That's one of the strange things, is this experience of identity with what until that moment had been conceptually the opposite of me. And I felt this unmistakable feeling of identity with what until that moment had been the opposite of me. And it was mind-boggling. I couldn't understand how a riot squad and policeman and I could be identical. But it was, you know, it was the experience itself couldn't be argued with.

[01:10]

And, you know, later as I've studied, I've heard the expression, self and other are not two. You know, I'd never heard such a thing before, but it was something like that. I suppose that experience, I don't want to conceptualize it too much, the point about it was that it was clearly more real than any experience I'd ever had in my life before. And that's what I brought this for. Now, I was trying to remember, what did I bring this book for? This is, I ran across the other day, Alan Watts says, this is it. Now, I don't know how many people here are familiar with me lecturing, but it's kind of a joke how often my theme is just this is it. And here's this book which I never heard of by Alan Watts called This Is It. But he has this quote that's interesting. The most impressive fact in man's spiritual, intellectual,

[02:15]

and poetic experience has always been, for me, the universal prevalence of those astonishing moments of insight, which Richard Buck called cosmic consciousness. There is no really satisfactory name for this type of experience. To call it mystical is to confuse it with visions of another world or of gods and angels. To call it spiritual or metaphysical is to suggest that it is not also extremely concrete and physical, while the term cosmic consciousness itself has the unpoetic flavor of oculus jargon. But from all historical times and cultures, we have reports of this same unmistakable sensation emerging as a rule quite suddenly and unexpectedly and from no clearly understood cause. To the individual thus enlightened, it appears as a vivid and overwhelming certainty that the universe, precisely as it is at this moment, as a whole and in every one of its parts,

[03:19]

is so completely right as to need no explanation or justification beyond what it simply is. Existence not only ceases to be a problem, the mind is so wonderstruck at the self-evident and self-sufficient fitness of things as they are, including what would ordinarily be thought the very worst, that it cannot find anywhere strong enough to express the perfection and beauty of the experience. Its clarity sometimes gives the sensation that the world has become transparent or luminous, and its simplicity the sensation that it is pervaded and ordered by a supreme intelligence. At the same time, it is usual for the individual to feel that the whole world has become his own body and that whatever he is has not only become but always has been what everything else is. It is not that he loses his identity to the point of feeling that he actually looks out through all

[04:21]

other eyes, becoming literally omniscient, but rather that his individual consciousness and existence is a point of view temporarily adopted by something immeasurably greater than himself. And he goes on. Anyhow, I read that and I thought, gee, that's... I've never read anything of Alan Watson's before, actually, surprisingly enough. And Lou just found this up in the third floor, you know, where all these books are stashed for somebody who wants to peruse them and brought it down to read. And this is sort of the unofficial lending library, in a sense, where people put their discarded books and other people take them for a while and sort of book exchange up on the third floor. So this experience with the riot squad policemen was totally unfathomable to me. I mean,

[05:29]

I actually didn't... Did I talk about it? I can't even remember talking about it. Yeah, you've mentioned it before. I know I've mentioned it before, but I talked about it today because I wanted to be on this tape because this is my way-seeking mind talk and this was a very important event. But what happened was that whatever boundary I thought I had just expanded and expanded and expanded to include everything. And... Well, is that on? I guess so. Working? Well, this worries me because I want this to be recording.

[06:30]

Oh, that's the thing. That's the... Yeah. All right. I'll just hold it. You know, I thought the world is not like I thought it was. I don't understand this, you know. How can I and the riot squad policemen be identical? Who knows about this? And then I started looking for who knows about this. And some months later, I went to the Berkeley Zendo. Well, some months later, actually, I went to a friend's house whose son had been my gardener and who was now at Tassajara. And he told me about the Berkeley Zendo. And I thought, Zen Buddhism? Boy, that's weird. So that was actually in May. And I didn't actually go to the Zendo until July.

[07:38]

But I had Zazen instruction July 3, 1969. And I started sitting Zazen daily that day. And I could not understand what I was doing or why I was doing it. It was really weird because, you know, my father had been an atheist. I adored my father. I think that probably came across. And clearly, this was some kind of religious experience I was having. And, you know, Zen Buddhism, you know, I didn't know anybody in 1969. I didn't know anybody, you know, that said Zazen. But I went to my friend's house and her son, Paul Disko, was up from Tassajara. And he had been my gardener when he was 14. And he told me about

[08:42]

the Berkeley Zendo in May. And I turned it over in my mind until July 3. I went over there and had meditation instruction and started sitting daily from that day. All the while, for months, kind of, what? You know, Zen Buddhism, this is weird. I don't know anybody who does this. You know, just all this kind of argument in my head. But every morning at 4.30, I'd get up and go to the Zendo for 5 o'clock Zazen. And after a while, I thought, well, I don't know, but there's somebody here who wants to do this. Because I was arguing with it all the time and getting up and going to the Zendo every day. That's where I met Suzuki Roshi. He used to come every Monday and give a lecture. When Lou came home from Connecticut, and he was sitting Zazen too, I invited him to come to the Zendo with me. And he said, that's your trip.

[09:47]

I am tired of having women run my life. And he made a Zendo at home. He said, first it was my mother, and then it was my school teachers, and then it was my first wife, and now it's you. But he came down. One day I said, well, you know, Suzuki Roshi is going to be lecturing today. Why don't you come down today? So he came down and met Suzuki Roshi. And then it was kind of irrelevant whose trip it was or whatever. And he started sitting there too. So we sat there at Berkeley for three years. Coming over to, first, to Sokoji Temple, Suzuki Roshi would give a lecture every Wednesday night, so we came to that. And then every Saturday morning, there's a half-day sitting. Now, like, if you did morning Zazen, breakfast, 925 Zazen, and the lecture, it would be sort of like what they did two periods of Zazen, but it would be sort of like what they did at Sokoji every Saturday morning. It was kind of a half-day sitting. A lot of people who live here don't go to 925 Zazen anymore,

[10:50]

which is a pity, because you'd have a half-day sitting every week if you did. But so I heard him every Wednesday night and every Saturday morning, and then every Monday morning he came to Berkeley and gave a talk. He came to Berkeley on Monday morning. He went to Mill Valley on Tuesday morning and talked at Bill Kwong's Little Sendoh. He did his Wednesday night talk at Sokoji Temple, and he went once a week to Los Altos, which is where he gave the talks that are in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. Those talks in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind that have affected so many people over the years were given sometimes only two or three people in someone's living room. It's just an amazement to me. So there he was doing one, two, about four or five lectures every week. It's amazing. He really, really wanted to give us what he thought

[11:58]

was the most important thing he had to offer, which was Dogen Zenji's teaching, and he knew he didn't have a long time to do it. So he just poured himself into us in such a totally unselfish way. It was really amazing. So I'm blathering on. Do you have any questions or anything in particular? Yes? When you had the experience of not being two with that policeman, what you said in the lecture was that was the end of politics, but then you went on to form this group and stuff like that. I wonder if you could say, partly I'm curious about what you did in the next two minutes, like you stayed there with your body between or... Well, I kept backing up slowly saying, don't rush, because there were people behind us and there were buildings behind us and there needed to be time for... And one of the interesting things

[13:01]

that happened, which is probably purely coincidence, but I don't know, because I was in kind of an altered state, when I ducked under the hands in front of me to be between police and students, that was the moment that whoever was guiding that phalanx of policemen blew a whistle and they changed from poking to holding their sticks this way. Whether there was a relationship between the two events, I have no idea. It seemed to me at the time that there was, but it could have been totally coincidence. Yeah, I went on to a meeting to form the Parents Committee to support the strike and so forth, but that event became the most important thing for me to understand that event, you know, something like, oh, the world is not the way I thought it was. I have to find someone who understands this.

[14:08]

And the closest thing I can say is when I met Suzuki Roshi, since he looked at me like there was no separation, I thought, he understands what happened. That was some months later. Between fall, it was the beginning of school in 68, fall of 68, that the thing happened at State. And it was July 3rd of 1969 that I went to the Berkley-Zendo. In the meanwhile, I had tried a bunch of other things. Somebody, and the way I heard about the Berkley-Zendo was someone where I was working was doing this yogic clean-out diet. They were into yoga. And they were doing this spring clean-out diet where you didn't, well, it's kind of crude. You took these enemas and then you didn't eat anything but raw vegetables for a week.

[15:14]

So I was in the middle of that when I went to my friend's house for dinner where she served coquille sans choc. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. This is where Paul Disco was at the time, his mother. I'm so sorry. I can't eat this. I'm in the middle of a spring clean-out diet, a yogic clean-out diet, and I'm just eating raw vegetables. I brought them with me. And Paul said, that's all right. I'll eat yours. He's a big guy. I don't know how many of you know Paul Disco. He's a carpenter. And one of Suzuki Roshi's early students, one of the early people he ordained, he used to be my gardener when he was 14. And Lu said, well, I'm on this diet with her. And he said, okay, I'll eat yours too. But somehow in the course of the conversation, he told me about the Berkeley Zen Do. And I thought, Zen Buddhism. And so that was May. I didn't actually go till July. Meanwhile, this friend had given me this book on Zen Buddhism.

[16:20]

And so I just was curious enough, finally, and hurting enough. I mean, just really, my life was, you know, I had to understand how to live my life in the face of the impermanence I'd experienced with my friend and myself. And well, you know, Nagarjuna says, seeing into impermanence is bodhicitta, is the mind of awakening. And so that experience of I'm going to die, it isn't just people die, or sure, I'll die someday or something. It's like, it became very personal. That everyone dies was not personal to me until those two periods of Pat dying and the experience of me almost dying. My doctor came in the morning after I was admitted

[17:28]

to the hospital and said, boy, I'm glad to see you. And by which I understood that he actually hadn't expected me to survive the night. So that was a real wake up. Anybody else? Yeah. I'm curious, when you looked into this gentleman's eyes, did you see the person or more like the image that he projected? What did I see when I looked into his eyes? Well, what happened was that what I saw was somehow identity. And what I felt was the sort of infinite expansion of any boundaries that might exist between us. So that what I felt was identity. I didn't have any thought. I just, I felt an identity that was, I had no words for. I mean,

[18:39]

later on, I said, well, you know, he was, he was defending all he thought was right and good from others that he thought were going to wreck it. And I was doing the same thing. But that was just trying to get some concept that would explain what happened. But that didn't really explain what happened. You know, it was just what it was, you know, we're not two. And it was mystifying. And yet, I knew that was more real than anything, any ideas I had. And, as I say, when I met Suzuki Roshi and looked in his eyes, somehow I had the feeling he understands that. Somehow, the way he was looking at me, there was no separation. It was more experience than idea. I mean, there wasn't any idea. I kept looking for an idea that would encompass it. And, as I say, later, the idea of self and other or not, too, I said,

[19:46]

oh, that's what they're talking about. What did you feel? I felt time stand still. I felt whatever might have been the boundary of myself, just expanding to include everything. I mean, I think this is what Alan Watts is trying to describe in this paragraph. When I read that, I thought, oh, he's trying to describe something like what I felt. My son once went up to the Sierra with some friends, and he came back, and I asked him, you know, how the trip had been. He said, it was wonderful. He said, I saw God. And I think it was an experience like that, of losing all sense of separation between self and other, between self and not-self. Loss of moment, loss of time. Loss of the, yes, yeah, yeah, just expanding boundlessly.

[20:48]

Did you see a recognition from that recently? I can't say one way or the other. You know, people have asked me, what happened to him? I don't know. You know, I don't know. I do know they stopped poking and started holding the sticks this way, but I don't know if there was a connection even. But I really did start searching at that point for who understands how a riot squad policeman and I can be identical, because a riot squad policeman in that kind of political atmosphere was sort of a symbol of the opposite of me. You know, so how can I be identical with what I think is opposite? And it was clearly more real than my thoughts. I mean, I had no doubt about the veracity of the experience.

[21:50]

I just couldn't understand the meaning of it. Or what the consequence was for my life. But I knew my life had to change to include that reality. Or to really be based on that reality. And of course, you know, these moments of clarity are very clear. But our habits of mind, that we are separate, you know, our habit of self-clinging is very strong. It's the habit out of which all suffering arises. And certainly that experience undermined it, but it didn't eradicate it. The idea of a separate self keeps returning. The illusion of a separate self keeps returning. But I think that's what's meant by shunyata, or by dependent co-arising.

[22:58]

That we arise, whatever this is, it arises fresh on each moment in response to all of the causes and conditions surrounding it. There isn't some permanent thing here that goes around that has all of these experiences. There's no substantial self. This is what the Buddha saw. But this idea of a separate self is very persistent. This delusion of a separate self is very persistent. But, you know, in the moment that it dropped away, the reality of that experience was totally undeniable. And that, so that's the kind of thing, that part stays with you. When you get caught up in your delusion of a separate self again and again and again, you know, at some point you say, yeah, but I know that this is just my idea of self. But you can, you know, grab it and run with it for quite a while before you say,

[24:03]

oops, caught again, you know. You had your hand up. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

[25:26]

I don't know. I think if I allow myself to be taken over by hatred, I will be capable of what the SS people were capable of. So my job is to not get caught up in hatred and separation. My job is to take care of my practice and to see all beings as Buddha. And to act, to conduct myself in such a way. I think that there is dreadful suffering that comes about by separating ourselves from other human beings and it isn't that I don't get caught by it. But as soon as I notice I'm caught by it, I say suffering is that way.

[26:33]

That is the road to suffering. I've been there. I don't want to do that. How can I, for example, be for peace rather than against war? I mean, I was fighting for peace. And at some point, I had, before this thing with the Right Squad policemen, I'd already had that experience of noticing that I was fighting for peace. But there was no peace in me. So there was some real contradiction there about fighting for peace. And I was hating the people with whom I disagreed and wishing them dead. And that's just what happens when you come up with the conviction of I'm right and he's wrong.

[27:34]

So how do I work toward the world that I don't want to live in? That I think is truly human without falling into hatred of those who view the world differently. I can't always do that. But I think that's where my practice is. I know my husband's experience with a traditional German upbringing when he was small. And I presume that Adolf Eichmann and Himmler and et cetera, et cetera, had such an upbringing. You know, the first thing is break their spirit early. So I could imagine a lot of anger and hatred as being built into someone with that kind of upbringing.

[28:44]

And a lot of fear. So I have to, you know, when I find myself caught up in anger, then the next thing is to try to see, try to experience how that connects me with all of the people who are suffering in that way. Rather than letting it become something which separates me from everything. The function of anger is separation according to the Abhidharma. And you can see how that is. When anger arises, you push things away. So, you know, how can I see instead the connection rather than the difference? The connection and the suffering. You know, it's not just to kind of lie down and let injustice walk over you.

[29:51]

But it's also to see the connection and the difference between the suffering and the connection. To meet it without hatred, without aversion. How to see yourself in the other person. I don't know. It depends on whether the intent is harm or not. Um. If I can deter evil without myself engaging in evil, that's one thing.

[30:59]

You know. If there is evil is a very good question. If there is suffering, there is suffering. If suffering sometimes produces harmful acts because of some unskillful response to it, is that evil? I don't know. I mean, what is evil? Is there good and evil? I am the one who's got the suffering and the end.

[32:01]

That they are the one who most truly knows what evil is. Such as the woman who stood before the headset. And yeah, I don't know what evil is. I don't know if it's a conceptual thing or a real thing. There certainly is suffering. There certainly is harm in the world. There certainly is suffering. I believe that harm is done by people who have also suffered harm. Which doesn't excuse it. But to say that it is evil, I'm not sure. I can say there is suffering, I'm not sure I can say there is evil, per se, I don't know.

[33:12]

I can say I have done harmful things. I have certainly been overcome by hatred. But you are not evil. Who knows? I am capable of doing it. However, I'm capable of evil acts. I think that's the point. That I discovered that I was fighting for peace. And that I was wishing my political opponents dead. And I was shocked by it. And so where's the difference between them and me? You know, I think we're getting in the way of people who want to eat their lunch. I'm sorry to say. But because this is, I'm enjoying this. What is more important, lunch or what we're doing? I don't know. But I'm enjoying it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[34:08]

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