It's a very warm day out. It's very windy for this time of year. Do you want me to fix that line? So it doesn't flop around so much? That's fine. Now how does it sound back there? You can hear it? Okay. So... I think everybody knows me, but there could be a couple of people here who've never met me. I'm Alexandra, that's the A, and I live here at Berkley Center, and I last Saturday talked about case 43 of the Blue Cliff record. Tozani's case, and it's no cold nor heat. Today I'm going to talk about the five ranks, the five perspectives on reality, and how they relate to Tozani's case and the Genjo Koma.

[01:16]

From the point of view of my last 12 years in the office, and doing a walk around. I see that those... the practice Dodin describes and Tozan describes are the same practice. And I have notes that I have to put on the floor because I can't read regularly enough. So I can show them first. Looks like a jungle of birds. Yeah, super. Tosan's thing is questioned by his monk, his student, who says, when cold and heat descend, where can I go to avoid them?

[03:01]

And Tosan says, why don't you go to the place where there is no cold or heat? And the monk said, where is the place where there is no cold or heat? And Tosan says, and this is a different translation than last time, when cold, be thoroughly cold. When hot, be thoroughly hot. And this is the first translation of this which I like better than when cold be so cold it kills you, and when hot be so hot that it kills him, or let it be so hot that it kills him. And then there are commentaries on the meanings of cold and hot.

[04:04]

which are death and illness or it could be birth and death or it could be anything that meets you in the moment. So last Friday I talked about the edge of practice as the place where you have not practiced, where it's difficult, where the comfort in your life is threatened and the bat is like looking over the cliff. So one of the metaphors of this koan was the thousand-fathom cliff. And I like that metaphor because It's, uh... I'm afraid of heights, and whenever I look over the edge of something, I gravitate towards it, as if I'm terrified of falling, but I move in that direction.

[05:25]

And there's something about that, the practice, that you gravitate towards the difficult when you practice, because intuitively, you know that bringing awareness to the difficult place is ultimately possibly liberating. But you have to do it to find out. So the risk is there when you practice at the edge. So I thought of it as the first movement into practice, as Dogen says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self, or practice the self. Then he says to study the self is to forget the self.

[06:36]

a question of how do you study the self and forget the self at the same time arises in the question of who is the self. And so the first perspective on reality that Tosan talks about is recognizing the absolute reality in the world. That all the things that are familiar to us are in or within reality. So the question that I've always had is, define reality, there's relative reality, the ordinary mundane world, I always call it mundane, and reality that has no form, that can't be defined, that has no birth or death.

[08:03]

And that's the reality that I was interested in knowing. And then I found you can't really know something that can't be defined. But you can intuit it. And so the sense of that was what I discovered when I began to practice. when I began 12 years ago to practice in a law firm I would come here and it was beautiful and I would see a brief patch of morning and get on a bus or a train and go to San Francisco and long for a day

[09:06]

that I could stand outside. But I went indoors onto the 27th floor into a cubicle every day. And I suffered. I didn't think I would last until at some point my practice is so gradual I never notice it doesn't stand out to me. But reality came forward in my office and I just began to notice that there was, if I stood in the center of whatever it was that I was doing, then reality would present itself or be revealed. the reality that is intuitive and the way it expressed was in people stopped being boring and my co-workers suddenly I had a new perspective on them and this would be like the perspective of the first

[10:39]

rank in Tosan's five ranks. To see another face and know that it is real, to sense that reality and know that it is yourself as well, is to embrace that person in your heart. I don't know. That is what happened. And I started really liking my co-workers. And we still were running around in the law firm under extreme pressure because we were all doing civil litigation. And we were working under lawyers who were merciless

[11:42]

in terms of the pressure. They were passing the pressure down from the clients who had lots of money at stake. What I started to do was create an oasis at work and I began to invite people to my desk and talk and we over a period of time we started to talk about real things and developed friendships and so I stopped longing for the outdoors as much and began to notice that If I stayed where I was, wherever I went, I could catch a glimpse of that absoluteness that's permeating everything.

[12:56]

So the difficulty came for me when I stopped being able to perform very well and faced losing my job. And I didn't know exactly how to... That was a new cliff. for me that was something like you don't, in my experience, jump off a cliff once and then hit bottom and become liberated and live in Samadhi in the ordinary world forever. It's like I'm always doing this to some degree or another.

[14:07]

a challenge that comes up and in my life a lot of them do but my response to that is to bring, to just be aware and to take action in that awareness and I am somebody who is very decisive and takes action very quickly once I know where to go. And I never know in advance. So, I knew my entire life was going to change, but I did not know what it would look like. escaping, I went through several scenarios to try to keep my job.

[15:21]

That would have been my escape. And then thought about why I wanted to do that. realized that I had become fixed in position and my identity had now fused with my job and the place and the people And that fusion was a pattern that would have to be broken. Which I didn't really get a clear view of that until I walked away.

[16:32]

I called in sick one day and never came back. I hired a specialist and went on disability. He called my law firm and told them that I was now disabled and going on family leave. So that was when I stepped out of the door of my consultant's office. and knew I was never going back to work. It was an extraordinary feeling of fear and liberation. Being liberated from that cubicle was an amazing feeling. There was also loss of all the people that I had bonded with over the years.

[17:35]

And they were just as stuck in that place as I was. So, I had developed a practice of service, which, in my law firm, and there were several other people that I worked with who also developed the same kind of practice. And in the second view of reality that Tozan talks about is there is the idea of submitting, of giving over yourself to the world and the world in front of you.

[18:42]

The center stopped being the center of self so much as all of our centers. I started to understand self and other was not really self and other from the point of view of submission or relinquishing my own ego or need or position. We were all in that place and so we were all equal in that way. and when I left them I found myself without a purpose and what I decided to do was nothing

[20:05]

and see what would happen. And I was actually, I started to settle down into the couch where I had, since I had no schedule outside of Zazen, I could come home and just And what I would do is either watch television or listen to silence. Eventually, I gave up television and just listened to silence. I also didn't read. And I spent months doing nothing in particular except little tasks. I realized that the service practice I developed took with me, but I wasn't serving people.

[21:19]

I was serving the environment around me, and that was okay for the time. One of the things about standing in the middle or not grasping or avoiding is that it does allow for the world to touch you and I noticed that if I let go into just my body that the world did touch me, the things of the world, the people of the world.

[22:21]

The world, I don't know, I think of it as just my local neighborhood. So I see that coming from within reality leads back to a freedom that frees the body, frees the mind, my own as well as other people, I noticed that people appreciate my freedom when they see it and want to fix my problems when they see me stuck in my problems and that we share a field of a sort

[23:42]

where if one of us recognizes true reality, that is felt by the rest of us, even if we don't recognize it. So our practice together has a significant impact on each other. What time is it? It's ten past eleven. I think I'm going to stop here and have questions. The period that you were at home after you left work and you were doing nothing at home.

[24:50]

I mean that sounds so terrifying and so how did you keep from being just depressed or did you? I think I was depressed I know I was depressed on and off at work when when all of this started happening. My mind had gone dull from reading legal briefs. I had never given my mind to the law before. I mean, I've worked in law firms for 30 years. Now I had to actually digest the briefs and the motions, because I worked for lawyers who wanted my opinion on their position, and they wanted me to know what I was reading, so I could proof it for content as well.

[26:09]

not for legal citations or anything, but it did something to my mind to do that all day long and to get interrupted 20 or 30 times during the day and have to go back and try to recapture the context. And so my mind was no longer my mind. I had lost my mind. So I went home Television was like an oasis. It took my mind and it was like putting my mind in a bathtub. It gave it a huge relief. It was like no legal briefs. And a story, I could watch a story, something that had a beginning and an end and no big explanation for any of it.

[27:19]

No right or wrong for any of it. And I watched some, I found some fascinating soap operas. Just to me examples of real life. Which I didn't know, you know, Real life was now me and the TV. So I was a little wondered how long I could keep this up. But I trusted the fact that I was aware of what I was doing. I think that that kept me from being depressed. I don't know why I was doing that, but it was a relief And then it changed. Yeah?

[28:21]

That's similar to, in some respects, obviously not the illness part, but what I went through when I retired. And it took months of literally doing nothing, or not much, to... The level of energy and constantly being on in that kind of highly competitive environment really does something to you. And it takes a disengagement to just slow down and be able to sit outside and just listen to the birds or whatever. I mean, you can really lose that Through the constant movement and agitation, you can really erase that. And then it takes a long time like that to recover. And it was a year before I wanted to undertake projects and stuff like that.

[29:24]

But it's also true that once you're not working at that level, everything takes at least twice as long, sometimes three times as long, as it used to. It's hard to fill up the day. It's rather than drinking. But the computer is just as good as drugs. But it really takes a long time to be able to adjust it and listen. Yeah, I could do an agenda, but somehow I lost the capacity to sit and listen quietly at home or in a park. Now, Lisa? I'd like a little more clarification of the real and the absolute, or the relative and the absolute and secondary.

[30:32]

Uh-huh, yeah. The second rank is when you see the real, and the real being not a thing, what is not born, does not die, and is within the dharmas, that being all of us and all of the things. To see that is something of a heart opener. That's the second rank. And in my experience of it, at the level that I practice, it's an equalizer of a sort. It puts us all back in the realm of we are all part of the same reality.

[31:37]

big reality. That gives rise to wisdom. And I think there are two ways to look at the five ranks. One is practical and one is one thing. One reality with five facets or five positions that you could view reality and with different functions. Different functions come out of different views. It's a complex subject. We've been studying it for... We started a year and a half ago, I think, with Darkness and Light. Darkness and Light led to the Precious Mirror Samadhi and then the Five Brands naturally arose out of that as a topic of study and there was a real interest in it.

[32:43]

It's a kind of going from one to the other but the two always being present and by being present yourself is the way to experience what that is, because it can't be really told. Sherry? You said that you moved from a place where you were living in the center of yourself, but it was your small self, just to circumscribe your conventional self, and going to the place of big self, big mind, finding your center there. And you said something about being in a place where everyone was the same, or the same place everyone else was.

[33:50]

This place of reality, true reality. A trace of your root in nature. That's what I'm understanding. Yeah. What you said led me to think that you were sane. Is my true self the same as your true self? True self meaning surreal? Yeah. Yeah, but it's not yours. It doesn't belong to anyone. That's what I'm asking. That's what I'm understanding. It's a thing. It's within, but it isn't a thing, so it can't belong. It's that thing that we use metaphors to explain.

[34:56]

So finding yourself is finding this place without Yeah, but it's finding a place, but the surprise is where the place is in the end. Ross? Thank you. It appears that getting sick kind of catapulted you into a new view of the world and yourself. growth and development and I had a similar experience myself being up in bed for about six weeks and just reflecting on my life and making some choices and trying to get in the way which I think was beneficial to me. But you said that in the office you started seeing your co-workers in a different light and they were interesting and I'm wondering what it was that

[35:59]

enabled you to see them differently, and what words of encouragement you can give to all of us who are in jobs or situations that may be a little dulling, that short of getting sick, what can we do to turn our life in a way which would be more of a break? Well, it was literally a shift from self-oriented to fulfillment. The need to fix things that are broken and always be looking at what my personal agenda was, my personal needs, my goals, where I was going, how I was going to accomplish it, that fell away to some degree. I noticed the person working next to me and inquired into her life and found she had a similar set of involvements that she was happy to share with me.

[37:12]

It made her feel good to talk about it. And that started a friendship. And I started doing that with people who would be open to it. and I was interested in what they had to say and what their life was like and I shared my mind and my thoughts on it and they did the same and it changed our floor. Our floor became a friendlier place and a team attitude began to grow and communication became easier because people wanted to be on the same page with each other. They didn't want to be in opposition, especially under the pressure of a reminder. So... Is that good?

[38:17]

I don't know your name. My name is TJ. TJ. I have a question. The more I sit and practice, How do you know what that practice would come out to be? How do you distinguish that from the wants and the desires and the self that probably came along for the ride as well? Yeah, they always do. I did not devalue things and service to things was was still non-self-oriented. I looked at the lawn today, and it was covered in leaves, the front lawn.

[39:28]

And I thought I should rake the leaves because when I water the lawn, I don't think it would be good. You know, so I rate the one first. I do things like that as service. But it's a service to an object, or for an object, or... but it's not really an object. Because I don't... I feel these things. They are more than an object. They are participants in reality. And have a value. that I recognize. So, yeah. Nathan? When you tell the story, somehow my mind imagines this community along with it.

[40:32]

The workers in the legal firm are not necessarily the higher-ups or the lawyers. No, but a few lawyers. That was a large law firm. Not really, mid-sized. Small law firms, different story. Small law firms are a different story. But I worked in this one. Normally I avoid large law firms. Lawyers are, I don't know how they do what they do, very intense and very fast-paced and put super high pressure and they don't want to hear friendly little chit-chats unless they have the time.

[41:40]

They're under the gun, and when we have our downtime, that's when we would interact. But then when we're under the gun, we don't want them getting friendly with us either, because we have to get this stuff out the door. Anyway, it's a funny community, and I learned a lot about practice in it. So, thank you Megan and Sita for the last question. Sita, when you were in your shower time on the couch, what about the other people in your life? Were they, were you isolated? Yeah, I was alone in Alameda. And the other people in my life, they were elsewhere. But, you know, a young couple from Richmond came and picked up my television and were thrilled and the silence returned in my physical world and I started walking the beach and I came to the Zen Center and it's beautiful and the silence is back in my life in that way.

[43:06]

So now I'm And rest with it. That's good.

[43:12]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ