Well, today I want to talk about maybe the most fundamental subject of Buddhism, which has to do with the old question of, what is the self? This is the question that has been turned around and around many times inside and out in Buddhist understanding. And there's no end to dealing with it. So it's a great question. Who am I? And what is the self? The early Buddhists, the Abhidhammas.

[01:19]

The Abhidhamma is the analytical study of Buddhism. The Abhidhamma dissects being done into its constituent parts. It studies all aspects of the human being in its constituent parts. And so you take away this, and you take away that, and when you peel it down, there's nothing there. So the formula so without a center, without a specific center. So, according to this understanding, there's simply momentum.

[02:29]

Dharma means, in this case, all aspects of all aspects of a personality. In the Heart Sutra we read all dharmas in their own being are empty. I would also say the five skandhas are also empty. So five skandhas means five streams Literally means heaps, but you forget that. It means five streams that are categories that come together and intermingle. And we call these five streams myself, or a person. The five skandhas are form, which is this body, and all of its feeling, and all of its constituents.

[03:53]

And feeling is both physical feeling and mental feeling. Of course, physical feeling is mental feeling. body and mind are not two. And perception, forms, feelings, perceptions, what we recognize around us, what we see, feel, hear, sense. Mental formations, we say formations, but it means mental formations, which means our thought process the thought process which creates karma, which includes all of our thoughts, which are acted out in our life, and gives us impetus. And then consciousness is the fifth skanda, the fifth stream.

[04:59]

So these are categories, and the categories of course contain all of the elements of their category. Consciousness is a big subject, a huge subject, an unending subject in Buddhism. Consciousness is consciousness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and awareness on various levels. So these are the five streams. The five streams which are all empty in their own being.

[06:01]

So Mahayana Buddhism concentrates, or makes clear, about the substratum of no substratum. So what we call ourself, of course, is these five streams and the dharmas. The dharma applies to everything. Everything is a dharma, but strictly speaking, for the purposes of studying ourself, the dharmas our human existence. All of the minor and major parts is Dharma, in that sense, with a small d. Dharma with a big capital D is Buddhist teaching or the truth about the Dharmas. So you may be familiar with Bodhidharma and the Emperor.

[07:09]

The first case on the Bhukta record where this happens in the 6th century in China. Bodhidharma came from India, as you know, and recognized that there needed to be something to pull Buddhism together in China. So Bodhidharma came to see the emperor, Emperor Wu. Emperor Wu gave him an audience. He heard that he'd come to China from India. And he said, he asked, it seems like Emperor Wu, who was a very nice man actually, he was, he really created a space for Buddhism and created monasteries and supported the monks. And he asked Bodhidharma, he said, what is the merit for all this? And Mao Zedong said, no merit. I'm like, I've been doing all this stuff and there's no merit.

[08:12]

And so, then the emperor asked Bodhidharma, what is the meaning of the holy truths? What's the true meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said, emptiness. No holiness. That's the stereotype of what he said. It's something like, holiness is emptiness. And then he asked Bodhidharma, he said, well, who are you? And Bodhidharma said, no knowing, I don't know, I'm not knowing. This interpretation of what he said is various. Literally, no knowing.

[09:20]

But that translates into not knowing. Master Sun Song, Sun Tzu-Ning, who was here for a long time before he died from Korea, a really good teacher, his student said, I don't know. And he said, no, no, don't know. Just don't know. Never mind the I. Aiken Roshi said, not don't know. I don't know. Sanuki Roshi said, without knowing who you are or where you are, just to stand up and be present without knowing who you are or where you are. I thought that was pretty good. I like that. I think that's a turning point for our practice. without knowing, just to stand up where you are, without knowing who you are or where you are.

[10:27]

If you know who you are, you don't know who you are. If you say, I know who I am, you don't know who you are. Who you are is beyond anything you can know. But, there are the holy, the true meaning of the holy truth. The emperor's question, what's that? Emptiness is holiness. You can also say no holiness, which means everything is a holy thing. Holy means basically whole. The meaning of the Holy Truth is the conventional truth and the non-conventional truth are not two.

[11:40]

In other words, our usual, what we call our usual life, ordinary life, and emptiness are not two. Divided consciousness and undivided consciousness are not two. Suzuki Roshi, in one of his talks, which I've talked about before, talks about of the movie and the screen. We live our life as a movie on the screen of emptiness. There's a projector and a light and

[12:54]

a blank screen. And a blank screen does not have any personality on it. There's nothing to distinguish it except that it's totally clear. And without this clear screen, there's no movie. But when consciousness starts to move and create thoughts and scenarios, then the scenarios are projected onto the screen. Then the screen and the movie are one thing. There's no difference between the screen and the movie. Without the screen, the movie doesn't exist. And without the movie, the screen doesn't exist.

[14:02]

They're really one thing, but they're also not one thing. It's not one, and it's not two. So he says, mostly we're not so interested in the screen. We're only interested in the movie. So our life goes on. The momentum of our life continues on and on, one thing leading to another. So we have this continually running movie, and we have our ups and downs in our life. And our movie, sometimes we say, let's change the movie. Let's go to a different movie. But even if we do, it's still the movie. No matter what we do, we're still involved in the movie. When we sit thousand, the movie stops. And we're simply faced with a blank screen, even though there's still a movie.

[15:10]

There are fragments, movie fragments, that are flitting across the screen. because it's really hard to stop the momentum of consciousness. In the Ching Wai Sher Loong it says the mind is like a roaring stream which is continuously moving and almost unstoppable. So in Zazen we don't try to stop the momentum but we sidetracked it. So the momentum, let the momentum of the fantasies flow past our mind, through actually, without reacting to like being underwater maybe and you watch all the life flowing past.

[16:21]

Sometimes described as watching the scenery of our life go by. Of course we want to be involved in our life, of course, but being involved in our life for a Zen student includes without the movie. It's also called giving your mind a rest. Maybe brainwashing. Brainwashing in the sense of giving your mind a pass. We could probably use a little brainwashing to get out some of those places that are stuck. We get stuck in our conditioning. Zazen actually allows us to let go of our conditioned responses.

[17:30]

Our conditioned response to emotions. Our conditioned response to pain. Our conditioned response to pleasure. Our conditioned response to the way we orient ourselves in a narrow sense. so we can open ourself so that we're not attached to what we're letting go of our conditioned response to whatever arises and just experience it in a clean way whatever arises we experience When we hear a sound, we hear the bird, our conditioned response is to say, well, that's a bird.

[18:40]

And then the second thought is, well, what kind of bird is that? And then the third is, that bird is really annoying. There is a bird that comes, this bird is pretty nice, but there is a bird sometimes that's really annoying. Suzuki Roshi said in his Sondokai lecture, when you hear the blue jay, it pops out, the blue jays are really loud, and they just come dive-bombing down, take your sandwich away. He said, if you think the blue jay is annoying, I was thinking of the word person.

[19:41]

The literal meaning, the ancient meaning of person is a mask in a play. And then, of course, it's become the meaning of a person. I mean, what we consider a human person. The American Indians went further, thinking of all of the surroundings, the individuals that surrounded them, the trees and the rocks and the streams, as persons, but not humans. So there's a difference between human person and tree person and sky person. And when we can think in terms of all dharmas or objects or other existences as person, then it makes it easier for us to think in terms of connection and how we treat things.

[20:51]

I remember in the 90s, I was an abbot at San Francisco State Center in Tassajara. I used to go on trips with Little Bear, who was an Indian. When you go up the Tassajara Road on the right, there's this horse ranch. And Little Bear was a huge guy. His back was like this long. I would take people on trips. camp overnight and he would do his Indian thing, which included sweat lodge. And I would go and do my Zen thing, which was Zazen. And we really had a wonderful thing going. We stayed there for two or three days and in the morning we'd start building the sweat lodge.

[21:58]

And then while the sweat lodge was being built, there was a big fire. We put stones in the fire all day long. And when we were ready to do the sweat lodge, everybody would go in and there was a bucket of water, which makes steam. And the rocks were so hot that you could see through them practically. They were translucent red. And so the person would bring the rock over and then everybody would say, welcome rock person. So it just wasn't just this rock. It had a personality, a rockality.

[23:07]

that really created a total feeling, a total event. And then pour the water on the rock and everybody dives for the floor. You should experience that someday. It's called really hot. We have these five skandhas, and this is what we're kind of like the dough that we're made of. And then there are the four elements since ancient times, which are space, sometimes called wind, sometimes called sky, And then there's the earth, which is solidity.

[24:17]

Sky is like empty or spacious. Earth is like solidity. Fire is like energy. And water is plasticity. And we have these four elements plus mind. The fifth one is mind in Buddhism. So we have ethereal types, and we have earthy types, we have fiery types, and we have flexible types. accommodating type. We shouldn't water all those things. Water is malleable and always seeks the lowest place. So there are water people, earth people, fire people, and ethereal people.

[25:25]

And we contain all of these elements within ourselves. And balancing these elements within ourself is really important. Balancing our spirituality with our earthiness. This is Zen. Zen is spirituality based on earthiness. Always sitting down. Sitting down in Sanzang. So that everything goes up. Growth goes up. Growth is always reaching upwards. This is why deities always live in the sky. And we are reaching for the sky. But the earth holds us down. Gravity is really strong. And spirit is reaching up. And so these two are always in tension. And we're dealing with gravity every moment.

[26:31]

Everything we do is based on gravity. It's based on these two aspects, gravity and spirit. Spirit is pulling up, gravity is pulling down. And we accommodate ourselves. I'm given these two forces that are constant. And then fire is, you know, the force that moves us forward. And faith is created through fire. Doubt is created through fire. All of our karma is created through fire. And controlling fire is the most difficult thing. Because when we can't control it, it just burns everything up. So it's really dangerous. And water controls fire. Water keeps fire cool.

[27:36]

In other words, malleableness. You see, somebody's really hot-headed. don't know how to control themselves. They need a little water to cool them down, to cool us down. So we have all of these elements and we have to keep them in balance and that's what our practice is, keeping these elements in balance. And what do we... but there's one other factor which is emptiness or mind. Mind undivided and divided. So the four elements are divisions of mind.

[28:36]

The five skandhas are divisions of mind. And mind is undivided. True mind is undivided. So, what is self? in the hierarchy of consciousness, self, is number seven, ego, which is the divided mind. Ego is the leader in divided mind. Buddha and ordinary. Ordinary is divided mind. Buddha is undivided mind. But Buddha is also divided mind. So divided mind and undivided mind are the same thing.

[29:44]

Just like birth and death are the same thing. But unless we touch undivided mind, we don't realize or understand what divided mind is. or where it comes from, or how to use it, or where to find satisfaction. So, again, Zazen is undivided mind. When we enter into Zazen, we enter into our undivided mind. And when we get up off the cushion and walk out the door, we enter into divided mind, discriminating mind. We have to discriminate all the time. But when we understand, when we have enlightenment, we realize that our discriminating mind is not different from our non-discriminating mind.

[30:56]

And our actions are We turn over our activity to non-discriminating mind, non-divided mind, and that non-divided mind can be leading. Suzuki Roshi calls it big mind. Big mind. We turn ourselves over to big mind simply by cleaning up our divided mind. Because big mind is always there. It's not something that's not there. Excuse me, you say cleaning up? Cleaning up our divided mind. No, it's called cleaning up our act. Cleaning up our act so that we don't get caught by phenomena. Could you give an example of cleaning up our act of cleaning up divided mind? I'm not sure what that means.

[32:03]

Yes. What it means by living by vow instead of living by karma. So, living by vow is like practice. That's Buddha mind. Living by karma means just following our senses. and getting karma. It's like AA. Buddhist AA. Don't do those things again. Quit creating karma. We're always creating karma, but stop creating karma which returns us. That's the problem.

[33:06]

Once we give ourselves over to our senses, not that our senses are bad or wrong, but once they are in control, then we're not in control. So our intention is most important. So intention is the same as vow. I don't like to use the word vow. It seems so like wow. But intention, you know, just think of it in terms of intention. I intend to do this. That's called self-control. So it's hard. Self-control is hard, especially when we've established our habit patterns. It's really hard. The one thing that distinguishes Buddhism, Buddhadharma, is that it's possible to change your karma.

[34:08]

Possible for us to change our karma. But we have to have the right intention. And even though we fail, as long as we have the right intention, that's called following precepts. The precepts is really our intention to let go of being stuck in our karma, turn around our karma, and to be compassionate with ourselves and others. So this is how we experience emptiness. What is really supporting everything besides the momentum? If we stop the momentum, what is it?

[35:11]

So that's zazen. So we can practice zazen all the time if we realize, if we turn ourselves over to the big mind or two. What is it? Ping mind is what? Dogen calls it Buddha nature. Bankei, Master Bankei called it the unborn Buddha mind. So, practice is to turn ourselves over to Buddha mind. After all, Zen school is called the Buddha mind school. So even though you may not feel enlightened, if we practice, enlightenment is there. Because it's there with your intention. It's there with your maturity, but it's really there with our intention.

[36:24]

That's why we say if we really have a strong intention to practice, it's there. But if you try to grasp it, It's not there. It's not there. When you drive your car, you know, it's all working. The engine is there, working. But if you try to look into it, it won't work. Try to take your engine apart and look in there, it doesn't work. Just drive it. Just practice. I've been thinking of all these things all week, and they came together, so I'm throwing it all together.

[37:26]

Again, have any questions? The screen in the movie, and the screen. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit more about what screen is? Yeah, the screen is something that you can't describe. But it's the knot that allows what is to be what is. It's zero. The screen is zero. So all of our activity is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And the screen is zero. Without zero, the numbers can't work together. So the numbers arise out of zero. All of our activity arises out of what we call emptiness.

[38:34]

Right? Which is, the blank screen is just a term that we use. And so this model of the movie and the screen is just a model. The screen is that which allows everything to move. So when we look at the sky, usually the sky is empty. But the sky is spacious. So space is that element in which everything can move. And it has no personality. Of course, the sky has, you know, various things flitting around in it. When you say when a bird flies across the sky, you know that the sky is there. Nogin says, in the winter, middle of the winter, he says, seeing the snow on the mountain makes the mountain.

[39:38]

But it's a way of talking about something. You have to talk about something that's non-dual in dualistic terms. Otherwise it's hard to talk about. So usually we say, we don't describe it, but to say a blank screen is coming close to describing If the projectors are discriminating mind, and we find a moment of non-discrimination, there's still, it seems like there's still, it's moving, it's not... Yes, the movie on the screen, the discrimination and the non-discrimination are one thing. They're not two things. They aren't two things. But we divide one thing into two in order to describe its nature. So we say form and emptiness.

[40:54]

Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness is form. The same is true for feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. That's the formula in the Haksa truth. The same is true for each one of those. Form is emptiness. The same is true with formations, as I pointed out, and consciousness. The same is true for all of them, including all the dharmas. They're all empty in their own being because they have no self nature that holds them together except in combination. I was thinking about what you said about self and

[41:59]

This is probably a wrong metaphor, but... He said, just keep looking and there is no cell. Keep peeling away, taking away. My reaction is... If this were a cell, you know, a single one cell, and you look through an electron microscope, and oh, you see a whole world, and then you... Yes. More advanced. You see more and more and more. That's right. Where it is. There's no end to the worlds. The worlds, the universe in a speck of dust has universes within that speck of dust. This is just a speck of dust. The thing is, where is the self? That's the question. Well the self, the true self, is the whole thing. When we give up depending on the small self too much, then we realize the bigger self, which is the whole thing.

[43:13]

We say the true human body is the whole universe. Because there's nothing that exists by itself. That's the meaning of emptiness in this case, that nothing exists independently. But things do exist independently, they exist interdependently, and they are all empty at the same time. So it's empty. If you say, well, I'm not an individual, that's not right. You are an individual. But if you say I'm only an individual, that's wrong. Because you are not only an individual, you are not separate from anything. And it takes the whole universe to create you. And so therefore you are the whole universe. When you sit in Zazen, you're letting go of dependence on the individual.

[44:19]

And you resume your enormous nature. Because you're so confined. We take the most confined posture to experience the most enormous feeling. Is there any relation between consciousness and the blank screen? in the realm of discrimination. Consciousness is discriminating. The screen is not discriminating. So the discriminating consciousness is the movie. So that's the relationship. The movie is on the screen. Consciousness is projected onto the screen. And when we remove the screen, we remove the consciousness.

[45:23]

There's nothing there. How boring. There's an old saying, the food of the gods tastes like nothing at all to ordinary humans. So, you know, the black screen is, what's that? So that, in Zazen, we're always bored. I'm bored. I remember my son used to hate to go to bed. He'd go to bed anyway, and at 11 o'clock he'd say, There's a little voice coming out of him, I'm bored. I'd say, that's okay, nothing wrong with that, just be bored. He hated me ever since.

[46:09]

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