I vow to take In the book of record, there's a case where a monk asked Tozan Ryokai, how can we avoid heat and cold? And Tozan said, well, why don't you go to that place where there is no heat or no cold? And the monk said, where is that? And Dozan said, when it's cold, just be thoroughly killed by the cold.

[01:02]

And when it's hot, just be thoroughly killed by the heat. Another way of saying that is, when it's cold, just be completely one with cold. And when it's hot, just be completely hot through and through. Yesterday I saw the movie Gandhi. Did you see that movie yet? Gandhi, I've always been a great fan of Gandhi's. He was always a heroic figure to me and I remember When I was growing up, when I was a kid, we used to see him on the newsreels, what we called the newsreel, and see this little Indian in a loincloth waving at the camera or doing something, talking to people, fasting.

[02:23]

It was a very powerful presentation in the movie. I think Gandhi, as Bekaroshi said, Gandhi is a... He called him a Buddhist. although Gandhi was a Hindu and actually called himself a Christian and a Muslim and a Jew. And I remember him saying Buddhist in the movie, but I'm sure that he, I remember he was very fond of Buddha. And he was a kind of universal man Yeah, probably the strong man of the 20th century.

[03:27]

And probably the archetypal renaissance man of the 20th century, the anchor of the 20th century, who went completely in the opposite direction of everybody else. Complete turn. a complete revolution going the other way and yet was so strong that he could slow everything down in a certain way or put a perspective on the way things go in the 20th century. And he kind of laid a foundation for bringing people back to or forward to the fundamentals of what our life is about.

[04:38]

I think that had been kind of lost, definitely lost. The Indian people had completely succumbed to the British. and the world was in pretty much of a chaos leading up to World War I. And Gandhi was, little by little, he refined his practice to where the only thing he had left was truth. He completely, little by little, in every confrontation that he had, because he maintained his integrity in every confrontation, it was like a refining process.

[05:46]

And you can see it, if you've ever read his autobiography, or read anything about him, or in the movie, You can see how he'd never let anything go by without it having some meaning for him. This is a very good example of mindfulness. He pretty much won every confrontation or came out on top in every confrontation because he was so dedicated to truth more than to life itself. And his answer, of course, to the violence in the world was to answer it with nonviolence, which was very courageous.

[07:04]

And because he could do that, because he could seat himself in the stillness of that truth, he could do anything he wanted in the world. And it would come out right. Not that he didn't make some mistakes or that a lot of people didn't get hurt because of what was happening or because of what he provoked. That's inevitable. He got hurt and other people got hurt. And they had to get hurt. But they accepted, people who worked with Gandhi accepted that as part of their role or their willingness to, in order to express their integrity and that truth, they accepted anything that would happen as a consequence.

[08:29]

And so that acceptance became a very strong practice for them. And it's very parallel to Zen practice to be able to accept the difficulties that are involved in expressing and maintaining truth within yourself. At one point in Gandhi's career, he trained people to be non-violent confrontation people, people who would confront the soldiers or the establishment in a non-violent way and risk their lives.

[09:42]

And those people, he wanted them to be unmarried and celibate, or at least celibate people, so that they wouldn't have the concerns of the family that married people have. It's very much like a monk's attitude. Because it's a very scary thing to stand and let people hit you without any resistance. Not passive resistance. I remember in the movie, Gandhi said, this is not passive resistance. It's non-violence. But it's not passive resistance. He says, I never talked about passive resistance.

[10:43]

But I always talked about nonviolence. He made a distinction. Because what he was doing was very provocative. What he wanted people to do was very provocative. Not passive provocative, but nonviolent. So it put people in a very delicate position, but a very strong position if they knew, if they had enough integrity to see their way through. So Gandhi put himself in that position of no matter what, to adhere to the truth. As he practiced over and over again, his integrity became deeper and deeper.

[12:01]

And his, I would say, the stillness his ability to maintain a stillness and calm mind in all circumstances allowed him to do the things that he did. Even when he was fasting to death, he could still have a calm mind. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he did what he did very deliberately. That's why I talked about this case. Tozan, a monk asked Tozan, where can you go where there's no heat or cold?

[13:09]

Or how can you avoid heat and cold? And Tozan said, why don't you go where there is no heat or cold? Well, you know there's no place where there's no heat or cold in our world. Wherever you go, there's cold and there's heat. No way you can get out of it. But cold and heat, appear in many different ways. And they're always appearing in many different ways. And all of the circumstances in our life are cold and heat, appearing in many ways, many forms. So Tozan the monk says, well, how do you get to that place where there's no cold and no heat?

[14:16]

Tozan says, when it's cold, just let the cold kill you. And when it's hot, just be completely hot. Just let the heat burn you up. Just be. Keep your integrity in all situations. Stay in the absolute. in all situations. Stay with the truth in all situations. And don't let anything move you from that position. Then you always know what to do. When we get moved off of our position, off of our seat, then we don't know what to do. We have to try and figure out what to do. But when we keep our seat, our absolute position, that is our stick to the truth, then there's no way we can get knocked off our seat.

[15:31]

We may suffer from it, but we don't get confused. So Gandhi had a lot of suffering, no doubt. But within his suffering, he always knew where he was. If he got lost, it was only for a while. He always could come back. I think this is Gandhi's important message. If we have that kind of integrity, there's no problem.

[16:41]

Even though we have many problems, there's no problem. Let the problems kill us. We should let our problems kill us. What do you think about it? You should let your problems kill you, but you also... I was just reading the book about the conversations between Berigan and Thich Nhat Hanh, and several times a point was made that when you suffer, you also enjoy... there's some way in which you take the suffering lightly and enjoy it.

[17:46]

And I have trouble putting the two things together. It's true that we enjoy something about our suffering. Because if we're dead, if we're still kicking then we don't like it. That's not different. So when we're really... If you... sit in zazen, in sushi, and you have a lot of pain in your legs, but you still have your integrity. And so you enjoy your activity, even though it's, but if you didn't, if you weren't completely merged with what you were doing in the truth of the fact, then you'd call it suffering.

[18:51]

So, you know, it's not different. That's how you enjoy it, I think. I don't think you can enjoy it unless you have that integrity, unless you know that what you're doing is really within the truth. I mean, that's a kind of broad statement, you know, what is truth, but that's another question. Do you think that's different? No. I suppose in that, some sense of, I don't know, enjoyment is a strong word in this discussion, but there is a difference between just feeling really at sea and lost, Yeah.

[20:07]

Well, you know, we can suffer through righteousness. That's a very common way of doing it. I mean, enjoy our suffering through righteousness. Or through masochism. I mean, there are a lot of... Or through... yeah, there are a lot of different ways. I'm just suffering through ignorance without really being aware of why I'm suffering. That could be very painful to me. Yeah, that's very painful and not so enjoyable. It's more enjoyable when it's not through ignorance, you know, but through knowledge. Carlos? Yeah, sometimes it can be quite pain and suffering when they're not the same. I've been climbing mountains and when I get near the top I'm nauseous and I'm very sore and ready to throw up and there's no air to breathe and you're really sort of in great pain. But you're flying higher than anything near the bottom of the mountain when you started up. So there are many situations in which one may be in physical pain.

[21:14]

We were talking a little bit about suffering in the class last week, and Christ's suffering was mentioned. There's a kind of suffering or process of pain that we go through to reach an end, whether it's for Gandhi's liberation of India, or whether it's reaching the top of the mountain, or whatever. And there's kind of a materialism involved in that, or even suffering to get to heaven. But the kind of pain or suffering that I think we face day-to-day, and in our practice, I think it's different. It's like, Emily and I are trying to rub out the spot in the floor yesterday. And I said, this is just like sashin. It wouldn't go away. And that pain,

[22:52]

or dying with the heat or the cold. I think many of us come to that koan thinking it has to be a pure, and this is really hard to express, it has to be kind of a pure dying, kind of an idealistic Christ-like suffering or whatever, or a euphoric kind of thing. But it isn't. You hate it. and you bitch at it. But that's okay. And to just accept that and look at it. I don't like this. But accept that you don't like it. And that's giving over to the misery of the heat or whatever. And then misery becomes non-misery. or it's misery, non-misery. We were also talking about this in a women's meeting last week.

[24:14]

We've been discussing our feelings in terms of violence, and feeling very vulnerable and so forth, and the anger involved in that. was really a really great medium because I think one of the things that we evolved out of that was that the anger is not something that we should try and suppress, it's there. To see it as anger and not discriminate against it. So it's kind of, you know, covered in a big circle, but it's... I think it all really ties... that's what it really means to die in the heat of dying, or die in the cold. Not to avoid the heat. Not to avoid the cold. Not to deny that you have anger. Or not to... But there's a difference in ordinary anger, or ordinary heat and cold, or our ordinary response.

[25:45]

And our response when we become heat or cold, And after we become heat or cold, completely, then we look at heat and cold, and we can say, oh, I don't like it, and so forth, and have judgments about it. But it's different. Like you said, it's not the same. On that path, though, we really have to accept that part of our path. of everything we're going to go through to reach that absolute where then we just make full circle and we come back again. I mean, Gandhi had, through his whole life, he suffered with the fact that he had a lot of trouble with celibacy. And he felt very guilty about that, but yet that never comes across in the film. It's mentioned here and there.

[26:47]

It's just like kind of a wink to a young girl on the side or something like that. But even Even all that inner turmoil that he must have been going through with that, he still reached that absolute center. Right. And the fact that he was celibate was because he had so much trouble with it. That's why he became celibate, because he had a lot of trouble. Yes. Diane, you said something about suffering in a materialistic way. I think that's really possible to do, you know, when we have a lot of ego involved and we decide to make something happen through our suffering. But I don't think that that's what Gandhi did or Christ did. I think it was more setting, accepting a course of action and all that came with it.

[27:53]

The suffering wasn't what they chose to bring about change. It was a course of action. And the suffering that happened was just part of setting that course, which they completely accepted. But I don't see anything materialistic in that. I'm talking about kind of, to use someone else's phrase, spiritual materialism. I know. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but We just have to understand that in our day-to-day suffering, we may suffer without any necessity, without seeing any end to it, or seeing any result of our suffering. You may just have to sit in the heat, just because you're sitting in the heat, not because you're working towards something. That's the kind of distinction I was trying to make. But there's both those things. I just don't see them as so different.

[28:56]

I see the distinction you're making, but I don't... I think it's the same process of just accepting and not struggling against what's happening. Whether you've done it to accomplish something, or it's just part of what's going on. I don't see that. I don't make a distinction. But I think it is possible to use our suffering or whatever we're going through in a very materialistic way. And most of us do. But I don't... Taking a course to accomplish something that involves suffering, if you can do it in a way that... I think you can do it in a way that's not materialistic. That's the point I'm trying to make. But it must be really tricky. Consider, Gandhi's movement was aimless.

[30:02]

It was non-materialistic because it was totally concerned with the suffering of others. And would that entail a willingness to suffer, to endure self-suffering, And so the machine goes, and the man, the Sikh, the audience says, you know, you must be strong enough to face the anger.

[31:06]

Without... How you be cold or how you be hot is not to have any expectation of something else. How you can stay on your spot is not to have some other expectation. When it's like this, then everything is just this. And when it's like this, everything is just this. Therefore, you're just living in that place. Then there's no place to escape to. Nowhere to go. Your situation will change. But on that moment, everything is just there. And from that standpoint, you can do something.

[32:30]

To get to that place has to be a realization and an acceptance of the fact that other people's suffering affects us too. Is that connection there? Whether it's emotional pain or any other physical pain? That's right. So, you know, it puts us in a sense of responsibility When something happens to us, we say, well, how did that happen? Say somebody comes up and you're walking down the street and they hit you over the head. Say, how did that happen? I was just walking down the street. Somebody came up and hit me over the head. And it was an unexpected thing. It was unexpected. And why? Why did that happen to me? But if you realize that you're responsible for everything that happens, have some responsibility, not completely irresponsible, but you have some responsibility for what happens and you can see a little bit more what's happening.

[33:35]

For instance, the crime and violence is our responsibility. Why it happens is because of ourself. Not directly, you know, but everything, we're all interconnected. And if we say that they have control of society, you know, then you don't see yourself as interconnected. If you say I and everyone else control society or makes it what it is, then you're putting yourself in a place of responsibility. And then you can see that what happens, happens because of either your responsibility or lack of responsibility.

[34:39]

Lack of responsibility is a position as well as responsibility. It's a definite position. was how far someone is in that state of me in an extreme way. Depends on your ability to do something. And each situation is different. But, you know, some things we're very responsible for and some things we're a little responsible for. But there's a sense of it. You know, we may not be directly responsible. There are things that you feel that are out of your hands. But still, indirectly, or in some way, you're responsible because the whole thing is you.

[35:47]

Or you are an inseparable part of the whole thing. So you may not be able to do something about something. And that gives you a feeling of frustration. But it should also give you a deeper sense of trying to decide or come to some understanding of what your responsibility is. And if a hungry person walks by and you don't know how to take care of them, just that thought of, why can't I, is a kind of taking responsibility. If you just ignore it, you know, which is easy to do, then you're not taking responsibility. But just to recognize it, even if you can't do something, is a way of taking responsibility.

[36:47]

Just relating to what you were talking about right now, that responsibility comes from the ability to respond. And you said that before, but I think in our deciding, we very often equate it with blame. So that if you say, this person was responsible for violence against him, or this person is sick and you're responsible for their illness, then you think it's my fault. Yes. That's different. It's unfortunate confusion. And the other thing was that you're talking about being one with your suffering, if you're suffering, or being with pain in such a way that maybe you don't identify the sensation as pain and you don't need to... No, you don't necessarily... I don't qualify that by saying you don't associate necessarily pain with suffering. Right, but you've also talked before about

[38:00]

just experiencing what's happening in your legs and sensation and not calling it pain. Yeah, that's it. Well, you know, it's always really interesting to me to talk about it abstractly, and I always agree with it. And then, I'm not even talking about being in profane, although that's one big thing. But you can work with it with yourself, you know, in that moment. And then when you're working with someone, for example, who's dying, which right now I am with my grandmother, who has been in a lot of pain and a lot of misery for a number of months, and she's very receptive, like she counts her breaths, and she does. And yet, it's so difficult to be with someone like that, and to, I mean, what she's identifying as pain takes her over, you know, when it comes, and it's so frustrating to share that approach with someone else.

[39:09]

And it's very difficult. And there is no escape. I mean, she is just, her body is just breaking down. It's a short amount of time. But all she can do, you know, is do her best to take care of it. And we're all in that position. We're really all in that position. It takes an extreme form when you see somebody dying. They're not coming back the other way, they're just going that way. It's very painful and their body's being done. There's a koan about that too. About what would you do? It's like putting a crab in hot water. How they kill crabs. They just take the crab and put it in that vat of boiling water. When that time comes, will you flail your legs and so forth? If you don't, if you don't, if you can't sit still, then you should look at this column.

[40:20]

Look at this case, I can't remember what case it is right now. That's the introduction. So, you know, you're part of taking care of somebody that doesn't have the training in how to be still or how to appreciate the fact that they're dying. How to let go. How to let go. How to be dying, you know. How to just... It's not easy. Nobody knows, no matter... I'm talking about it. But when my time comes, you know, I don't know how it's going to be. Maybe I'll flail around, you know. Ganto, there's also a famous story. Ganto was very famous, a Zen master. And when a bandit stabbed him or shot him or something, stabbed him, he let out his tremendous scream, you know, which baffled Hakuin for a long, long time. He couldn't understand it.

[41:23]

There was also the Zen master who said, I don't want to die, I don't want to die. I think when we talk about suffering, Lisa was saying about suffering of others, I think the thing is, there's no distinction. The suffering of others is our own. And so watching someone die or suffer We suffer. And other people's anger is not other people's, it's our own. So we want people to die in a certain way. Maybe Hakuin wanted Ganto not to yell. Right. Because it made it hard for Hakuin to think that this man who was supposed to be composed hollered at the last minute. But I think when we help someone, you know, at that point, it really helps us too.

[42:44]

And I think that our kindness helps someone else. That our attitude is very helpful for someone else. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Pain will continue. You drop that fiction, but as I understand it, suffering will not. Yeah. Because you accept the fact of what is happening, it's not a cause of suffering, even though it may be very painful.

[43:49]

And there may be suffering too. But there's freedom from the suffering, if you have that understanding, as well as freedom from the pain. But I think we always have to be very careful, no matter how we rationalize or philosophize when the fact of things appears, when something happens, you know, you do what you do. And that's always, our daily life is always the test of our understanding and our practice. And we should always use it, see it in that way,

[44:51]

So, but with that kind of spirit, we're always training ourself. And by training ourself, we also help other people. And it's just forever. It just goes on and on. I want to, at this point, I want to introduce Terry Dobson, who's been sitting patiently I can't see very well. I can't lift the altar up. This is probably the last lecture in this building. Our new zendo is just about finished and we'll probably move in over the weekend. So if you come on Monday morning to Zazen, we should be, go over there to the building and see if it's open before you come here.

[45:56]

And Terry is going to give us a seminar, a one afternoon demonstration, or a wonderful talk, or whatever. How to take care of yourself and other people on the street. Something like that. I'm sitting here thinking you're doing the work for me. It goes back and forth. Terry gave us a demonstration on Aikido a few years ago and it was quite wonderful and I'm really happy to have him back here and I hope that we can all attend and I can assure you that it will be a continuation of what we've been talking about in a more practical sense to the champions of...

[47:19]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ