Well, today is the first day of our three-day Sashin, commemorating Shakyamuni Buddha's parinirvana, called the Great Decease. So after my talk, we will have a ceremony commemorating Buddha's passing So, today I will talk about birth and death and nirvana according to our understanding. Birth, death, and nirvana. So Buddha's passing is called the parinirvana, the great nirvana, great passing.

[01:08]

Some people, some Buddhists use the term extinction, but that's a very tricky word, extinction, because extinction is like the opposite of permanence. And according to our understanding, the extremes of impermanence and permanence are outside of our understanding of birth and death. So we don't particularly think of birth and death as the beginning and ending of our life. but simply as two phases, two categorical phases of our life. So I rarely talk about birth and death, or I don't talk about life as the opposite of death, but people usually do, carelessly say, oh, life and death, it's a matter of life and death.

[02:23]

But birth and death are two sides of life. So life is more like the Life itself is like the Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya is the matrix from which everything comes forth. And as things come forth, we call that birth. And as things calm down, we call it death. But they're simply cycling through phenomena continually cycling through as birth and death, which is the activity of life. So we use terms like big mind or dharmakaya

[03:33]

or essence of mind. We don't use the word God because it's just not in the vocabulary. because we don't think of an anthropomorphic deity. But the only one I go for is the one with the white beard and the sunny clothes. Anyway, I have no quarrel with that. It's just not Buddha said, when people asked him about the existence of a deity, he didn't say yes or no, according to our understanding.

[04:37]

He didn't say yes there is or no there's not. So, it's not exactly agnostic, but it might be. You might say it's agnostic. But simply, Buddha did not want to define something which is not definable. So when we use these terms, people do want definitions. We all want definitions. And it's hard to live in ambiguity with ease. But as a Buddhist, we live in ambiguity at ease. We're at ease in ambiguity, so-called ambiguity. So we have space, a lot of space. We're not pinned down to some definite idea.

[05:46]

So our understanding is more through experience than through ideation. For us, it's too easy to get caught up in ideation. You have an idea and you stick to it. So, actually, in order to practice Zen, it's imperative to let go of all your ideas. about everything and start from zero. I don't know anything. I have a lot of ideas about things. I learned a lot. I think I know something. But actually, I don't. This is called beginner's mind. And when I realize I don't know anything, then I realize that I know a lot, which is not knowing anything.

[06:59]

If you say, I don't know anything, I'll say, oh, yes, you do. And if you say, I know a lot, I'll say, I don't think so. Anyway. So, what is Nirvana? Where did Buddha go when he went? Buddha is called the Tathagata, Tathagata, meaning thus come one and the one who goes thus. And thus is a very interesting word, term in Buddhism, because it means just as it is. And if you try to define thusness, you fall into the pit of knowing, the deep pit of knowing. Nevertheless, thusness is as it is, just as it is.

[08:08]

So when the conditions are, you know, we say, In Buddhadharma, there is no birth and death. But there is nirvana. Nirvana is that place where it's the center of your being. So when you're really in touch with the center of your being, that's nirvana. in touch with the center of your existence and non-existence. That's nirvana. So Buddha left no remainder of karma in his, when he passed from this life, from this birth, or passed through this life,

[09:12]

So there was no karma left. There was no trace of a new beginning. So this is called parinirvana, the great letting go. But according to our understanding, everything arises through causes and conditions. And then everything ceases when those causes and conditions are no longer operating. So when the causes and conditions are auspicious in some way, come together, then we say, I was born. And then when those causes and conditions are no longer operating, no longer holding things together, you say, I died.

[10:16]

We can apply that to someone else. It's hard to apply it to ourself after we die. But we say that, but that's just our idea of it. It's very convenient because we don't like to think things through. We say there is actually, there is birth and death and there is no birth and death. If you say there's birth and death, I'll say there is no birth and death. If you say there's no birth and death, I'll say well yes there is birth and death. So we have to be careful not to fall into the pit of definitions. as Dogen says, quoting two Zen masters. One Zen master says, within nirvana there is no birth and death.

[11:22]

And the other Zen master says, well within nirvana there is birth and death. So which one is right? That's two wonderful koan. But Dogen always says that nirvana is within birth and death. Because if you think that by dying you will reach nirvana, you neglect your life in this world. Nirvana is reached within this world, not by eliminating all the problems you have in order to think you have nirvana. Nirvana comes up through practice in conjunction with all your problems. If we think that by eliminating all our problems, we will have nirvana, that may happen.

[12:31]

But it won't happen anymore than if you practice Buddhadharma as your problems, then nirvana is always there within your problems. This is the meaning of the Heart Sutra. So within the delusion and illusion of life is where we find nirvana. So the meaning of Shakyamuni's great decease, par nirvana, his nirvana, really means liberation. So when Shakyamuni was alive, he discovered nirvana.

[13:34]

because he was always within his essence of mind, never strayed from his essence of mind. And when he died, so to speak, it's called the great nirvana. It's really the same thing. So nirvana is found within our practice because our practice is the practice of settling on our essence of mind. But nirvana doesn't mean that you're always pleased or that you don't make mistakes or that you do everything right. It means that whatever you do, you realize your essence of mind. So this is not an easy place to live, called the world. It's not an easy place. I think this is, seen from some perspective, this is the hell realm.

[14:42]

Which looks like, well, I have a happy life and so forth, but if you look at it, it's true. The hell realm, has many wonderful aspects. We just think that it's people with pitchforks and stuff, right? If we look where we live, we actually live in the heavenly realm of hell. We do. This is like the cornucopia of the world. You know, the lush, peaceful, comparatively, place in the world. If you look around us, fires are burning everywhere. Fires are burning all around us. And if you take the time to read the newspaper, you cannot escape the fact.

[15:53]

So, anyway. I think it's appropriate to, on this kind of occasion, to read Suzuki Roshi's talk on nirvana when he visited the waterfall in Yosemite. Right here in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. He says, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but from this point where he says, I went to Yosemite National Park and I saw some huge waterfalls. The highest one there is 1,340 feet high. And from it, the water comes down like a curtain thrown from the top of the mountain.

[16:57]

It does not seem to come down swiftly, as you might expect. It seems to come down very slowly because of the distance. And the water does not come down as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams. From a distance, it looks like a curtain. And I thought, it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain. It takes time, you know, a long time for the water finally to reach the bottom of the waterfall. And it seems to me that our human life may be like this. We have many difficult experiences in our life. But at the same time, I thought, the water was not originally separated, but was one whole river. Only when it is separated does it have some difficulty in falling. It is as if the water does not have any feeling when it is one whole river.

[18:00]

Only when separated into many drops can it begin to have or to express some feeling. When we see one whole river, we do not feel the living activity of the water. But when we dip a part of the water into a dipper, we experience some feeling of the water and we also feel the value of the person who uses the water. Feeling ourselves and the water in this way, we cannot use it in just a material way. It is a living thing. Before we were born, we had no feeling. We were one with the universe. This is called mind only or essence of mind or big mind. After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falls from the waterfall, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and the rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created.

[19:03]

When you do not realize that you are one with the river or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. When the water returns to its original oneness with the river, it no longer has any individual feeling to it. It resumes its own nature and finds composure. How very glad the water must be to come back to the original river. If this is so, what feeling will we have when we die? I think we are like the water in the dipper. We will have composure then, perfect composure. It may be too perfect for us just now, because we are so much attached to our own feeling, to our individual existence. For us just now, we have some fear of death.

[20:09]

But after we resume our true original nature, there is nirvana. That is why we say, to attain nirvana is to pass away. That's parinirvana. To pass away is not a very adequate expression. Perhaps to pass on or to go on or to join would be better. Will you try to find some better expression for death? When you find it, you will have quite a new interpretation of your life. It will be like my experience when I saw the water in the big waterfall. We say, everything comes out of emptiness. One whole river or one whole mind is emptiness. When we reach this understanding, we find the true meaning of our life. When we reach this understanding, we can see the beauty of human life. Before we realize this fact, everything we see is just delusion. Sometimes we overestimate the beauty.

[21:10]

Sometimes we underestimate or ignore the beauty because our small mind is not in accord with reality. To talk about it this way is quite easy, but to have the actual feeling is not so easy. But by your practice of zazen, you can cultivate this feeling. When you can sit with your whole body and mind and with the oneness of your mind and body under the control of the universal mind, You can easily attain this kind of right understanding. Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an old, erroneous interpretation of life. When you realize this fact, you will discover how meaningless your old interpretation was and how much useless effort you had been making. You will find the true meaning of life, and even though you have difficulty falling upright from the top of the waterfall to the bottom of the mountain, you will enjoy your life. So, you know, Suzuki Goshi would always say that the reason why we are here is because we've always been here.

[22:52]

It's just that we've been here as potential, potentiality. And when all the conditions come together, we appear as this separate person, and what we call the individual. But actually, we're just different aspects of the same thing. When we start to quarrel with each other, We should understand this, bring this to mind, that we're really just arguing with ourself. Even though you're you and I'm me. That's true. You're you and I'm me, but we're all just different pictures of the same thing. I said this before when I asked Hoitsu, Suzuki Roshi's son, what do you tell people who are dying?

[24:10]

What do you say to them? He says, I say, you and everything else are all going the same way together. You and everything, just like the waterfall, Just, we're all going. This happens to be a certain segment of birth in which we all happen to be alive together at the same time. Interesting. Then the next generation comes, the next generation comes, goes. Of course they overlap, but this is a certain picture of our train This is called the realm of transformations, the world of transformation. You know, we have Dharmakaya, the Trikaya, Dharmakaya Buddha, Sambhogakaya Buddha, Nirmanakaya Buddha.

[25:20]

Dharmakaya Buddha is life itself, the essence of life itself. Nirmanakaya Buddha is the transformation realm. Shakyamuni Buddha appeared as a person in the transformation realm, so he understood the realm of transformations. He made a big effort to try to understand the realm of transformations. how that relates to the realm of stillness or essence. In between it, Sambhogakaya Buddha is the Buddha nature, from which the essence of mind produces wisdom.

[26:27]

and transmits it to the Nirmanakaya Buddha, which is you, in the realm of transformations. So it's all one piece, with three aspects. So you are all three. You and I, each one of us, is Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya. essence of mind, wisdom mind, Buddha mind, and transformation body. So nothing is lost. Nothing is really lost. In the realm of transformations, nothing is permanent, right? Nothing is permanent. There's only transformations. nothing is lost. So there's no way that you can get lost in the universe.

[27:38]

This is maybe cold comfort, but if you have a warm-hearted feeling toward everything, you know, if you awaken your compassion and your warmheartedness about life. I think when you practice compassion and kindness, you realize that the way everything is happening is quite compassionate. So the reason why we feel the feeling of warm-heartedness, compassion, and so forth, generosity, and intelligence, is because that's our function as people in the universe.

[28:51]

That's what our function is. So we can enjoy that. and to enjoy all the transformations. We say, so-and-so, I'm getting old, or you're getting old and decrepit and all these things. Well, it's painful. It's one of the examples of the Four Noble Truths, suffering, old age and sickness and death, right? But at the same time, it can be a very joyful experience if we really know how to live out our dying. Instead of being afraid of our dying, to actually live out our dying as a positive part of the process. I would say, I hope that I can do that when I get old and sick.

[29:53]

I have a friend who is dying right now, but this person, who is going to die very shortly, is dying in a very positive way, very positive, wonderful way, by seeing it as a positive thing and helping people and try to understand that. So, right after this talk, we'll have a celebration. We don't usually celebrate someone dying, but our memorial service. You know, Tozan Ryokai, the founder of our school in China, when he was dying,

[31:26]

He sat, I think, you know, according to the story, he sat Zazan, you know, and everybody said, he's dead. And they all started crying. And he said, he woke up and said, you stupid jerks. If you understood what was really happening, you wouldn't be crying. He said, I'm going to ask you to do something. I want you to prepare a feast. Take all week to prepare a feast. And at the end of the one week, it's called a stupidity rectifying feast. So they had, at the end of the week, they had the feast and Tozan said, goodbye.

[32:30]

Nice to see all of you. Please don't cry anymore. And Shakyamuni did the same thing when he was dying. And we didn't put up the picture. We usually have a picture up here for a ceremony. Oh, I see, yeah, okay. It'll be up there when we have a ceremony. He's lying down. And a lot of people are crying, some animals and trees and everything is crying. But the arhats, the mature arhats are not crying. And he's saying, you know, don't cry, you know. You don't understand what's happening. If you understood what's happening, you wouldn't be crying, but you should cry, even if you understand what's happening. Even if you understand what's happening, you should cry.

[33:36]

and then stopped crying. When Suzuki Roshi was dying, all of his disciples came into the room before he died. But everybody knew that this was our last meeting together, and everybody was crying. Even though some of us knew better, It's too cold to not be earthly. Peace.

[34:39]

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