But this morning, I would like to take up the question of, is Buddhism a religion? Or is it a philosophy? Or is it a way of life? Or a code of ethics? People have some difficulty in trying to define it. which actually is pretty good. The quandary is a good sign, actually. But Buddhism, you can say, is a religion. Zen is the expression or practice of Buddhism, we say in its true sense. Not that all the other expressions of Buddhism are not Buddhism in its true sense, but Zen is the expression of Buddhism in its true sense.

[01:12]

Because Zen is not about Buddhism, it's Buddha's way. So we call it the expression So people say sometimes, well, Buddhism is not religion because there's no God in Buddhism. How can it be a religion? So this kind of thinking presupposes some kind of definition that, well, if you say, well, then what is God? then people will have some kind of definition. Maybe an old man with a white beard in the sky who pronounces what's good and what's evil, makes judgments on what's good and what's evil, and created the Earth, and so forth.

[02:24]

I like that description best of all, actually. But Buddhism, if there is such a thing, Buddhism itself is just a convenient word, a convenient term in order to focus us on something. So the word Buddhism itself is not anything sacred. the images of Buddha are not sacred. Nevertheless, we bow to Buddha with our wholehearted reverence.

[03:34]

So, sometimes when we read the literature of Buddhism, or Zen, by contemporary Oriental teachers, they'll use the term God, because they Buddha or God, as if they're kind of equating one with the other. And sometimes when we read that, we'll say, well, how come they're using the term God to equate that with Buddha? you know, is there God in Buddhism or isn't there? My ten-year-old son, who defiantly claims he doesn't believe in God, when he reads that he says, God in Buddhism?

[04:47]

And so I have to explain that because If God is a non-defined term, we can use God in Buddhism if we want to. We can say Buddha or God if we want to, because we don't mean anything by it. We don't mean anything specific by the term God. It's just a way of pointing at something. a way of focusing our attention towards something. What happens in modern religion, or not modern religion, in religion, is most religions create a definition of God and then they kill each other defending their definitions.

[05:53]

opposite of, this is a complete perversion of religion. So Buddhism stays away from this kind of dualistic antagonism. When Buddha was asked, is there God or not? He didn't say anything. And Buddhism developed without the model of a god. So Buddhism developed as a religion, but a religion not... People say Buddhism is atheistic, but actually it's non-theistic. It's not against anything, it's just not concerned with the usual definitions that people attach to what we call God.

[07:13]

So Buddhism goes beyond God and not God, and is not concerned with the question. Buddhism is the religion of, you might say, emptiness. When we think in terms of God and not God, what we're doing is discriminating the world, or the universe, or existence, into two halves. And when we chop the world in two, chop the universe in two, we say, this is existence, and this is non-existence. This is God, and this is not God. This is life and this is not life. This is birth and this is death. And then we act out of that discriminating consciousness. And this is called the world of delusion.

[08:16]

So, since nothing has an intrinsic meaning, we can use anything we want to describe anything else we want. Everything is there for us to use in the way that we need to use it. So, originally, as we know, forms follow certain patterns.

[09:29]

All the forms in this in our life in this world follow certain patterns of creation. And human beings are born according to their kind, and animals are born according to their kind, and plants, and so forth. So there's a certain kind of order in this world. But there are various ways of explaining this order. There's a biological way of explaining this order, and there's a physical way of explaining this order. There's a spiritual way of explaining this order. And the main thing is, what is truth? What is reality? And we can look at reality from the point of view of science, religion, art, music. poetry.

[10:34]

And the main thing is not the words or the means, but the truth, the reality. So Buddhism is just a way of looking at reality. without any interference, without partiality. So if we say that there is a God in Buddhism, then we become partial to God. If we say there's no God, then we become partial to no God. So you can't say yes and you can't say no.

[11:45]

But you can say yes and you can say no. You can use If you have freedom, then you can use everything in a free way without being caught or stuck or attached to something. There's really nothing to fight over. There's nothing to defend. There's nothing to be attached to. So, originally, in Buddhadharma, we say that both phenomena and consciousness are not two. There's no inside and there's no outside.

[12:51]

When we think of God, we think, well, God is outside the world. kind of looking down, that's dividing spirit from matter. But originally, spirit and matter are not divided. As a baby, spirit and matter are not divided. But as we grow up, our discriminating consciousness divides spirit from matter. subjectivity from objectivity. And then we start looking on the world as an object, as a series of objects. And the more discriminating our mind becomes, the more objective the world becomes.

[13:59]

When we discover Buddhism, or Zen, we realize that we need to reunite the realm of spirit and matter to its original mind. In Buddhism we say mind, shin, in Japanese. But this character shin means both mind and heart. So mind has many various meanings. Thinking mind and unlimited mind. Unlimited mind. Mind is consciousness. And there are various levels of human consciousness. But the highest level of human consciousness is pure consciousness, which is beyond thinking, feeling.

[15:15]

It's beyond the senses and beyond the thinking mind. And it's common to everything. And when it's split, it becomes, we see it as matter and spirit. We don't often think of consciousness as matter because our mind is split, divided. Discriminating consciousness divides consciousness or spirit from matter. And then we have a subject So the practice of Zen is to reunite spirit and matter.

[16:24]

And the practice of that is called the practice of Samadhi. Samadhi seems like an exotic word, but actually It's quite simple. It means the practice of uniting spirit and matter so that our world is no longer divided. The world of consciousness is no longer divided from itself. In the Bible, it's called falling from the Garden of Eden, eating the apple of discriminating consciousness. Then you have good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. As soon as we eat the apple of discriminating consciousness, we divide spirit from matter.

[17:30]

And our whole life is spent in trying to reunite that, even though we don't know that that's what we're doing. We all long for this reunification. This is a longing feeling that we all have. So Zen meditation is to let go of discriminating mind and reunite with pure consciousness. This pure consciousness which does not name things and does not discriminate between pleasures and pain, good and bad, right and wrong.

[18:42]

but it's just pure existence. That's what Zazen is, just pure existence, which reunites matter and mind, consciousness and the object and the subject. So this is the basis of Mahayana Buddhism and the practice of Zen. Soke-yan Sasaki, who was one of the first teachers to come to America quite some time ago, that they used to teach the children, when they were about eight, not all children, but children that would come to Zen temples, they used to teach them how to practice deep samadhi when they were about eight years old.

[20:09]

So that by the time they were adults, they had very strong samadhi power. Samadhi power means the power of the unified mind. And they would go to the beach and just look at the ocean all day and become absorbed with the ocean until they completely forgot themselves and just became ocean. And then they would come back to their room and make a painting of the ocean. And it wasn't a painting of the ocean. It was ocean painting. This painting was the ocean. Because the little boy was

[21:18]

all one piece. This kind of training, of course, is no longer present in Japan. And even when he wrote that, he said, nowadays they wait until they're maybe 16 to start. doing this, because they have to go to school and learn academics. So by the time they get to their real training, they don't have much samadhi power. But we have this idea, you know, that we have to train children to be academically sound, which is okay. but we do it at the expense of unifying the mind.

[22:26]

In our education system, we turn out a lot of people who are good at certain things, but we turn out a lot of greedy angry, deluded people. Originally, education means to bring forth something, not to stuff in something. Educate actually means bring forth, bring forth the true mind. So Zen practice or Zen education is not to put something in, to open the mind, but not to replace it with something. Just keep it open. Of course, learning is important.

[23:38]

When our mind is unified with the universe, then learning has its place and has a foundation for how to use it, how to use information. But we're in the information age. Computers are storing so much information and the computer, of course, is a reflection of our mind. of our own mind. It's a model of our own mind. And the computer restores all the information, but the computer also develops our mind, reciprocally, so that we feel that we just have to have so much information, and the people that have the most information have the most power. So, we look for

[24:45]

a place where who's going to get the most power. And if you realize that, you can predict what's going to happen. So Samadhi For a Zen student, Zen students are going the other way. So it's very difficult to be a Zen student because you're not looking for position or wealth or power. But you have to unify the mind, the heart, So samadhi is the basis of prajna or wisdom.

[26:14]

When the mind is unified, when spirit and matter, when subject and object are unified and there's no subject, no object, then prajna or wisdom is the result. But prajna is not knowledge. It's knowing, but it's not knowledge. I don't know if that makes any sense. Knowing is not knowledge. It's intuitively understanding, and intuition means directly knowing, without some intermediary, without having to think or calculate. Human beings have developed a calculating mind over thousands and thousands of years.

[27:21]

We've developed our calculating mind as self-protection and as a means to survive and a means to enjoy ourselves. But it's also a means to destroy ourself. So whether it's good or bad, I don't know. But... it's... The discriminating mind can either be a help or it can destroy us. And just the fact that our mind is divided by discrimination is a destructive process. It's important and necessary to discriminate. Discrimination is absolutely necessary for our survival.

[28:33]

But unless it's based on non-discrimination, it's in the realm of delusion. It leads us into delusion. In Zen, there's a saying, a person who is deluded is called a board-carrying person. Someone is carrying a board on their shoulder. walking along with a big piece of timber on their shoulder. And they can see over here, but they can't see over here, because this big board is blocking their view. And most of us are walking around with the board on our shoulder. We can see on this side, but we can't see on that side. And we think, this is the whole thing. As soon as we take down the board, oh, not so.

[29:39]

So Zen practice, or Zazen, is the practice of taking the board off your shoulder so that you don't have any particular point of view. This is called ji-ju-yu-za-mai, or self-joyous samadhi. Self-joyous samadhi means the samadhi of unification of body and mind, with no special place to stand. This may feel very insecure. If we don't have a special place to stand, There are two causes of suffering. One is two levels.

[30:48]

One is a superficial level of when things in our life are not going right, then it causes suffering. And the other level is whether things are going right or not going right. Underneath everything, because in the end we don't know what's going to happen to us. Moment to moment, even though things are going in a certain pattern, moment to moment, we don't know what's going to happen to us in the next moment. We plan for tomorrow, next week, 30 years from now, but actually we don't know what's going to happen in the next moment. For sure. So there's this basic anxiety which nothing can cover.

[31:55]

But we try to cover it. We try to make ourselves happy by covering this basic anxiety with various activities. But in the end, we have to solve this problem of basic anxiety. It's the basic anxiety of the divided mind. You know, when you sit in zazen, and really sit, a completely unified body and mind, There's no anxiety, no hunger, no need for anything. Even though you may have some disturbance on this other level, oh, my legs hurt and so forth, but there's no basic anxiety.

[33:03]

And you may have some thoughts coming up and some emotional disturbance, memories, anxiety, a little anxiety about, you know, how am I going to get out of this? But this basic anxiety is not there. If there's, if when you're completely absorbed When we can live in this basic, in this unified way, then our life really changes. There may not be any dramatic change, but subtly it changes, and we're no longer so concerned about ourselves.

[34:11]

self-concern drops away. When our mind is truly unified, self-concern drops away and then we become concerned about everyone else. There's nothing we can do except to help take care of what's around us. because we know that what's around us is ourself. And then in our daily life, whatever situation we meet, we're not divided from it. When we drink a cup of tea, the cup of tea is not some object. But it's myself drinking myself with myself.

[35:19]

When we eat a meal, it's myself eating myself with myself. When we walk down the street, it's myself walking on myself with myself. A monk asked Master Joshu, does a dog have the Buddha nature? Joshu said, mu. Actually, it was Chinese. He said, wu. But Japanese say, mu, which means no or nothing. And another time, a monk asked Joshu, does the dog have buddha nature?

[36:29]

He said, Hai. Which means, yes. Does the dog have buddha nature or not? This is a koan, basic koan. So if you have this koan, you work with this koan until your mind is completely unified. completely no or completely yes. Is there a God?

[37:34]

Yes. Is there a God? No. Which is right? So Buddhism is not about something. In order to see it, you have to be it. So sometimes people think, oh, in Buddhism they say that you are God, and that's very blasphemous. It is very blasphemous to say, I am God. So don't say that. Nevertheless, are you or aren't you? If you say yes, you're blasphemous.

[38:38]

If you say no, then you deny the fact. So, who are you? So, no need to be angry about anything. Just be calm and investigate. Do you have a question? you have to develop non-discriminating consciousness.

[40:35]

And that would be a basis for... You can't teach it. You can't teach non-discriminating consciousness. You can only be it. And you can demonstrate it. So this is the kind of problem the parents have. And if you're a Zen student and you have a child, then you, well, let's see now, shall I teach this child Buddhism or Zen? How should I do that? And as soon as you start to teach them something, they don't want to hear it, particularly because you want to teach it. So you have to be it, and then they will absorb it. And then every once in a while, you can demonstrate something. So it really, what it does is throws us back on ourself.

[41:43]

So you can't teach the kid, but you can teach yourself. So every time I think, well, how am I going to teach this kid this? I think, well, where am I? Do I, am I really there? my what I would like to impart. Do I have that? So I always have to look at that. And children are like absorbers. They don't go for you. They're like lions, little lions. They're not like dogs. Dogs, when you shake the stick, will go after the stick. And you can control them, but kids, They go right to your heart, like the lion. When you shake the stick at the lion, the lion ignores it and goes to you. The kids are always insulting you, you know, because they're so straightforward. They're really insulting. Don't speak like that to me!

[42:49]

And they like straightforwardness. But they make you be straightforward. And then you teach them something and they say, oh, baloney. So that's good. It's good to try teaching them. And then they start teaching you. So as long as it's a reciprocal thing, as long as you have a dialogue, a continuous dialogue going, then it works. But if you just try and teach things, it doesn't work. It has to be within the realm of continuous dialogue. So my son is now 10, and he hates religion, and he doesn't believe in God, but he likes Buddhism. But he was very shocked to find that you could mention God in Buddhism. But he's not rejecting that, because he likes it so much, you know, and he's reading Zen comics.

[44:03]

There is such a thing, you know. Somebody made some Zen comics, and they're two little volumes. And I used to say, oh God, that's so corny. But then I think, wait a minute. And I started looking at it, and it was just exactly on his level. Same little, short little koans, actually, just on his level. So I got him, and he did, and he memorized. You know, he keeps telling me all these, and he keeps referring to them all the time. So this is the avenue, you know. And so we have this dialogue going all the time. Continuous kind of dialogue. where he keeps bringing these things up. Sometimes they're a little baffling to me. He seems to understand them. So we have a way of discussing this.

[45:08]

And then he comes across the word dao. He says, what's the dao? And then I can bring out the dao de jing and start reading that to him. It's very simple, but very profound. Someone, the lady next door, when we used to live here, gave him, when he was about five, a copy of the Tao of Pu. So I said, here's the Tao of Pu, and he had his name inscribed in it. So little by little, you know, things are opening up. There's a way to get into it. So I'm really happy about that. I have the impression that it's okay to use discriminating consciousness as a tool, but maybe not to identify ourselves with it. Is that correct? Right. That's right. We have to use discriminating consciousness all the time because we're always making decisions. Every moment we're making a decision.

[46:08]

And whenever you make a decision, you're discriminating. You're choosing one thing over another. And you're deciding to go this way or that way. So we have to use discriminating consciousness. We use discriminating consciousness on one level, but its basis is non-discriminating consciousness, which is not that you don't discriminate, but non-discriminating consciousness means that the subject and the object are not divided. So when we make a decision, to go some way or to do something, it's without dividing the subject from the object. In other words, simply put, it's not based on self-centeredness. Self-centeredness is to see ourself as the center of the universe, which is the basis of division.

[47:14]

Non-divided consciousness means to see ourself as a part of the universe and always find our place amongst everything around us. What is our true place amongst everything around us? So that means to move and flow with our surroundings, as part of our surroundings. And sometimes we're led And sometimes we lead. So when it's time to be led, we know how to do that. We know how to flow with things. And when it's time to lead, we move and things flow with us. So sometimes following, sometimes leading. And we say, following the wave and leading the wave. That's called the practice of no-self, which is the same as non-discrimination.

[48:23]

It doesn't mean that you don't discriminate, or you don't tell one thing from another. But, you know, horizontally, everything is the same. That's non-discrimination. But vertically, there's hierarchy and everything is different. Nothing's the same. In a place where the horizontal and the vertical meet is where we live. That's the edge of time and space and emptiness. So there is no real us apart from everything else. That's how Buddhism is a religion. It includes everything.

[49:24]

It's about where is our place in the universe. We have to find that place moment after moment after moment after moment. There's no place that we are. There's no special point of view. Where we are is where we view from. That's our viewpoint. But our viewpoint is not a special viewpoint. So we say drop your views and ideas and just be where you are without a special point of view. Just see as it is. Everything has a name. But the name is not what it is. If I insist on your name, then I can't see you completely. If I insist on your characteristics, then I can't see you completely.

[50:26]

Matter of fact, I can't see you completely until I can see myself completely. As soon as I can see myself completely, then I can see you completely. So the problem isn't out there, it's here. Always here. Discriminating consciousness limits our understanding. And the more discriminating it is, the more limited it is. But it's helpful. As long as we know that, then we can pick and choose. But our picking and choosing has to be on the basis of non-self-centeredness. Not from a limited view. Our choosing should be from big mind, not small mind. We discriminate on the basis of non-discrimination.

[51:29]

Would you say that that is But we do have to make some judgments, but without judging. That's right. Without judging according to small mind. I noticed that in my body, that I was, I've been thinking about, you talked about letting the arrows, not in this talk, but in a previous talk, letting the arrows go through you, and because that is so different from my experience as an adult, maybe as a child I did, I'm not sure.

[52:38]

Well, you're not so unusual. Pardon me? You're not so unusual, in that way. In any case, I really, there's part of me that doesn't really believe that this is possible, that one can open and we're talking about flowing and so on. Somehow my question is connected with your topic, I feel, but there's part of me that doesn't really believe that one can be open Because there is so much fear. There is something inside of you that has so much fear of the next moment or being encouraged or whatever, that it's constantly closing up. So, we have to learn to go the other way.

[53:53]

In other words, our natural reaction, often, either with pain or fear or ego. And we have to learn that instead of going like this, to go like that. And that's what you learn in Zazen. That's exactly what you learn in Zazen. Because when you sit, especially, you know, in Sashin, And so, you tend to close. And the only way, and you can't move, you can't go anywhere, there's no place to escape to. All you can do is open up. You have to go the other way. You have to completely become one. You have to become one with whatever it is that's the problem, that you perceive as the problem. And that's the unification. Because you're dividing fear and anxiety.

[54:57]

Divide. That's the discrimination. And you become a divided self. Then you start clutching to something. There's nothing to clutch to, so you just close up. Nothing to hold on to. So you have to just go the other way and just open up and become one with it. And when you're one with it, most of the problem disappears. And there's some problem there, but you can deal with the problem that's there. Even if it's the problem of pain, you can deal with the pain, because it's only pain. Pain is not suffering. Suffering is suffering. But pain is not... We can have suffering over pleasure. So, pleasure, pain and suffering are not the same, although they are associated with each other.

[56:00]

And pain turns into suffering when we reject it. So, when the arrow comes in, just let it go out. But, we go like this. And then we're caught by it. I often think of catching a cold. Say, I caught a cold. Well, you know, if you let the conditions go through, you don't catch it. But if you have some resistance, then you catch it. I mean, this is just an example, right? Don't take it too literally. If you look at health, you find that most of our health is bad circulation. Most of our health problems come from bad circulation. I don't mean circulation of the blood, but flow, imbalance, and lack of freedom in the flowing.

[57:10]

And the mind is the same way. As soon as we stop the flow of the mind, we get sick mentally. So, body and mind flowing together with the universe is health. But it means that we can't, you know, not to get stuck with something. It's hard. When you get insulted, then you catch the insult, you know? And this is the basis of most of our problems. We catch what's, you know, the stuff that's thrown at us. The garbage sticks to us. And it's hard to let it go. Because why? Why is it hard? Because we have so much pride and self-worth and all this stuff, you know. It's hurting my sensibilities.

[58:13]

So it does hurt. It's okay to hurt, but the pain doesn't have to turn into suffering. It's only when we attach to it that it turns into suffering. So sure, it's painful. A rock hits me on the side of the head. That's painful. But if I say, oh, jeez, my poor head, then I start to suffer. Just let it go. So what? It's not easy, but you have to train yourself to do that. You have to train yourself not to hang on to the stuff that comes, and to let it go. Unless you enjoy your suffering. I'm serious. If that's what you need to make your life vital, then sure, why not?

[59:24]

♪ He's the son of every compass ♪

[59:44]

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