This morning I would like to talk about interdependence. I started this a little while ago but I want to focus more on interdependence and more specifically what occurred to me is I want to talk about or make the point that in our practice we can cultivate a faith in interdependence. Now interdependence probably doesn't need our faith in it, but it's striking me that it's a good thing for me to practice, especially given the fact that I may not be directly experiencing interdependence directly, I may not be aware of it. I may forget about it.

[01:02]

But nonetheless, interdependence is happening. It's happening all the time. That's the way things are. So it seems to me a really wholesome thing to begin to develop a way to include it in my practice, remember it. I want to read this case of Deng Xian's. I'm really not going to discuss it. I'm sort of practicing reading it. And a couple of the ideas in it I'll be talking about, but I'm not really going to be, you know, we'll just get started on it. So this is from the record of Deng Xian. And it goes, just before leaving, Dongshan asked, if after many years, someone should ask if I am able to portray the master's likeness, how should I respond?

[02:15]

After remaining quiet for a while, Yunyan said, just this person, or just this one, or maybe just this. Dungshan was lost in thought. Yunyan said, Che Acharya, having assumed the burden of this great matter, you must be very careful. Dungshan remained unsettled about what Yunyan had said. And later, as Dungshan was crossing a river, he saw his reflected image and experienced a great awakening. to the meaning of the previous exchange. And he composed the following gatha. Earnestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede far from you. Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, but I am not now him.

[03:20]

It must be understood in this way in order to merge with suchness. I'm going to read the gatha one more time and then I'm going to read a different translation of it just to get some of the ideas out. Because it actually says it all. Earnestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede far from you. Today I'm walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, but I am not now him. It must be understood in this way in order to merge with suchness. So this is another translation by Sojin Roshi working it through. It goes, do not try to see the world as an object. The you which is given as something to see as an object is not you yourself.

[04:26]

I am going my way now alone and I meet myself wherever I go. If you understand that you as an object is not you yourself then you have your own true way. So there's a lot to say about that case but the two ideas I'm interested in and will be talking about are basically related interdependence and the world itself. So I just want to take a moment to say something about what is interdependence. You know in Buddhism we have a lot of or several words or ideas to express the same notion. They're sometimes a little bit different, the nuances might mean

[05:32]

indicate something a little bit specific, but basically interdependence, emptiness, big mind, these all sort of point to the absolute in some way. And when we say absolute, immediately what comes up is the relative. And this is because we live in a dualistic world. So things are dualistic and even the notion of absolute is sort of dualistic because it has its opposite or it has its counterpart. There wouldn't be anything to be absolute about if there wasn't sort of relative thing going on. So absolute and relative go together. Now I don't feel like I can use language non-dualistically the way Sojin keeps saying we can. I don't. I feel like language is dualistic, for me it is, and in a way, absolute and relative are dualistic, but within absolute, there's the notion of absolute, it's actually, there's something actually absolute.

[06:52]

And in dualism, or duality, it's dualistic. And within the absolute, there's duality. Within duality, there's non-duality. So, and then, of course there's the going beyond of dual and non-dual. But I just wanted to say that I'm not going to actually go there. I can only say it. I know about it but I don't know how to talk about it. So I'm very interested in these counterparts because they're apparently actually not opposites or they're not exclusive and Something came up for me about big mind, which I it's been really helpful Big mind is not necessarily better than small mind now if you search your heart You really are going to find the place where you believe that it is.

[07:56]

I know I do because why is that and I think it's because I We're very familiar with small mind. We're very comfortable, sort of, in the relative. That's where we experience a lot of things. Small mind is not this villain that's out to poison big mind. Big mind can't be hindered by small mind. So, we're very interested in the relative world and interested in our small minds. And the reason we want to cultivate, I want to say cultivate big mind, but that's not exactly right. it may require cultivation within ourselves, it's already there, is that it feels somewhat missing in our lives.

[09:00]

We don't go around, or I don't go around anyway, sort of in this absolute sense feeling interconnected with all beings, just completely lacking self-centeredness and at peace with the absolute nature of reality. That may come as a surprise to you, I know. It may appear otherwise. Don't fall for appearances. So it really is that it's as if it's missing in our lives. It's not actually missing but we feel that way or our human nature, our small mind makes it so. But small mind is not really the problem and it's not really in the way but it does eclipse big mind pretty effectively. it requires our intention and our effort to bring forth big mind. So I was given this image that helps me a lot work with maybe the relationship between small mind and big mind and doesn't quite yet

[10:18]

talk about interdependence, but the image is that of a movie screen and a movie. Small mind and big mind co-operate. They work together. They operate together. And so does a movie and the screen it's projected onto. And many of you maybe have heard this before. It's also like the mirror and the image, the screen is like the mirror. We say that the world is a mirror and that the world is full of images. So we have this movie screen, we have this film projected onto it. And when there's no movie being projected, the screen is just the screen. And the movie starts, the screen is then the movie. as you're watching the movie, you're not aware of the screen.

[11:25]

In fact, with a real movie, of course, the point is to enjoy the movie. But if you were to go up to that screen while the movie was being projected, there's no perceptible gap in between the movie and the screen. You can't even stick anything between it. It's one at that point. The movie is on the screen, and it's one reality. It's happening. They're both there, but one thing is happening. It's a very compelling image to me, this idea of the film not being able to be lifted off of the screen. The film is somewhere else. It's back in the projector booth. I mean we could take this metaphor maybe too far but what I like is that there's no gap there and that when you actually go to participate with the images on the screen they're insubstantial.

[12:29]

There's actually nothing there. We perceive something there and the something there affects us quite a bit. But from the point of view of the screen, it's not there. It's just running over it. It's very interesting to ponder for me. I did this practice for a little while when I first started meditating. When I would go to a movie, I would practice saying, it's just a movie while I was watching the movie. Especially really compelling movies like where there were great love scenes or explosions or something that really would take you in and take you away to at that moment, remember it's on a screen.

[13:37]

It's a flat, insubstantial nothing that I'm perceiving on a screen. Anyway, when we sit Sachine, we get this great opportunity to go to the movies. And we're at the movies, you know, and the projector's running, and the images are coming up. Now these images, you know, they feel real. Phenomena, the world, human beings, we're images. We're images of emptiness. We're just here, emptiness or interdependence expressing itself as us. So we're not, I'm not me myself as I perceive myself to be as an object in this body, in this form.

[14:54]

I'm an image brought forth out of emptiness, the same as you. So we're the same in that way, we're connected in that way. We're here sort of manifesting the same thing. When we say that the world is a mirror I find this a little difficult to talk about but it's something like everything is just a reflection of everything else. Everything is a reflection of each thing or each thing is a reflection of everything. Now we may not experience it this way and this is what is crucial I think for me to understand that I start when I get sort of lost and lonely and zazen to remember that, you know, I find that sort of striving self, striving to experience emptiness.

[16:08]

It's more like, you know, I don't know if I can experience emptiness. I can only notice when the movie is going. I can only notice my relationship to others and to objects. So this is where some faith comes up for me. Faith that there is interconnection. That's the way it is and it helps bring back to the reality that things are not just as they seem. In that second translation of the gatha that Dungsang composed when he realized what the master was, what Yun Yan was pointing to, is the idea not to make an object out of the world.

[17:25]

Things seem independent, and in one sense they are. You're over there, I'm here. The cup is there, and I'm here, and the water's in the cup. And it's like each thing has its own place. Things are independent, but we don't suffer from a lack of experiencing that. When we view things as objects, we then tend to view ourselves as objects. And when we view ourselves as objects, we tend to fix ourselves and get stuck in a notion of a self. And then when there's a self well when there's a self there's suffering, basically. When there's a self there's desire and a clinging to that desire

[18:31]

and frustration and irritability and because we think it's all right here. It's very difficult because we experience it here. So Zazen gives us this opportunity to be so here that everything else arises. So I was thinking about some of the ways we can experience the world itself. I mean, you will have your own stories. I always have this notion I carry with me when I travel in an airplane.

[19:38]

I used to do this especially as a little kid, but I still do it and it cracks me up. And that is, I'm in an airplane. you know I'm five miles above the earth and I take away the airplane and I take away the stewardesses and I take away the food and I take away the seat and I take away the pilot and there's Karen five miles in the air sitting in this certain position and the image is like funny and especially like a kid thinks that's cool, oh yeah all these people like with nothing around them just traveling through the sky and The reality is, of course, we wouldn't be that person without all the things helping to create that, without the airplane and the pilot and the sky and the earth and, you know, we would be some other more distressing life form falling through the air. We would be a different reality. And, you know, all things are like this in some way.

[20:40]

Because I sit facing out right now, I get a lot of opportunity to be distracted and watch different things and memorize the grains of the wood and things like that. As I was sitting, I was thinking of that airplane image and I thought of it in my seat, that the cushion was holding me up and the cushion had material covering other material. Um, sitting on a ton, on the floor of the Zendo, on the ground, on Russell Street, and it just spiraled out. Everything was relational at that point. Everything was in relation to me. Um, and everything was in relation to you and to you. We experience ourself as the center, but everything's actually related. And it was, um, it was sort of relieving

[21:43]

it allowed me to go back to my breathing because I knew where I was just in that moment. And that happens moment after moment. When we sit and we can't escape we think we're sort of stuck there sitting and it's the same thing over and over. But as we watch we really get to see it's like over and over the world is creating me, being here. Sometimes when the food comes during Sashin, there's all kinds of feelings, there's this sense of relief, and there's this sense of entitlement, like I've been sitting here all morning, and now, you know, I deserve at least this, and here's this food, and, you know, it's here, and then I get often taken with how beautiful it looks.

[22:48]

But it's sort of like the form in here, and the servers bring it to me, and it's all sort of going along, as it goes. Well, yesterday or the day before, I happened to walk into the kitchen one or two periods before lunch and I was sort of just walking along And I walked into, and it felt like I just walked into this different theater, and this other movie was playing. And here was Ron bent over and Raul bent over, and arms in the air, and aprons, and other cooks, and pots, and things were moving. And it was so active and so complete. It was so what it was. They were really happening. I mean, just stuff was flying. And I thought, this is my meal, like, this, I mean, my meal is my meal and this cooking is it's cooking and yet, you know, it just, it got traced back a little further.

[23:56]

And when the meal came and I sort of saw the product of their efforts, I got taken in a little further and started thinking about who grew the rice and when did it rain, to water, you know, rice needs a lot of water and on and on like that. And that's sort of a literal, sort of cerebral entryway into interconnectedness or interdependence, but it's very delightful to ponder. And it's like a nice exercise in this is how things actually are. You know, the fact that they're that way doesn't require me to think of them that way. They just are that way. But my sort of pondering it brings up the possibility of not being self-centered.

[24:57]

You know, so again, the point is, it's not just fancy Buddhist language to say the world is me. I mean, walking into that kitchen, it was very clear to me. I got that little experience. So it's like, I don't know if it's a little bit like seeing a little bit of the screen on which the movie's projected or seeing the blips in the film or just remembering it's a movie. But, That's the opening. That's sort of the opening to recognizing just how big our life is. And because we're all, we're all making this life.

[26:02]

Each one of you is making my life. I can't say I'm experiencing that right now, but I'm experiencing something because you're all here. and we're all doing this one thing together. So there's this, you know, this literal sense of sort of tracing back interdependence and you can never sort of stop once you get going, you know. You can't quit with the farmer who grew the rice because he has ancestors, you know. So that sort of intellect, it feels a little intellectual, which is okay. All I mean to say by that is that there's also a sort of immediate recognition of interdependence. That's not this sort of tracing back. It's just actual awakening. I think it's, you know, what Deng Xian realized when he looked in the river and saw what he saw.

[27:09]

Saw his face on the river. he saw the river was himself, he saw his master. I don't know. But if he experienced enough to compose a gatha that basically, I think, sums up interdependence in such an exquisite way, I think he saw something really profoundly. I think that Zazen practice and Sishin practice is a faith practice. Not in the sense that we use this faith to rely on. Like, I'm going to hold on to this faith and no matter what, this is the way it is in this sort of... I mean, faith is not an object. There's not exactly an object of faith. It's just sort of a faith that, you know, what actually sustains us may not be what we're directly experiencing in the moment, but the only way to know what directly sustains us is to experience what we're experiencing completely.

[28:28]

Period after period of zazen, you know, I get swept away with the movie, the images, the images of knee pain. That's no image. But it's an image, it's emptiness, it's expressing itself as pressure in the physical world. And I liked what Sojin Roshi said yesterday about in Sashin we reduce our life to the most, forget how I said it, but we reduce our life to the most, we're reduced. I said something like, we're reduced. You know, if the pain gets so bad or the movie gets so compelling or the longing gets so intense, we're reduced. We can only just get through the next breath if that, maybe the inhale, maybe the exhale. It's through experiencing each thing completely, each independent actual individual thing.

[29:46]

That is emptiness. There's no other way for us to do it. Seems to me. Maybe there is, but this is maybe as much as I know or as far as I've gotten or as best as I can say it. Noticing again and again how we make ourself an object, the world an object. It's really... It's really sweet when you get, you know, just that one little moment where there's maybe total pain and total presence and the pain really hurts but you're not separate from it and it's not then the only thing because there's the pain and then there's the breath and then there's the mudra and then there's the pain and each thing completely lives

[31:11]

it just sort of spirals into the whole world. And the whole world spirals back into here. And it's very difficult to experience this in our activity without practicing experiencing it when there's the most basic activity, the activity you can't escape from, which is just being yourself, just being, you know, a body on a cushion that's breathing. Then, as we take up activity, as we serve or as we eat, that's relationship or interdependence just manifesting. So maybe it's not even so much having faith in emptiness or interdependence but having faith in the activity.

[32:34]

That's how we express our lives. We're always doing something even if we're just being. So So that's what I have about interdependence thus far. Do you have a question? Absolutely. Appropriate, Karen. There's no hole in you anyway. I don't know what will happen next time. Right now I've just gotten a question I don't know the answer to. It's the same thing over and over again and there's actually delight in that. Looking forward to waking up and getting to do the same thing because it's never the same thing.

[33:40]

Before this talk, I was doing kin-hin. I was trying to remember, okay, what's my talk about? Interdependence, okay. And this time I did a different way of preparing the talk. So I had more fear than usual because I wasn't going to rely on my old way. So I was more nervous and had more fear. And I thought to myself, I'm not even in the talk right now. I just, what I did is I brought my nervousness along. This is gonna make it look like an object, I know. But it's sort of like, come along with me, nervousness. There's plenty of room for you here. There's plenty of room for you here. I don't know if I remembered interdependence, I just told myself just to kin-hin with everybody else.

[34:56]

Just to kin-hin, and nervousness, you can come along with me. That's as far as I got. I don't say the fear went away, but I did get in here. So... Adieu. Yesterday was... I don't remember what it was. Silly was making a... just learned how to make a... one of those things you make in camp with the flat plastic strings And so I said, well, Sylvie, why don't you ask it to help you? And so she said, oh, you stupid thing, I know you can do what I want you to do. It'll try that one. I think that sums it up nicely because

[36:01]

I'm just finding it everywhere these days. You know, it's like, I made a lanyard once and I was 30 and I was... It's this participating thing. Everything's like that. And it's very sweet that a little girl could be offered that notion that it's not completely up to her. this movie screen and the allegory of the cave. People that deal with these screens are never satisfied. But it seems to me our practice just sweeps away that sort of desire to see what's behind the screen or what the dynamic of the screen is.

[37:16]

It's almost as if the mirror that we use is only partially silvered and we can see on the other side of the mirror and then we can see what's behind us too. So I want to thank you very much for bringing it up. It's a nice thought. Peter. Mine's not a question either, but a comment along Charlie's lines. I struggle with this little mind, big mind relationship also. Particularly for me, form is emptiness has always been an easy thing for me to understand. I know both are true. And when you talked about the movie being on the screen and you said, you know, there's no movie without the screen. That's obvious.

[38:17]

You have to have something to project the movie onto. But then you said, but what about from the screen's point of view? You didn't say anything. And so I started thinking. I realized, well, the screen is illuminated by the movie. When the movie is playing, that's how we see the screen. So that seems to be our practice. Thank you. That's very good. This is our way of knowing that there's big mind, is fully accepting the activity of small mind, but not mistaking it for big mind. Sue, and then I think we... Well, I want to thank you for your talk. had a lot of clarity in seeing through it. And one of them is that I don't think I'll ever hear, we are the world. And I'll say, away, man.

[39:18]

Just a lot of things came up. The idea of asking your master. My doing is from coming in here and going through and doing it the wrong way to the wrong way. Talking and seeing that it's just this way. It's just this is the way we're doing it. I'm doing it this way. And it includes suddenly everything. So thank you. Let's please continue to sit today completely present for whatever movie is showing and with complete faith that our big mind screen is never hindered by what arises.

[40:43]

Beings are endless.

[40:52]

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