This is the mirror, a simple color of true practice of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith. Again, the ceremony or ritual. I'm asking if you can hear me. Can you hear me in the back? Okay. And then the next thing is another ceremony, a ceremony of recognizing and being recognized by each other.

[01:02]

wherein each person says her or his name, and then we all say name. Is it okay to do that? Would you just stop? Nancy. Nancy. Jada. Jada. Corinne. Corinne. Tim. Tim. Jenny. Jenny. Matt. Matt. Great. Fred. Catherine. Christina. Michael. John. Lynn. Amy. Lori. Kathy. Fred. Dan. John. John. Rannigan.

[02:08]

Rannigan. Lisa. Lisa. Sally. Sally. Kelly. Kevin. Ken. Ken. Bob. Bob. Yeah. Yeah. Last night, at the end of the evening, I went and I bowed to the statue of the Buddha. And the rest of you didn't bow.

[03:16]

Almost none of you bowed. And I wondered, is bowing kind of unfamiliar to you? And do you have any unfamiliar, strange, or does it seem inappropriate to you? That's one question I have. Another question I have is, do you have any problem with, you know, talking about Buddhas and things like that? Does anybody have anything to say about the question about the bound? Do you feel okay about bound? Do you have a problem with bound? I think we weren't sure that was just timely. You alone were supposed to vow. Uh-huh. Did you okay with bowing? Is that okay? If you have questions about any of the rituals that might occur this weekend, I encourage you to express those questions.

[04:19]

I think this point in history of the tradition of the Buddha coming to America. It's kind of a very interesting phase because this interaction between Asian Buddhism and what's going on in this country is really quite wonderful, but it's new. So how we understand this tradition and how we receiving it and put it to use is quite new. And potentially it could be very helpful to this world if we understand the tradition and understand the tradition and understand how to apply the tradition to this culture. Now, it really hasn't been done for very long, and it's always new, so please feel free to feel wonder and ask questions about

[05:26]

what we're doing here in the practice, doing this retreating day by day in your practice, wonder about what's appropriate application of practice. And I was thinking to actually talk to during this retreat about forms, forms of practice and formality and how I see it as necessary in order to accomplish what I see as the basic intention of the Zen school of buddhaway. So I might start by just discussing the basic motivation in the Zen tradition, which I think is really the basic motivation of the Buddha, or basic motivation of a completely enlightened

[07:02]

living being, or completely enlightened being, basic motive. Basic motive is to realize peace and harmony. freedom and full living among all living beings, which includes, actually, the full function of all living beings and the full function of all inanimate phenomena, too. So we're meeting now in, is it an ecology environmental education playground?

[08:13]

Is that what this is? So environmental education is learn about the environment. And I think with the probably motive of promoting learning about the environment is so that people would understand how to realize peace and harmony in the environment. So the environment is as peaceful and harmonious and happy and fully living as possible. So I think that's the basic motive and that includes, of course, as part of that, that what's included there is to manifest relationships among living beings, which includes sort of your internal ecology.

[09:16]

In other words, your relationship with your own body and mind and your relationship with all of the beings. This peace and harmony includes relationships where the obstructions, the kinds of habitual and physically established patterns of behavior which obstruct peace and harmony are released. So this peace and harmony, we wish to, it's the basic motive, but it's part of that. There needs to be a little bit of that includes recognition that there are karmic accumulations that have developed in our body and mind, in our bodies and minds, karmic obstructions have accumulated, which indeed have become an obstacle to realizing peace and harmony.

[10:24]

So the chant we just did, some of it said, karmic accumulations have accumulated and have become an obstacle to peace and harmony among all beings. So part of realizing peace and harmony is to somehow massage these obstacles until they kind of melt away and loosen up. What I'm about to say is related, so don't worry. When I was in the airplane, I went into the toilet and I noticed on the wall there was written the word, English word, flush. And under it was a Spanish expression.

[11:28]

Does anybody know what it says in Spanish? The last word is agua. Does anybody here speak Spanish? You do? What do you think it says in Spanish? Huh? Anyways, I forgot. I don't know how to say the word. Anyway, it's something like... Yeah, there we go. It said that. And I thought, well, it has English and it has Spanish, but it doesn't have French, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian. It doesn't have those other languages. And I thought, well, I know that some French people will think that wasn't very good.

[12:31]

We should have French there too, don't you think? But then I thought, well, you know, in the Western Hemisphere, the two main languages are English and Spanish. So it's okay to learn French, but really, living in the Western Hemisphere is probably a good idea for us to learn Spanish. Learning Spanish would be something that you might want to do for the sake of peace and harmony, so you could talk to people. I'm from the Western Hemisphere. And then you'd go on to learn French, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Korean. In other words, you'd want to learn languages of all people, so you could talk to them, so you could listen to their stories, so you could make peace with them. And you'd feel that, you know, when you realize,

[13:37]

how wonderful it is to work for peace and harmony. But when you have karmic obstructions really heavily set in, you can hardly remember that you want to work for peace and harmony. You wonder why they have any language you know besides English. And you think you only have to know one language and everybody else should know it. And there should be, and there's only one country that really is good, and it's you living it. And the rest of them can just line up and say thank you that they even have any, that they live on the same planet with us. This is the attitude of karmic obstruction. Of having thoughts like, you know, I'm better than somebody else. It's a karmic obstruction. We're better than them. It's a comic obstruction to peace and harmony. It's not a comic obstruction, however, to war and horror and cruelty.

[14:46]

It's actually this comic assistance to cruelty and harm. Thinking you're better than other people, thinking that your people are better than other people, that's a comic facilitator of misery. Thinking you're worse than other people is not so good either. But thinking that you're actually the same family, the same blood, the same life as all beings, that goes more along with, I would like to have good relationships with all of them. And I would be willing, if I had time, to learn all those languages so I could talk to them, so I could have tea or coffee in the coffee shops of any of those countries, sit in and talk to those people and listen to them and ask them if I can help them and talk to them about how to achieve peace and harmony.

[15:56]

And what's the basic method to realize this basic motive? Basic method has, you know, I'm speaking to you now in English, so there's many ways I could say what the basic method is. But it really is kind of a basic method, and it's not really like the zillions of basic methods. It's really sort of one basic method, but there's many, many ways to talk about it. But it's really kind of like just one, more or less, basically. And what it is is it's, one way to put it is the basic method is intimacy. The basic method of Zen is intimacy. The basic motive is peace, freedom, and compassion, good relationships among other beings. The basic method is intimacy. Another way to say the basic method is the basic method is to end all outflows, end all leakage.

[17:23]

That's a technical term that the Buddha used. I don't know, not exactly right away, but in early Buddhist tradition, You know, Buddha, the living historical Buddha used the term outflows to describe the kind of knowledge, the highest kind of knowledge that was realized. The kind of knowledge which makes it possible to harmonize with beings is a type of knowledge where you actually realize, you understand the end of outflows. I'll just sit it for now and come back to the outflows later. But they are. And another way to say it, maybe I won't ever come back, so maybe I should say it now. Who knows?

[18:25]

I may not come back. So outflows are the kinds of phenomena, actually, which arise when we when we get attached to gaining loss, which is similar to when we get attached to some position like this exists or this doesn't exist. So if we do something like, well, you know, some simple thing like picking up a white cup that has some tea in it, pick it up with some kind of actually attachment to that, I'll get something out of this.

[19:30]

So if I pick it up and there's no tea in it, actually, I picked it up hoping that I would gain some tea. that makes the simple act of picking up a cup somewhat of a drain. And it's not a big drain, but it's a little bit of a drain at least, and you can feel it. Or if you drink the tea thinking that you're going to gain a positive sensation, or thinking that you're going to gain a pleasant taste, And you do it to get that, to gain that. That creates a situation called the outflow. Or if you think somebody is wrong, and you think the wrongness which you think they are, they manifest, if you think that actually exists, it creates a kind of, a seed.

[20:41]

It creates a seed for suffering. It creates a root for pain and misery. Or the same situation, if you look at someone and think that they're wrong, then you think their rightness doesn't exist. They're wrong and they're not right. You think they really are wrong, that that wrongness exists and there's no rightness there. You think the rightness doesn't exist. All these kinds of existences and non-existences which our mind imagines, our mind does imagine, existence and non-existence of our various things. To grasp those imaginary existences which our mind creates, which don't actually exist, but our mind created to grasp them, creates the seeds for affliction. These seeds for affliction are these offloads So you get concerned with gain and loss so that you're experiencing gain and loss all day long, which disturbs you, and also it sets up the karmic patterns for obstruction, peace, and harmony.

[21:51]

Because, again, if it comes down to, like, I don't know what, somebody comes up to you, and you see them, and you're involved in gain and loss, and as the person approaches, you think it's going to be a loss to meet them This looks like a loss. This person's going to come and ask me for a dollar. This is a loss situation. You tense up and leave town because you don't want to lose a dollar. Or this person's going to ask for $100, $1,000. And you're like, you're into gain and loss. So you're uncomfortable that they're coming and ask you for this large amount of cash. So the peace and harmony is somewhat obstructed because you're afraid of what they're being asked for. Another way to put it is outflows are the kind of things that happen when a positive sense, when you feel something pleasurable,

[23:11]

and you get happy. But getting happy when a pleasurable sensation happens, that's like that attitude that you have about the pleasant sensation that makes you happy about it, that's an outflow. That's an inflow. And actually, the word outflow is just It's just one way to put it. Outflow, it could be outflow or inflow. It basically means a flood or a flow. If someone comes towards you and you feel a negative sensation, and you get unhappy, getting unhappy at the negative sensation, that's an outflow. And then the actions you do based on the pattern of pleasant sensations and getting happy and the actions you do around that getting happy about pleasant sensations and the actions you do about unhappiness that happens with negative sensation.

[24:18]

Those actions then reinforce the pattern to get happy when something positive happens and get unhappy when something negative happens. When When somebody speaks well of you and you get happy, that's an outflow. When people speak badly about you and you get unhappy, that's an outflow. When you hear about people speaking badly of you and you feel unhappy, that's an outflow. And when you hear about people speaking badly of you and you get happy, speaking well of you and you get happy, that's an outflow. Getting happy when you get something that you like And being unhappy when you lose something that you like or when you get something you don't like. But when you lose something, that's not all. So it's possible to have a method so that you do experience, so that when you experience a positive sensation, you just experience a positive sensation.

[25:30]

And you don't get happy or sad about experiencing a positive sensation. And when you experience a negative sensation, you don't get happy or sad about experiencing a negative sensation. When you hear about people slandering you, you don't get happy or sad about that. And when people hear about people saying good things about you, you don't feel happy or sad about it. Actually, when you hear people slandering about slandering, you might also feel pain. So you hear somebody slander you, and you hear the slander, and you feel pain about it, and you don't feel happy or sad. You just experience pain and bad news about it. So learning how to end this kind of heart flow is a method to realize peace of mind. We can perhaps talk more about that later.

[26:32]

Third way of talking about it, which I talked, when last time I did a retreat in this area, in Pittsburgh last summer, I talked about wisdom teachings, and actually previous two are wisdom teachings too, but this is another one where basically the way to, the method for realizing this basic motive is, number one, to learn to not strongly adhere to what you think things are as being the way they are. To learn how to not strongly adhere to your imagination about phenomena as actually being the phenomena. and if you can learn how to not hear so strongly you could possibly see eventually the way things are in the absence of what you think about them or put it in a somewhat different way you can also learn to see when you look at things you can learn to see the absence of what you imagine them to be

[28:03]

And then when you see that absence of your imagination in things, then you will be liberated from hindrances to peace and harmony among beings. I could go back over each of these ways of talking about the basic method.

[29:32]

And also, if you have any questions about what I'm suggesting as the basic motive, I bring them up. And then if you go through these basic methods, this basic method, these different ways that I've brought it up for the rest of time together, Before we do that, do you have any questions you want to bring up about what we've said so far? I have a question. Yes. Is the suggestion that we not heal as opposed to not paying attention to feelings? Is the suggestion that you not feel? Right. It's almost like when healing it only sounds like it's about wanting not participating in healing. Like a positive, like a positive feeling? Well, like, maybe the touch or the pain with listening, almost a check. Um, I would suggest, what I'm suggesting is that actually the way to experience a positive sensation is such a way that the outflow's end is to experience it

[30:53]

And if you're experiencing it, by experiencing it completely, there will be, you won't get happy about it. You will be happy, but you won't be happy because it was a positive sensation. So it may be easier to use the example, if you experience a negative sensation completely, you will be happy. But you won't be happy because of this sensation. This isn't just masochism. So I appreciate your question because I'm not suggesting when you have a feeling that you don't experience it. And you said, actually, as you asked, are you saying that we should experience it almost objectively? And in a sense, I thought, well, yes. In other words, when you experience something, like for example a positive sensation, almost objectively, let's say you experience it almost objectively, in other words, you experience it so fully, so fully,

[32:19]

that it was just all that was happening in that positive sensation. All that was happening in that positive sensation was the object called positive sensation. That would be it. Nothing else would be happening. But you would be there. You and you are a subject. We are subjects. Subjects experience objects. So you, our subject, experience an object. But when you, the subject, experience an object completely, there's no subject in addition to the object. There cannot be an object without a subject. But usually subjects, normal human beings, untrained human beings, are subjects who experience objects half-heartedly, so to speak. And they sort of feel like, I'm a subject over here experiencing the object over there.

[33:24]

This is a partial experience of, for example, pleasure. I'm having pleasure. When there's a feeling of I'm over here having a pleasure over there, then in some sense you're not fully experiencing pleasure. And because of that, there's this sense of... Again, me having the pleasure. And that's another way to talk about the source of the outflow, is the belief in the separation between the subject and the object. I, the subject, am getting a pleasure called the object, or I, the subject, am getting an object called pleasure. And when I have the attitude towards pleasure, I'm separating myself from the pleasure. It's something I get or don't get. And that's another way to describe the paradigm of getting happy about pleasure and unhappy about pain.

[34:33]

So you're not holding back. In a sense, you're not holding back from the experience of the pleasant sensation. You're more like separating yourself from it. But if you fully experienced it, to the point where all there was was a pleasurable sensation and there was nobody in addition to that, nobody separate from that who was experiencing it, that would also be the end of our flows. That's another way to talk about it. To fully experience the feeling to the point where there's just the feeling and there's no additional person having it. Of course there's a person there because Because you are alive, you are a person, but you're just not separating yourself from your experience when you fully experience them. And that ends all flows. What function was this dependent, what you taught last year, this dependent core arising? Exactly. Then you would be manifesting, you would be practically manifesting the teaching of dependent core arising in that moment.

[35:43]

You would be manifesting the truth also. that comes along with it. So another way to put it is when you don't manifest the truth, you have these outflows arise. So the truth says that human beings have positive and negative sensations. We do. We have nervous systems which are built to come up with positive and negative sensations, which means they have nervous systems which are built to create positive and negative evaluations of what's going on by moment. That's kind of the living being we are. And most living beings are like that. Every moment, your nervous system is coming up with all kinds of evaluations. That's just normal. And the training is then to train this person, who's dependently co-arising and having the sensations, to train this person to understand the truth of the origination of our experience.

[36:45]

to understand the truth is the same as ending altruism, or is the same as understanding that you are depending, co-horizing, and not suffering from your experience. Did you hear the end rest?

[37:01]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_79.28