Well, I hope everybody's comfortable and everybody found a place, a dharma place. I want to talk this morning about what we could call knowing, not knowing, and non-knowing. Speak up. Can people hear? Now it's better? Okay. And Dolly's sitting there by the door. Can you hear me, Dolly? Okay. You know, this year, 1988, will be 20 years since I came to this country.

[01:05]

I'm originally from Chile. And I sat for the first time in Paris, at the Paris Zendo of Taisen Deshimaru, who was a Japanese teacher who started a Zindo in Paris. I sat there once and then came to the United States and came directly to Berkeley and was living on McGee Street, which ended up being about half a block from the old Berkeley Sense Center. Dwight Way. And so I started sitting pretty soon after I arrived. I looked it up and went to San Francisco and they told me, well, there's a sense center in Berkeley.

[02:16]

I went there and met Mel and a few people, old members of the Sangha who were there at that time. Mary and Rebecca and Ron. Ron, the first time I saw Ron, he handed me a broom. Start sweeping. And so, but I came from Chile and I had lived there through the Allende period. I left right before the the coup, which was a time of a lot of reflection and upheaval and experimentation, social experimentation.

[03:20]

You know, Allende was trying to find a democratic way to socialism. And so there was a lot of debate. In Chile about 90% of the people vote. So everybody has some kind of opinion about this or that or what's happening or this policy or that policy and so on and so forth. So for good and for bad there's a high level of political consciousness. And I remember my father wasn't an active supporter of Allende because his father was a carpenter, so he grew up pretty poor. And then he had a brother

[04:26]

And so he always pointed to the relationship between him and his brother to sort of talk about what was going on in the country. And they both were born poor. And because, you know, being a carpenter in Chile is not like being a carpenter in the United States where it's blue color and, you know, it's middle class. Being a carpenter there is being poor. So he, my father, sort of was the only one in his family who educated himself and went to school and got a government scholarship to come to the United States and met my mother here and married and then they went back to Chile and that's when I was born. So he felt that he had sort of, from his own effort, had overcome poverty.

[05:35]

Whereas his brother, he supported his brother, and his brother was a member of the Communist Party, but he wouldn't work regular hours, and he would drink, and so he would say, my brother. But then my father also was pretty the object of scorn and contempt by the Chilean ruling class. So he himself suffered of the very same problem that he thought he didn't have, which is the other side, which my uncle sort of represented So, he couldn't go beyond a certain point in his work because of not being part of the ruling class.

[06:41]

So, the ruling class is a reality. You know, and then the CIA killed Allende and deposed the socialist So, that sort of period ended and now things have changed pretty much globally in terms of socialism as an ideal. But instead, the US now has a worse play in the form of Zen. In Zen, you know, we don't kill anybody, but we kill the ego. And maybe the ego is the deeper source of the problem that socialism tried to resolve.

[07:50]

You know, when I feel, my mother was North American, my father Chilean, I grew up in Chile. So, I feel at home in the U.S. I feel spiritually at home here. But culturally, I feel at home in the Latino community. The Latino community in the U.S. Culturally. Spiritually, I feel at home. Culturally, I feel at home in the Latino community, and I've been working in the mission for the last 12 years. And Latino now is the word that's used because to what the different subcultures and subgroups have in common as being members of Latin America which is two-thirds of the American continent. And you know California by the year 2000 is projected to be 50% Latino.

[09:14]

The biggest group of course in Latino group in California is Mexican American. And actually this place right here And, of course, before that he was Native American, and I will say something about that later on. But you know what Mexico means in the Aztec language. Mexico means the belly of the moon. The belly of the moon, the luminous aura. And then we say that our heart is in our hara, in our stomach. It's where we breathe. So that's the same meaning as Mexico.

[10:24]

So I teach a class on the the spiritual and psychological and social experience of Latinos in the U.S., which applies also to other minority groups. So this whole issue of the relationship between majority culture and minority culture is pretty much at the pulse of cultural juncture of this country. So, the way I like to think about that relationship, the majority-minority is the relationship between the science, the scientific paradigm, which is modernity, the modern world, and the traditional culture.

[11:26]

So, the scientific paradigm and traditional culture. Minorities live by traditional culture. Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Native Americans also live by traditional culture. Buddhism is traditional culture. So, capitalism as an economic system is the product of English utilitarianism. So, the relationship between majority and minorities

[12:31]

is like the relationship between the master and the servant. Science and traditional culture, which is a culture of service. Capitalism is a culture of mastery. So, it's a culture of self-interest, of gain, profit, and obtaining pleasure from the things that we use, the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of pleasure, the pursuit of success, of gaining. All of that is the mastery ideal, which I would say is the ego ideal. The traditional culture, culture of minorities, is a different kind of ideal.

[13:37]

The Buddhist ideal is a different kind of ideal. It's an ideal of service. And then knowledge in science is ruled by also self-interest, accumulating knowledge, gaining something through what we know, supplementing the ego through knowledge, accumulating knowledge, supplementing the ego, building the ego, causing pleasure for some and pain for others. Instead, in traditional knowing, And intrinsic wisdom, like in Buddhism, is based on not knowing. Not knowing.

[14:41]

Position of service, not knowing. So the true subject is found in the position of service. not in the position of mastery, of the master. But of course, this position of service of the servant, right? Because minorities, Latinos, are working as servants. They are gardeners, child care workers, domestic work, cleaning houses, working in the factories, sustaining the infrastructure that permits the machine to work. So that's the position of service.

[15:45]

Now this position of service, of not knowing, is not ignorance, and it's not false modesty either. So, sometimes you will feel that the position of being of service and of being a servant is like being powerless, not having power, having low self-esteem, being ignorant in some way. So, in ... In Hegel, socialism came from Marx and dialectical materialism. And Marx was a disciple of Hegel. And in Hegel, the negative consciousness is found in the servant, not in the master.

[16:50]

The true consciousness is the negative consciousness. It's found in the servant, not in the master. But for Hegel, the absolute is an abstract idea. It's an idea. So in Zen or in Buddhism, it's more the dialectics of emptiness rather than the dialectical reason or dialectical materialism. It's the dialectics of emptiness. So the negative consciousness is the consciousness of the Heart Sutra, the consciousness of the Bodhisattva. So not knowing is not being so proud or attached

[17:54]

to our culture, or our cultural values, or not being nationalistic or imperialistic. So, when Bodhidharma went to China or came to China, record, the case number one, he was asked by the, he was summoned by the Emperor, Emperor Wu, and was asked, well, who are you? Well, he didn't say, well, I'm from India, you know, and I'm not Chinese. I'm a Buddhist, you know, and I've been practicing Buddhism for all these years and now I'm coming here to bring Buddhism into China, right, which could have been predictable.

[19:08]

He didn't say anything of that sort. He said, well, who are you? He said, I don't know. That's not knowing. And so, but then he was also asked, well, what is actually the first question is, what is the highest meaning of the holy truth? Right? Asking an exalted question, expecting an exalted answer. And instead he said, emptiness, nothing holy. So, not a master, not a master, nothing special, just emptiness, being of service. So this holiness is not a thing, is not an object of the ego, is not a possession, not something that gives status or specialness.

[20:21]

Then he also was asked, well, is there any merit in building all these beautiful buildings? You know, this great emperor of China, big deal, building these beautiful buildings, highest culture, so on and so forth. Is there any merit in any of this? No merit was the answer that came back. Nothing at all. So, any other response that would have pointed to the mastery attained by Bodhidharma or the mastery attained by Emperor Wu and so on and so forth would be sort of the talk of the ego, the master's discourse. That's like Time Magazine saying that Bill Gates is the master of the universe.

[21:28]

He's revolutionized technology, right? So that's it, that's the technological utilitarian ego. Not that technology is necessarily bad, it's just bad when it's linked or attached to this ego, right? So, that's the American dream in some way, sort of making it big, being number one, being the boss. I remember when I first came and I was reading the Chronicle once and there was an article by Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes saying, well, giving advice of how to start your business and how to make it in the corporate world, right? They said, well, the first thing you got to do is even though you don't have any money, you don't have anybody working for you, you have to pretend like you have assistance. So you have somebody answer your answering machine, you know. So you're the boss of somebody.

[22:33]

Because if you're nobody's boss, you know, you're nobody. You will never make it. So, this is the ego. This is the ego ideal. And that's the bad side of the American dream, and the bad side of capitalism, and that's why socialism came up. And those who don't make it in that ego dream, right, are called minorities, are called failures, are called servants, are called weak, etc., right? So, Being a Zen master is different than being a social master. It's not being a ruler. And in Zen emancipation revolution, Zen revolution or emancipation transformation doesn't mean that you do whatever you want or that you become a boss or a ruler and that's what

[23:49]

guides our practice because that's like total perversion. And yet, that's the way the ego tends to perceive the teacher and perceive the practice. So, it's not... The ideal is not that we can do whatever we want. So, it's... We can do whatever we want when we, after going through a tough ordeal and learning experience and falling on our face a thousand times, then we learn to flow with how things go. And that's the being at one with the law of no-self. And if we think that no-self means being nothing, not having power, being of service means being a servant in the sense of powerlessness.

[25:00]

Okay? And this is like the black lacquer bucket, which in Zen is a metaphor for ignorance. Emptiness of self, no-self. is when the bottom falls out of the bucket. So that all that remains is just this vast universe and the functioning of all dharmas, moment to moment, being to being, And when needed by a circumstance, we follow and somebody else leads. And when needed by circumstance, we need to lead and other people follow.

[26:05]

And if we like to lead too much, then we have to learn how to follow. And if we like to follow too much, then we have to learn how to lead. So, not knowing also means that the ego appears to know, but doesn't really know. And the subject appears not to know, but in reality it actually does know. Because we all have intrinsic wisdom. And intrinsic wisdom is evoked by not knowing, by sustaining an open mind, an open heart.

[27:08]

And wisdom is not something that can be owned as an object or given as an object to someone who asks for it. So, if you ask me to show it to you, well, I won't be able to do so. Because to do that would be what I would call Zen exhibitionism. So, it can't be given as an object. It can only be evoked from within. So, if you ask me to give it to you, then I will fail. I will fail. But this failure is also success. It just looks like a failure to the ego.

[28:12]

So, we all have the intrinsic light, but if we turn directly towards the intrinsic light, then it becomes only darkness. This is a koan that comes up also at this clinic where I work. I'm a psychologist and I work with a lot of Latinos in Spanish who come with various kinds of problems. And they come to the doctor thinking, oh, you know, right? You're the doctor. You're the master of knowledge, right? You went to school, have these degrees, read all these books. Nonsense. None of that is what really makes the difference. So, what makes the difference is the being in the position of not knowing. Not knowing because the ego is not the one that knows.

[29:16]

And even though the person may come saying, oh, I don't know, I'm suffering, I'm in pain, and I'm hoping that you know something. They only appear not to know because in reality their true subject knows. The wisdom that is healing or therapeutic that will free the subject is buried within themselves, within ourselves. So we have to be the midwife to bring that out and that's not knowing. So the Bodhisattva is more like the servant than the master. More not knowing than knowing. It's more like the host, or the host within the host. So we could say a Zen host, maybe, more than a Zen master. A Zen host. Holy host, holy ghost.

[30:18]

So, on the other hand, sometimes people come and say, oh, I don't know anything. This is the I don't know of ignorance. Because the ego appears either to know or not to know. But, I don't know anything is also the ego. Because, in actuality, the subject knows. So, neither knowing nor not knowing, but non-knowing. Like Dogen says, thinking, not thinking, non-thinking. Neither thinking nor not thinking, but non-thinking. Neither knowing nor not knowing, but non-knowing. Another aspect of this knowing, not knowing, is non-clinging or non-attachment. So, we don't cling to views, So, it's important to study, but we don't cling to knowledge to supplement the ego, to build the ego.

[31:34]

That knowledge that builds the ego is what the teacher just cuts off, knocks down. So, knowledge and language is dual, right, or dual. And as soon as we take a position, the opposition comes up simultaneously. So in knowledge and language, position and opposition simultaneously arise. And so position and opposition depend on each other, and So non-clinging or not knowing or non-duality means how we take both sides of a duality into consideration. So we don't cling to either side of the position or the opposition.

[32:39]

We have to take a position and yet the opposition brings up an opposition. So how do we deal with the position and the opposition? So we have to be non-claiming. It means not claiming to the position or to the opposition, even though we take a position. And here's where I want to come back to the question of Native American culture, because Carlos Castaneda is a Mexican-American who studied with sorceress in Mexico, which came from the Toltec tradition. The Toltec tradition was the Native American tradition that fueled the Aztec and Mayan cultures. It was a pretty old culture.

[33:40]

And so Castaneda speaks about what he calls tensegrity. And I want to talk about tensegrity in terms of this position and opposition. So if we take a position, we create tension. Just like when we have the intention to sit sazen, we take a position, and in taking a position, there is extension in the legs. And pretty soon we have the opposition which is felt as the pain in our legs. So we have the intention, we have the extension, and we have the opposition or pain in our legs that comes from the tension. So we have intention and tension.

[34:42]

So tensegrity is, he uses that to talk about the balance between tension and distension. Position and opposition. And so that's just like zazen. When we take a position, so the intention and the extension creates tension. And we have pain. So how do we harmonize with the pain? That's just like taking a position and then creating an opposition in somebody else. So the opposition that we may experience when we take a position, and where this position is a conversation, is a relationship, is a political situation, how do we harmonize that position and opposition is precisely the koan of zazen. The opposition is the pain in our legs.

[35:47]

So we cultivate a serenity, a confident serenity that enables the subject to endure the opposition calmly. So then if somebody opposes us, which inevitably will happen, to all of us. We take a position, we're enthusiastic about life and certain ideas, right? So we want to change the world and do this and do that, and then inevitably somebody has the opposing idea. Right? And then, well, that's very frustrating. Well, precisely there is the koan of Zazen. So tensegrity is like the structure in a building. The building stands because certain pillars are sustaining the weight and other pillars are at rest.

[36:50]

So some part is the harmony between tension and distention. And so when we sit in zazen, the muscles of the legs are in extension. And with the other muscles, our intention is to have them at rest. and relaxed. So, harmony is this kind of optimal tension, intention and extension, and that's what we call an effortless effort. So, between the intention of mind and the extension of body, we have intensive practice. Intensive practice is intention of mind and extension of body. harmony between the two, then we have intensive practice. Is it time?

[37:54]

Okay, I'm just going to end I wanted to say that this optimal harmony between tension and distention of zazen is the metaphor for how we deal with position and opposition in many different areas of our life. And it's just like the process of giving birth. Just like the process of giving birth. We know that birth also involves death, but we don't know that death also involves birth. In Spanish, to give birth, you say dar a luz, is to give light. To give light. So in the process of giving birth, it's bringing something from the light within the darkness of the womb.

[39:13]

And to bring this light within the darkness out into the darkness within the light of the world. The light of the world is this tension created by the world. Within this tension created by the world there is suffering and there's darkness. That's the darkness within the light of the tension of the world. And inside the darkness of the womb there is the light of darkness. And the process of birth brings this light within the darkness of the womb into the darkness of the light of the world. And it's very painful. and I don't have to. I'm not a woman, I've never given birth. I was present at the birth of both of my sons and there was great life and great death and great joy and great pain.

[40:19]

And so We have to go through, circle around this, define this light within the darkness. We have to circle around this pain, which is the darkness within the light of the world. And we create this balance between tension and distension. Thank you very much. Do we have time for a few questions? Yes? Getting back to something you said earlier in your talk, would you mind giving a couple examples of how you see the not-knowing side revealed in the traditional cultures? Well, I mean, that's the whole teaching of Bodhidharma. I don't know if that's what he said. That's the only thing he said. I mean, the traditional Latino culture... Oh, not knowing.

[41:26]

You're talking about something very positive about the traditional culture, is what I heard. Right. Well, the wisdom in traditional culture teaches about this position of not knowing, which is the position of service, and which is also the position of the servant. Right. Yes. and the position of not knowing. Not knowing all the, you know, ego knowledge. But you can not have ego knowledge, not have the academic knowledge that gives money and status, but yet have intrinsic wisdom. Not knowing. And so, yes. Well, a question arises for me. I wonder if one wouldn't have to go through knowledge in order to get to not knowing.

[42:38]

Or, another way of stating it, if one wouldn't have to develop the ego to begin with in order to then surrender it. The ego is an imaginary construction, but that's not what the self is. I mean, the self, the subject is, it doesn't mean that you don't function, or you don't that you're not a human being in the world. You have to be a functioning human being in the world who speaks, who has a name, who comes from a culture, who relates to people, who has some understanding, some knowledge to do things and get around and so on and so forth. But that's not the ego, that's not the imaginary construction.

[43:41]

So that's not something that needs to be destroyed because that was something that never was. This reminds me of something I wanted to say earlier, which is this distinction between being of service in a traditional culture, which is where everything and everyone is interdependent. I mean, it is a culture of interdependence. And then as distinct from being in the position of a servant in a culture like ours, where there is the ruling class when you were talking about having to go through, develop the ego, I don't think you were intending to say that one should be passive or... No, that's what I said by the black lacquer bucket. That went by fairly quickly.

[44:45]

Seeing the servant as powerlessness is the ignorance which is represented by the blacker bucket. Seeing service as emptiness, essential emptiness, is the bottom falling out. Yes? frailties and difficulties.

[45:55]

And also, in fact, we're here. those contradictions, you know, not just the contradictions between master and servant, but even the contradictions within being servant or within being master, and just that they're inherited in, you know, each level that we look at, they're there. So that may be, I'm afraid, a little abstract, but I want to be careful about the idealization. Well, I mean, the notion is for those who feel dispossessed, to have a tool or a vehicle for intrinsic wisdom.

[46:56]

And also to turn science into a vehicle for intrinsic wisdom. That's the point. So it's the balance. I agree. Please explain then, not knowing Again, that's the same answer that I just gave. If you say it's not present, it's not true. If you say it's absent, it's not true. Pardon? It's how you use it. So it's just like how you use technology. Well, I think that sign arose in opposition to religion.

[48:03]

Position, opposition. That's the movement of history. And now, the culture moved into, in opposition to religion, that's the western culture, moved in opposition to religion. Science took a position in opposition And that's how we find the tension, the balance, the harmony between the position and the opposition between science and religion, and that's where we are. Yes? I just want to thank you for this really marvelous and complex talk, and there are lots of levels which I And it seems to me that they hinge on, when you're talking about Master and Servant, light, dark, so on, it's that duality, the dualities in which our kinds of brains we have tend to work.

[49:22]

It's this or that. And the tendency not to see that apparent total oppositions have some aspect of the other. I think it's true of physics also, actually, that there is a darkness in light. Some people have done that experiment. But it seems to me that part of what we need to do, I mean as individuals and as social beings too, the model towards less one of opposition, up and down, or good or bad, towards one of more, what I want to call more cooperative notion of our being and various aspects of our being working together, becoming more harmonious.

[50:27]

I mean, I think that's where we're at, but it's a little bit of a different point of view, I mean, just to hold in one's own mind, when we start going on one side or the other way to think. There's an integration. Right, but even though we have the ideas about cooperation, how come we can't cooperate? So that's the problem. Even though we know, we've known for a long time that we should cooperate, and we all know that. And yet, moment to moment, how do we cooperate in this situation? Are we cooperating? Or is it this tension and non-tension? This balance, dynamic balance. that we need to find in every moment to moment.

[51:32]

So even though we have an ideal of cooperation, it's not so easy. No, but I think that's the goal. I mean, that's what we wish for, is that the ego not be so, or whatever, the ego tends to unbalance and make us miserable. Because it's just like, you know, realities. Right. That seems to me that's where the pain comes in, rather than having an ego which is part of the system. Right, but pleasure and pain will arise inevitably. So the problem is, how do we work with pleasure and pain? It's not like we can have just pleasure and cooperation. We would like that, but it doesn't work that way. Are we out of time? Yes. I'm sorry. We'll end it there.

[52:33]

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