Where does love fit in here? And we talk about it in so many different ways. It's the thing, we talk about loving-kindness. When we love somebody in the sense of being in a relationship, so, okay, you mean in the sense of the Dalai Lama? I think that it arises naturally as we strip away doesn't fit into another feeling. Well, feeling is just pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, period. And then our response to that pleasant, unpleasant, neutral is to cling, is to become attached or whatever, yes. Right. And so that's not the kind of love that you're talking about. That other kind of love is outside. Yeah, maybe you could say it's off the wheel.

[01:03]

This is suffering, right? This wheel is about suffering. This is dependent co-arising. I think that kind of love that you see in the Dalai Lama is unconditioned. And this is, this wheel is, this is dependent co-arising. This is the conditioned. This is our life. So is there anything else that's kind of bubbling? It's our unliberated life. That's our unliberated life, yes. Sure, some other time. Yeah. And we can talk about it a lot next week. I mean, I was daunted by the notion of doing the eight-hole path in one class, but then I realized

[02:04]

It's really, I mean, anyway, we did it last night and it didn't seem to be a problem. So, then that's what, that's what, I think what could emphasize the last, the right understanding and right intention. So is there anything from last week or the week before you've been working about? So just to review the underlying suffering, so tonight we're talking about the cessation of suffering, so that there, life is first noble truth, there is suffering, there is dis-ease. And I think that's the most important kind of suffering. You know, there's the kind where you cut your finger, or you get a scratch on your car, or you lose someone you love, those things. That pervasive suffering that arises from the conceit, from the belief in ourselves as separate, independently existing beings.

[03:15]

That's the really basic suffering. And that that is the cause of suffering, is that ignorant belief in our existence. And the thirst for continuity, the thirst for becoming. And I want to talk about, we talked about annihilation, somebody asked about, there was something about the thirst for annihilation, and as I was preparing, I found this description, I think, is what he's talking about. There are two kinds of wrong view, so this wasn't talking about the April 10th, okay?

[04:17]

Some people hang back and some people overreach. How do some hang back? Being, it's a love being, delight in being, enjoy being, when the Dharma is expounded to them for the ending of being. Their hearts do not go out to it, nor acquire confidence, steadiness, and decisions. So some hang back." Then he goes on, "...and how does some overreach? Some are ashamed, humiliated, and disgusted by that same being, and they look forward to non-being in this way." serves when with the dissolution of the body this self is cut off, annihilated, and accordingly after death no longer is. That is the most peaceful. That is the goal superior to all. That is reality. So some overreach. So that's what he's talking about. So the third noble truth is that is

[05:27]

the way out of suffering. That it exists, and that there's a cause for it, and this is the way out. And the way out of suffering is nirvana. And there are lots of definitions, none of which can of course really get at it. And Rahula says that it's probably better to describe it in negative terms, because we have, as soon as you use language, as we've been discussing, then you have your concepts, and you have all your labels that you put on things, and all your ideas about certain words, and we have fewer ideas about negative words. So it's a little easier sometimes to describe it as absence of this or that. So I just copied down some of them. It literally means freedom from craving, which is pretty good. So sometimes it's described as tanhakaya.

[06:34]

We talked about tanha last week. Tanha is thirst or craving, and that's the cause of suffering. So tanhakaya is the extinction of thirst. Absolute truth, ultimate reality, unconditioned, cessation, joy or happiness, freedom from conceit, uprooting attachment, cutting off continuity. Continuity in the sense that this goes around and around from one to the next. Peace, release, purity. Those are just some of the words that come back to all of this. But, you know, it's nirvana or liberation or enlightenment is not something that you can really talk about with words. It's not something to be got. It's not something to be grasped. It's something one realizes. It is not a thing.

[07:37]

I mean, maybe it's the absence of thing, thingness. It's the not objectifying your experience. It's not nothing. But it's not an object. And there's nothing after it. That's the whole point. It's not conditioned and it's not so it is also not conditioned because that which is of the nature of arising is of the nature of ceasing. Dependent arising, co-origination. So it's not of the nature of arising or ceasing. Mel once said, somebody said, well what's Or maybe he brought this up when he was teaching the Heart Sutra, he said that what's, well he said that what's at the intersection of form and emptiness? Now. And I think sometime in Shosan somebody said, well what's beyond form and emptiness?

[08:37]

And he said, now. So maybe nirvana is now. Really, now. And all you can do is do that. I mean, a part of what Vasubandhu was talking about is how we're labeling all the time. We're even labeling the labels. In other words, you can't, it's still a concept if you say that's just a concept. You're still doing it. You just have to sit yourself down in the middle of it and shut up about it. And so did Dogen. I don't know if you read that, what is it called, Enlightenment Unfolds?

[09:40]

It's like the second volume of the Lumen et Nudra that causes translations of Dogen. And the first one in there is his journal when he was in China with his teacher, with Rui Jing. It's wonderful. It's so sweet. Rui Jing tells him, don't sit in drafts. And he tells him how to put on his shoes when he's about to give a lecture, stuff like that. Because in Asia, if you present your feet to somebody, that's very rude. So he tells him not to do it. But at any rate, Rui Jing tells him that you really should study. And that those who say, just don't or something, probably. He probably says that for Rishabh, I don't know who he says, but he basically says, maybe Dogen brings it up. Of course, you should study. You should study Buddhism. That's the answer to it. We were talking in the dark about what we were reading.

[10:40]

There's something that's a line that he said about diligent practicing. And I asked about, well, what about sudden enlightenment? And we had a discussion about that, the upshot of which was somebody said that it's a question of preparation. So while it's true that we could have sudden enlightenment at any time, like salvation through grace, You have to be ready for it. And so it's not a conversation to say, to have both the sudden enlightenment, like the fifth ancestor, or sixth ancestor, and at the same time, Dogen, when he's talking about diligent practice,

[11:43]

No, well, and the fifth ancestor told Toineng, go off and live by yourself and practice for, I don't know, what was it, 10 or 15 years or something? So it wasn't, yes, he had this sudden awakening, plus he had this awakening, and then he went off to the fifth ancestor, and he pounded rice for a while and whatever, but then once he was given a broken bowl, he was told to go off and let it mature. You know, the way people talk about nirvana is always interesting to me because when they talk about, one of these guys has a description about once you've reached this place, then your life is really joyous and you're full of loving kindness and you treat everybody well and so on. And then you see these dharma masters that don't act so well and that consider themselves in life so what's what's that yes but this no no but but these these people i'm talking about somebody like trunk i'm talking about big time dharma masters oh i'm sure he did suzuki roshi had a very high opinion

[13:11]

Well, he was quite well aware when he was drunk. Well, people don't, one doesn't, one doesn't claim it for oneself. No. But I think that most of the Siddha Purusha students would think, would claim that he was enlightened. Would or wouldn't? Would. I mean, I don't even know what it means. I mean, having an enlightenment experience is one thing. being enlightened in the sense of having actually achieved, achieved, if they're part of the word, but we have to say something, achieved nirvana, I don't know. And, oh yes, yeah, he called himself a perfect one. Yes. So if these people aren't claiming it, maybe they're, you know. Well, they don't claim to be Buddha. I mean, that's, Buddha was completely blown. flown out all of his karma, and then decided to stay in the world to teach, which is what a Bodhisattva does.

[14:19]

Anyway, I think it could be sort of, you can't really, we could just discuss this forever, and it's a useful question to keep in mind. That there's lots of- The work continues, right? The work continues. Well, I don't know about you, I've learned a lot from Trungpa Rinpoche. I wouldn't want to have it for my teacher, but I've learned a lot from his books and so on. He was very helpful. And then people come to learn, too. Well, my point was, you know, even after you have some, you know, profound or, you know, shaping enlightening experience, you're still, you know, presumably, for most of us mortals, I would think, you know, the relevance of continuing to practice. You're still stuck with yourself. and the lights go, and the fireworks go down.

[15:30]

Well, but he didn't sit silent either. He tried. He just didn't have a really successful time of it. You know, he had problems with different Japanese masters and get in total fights with them. He didn't have the gauge. Well, a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, you know, D.T. Suzuki would talk about enlightenment and Kensho and all this sort of thing, and Satori and experiences, lots of bells and whistles. But he didn't talk about Zazen. But that's because he thought that Americans couldn't do it, presumably. Well, he showed them. Yeah. But you can have an experience. And then you have to go back and live in the conditioned world. And that's where the problems come. Because, I mean, you know, if you're by yourself, you can be enlightened, perhaps. But then you go out, and you're in the world, and you're interacting with other people.

[16:33]

And that's where the problems come. It's very, very hard to practice what you preach in the conditioned world. It's easy to do it and extend it. Well, that's why we have Sangha, and that's why we have schedules. So you have something to pump up against. Well, I mean, you have to keep working at it. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the major things and maturing in practice is having some sort of experience, a moment of clarity, or some insight or something, and then letting go of it. Not letting go of wanting more, or wanting to do it again, or something like that. Just living this life. And you panic a little bit, and you go back into a condition where you have no experience at all.

[17:47]

And you go with the healing, and you tell her how bad it is, and you're still doing it. you were blown up like if you were yeah but if they have yeah that's i mean that's like i don't know we could use another phrase completely enlightened but to but there's a you know there's a real basic experience when you're when rinzai practitioners would be given you know the first koan mu right and you work with mu and you work with mu and at some point the whole universe becomes whatever that's an enlightenment experience but that's just the beginning But that is an experience of no-self, an experience of understanding, realizing the universe, what it is. That's enlightenment. That certainly is the definition of enlightenment. And we say in our school, you know, in the Rinzai school it's like flesh-blood, and in our school

[18:53]

It's like going out for a walk in the fog and after a while you notice your robe's wet. And people have enlightened experiences of various kinds and don't necessarily even recognize them. And they're not always these huge things, these huge earth-shattering experiences. And I have a theory that sometimes it has to do with the personality of the person describing it. more than it does with the experience itself. Not that there's not a vast range of experiences. There is. There is. But I think, you know, what I'm hearing what Anna's saying is that our work is to integrate whatever it seems to be. And to live in the world, and this is character building. Norman has a whole lecture about, you know, you heard the lecture about maturity? Maturity being a minch.

[19:54]

Oh yeah. But that's, in a way, I think he would say that's enlightenment. Maturing in practice is enlightenment. Being a grown-up, learning how to be a grown-up in the world, which is not an easy thing. Yes, ask him to give the grown-up lecture. No, I think he talks about being a ninch. But he talks about maturity. He doesn't call it the grown-up lecture. That's me. That is I. In my family, when we're really touched by something, we make a joke. It's a good thing, honestly. So this lecture actually is very close to my heart.

[21:00]

I have to tell you this. This is a couple of them talk about this, so cover this. There is nirvana with remainder and nirvana without remainder. This is very Theravadan, forgetful things. So, as you could imagine, nirvana with remainder is when you are completely enlightened, you're an Arhat, but you're still in the world, so you still have a body and you still feel it if somebody cuts off your foot or if you get pneumonia or whatever. So you still have ... the five aggregates are still there, so you still have Of course you don't take the next step, but you still have experiences of the body and you can still suffer pain and so on. And without remainder is completely, totally and utterly gone.

[22:03]

That's para-nirvana. When Buddha died, that's para-nirvana. That's not plain old nirvana. That's para-nirvana, over and above nirvana, I guess, or beyond nirvana. What's pari? Anyhow, that's completely extinct. There's a candle that burned down to the very end. No more wick. So that's nirvana without wick. Yeah. You completely did. Totally and utterly did. All death symbol of Rasengan. Well, I know, but this is, there's no coming back, no nothing. It's complete extinction. No more becoming. Right. Right. It may be in some, one of the next... No.

[23:05]

Hand out a... No fertilizer, no roads. No nothing, right. Done. Yeah. But a lot of statues. A lot of statues, right. And relics. Right. Thousands of followers. Now I didn't get it. So in the Theravadan view, nirvana is the cutting off or extinguishing of desire. And we'll get to the Mahayana view, which is finding liberation within it, but we'll get to that, I don't want to talk about it now.

[24:06]

One of the standard ways of thinking about it is getting off off this wheel, cutting the chain. And the place that you ordinarily think of cutting it is between feeling and desire, feeling and attachment. In other words, the feeling is hardwired, pretty much. I'm sure I said this to you. Hot day, cool breeze, feels good. But what's difficult where the chain is cutting off not taking, not going the next step to desire, to wanting more of nice and wanting and avoiding unpleasant. Yeah, so I thought that's traditional to think of it that way. It's also true what Buddha would do is kind of a riff, you know, he'd say, you know, ignorance, conditions, karmic formations, and karmic formations, condition consciousness, condition name and form, and you go all the way up to birth, sickness, lamentation, old age, and death.

[25:20]

But then he would do the riff the other way, and he'd say, with no ignorance as condition then there's no karmic formation. If no karmic formation is conditioned, then there's no consciousness, and so on. So we'd kind of go da-da-da-da, and then you'd go back, down the scale, the other way. So that's a way of thinking about it, of cutting off, extinguishing desire. I don't think so. There's a hint of that in one of the things that I read in here, but I don't think that that's ... I mean, that's not how I've understood it in the past. I think it's easy to break between desire and grasping. When I have a desire, I can reflect on it and see that it's not a wholesome desire.

[26:27]

And that helps me. to leave it at that, and say, I have this desire, but I don't want to fulfill this desire? Yeah, I think that's possible. I think we've talked about sometimes, you know, as it intensifies, as it goes from desire to grasping, to becoming, to birth, as it intensifies, in some way it's harder to cut into it. But on the other hand, it's more and more visible. and often you can more and more see what suffering you're causing yourself as it intensifies, so that even though in some ways it's harder because there's the inertia, because what is moving continues to move, so there's the inertia of it that you have, it takes more force to stop it, but even so, you also can see it. Maybe I'm mixing something up. This is about the wheel of causation, about how we continually experience rebirth, maybe even within a lifetime.

[27:35]

Oh, moment after moment. Moment after moment. Well, I'm mixing up maybe different kinds of desires. There's the desire that keeps on perpetuating this cycle of separate existence, of unenlightened existence. I'm just thinking of desire to smoke a cigarette. Well, it's also different. No, it isn't. It isn't a different kind of thing. It's the same thing. Well, there's a desire for a cigarette, there's a desire to get one, and there's really no way to get it. And what's this become? Then that's your reaching for the cigarette, and birth you lit it. All right, all right. We spent a lot of time on this last week, that there is a date. Well, that's how the thing is. But the way he talks about it, if you've ever read any of Buddha, he's always birth, sickness, lamentation. Sickness, death, lamentation. No, sickness, old age, lamentation, death.

[28:36]

That's the way they talked about it. That's the formula. Listen, if you're lucky, Otherwise I might just get smacked by a truck and that's it, boom, you don't get to say goodbye, no. Well, I guess it's different views of it. But then how would that make your consciousness? I think this is always... You know, I'm sorry you guys, but there's a tape from last week. Were you here last week? Oh, we went through this in some length. So that's basically what we did last week. And so I think the tape you were trying to listen to. No, it wasn't. That was the week before. Yeah, so this was actually the same. Never mind. Same thing, but this tape is hard to hear. But there is a tape here. It's just that they're not usually, they're not out until the whole class is over. But there's actually a description in the handout that is not bad.

[29:40]

And here, in the handout, there's a description of this feeling. The truth of the cessation of suffering is right about in the middle, I think it's about six pages from the back. Seven pages from the back. See, in the middle of the page it says in Roman 3, the truth of the cessation of suffering. I think. There? Oh, we didn't read the sutra. Right. So, see, dependent on eye and visible forms, eye consciousness arises. The coincidence of the three is contact.

[30:49]

With contact as condition, there arises what is felt, is pleasant or is painful, or is neither pleasant nor painful. If, on experiencing the contact of pleasant feeling, one does not relish it, or welcome it, or accept it, and if no underlying tendency in one to lust for it any longer underlies it, if on experiencing, so that's once, okay, so if on pleasant no lust for it arises, or underlying tendency to do so, I mean really subtle tendencies, right, or if on experiencing painful feeling, one does not sorrow or lament or beat one's breast, weep and become distraught, and if no underlying tendency in one to resistance to it any longer underlies it. And then, this is the interesting, neither one, the ignoring one, neither painful nor pleasant feeling, one understands as it actually is,

[31:51]

the arising, disappearance, gratification, dangerous inadequacy and escape in the case of that feeling, and if no underlying tendency in one to ignorance any longer underlies it. So you understand, if we don't have any of those three reactions to the three stimuli, nor any underlying tendency to those reactions, then indeed that one shall make an end of suffering by abandoning the underlying tendency to lust for pleasant, eliminating the underlying tendency to resist painful, and by abolishing the underlying tendency to ignore neither pleasant nor painful feelings. That is possible. So that's Nirvana. By the way, for those of you who came in a little bit later, we're going to go until 8.45.

[32:53]

It didn't seem to work well last week, so we're not going to take a break. We'll just go. So that sounds, you know, that he's talking about non-attachment. if you include an attachment to avoiding the unpleasant. So that sounds rather Mahayana. And then some of the Theravada commentators talk about nirvana as being annihilation, but then one of them says, but it's not annihilation of the self, because there isn't any self. But what it is, it's annihilation of this sense of the self. It's annihilation of this false idea of the self.

[33:54]

And then there's great liberation, because there's nothing left to protect or worry about. So there's nothing, that's why this great loving-kindness can arise naturally, because we're not So much of the time when we're in a relationship with somebody, you know, we're jealous and we want more, or we hate them and want lots of whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's just constant imbalance, one or the other. It's rare that it's simply generous. Not that that doesn't happen, but it's difficult. I mean, you notice it. So the Mahayana view of nirvana is that it is non-attachment. It's acceptance of this samsara quality.

[34:57]

We talked about it. Nirvana is samsara. That's a Mahayana view of it. Does everybody know what I'm talking about when I say Mahayana view of it? Well, this is all being challenged by modern scholarship, so take it with a grain of salt. The standard view is that in the Buddha's time, it was called the Way of the Elders, and then that developed into Theravada Buddhism. And then later, maybe another 500 years later, Mahayana Buddhism arose, and Theravada Buddhism tends to emphasize individual liberation, and this sense of cutting off desire, cooling, quieting, and so on. And Mahayana emphasizes liberation of all beings, and finding liberation within samsaric life, the daily suffering life that we find ourselves in, in this Saha world, which is this world.

[36:06]

S-A-H-A. This world of suffering, of confusion. So we're calling it samsaric world? I think so. This world right here is from Buddha. And I read somewhere that there was a... that actually there were two tendencies that began not that long after the Buddha's death. And that one group, the Theravadin, went off and their dominant practice was reciting the scriptures to keep the scriptures, the oral tradition. And another group went out to spread the Dharma, and they were not monastic in that sense, and that Mahayana developed. Can you imagine? I think that's closer. They don't know exactly, but probably they were both developed at about the same time, and the Mahayana may have been a reaction against people that were too, they felt too bound up with purity of monastic life.

[37:17]

And so Mahayana really emphasizes emptiness and the concept of emptiness, which we'll get to in a minute. But the three marks of existence are impermanence, dukkha, which is this suffering or dis-ease, and I'd just as soon not translate it. So, insubstantiality, Now, impermanence, dukkha, and insubstantiality, or not-self. That would be a Theravadan formulation. And Mahayana would maybe add emptiness, or describe it in terms of emptiness. But what is emptiness but impermanence and not-self, after all? So it's not that different. But there was a different emphasis, and it probably was arising about the same time. And like, you know, just some of the things that we've read, and if you read through this stuff in the handout, it's supposed to be all Buddha's words.

[38:27]

You see that it's not, there's a lot in there that sounds just like a view straight out of Dogon. So it's not, it wasn't either or. They're doing now, they're doing like textual analysis and so on, and coming up with these kinds of things. We used to say that the Theravada was first and the Mahayana was later. But it's just not that simple. But there's a different emphasis. And the Mahayana tends to be more Northern, like Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. And the Southern, South Asian schools But Sri Lanka and Burma and Thailand, they're Theravada. There's not much Buddhism left in India except what may have come back, come back in later, so.

[39:37]

No, that's a Mahayana notion. But my experience of Theravada teachers that I've met is that they're Bodhisattvas. I mean, when you see somebody who's really devoted themselves to practice, I don't know how much it makes. So I think it tends to be that you're attracted to some practice, some way of practicing. And if it works for you, then do that, and do it wholeheartedly. And there's this old hermit that said to, you know who Red Pine is, or Bill Porter, he went to interview hermits in China, and he would ask them what their practice was, and some of them were more Taoist, and some of them were more Buddhist, and this guy said, oh, you know, I wouldn't worry about it so much. Different practices, it's just like different kinds of candy in the candy store.

[40:38]

It doesn't matter. Some people like chocolate and some people like jelly beans. Dharma is empty. I think it's helpful to remember that. Because we can get too caught up in sectarianism. That's why Sherto wrote The Merging of Difference and Unity. What? You said Dharma is empty. That's what I was summing up what you were saying. It was contrasting, he was saying that you could get there, you could wake up by all different practices. Anything works so long as you use it. As long as you get to emptiness. Okay, that's how you want to sum that up? Well, that's what I understood him to mean. It's in the, what was it, The Road to Heaven, or whatever? I think the dharma is pretty much the same for those two different schools. There's a difference in style, rather than substance. That's what he was saying. But there is substance to the dharma, and it's just pretty much the same, whether it's Theravada or Mahayana, it seems to me.

[41:45]

So, in that sense, I see it as being not... I don't see it. I don't see... There's lots of teaching there, very specific and very detailed, rather than changing and substantial and shifting before your eyes. It's kind of something you can rely on. It's really there. Really there? The four Noble Truths. Number one, there is suffering. Number two, there is cessation of suffering. There is the Eightfold Path. That's there. It doesn't shift and morph before your eyes and be relational. I'm sure there's the other side I'm not seeing, and I'm sure you're exactly right. I only see one side. Please go on. When you see one corner, you know it's important to see all four. We're already three in a line.

[42:46]

Yes. You should say what that is. I don't know if I can disagree with Joseph. It's a sutra. At least five. It's an interesting collection of discourses. The difference in how much repetition against the specificity of matter in various the permutations of objects.

[43:50]

And what was emphasized to me was that the practice is completely individual, that there isn't a one-sided term. And that when we learn the American conception of epoxy, we use that term, but it doesn't, it's not like a cantileger, It's a relationship that develops between the teacher and the student, that the teacher helps the student figure out what's next. And you can go anywhere, except like a jacket and a sock. So the teacher's helping the student craft a practice, a serious practice. You could read the sutra and learn from one object to the next. It's like sequential.

[44:53]

You go through every object that's in there and spend whatever time you need to. But when I grasped after what they were doing, I said, no one else was doing what I was doing. And it didn't matter. Well, you know, that's the way Rawat Adama talks about it. He talks about, there's something called the four foundations of mindfulness. Contemplating the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings, and so on. And then it goes out from there. It gets complicated. How do you do that? Do you use breath? other part of your body or do you use the air element of your body? And it's very fluid, pretty fast.

[45:55]

It's like a question of where does your body end? What is my body? So nirvana is samsara without attention. Another way of describing it is that it's completely realizing No, realizing. Remember, there's... You know what? I want to... Let's read this. Let's do it now, before we go on about the Mahayana view. So... Let's see. Charlie, you want to start? Okay. And then which direction are we going? Backwards. Okay. Yes, sir. gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment.

[47:16]

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. There is this noble truth of suffering, birth of suffering, aging of suffering, sickness of suffering, death of suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain and grievance, despair or suffering, dissociation of the loved, dissociation from the loved is suffering. There is this novel truth of the origin of suffering. It is craving, which produces renewal of being. It is accompanied by a relish of lust, a relish of this and that, of the words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for not being. There is no truth in the cessation of suffering. It is the remainder of one's being that is suffering. The remainder of one's being. And I want to remind you before we go into these next paragraphs,

[48:48]

about what they're about, even though there's a lot of repetition there, about this notion that when we work with these truths, there's intellectual understanding, practicing and realizing, integrating, having it become really part of you. So that's what these next four paragraphs are about. There is this noble truth of suffering. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. This noble truth must be penetrated to you by fully knowing suffering. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. I'm missing something there. When we copied, I missed a sentence or something. Oh, yeah. this noble truth has been penetrated to my fully knowing suffering such was the inside just so that I could say just read one of the times up above it's the same such was the inside the knowledge understanding the vision the light arose in me about things not there is this noble truth of the orbit itself

[50:07]

Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things never before. This Noble Truth must be penetrated to, by abandoning the origin of something. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things never before. There is this noble truth of the cessation of suffering, such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. This noble truth must be penetrated to by realizing the cessation of suffering. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. This noble truth has been penetrated to by realizing the cessation of suffering.

[51:09]

Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. There is this noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. This noble truth must be penetrated to by maintaining in being the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light that arose in me about things not heard before. This noble truth has been penetrated to by maintaining and being the way lead to the cessation of suffering. Such was the insight, the knowledge, the understanding, the vision, the light, the rose, and made of all things that have not lived before. OK. As long as my current knowledge and vision in these twelve aspects, in these three phases of penetration to each of the Four Noble Truths, was not quite purified, I did not claim to have discovered the full enlightenment that is supreme in the world, with its deities, its Maras, and its divinities in this generation, with its monks and Brahmins, with its princes and men.

[52:32]

But as soon as my correct knowledge and vision in these twelve aspects, and in three phases of each of his four noble truths, was quite terrified. Then I claim to have discovered the full enlightenment that is supreme in the world with its deities, its maras, and its divinities. In this generation, with its monks and brahmins, with its princes and men. The knowledge and vision arose in me. My heart's deliverance is unassailable. This is the last birth. There is no more original being. I like that he says it's his heart's deliverance. And we forget that, because we do talk about it. It sounds kind of cold a lot of the time. But this loving kindness, I think, naturally arises. Compassion arises.

[53:33]

We are uncovered. So what reminded me was that about the three ways of working with them, because completely realizing the nature of emptiness. So it's not understanding it intellectually, but really, really realizing it in your body, knowing emptiness, knowing the no-boundariness of experience, knowing the constant fluctuation. I looked for this wonderful description, but the book's not here right now. There's this description. There's a book, I think it's called The Heart Sutra in Light of Quantum Physics by a guy named, I think he's an American, but his name, he's a Korean teacher. His name is Moosong. He's actually, he's now in Bari. He's at the Insight Meditation Center now. Anyway, he describes emptiness by describing

[54:37]

either looking into an atom and then going closer and closer and closer, and eventually, of course, there's nothing but a shimmering, dancing energy. There's nothing solid at all. And I think that's a marvelous description of emptiness. There's nothing to be got hold of, and this bookcase feels solid, but in reality, it's not. So really, really understanding this notion of constant change and complete interconnectedness, constant arising. We've heard of emptiness described as there's the waves, there's the ocean and then it takes a form for a moment and then it goes back to being ocean again. So that's a way of thinking about emptiness. that process, so it includes the voluntary form and then back to just a simple water.

[55:48]

So emptiness, and we talk about it too, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about something being empty of own being. The cup may be empty of water, but it's full of everything else, full of the universe. You get started on and you can talk about how it's full of the person that made it and the clay that's in it and the organic matter that went into the clay and the dirt around it and the paint and the people that fed the potter and the wood that went in the kiln and on it. You could go on and on and pretty soon the whole universe is in that cup. So it's empty of only And David Camito talks about, he had, he had, he didn't call it this, but it was, he had an enlightenment experience, a green belch, cutting carrots.

[56:51]

He was helping out in the kitchen and he was cutting carrots, and all of a sudden he really saw that this carrot in front of him was full of the whole universe. and that it wasn't solid, that it didn't have inherent separate existence. And he was just flooded with a feeling of tremendous gratitude and joy. It's a wonderful description. I don't know if he's written it down anyway. Maybe he has. But at any rate, it's a wonderful description. And that's an Enlightenment experience. He really saw that carrot. He realized the emptiness of that carrot in his body. It was not an intellectual experience at all. He knew that. And I didn't... To hear him tell it, it's very touching.

[58:00]

David Camito, He translated and wrote a commentary on Nagarjuna's 70 stanzas. That's easier. It's more accessible. Because he writes very clearly. And the introduction is a great introduction to this kind of study of emptiness and Buddhist psychology. A lot of my understanding of the 12-fold world existence comes from the introduction to that. And he lived at Green Gulch for a while, and I think he's now an Episcopalian. Yeah, I think so. I'm sure that he was, and whether he still is, I don't know. But he got involved with Christianity. Probably, not at Green Gulch. He doesn't live at Green Gulch anymore. And another way of describing it is no resistance to suffering.

[59:06]

No, we add on to our suffering and make it worse. Sheng Yan, this guy, setting in motion the Dharma Wheel, the Chinese Chan master, talks about it, that the cause of our suffering is our resistance to it, and could we He suggests that, oh and our resistance to it and our attempts to escape it and that liberation lies in the direction of turning towards it and finding meaning in the suffering, allowing ourselves to experience it and learn from it and live through it and find out about the emptiness of the suffering. Guess what? Everything changes. You know that it was a wonderful Willie Nelson song about the healing hands of time?

[60:09]

The false study. Yes. He sounds great. He was here. He gave a lecture. There's a tape. I remember one thing he said, you know, here he is, 90 years old, and whatever he is, just something out of a central casting that changed how it's passed. He has this long, big beard, you know, that sort of, you know, he's the guy up there, you know, that the guy in the Brooks Brothers who's climbing up the mountain to see, and he said that. So I still have three, but I see it coming. That's marvelous. Did you ever read, there's a wonderful commentary on the Heart Sutra by Abbot Oborah in a book called The Tiger's Cave?

[61:16]

Oh yeah. And I read for you to pass it around. Just look at his face on the back there. Anyway, Oborah talks about going off to some conference or something or are there any companies coming back to the monastery and he talks about well what if I came back and I told them which tram I would be on and when I would be on it and I get off the tram and there's nobody there and I'm upset and then I calm down and then I go back to the monastery and I walk in door and there's nobody to greet me and nobody offers me a cup of tea Nobody takes my case. And then I say, could I get some tea? And somebody says, yeah, just a minute. And I'm furious. Me, I'm the abbot, and why can't I get a cup of tea? And no one gets and meets me at the tram.

[62:16]

And what's going on here? The world is coming. And then he said, It's pitiful, isn't it? Oh, this work is still getting upset. Yeah, I mean, it's just marvelous. It's so encouraging that somebody would cop to that kind of stuff. It's like, you know, Sit on the Yard of Archery, where LaRoche says, Goddammit, that movie's only going to be on for another two days. I want to see it! Hey, okay, we'll get you a taxi. You remember that? I did have it written. Oh. It's very old, you know, and they're afraid of any smell, so that's what they go out and eat with. Because he's a cowboy boy. He wants to see it. Good for him.

[63:17]

So I just want to close with something, and then we can discuss this, but there's something else in the handout that's around the same place where we were before. Since you'll notice that the cessation of suffering is all on that one page. But this struck me as very Mahayana. This last, it's the last little piece there. On the same page that we were before, the seventh page in, I think it is. You don't really need it. It's not long. You don't have to follow this so much. The unaffected is hard to see. It is not easy to see truth. To know is to uncover craving. To see is to have done with owning. So to know is to uncover craving. That sounds like not getting rid of it.

[64:21]

It sounds like having to come up and fight. Right. To see is to have done with owning. So it seems to me that that's what Shang Yin was talking about. Right. This turning towards our suffering. You know that sometimes in a wheel of life, there are those six realms of existence. which includes the animal realm and the hell realm and the hungry ghost realm where all of us spend time most every day and anyway in each of those in all each of the realms but including those difficult realms in each of the realms there's a bodhisattva so that's mahayana liberation being willing to be in the hell realm when you're in the hell realm James Cameron is one of the most reputable Catholics in the world. And the last lines of that part, lay down your burden, he would have said, the burden of avoiding the things to be done.

[65:32]

And that just took it up to a certain degree. Yeah. That's it, wanting things to be different. So it's acceptance. Yeah. And Dogen, in Okamura's understanding of the Genjo Koan, he's saying that Dogen is basically saying, get over it. Get over yourself. Because we're trying for something different. We're trying to, we think that that there is some enlightenment over there, that something somehow would get really neato, keen. And for example, that we'll be able to find out whether anything exists or not. And Dogen is saying, just live your life. Just really, really live your life.

[66:34]

Realize this life right here, right now. And stop trying to get some pie in the sky. And it's very difficult because we have ideas about enlightening Nirvana. I know somebody that thought that, he said that he used to think that when he got enlightened he'd be sexy. What's happening? I think they just wrote a book about it. Well, Norman said that when he became avid, he got more popular.

[67:44]

That's a little different. It's true. All these people start calling him from who knows where and saying, oh, I'm an old friend of Norman's. It's quite strange. Oh, that's right. It's like putting in a flu roll or something. Yeah. Right. Moving to Hawaii. Okay, so are there any questions or anything that you want to bring up from tonight? I think it would be really good if you read the material on the Eightfold Path so that we can go through some of it relatively quickly, especially the ethics part of it. It's very important, but it's kind of not what this class is about. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. But I think that Alan's going to teach a precepts class pretty soon.

[68:47]

So please feel invited. But anyway, so if you could read that stuff, it's not all that long. That would be helpful. Yeah, I mean, anything else you want to read, please. It's all to the good. These are numberless.

[69:14]

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