Good morning. Well, we're coming into the homestretch of our four-week practice period, Aspects of Practice. We've been talking about precepts, Zen precepts and Bodhisattva precepts, living precepts, and our senior students are sort of leading the way with whatever we reflect on when we practice the precepts. And also we've been bringing up, but not talking too much about, maybe not being able to figure out quite how to talk about our own BCC's ethical guidelines, which were recently reinvigorated and rewritten.

[01:44]

And the culmination of that is part of why this topic came up for this time. I'm going to get too round to that but it's going to take me a little while to get to the precepts. One of the things I love about Buddhism is this way that it packs up and unpacks, you know what I mean? Like it packs up into one principle or three pure precepts or six perfections and then from there it can sort of unpack endlessly with commentary and the Heart Sutra is like the short Perfection of Wisdom, but then there's the 25,000 lines, you know, Perfection of Wisdom, and koans, I feel like, are like these little time capsules, but they unpack, you know, magically into these long commentaries and more stories. So I was feeling like to try to give a talk is to somehow step into that activity, find some place in that activity of unpacking and packing to step in.

[02:57]

That was my image for this talk. So I'm going to use, to start off with, I'm going to use a traditional two-pack called, which I'm calling, Where Am I and Where Am I Headed? but it's really the traditional, it's lined up with the traditional formulation shamatha, vipashyana, calming and insight, and very, very basic Buddhist formulation. And there's an order to it in Buddhism, and I was thinking maybe the order of these two might be one of the main differences between Buddhism and other religions possibly. We have calming first, and then we have insight. And basically the idea is calm, the mind calms, when the mind calms we see, we naturally see things more clearly. So the insight is like a natural consequence of calming.

[04:01]

So we emphasize, especially in Zen, we emphasize the calming piece. And calming is, where am I? So where am I is how you calm your mind, where am I? Just where am I right now in this moment? And where am I is in the tiniest house of time. It's really just this moment. So if you say, I'm angry, that's already a story. It's, I feel heat. I feel pressure in my chest. I see red. I see red is pretty good, I was thinking. Oh yeah, I see red, you know. That's a moment and it's absolute. And that's how we calm our mind by going to the absolute. When we're just in that one moment, our mind calms. And, uh...

[05:02]

So, and we get away from the story, like to have a story, a story is like a line, it has to have two points. So if you just get to one point, you can drop the story. So it's just this moment, whatever it is, even if it's bad, it's absolutely bad. And that is how we allow our mind to calm, by just being in, right in this very present moment, one moment, absolutely, not relatively. And so that's where we start. We start with where am I? When we're born into any moment there's some level of upset inwardly and some level of upset outwardly. The world is at some point of turmoil and inside we're at some level of turmoil. And so we start with calming and then we look out and that's where we get to where

[06:15]

Are we headed? And I use the word headed instead of where am I going because, again, we don't want to get too far out there into a long story. It's just sort of where we're pointed, but it's going to sound like stories. an example of where we might be pointed is if we're upset then we see the world in an upset way and we take an action that upsets the world and then in the upset world we get even more upset and then we see the world in an even more upset way and then we take another action that's even more upsetting to the world and then when we see that upset world that we have upset even further than it already is, we get even more upset. And that's the unskillful direction. And another way to do it is if you allow your mind to settle, you might see the world more clearly and you might be able to take an action that actually would calm your world.

[07:25]

And when you take that action that calms the world, the world calms and then you see that helps you be even more calm. And when you're even more calm, you can take another action that calms your world. And then you see that calmer world and you become more calm. So no matter what the level of internal or external turmoil, you can still have a direction you're headed towards calm. And there's even a sort of extreme sport version where you, with a calm mind, you actually go towards the upset world and the things that are upset in the world and use those upset things to help you get an even deeper calm. And sort of the don't try this at home thing, you know, sort of like, don't even, I'm just putting that out there as a, you know, something. to put out there, but basically I'm not going to talk about that. We're talking about just how we can settle our minds.

[08:33]

And the two sides, where am I and where am I headed are totally intertwined because as I just said, When you're calm, you see where you're headed. When you're headed in a skillful way, it helps you be more calm. So the two are completely intertwined. I took my notes in the backstage of my son's play last night. I ripped out two sheets of notebook paper from someone girl's notebook, and so I thought I would get to write them up again, but then I thought, why? So the precepts are all about where we're headed. And for the purposes of my talk, I packed all the precepts up into one. And that one is don't treat anything like an object.

[09:37]

So you kind of see how that is. It's like when we want to kill something, it's because we see the thing as an object outside that if we could just eliminate that thing, we could have peace and bliss or we could be happy or we could at least not suffer. And when we steal, we have a thing we see, it seems to be outside of us and it seems like if we could join with it or have it somehow, whatever that means, have it and have it become ours somehow, we could be happy or we could relieve our pain. In the commentary on this precept, Dogen says, in the suchness of mind and objects, the gate of liberation is open. So it's like the gate is open, it's unlocked, there's no key, you don't have to steal anything to get it. So if you think there's a thing you have to steal, it can't be liberation.

[10:41]

And another translation of this is mind and objects are such, two yet one, the gate of liberation is open. And I was thinking, mind and objects are such, two yet one, is like love, right? Because if it's two, we're separate, it's not love. If it's one, we're merged, it's not love either. It's about the relationship and something about the way things actually are is not two, not one. So that's how stealing becomes an expression of treating something as an object. With misusing sexuality, we treat the other person as an object. It's a funny thing we do because we long to merge.

[11:43]

I mean, there's the side that we long to merge, and we want to merge with another person, but yet somehow we want that to be about us. That's where we misuse it. We want somehow to merge and have that be a gain for us somehow, or establish something for ourselves, or a place, something to hold onto, something that gives us control. So in the commentary on that one, Dogen says, oops, where is it? Because the three wheels are pure, nothing is wished for, but the other translation is, let the three wheels of self, objects, and action be pure. So once again, he's bringing up this relationship between subject and object. And when we make an effort, because we automatically think of objects, we make an effort to not treat anything as an object.

[12:44]

It's a way to align ourselves more with this, both this other way, but it's also more like the way things actually are. Lying, I was thinking, it's one of the ones I think I've had some of the most trouble with myself. And I was trying to think, well, what is that? And what does that have to do with objects? And I think what it is for me, anyway, is once something's an object, it has a name. and then you think you can change the name of what it is somehow. Once you have that separation, the thing is out there and then, at least I think, I can say it's something different than it is. Because somehow, because it's an object, I think I can do that. So if I'm upset and I say I'm not upset, I'm taking my experience, making it into an object that then I can rename and somehow that's going to make a difference. Like that thing that Karl Rove said, was it Karl Rove who said,

[13:46]

Those progressives, they're into reality-based. We're an empire. We make our own reality. Well, actually, no. But that's sort of an example. Really, that is the voice of the ego. That is the way the ego thinks. I make my own reality. And not in the true sense, but actually, there's all this stuff out there and I'm going to reshape it to fit my needs and my desires. I'm an empire. So the intoxicants, where nothing can be brought in, that is where everything is inviolable. So something brought in is like once again it's an object, there's something that you could bring in, there's your world as one unified piece of experience and you think there's something you could bring in that could bring you peace and bliss and it kind of works temporarily which is why it's so, so tempting.

[15:02]

and I think that those of us who are in a spiritual practice are sort of almost susceptible, very susceptible because we're interested in mind states, we sort of explore mind states and we know that our practice has something to do with bliss and blissful states of mind or it's somewhere in that same neighborhood and so we're sort of were either the kind of people who are susceptible to that or the practice where you actually can experience different mind states maybe actually even opens a little door there. Because the way things really are I think is this bliss. And like all things in Buddhism this thing about mind and objects is not just a good idea. It's actually the way things are.

[16:07]

Again I think we tend to think that our ordinary way of thinking is subject and object and when we get to a transcendent way of thinking that will be erasing the boundary between subject and object. But actually our ordinary way is that we don't actually ever experience a distinction between subject and object. If you actually look at your experience, you never, so what makes me a subject is my five senses and my mind, right? That makes me the subject, and for example, you out there are the object of my five senses and my mind. But actually, I never have an I, I never experience my I except when I'm seeing something. I never experience anything I see except when I'm seeing it. And I never have that in my mind except when that's all happening.

[17:10]

So check it out. I mean, if you actually go into this tiniest house of time, you will never find a distinction between subject and object. That's something we cook up with memory and averaging our senses. And it's not that exactly that it's not true, because it's part of our consensual reality that we need to have names for things and refer to them, but still, if you want to calm your mind, you align it with reality. And in reality, you will never experience, not that it's not there, but you will never experience a distinction between subject and object. And when we're thinking about our own ethical guidelines for BZC, it's really like we're

[18:15]

We will not treat you as an object. We will not see you as an object. We, all of us, will not see you, all of us, as an object. That will be our practice, that we commit to that, that is our intention. And it's not easy, as we all know. It's tricky. I was thinking that, as I often do when I'm giving a talk, something pops into my mind, like this no gaining idea thing. And I always think, oh, my whole talk is introducing a gaining idea. And I always feel really bad, like, oh my God, my whole talk is giving you something that you could see as a gaining idea, right?

[19:22]

But then the phrase popped into my mind, training is different from gaining. I think that this way, this calming, seeing clearly, action that aligns with calming, calming, seeing clearly, action, this is not a gaining idea. It's, it's, a way to train, but you could still hear it that way, and you could hear, oh, Laurie said I would have bliss if I just achieved this. But I think the gaining idea, again, is just the story. If you have a story, it's a gaining idea. And so if you can get to this tiniest house of time, get past the story, the story is like running anyway, but somehow you let it run, and it's not yours.

[20:27]

And this is, I think, why they say precepts arise naturally from zazen. If we took all the precepts away and you simply tried to let your mind settle in the present moment, I think you would rewrite them all exactly the same way, because those are the ways that we both get pulled off, pull each other off, pull ourselves off, get pulled off, you know, and it's all about this relationship between mind and objects which are such, it's such, and I can't even, there's no way for me to even talk about it because our whole language is built on subject-object, that's the whole way our senses are structured and everything. But if we can just go there, then the precepts, preceptual behavior or the positive phrasing of the precepts, like don't treat anything as an object phrased positively, what would it be?

[21:34]

It would be treat everything as yourself or your eyeballs or treat everything as a gift. everything you do is a gift and everything about your experience is a gift to you. Well, that's what I thought of to say today. I'd like to hear what you think, Elizabeth. It's such a pleasure to hear you. It's wonderful. I was thinking about the moment. Is that the word that you used, bringing it to one moment?

[22:38]

And so I'm going to maybe make an attempt to unpack the moment. To me, what I've been thinking about lately, and I might be wrong, is that that moment includes the three times. Past, present, and future. And so what happens is that it allows me to allow the story to run, to not be too attached to it, but if I have past, I still have story that I value. And if I have future, I take care that my present, along with what's a little bit in form of my past, will affect my future because there's a skillfulness in the present that I think is really important. And I don't mean just my future, but our future, and our present, and our past.

[23:46]

And the reason I want to talk about it this way and unpack it this way is because when we talk about not discerning and not getting apart, you know, I also want to be seen. And I want to see you. And so there's this combination of us not discerning and being of one. And this combination of Reno and Yolori. Right, so that's why it's not one, not two. I think that's right, and the present, the actual moment, like I see red, is just like really the tip, it's always the total tip of the iceberg, because everything is feeding into that. your past, your genetics, your parenting, your siblings, your childhood experiences, your Enneagram point, and your astrological chart, and the laws of physics, the laws of matters not created or destroyed, and gravity, and it's anything that anybody's ever thought of as a condition and ever seen as a condition is feeding in and is there somehow.

[25:05]

And then I think the future part, to me this thing about where we're headed is the future part and I agree that it's not, we're never, because we're never two completely, it's never just my future or your future, it's our future and where we're headed I can be headed somewhere, it's not just like me as an individual is headed somewhere, like in one relationship I'm headed, in another relationship I'm headed, and BZC as a group is headed somewhere and we're always And so we really have to watch that. But it's easy to think that you're seeing where this bigger thing is headed too quickly. Like I really think that's the important thing. We often think we're seeing. That's why we need to calm our minds. Because we always think we're seeing it exactly clearly. But we do have to see. We have to try. And that's why I feel like you're saying but, but I'm saying yes. The only way to see is to have a calm mind.

[26:08]

Otherwise you can have all the best intentions in the world and you can be ... I mean the things that have been done the most awful on the planet, a lot of them were done by people who had a really good idea of what was going to improve things. So we know that that's not a good idea. We can't just go out with our idea of what's going to improve things. We really need to see and have it not be self-clinging, not be about ourselves, establishing ourselves, or making it safe. So there have been other people who have also had a feeling of, I'm going to help take care of things. I mean, there's not just the improvers, right? But there are active people. I don't see two kinds of people. I see everybody, I see one kind of person. Us, who are we? People. More credit than who?

[27:10]

The story that I just heard was we see a lot of people who want to improve things, but yet we know what that leads to. And so, I think there are a lot of people who want to emanate compassion. Right, so you're feeling like I was saying there were two kinds of people or something. Okay, great. Hans, how about in the back? You're new. Thank you so much for your very wonderful and clear presentation. I've been thinking a lot about non-violence in Buddhism and wrestling with something that may, I mean the answer may be double silence, it may not be an answer, but I'm a parent now and I think if I needed to kill that person. And that's a reality for me. I'm deeply aware of that.

[28:13]

And I'm not even trying to ask for a judgment of whether that's right or wrong. If someone was trying to kill someone else, not your child, you wouldn't feel the same? I might. And we're talking about a very specific situation where either the only or the most effective way to stop it would be to kill rather than ... there wouldn't be any other way to stop it, right? Well, again, there's a lot of ... ways to think about it. For one thing, it's very unlikely that you'll be in that specific situation where the only, the best thing you can do to stop it is to kill somebody. But I do think that the instinct to protect someone, and hopefully you could grow that to be everyone, is really important and good.

[29:14]

And I think that what you could do is you could get to where you cared as much about the person, because they're one of these people that we're talking about, right? They're in the circle of people too, the person who's doing this killing of your kid. You could get to where you cared about them maybe almost as much, or maybe a lot anyway. And so you could stop them from doing that, partly with a spirit of, Yeah, you would be protecting your own child, but also you don't want them to do that act which is going to be really upsetting for them. We know that, right? Because we've studied our own mind. We know killing just upsets you. It doesn't make your world better. So whoever thinks that they're going to improve their world by killing your kid is wrong. So that's one way to think about it. I think that you have, as a parent myself, I think that one of the most really important things that we have to be cautious about, which is much more likely to happen than the situation you're talking about, is that you make your kid and you into a new, bigger self, so that rather than having your heart open because you have a kid now and you understand what it's like to care about somebody's welfare,

[30:35]

It's like you care so much more about that that the other people are the objects, right? They're the objects that are either good for your kid or bad for your kid. So I think that's a much more, for me, that's much more of an everyday practice and concern for me and you know what I do I mean just my kid and it grows from your kid and your kid's friends and their parents and you know that's what you can do and then eventually maybe it'll grow to include that person which wouldn't mean that you wouldn't stop them from doing something if you could but we're so rarely in that situation where you know I mean there's so many other things we do that are so wrong, you know, like I throw away food and people are starving, you know, I mean, there's so many other moral dilemmas, you know, but I totally, I understand what you mean. I think for a lot of us, we never even felt quite that feeling until we had a kid.

[31:38]

It's like, oh my God, I would rather die myself than have anything happen to this person. So anyway, I hope you know that I hear you, Alan. To go back to the ethical guidelines, I kind of remember quite your language, and thought of a question for me. The language, I think, was one of non-objectivity of us as subjects taking care of each other as subjects, something like that? Yeah, I didn't think about it that way, but right, yeah. What did you say? I said we all of us won't commit to not treating you, all of us, as a subject. Right. What I was thinking, the question that came up when you look at the document, there are these various seemingly objective categories of people that, for the sake of creating this thoroughgoing subjectivity, I'm sorry for being abstract, you know, it's like there's a senior student

[32:47]

and the practice leaders and all these people who are supposed to have agreed to this or that in relation to what they will or will not do with other people. So in order to create this giant subjectivity, we actually have to be seen, like we create a lot of objectivities. Do you want to comment on that? Right. Yeah, well, it's because it's not one, you know. that way of thinking also has truth, so there are these objects. It's not like there are objects, but we get into dynamics of subject-object relationships. just like the ten bodhisattva precepts there's these typical ways that we veer so we could just say don't treat anybody as an object but we say don't kill and by the way that means don't kill don't steal and the same with our sangha as we've gotten bigger and we have complicated relationships we have these typical ways we veer so we actually say we're not going to treat you as an object and that means

[34:02]

We're not going to treat you as an object of personal fulfillment through a sexual relationship, the teachers. We're not going to treat you as an object for our business to build our business. We're not going to treat you as an object, a story that we get to gossip with each other about to amuse each other, entertain each other. So, I mean, there's these ways that have happened. And so we're just naming them as a way, it's a way of saying, we commit to not treating you as an object. And here's some specific ways we're not going to do it. And these are also specific ways, which if you see, if you think we're doing those, that gives you a clue too to say something. So Bob and Susan. assume the role of a... Totally, that's totally true.

[35:11]

So that if I'm a senior student or a session director, if I walk around going, I'm session director, you know, that invites you to treat me as an artist. And that's Another thing that people do, which I meant to say, but I forgot, I think women do this a lot and probably men do this too, is you can get caught in seeing yourself as someone else's object. So it's like, I need to be thinking, what do I want to give here today as my gift to you? I don't need to be thinking, How can I give the gift that you want to get from me?

[36:11]

That sounds sort of like you're going in the right direction, like you're blurring the boundary or it's like we're two, we're one. But no, that's really twisted. You don't want to do that. You don't want to be in someone else's story and that be the main way you Establish yourself and women tend to do that. We because maybe be I don't know whether it's I don't know whether it's which came first, but it's like we Try to be or like I could be try to be the kind of student Sojin wanted me to be I want to be a good student and he has advice for me about how to be a good student, but I don't want to be the student he wants me to be and theoretically if he's a good teacher, which I think he is he doesn't want me to do that and Let's see, we were on a track here.

[37:14]

Susan? Thank you. You said, I think you said, training is not gaining. And it seems like training is not gaining unless we use training. As gaining, yeah. So like, training is training. get in trouble if we move in that direction of using training. Which is kind of like using anything, yeah. Nothing can be used for anything. It's not going to work. You can't, like that's the way moments are. Moments are one after another. You can't use something in this moment to do something in this other moment. Excuse me, but it just doesn't work that way. So you can never gain anything. So in our Sangha, or in rewriting the guidelines and thinking about that, in areas where there's been trouble or in any group, could you say something about working with the notion of if you see yourself using training or you think you

[38:30]

And I think that's what we're trying to do. I think that's true and I have to say I'm not really sure, I think it's still sort of, I mean like I know for myself the biggest clue for me, and this is what Suzuki Roshi says also, how do you know you have a gaining idea? Because you're discouraged. If you have a gaining idea, you're going to get discouraged because since you fundamentally can't gain anything, you're going to be disappointed. So you can use your own pain, basically you use your own pain to talk to yourself, you know, like, oh, I didn't get what I wanted out of that. Oh, I had something I wanted. Oh, what was that about? And oftentimes, I don't think we are motivated so much selfishly, at least I don't see that.

[39:35]

I feel like we're sort of motivated in this sort of like just dance, we want to be in the dance, you know, but then when things don't feel good, then we start trying to get them to feel differently, you know. I don't feel like I'm answering the question, but I don't know, how do we say that our sangha is in dukkha? How do we say that our sangha, or that another person, you can't even, it's really hard to say that about another person, because really you need to see the other people as your gift, you know, right? So I think that's a big question. How do we talk to each other about what we are uncomfortable with the other person's doing? Somehow it relates to something else you said about seeing. And you said, we need to take time. And I thought, when you said that, I thought, oh yeah, you can see something, but it doesn't mean it should come out of your mouth right away. And that we could practice expecting the best from one another instead of thinking that we see something that's not the best.

[40:42]

and giving the person the benefit of the doubt to go through that process you're just describing. Right, but that's kind of what we've been doing. We are actually trying to go a little further, it seems like, to actually learn how to skillfully swim out there into the place where it's happening together and be able to, at least I'm trying to do that, swim out and try to be able to say something, keeping in mind my saying is just a gift, what the person's doing is just a gift, and I'm not attached to the results of what I do, and it's okay that things go wrong, people are making mistakes. I think it is kind of the edge of where we are collectively, how to do that. And we're good at being silent with each other and merging, but as soon as we open our mouths, we're just like, Ed, I think I lost, there was a Kate.

[41:48]

Sorry, let's go Kate, Ko, and then Ed. There's a couple over here too. I've raised my hand and I've had three burning questions, so I'm going to go with the last one. I'm still, still struggling like crazy with practicing the piano, and it has to do with my idea of what I'm going to get out of it. stop me from getting hijacked by my idea of, you know, it's the extrinsic purpose, right? It's playing the piano with a goal in mind.

[42:51]

But you know, the thing is, here's what I'm hearing. Actually, you're going to keep, that's the way our minds work. You can't get your mind to stop doing that. well then that's the way conditions are coming together right now and see if you know you've got to like get some other conditions going in there you know I you can't get head-on like try to get your mind to think differently that's exactly what we're not doing I don't know what else to say. Calm your mind and look at it and see how, because that gaining idea is like a doggie bag. That's what Kenny Garrier said. It's a leftover. It is not what this is really about. It's something that you tack on, you know, because you didn't get, you didn't merge, you didn't realize bliss. So like, well, what can I get out of this? I guess maybe I could feel good about myself or something, you know. So I don't know what to say except that you can't go at it that way. I don't think. Which brings me to my first question, which was,

[43:56]

I noticed that I, and I think probably lots of people do this. Witness dependent co-arising. Distinction between calm and enthusiasm. Because I have a high value on enthusiasm. And I noticed that I tend to distinguish it from calm, which I think is probably an error. Well, we can distinguish it, but again, we see things more clearly when the mind is calm. So, enthusiasm is great, but you can be enthusiastic in a lot of different directions, right? So ... Well, can I become an enthusiastic at the same time? Totally, of course. I mean, I would ... I don't know. I would hope so. Well, we've just opened up so many cans of worms here. Ko? We're probably out of time, too, but anyway, go ahead, Ko. Probably, yeah. Yes.

[45:14]

But not important to BCC guys, right? This is like, we're into the ultimate here, but to some people really. You guys are doing pretty well actually. All right. You're leading the way. We're following you. I found one thing, was that knocking on door after door after door after door and talking to person after person after person on the phone. Frequently, I like somehow that my mind just That sounds like really good, yeah.

[46:24]

Yeah, and just like the potential for, seeing the potential for connection there, somehow. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Ed? So that we're at least open to that and open to our own equanimity about this, about what we were doing out there.

[47:26]

So that we could at least notice the impact when it was coming out and let it go and move on. Well in a way what you're saying makes me think, yeah you've got to You've got to be in a situation where you could get attached to results to develop this capacity. Otherwise, if you're just in a situation where you don't care what the hell happens, you're not developing any capacity not to be attached to results. Those are just conditions that are bringing that out, and in other conditions, who knows? Mm-hmm. I think that coming from that kind of positive voice is really important. We have some really great people in the song and then we're not allowed to talk about what they're doing in public.

[48:30]

But there's gonna be a special night when we're gonna talk about it. So keep your eyes out for that. About- we're not allowed to talk about elections and sort of like, Because we're a nonprofit, we can't advocate for positions. That's not true. You can talk about the election all you want. The organization itself can't advocate for candidates. But I'm, right. But I'm not the organization itself when I'm sitting up here. I'm sitting up here. I'm sort of, aren't I the organization at that moment when I'm sitting up here, though? As long as you're not advocating, other people vote for you. I'm kind of trying to make this light because we had some interpersonal tension around this issue, so I'm trying to kind of like fluff it up and make it sort of talk about it without talking about it. That's why I'm saying this. So we can all be happy with each other again, right Ed?

[49:33]

Right Ed? We can be not two, not one again, right? I think maybe we're not going to do it because there's too much going on today. But I did want to say one other thing. I'm leaving on Wednesday so I'm not going to be here for the last couple events of Aspects and I'm really sorry. had this work conference that every year I say I can't go because it's during Aspects, but somehow this year, maybe because it's at Nashville, it's in Nashville, my mouth opened and I said I would go. And now, of course, I really wish I could just be together with everybody and not go to Nashville. But that's what's happening. And maybe we can talk outside. OK. ♪ Things are numberless ♪

[50:30]

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