But today I'm going to talk about some opposites, some dualities. It's come to my attention that this is an interesting subject at the moment, as always. This is a perennial subject for us at all times, but it's very interesting. I wrote down quickly a whole bunch of these dualities that we're dealing with all the time. And so I'll talk about them. So here are some of the opposites. Gain and loss, love and hate, like and dislike, praise and blame, right and wrong, giving and taking away, granting and grasping, taking hold, letting go, warm-hearted, cool, on-off, expectations and just this, assertiveness and reticence, praise and blame, why him or her and not me,

[01:27]

or why me and not him or her? And seen and unseen, or unseen and seen. Understanding and misunderstanding. So these are all, you know, little problems. When we, I have in my hand a translation of the Xin Xin Ming. which was a class not too long ago, studied, and which means, you know, the title is The Trusting Mind or Trusting Heart. And the first paragraph says, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When freed from love and hate, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised. A hare's bread's difference and heaven and earth are set apart. If you want it to appear, have no opinions for or against it.

[02:37]

The duality of like and dislike is the dis-ease of the mind. When the deep meaning is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed. So I'll talk about this a little bit. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. So what is the great way? And what are preferences? So it would seem like preferences are not the great way, and the great way is the way of no preference. Well, this is so, but there's a problem. great way, you know, means the way of nirvana, basically, which is somewhat free of greed, hate, and delusion, free of material avariciousness, and free from love and hate.

[03:58]

So what happens to my love and hate if I follow the path? Should I let go of love? We say, well, let's let go of hate. My altruistic mind says, well, let's let go of hate. But my truistic mind, no. What did I just say? Yeah, that's right, but my desiring mind feels I should at least, you know, what's wrong with love anyway, right? So this is the kind of problem of duality and non-duality. We exist within non-duality in a dualistic world. This dualistic world is essentially a non-dualistic world, but we perceive it as a dualistic world, and we act in a manner of picking and choosing.

[05:10]

So we're picking and choosing all the time. So this is a great koan of our life. How do we pick and choose without discriminating? So he says, this is the third ancestor, singsong, a hair's breadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart. If you want it to appear, have no opinions for or against it. The duality of like and dislike is the dis-ease of the mind. When the deep meaning is not understood, the mind's essential peace is undisturbed. So how do we keep our mind from being disturbed? That's a great question. We're always being disturbed.

[06:13]

Our mind is always being disturbed. There's always something intruding into our mind that we don't like. We can live in such a way that we ignore a lot of things. You know, we ignore a lot of things. We can say, well, everything's okay, the world's okay, what's the problem? But when we allow our mind to take in what goes on in the world, it's very disturbing. So how do we have an undisturbed mind in the midst of chaos? But what does it mean to have an undisturbed mind? Does that mean there's no disturbance? So the question is how to be free within disturbance, how to find our freedom within disturbance.

[07:15]

Like Gandhi was a really good example of how to practice non-violence in the midst of violence. It's an almost impossible task. But I think that's a kind of clue or key to how to deal with this stuff that comes up all the time. There's this big fire now in Lake Tahoe. A few years ago, it was in Oakland. I remember coming, driving back from Tassajara, seeing this big black smoke filling the sky. I thought, it must be an oil well or something, but there's no oil well up there. It gradually became this huge Oakland fire. People lost all their homes.

[08:19]

Now in Lake Tahoe, same thing. You see these people, their devastation. And strangely, there's so many different responses and reactions to this catastrophe. And with Katrina in New Orleans, how do people respond to these catastrophes? Someone will say, I've lost everything. And someone else will say, gee, at least I have this. It's very interesting, the different attitudes how we accept not only gain and loss with an equal mind, but it shows us when we have loss, just where we are. So, some people are able to just go on from where they are.

[09:25]

And some never get over their loss. But it's very complex and complicated. But loss is going on all the time. Even though we may not feel it, at some point, boom. So it's important to deal with it before some so that we are prepared actually for whatever. Zen practice is to be open without expectation. That's the essence of Zen practice, is to be totally open and ready for whatever without any expectation or precondition. And then whatever happens, we respond to it. But that's very hard because we get used to accumulation, used to relationship, used to all kinds of things that we become attached to.

[10:39]

So it's very hard to stay open and ready, but that is actually our practice. so that we know how to respond at all times. But at the same time, we can't not feel our pain. So how do we find our freedom within our pain? Buddha, Buddhism says, the Buddhists say, Buddha said that the object of, the reason for Buddhism being in the world is to alleviate suffering. But then you might say, well, geez, what about all that pain? So eliminating suffering doesn't mean to get rid of your pain. How to deal with whatever comes up without attachment.

[11:51]

at the same time without getting rid of attachment. We hear a lot about non-attachment in Buddhism. The Sixth Ancestor says the basis of our understanding is non-attachment. But the problem with words and texts is they never can change. They always say the same thing. So the subtle nuances of understanding are very hard to understand when you read a text about Buddhism. So we take what we, either we believe or we don't believe, but we take it fairly literally. And if you take it too literally, you get stuck. You get bound by the sutra or bound by the text. So our mind, through our practice, has to be subtle enough and soft enough to finesse the meaning from the words.

[12:57]

If we stick to the words, we misunderstand, because the words never change. They're written at a certain time and a certain place for a certain reason, and they do have fundamental truth. But that fundamental truth has to be matched with our present understanding. So that's why we have such things as commentary. To study a commentary is much more revealing than just to study the text, because the commentary brings out the meaning of the text, we hope. What does it mean to let go of suffering in the midst of painful situations?

[14:01]

Sometimes we say, just suck it up. You know, Suzuki Roshi, after, you know, when the Japanese lost the war, the Second World War, they were into it wholeheartedly. They were into the war and to, it was a matter of life and death. But they lost. And Suzuki Roshi said, you really don't, cannot understand the true meaning of your life or suffering of your life until you experience defeat. When you experience defeat and know how to deal with that or handle that, then that's a very enlightening experience.

[15:13]

We don't like to be wrong. We always like to be right. We don't like to be unsuccessful. We always want to be successful. We don't want to do the wrong thing. We always want to do the right thing. We don't want things to come out wrong. We always want them to come out right. But they don't. Sometimes they do. So how do we deal with all that? Let's look at love and hate. The Shinseng Ming says, when you're not caught by love and hate. It doesn't say that, but that's what it means. It says, when you're freed from love and hate. Well, that's a good statement. Freed from means not attached. But it sounds like if you take it too literally, it means like you shouldn't love and you shouldn't hate, and then everything will be okay. But that's not what the text is saying.

[16:20]

The text is saying, when you love, thoroughly love. When you hate, hate completely. When you love, there should be no opposite. When you hate, there should be no opposite. Then each one is very pure. But hate leads to violence. Bad karma for everybody. So you don't want to be attached to hate. Love leads to attachments, which cause suffering if you don't know how to love correctly. So love has four aspects in Buddhism. Loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. So equanimity is really important, as well as loving kindness.

[17:28]

Loving kindness means without gain. Love without gain is love without attachment. Love with gain is attachment. So when we attach, because we're going to get something from what we love, then we get caught. But love without a string, no strings attached, is non-discriminating. And the quality of equanimity means that love has no preferences. And you can, love is a balanced state. And it's there all the time, and it's being expressed indiscriminately, without desire.

[18:33]

So this is love without attachment. So what the text is talking about is love with attachment, or hate with attachment. Suzuki Roshi says an interesting thing. He says, if you hate, just go ahead and hate. We think, oh, I shouldn't hate, I shouldn't hate, because I'm a bodhisattva. Very interesting. I'll read you this little passage. This incidentally is the new Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. It's very compact and light, but it's got all the same words. And the pages flip, you know. It's nice. So he says, even to have a good thing in your mind is not so good. Buddha sometimes said, you should be like this. You ought not to be like that.

[19:38]

But to have what he says in your mind is not so good. It is a kind of burden for you, and you may actually not feel so good. In fact, to harbor some ill will may even be better than to have some idea in your mind of what is good and what you ought to do. Doesn't that free you a little bit? You don't have to blame yourself for everything you think. If you were to analyze your mind throughout the day, and had a record of everything that went through your mind in one day, you'd be really surprised. To have some mischievous idea in your mind is sometimes very agreeable. That is true. Actually, good and bad are not the point. Whether or not you make yourself peaceful is the point, and whether or not you stick to it.

[20:42]

When you have something in your consciousness, you do not have perfect composure. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. Then your mind is calm and it is wide and clear enough to see and feel things as they are without any effort. I don't want to go on, but that's an interesting statement. I've never heard that said by it. Buddha's teacher before, which doesn't mean it hasn't been, but it's so one-sided to always be good. We also have to recognize the other side, that we're also bad, and to express something that is not likable or seems not so we shouldn't be doing, to give space to our actual being, the reality of who we are and how we act and think and feel.

[22:02]

Otherwise, we kind of hide easily, our feelings, because we don't mind when we know that we're bad, what we think is bad. My experience is that people who express themselves a little bit off or, you know, in ways that are not seemed acceptable, but they're very open about it, somehow you feel the honesty and the openness and you can somehow trust that because it's so open. I've known many people like that, but I won't mention their names. You know, in our practice, the relation of peers is one thing, and the relation of teacher-student is another aspect.

[23:27]

And in the sense of teacher-student, some of these things arise. Do you like me or do you not like me? With a teacher and a student, it's not a matter of liking or not liking. It's a matter of relating to a person's practice. And when the teacher relates to the person's practice and has a positive approach, that seems like liking. the teacher and student have some opposition or misunderstanding or it looks like not liking. But it's not a matter of liking and not liking, it's simply a matter of relating to how we are. And liking and disliking is kind of out of the picture. There is, you cannot say that that's not present, but it's not a big factor.

[24:32]

that sometimes people say, do you have any friends? People that you can just talk to, like someone you can talk to as a friend that's not a student or something. But I don't pick my friends. I used to pick my friends when I was younger, Since I practice, I don't pick and choose my friends. I just relate to people, not necessarily as students, but students as students and members as members. I just relate to how we interrelate with each other. And with students, it's personal, impersonal. I don't know how to explain that exactly, Whoever comes along is who I relate to as a teacher, and what I relate to is how a person is practicing and what is involved in that practice.

[25:48]

Actually, sometimes people, you know, have lots of different problems. And I'll see, talk to people for a long time, see five or six people in succession. But when I leave, I forget all about it. I don't carry that around with me. I don't carry people's problems around with me. Your problems are your problems and my problems are my problems. And there's a relationship and close, but I can't fix you and you can't fix me. But there's something about relationship that makes things, that loosens things up and helps things to work. So, you know, a lot of things come up, like, sometimes someone will say, do you see me?

[27:12]

I don't think you really see me. And what I see is something else than what the person feels I don't see. And it's very likely that I don't see, but this also goes along with peers, you know, do people see each other? It's very hard for people to see each other, really, unless we reveal ourself. When we reveal ourself, it's easier to see. But sometimes we're not sure where somebody is. So are we seen or are we unseen? Well, we're seen, but not completely. And sometimes the teacher will say something which is kind of a jolt for the student to kind of reveal something that's

[28:15]

kind of hiding. So I wonder sometimes, you know, what the teacher wants to see is the person's practice and the big mind of the person, not the small mind. or what we think is our self. The teacher always tries to see something that maybe the student doesn't see. And we all have an idea of who we think we are. And we all have various experiences. And each one of our lives is so vast and filled with history that one would have to live your life in order to know all the things that you experience.

[29:27]

So teacher-student relationship, try to let go of all that and simply deal with what's present. When you read the Koan literature, Koan literature is little conversations, mostly, and there's very little history about it. There's very little around all that. It's simply just dialogue. And we say, well, where's the rest of it? Which is important, but the reason it's so isolated is so that it just focuses on this, and just this dialogue. and leaves all the rest out. So that's where the essence of the teacher relationship actually is, is in that it may only happen once in 20 years, but that meeting is what it's all about. So I don't like, as a teacher, I don't like to get involved in people's lives.

[30:37]

I only want, only interested in that essential thing. So am I seen or not seen? Well, I hope you're seen, I hope I'm seen, but the stuff that maybe someone wants me to see is important, important. But also, maybe it's seen but not taken up. then there's like warm-hearted and cool, you know? Sometimes we're warm-hearted, sometimes we're cool, you know? Well, which is it? You know, on and off? How come you're cool now when you were warm-hearted before? Well, you can't, you know, sometimes if we're warm-hearted, then that would be attractive to somebody.

[31:49]

So when it's too attractive, then you have to be a little bit cool so that you don't have that thing that's attractive. In order to reduce your attractiveness, you become cool instead of, you know, being too warm. So it's very tricky in some ways, but each one of us is a mirror for each other. And if somebody is cool to us who was warm, is it their fault or is it something I'm doing that makes them cool off? In love relationships, this is always a big problem. Because a love relationship will start off with all this warmth and openness, and then when it becomes too overwhelming, that someone would step back and be cool, and then the other person becomes more advanced, and pretty soon it becomes a kind of chase.

[33:03]

So we have to deal with those kinds of problems a lot, but not just in a lover relationship, but just in a normal relationship. How much is enough and how much is not enough? How do we address each other in ways that respect the other person's space so that we're not wanting too much? This is one of the things that creates a problem in relationship of not wanting too much. And our desire drives our relationships often. So, As Zen students, how do we relate without wanting too much from each other, which allows us to give? When we're open and not wanting too much, then the other person naturally wants to give. And so when we're open and receptive, we can receive that.

[34:10]

There's also the problem of giving and receiving. Sometimes receiving is very difficult. Receiving a compliment or receiving a gift, we become flustered and don't know quite what to do. But receiving is the opposite, the other side of giving. And if someone is giving and we're not receiving, then the gift is not a gift. But sometimes, We don't want so much. I've asked people, please don't give me things. My room gets piled up. And also, whatever you give me, I want to feel free to give it to somebody else. So if you see something on somebody's mantle,

[35:12]

Anyway, do you have any questions, by the way? I can just keep going on. I've barely scratched the surface, actually. Yes? When you're talking about love and hate, you talk about different ways to love, good ways to love, you know, loving kind, and secularity, and so on. Non-attached ways. Right. Not good ways, but... It's not so much there's any non-attachment or a good way to hate. There's more talk about, well, give yourself room to do it. Everybody's human. So then, you know what I mean? They're kind of... Yeah, well, you know, sometimes it's justified. Hate is a funny word. Ill will or, you know. I would say pure hate has love as its base.

[36:38]

And if I become angry at somebody, which I do, I become angry at people. you know, and things, circumstances and so forth. But there's always compassion underneath it. So I never write anybody off when I'm angry. So when you're angry, to be able to use anger and not be used by it. When you love, to be able to use love and not be used by it. I think that's, That's the balance. That's the equanimity. As hate comes up, but compassion comes along with it. So that if I am angry at someone, hate is a little bit strong. But anger, the anger is always tempered by

[37:49]

compassion so that I'm not being used by the anger. I can use it to transform my relationship. And the same way with love. If I become, want too much from what I love, then I'm caught by that. And so equanimity is really the important part so that you can love freely and you can express your anger without being caught by either one. So in a love relationship, what is it that I can do for this person rather than what can I get from this person? It would seem that you could apply the same four qualities that you spoke about, to how to love, and how to hate.

[39:01]

Hate with love and kindness, hate with equality, hate with compassion, hate with truthfulness. But it seems like you're uncomfortable on both sides. It's not any easier on either side. It's not any easier on either side, but you can't, yes, that's right. Yeah. And that was very liberating for me when I thought about that. But it doesn't say, don't ever feel ill again. It says, don't harbor it. And I think it's the harboring of the hate, that letting it fester and all of that is what destroys people. But to think that you're going to go through life without ever, you know, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. Exactly, yeah.

[40:03]

Well, good and bad are just categories that we conveniently use. That's right. Well, that's the point of just staying open and ready without some preconception.

[41:43]

I always get enraged when I hear a congressman say, criticizing something, and he'll say, and that's just wrong. Well, what do you mean that's just wrong? That just dismisses a whole category of, well, what is it that's wrong? And what are the wrong things? It's just putting something into a category and throwing it over your shoulder. So we have to be very specific about what we're talking about and what we perceive. Yeah, Alan? Well, I've never done, but... I'm just curious, it didn't quite get that you sort of made an offhand comment when you were reading the teachings of Mind, Beginner, Divine, and you said, I've never heard this teaching from other Zen teachers. Can you go back to that a second and say what it was?

[42:48]

Well, the teaching meant that being able to be angry when you're angry. It's better to express something like anger instead of thinking that I shouldn't do this because this is what Buddha said. Yeah, that's what he said. He said, I'll read it to you. If I can find it. You see, usually people put emphasis on some particular position or on some particular understanding of Buddhism. And they think, this is Buddhism, or what Buddha said. But we cannot compare our way with the practices people normally understand.

[43:52]

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I may be reading the wrong one. No? Oh yeah. Even to have a good thing in your mind is not so good. Buddha sometimes said, you should be like this, or you ought to be like that. But to have what he says in your mind is not so good. It is a kind of burden for you, and you may not actually feel so good. In fact, to harbor some ill will may even be better than to have some idea in your mind of what is good and what you ought to do.

[45:03]

The best way, when you have something in your consciousness, you do not feel perfect composure. In other words, when you have some idea about what you should do, the best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. Then your mind is calm and it is wide and clear enough to see and feel things as they are without any effort. So I think that the meaning is like we have these things called precepts and rules and regulations, but actually life presents itself moment by moment and we're responding moment by moment. And he's saying something like, the true precept is to be able to understand what to do on each moment and not, because the precept is within us, but to try to follow some precept which was written down, which is an inflexible statement, is not to follow the precepts.

[46:35]

that inflexible statement is a helpful guide, but if you follow that literally, you're not following the creative process of following the precepts, which demands a response on each moment which may or may not conform to what's written down. Well, that's it. So the living precept is different than the rote precept, although they're related. Uh-oh.

[47:42]

Oh, yes. Our favorite subject. Yes. Well, even though we're just talking about words here, and they always have their limits, somehow it's important the way we use words. So, you sometimes say that saying life and death is inaccurate, and that what we're talking about is birth and death. And like that, I feel about saying love and hate. There's something disturbing about that. What we actually mean is something like attraction and immersion, but that might not have enough juice in it. I want to talk to Andrew about that. Love and hate has more energy in it than attraction and immersion, which are more abstract. But, well, the reason I'm going on is because

[48:47]

It's the same as Courtney started. There's a way to have love without attachment, but there isn't really a way to have hate without attachment, whatever you may say. I want to reserve a word that corresponds to an experience that is open-hearted and truly awake and tender, and love seems to go with that. Hate never goes with that. So I'm just saying love and hate don't make a... A pair. A word pair. What would you think would make a pair? It's always some trade-off. I would do something like attachment and repulsion or attraction and aversion.

[49:53]

Well, that's the way it's often. Attraction and aversion is actually the more fundamental. No, it's not that feeling. It's grabbing or pushing away. Yeah. And love doesn't have to have that feeling. See, I've been really, you know, my whole life is looking for love and I don't want to give up that. Well, there's no need to look for it. Yeah, it's a big subject, but attraction and aversion is what we're dealing with all the time in its various forms, and one form is love and hate. Those are two forms of attraction and aversion. But attraction and aversion are the fundamental. And to dress it up, you know, put it on stage, you say love and hate.

[50:57]

You're saying love and hate can stand in for attraction and aversion and I was trying to... Not stand in, they're the fundamentals of it. Okay. Wasn't there a Woody Allen movie called Love and Death? I wanted to say something about a different experience of dealing with being hateful or judgmental or you were talking about just go ahead and do it and it's better to do that than have some idea of what you're supposed to do. And I actually found that very helpful. I agree that if you allow yourself to have that without hurting yourself or somebody, then you can see it.

[52:24]

And when you see it, you can deal with it. But it's hard to deal with unless it's somewhat expressed. Sue, you had your hand up first though, but I'll come to you after. Sue? Okay. I spent the last few days with two nine-year-old girls, and there was a lot of strong emotion that came up for me. And what I noticed is that acknowledging or being in my ill will and judgment when that came up If I could, when I could do that, it would disappear. But there's this huge fear that I'm going to hurt somebody. I mean, not violently, but just be nasty, you know? And I am nasty with my little... And it's just this tremendous fear that I think that underlies a lot of my not being present with my states that are not so great.

[53:39]

is that I'm going to hurt somebody. I'm going to be offensive or cause harm. And what really amazed me was that this one little girl said, you're really nice. And it's like, where did she get that from? I was very grateful to her. So she didn't feel harmed. She had a good time. But it's like the dog that can see who you really are, instead of who you think you are. The children see us. They do see us in ways that... because they don't have all the baggage. They just very directly see you. You know, when you think you're some one thing, they say, that's not you, you're this other thing. Okay, so it's time to end.

[54:45]

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