We're going to continue where we left off. And during the lecture, this morning was more of a lecture, but this afternoon, you can ask questions, or if you have anything. to say, we can have dialogue. So before we go on, I'm wondering if you have any questions from this morning. Yes. I think I remember what I was going to ask. I was wondering, What I was hearing you say, I don't know if it was what you said, but what I was hearing you say was that when there's no discrimination, everything is okay.

[01:03]

Okay? Did I say okay? No. Everything is, it doesn't bother you. And I was wondering about if there is discrimination, everything is okay. So, we have to remember, there is discrimination and non-discrimination. So, discrimination means to compartmentalize, as we talk about a lot. Discrimination means to take things apart, to divide, dis-cri-men-ate. Discriminate means to separate. So when we're talking about discrimination, we're talking about separation. And when we're talking about non-discrimination, we're talking about cohesion.

[02:11]

So discrimination based on self-centeredness is what causes suffering. That's the cause of suffering according to the Dharma. Discrimination is important and necessary because we live in a dualistic world. But our dualistic world is not completely dualistic because our dualistic world is based on non-duality. So, there's discrimination and synthesis. Synthesis means bringing everything together in one. And when we bring everything together in one, there's no opposite. No opposite. When there's no opposite, there's nothing to cause suffering.

[03:15]

If you cut your finger, you suffer. But not necessarily. It's just that we think that's what we're supposed to do. So, talking in this way, we have to understand the underlying principles. So we're not talking about every single instance. You can talk about your experience and what causes your suffering, but basically the causes of suffering are based on discriminating mind. So when you say, OK, non-discriminating mind is OK, it may not be OK. Is it okay with you?

[04:22]

Maybe it's okay with me that you did something that caused you to suffer, but it's not okay with you. So, that's what Sekito is talking about. Every quadruplet, four lines, is saying the same thing from a different vantage point. It's all the same, but it's from a different point of view. Is it possible to have discrimination without opposition, as long as you don't want it to be different from what it is? Discrimination, you know, we have to separate one thing from another. But it's not necessarily based on self-centeredness. And so, when we talk about suffering, we're talking about something based on self-centeredness. but we don't always realize our own self-centeredness.

[05:25]

So, our attitude... So, basically, we talk about our attitude toward our experience. Our attitude toward our experience is what makes all the difference. I guess I was thinking of At times when I really don't like something, I can bring that same awareness to that feeling of dislike. I can have an accepting, open awareness of my dislike. But the more attached we are to our likes and dislikes, the harder it is to avoid suffering. So, this is why these terms attachment, discrimination, picking and choosing, these are all terms that are used to describe the causes of suffering.

[06:44]

I don't want to get ahead, but in actually the next quatrain in the commentary, Suzuki Orochi talks about all this in great detail. He says there are things one ought to be upset about, but the quality of what is the self-centered Is it a self-centered upset or not? So, there's this phrase, the discrimination of non-discrimination. Discrimination of non-discrimination, that's a koan. Our life is one koan after another. Unless we address it that way, we don't see it. Our life is one moment, one koan after another, because whatever we say, there's an opposite.

[07:52]

And how do we include opposites? How do we see the oneness of opposites? How do we experience the oneness of opposites? good and bad, right and wrong, yes and no. So, back to... So Siddharthi Rishi presents this koan of Master Tozamyokai. your question. It is so hot, how is it possible to escape from the heat?

[08:58]

If you go to the desert, to the Mojave Desert, it gets so hot, you really want to be cooled off. You can't deny that. And yet, there are creatures that live in the heat. And if you go to the North Pole, you won't get up to cold. This is natural, of course. But we're talking about our attitude. You can't actually live in the North Pole without absorbing coldness. You can't go to the desert without being willing to be hot. So why don't you go to the place where there's neither hot nor cold? And the disciple says, is there a place where He's not really talking about cold and hot. He's talking about birth and death. He's talking about where can I go when there's no birth and death?

[10:03]

When you're alive, just be totally alive. When you're dead, just be totally dead. But we equivocate. We have this, we don't want to be dead, we want to be alive. But we're alive and we know we're going to be dead. So that's a life and death, birth and death is a big, big go on for us. How do we be dead while alive and alive while we're dead? and how to be totally dead when we're dead, and how to be totally alive when we're alive. This is... We're in this... You know, how do we get out of prison? So the disciple said, is there a place where there is neither cold nor heat?

[11:07]

Where there is neither cold... Where there is neither birth nor death, basically. And the Master said, when it is cold, you should be cold Buddha. When it is hot, you should be hot Buddha. So you live your life totally while you're alive, all the way up to the end. That's how to be totally dead. What you do totally now will determine what you do totally in the next moment. If you do something half-heartedly now, you'll do something half-heartedly in the next moment. So, the Master said, when it's cold, you should be a cold Buddha. When it is hot, you should be a hot Buddha. You may think that if you practice Darshan, you will attain the stage where there is neither hot nor cold. It's not that there will be neither hot nor cold. It's just that when it is hot, be hot.

[12:08]

When it's cold, be cold. Where there is no pleasure or suffering, But you can't reach that place where there's no pleasure or suffering, because as a human being, you want pleasure, and you get suffering. You may ask, if you practice Zazen, is it possible to have that kind of attainment? And the true teacher will say, when you suffer, just suffer completely. When you suffer, just suffer completely. Then, when things change, you just have enjoyment completely. If you only suffer half-heartedly, then your enjoyment will only be half-hearted. So sometimes you should be suffering Buddha, and sometimes you should be a crying Buddha. So it's like we think, if I'm suffering, I'm not Buddha. Or if I'm crying, I'm not Buddha. But for Suzuki Roshi, when you're crying, you're crying Buddha. When you're suffering, you're suffering Buddha.

[13:09]

When you're happy, you're happy Buddha. It's just that you're always Buddha. But then you go through these having these experiences, as Buddha. So when you feel good, you should just feel good. Sometimes you should be a suffering Buddha, sometimes you should be a crying Buddha, and sometimes you should be a very happy Buddha. And this is how we experience our life totally. Yes? So I'm getting from this, tell me if I'm wrong, that ambivalence is the great thing to not do. Don't ever be ambivalent. I said, don't ever be taking something to the extreme. Sometimes you're ambivalent Buddha. You can be half-hearted Buddha. But you know where you are. You know, this is it. Including being divided.

[14:19]

Including being divided. Wholeheartedly. Yeah, wholeheartedly divided. That's right. Yeah. I think what I was trying to get at before is doing something wholeheartedly with a non-self-centered awareness of your self-centeredness, if that makes sense. Well, yes. Don't just be angry and act out your anger, but feel. Yes, feel your anger totally. But it doesn't mean that you act on your anger. There are people that act on their anger and then you say, oh my God, he took a machine gun and killed all these people. So that's self-centered anger. That's acting out through self-centeredness. Or insanity.

[15:20]

What passes for norm sometimes is insanity. We don't realize how much insanity there really is around us. So, there's a sense of passivity there. Passiveness. If I'm angry, I know I'm angry, so it's like there's a surrender, acceptance, but then there's this other side of... What do I do? Well, no, it's... yeah, well it's this sense of making adjustments. So it sounds like part of what you're saying is don't try to make it better, don't try to be more comfortable if you're hot, or if you're dead. So is there... If you can be more comfortable... If you can be more comfortable, go ahead and do it. Uh-huh. So you can make adjustments. You can make adjustments. Like if there's dissonance, and you can make an adjustment, and the dissonance goes away?

[16:26]

Life is adjustments. OK. That's what life is about, adjustments. We're adjusting. So you're both passive, you're both accepting, and you're adjusting at the same time. Accept, yes. Assertiveness and passivity at the same time. At the very same time? Very same time. That's called riding the wave and driving the wave. Riding the wave is not passivity, but passivity means peacefulness. Literally. So, yeah, peacefulness is good. And assertiveness also. So you're driving and following at the same time. So it's not so much passive, it's more like you see what's here. Yeah. You just see what's here. It's called vipassana. Samatha and Vipassana. Samatha is to stop and look. And Vipassana means to investigate. That's Buddhist practice.

[17:28]

At the very same time. If you can do that at the same time, then that's called balance. Or it's being at the center. So that it's neither one, dominant, It means considered activity, considered action, well-considered action. There's an interesting example that came up yesterday on the American Saint Teachers Association list. Evidently, in Mississippi, there was this cyclone. And someone was writing from Mississippi, one of the teachers in the group, saying, oh, the cyclone came through, and we heard it coming, and we sat. And there were a group of people who responded, wow, that's really Zen practice. And there was another group of people, of which I was one, thinking, that's really dumb.

[18:35]

Why would you put your life and everything at risk when you could actually go into the cell Where did they do the zendo? In their zendo, exposed to the cyclone, anyway. The details I'm not clear on, and I wasn't there. But I hear it in Shelley's question, if there's something that, and in your response, if there's something that you can do to protect life, You do that, you don't have some abstract idea of Zen behavior or mystification. Anyway, thank you. You should do what you can do. It's good to drink water when you're hot.

[19:39]

But when you, you know, it's not about a rule about what to do, it's about an attitude in how you approach your life. Not about rules or details. What about the details? What if, you know, what if I'm thirsty, you know, should I have a drink? Of course. It was a taking care aspect. Like Poisson was just saying, you're accepting but you're also taking care of your body or your... You should take care of your body, take care of your life. But... How do you approach birth and death? How do you approach something, a situation that you can't escape from, basically?

[20:50]

So, we're always escaping. We get ourselves comfortable, we put a lot of cushions on the couch, we sit down, and it's very comfortable, but then after a while it's no longer comfortable, right? with the fundamental, we're just changing our equipment so we don't have to deal with the fundamental. That's the problem we have. It's easy to fall into. We keep changing so that we don't have to deal with what's really in front of us. So practice is to really face what's in front of you. That's practice. Whatever it is, you face what's in front of you. I keep coming back to this as the koan of what to do with remorse and atonement, that sense of, ah, well I did that, or we did that, or that happened, and I can feel the pain, I can feel the sense of, okay, well the one who did that is also the one who's present now, but sometimes it gets stuck in that

[22:13]

intellectualization or separation. And I hear something in what you're saying and just what's being said in the room around that's what practice is. Practice is showing up for all the confusion and the pain and the challenge. So that keeps coming up. Yeah. So, remorse. I did something really bad, so what do I... And so I have this feeling. And what do I do about that? Well, you can have a drink, which is what people do, because you can't stand it. So how do you face that? How do you deal with the thing that's the most difficult thing to deal with, without escaping? That's what the attitude is. How do you deal with the thing that you can't deal with? Kadagiri Roshi used to say, how to bear the unbearable.

[23:20]

And we also say, hell is just another place to practice for a Zen student. We have to have that attitude actually to practice. Hell is just another place to practice. Perhaps not adding on to what you're facing? Don't add anything. Don't add anything. We don't have to add anything. If everything is going along beautifully, don't add anything. You don't have to make yourself feel bad just to resist. When things aren't going so well, don't add on. Don't add anything. Don't add anything and don't just take anything away.

[24:25]

And the self-awareness in this is not separation from what's out there, Jake. It's there. And not to add on, but not to create the Jake story. You know, to see things clearly. to see this as it is, as it is, not how I'd like to see it or wish it was. That's how we gain our strength. So Suzuki Roshi says, actually, there is no dull person or smart person.

[25:34]

Either way, it's not so easy. There is some difficulty for both the smart person and the dull person. For instance, because he's not too smart, the dull person must study hard and read one book over and over again. That's me. just have a few books and I just read them over and over. I have tons of books, but I only have a few books that I read over and over again. A smart person may forget quite easily and may learn quickly, but what he or she learns may not stay so A dull person takes time to remember something, but if he reads it over and over and remembers it, it will not go away so soon. So smart or dull may not make so much difference. So the reason he's talking about this is Sekito says it doesn't matter whether a person is dull or smart.

[26:40]

And Dogen, of course, says it has nothing to do with being smart or dull. So, while human faculties may be sharp or dull, in the Sandokai this point is not so important, but it is interesting to understand what human potentiality is in Buddhism in order to explain further our understanding of practice and why it is necessary to practice Zazen. is human potentiality. Someone who has a disadvantage, ri here means someone who has an advantage, and don means someone who has a disadvantage. So the root of human potentiality is our advantages as well as our disadvantages.

[27:42]

My virtue is also my downfall. What is actually good about me is also bad about me. What page are you on? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm on 43. I'm in the wrong place. That was pretty good. It doesn't matter. I've often said, one time I had everybody go to the library and pick out a book and open the book and wherever you open the book, there's the Dharma. So what page are we on? Oh yes. OK. Oh yes, this is nice.

[28:57]

He says, this happiness is not exactly the same as the happiness that people visually have or desire. They have this kind of composure. They are not disturbed by something bad or ecstatic about something good. They have a true joy that will always be with them. The basic tone of life remains the same and in it there are some happy melodies and sad melodies. I like that a lot. I was reading this book that Tim Bradley, I don't know if you know him, he's an old Zen student from way back, but he's an anthropologist, a good anthropologist, and he just wrote this book about Harry Roberts.

[30:07]

I don't want to go into this. Harry Roberts was at Green Gulch. And he talks about, everybody has a melody. And they have, the Indians make up melodies for whatever they're doing. And if, say, an example, one example is wanting to chop down a tree to make a canoe. So the canoe maker has a melody. He invents a melody, or he brings up a melody, and then he goes around in the forest chanting or singing his melody. And he may do this for a week or two. And then one day a tree will say, hey, I'm over here.

[31:11]

It's very obvious, you know, and he and the tree fall in love with each other. And sometimes, even before he cuts down the tree, the tree is so happy that it falls over by itself. You know, the Caucasian came in and ruined that whole thing, you know, that this is an advanced society, that they didn't recognize it. you know, primitive, but it was far more advanced because people could commune with nature, and we'd chop it down. Anyway, but I like this. But we do have a tune, you know. I've often said that each one of us has a hum. Have you ever heard your hum? You know, like, say you're feeling contented, you know, and you go, So anyway, that's the feeling an enlightened person may have.

[32:25]

It means that when it is hot or when you are sad, you should be completely involved in being hot or being sad without caring for happiness. When you are happy, you should enjoy the happiness. We can do this because suddenly we don't mind. Today we may be very happy and the next day we don't know what will happen to us. When we are ready for what will happen tomorrow, then we can enjoy the day completely. You do this by not studying the lecture. But what he's saying is that without expecting anything, everything changes. As soon as you want to change, as soon as you want to be different, you start suffering. Even though you don't know you're suffering. But, with this kind of attitude of just being open to whatever, there's happiness, even within the unhappiness.

[33:36]

Even within the suffering, there's joy. This is non-duality. This is the oneness of duality. The joy is so deep that it's not driven or affected that much by the unhappiness or the difficulty. So these are Sekito's words. Later, in Tozan's time, three generations after Sekito, people got stuck in word games about brightness and darkness. So what he's really talking about is Tozan's five ranks. Some of us have studied the five ranks of Tozan. But one of the problems was that people started playing games with it. And it became an intellectual kind of pastime.

[34:42]

So, Dogen didn't like dealing with it. But, nevertheless, that doesn't mean it's not a good study, because I think it is. So, they liked talking about the bright side and the dark side, and the middle way, but they lost the point of how to obtain real freedom, so they got stuck in intellectualizing Tozans programs. So, Dogen's appreciating things moment after moment. He was more interested in a koan like, when it is cold you should be a cold Buddha, when it is hot you should be a hot Buddha, that's all. To be completely involved with what you are doing without thinking about various things is Dogin's way. This kind of attainment is reached through actual practice, not through words. So we get So words can help you understand these things.

[35:52]

When you're very dualistic, when you're getting confused, they can help you. But if you're too interested in talking about these things, you will lose your way. We should be interested in actual zazen, not in these words, and we should practice actual zazen. So Dogen Zenji's way is to find a meaning in each being, or in each dharma, like a grain of rice or a cup of water. How to appreciate each grain of rice, actually. how to appreciate a cup of water. You talked about Dogen would, when he came to a stream, would take a cup of water, he would drink half the water and return the other half to the stream. The line, this kind of attainment is reached through actual practice, not through words? Yeah. I've always felt myself, when I'm singing, Music or dancing, if there are words involved, it's a whole different thing than just words.

[36:56]

Words are there, but it's different. Well, there's music with words, and music without words, and music in both. You know, Sekito actually was enlightened by reading, believe it or not. Sekito was, when he was reading Sengchow, Kumarajiva was this Indian scholar who translated the sutras so that the Chinese could actually understand them. So he was a great translator. Seng Chau was his Chinese disciple and Seng Chau wrote a treatise called Prajna Is Not Information, or not information is the right word, Prajna Is Not Knowledge.

[38:03]

And Sekito was reading this treatise and he had a wonderful realization. So that can happen. So whatever we're talking about, there's always another side.

[38:19]

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