I vow to taste the truth of the photographer's words. Good morning. Is this on? Can you hear? Only two weeks and three days till the election. But who's counting? I also wanted to introduce a friend who's a guest here today from the great battleground state of Ohio, David Loy. Some of you may know David's books. I think the next time he's through, hopefully we can have you sitting in this seat and giving a talk. We are about to begin tomorrow. We have Sesshin that opens aspects of practice for the fall and quite a number of you are signed up for that. The Sesshin is full but the aspects for the next month of practice is open and there's a class and there's some sign-ups, sign-up sheets on the bulletin board outside so feel free to check them out and you can talk to me and

[01:17]

Who else is, Jerry is one of the teachers, and Ron, you can talk to any of us following the lecture. Oh, and Ross. I didn't see you, I should have seen that. Yeah, right, the sun shining off of that. Yeah, I couldn't see your face, but I could see that. Anyway. Right, that's right. So, the subject matter, what we're working with in this practice period is going to be working from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, something we've not done in Aspects before, but something I think that is fundamental to the teaching of our family, the wind of our house here. Sojin Roshi being a disciple of Suzuki Roshi's and

[02:21]

So all of us have been reading various chapters and the classes will be on chapters and all the talks and I thought I would begin, even though we haven't officially begun Aspects of Practice, I begin by giving you a lecture that's based on chapters in My Beginner's Mind in the Right Understanding section. It's called Transiency, and this I think is particularly, it's always relevant. Transiency is perhaps theme or the title theme of Suzuki Roshi's second book, Not Always So, that's also transiency. And perhaps the only thing that's always is the fact of not always so, the fact of transiency, and yet it's hard.

[03:33]

what do we see in just our daily lives. I'm struck that in the last week or 10 days there have been four deaths in and around. The father of a friend, my mother's older sister, one of the only two remaining people of her generation in my life, our former beloved mailman on this block, Martin Vargas, who was relatively young, I mean he couldn't have been more than in his middle 50s, somebody I looked up to very much and that I had seen at, when I last spoke, I think, about the Columbia University strike gathering.

[04:48]

This was a teacher and a film writer, a guy named Lewis Cole. He died of Lou Gehrig's disease. So, all these things sort of came on at one time. And, of course, there's the if any of us have any retirement funds or investments, there's the death of a substantial portion of those or the fact that they just go away in ways that we do not have an awful lot of control over. We don't have control over things going away. We only have control over our response to that. So this is, I think, the theme that Suzuki Roshi takes up in this chapter, Transiency.

[05:55]

So I'll read a little of it. The epigraph is we should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. So as usual the language of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is very open, inviting, simple and then you think what is he really saying here and it's not simple What Suzuki Roshi, he begins, the basic teaching of Buddhism is a teaching of transiency or change. That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. No one can deny this truth.

[06:55]

And all the teachings of Buddhism is, all the teaching of Buddhism is condensed within it. This is the teaching for all of us. wherever we go this teaching is true. So this is what he sees as reducing the Buddha's teachings to this one key working of the universe that is transiency or change. we study basic buddhism we read about the three marks of existence in the earlier buddhist schools the three marks are impermanence and selflessness or the non-self the interdependent nature of reality and

[07:58]

This teaching is also understood as the teaching of selflessness. So he sees these things as deeply related. Because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self. In fact, the self nature of each existence is nothing but change itself. The self nature of all existence. there is no special separate self-nature for each existence. Then he takes a leap. So as I said, traditionally in earlier Buddhism the three marks of existence that characterize our lives as we ordinarily see them are impermanence, no self-nature or selflessness and dukkha, the suffering.

[09:09]

So maybe I should say how dukkha is usually described and this is from the Buddha's own words, both concise and exhaustive. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering. Death is suffering. Sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering. Association with the loathed is suffering. Dissociation from the loved is suffering. and one can go on getting what one wants is suffering because it doesn't remain you know it's going to go away how are you going to you know so sometimes even as we're getting something that we feel we deeply desire

[10:21]

in some little corner of our mind the light goes on that says oh this is going to go away too and so before we're even able to enjoy it we're already missing it this is the kind of wily and slippery nature of our human mind. So this is the traditional understanding of the three marks of existence and what this is kind of a digression because what Suzuki Roshi says here as I said he says there is no special self-nature for each existence and then he says this is also called the teaching of nirvana. So this is his the third mark as he lays it out is not its release. And that's a radical reframing which was not Suzuki Roshi's invention.

[11:32]

This is something that comes up fairly frequently in the Mahayana teachings. I think you find it, it may have been first in the I'm not totally sure but you also get the equation in Mahayana Buddhism of this world that we live in is marked by this world is the world of samsara and again in early Buddhism there was a Nirvana which is release from samsara which is literally translates as wandering. It's the world through which we wander.

[12:34]

It's the character of of our life and mind and body to wander in this world and actually and that's sometimes really hard. is known as the Saha world. Each of the universes or fields in which there is a Buddha kind of mythologically presiding has a name. Our world is called the Saha world and Saha other words this is a tough place to inhabit but the advantage of living a wandering life in this world to be endured is that we can wake up.

[13:42]

Hence Suzuki Roshi says this is this reality that things go away is the teaching of nirvana so that's the third mark in his way of looking at basic buddhism. When we realize then this here's the I think the critical turning when we realize the everlasting truth of everything changes we find ourselves in nirvana. So that is the transformation that is essential. And it's a shift in perspective. It's a shift in view. But it's a shift in view that takes place through your entire body.

[14:50]

It's the shift that I think is energized or enacted when we sit down in zazen. Because when we're sitting we see this constant flow of thoughts and activities. physical activities, mental activities, we see the flow of activities around us, we hear the, you know, the voices going by in the street, we hear the birds, we notice the fact that when we sat down 10 minutes ago it was cloudy and now there's a beam of sun coming through the windows back there. And if we're caught in our suffering, wandering reality, then we don't have our composure.

[16:03]

So he goes on, without accepting the fact that everything changes we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transiency, we suffer. So the cause of suffering is our non-acceptance of the truth. This is a big problem in my life. And I can't speak for any of you. You know, when I get into my... I tend to be more, perhaps, emotionally... Some of you know this about me too well and wish I would get over it.

[17:07]

And some of you don't. But I tend to be... I have to ride out these various storms of you know waves and storms of feelings and emotion not always so evenly balanced certainly not as balanced as my teacher or some of my other some of my primary teacher and some of my other teachers but that's the way it is you know it's not like This is kind of what I've been given to work with. And so when I get caught, actually my wife is much more even tempered than me, as some of you also know. And what she says over and over again until I now kind of embodied it as what I remember

[18:10]

when I'm caught, when something is aching, what comes up for me is, oh, I can hear her voice say, oh, well, the problem is you want things to be different from how they are. And yeah, that's right, that's the problem. That's exactly. Now, is that nervous laughter? That's what Stuky Roshi says, unfortunately it is true, it is difficult, unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. We cannot accept the truth of transiency, because we cannot accept the truth of transiency, we suffer. So the cause of our suffering is a non-acceptance of this truth. The teaching of the cause of suffering and the teaching that everything changes are thus two sides of one coin.

[19:16]

But subjectively, transiency is the cause of our suffering. Objectively, this teaching is simply the basic truth that everything changes. I was talking with Sojin Roshi earlier today, then he goes to this really interesting thing, interesting section here. Dogen Zenji said, teaching which does not sound as if it is forcing something on you is not true teaching. I had to read that about four times I wanted to push it away. The very thing that he was saying was the very problem that I was having with what he was saying. You get it? Teaching, which does not sound as if it is forcing something on you, is not true teaching. Got that?

[20:18]

No? Who said no? What? Let me go on. We'll get to it, I hope. The teaching itself is true, and in itself does not force anything upon us, but because of our human tendency, and then maybe that's, he goes on, I would say, put in parentheses, our human tendency to want things moment by moment to be different from how they actually are, close parentheses, right? Because of our human tendency, we receive the teaching as if something was being forced on us, but whether we feel good or bad about it, this truth exists. a story.

[21:21]

I've been practicing here for, I don't know, a couple of years, this is in the middle 1980s, and I really felt at home here as soon as I got here, which really surprised me because there was nothing in my background that sort of had obviously prepared me for Zen practice, but there was some resonance and I felt very much at home. And I liked doing the forms, ringing the bells, chanting, doing bowing, all this stuff. And I also, my life was quite unsettled. were lots of anxieties floating about and I had a propensity to be somewhat righteous and perhaps pushy about the enactment of those forms.

[22:36]

It's like, oh there's a right way to do it. And I know the right way to do it and I would look around and some people, including my elders, said, well they don't know the right way to do it. And I think that I was not particularly good at communicating I was particularly good at communicating my discomfort and sometimes disdain. Very effective at that, unfortunately. I apologize to those of you who are still in the room from that time. And Sojin Roshi was incredibly generous to me. And I think he took several years to tell me what he needed to say. That's part of another chapter of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which talks about giving your horse or cow a big field and watching how you help people change, you just watch them and watch them, but that's another talk.

[23:56]

There does come a time when a teacher, because of the relationship between the teacher and the student, will, having watched quite thoroughly, say something. So what he said to me was, let things fall apart. And that was a very powerful teaching. It's something I always remember and I still have to work with. It's not like, oh you get this teaching and everything is done. It's like you then can let go and thank you so much for giving me this teaching. It changed my life and I will never do that again. No, it's like you have a teaching that then you can work with. when there is when the inevitable challenge of clinging when the inevitable feeling of wanting things to be other than how they are arises you remember let things fall apart and also you know the fact of the matter is things do fall apart

[25:24]

then you will not allow the space for other things to come together. If you're holding on to things the way you want them to be, then you have eliminated the space and possibility for the unexpected but similarly inevitable to arise. It's not just that things fall apart, things change. He doesn't, you know, I'm saying, Sogen was saying let things fall apart because I was, I think he correctly perceived there was a way in which a self-centered way that come from my own fear and my own pain wanting to hold things together because what I feared was this hole or this void or as as David Lloyd would write this sense of lack at the core of my existence it was scary to me and so I thought if I could just hold this stuff

[26:56]

And that's precisely what Suzuki Roshi is talking about. That's precisely what he's saying is, wait a second. If you let go, things fall apart, things come together. If there is no clinging and if you can maintain your composure, which means sitting upright in the middle of that, in the middle of all circumstances, good or bad, then you are manifesting in nirvana, you're manifesting in this zone of not clinging, not sticking to anything. So this was very powerful that that teaching was helpful looking at all of the psychological or existential factors of my life that were leading me to try to hold things together when you couldn't.

[28:17]

So I'm going to go on from there, okay? Whether we feel good or bad about it, this truth exists. If nothing exists, this truth does not exist. Buddhism exists because of each particular existence. In other words, the flashing into existence and out of existence of each being is what co-creates the universe. I think in this sense we can make an equation between Buddhism and the universe. He's talking about Buddhism in a very, very large way. And then he says, we should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

[29:19]

We should find perfection in imperfection. For us, Complete perfection is not different from imperfection. So, our existence is all that we have to work with. My body, my mind, even my habits, These are the very material that we have to work with. And they're astonishingly complex. It was somebody yesterday, was it at tea? Somebody was talking about the number of cells in the human body, was that?

[30:21]

I forget, somebody's saying that the number of cells in the human body vastly outnumber the number of stars in the universe. I mean, really, who's counting? But the miracle of these things working together is astonishing, the miracle of in kind of Buddhist, in Abhidharma, the fact that you have an eye, eye consciousness, and the object of that eye, that these three things, and these are just three, work together and create this awareness so that I can look down at my glasses, you can do the same. All of this is happening simultaneously in the kind of complexity that is totally beyond our understanding.

[31:32]

This is miraculous. And it's imperfect. I need these glasses. You know, my back is aching a little for reasons that I don't know. My body is aging. I have various chronic health conditions, as do probably many, if not all of you in the room. These are imperfections. But even in these imperfections, there is something so perfect manifest in so miraculous, I won't even say perfect, this perfection imperfection is that this is a problematic way of looking at things, it's a dualistic way of looking at it, but maybe I just say I like to think about

[32:37]

Even illness is miraculous, which doesn't mean necessarily I like it, but when you look at it you see it's miraculous expression of the universe in total dynamic activity. So how do you find, so this is, we should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. the only way we find perfect existence through imperfect existence is just by willingly sitting upright in the middle of it and by that I don't mean necessarily even that we have to sit but it's having your composure facing it in a mindful way whatever whatever posture you're taking so he goes on he says we should find the truth in this world through our difficulties through our suffering this is the basic teaching of buddhism pleasure is not different from

[34:11]

through our self-centered mind there's a difference between pleasure and difficulty. What looked at from the point of view, from the sky view, from the buddha's view, we can see They're not total dynamic working, they're just the working of the universe. Good is not different from bad. Bad is good, good is bad, they are two sides of one coin, so enlightenment should be in practice. Now I want to say this is all, this is looking from the view, from this sky view that good is bad and bad is good and this is, as I've said many times before, this is the medicine that he's giving us in this moment because of our tendency to keep bifurcating, just keep thinking of good and bad as different.

[35:34]

uh and is separate from this standpoint of enlightenment as he's putting it from the standpoint of nirvana or this or this sky view they are just the functioning just this this ever-moving body from the relative world in the relative world There is good and bad, but that's not what he's speaking of here. And the problem that he's pointing to is, he keeps pointing, we're always caught in this relative world. So can we step back and find some freedom? And if we can find freedom, then how does that affect how we move and act in our daily world? That's the open question I would leave you with. So, to find pleasure in suffering is the only way to accept the truth of transiency.

[36:37]

One more story about that and then I'll sort of wind this up. Last month or a month before, we have a priest training group that's called SPOT and it meets up at Emptiness Zendo. Grace Shearson's place and there's about six teachers and 30 students and it's a very wonderful intensive kind of training program. We do service, we do zazen, we have other kinds of activities and studies. One morning I was the priest for the service And so I stood up there, just, you know, as I stand up here and be pristine. I had, for whatever reason, a wave of intestinal cramps.

[37:43]

And that didn't come on until I was standing there with my kotsu in place. And, you know, it was like, we had just come out of Zazen, so my mind was actually very settled. And I didn't freak out. I did think, oh, this could be bad. I don't know, in a quite literal sense, where this is going. But I just said, okay, let's see where it goes. And I just stood there and I literally could watch this kind of wave and there was some In some strange way, there was actually real, there was joy in the middle of that. There was joy in the watching of it. It wasn't unbearable.

[38:47]

I think part of the joy was in the, to my mind, and I have a strange sense of humor, the humorousness of the fix. Here you're performing this religious ritual and you're occupying this position and you're in your robes and meanwhile you wonder if you're going to make it to the toilet. It's like, this is the fix of having a body. And I watched it and I just thought, well, if I have to leave, I'll leave. But I also felt, I was there to do something. And I thought, if I can finish this, good. You know, that's what I would like to do. Conditions may not allow that. Just let's watch this. So this to me, without getting, and I did, so I don't need to get any more graphic than that. So this is,

[39:49]

So to find pleasure in suffering is the only way to accept the truth of transiency. That was a real encapsulated experience of that. Without realizing how to accept this truth, you cannot live in this world. Even though you try to escape from it, your effort will be in vain. If you think there is some other way to accept the internal truth that everything changes, if you think there is some other way to accept the eternal truth that everything changes, that is your delusion. That other way would be, yeah, everybody but me. Or as Woody Allen says, I don't really mind the idea of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

[40:57]

This is the basic teaching of how to live in the world. Whatever you may feel about it, you have to accept it. So he says, and this is where we'll end, So until we become strong enough to accept difficulty as pleasure we have to continue this effort as long as that is and it may not be a categorical change. You may find moments as I did standing up there with stomach cramps where I could accept it and others that are not so clear, not so even dramatic, where I note my resistance. So I just continue to practice. I don't necessarily believe that that practice will ever end for me because I am who I am.

[42:04]

You are who you are. Each of us has our difficulties. And the only way we can meet it is by practicing with it. Actually, he says, though, this is encouraging. If you become honest enough, straightforward enough, it's not so difficult to accept this truth. Honest, first of all, with yourself. If you're really willing to see where your shortcomings are, and not, I would say, and not blame them on others, or on conditions, but just see, well, this is mine. I don't know where it's from or how it is, but if I can own it, then I can practice with it. Then it's not so difficult to accept this truth. You can change your way of thinking a little bit. Seems like a little bit, but actually this is what is called transformation at the base.

[43:08]

just changing your thinking a little bit and everything is turned upside down. And then you can see impermanence and appreciate it. Sometimes you may laugh at yourself, discovering how selfish you are. And that's true. But no matter how you feel about this teaching, it is very important for you to change your way of thinking and accept the truth of transiency. So I see that the striker has been lifted. the warning has been given, but I wanted to leave, let's take just a few minutes for just questions or comments, and then I think we're going to do Q&A in here at 1130. And thinking about an hour ago, I was sitting in the middle of the patient department, and Dave, too, was working up to down to the electronic stage, and I go home and sleep, and he continues to work at the technical.

[44:38]

And a couple of days ago, I learned she slipped and fell, and that was actually what happened. I think we can only do this for ourselves and you can only sit with that person for myself, I think I have to just go to the bottom of my despair. No, I understand. But how can you encourage her? How can you?

[45:42]

It's true, her life has changed. Yeah, right. That's right. That's right. I don't think there's any way around that. we're fortunate to have one way of holding ourselves in the midst of that. And there are other ways, other spiritual traditions, other intellectual philosophical traditions, but we have this way of comprehending and holding that. but there's no way around that. That's what's going to happen.

[46:47]

It's not that there isn't pain. It's one thing to laugh at stomach cramps. It's another thing if you have stomach cramps all the time and persistent nausea or everything that you had was taken away and that happens. How do you meet that? That's the koan. I do not have an answer for that, but you're right. That's the question. The question is what we're obligated to ask ourselves. I said that's the only thing we have some control over. Perhaps, to look at that more closely, my own experience is that, like when I broke my arm last year in the ambulance, but what I noticed arose, and it wasn't something I controlled, was a curiosity.

[48:05]

The how question. How do I deal with it? Right. You don't have control over what arises. You have control over your reaction to it. That's where we try to cultivate control. In other words, something happens and I get upset. That's not the problem. The problem is what I do with that being upset, where I might go with that aside from just staying with that. So, there's response and there's reaction. I think I'm distinguishing between the two. Reaction is what follows response.

[49:06]

Response is a function of every piece of conditioning that we have in us, including our conditioning to be awake. To ask the question, how, is a response. 15 years ago, that's probably not the question you would have asked, right? Right. Anyway, one more. Are there any clues as to when you feel you should let go? I think back on what you said earlier in the talk about the time in the 80s when you were advised to let go. I mean, you have to hold on to it. I know it's a simple, it should be a simple answer.

[50:07]

Well, no. Notice that all three of these questions were very complex. Notice that there was no simple answer to them. There's no instruction book. It's all what you experiment with. but when Sojan said that to me, it helped me see what I was doing. What it helped me see was how what I was doing was keeping me separate from people which was not helpful to them and was totally counterproductive to what I was yearning for which was just connection. So if I could relax that, and stay present with that, then it's fine. Some people here, including myself, see lots of mistakes, lots of things that are theoretically maybe wrong, but they're not wrong.

[51:21]

And, you know, if you want to spend your life correcting people's mistakes, you can do that, you know, and there are people like that in the world, but it's not a hell of a lot of fun. So you're saying it's all about people? It's all about relationship. It's about relationship to yourself, which is not distinct from relationship to everyone else. it's all about it's all about relationship that's the nature the nature of non-self and the nature of impermanence is that we're in this great flux together how do we do this together which is the whole point this is this is the whole form of what we do here in the zendo We don't sit off in our own caves and meditate, you know?

[52:28]

You do? Yeah, well, you're here now and you're in relationship to the flowers and the bushes and the grasses and all the people who work on them because you have a position, right? So, too bad. Be bizarre.

[52:55]

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