People will always continue killing each other in large numbers, but for people to kill themselves in large numbers is more unusual. I was thinking we could when people have wars, instead of killing each other, they could save a lot of grief by just killing themselves, each side just killing themselves. But actually, there are many forms of mass suicide. The Battle of Gettysburg was a kind of mass suicide. So this kind of madness actually is part of our human experience.

[01:06]

And since one doesn't really know for sure what happens after one dies, exactly, It's totally fantasy to think that you do know and to base your demise on a fantasy. As long as we're here in this world, we have to Do our best to create our life where we are Problem one of the biggest problems is suicide is its influence on other people Because suicide is

[02:24]

means that the life that we have is not worth living. And there's no way to make it, to improve it, or to make it, or to find a meaning in it. And that's not a good influence for other people. So when we look to various people as role models. And we look to parents as role models, and if a parent commits suicide, then the child says, well, where does that leave me? So, although it's a difficult thing to do, it's an easy way out. if you have big problems.

[03:28]

So when people experience something like this, mass suicide, what kind of model is that for everyone else? And what kind of model is that for the spiritual side of people? So that's why fantasy is a big problem, especially for spiritual practice. You start believing in UFOs and people calling you. I know people who've been called on the telephone and the person on the other end said, I am from outer space and we've landed and you have been chosen to come with us to another trip to Mars or someplace.

[04:44]

And people believe it. Come Wednesday at such and such a place and we'll take off. I know people who have actually had these telephone calls and kind of wondered if maybe it wasn't really true. So it's really easy to, you know, believe certain things. And if you think about, there's something wonderful though, I must say, about the acceptance of death. In this whole scenario, there's something wonderful about the easy acceptance of death because you feel, well, you know, we're really leaving this undeveloped place and going to the true, the real place.

[05:46]

And so it's not a problem. This is why most religions have created a heavenly place so that the transition, the end of your life, can be easier and you won't feel so much regret at leaving. still fantasy it's still fantasy and problem we have is how do we live our life in reality how do we live our life and death in reality without the aid of fantasy without thinking or relying on

[06:52]

a dream state to comfort us. So this is everyone's quest. Mostly religion and spiritual practice is a combination of spirituality and fantasy and how do you reduce the fantasy so that you have the pure reality and are able to live with it How can you say, I don't know, but and accept that.

[08:01]

I don't know what the next step is, but it's okay. How can you let go of life at the right time? How can you let go of this existence at the right time? and step off into the unknown without regret. So religious practice does take some faith, but faith and fantasy is also a problem. Just faith. Let it go at that. You know, if we realize that we are born into this world and the life of this body-mind continues, continually changing, continually transforming, and trust that transformation.

[09:14]

We want to trust something stable. or something that doesn't change. But we must trust the change. We have to trust the transformation and on each moment's transformation accept our life and totally be one with each moment's transformation. Then we don't have to worry about some future place Because wherever we are, it's the right place to be. Whether it's easy or difficult. Whether it's pleasant or unpleasant. Whether it's so-called right or wrong. Anyway, if you have some, would like to say anything about this, or bring up some questions, you can just jump in.

[10:41]

It seems to me that there is something in religion, or faith, about dying, being reborn. that part of yourself. But there is something about dying and the letting go that seems very much like it has to be done over and over again. Dying and rebirth is something that happens moment by moment. So we tend to think of our life as

[11:42]

one thing and our death is something else. And the period from birth to death is the life of somebody. And this is close to the idea of permanence. That there is a person that's born and after so many years dies. And that's one person. But actually this one person never existed as one person. It just seems like there is a one personality but it is birth and death from the moment of conception. Each moment we're born into a new self which is gone the next moment and appears on the next moment are continually, they're both alternating and happening at the same time.

[12:56]

The moment of birth is a moment of death. The moment of death is a moment of arising. And you can study that by following your breath. Inhaling is inspiration and a moment of exhaling is expiration. So we're born on the inhalation and we die on the exhalation. So birth and death are continually going on so that they're going on on a minutest level And entering the world and departing from the world is just a different manifestation of that same process.

[13:56]

It's just a different way of looking at it. Emptiness, not in nothingness. But in order to identify truly with that state of mind, you have to do some letting go. Well, we always have to let go. We have to let go all the time. Continually let go. In order to be present, we have to let go. In emptiness, no eyes, no ears. Emptiness means that all things are related for their existence.

[15:00]

There is no, you know, we say there is Mel, sitting up here giving a lecture. Actually, even though there is this appearance and Mel feels like Mel, Now, what you're seeing and hearing is empty of its own being. In other words, what you see here is dependent on everything else for its existence. It's not an entity that's separate. It's just a part of the flux and flow of this universe. is contained. It's like a flash, a momentary flash in the area of existence.

[16:04]

This has happened before, this situation. It has. And I would guess it would happen again, because human nature remains the same. and it seems kind of like an odd thing together we create meaning we have this capacity for creating meaning but it can also become a consensus reality where we have this group think that happens and because of our human nature reality that we see these extreme forms and it's amazing. Society is one of these realities that we create and agree on. We all agree that this is real. That's what makes it real is that we agree that it's real.

[17:15]

The dollar bill is just a piece of paper. It says, in God we trust. And it has a little pyramid and a mystical eye on the top. And we believe in it. As soon as you don't believe in the dollar bill anymore, it's worthless. So it's all a matter of agreement. We agree that this is reality. Yeah, and it crosses a line, it seems, like it can be a good thing that we, you know, and that's our strength, in a way, as a species. But, you know, where does it go bad? And in religious communities in particular, it seems vulnerable to that. Yeah, in particular it does. Because religion is necessary.

[18:21]

It's humanity making the effort to find its place in the universe. And it's all mixed up with morality and ethics and mystique and the mysterious and the unknown. So it's the most necessary thing and also the most dangerous thing. totally dangerous. You know, life is dangerous. And so it has these two sides. One is the side of great comfort and security. And the other side is total madness. Religion is total madness. So, in some way, I was thinking that because fantasy has been such a companion of religion.

[19:34]

In the evolution of religion, I would hope that science would be somehow come together to be the companion of religion so that as a checkmate, you know, I teach the world's religions in a university, and very often I have Christians who feel that Buddhists are atheists, I guess because of the fact that they do believe in an afterlife, and they don't consider it a fantasy, nor do I. I can say I have not perhaps had the same belief or experience, but since I don't know, I can't say that such an afterlife may or may not exist. I read a little article the other day in a magazine called Guideposts, which is primarily a Christian magazine, in which they talked about a little girl who was dying of a disease, and she asked her mother, Mother, when I die, are you going to come with me?

[20:46]

I'd like to know how someone who follows the Buddhist practice such as herself would answer a question like that. Are you going to come with me? If I was asked that by someone a little girl. Yeah, I was asked by that by a little girl and she said Are you gonna come and I would say I'll come later The mother's answer was the part of you that you need if you need me we'll be there with you. Yeah, that's very nice Yeah I'm struck, to me, that fantasy arises from imagination, which I think, I don't think that's the real problem here. I mean, that's human and it's the creative source. I think we have to look at this situation where people looking for a leader who has answers.

[21:51]

And, you know, in all of these situations there's a leader, and this one also, and people leaving their biological family and seeking some union with this group and looking for the word from this leader. And this is true in religion, it's true politically in many other fields. That's kind of how I see it. Yeah, well, that's a good point because we should all be our own leader. But even though we're all our own leader, we still look for leadership. And we cannot get away from looking for leadership and wanting leadership. And so it's important to have leadership, but it's important to be discerning. We should know how to follow.

[22:55]

So that's what's so difficult. We can easily be misled. So you can say, well, let's not have any more leaders. But that doesn't work. But also, I'm not so sure that, you know, People go where they go and do what they do. And you cannot save everybody from doing what they're going to do. And there's some regret. And I think what we can do is look on something like this as a lesson to be careful.

[24:05]

Melody? I was looking at the comet last night and there was a particularly bright view of it. It's kind of a dark night. I was kind of hoping that they could follow the comet to someplace nice. There's a kind of longing, you know, I guess. Yeah. thinking about them. I think it's really easy to think of them as really different from us. Except, you know, I keep always comparing things where people are looking at a leader like that, following a leader, to the fact that almost my whole adult life, our whole country and most of the world had invested in just a couple of few political leaders that power over to destroy the whole world, just by pushing a button or something, and how we just kind of gave that over. I mean, a lot of us didn't agree with doing that and saw the folly in that, but most people, we live with that situation completely, kind of in a suicide pact with our own leaders, and I don't think we've really examined that, that part of ourselves since the criminal agenda.

[25:26]

Well, yes, one of the things that I always think about is, why are our leaders never psychologically evaluated? Did you see the president's analyst? No. The president's analyst? No. The president has an analyst? Well, my thoughts along the lines of Melody, actually what was really shocking to me in the news, I was really disturbed by this and disturbed by the coverage

[26:31]

And I found that troubling, but what I found more troubling, because in a sense I just found this is like, as you said, if this was in these early Buddhist texts as a It was in human nature. It's something difficult to accept and one wishes one could talk with those people and see what their direct experience was. But it happened. I'm wary of saying this to shift the discussion, but what I found tremendously shocking this week was news reports

[27:40]

flames and a foot-long fire leaped from his head. That was done in harmony. That was not people taking it upon themselves to follow some higher vision. The Attorney General for the state said, well, this should give murderers pause. That was his the governor of the state paused to say, gee, maybe we should look into this as a, perhaps this is not such a humane way of taking life. But I found that much more shocking, and also human, and also historical. So these events in my mind, they kind of interlock. I think in our practice, we have to rely a lot on faith.

[29:06]

We don't worry a whole lot about beliefs. But when something like this happens, it encourages people to be non-believers, which sometimes translates into losing faith. And that can be very discouraging. And before I came to this practice, And it was hard for me to learn how to have faith in practice. But belief seems to have more to do with our wishes and our fears and our hopes. I think that's what gets tied up with leaders, our wishes and our fears and our hopes. And faith seems to have more to do with being willing to not know and just meet whatever comes with some exceptions and openings.

[30:17]

Did you hear what he was saying? That the difference between belief and faith, the difference between a belief having your beliefs and actually having a basic faith in life itself. If there's some actual difference there. Somebody once explained a difference to me with faith and they said that they had faith in the law of gravity. because they have already experienced gravity in the new, but if they don't, you know, whatever they were holding, their glass or whatever, the glass would fall, and therefore, from direct experience, they build their faith. On what? On gravity. On the fact that gravity exists.

[31:21]

So, they talked about believing versus faith, faith being based on direct experience, unknowing, and therefore you have faith that the law of gravity will continue to operate even though you don't have to test it every time. But it's still a physical law. So it's on this side, you know, there's say emptiness in form. emptiness is emptiness and on the phenomenal side is where the law of gravity operates. On the non-phenomenal side there's

[32:29]

includes the law of gravity but is not bound by it so you know religion and spirituality it's about the non-phenomenal side and the phenomenal side whereas scientific faith is always on the phenomenal side and only deals with what it knows. So there is a kind of faith which comes from what you know, physically, on the phenomenal side, through experimentation. But there's the non-phenomenal side, or the side which is beyond the phenomenal side, which is the cause of the phenomenal side, And that's the more intangible side, where we have to be able to have faith in nothing.

[33:59]

When I say nothing, I mean in not knowing. Because when our life is over, the phenomenal side is gone. The so-called phenomenal side. And then what? Right? So that's where religion begins. With the non-phenomenal side as well as the phenomenal side. But with the non-phenomenal side. So... It's... We have to get beyond the law of gravity. To... the great mystery. How do you have faith in the great mystery? Not belief, but faith in the great mystery. Can you get beyond the law of gravity without going through it?

[35:04]

Without knowing it? Well, we all know it. The law of gravity determines everything that happens in this world. Everything in this world is determined Its nature is determined by the law of gravity. But don't we often act as though we don't really? Well, we're oblivious, yes. But, you know, if I go like this, the reason, the way I do this is determined by the law of gravity. You know? It just is. Everything that we do is. And the center of gravity, you know, Buddha is the center of gravity so and so what is the center of gravity so in this phenomenal life to always be at the center of gravity is to find trust and say I

[36:20]

to find trust and faith at the center of gravity. That's what Zen practice is about. It's about being always at the center of gravity. And that's where you find where the phenomenal and the noumenal come together. I'm just thinking today is Holy Saturday. Today is what? Holy Saturday, you know. Oh, yes. So, therefore, you're talking about the great mystery of faith. Christianity is based on life, death, resurrection of Christ. And that's, seems to me, like a very strong belief in faith. Because just, not everybody saw Him. You know, just the people who follow saw his resurrection.

[37:22]

Then everybody else afterwards is basing their faith on that one, their experiences. So, could you make some comments on that? I will. I don't want to talk about Christianity, but I will. Because the problem is that everybody's looking outside and Jesus was somebody who lived 2,000 years ago, almost 2,000, right? But each one of us has the Christos within us. Yes. Each one of us has to resurrect ourself. That's what resurrection is not Jesus coming up from the grave 2,000 years ago.

[38:24]

It's about each one of us being reborn within ourself. That's what that's about. So you don't have to be Christian in order to... Oh no, you don't have to because you're saying every moment you live and you die every moment. But it seems to me like this that resurrection might be a little bit bigger moment than the ordinary... Well, it's celebrating. The holiday celebrates that, you know, and that creates the pageant and so forth. So that's nice, you know, pageantry and it's a reminder and so forth. But if you start getting too literal, that's where fantasy takes over and becomes misleading, actually.

[39:34]

And people start believing literally in the Bible and then become dictatorial and intolerant because they want to base their beliefs on something. So that's not faith, it's belief. Faith is very personal and doesn't have any supports. belief is full of supports, you know, like you take a whole bunch of stories and put them all together and then you have all these crutches, you know, and this big support system to bolster your opinions. But faith is very lonely, very lonely. Somebody hasn't asked a question.

[40:34]

The way I'm hearing you speak about faith is like something like the process, you know, and the fact that you don't have a substratum, you don't have a theological ideal or goal. And how do you speak to the fact now that if you're speaking about a certain reality, say the statements you made before where this phenomenon like gravity is coming out of the spiritual world, and the spiritual world includes it, but it's coming out of the spiritual world. So it seems that you're setting up here an Aristotle step ladder, so to speak, where you're saying that there's an ultimate reality, and that there's a secondary reality of the big mind and the little mind, and if it is, if we are in this, say, independent personal faith and things are processed, maybe a moral metamorphosis or whatever, how do you reconcile that with the idea of the ideology or the belief in certain categories that you set up in Buddhism?

[41:58]

It seems to me, even though it's very rare, it still seems to be a case of beliefs that There are no categories of belief in Buddhism. There's no belief system. Buddhism is not a belief system. Buddhism is a way of letting go of all views and opinions and beliefs in order to stand in the naked reality. In other words, if I'm completely independent, spontaneous, I'm meditating, and I'm coming up to my reality as it's coming into being, then I can say, for instance, why would I say that noumenon creates phenomenon?

[43:09]

I could just as easily say phenomenon creates noumenon. In other words, it could, in the Vedanta idea, is that the spirit's going The matter is more than the spirit. There's both involution and evolution going on simultaneously. And that's our idea of what a good and evil is, when people from the spiritual world are going into the material world and think that people who are from the material world are the spiritual evil and vice versa. So there's some resolution, but there's no real second banana. There's no big mind that should dominate or should direct the little mind. or that the spirit world is creating the phenomenal world, there's no substrate. In other words, what I'm saying is, once you set up, this is in deconstructionism, once you set up a ultimate reality, out of which other realities come, you're setting up a Aristotle category, and you're setting up an ideology or belief system. And with no belief system, in other words, you wouldn't have this

[44:13]

You know, this permanent hierarchy that you would find in a closure, that you find in theology, this little bit of a closure. I'm not saying that this is erroneous. Maybe we're on to some kind of structuralism that is true. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying that the very fact that you set up some form of a hierarchy that you agree agree upon, that makes an ideology, that makes a belief system. Now, if you don't, if this is not important, then why do we keep expressing this, why do you keep expressing this reality where I'm trying to accept the idea? Excuse me, my big mistake. I'll never make that mistake again.

[45:14]

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