Good morning. This morning, I want to welcome, first I want to welcome all the newcomers who have come to, I think there's a class, Sam's class at, where's Sam? Say something about your class. Yeah, it's a class on ancient Japanese religion. This is my professor here, Dr. John Nelson, and he also teaches Asian, Eastern Asian studies. Well, what a welcome.

[01:01]

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for coming. So today, I want to talk about, I think most of our students are familiar with the Xin Xin Ming. Maybe not. We haven't studied that for a pretty long time. Xin Xing Ling is attributed to the third Chinese ancestor, So Sang, Kan Chi So Sang. Whether it actually was written by him or not, nobody knows, but it's a very wonderful poem. on a statement, I don't know if you call it a poem, I don't know what to call it, but it's a short treatise on faith in mind, shin-shin-ming, faith in the mind of faith or faith in big mind.

[02:14]

So it's, I will read the first paragraph or so and then comment on it. And so it's translated in various ways, but the great way, the great way, daixin, the great way is not difficult. For those who have no preferences, I like to think of it as partiality. Preference and partiality are pretty much the same, but there's a difference. I like partiality. When freed from love and hate, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised. A hair's breadth, difference, and heaven and earth are set apart.

[03:17]

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 disturbed. The way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Because of grasping and rejecting, you will miss its suchness. Pursuit not the outer entanglements and don't dwell in the inner void. In oneness and equality, Confusion vanishes of itself. Stop activity and return to stillness. Within that stillness is the great dynamic activity.

[04:23]

Falling into one extreme or the other, how can you recognize oneness? Not penetrating the unity of the way and both sides go astray. To deny the existence of things is to miss the reality. To fall into the emptiness of things is to miss the reality. The more you talk and think about it, the more you go astray. So, I'm going to make a mistake on purpose. I'm going to talk about it. So, the Great Way is not difficult. for those who have no preferences. So we have to take this line by line, word by word. What is the great way? There are many different ways. We all have a way of doing something. Everything leads somewhere, and that's their way.

[05:27]

So the great way, the great way is the way of liberation. The great way is the way of liberation freed from greed, ill will, and delusion. It's called the enlightened way. Freed from greed, ill will, and delusion. Freed from false self, sense of self. and thinking that we can gain something or lose something. So the great way is not difficult for those who have no partiality. Partiality is described, as I've said many times, Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the tamban kan, the board-carrying fellow.

[06:36]

carries a board that obscures one side. So he's looking this way, and he thinks everything is like this. But he doesn't see beyond the board, so he can't see that everything is also like that. And that's kind of the way we are. We all live in partiality. And that's why we have so many problems in our world, which will never be solved, because we live in a dualistic world. It's just the amoeba keeps separating itself. Originally it's one, but it keeps separating itself. And all of our thinking is separation. The thinking mind is continually discriminating. And discrimination creates partiality. So we discriminate one thing from another.

[07:39]

Originally, there's only one thing. But God is an amoeba. Originally, everything is one. But because of our discriminating mind, we think that everything is two. There's good, there's bad, there's dark, there's light. Everything has its opposite. So how do we maneuver truthfully in reality, which is beyond good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark? How do we understand that? How do we understand that one thing includes all things and that all things include one thing? This is the purpose of our Buddhist, Zen Buddhist understanding or education.

[08:51]

This is the meaning of Zen education. So when freed from love and hate, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised. So we talk about love a lot. Throughout history, most of the songs are about love, disquieted love. If you listen to the Elizabethan ballads, it's all about anguish, anguished love. And love doesn't occur without anguish. And it's always personal.

[09:54]

In Buddhism, love is not personal. There's no description of love as personal. It's more universal. Compassion is a form of love in the Dharma. Compassion is freely given. without expectation. There's no expectation. Either that something will happen or that you will be rewarded.

[11:01]

It's simply totally giving of yourself. So this is love, Buddhist love. It's simply offered universally without discrimination. So, it's called selfless. So, last week, during the lecture, during Hosan's lecture, the subject of love came up. And my wife, Liz, was in the audience, and she offered this. She said that when, back in 1970-ish, By 1970, there was a house that Zen students lived in near Shattuck.

[12:05]

And sometimes people coming back from Tassajara, our monastery, would stay there. And so a couple came back, and they were talking about what's it like at Tassajara, and they're talking about love. And there was this guy there that said, oh, at Tassajara, there's plenty of love. Lots of love at Tassajara. It's just that it's expressed as hate. He was probably joking. But who knows? So love and hate is really a really great example, you know, of duality, the dualistic discrimination between our feelings.

[13:06]

But for every duality, light does not exist except for darkness, and darkness does not exist except for light. Light creates darkness, and darkness creates light. We may not think so, but when you think about it, it's just one side exchanging for the other side. love and hate actually are the same feeling reversed. We fall in love with somebody and then something terrible happens and then the love turns into hate. So we live in a world of transformations. So what are transformations transforming from?

[14:15]

They're transforming from one, the basis of transformation is although the feelings are being transformed or exchanged, the source is the same. So love turns into hate, hate turns into love, even though one thing does not turn into another. Love is love, hate is hate, but love is within hate, and hate is within love. Because of love, there can be hate, and because of hate, there can be love. There's a lot of great examples. I love my dog, our dog, but he's a very wild guy. And he likes to express his own mind, no matter what.

[15:23]

So I take him to a dog park, which is very wild, and he's very good, up until the time we want to go home. So I'm loving my dog, and I'm loving the way he's relating to me. And then as soon as he takes off, he just says, I'm going this way, and just ignores me completely. And then anger, which is a form of pain, it's just anger. Anger comes up. Why are you betraying me? And then it takes me an hour Because he'll see me way down there and we'll look at each other. And he knows. But he runs away. And then he looks at me again. And as soon as I start to walk toward him, he runs away. It's a kind of game, in a way.

[16:27]

But it's really pissing me off. Because I want to go to lunch. And it's two o'clock, three o'clock. So, but then I'm saying to myself, I said, well, I'm just going to drive away. So I get in the car. I don't know what's going to happen. I have no idea what's going to happen. I don't know. But I'm just trusting in big mind. The big mind will take care of this. So I start the car and back out and start driving down the road. And I know I'm not going to go anywhere, but I'm going somewhere. And he hears that. He hears the car starting way over there. And I start going down the road and he runs out and starts chasing the car, which I knew he would, but I didn't know.

[17:33]

I hoped he would, but I didn't know. So this is big trust, actually, because I didn't know what I was going to do. But the universe is working together with me because I'm trusting it. And so I stop the car, open the back door for him and he jumps in. He's scared I'm going to drive away without him. So this love and hate, not hate, but love and anger is going on all the time, exchanging itself, transforming itself moment to moment. It's all one thing. It's all one piece, except that it's expressing itself in different ways according to my mood or my mode. And so I'm trying really hard not to fall into anger And so I just put my trust in Big Mind.

[18:40]

And I said, it will figure itself out. And it did. So this is called trust in mind. You put your trust in Big Mind and bring the two aspects of love and anger together. And it's beyond love and it's beyond anger. This is called oneness of duality. Beyond love, beyond anger. He's not saying, When freed from love and hate, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised. When freed from love and, it doesn't say freed from love or freed from hate, it says freed from love and hate. Freed from the duality of love and hate. So if you're going to love, love.

[19:41]

If you're going to hate, hate. but have to realize that you're splitting yourself between love and hate. Because hate contains the love and the love contains the anger or the hate. We get angry with each other all the time. My wife and I get angry with each other. But it's great to just let it go and not get caught in either love or anger. say it's otherless? Well, okay, that self and other is another duality. Yes. So, how to go beyond self and other.

[20:45]

This is big mind. This is the trust. The trust is in realizing that the anger is within the love and the love is within the anger. And then my self is within the other self, and the other self is within my self. And when we talk to each other, we're really talking to our self. When we interact, we're actually interacting with our self. And the other, even though there is a self and other, there is no self and other. We talk about self, Self is no self and no self is self. Sometimes we say in Buddhism there's no self, but that which is no self is our self. We couldn't talk about no self if there wasn't a self. So if it's not a

[21:50]

Contradiction is not a truth. The truth is in the contradiction, not in the separation. We want to think that the truth is one side or the other. But the truth is in the contradiction, because nothing exists without a contradiction. So, what is right and what is wrong? Right and wrong, even though there is a right side and a wrong side, fundamentally, the right and the wrong are a contradiction. And when we realize that the right is within the left and the left is within the right, then there's no contradiction. Even though it's a contradiction, it's hard to, that's why talking about it is difficult. So, truth in Buddhadharma is

[23:22]

non-duality, the non-duality of duality, and the duality of non-duality. So every time we fall into one side or the other, we should realize that the other side has to be included. But what we want to do is keep chopping off the other side that bothers us. want to keep eliminating the side that bothers us. But the more you eliminate the other side that bothers you, the more you cut off the limbs of the tree until you have no place to stand except to fight. And fighting is good. And it's also bad. When I was a little kid in grammar school, Whenever a new kid arrived at school, we'd always have a fight.

[24:28]

That was the way you got to know the person. And after you had the fight, you were friends. I don't know about you, but that's the way it was with me. So we were always fighting and wrestling. And when you wrestle, you feel the other person's strength. And then you become friends. I've had this great war with Germany and Japan, right? And now they're our friends. I mean, it was terrible. And we killed each other. But on that level, it's terrible. But that's the way it works. And because conflict, Through conflict, there is some kind of settlement. It's terrible, but it's because we live in a dualistic world.

[25:33]

So unless we rise above the duality, there's no peace. Yes, Charles. gave your mind to a big mind. But when the dog got into your car, was it happy or did it carry a grudge against you? No, he doesn't. This is the thing about the animal, no grudge. They love you, and no matter what. That's my experience with the cat as well. It's just amazing. Yes, they know how to reconcile the dualities, sometimes.

[26:39]

But he had been running constantly for two or three hours. He was in a different space, totally different space. But I have to say, The other day, after that, I took him to the marina. And he loved to go certain places. He ran out, way out into the little peninsula there, and he wouldn't come back. And he knew I was calling him and all that. And so I said, I'm just going to walk away. So I walked away, and I'd look back, and he'd look at me. And he came running, he said, I'm going to go find my master. So he came running over, and so I had this choice. Should I admonish him for having run away, or should I give him a treat for having come to me?

[27:42]

So that was a real compelling kind of contradiction. Which should I do, reward him for that? But I put the leash on him and walked him instead of, that was my compromise, instead of letting him be free, I walked him on the leash, which I don't usually do. So, but should I reward him or punish him? Sort of. And then I felt kind of regretful for punishing him because he actually ran over to me without being called. So we're running into these contradictions all the time. And our life is like that a lot. So a hairbreadth's difference and heaven and earth is set apart. What's the difference? The difference is creating a duality.

[28:50]

using our discriminating mind. Discrimination is important. We have to discriminate all the time. But on what basis do we discriminate? We make choices all the time. On what basis do we make our choices? Do we make choices on the basis of... What is best for the situation? Do we make choices on what is best for me? Or for you? Do we make a decision based on a selfish idea? Or do we make a decision based on a selfless idea? Understanding. So that's what we're always confronted with. Moment to moment. Am I going to make a selfish a decision which promotes my self-centeredness, or do I make a decision based on non-self-centeredness, which actually frees me from myself?

[30:09]

The Buddhadharma is actually to free ourself from ourself, because What captivates us is ourself. We're always blaming everything around us for our problems. But our problems really come from ourself, from our addiction to ourself. We're creatures of addiction. Every one of us is addicted to something. And mostly we're addicted to ourself, if nothing else. So how do we let go of ourself? It's really, this is why Zen is so difficult.

[31:14]

Not because of the pain in our legs, but because of our addiction to ourself. Peter? Yes. Yes. Yes. That's why I said we make a talk on a mistake on purpose when we give a talk. To free myself from my addiction to myself. And hopefully you will understand. Linda?

[32:21]

Yes, right. Yeah, we don't have to lose anything. But I know that statement, he separates love from kindness.

[33:27]

He doesn't separate, he says, I would like to use the word love. I know. But he also, yes, he also says to separate because usually metta is, in our day, is called loving kindness. So he separates love from kindness. Kindness is one thing. and love includes that. But whatever you say is fine. I have no quarrel with whatever you're saying. Sure. You know, we're free to use those terms how we like, actually. And so, yeah, no problem. Because we all interpret words. The words are interpreted themselves. And in translation, from different languages, it all gets messed up.

[34:28]

So redeem it for yourself. That's fine, that's what I do. I use the word in different ways. I do, I use the word, you know. Because fundamentally, in Buddhism, the word love means something different. In early Buddhism, love would mean something like sex, usually acquainted with sex, yeah. But later interpretations, it's okay to use the word love as you use it. I'm thinking about Big Mind and how long sometimes it takes Big Mind to make a visit to me.

[35:34]

So I'm thinking about you being out there with your dog and you're an hour late for lunch, moving to hour two. Is there, is it about just waiting for us to get to Big Mind or is there value in having an intention to when the anger comes up or the irritation comes up to try make an effort to sort of switch and give a little space for Big Mind to get in there so that maybe you'll be having a late lunch rather than No, yes, big mind is always there. It's waiting for you to come. But to uncover, you know, I thought when I was, I said, my small mind said,

[36:46]

Here I was, you know, planning to put you in the car and we go and have lunch, right? But then waiting and waiting for him to get in the car, and I didn't have my lunch, you know. That's just my small mind. So my big mind said, you don't need lunch. What are you talking about? You had breakfast. Why do you do that? You just want it. It's just something I wanted. So it's just my small mind saying, yeah, yeah, we're ready, we're having lunch, you know. So that's when I allowed Big Mind to express itself. But even your small mind is an expression of your Buddha nature. So forgive yourself. And realize you really don't need, we don't need anything.

[37:54]

The things that we really need are usually covered over by the things that we think we need. And it's so true. We need so little, and we think we need so much. And we keep upping the ante all the time. Our standard of living is just greed, mostly. Most of it is greed. Our standard of living, what do we need? We don't need as much as we think we need, but we fight each other in order to, and deceive each other in order to get what we think we need. So getting back to the fundamental is actually our practice, even though we get caught by what we think we need. So trusting in Big Mind sounds very tricky in a sense.

[39:00]

and find my next way, find my next way, find my next way. And so what I'm kind of getting is to start letting that go and let things take care of everything. Well, it's true if you have, but you can't just do that. I mean, I don't say that you can't, But you have to have some preparation. You know, you can't just step out the door and forget about what your life is about, has been about. You could, but you'd have to really scramble. That's why we have practice. Practice helps us. You know, if we come to Zazen in the morning and start from zero, You sit Zazen and you start your day from zero.

[40:11]

And from zero, you realize what your surroundings are like without any preparation. So you see clearly. So from the mind of clarity, in that sense, you can start from their fundamental existence. And then we need something besides our fundamental existence, most people do. So then we have to support other people and ourself, and you get tangled up in the entanglements of our city life. So you can't just say, well, you know, I'm just gonna trust my big mind. But if you know how to practice, little by little you begin to realize your big mind and your focus is on big mind, but it takes time for you to actually reach that place.

[41:21]

Even though we talk about sudden enlightenment, sudden enlightenment is really gradual. If it wasn't gradual, it wouldn't be sudden. It needs to be gradual in order to be sudden, and it needs sudden in order to be gradual. I know that sounds funny, but yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes, learning to let go, because when we want something, we want to do something about it.

[42:33]

And the more we try to do something about it, everything has its contradiction, but the more we try to do something about it, the further we push it away. The hurrier we go, the further back we slide, so to speak. Yeah, I agree, just forgetting, just letting go of all, machinations, is allow something to come up. Saying, I don't know, when you don't know is really good. Rather than trying to figure something out, when you let go, you open your mind. I don't know, give up, and then something comes up. Because you're giving it the space to appear. So that's big mind. I'm talking about duality and non-duality is really invoking quantum mechanics for me, like you open Schrodinger's box and the cat, so then the cat loves you or hates you.

[43:37]

Say that again, please. What? What's in the box? The Schrodinger's cat paradox, the cat, like, depends on whether an electron is spinning this way or that way, so in waveform. Once you pin it down, like, everything exists in several different states, Yes, yeah. I mean, I think I understand what you mean, but I would like to understand what you mean. But not to pin it down? Yeah. You know, it's finding the balance. Everything wants to find its balance, but when you force it, then you disrupt the balance. So, not to force things, but allow things to happen. That's big mind.

[44:38]

Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say that that's what big mind is, but that is big mind. So...

[44:58]

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