Good morning. Lately, people have been addressing questions to me about the meaning of emptiness. in Buddhism. It's a strange term because when we say emptiness we immediately get an image of something that's nothing. We conjure up a because we compare what we think is emptiness to what we consider to be form.

[01:06]

So we say the sky is empty, the empty sky, but actually there's nothing in this universe that is not substance. The empty sky is a substance. It's in the phenomenal realm. So as far as the universe goes that we know about, it's all in the realm of phenomena. So what do we mean when we say emptiness? We can say that emptiness is the other side of phenomena, and the Heart Sutra explains this, or at least gives us the information

[02:25]

that we can think about, help to help us to realize what emptiness is. Nagarjuna, who brought forth the Prajnaparamita literature in about the first century B.C. or A.D. or thereabouts, says, meaning of emptiness in Buddhist terminology means interdependence. So if you study the Heart Sutra, there's a little story, a little preamble to the Heart Sutra in one version where Shakyamuni is holding an assembly and Shariputra, one of his main disciples who is very intelligent,

[03:59]

is asking, what is the perfection of wisdom? And Buddha asks Avalokiteshvara, who is a Bodhisattva, to explain it to him. So Shariputra, I mean, Avalokiteshvara says, okay, I'll try. And so he looks at himself, examines himself, and he says, well, I realize that all the five skandhas are empty. So as we know, if we study Buddhism, the five skandhas are form, this form body, the feeling stream, the stream of form, the stream of feelings, the stream of perceptions, the stream of thoughts or mental formations, and the stream of consciousness.

[05:20]

These are like five streams which come together. and coalesce into what we call a person. These are five fundamental constituents of our person and our personality. They're all empty. these five streams. They're simply streams that are converging in a constant flux. And then he says, Shariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That which is form is emptiness

[06:24]

and that which is emptiness is form. Later in the Prajnaparamita literature, and Dogen brings this out, he says, form is form and emptiness is emptiness. Suzuki Roshi says, if you only say form is emptiness and emptiness is form, that's still dualistic, because then you have a form and an emptiness. So to say form is form and emptiness is emptiness cancels out the duality. What does it mean form is form and emptiness is emptiness? So Avalokiteshvara says, the five skandhas in their own being are empty.

[07:28]

These five streams in their own being means independent. It means they don't have inherent existence. They only exist dependent on each other. So, the I sees. but it only sees dependent on an object and a consciousness. The ear hears, but it only hears dependent on an object and a consciousness. If any one of those is not there, there's no seeing and no hearing. So there is no independent existence. No independent existence. of anything. Some of the Buddhists, the old Buddhists thought, but the dharmas, you know, the constituents that make up all these forms are real.

[08:37]

But the Heart Sutra says, those are not real either. Maybe the atoms are real. the atoms are not real either. Not real. They have no own being. Everything is dependent. There is not one thing that's not dependent. So, the five streams that constitute this person, not only interact with each other, but they interact with our surroundings. We don't, you know, as a human being, we're a breathing machine.

[09:40]

We're an eating machine. We're an elimination machine. I sometimes like to think of that we're like earthworms eating our way through the earth and eliminating. And we turn over the earth and the earth fills us. and this continual percolation is going on continuously, continuous transformations. This is the meaning of the Heart Sutra. So it says, no eyes, no ears, in emptiness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. But no also means yes.

[10:47]

There is a nose. There are eyes. There is a body. There is mind. But it's a dependent nose. It's a dependent eye. It's a dependent ear. Without the face, there's no nose. So, who are we? That's the big question. Dogen says, to study the Buddhadharma is to study the self. Well, we can study the self in various ways. What he means is, by sitting zazen, that's called study in that sense. To practice is to study.

[11:51]

Then there's the studying which is more academic, which is different. But you can study reality by paying attention to how the body changes from moment to moment, from day to day, from year to year. You can study reality by noticing how quickly your feelings are changing, and how we hold onto feelings for security, and how our perceptions change, and how our thoughts are continuously being produced and fading. They come up, we notice them, and they're gone.

[12:57]

It's interesting, in music, the notes come up, and they're played, and they're gone. They're only there for that moment. And yet, you use the same notes over and over again without wearing them out. but they're never the same. Nothing is ever the same. There's only this moment and this experience, even though something seems different, or it seems the same, excuse me. Suzuki Roshi talked about our practice as being so repetitive. Every day you come to the Zen Do, you bow, you sit on your seat, you do Zazen in the same way, you chant the sutra in the same way, you bow in the same way, and every day you chant the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, day after day after day.

[14:07]

And if you think that you're chanting the same sutra today that you chanted yesterday, then you will be bored. But chanting the sutra today is totally different than chanting the sutra yesterday. It's a whole new experience. And if you don't have that sense of presence, you will think, oh, I've done this before. So we tend as human beings to want a wide range of experience, seek a wide range of experience to keep ourselves interested in life. But if you know how to experience everything, how to experience your life totally on each moment, it's not necessary to have so much variety.

[15:12]

And if your mind is open and not filled with fantasy so much, the world in front of us opens up in a very spectacular way. When we sit sasheen on the third day, you walk out the door and the whole world is sparkling. And you're totally amazed at how what seems like ordinary is so extraordinary. Just because it's this moment and you totally let go of self. So in this transient world, to understand the meaning of transiency is the most important thing.

[16:35]

This is what Dogen is always talking about. He's always admonishing his students to be aware of transiency, to always be aware of transiency, that things are passing very quickly and we should make an effort to understand the meaning of this life within this short period of time. So Dogen says, to study the Buddhadharma is to study the self in all of its aspects, especially transiency, the meaning of transiency.

[17:44]

And to study the self means to let go of selfness, selfishness, self-centeredness, or the idea that there is a self here. There's simply the five streams. Being, feeling, perceptions, thinking, mind, and consciousness. But within those five, there is no self. This is just basic Buddhism. But we feel like a self. We feel that there is a self. So this is part of the problem.

[18:48]

There is a self. There is an ego. They do exist. but they're not real. Real means substantial. If things were real, that means that they would always exist. So if I was real, I would always be here, sitting in this seat forever. But maybe that's so. So reality means non-substantial. But we tend to think that reality means substantial. When we think of something's reality, we think of its substantiality.

[19:57]

But that's upside down. So things do exist momentarily, but really momentarily, because if you try to catch the existence of something and pin it down, it's already gone. So we're not so interested in those mechanics. What we're interested in is how we relate to the fact of transiency. How do we relate to the fact of transiency? How do we accept ourself on each moment just as we are, accept our experience just as it is, accept our position just as it is?

[21:02]

accept our birth, accept our youth, accept our middle age, accept our old age and accept our demise as natural order of things. Thich Nhat Hanh says something like, We tend to think that this transiency is sorrowful, but actually we should be happy about it. We should be happy about the transiency of life. If we know how to be present on each moment, without regret and go with each change.

[22:11]

We can appreciate our life in every stage. And then we always have a feeling of joy in every stage of our life. Of course, we make mistakes and life hands us bitter pills, which are hard to accept. But if we know how to have composure, we can accept everything. And our mind is big enough and wide enough to accept everything. So in Zazen, form and emptiness come together.

[23:22]

We don't make a distinction between form and emptiness in Zazen. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That which is emptiness is form and that which is form is emptiness. Just this. When we sit zazen, it's just this. No division. No duality. and we can accept our life exactly as it is. When it's painful, we accept it as painful.

[24:34]

When it's pleasurable, we accept it as pleasurable. Painful doesn't necessarily mean not pleasant. In pain there's some pleasure and in pleasure there's some pain. It's a mixed bag. So all forms in their own being are empty. all the forms depend on that which is not those forms for their existence. All the things that we feel are not myself are actually what myself is.

[25:42]

So we say our true self is the whole universe. We may not feel that way, but it's so. And it's very logical, the most logical understanding. Because of emptiness, everything has a place to go. So as my old teacher used to say, everything is falling out of balance constantly and regaining its balance constantly. This is something that we should really contemplate. We're finding our new condition every moment.

[26:49]

our new balance, our new relationship to everything around us, moment by moment. If we don't do that, we get stuck. If we hesitate or we miss or we have some fear or resistance, then we start to suffer and hurt. But if we know how to move with each change and find our balance, find our relationship to our surroundings moment by moment, then we can maintain our composure, maintain our balance, maintain our presence, and harmonize our life without resorting to creating a self because we're just simply moving with our self.

[27:58]

We let go of that division between myself as a subject and the world as an object. Not so easy, but this is our effort as our practice. This is what we do on the cushion, and this is what we do off the cushion. This is how to extend practice into our daily life. It's a kind of dance. And it takes soft mind, flexible mind, and compassionate mind.

[29:11]

So realizing emptiness, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, is to realize compassionate mind. The truly compassionate mind means there's only you realize that every existence is a part of yourself. So sometimes we say you should be independent.

[30:23]

But independence means total dependence, just like emptiness means fullness. The real meaning of emptiness is totally full. Because in order to accept emptiness, you have to accept everything as one body. And when there's one, when you realize everything is one body, that's total independence. Because there's nothing else to be dependent on. There's nothing outside of yourself to be dependent on. That's what we mean by independence. Total dependence. Totally dependent. So I encourage you to sit zazen in order to understand yourself, your true self.

[31:42]

That's the easiest way. Do you have any questions? Yeah. Pain is pleasurable. I said within pain there is pleasure. I didn't say it was pleasurable. Yeah, there's a difference. Within pain, there's pleasure. Within pleasure, there is pain. If you know how to handle pleasure, pain, excuse me, if you know how to accept pain, then you have the pleasure of being able to accept it. Uh, and pleasure, um, you know, one thing follows another night follows day.

[32:47]

This rain follows the sun. Pain follows pleasure. Pleasure follows pain. Okay. Were you going to read something? Well, you see, that's a good question. This is my backup. You know, my memory is not too good all the time. So I bring the book, you know, in case I forget something. But then I forget that I have the book. I see a hand. Oh, there's Ross over there. You said pain follows pleasure as light follows day. Is that related to Dogon's firewood not becoming ash?

[33:55]

No. It's not. No, it's not related. But you can relate it if you want to. It's not what he's talking about. things have a life unto themselves, they don't turn into something else. Right. So when you said pain turns into pleasure... No, I said follows. Follows pleasure. Pain doesn't turn into pleasure. Which is not being present and not being open to this moment, which is what our practice is about. So that's what I'm kind of, I could use some help sorting that out. Well, if you think that pain always follows pleasure or that pleasure always follows pain, then you have a problem.

[34:59]

So it's not that it's inevitable, it's simply that this happens, this does happen. For instance, you have the pleasure of falling in love with somebody then you have the pain of them leaving you in one way or another either through willfulness or death. So whatever we become attached to will leave us. So if and we become attached to things all the time. We're always becoming attached to something. Mostly we become attached to our pleasure, but we also become attached to our displeasure. So we don't think we're attached to our pain, but we are.

[36:03]

The way that we're attached to our pain is we don't want to be there. That's attachment. So, as long as you don't want your pain to be there, you're attached to your pain. As long as you don't want your pleasure to leave you, you're attached to your pleasure. So, because of attachment, pain follows pleasure, and pleasure follows pain. Okay, because of our non-attachment that we follow. No. Yeah, we hold on to our ... well, attachment looks like holding on, but it's also aversion that's holding on. Aversion is also grasping. Yeah. Thank you.

[37:06]

In my suffering in various versions of that, What comes to me as the place of what you're talking about as pleasure, I believe, is when I actually accept the pain. The moment of accepting the pain, not resisting it, really allowing for that to have its presence. In that moment, I find ease. And ease doesn't necessarily mean I'm filled with great joy. It means that there's another moment, another possibility. Something I heard recently, which I really like, which I think relates, is that we don't have what we have until we give it to someone else. Yeah, I agree with that. Clay? Yeah. Thank you for your lecture on emptiness and interdependence, which is very good.

[38:08]

What I wanted to say was that there's this very strong feeling of separateness though, this very strong experience that we are separate. We are separate existences. And the rest of that is really nonsense. That's such a strong experience that it's hard to deal with that. Well, I think that in our society, particular society, we tend to be isolated more than most other societies. And so we feel that much more strongly, In another society, the people on your block, so to speak, would all be one family, and everybody would know each other, and the children would all be playing with each other.

[39:20]

But in America, on your block, you don't know who your next-door neighbor is, the people across the street. So we do have this isolation, and we're isolated according to our since we're not tribal, we tend to join different families according to our propensities like our emotional needs or our intellectual needs. So we know people scattered around and they're our neighbors. So we do have this problem, but even that's another problem. Letting go of the idea of self means to take the ego and not to get rid of the ego.

[40:28]

but to put the ego in the service of, well, as I say, our practice, or put the ego into the service of away from self-centeredness to serving others, actually. Being in the service of others is how we let go of self, basically. This is to forget the self. To forget the self is to really make an effort to help other people.

[41:32]

So that way you don't feel You may feel lonely or estranged or, you know, separate, but the more you can do that, the less separate you feel. Well, as I was asking my question, I was realizing that, Art, and you started talking about sort of more communal kinds of societies, that we're really stuck on ourselves here in America. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, the society is steering toward self-preservation, doing as much as you can for yourself.

[42:40]

In the beginning, somewhere in the Mind of Clover, that book that Ekaroshi wrote about precepts, he gives this example from of a misuse of the teaching of emptiness, where he says that the people who enlisted Zen training, or training of samurais, he quotes some teacher in the 18th century or something, and says, when you raise your sword, do not think that the enemy, your sword is empty, the person before you is empty, This empty sword goes through this empty person. Yeah, that's the perversion. What's wrong with that? That's the perversion. In Buddhism, for every truth or reality, there is a counterfeit. But why is that wrong? Why is it wrong? It's not wrong, but it's not right. It's true, except that it's not right. It's just morally wrong?

[43:49]

That's right, it's morally wrong. It's one side is the problem. In order to be real wisdom, it has to encompass both sides. The part that's missing is the side of compassion. So wisdom without compassion is totally dangerous. Just like Charles Manson. If they don't exist, what's the problem with killing them? Or Hitler. It's incomplete wisdom. What's missing is form is form. What's missing is form is form. Yeah.

[44:50]

Somebody in the back there. Okay, waving the hand. I have a question about pain. You know, abscesses is one of my hobbies. I had another one this week and I remember I can There's a big contrast from how it used to be, in which I used to be panic-stricken about the pain, and sort of contorting, and, oh my god, this is terrible, I can't stand it. And now it's like I just sort of observe it, and I observe the pain coming and going, and I try to take the least medicine possible. And it's a real different experience. And I think the amount of pain is really the same. But I experience the pain as so oh my God, you know, like before. And now it's just like, oh, well, yeah, no, I can't do too much today. So that was, I don't have that figured out yet, but it seems a big contrast in my pain experience.

[46:02]

That's right. I appreciate your saying that. Ivan? Yeah. How do you, you know, what happens if you, you know, are experiencing pleasure and all of a sudden you think, oh my God, pain's going to come soon. That's called anticipation. The secret of life is no anticipation. Don't get ahead of yourself. Then you're no longer where you are. You've forfeited your presence. What? You're already in pain. You're already in pain, yeah. Muffet? The Hara Sutra, I guess it just from your lecture seemed to make something a little clearer to me that I had before been thinking of the, what do you call it,

[47:09]

perfect mantra at the end, gatte gatte. And I've always thought of that as a kind of going beyond, in a sense of going beyond life. And I do think of it when people die, as we say. And I have in mind the concept of something that's not form or emptiness, but is beyond that. I don't know what it is, but that's the concept. Well, it is beyond form and emptiness. That there's an absolute something or an unconditional something. I don't know about that, but it did occur, I mean, I don't know, it's just something that I realized that I carry and that I find references to in Buddhism and Hinduism. But it also really occurred to me that the God beyond enlightenment Svaha is really indicating that that's an enlightenment state now.

[48:21]

These concepts of form, emptiness, feeling, perception, this is a kind of still in this joint interconnected duality. But they're going beyond, somehow, whatever that So going, there's no place that it goes. There's no place to go. When you can live your life, when you know how to live in that way, on this shore, you're already on the other shore. There's no two shores. It's just a way of speaking. So we don't go anywhere. We don't come from anywhere and we don't go anywhere. There's a sense of loss, but you know... imagine or maybe it's except that there's not, I don't know, that they won't reassemble somewhere in some recognizable way.

[50:00]

But if you identify with, you know, with all the forms as yourself, then there's nothing lost. I'm not there yet. Grief is appropriate, though, at times, right? Oh, it is, definitely, you know, because when we have relationship, we feel gain and loss, right? So, of course, it's appropriate. Yeah, definitely appropriate. When someone comes into the world, we're very happy. When they leave the world, we're very sad. And so we gain and we lose. But there's also the level of no gain and no loss. So things exist on many levels at the same time.

[51:05]

there's a level of gain and loss, which we should acknowledge that. Otherwise, you're a very cold person. But on the other hand, in the absolute sense, there's no gain or loss. Nothing gained and nothing lost. So we have to understand. If we only understand one level, then it's incomplete. Our understanding is incomplete. If we only understand on the form level, that's gain and loss. If we only understand on the emptiness level, is gained and nothing is lost.

[52:14]

So it's in between those two is where the actual life takes place. Yes, there's gain and loss and at the same time there's nothing gained and nothing lost. Spirit? Well, spirit is a real tricky word, very tricky word. Well, it's a very tricky place, because when you start separating spirit and matter, then you have these ghosts floating around, you know. You can do that, people do that, but we don't separate spirit from matter.

[53:24]

Although, you know, folklore is full of spirit and matter, Not so, no. Emptiness is the fundamental, what is fundamental to existence. Emptiness is, without emptiness there's no existence. It's not spirit. People who talk in terms of spirit would say the same thing. Emptiness is what underlies, not underlies, but is the essence of all things.

[54:38]

The essential thing, which is not a and all the forms are the forms of emptiness. All the forms are the expression of emptiness, but they're not two different things. We only divide them in order to explain something because you can't explain something in oneness. you can only explain something in duality. So we create a duality on purpose to talk about something that can't be explained any other way. Because the only way to explain things is through contrast. So that's why things become confusing.

[55:49]

So we have to understand that it's an expedient means to talk about form and emptiness. The form is the emptiness, the forms are the expression of the emptiness, but the emptiness is not something separate from the forms. It's like everything, you know if you look at a pile of worms a big pile of worms, you know, they're just all doing this thing, right? But it's one pile of worms, that form is emptiness. I keep reducing everything to worms, I don't know why. What about spaghetti? Thank you very much.

[56:42]

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