Vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning.

[01:10]

Yes, that will be more the subtext than the overt topic of today. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of studying a fascicle of Dogen Zenji's called Shoji with a group of people, a group of friends. It's a nice little fascicle, Shoji means birth and death. And a lot of what he's talking about in that fascicle is how to, well anyway, what I realized when we were studying was that a very common theme of Dogen's is how to not let your mistaken ideas about enlightenment get in the way of your actual enlightenment. And Like in Shoji he says, to try to reach enlightenment by getting out of birth and death is like looking in the southern sky to see the North Star or like hopping on a train to LA so you can get to Portland, Oregon.

[02:28]

You just get further and further from where you want to go. And in another fascicle of Dogen Genjo Kowan he says, to carry the self forward and try to realize the 10,000 things, you know, everything is delusion. That the 10,000 things advance and realize the self is enlightenment. And in that same fascicle he goes on to say those who deeply and thoroughly understand delusion are called Buddhas. Those who are completely and thoroughly confused about enlightenment are sentient beings. However, in any case, as we were studying and reading this I started to wonder I don't think this is my issue, this thing about being confused about it, you know, like getting caught up in trying to achieve enlightenment. And I thought, I don't think that's my problem.

[03:31]

I think it was, it has been at different times, you know, like maybe when I was living at Tassajara or maybe during a session, like you would get, so I get maybe sort of caught up in the idea of enlightenment. But really, you know, since I moved to Berkeley and started my lay life, it's really much more like how to get through the day. How to get through the day with some kind of grace and humor and, you know, without doing too much damage. And in a way, that's actually what he's talking about in Shoji. He's kind of saying, there's no enlightenment outside of just getting through the day with grace and humor and mindfulness and generosity and energy and ethical behavior and all the things that are part of our practice. So I wanted to talk about, oh, so then I was trying to think, well, what is my issue?

[04:35]

And I came up, here's what I came up with, to not let my mistaken ideas about relationships get in the way of my actual relationships. Because, you know, I think our minds are like factories of mistaken ideas about whatever it is that we're intent upon. Whatever it is that we think is important, whatever it is that we think we're doing, we just generate, our minds just, brains just generate a variety of ideas, probably some enlightened and some mistaken. But the idea, the important thing is not to let, not to get caught by your mistaken ideas. Yesterday I was talking to my sister. My sister takes care of my mom full time, many of you know. And she was saying that she realized that she had gotten caught up in thinking that when my mom is suffering, she's not doing a good job.

[05:40]

And she realized that that wasn't true. And of course, my mom, you know, my sister takes care of my mom completely, almost like an infant. My mom's completely dependent on her, and that's the actual relationship. My sister takes care of her morning, noon, and night, you know. And my mom has a good life mainly because of my sister's generosity in taking care of her. And my sister also is, you know, dependent on other people who are helping take care of her. And so that's maybe more the actual situation, but my sister had this idea that when my mom, and my mom isn't declining, she's 94, so there's no escape for her from suffering quite a lot. my sister realized that she had this idea that whenever my mom was suffering she was not doing a good job, which is, you know, she realized that was a mistaken idea. But underneath that mistaken idea is an even deeper mistaken idea, which is that her idea that she could get a sense about herself from doing this.

[06:49]

And, um, That's the kind of mistaken idea that we're really talking about in our practice. And that's not what's motivating my sister. My sister's motivated by her love for my mother and her care, but because that's what she's doing, because that's her main activity, taking care of my mom, these ideas are going to creep in. And the idea that she's going to somehow establish herself in a good way, solidly, permanently and securely with a sense of herself as doing a good job. That's kind of the real mistaken idea underneath there. In traditional Buddhism mistaken ideas are sometimes grouped into, categorized as three different types. Ideas about permanence, ideas about identity and self and ideas about satisfaction.

[07:53]

Usually that we're going to be able to satisfy our need for permanence and identity. So, and Suzuki Roshi also he kind of very elegantly packs them back up into just gaining ideas which I think is a wonderful teaching and something that I keep coming back to and never kind of get to the bottom of. But you can also just study yourself and you don't need to use Buddhist grouping and just notice your own thinking, the way you think about things. And in particular, the way to tell oftentimes the mistaken ideas are the ones that don't work. So you can sort of notice if you're getting frustrated or discouraged or depressed, that maybe there's some mistaken idea underneath there. We think permanence is ... and these things are sort of things we naturally want.

[09:00]

We naturally are uneasy about the actual situation which is this shifting, impermanent. you know, one day we're one way, one day we're another, we don't have a fixed self, and we don't, you know, so the outer world is not fixed, the inner world is not fixed, and everything's kind of shifting and uneasy. So the more we're uneasy about that situation, the more the mistaken ideas have something to, they're generated and then we hang on to them, hoping that they're going to sort of like settle this circumstance. The first kind of relationship I wanted to bring up is what I'm calling our relationship with the unseen, unknown others. Our life is completely supported and dependent on so many other beings.

[10:05]

All the people, just, you know, if you, like we say in our meal chant, we should know how this food comes to us. We need to reflect on how this food comes to us. So, just being aware of, you know, the people who saved the seeds and then planted the seeds, who picked it, who packed it, you know, the truckers, everybody, just for a meal, just for one meal. all the people that we're in relationship to based just on that one meal. At first, I was just going to bring up people. I was going to not bring up animals and plants because I just thought, oh, that's just too vast. I can't even encompass that. But then I was listening to the radio and I heard this I heard that bees, one-third of our food crops in this country are dependent on bees pollinating them.

[11:07]

So, that's a lot. That seems like a lot to me. Like, you know, I'm so ignorant, you know, when I first heard about this thing about the bees dying off, I thought, well, honey, you know, we won't have honey. Yeah, that's sad, but I wasn't, this is like, this is huge, you know. This is really huge. And so we're dependent on bees. you know, how often do you think about that? I wasn't even aware of it, you know, and that's kind of the mistaken idea, the main mistaken idea, I think, about the unseen, unknown others is that we're just totally unaware of them. The, I have a thought in there. All right. Like, you know, I was thinking about how when you watch a movie and you see the credits at the end, I'm always so amazed, you know, like how many people were involved in that.

[12:16]

It's just so amazing. And I was thinking that's like every moment of your life has this long thing of credits, you know, but you don't have time to read the credits because you're into another moment, you know. And so you just, it's just really so like just settling with that and being aware like maybe, you know, if we're not incredibly grateful. Maybe that's the mistaken idea that every moment of the day we would feel the support and be incredibly grateful. But then I was thinking, well, maybe not, though, because the unseen, unknown others are also like the drunk drivers and the polluting companies who give us cancer or the scientists who didn't discover a cure for whatever kills us. So there's no commitment in a certain way. On their part, there's no commitment to our life, sustaining our life. So maybe that's why, maybe there's a reason to not feel grateful because it's like you can feel like, well, wait, yeah, they're doing this, but they could just as easily decide not to sustain my life.

[13:22]

But still, I think that it's good to remember this thing about the kindness of strangers, that we're always completely dependent on the kindness of strangers. And when it comes to mistaken, I was thinking about, well, what are the mistaken ideas about this relationship, the relationship with the unseen, unknown others? I mean, maybe you can think of some too, but what I was thinking is that these are kind of more the general you know, like our sense of belonging, the way we want to divide the others up into the ones that are in and the ones that are out. Like we try to make ourselves feel more in by making some people out or we try to make ourselves feel more right by making some other people wrong. We feel more free if other people are enslaved. And this is very unconscious and it's kind of a group think thing. we try to sort of jockey our position and establish ourselves based on some way of conceptualizing the unseen, unknown others.

[14:30]

And that's kind of, maybe that's, anyway, that's one set of mistaken ideas that we can get involved with and it's really good to be aware, you know, that we have more if other people have less. That's an idea we have sometimes. It's not really true because we're too connected. But it's a very easy idea to have. And it's not so much, it's actually true, we set up, we try to set up the world, you know, getting the resources of others so that we feel more secure, but also it's just an idea, it's never gonna be satisfied. So it's really good to be aware of that. It's totally mistaken. It's not gonna give you the thing that you're uneasily searching for. give me anything I'm uneasily searching for. But then what I really wanted to talk about today are the relationships that are defined by that mysterious mammalian glue that makes us connected to the people that we know—our friends, our children, our parents, our Dharma brothers and sisters.

[15:44]

our co-workers, our teachers, our students. Scientists are, you know, they're discovering a lot about how we're actually, there is some kind of glue that connects us to each other and we regulate each other's bodily functions. We regulate each other's breath and heart rate and just underneath all our ideas about our relationships, there's actual relationships that are happening. And it reminded me of that phrase in a story about Deng Xian where he's asking about He's heard that the non-sentient beings preach the Dharma and he's asking, why can't I hear it? And the teacher says, well, just don't hinder that which hears it. So that's kind of what I want to bring up is how do we keep orienting towards our actual relationship with each other and letting go of our ideas about what that relationship might do for us, basically.

[16:57]

And that's kind of what gets in the way. What is this relationship going to do for me? I was thinking about, because I'm a mom, thinking about parenting, and I was thinking that the job of a parent is to give your children permanence, identity, and satisfaction. And children do not, so it's like children do not thrive if they don't have. Babies need, you know, it starts out with just, I'm here, and then it's like, I'm here when you go to sleep at night, and I'm here when you wake up in the morning. And then it's like, I'm here when you go to school, and I'm here when you come back. So there's just this, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. And children need adults and parents to reflect back what they're feeling and give names to their feelings.

[18:00]

That's a really important role that parents and adults have with children because, really because of impermanence, because there's all these different things going on. And how do you manage all your different selves? And so part of a role as a parent is to give words and give techniques, give strategies for handling yourself and kind of giving you yourself. And we need to give children we need to satisfy their actual needs and give them, and also just to me, a sense that this world is a good place to be. This, as we talk about in Buddhism, this Saha world, the world to be endured, is a place to stay and be, and be satisfied, find joy and happiness here. So you might think that the parents have to be like a little bit deluded to give this, right?

[19:02]

Like you have to really believe in permanence so that you can give your kids permanence. But actually, it's just the opposite because this thing about the permanence, the mistaken ideas, is always about our own, you know, idea. parents would, you're looking to your children, your relationship with your children to give you a sense of permanence or to give you an identity or to give you satisfaction. So really for as parent, as we all know, those of us who are parents, the more you let go and the more you understand impermanence, the more you can be there. and know how important it is to be there when they go to sleep at night and when they wake up in the morning, knowing that at any moment the impermanence could come in and cut the whole thing off in any number of ways. So you're aware of that and you're holding that and that is almost like what's helping you give that permanence to the child because you're aware.

[20:04]

And knowing selflessness, knowing that there is no fixed self is what enables you to respond to that momentary being that's in front of you with reflecting, here's who you are, here's who you are, I see you and here's who you are. And knowing that the more we accept that uneasiness, that way that we're never going to satisfy, it's always going to come up, we're always going to yearn for something a little more solid, and knowing that that's not going to be satisfied. then you can offer your children the joy. You understand how to find joy in this world as it is and you can offer your children that. And then so when we really understand and have accepted impermanence and no-self

[21:14]

then we can just somehow settle into that whatever that actual relationship is the regulating and you know the harmonizing the regulating and then and the love can just flow freely back and forth and that's what we want we want relationships where the love can just flow freely back and forth not get our little like my sister thinking she was going to get some little thing that she could hold on to, you know, and just forgetting momentarily that that's not going to happen and, you know, just to give, just to give. Another kind of relationship that we're involved in as mammals is relationships of equals where, you know, our friends, our partners, our spouses, our Dharma sisters and brothers. And there's some, again, there's some actual way that we're glued together in a beneficial way to each other's benefit.

[22:26]

We're regulating each other, helping, you know, each other beyond our ideas of what will actually help and what won't. I've been noticing lately that one part of my relationship with Alan that when it works, what it seems like we're doing is we both kind of orient towards whichever one of us is more grounded in a particular conflict or in a particular moment or particular difficulty we're having. And you never quite know ahead of time but there's a way you can learn to rely on the other person, I think, and I think this would translate to other relationships, not just spouses, you know, and you kind of have to go, it's almost like you're going against the instinct, because I think our instinct is the more we're confused and the more we're subject to a mistaken idea and the more we're attached, the more we hold on, the more we're sure we're right, and the more urgently we feel we must make our point.

[23:29]

And when we're not so much subject to mistaken ideas, we're more open and flexible and kind of, well, whatever. I feel like what we're learning how to do is the opposite of that. It's like to have faith if you're feeling confused or unsure, to be more letting go, to take more of the letting go role. Let yourself orient towards the other person if they're seeming. What I'm talking about is not anything I can't quite get my hands on, I can't quite hold on to it, but it's there. And then if you are actually aware, and this has been, I think this is the hard thing for me, if I'm aware that I might be a little more on the solid ground than he is to hold my ground and stay there and let him orient towards me. So, and it's very, it's moving and changing and moment by moment, you never quite know where you're gonna come down.

[24:34]

But I think what it is, is it's allowing that real relationship, that real connection that we have with each other to emerge. I was thinking about what these mistaken ideas, I think they're kind of like spam in email. It's like they're coming through on the same channel that all the other ideas are coming through on. It's like you can't tell. It's not like, okay, if it's coming from over here, it's a mistaken idea. If it's coming from my right brain, it's a mistaken idea. If it's coming from my left brain, it's a true idea. You can't tell. It's coming through the same way that your good ideas and your neutral ideas are coming through. And, you know, I think that the so-called enlightened ideas are kind of like your real email, that they don't have any marks.

[25:37]

Like, you can't say anything about what might be an email that you want to receive. There's no characteristics to that. It could be coming from, you know, your long-lost college friend that found you on Google, or it could be any one of a number of things. But like the mistaken ideas have marks right like so like we I have a really good spam filter on my I have these various stages I guess everybody is like my my my service provider filters it out before it even gets to me a lot of it and then I get a few that like my Norton. Utilities filters out and then I get a few that actually come in and I have to like recognize but like they're always there's just a few things the reason why the Reason why the ISP can filter mouse because there's just a few things right there's like sex dollars on there's dollar signs on it or there's sex you know or Viagra or whatever or there's you know there there's a few things and they can just filter all those out and So that's kind of like how we have to train ourselves with our own ideas, like to recognize the ones with the dollar signs on them.

[26:40]

And I'm glad Mel's here because the other one, a relationship I wanted to bring up, but I wanted to make sure that he could correct me if I was wrong, is the teacher-student relationship. When I first came, I feel a little, I'm a little bit on, I'm a little nervous about bringing this up. when I first came to practice back in the late seventies, there was a lot of mystique about the teacher and like a lot of adoration and a lot of transference, you know, there was, and then I think, I guess, with all the scandals and problems or maybe we've just matured, I think There's less of that, but I almost feel like maybe we've gone too far in the other direction. Like, I don't know how to explain it, but it almost seems like we're not appreciating the value of that relationship somehow.

[27:44]

I don't know. But here's my idea about how it works, and then we're gonna... So my idea is we're open to everyone's dharma. We open ourselves to each person's dharma. Each person that we meet, we open to their dharma, and we receive their dharma. And so we're not going around, you're not my teacher, [...] right? That's not how we find our teacher. we open to each person's dharma and then sometimes you will find that there's like this almost like tractor beam that pulls you along the path. You get in relation to the person and this tractor beam you just kind of move or you know you can really feel where your edge is and where you need to work just in relationship to that person. And if a lot of people feel that way about one person, they get to become seen as a teacher.

[28:47]

And that's a very, not to minimize the value of that, that is really a wonderful thing that can happen for us. And also, because it's an important thing, it can generate a lot of mistaken, just that fact that you feel that connection to the person generates a lot of mistaken ideas. I was very young when I first started practicing, and I just didn't know what it is. Is this my best friend? Is this my lover? Am I in love? Is this my dad? What is it? But still, that's normal. All those mistaken ideas are going to come up. You just let them come and go. to appreciate how precious it is to have that we have this possibility that we can regulate, you know, that we can not just regulate each other but we can move on the path through relationship.

[29:51]

So that's the end of my prepared part of the talk and Usually we wait till the end, but I think you want to say something now? Anything I said, particularly the teacher-student relationship? It's not that they're happy.

[31:03]

It's just a feeling. So I think part of what I was trying to say is that because of all the scandals and trouble that people have gotten into, we might be too reserved and feel too frightened, you know.

[32:57]

And, you know, you don't actually need somebody who never makes a mistake. And to remember that, I mean, I think you don't, but you don't need to, you know, so I think the inclination is just to feel like, well, I just got to stand on my own two feet starting now, which is good. It's good to feel that you need to stand on your own two feet, but don't be open to that feeling that someone can help you find that, find your center. And that's really, it's like, it's one of the main parts of practice, you know, that the Buddha came, the Buddha's teaching came to us, warm hand to warm hand, came from him through, you know, different people, passing it to different people, passing it to different people. And that's how we receive it. So, please. Right.

[34:08]

Follow the teacher's dharma, not their mistaken ideas. Other people want to bring up anything? Yes? You say all the scandals. I'm not aware of us being fraught with scandals. Well, at BCC we're not, yeah. Mistakes have been known to be made within this sangha at different times. I think it's a good, that's good. Yes. In order for Dumbo to fly, his friend gives him a quote, magic feather, which gives him the power to fly, but he's always able to fly by himself.

[35:23]

But he uses his magic feather, and suddenly he can fly, and then one day he's flying alone, and he drops the feather, and he's like, oh! And his friend's like, you can fly by yourself, you can fly by yourself! He's like, no, no, I can't, I can't! That's like, and I think in Zen, there's this thing about the sky hook, right? The teacher gives you a sky hook or something. It's just hooked on the sky, but like, here, take this hook and hold on to this. And then it goes, whoa, it's not hooked on to anything. Yes, Robin? And so just the idea of an idea is a trap.

[36:26]

The fact that there are ideas means it's a mistake. But yet you have to be here. It's like we have to be here with our bodies. We have to be here with ideas because we can't function without them. Right. But yeah, so I think the more you reflect. I think most of us who've been practicing for a while have that experience. The more you reflect, the more likely it is to pop in your mind, oh, this is just an idea, you know? And then you drop back down to whatever is happening, you know? Like with my mom and my sister, you know, oh, right, I'm just taking care of her. Sometimes it's gonna feel like I'm a good person taking care of her mom, but ultimately, I'm not gonna be able to hold onto that, you know?

[37:32]

That's just another idea. But we suffer a lot when we're caught in these ideas, I think. I mean, I think you're talking about something a little deeper, which I can't quite get my mind around, which is maybe that mistaken ideas are just another expression of life, and they're really not Yeah, right. But yet, our life can sort of be oriented in a harmonious way, or... But it's also emotional.

[38:37]

I mean, I think the ones I'm talking about are the ones that are strong enough to cause emotional pain. It's something more to get to know yourself, to keep getting, that's why Zazen is so great, you just keep getting to know yourself and the way you think, the way you feel. Yeah. Any other thoughts, Megan?

[39:44]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What it's going to feel like or what it's going to, yeah, I think partly what it's going to feel like, not so much, like I think there's this whole thing about being seen, maybe particularly women, but everybody has this thing, but I think part of it is sometimes it does not going to feel, you know, and that's part of the thing about the teacher too, it's not going to feel the way you think it's going to feel. It's not, when you're seen, it may not feel the way you imagine you'll feel when you feel, when you are seen, you know? And so to not get caught by that, well, I'm not seen because it doesn't feel the way I knew it would feel, which was some kind of something I could hold on to or some kind of, you know. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be aware of each other and see each other and try to see each other better and better. But I think that there's being seen and then there's the idea that that's going to give you some thing and that's where you feel, I must not see me because I still feel unseen, you know, but you just, it's, yeah, get back down to what's really flowing between you and the other person.

[41:18]

Speak up. I have struggled with, I thought probably mistaken ideas, just differently because I know some of the people who are running this boat, two boats, who are trying to get into Gaza. To Gaza? I could have gone on that boat, but I didn't go. I keep having this idea that I should have had the courage to go, but then it's not my path. I just want to go because all the visiting and all the... I want to go because I can't find my country. I can imagine, yeah, because you want to feel like you're doing something about that situation. And so you think, well, I don't feel like I'm doing anything now, but I would feel like I was doing something if I did that. Right. But maybe, I mean, part of what, if we're going along with lines, what I'm saying is like, for you to feel like you're doing something about that situation is different from the fact that you're doing something about that situation.

[42:36]

You're doing things about that situation, but you may never feel that you're doing things because that's something that's not available. You've got to keep witnessing the bigger picture of how you're part of the doing of something about that situation. Yeah. Ken? So it's like a physical, almost a feeling? I've also had experiences where I'd be feeling anxiety about something.

[43:39]

And I feel like it's wholesome anxiety. Like there is something that is worrisome. do something about it, it feels good. It seems appropriate. And it doesn't spin off, and it's when you don't do something about it that it spins off into the real kind of torturous anxiety. Yeah, like preparing for this, when I was getting, I was preparing, that was okay, but when I stopped preparing and was just waiting, I started to get really anxious. And then I thought, because I've given a few talks and I know, that's part of the energy that I give the talk with. I need to let that anxiety kind of flow freely because otherwise my talk is going to be incredibly boring because there's nothing behind it. And, you know, maybe it was anyway, but, you know. I realized that as I was saying, oh, this is OK. This is normal. Of course, I would feel I'm about to get up in front of a room full of people.

[44:41]

And of course, I would feel nervous. But yet this is the energy flowing through me that that is part of our relationship with each other. So it's hard, you never, I'm not sure you ever know, except that when you get really frustrated and discouraged, you can usually tell that that is not an idea in accord with reality. It's like things should be a certain way. Well, no. but you can have an idea of how things could be and you can bring forth your effort to make things more the way they could be, that you see they could be. I think it's what you said, that it's not that it feels good or bad, it's that it feels real or not real. Yeah, and maybe it's hard to ever really get a firm, conceptual, I think, yeah, it's always going to be a little bit outside of our conceptual ideas about it, which is, that's our practice, to keep opening to that part, that side.

[45:48]

I think we're, I'm getting a signal and we're, thank you all.

[45:53]

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