So tonight, I think we'll mostly try to, after we kind of report in from the work that we were going to do in the previous week, I'd like to focus in on the Third Noble Truth of Cessation, or Naroda, and it's very interesting. I think it would be interesting to talk about it. There's a lot to, I think, just share amongst ourselves about that, and some interesting material that I've been thinking about to share with you that might be somewhat provocative. Let's see. I'd like to read the first three truths, where we've been so far, and then

[01:17]

maybe discuss what we were left with at the end of the last class. So, the First Noble Truth, the Truth of Dukkha, or Suffering. This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of Dukkha. Birth is Dukkha. Aging is Dukkha. Sickness is Dukkha. Death is Dukkha. Sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are Dukkha. Association with the unloved or unpleasant condition is Dukkha. Separation from the beloved or pleasant condition is Dukkha. Not to get what one wants is Dukkha. In brief, the five aggregates of attachment are Dukkha. Those are the skandhas. And the Second Noble Truth is the Truth of the Origin of Dukkha. This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of the Origin

[02:19]

of Dukkha. It is craving, which produces rebirth, bound up with pleasure and greed. It finds delight in this and that. In other words, craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence or becoming, and craving for non-existence or self-annihilation. And the third is, This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Dukkha. It is the complete cessation of Dukkha. Giving up, renouncing, relinquishing, detaching from craving. Very simple, straightforward. So those are the truths we've been discussing. I think where we left, we were talking, well there were a number of things we were talking about. In the end, I read you this

[03:26]

line from Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddhist Teaching, which is, Until we begin to practice the Second Noble Truth, we tend to blame others for our unhappiness. So, it was kind of an assignment to explore how, one, me, you, uh, wants to make Dukkha our own by clinging to it, or makes it our own by blaming others for our unhappiness or our troubles. And the task was to see yourself doing that this week. How does that come up? So I'm curious what people have to report in. You can just say it, or if you've written it out, you can read it.

[04:29]

I was actually kind of excited when you gave that assignment, because I've had a new boss for about the past five months. And over those five months, I've decided he's the greatest source of Dukkha I've ever experienced. I have tried, well I pretty much decided he is my practice. What do you do? I, um, try to separate... No, I mean, what's your job? Oh, what do I do? I work in human resources at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and, um, he's the human resources director. And, uh, I don't know how much more... No, that's fine.

[05:31]

So, oh boy, it's hard for me to even... What can I say to... Well, uh, you could say about how, I mean, what you've already said is, uh, the way you described it was you see him as a source of... You said he's the greatest source of Dukkha. Yes. So already there's Dukkha in that way of framing it. Yes. I have a lot of rationalizations for why he is the cause, and I try and back away from that. I really like the way you lined things up last time, and to try and stop it before it gets to blaming and just... Sit where there is the discomfort. Um, you know, there is his suffering, and he has his own little world, and I have mine,

[06:40]

but how that seems to kind of spill into my life... It's really hard for me to separate. Well, can you say something? Give us a... Give us a... Tell us a story about something that happens between you. Um, he really enjoys talking, um, and we are in one space, um, and so he, uh, one small room, and he will, pretty much from the time we arrive, um, start talking at me and making all kinds of commentary, um, about staff, about the college, many, much of it is negative, misogynistic, um,

[07:47]

just, a lot of it is just inappropriate as far as I'm concerned, commentary about anything he cares to talk to me about while I'm trying to do my work, and so I, at times, will listen, at times, I'll just turn my back and start typing, um, at times, I'll make a phone call if there's someone I can think I need to call, just so that he'll stop talking while I'm on the phone. Um, that's something that happens to me. And why is it painful? Um, some of the things he says I have strong opinions about, um, I don't like, I don't feel I can tell him that, um, I don't think he listens to me anyways, often he'll cut me off and just continue on whatever line of thought he was on. It's just, um, because it's such an enclosed space, I,

[09:01]

it's just one little room, it's hard for me to get away from him and kind of define my own space. Um, just from the time, whenever he's in there, I'm just uncomfortable, and I don't know how to respond to him, I don't know how to make him stop, um, I don't know how to kind of vent my feelings, either to kind of try and clear the air with him or just to let go of it and think whatever reason this is who he is and what he needs or wants to do and not take it on. Well, that's pretty clear. Does anyone have any other questions about what's going on there? I want to just sort of get a, maybe get several out on the table, several stories out on the table. Does it make sense to you all?

[10:05]

Thank you. Does anyone else have an experience to relate? Um, I'm not sure if this will fit in here, I mean, it certainly do come for me, so, um, in the process that I get myself in, and specifically what happened this week was my co-worker, um, when I had expressed something to her around the way we were working together, and certain difficulties I had and needed to address with her, and, um, and at the moment she, when I expressed them, she felt, she let me know that she heard me, but the expression on her face I read as she was really hurt, and at that moment,

[11:16]

and then we were, we were busy, and then I had to leave, she had to leave, and so the next, it was a weekend, so it was over the weekend, and through that period of time, I had thought about, gee, you know, I hurt, I may have hurt her feelings, and I was feeling badly about this, and, um, it was an incident where, I mean, I carried it, and I, and I suffered with it, and then the next, when I came back and saw her, um, after the weekend, and I asked her, did I hurt your feelings, you know, I felt, I saw this response in your face, and she immediately reassured me that no, it was just an expression that she may have had, that she said, no, she said, I just really heard you, and I recognize that that's something that I've done repeatedly, where I, instead of being in the present moment, and asking in the moment, you know, did I hurt your feelings, or something, instead of carrying and building up,

[12:19]

and creating something out of it, and suffering from it, and not really clarifying in the moment, or being right there, and just addressing it, you know, so it just felt like, this is, this is just a way that I really create suffering, you know, it's not necessarily blaming that person, but in a way, it was like, that incident, and what that reaction was that I perceived, it was like, cause, I felt, I was suffering from. Were you afraid to ask her about the reaction that you saw? At the moment, I think it, confusion comes up, and it was kind of, it, it's like, when I moved back, and then, you know, within the time separate, you know, after, right after the incident, I, then I had a little space to reflect, and I'm saying, I wonder if I hurt her feelings, that kind of thing, instead of being able to say right there at the moment, and saying, gee, did I hurt you, I didn't mean to, you know, have I hurt your feelings,

[13:22]

you know, and just clarify it in the moment, I carried it, and didn't address it. But even you, you carried it through part of the day, when you were actually there in the same place together, right? No, actually, we were leaving soon after that, because I worked out in the field, so I don't see, we were in the office, staying there all day, so that would have been even worse. Right, so you let that moment go without acting on the perception that you had, whether it was accurate or not. Right, right, which if I had in the moment, I could have clarified it, and that would have been it. Right, and there was something that impeded you from asking that question. No, it was kind of, set back, and feeling a little confused, which is kind of this response that I might get when something happens where I'm kind of, I'm kind of set back, and kind of don't understand maybe what the response was, or uncertain about me saying something, maybe that, you know, it's expressing

[14:24]

my feelings at the time, so it was that kind of dynamic, but carrying it and not addressing it in the present was like great suffering, you know, that I carried through, and I could have just, that would have been the moment, and let go. So there it was clear that you were, you were suffering. Or she had let it go, she had just, you know, I mean it was clear to her, and she heard, and that was, she took it, you know, and assuming that she was being honest with me, which I believe she was, and you know, it didn't, she wasn't carrying anything, she heard and let go. Thank you. Another? Yes, I can add something. There seems to be some interesting,

[15:28]

some very large amounts of suffering in my life at the moment, that I'm coming about from losing two people I loved, to varying degrees, and that creating a lot of change in my life, and bringing up a lot of things, and just like there's no control over whatsoever, and at least I think I'm finding, I'm not, as much as I can just feel the pain, then I don't, rather than resisting it, then it doesn't get into anger and blame. And then, sometimes it's easier to work with really trivial things. I mean, I was stuck in traffic twice today. I mean, whatever ended up so that I was, you know, in the 45-minute backup, behind the accident on Eastbound 24th day, there were lots of people, and entities, and all kinds of things I could have blamed, and sort of like as each one came up, you know, I recognized it,

[16:35]

and let go of it, and for 45 minutes, I was, but you know, I got through it, but it wasn't like, I used to go through situations like that, and I'd get angrier, and angrier, and angrier, because, you know, you were stuck, and nothing to do, and I got out of the whole thing fairly calmly, but it was a great opportunity to do lots of blaming. And did you feel the inclination to? Oh yeah, yeah, it was like I got right up next to a whole bunch of times, but I just, you know, I could, because I was paying attention, so I could recognize, and let go of it instead of, but you know, it's sort of easier to do sometimes with trivial stuff instead of the great big stuff that kind of like whacks you over the head, and that stuff's harder. I think it's a toss-up. Sometimes that stuff is easier, and it's that little stuff that hooks you.

[17:36]

Yeah. There's no saying. Anyone else? I've been working with some frustration with my husband, who's recently retired, and my house is very important to me. I have cancer, and I like having things organized, and we've just done a lot of remodeling on the house, and I still have a list of things. I think he thinks it's endless, so I have the opinion that when he's home during the day, he can participate a little bit more in contacting some resources, and you know, getting things moving along a bit, and so I'll ask him at the end of the day, well, it's happening, and not much has happened. Phone calls haven't been made. He's spending a lot of time on the internet, so I get into blaming this, and feeling resentful about his not participating. I finally realized this morning, after I mouthed off a little bit about it, that it really is my attachment to this house working a certain way, and certain things happening in a certain time

[18:42]

frame, and it's just not that important to him. So I think I was able to make a statement about it a little bit more effectively tonight, acknowledging that it probably wasn't as important to him as it was to me, but it was important to me. So we'll see, but I did realize finally, it's my attachment to things being a certain way that was causing me a fair amount of grief about his non-behavior. So anyone else? Well, you don't all have to do this. The last machine, I was, you know, go on, and I had, I didn't know this till I got through that morning, that I was going to be doing the go on, the bells, and I needed little segments of it,

[19:44]

but I was like, as soon as I got to the steps, you know, you're going, and so I went, total panic, you know, and then as the day went on, it was a little more of a panic, and it felt very, very, very foolish, and I let it drop, and then it would rise again and drop, and it was constantly doing that, and it stayed with me for about two days after this machine, that, oh gee, I should have known that, I should have known that, and I was causing, you know, a lot of this dukkha for myself, when in reality, under the circumstances, I didn't know I was going to be, so I didn't have any time to prepare, but I couldn't let go of it, even though it had already passed, I was still carrying it on, you know, and trying, God, I just hate, you know, not knowing that, you know, and so that gives me some real trouble, because I really want to be good at it,

[20:53]

but I realize that there's a lot more to it that I need to learn and practice, so that gives me, I feel really embarrassed at times. You know, I find this really fascinating, because mostly we've been talking about, and what Thay is talking about, is blaming others, rather than owning our own mind products, and what we hadn't talked about, and I never thought about, is that this whole process of blame also includes self-blame, and that's really fascinating, just, I mean, I could feel your whole process of self-blame, and hook it on to my, you know, my story that I had about blaming someone else, and just feel it's the same process, thank you. Well, I think when you begin to practice, and your practice actually takes root, then the first place that you learn, so one step you learn to do is to step back

[21:58]

from blaming others, you know, but it doesn't necessarily stop the blaming process, you know, so one often turns it on oneself. Well, I think I started the other way around, but I discovered so much self-blame that that was something that stopped in the beginning of practice. I mean, there's cycles now, deeper levels of self-blame, or not deeper, but just another level of strata of self-blame, but I started with that, and then from there went to see how I wasn't able to sit with certain emotions of discomfort, and that's, for me, the root of self-blame, is not the ability to tolerate and name my own feelings, and then to get away from the discomfort, uncomfortable feeling, and the, you know, the sense of confusion about what is that feeling that I project, and I make someone else the source of my discomfort, and come up

[23:00]

with a story about why they're that way. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any uniform way that it moves from, you know, blaming others to blaming oneself. You know, like, say, in Gregory's case, if you don't mind me saying this, there was not really any reason he should have known what he didn't know. I mean, there was an error of communication that put him in a place where people thought that he was trained for something, which is not to say that you couldn't do it, you know, you could do it, and you did it, but you hadn't been given the full set of tools to do it with, and yet you chose to carry that, you know, instead of,

[24:02]

it's very hard to let go of it. And I also think it's interesting what Patrice, what you were saying, that often in these situations where suffering is arising, what happens is one just becomes confused, and so that's another reaction, that's another manifestation of suffering. And there's lots of different forms that it takes, but almost all of it is in reference to, if you look at it, it's almost all of it that I can find is in reference to the project of creating the self, you know, and the pain is the inability or the failure to create

[25:11]

a self that is, you know, fully competent or fully happy or fully satisfied or able to accept limitations or mistakes or even unskillful actions or pain that one causes, one might cause others. So this is just kind of generally describing the territory. They're returned. Well, the habit of self is deeply, deeply pervasive. Was there anything else that people want to share here before we... Ellen? Ellen, Ann, Ann, Ellen? Just a question about this

[26:17]

this structuring self and pain. I'm trying to think about, you know, one example of suffering. My sister and a good friend both have very serious medical issues, and one response that I've had to that is feeling really on a very physical level anxiety, you know, this anxiety just here in my stomach, a funny feeling in my stomach, not knots, but just... And... Of course, the blame involved in it is, what's that? Why should you? You know, it's sort of

[27:24]

not blaming anyone else, but I'm wondering if that kind of suffering is tied to self, or if it's just something, well, that suffering is just there, that pain is just there, and just that you experience it, and that's the end of the story. Well, I think that's what we have to figure out. You know, I don't want to put forward an answer, but just remember those, what we talked about last time, those... I'm sorry, I wasn't hearing. Okay, so three kinds of suffering. Just ordinary suffering, you know, which is like pain in your legs, or your stomach's upset, or you have a headache, or your sisters are, you know, your sisters are experiencing a serious illness. Then there's suffering of impermanence, you know, the seeing into the nature, seeing that things are impermanent,

[28:24]

and that there's various kinds of fear, reclaiming or pushing away that comes up there. And, you know, that might relate to some of what you're experiencing. And then there's the third kind, which is, in a certain way, I think of it as inclusive of others, which is the suffering of conditionality, you know. And, you know, in certain ways, what different people were talking about seems like the suffering of conditionality, you know, that conditions at your job, the circumstances that as they unfold, or with your co-worker, or the condition of being put into this situation, creates, you're reborn in the realm of suffering each time. You know, you may be walking down this, you may be just fine, you know, cruising along, walking into the zendo, say, you know, really looking forward to

[29:31]

your session, and then the conditions change. And all of a sudden, you're, you know, you're in a different, you have a different set of conditions and circumstances to deal with in your life, which means a different consciousness. Alan, how do you just describe that kind of blaming? Like, what makes for their suffering is the condition in the zendo, the condition in the office, rather than the reaction to the condition, and the conditioned self that, you know, for instance, has an idea of what's an appropriate opinion. Right, well, we haven't gotten to that. Yes, it sounds like blaming. Yeah. And the truth of cessation is very simple. You know, the truth of cessation is complete cessation of dukkha, giving up, renouncing, relinquishing, detaching from craving. That's the classical

[30:32]

definition of it. You know, and then there's another turn to it that it takes when it reaches the Mahayana, which is, you know, in a way, completely, it's like turning it inside out, you know, and making it the gift of having a vehicle with which to experience oneself. That's what Suzuki Roshi says when he's talking about suffering. He said, oh, suffering is our candy, you know, and he doesn't mean it in a derogatory way. He says, without this suffering, what would we have to, how would we be able to perfect ourselves or to, you know, experience realization? But, and so I wasn't blaming those conditions. I was just saying that's a condition. And what cessation is, nirodha, which is really, nirodha is,

[31:39]

when you experience that truth, you know, it's sort of like peeling something away and seeing nirvana or nirvana, just allowing it to emerge. Well, Alan, am I, have I been for a long time on the wrong track here? And that if I went into the zendo and someone said, you're going to, you know, clap your clackers, I would look at the conditions for my suffering as my need to be perfect, my having an idea of what that person's like, all of the ways that my mind is constructed and seeing through those is, is empty and very conditioned. Right. Okay. Yeah, that's right. But if you can't do that, you suffer. Yes. Well, I just trying to make a distinction between the trigger for the suffering and the process of the suffering. What I'm saying, the trigger conditionality is... My conditions, my opinions, like when I hear the word inappropriate,

[32:47]

I'll use an example. To me, when I'm saying inappropriate, that is a trigger word for me. That's when my wake up bell is that I have a judgment going, which means I'm working for my conditioned realm. Right. And I'm actually in a form of a state of violence at that moment. Because I'm, I'm creating an idea of what proper behavior is and setting myself up as a model and creating an enemy out of the other person who's not being appropriate. So, but that's, I look at my conditionality, not the person in my office. Right. You know, what is my social background? What is my education? All that stuff. But if you look at your conditionality, if you think of it that way, then you're already describing yourself as something separate. No, I'm saying it's one part of the whole situation. It's a situation where there's this trigger and then there are all these things that, to me, looking at all of this makes it quite

[33:48]

empty. Because it's looking at, well, my opinion doesn't, I can't identify myself with my opinion. I can't identify myself with that judgment, because that has come into being through the arising of lots of other conditions. Right. It's a way to be less identified with me or me versus other. It's a mutual arising from the situation. Yeah, I think that's right. And I, you know, it's interesting, Lori was talking at, she was describing something that she'd been working on with our friend Santikaro Biku. About herself. And what she said, which really made a lot of sense to me, was that because of our own conditionality or habitual behavior, what one tends to do is,

[34:55]

you know, as one is constantly reborn in each moment, is to take whatever information is coming in through the senses, through your hearing or your seeing or tasting, your consciousness or, you know, whatever that is, you tend to color it in a habitual way. Which means, in a way, you tend to hear it the way you want to hear it or the way you're used to hearing it. That's your conditionality. That's the conditionality that you bring to a situation that's just presenting itself, that's just unfolding. The whole thing is one big set of conditions, but there are, we have some habituated stuff. Is that what you're talking about when you talk about the Dukkha conditionality? Yes. It's primarily, well, see, that's what I think Judith was getting at. That was the aspect she was getting at it. And

[35:59]

I think what I was saying, I was coming at it from a slightly different angle. It's both the conditions that just arise in the world, but it's also, you know, in any particular situation, like just walking to the Zendo, but it's also, it's the interaction of all these conditions, the total, what Dogen calls a total dynamic working, you know, that everything is always working and turning over and the conditions are always interreacting. So, you bring your habits, you bring the fruit of your karma, and then we tend to get reborn, you know, in this sort of habitual way. Does that make some sense? So that's the way karma is constantly changing? It is constantly changing. Right. And there is no, there is nothing that says,

[37:04]

and this is the wonderful thing about the Four Noble Truths, is that, or about dependent origination, you can break the cycle. It doesn't have to turn out this way. You know, you can see it at different points, like Gene was talking about, you know, you can see it and, you know, you can let go of it before it reaches some aversive state of mind, you know, or you can just let go of it as its contact, you know, as actually a sense contact comes up. You have a number of different opportunities to let go until you're actually hooked and then you have to go through all the shit. Did you have a question? I had a question about your response at the very beginning. Um, Judith, right? You said something about my conditioning is different from the other person's conditioning or whatever. And you said, when we talk about our conditioning, that's when separation

[38:11]

comes up? Yeah, I want to get to that, actually. I don't want to talk about it right now. I want to read you something about it. You know, I want to say that you are sensitive to something that I can feel the place where I was doing that. And I think it can be a trap, particularly because we spend a lot of time in our minds watching our breath and watching our own minds to be, for me anyway, to be very seeing my process and my conditioning and not be so engaged with the situation. And it can lead to a lot of self-blaming. One's not careful rather than beneficial regret and taking responsibility. You know, I think we need to have sessions where we're completely involved with outside conditions rather than what our minds are doing with it. How do you do that? I don't know. Just enjoy the smell of the roses, maybe. Yeah. Unfortunately, it gets old. That's because of our minds. Well, there's something I'm trying to figure out here. I'm

[39:17]

not sure I understand it myself, but I'm thinking of impulsiveness, where you're not thinking about what you're doing. And then you're just, you know, and different personality styles may do this more or less. And the example that, I didn't bring an example this week, but I just had an example, which was that I was at my daughter's softball game. And I got there a little bit late and I saw her out there on the field. And she had her shoes, as she always does, untied with the flaps flapping up and big old baggy pants. And it just pissed me off. And I just, and as I've been thinking about it, we're talking about it, I could actually see that it wasn't really about the shoes. And I could see back that it was about a conversation

[40:24]

I had with her dad. So there was some way that there was something I was thinking about, not in the kind of way that you described, where I'm observing my thoughts and I have them organized in some way, but that there's just something that um, I was attached to some images and feelings about in a series of things that had happened. And then all of a sudden I'm somewhere else. And there's this feeling, I mean, this is more about feelings than thoughts. I think there's just this feeling that takes up a ton of room. And I'm, you know, mostly it's showing up as anger, but even as we're talking about it now, I realize there's all this sadness that's underneath it. But it's the impulsive

[41:25]

aspect, it's sort of like you're going along. And so again, for a more of a feeling type than a thinking type, I'm going along and I'm sort of managing or the feelings are just kind of floating around and it's all feeling, letting go, but there's some other thread of attachment or something. So it's sort of like it's not visible, but then suddenly it becomes visible and it takes hold. And so there's not this thing that you're describing of the opportunities to let go because it comes out of left field, not baseball game intended. Let me read you something that may speak to this. And it comes from my friend David Loy. I've been thinking about his work a lot. I don't know if any of you know of him. Lack and transcendence. It's very hard to read, except for maybe Nancy.

[42:31]

But it has some very powerful stuff in it. And what he's doing is the problem of death and life in psychotherapy, existentialism and Buddhism. And at one point, so he keeps going back and forth between sort of psychoanalytic and philosophical language and Buddhist language. But so if you excuse the maybe not so deeply understood psychoanalytic language I'm about to use, I think that the principle that he's bringing out here is useful for our self-awareness. So the way he lays it out, psychoanalysis offers us the concept of repression. There are things that are so painful that we repress them, but also that when you repress something, the repressed returns in symbolic

[43:43]

form or in acted out form, however. So David Loy writes, if something makes me uncomfortable and I do not want to cope with it consciously, I can choose to ignore or forget it. This allows me to concentrate on something else. Yet what has been repressed tends to return to consciousness anyway. What is not consciously admitted into awareness erupts into in obsessive ways, symptoms or dukkha that affect consciousness with precisely the qualities it strives to exclude. Does that make some sense? I don't think that that's actually any different. I mean, I think that's dharma. And so when there's something that makes one uncomfortable and one wants to

[44:45]

avoid it, get it out of the way, fix it, without really admitting it into awareness, then it causes cycles of suffering. And so the process of, as we look at the Eightfold Path, the Eightfold Path is a way of bringing everything into awareness, your physical actions, your mental actions, your moral actions, your a wholesome way and not avoid it, but actually really look at it, surface it so that it doesn't return as a repressed action. And the way he talks about

[45:56]

craving is that, so the idea of craving in at the bottom line is that we're trying to create this sense of ourself, that it's something that's reliable, and it's something that we can have some confidence in. Somebody that I was talking to today, they were talking about a mistake that they also had made as a Doan or Kokyo, and they were really upset about this thing that we're going to experience because we're going to make those mistakes. We're going to do lots of things that seem like they're not me. And in fact, as our lives go on and our abilities fail and our bodies weaken, there are going to be lots of things that happen

[47:11]

that they're not me. And the not actually, that failing is part of the real process of being human and being able to admit it into awareness is what we have to do. So, following out that thought that David Loy had in another place in his writing, what he sees us doing in our lives is trying constantly. And this is, I think, this is what craving is. This is what clinging is. It's essentially craving, clinging to self, to this idea of self, this project of self that we have. And we fail at it all the time. We fail to measure up. We fail to perfect it in some, you know,

[48:17]

in some perfectionist terms that we have. And what he writes is the consequence of this perpetual failure is that the sense of self has as its inescapable shadow. So, the shadow is like that repressed that returns. The sense of self has, as its inescapable shadow, a sense of lack, which it always tries to escape. So, the lack is the feeling that there's something missing, you know, that are, you know, it could be really mundane, like, oh, they're having fun at that table. And, you know, where am I? You know, who do I, talk to, you know, at my table? Or something really missing, something more ontological or existential, you know, walking around feeling like the sun is

[49:26]

shining. It's warm. People are happy. And I'm not. There's something missing. There's something lacking. And what he says is that lack, we're always trying to escape it. Now, it's interesting because Dogen writes about this very directly in Genjo Koan, which is sort of his core philosophical work about Zazen. And what he writes is that when Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. In other words, you know, well, let me read again. When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is sufficient. In other words,

[50:27]

that's like saying, I know how to do this. I know how to be a Doan, or I know how to be a Kokyo, or I know how to do this, even though you're not perfect, but you build some pride, some ego on something that's not complete. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. I always thought that was just wonderful two lines. They really had me for years. And then when I met David Loy and was talking with him, I realized, oh, this is kind of what that means. His work sort of explicates it more deeply. So the second line is when Dharma fills your body

[51:29]

and mind, in other words, when you're actually practicing the Four Noble Truths, then you understand that something is missing. And you understand something's missing, period. That's where Dogon ends. And I would say, and it's okay. That's really the tricky part. Is he saying that the concept of there's always something missing and then there's always nothing missing? I don't understand. He's saying that everything is always incomplete. Of course it's incomplete, because it's all conditional and impermanent. It's changing all the time. What we think of as complete is like, oh, this is it. Nail it down right here,

[52:39]

and then I got it. And what he's saying, what Dogon's saying is there's always something missing. Isn't it more than okay? For me, when I see that, that's when it's perfect. It's perfect. And I feel this great joy at the imperfection that's not really imperfect anymore. It's just incredibly joyful just to be with things as they are and to feel it all changing and moving and forming here and dissolving there. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what Thich Nhat Hanh says. He says, when practicing the Third Noble Truths, we are getting around to Third Noble Truths. As I said at the beginning, we get through these things kind of obliquely. But what Thich Nhat Hanh says, when you're practicing the Third Noble Truths, one comes to the realization that suffering and happiness

[53:41]

are not two. When you reach this stage, your joy is no longer fragile. It is true joy. But it's not the kind of joy that we can quite conceive of, because unless we experience things that way, well, actually, we're always experiencing things that way. It's just we're often, we're usually not aware of it. But we have moments of that joy and of that unity. It's not like, oh, you have to get there. It's actually right here, every second, available. It's not available. It's just what it is. It's the law. It's not just a good idea. But the challenge is to get this coverings off of it so that we can actually

[54:45]

experience it. And there was something else in here that I think speaks to that, which gets to what Judith was asking. It gets to this notion of separateness. So, Buddhism relates to our dis-ease about the delusive nature of the ego self, which, like everything else, is a manifestation of Indra's net, which means like everything else is just insubstantial but infinitely reflecting each other, and yet feel separate from it. The basic difficulty is that insofar as I feel separate, that is, autonomous, self-existing

[55:55]

consciousness, I also feel uncomfortable because this illusory sense of separateness is inevitably insecure. Does that make any sense, or is that too abstract? It means feeling the separateness. It's not just that things are impermanent and unconditional, but that what's really painful in this lack is this lack makes me feel apart from things. It might make me feel apart from my daughter, or apart from my husband, or apart from myself. And the third noble truth says, stop it. Just renounce it.

[57:05]

And I think that the reason that this truth, I'll read once more, this, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha. It is the complete cessation of dukkha, giving up, renouncing, relinquishing, detaching from craving. And I had a hard time, when I was thinking about this at first, I just thought, well, what's there to say about this? And so it's kind of simple and seemingly absolute, you know, and maybe there's nothing really to say about it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this is the hardest one, because in a lot of ways, because I realized two things as I was thinking about it, that one, a lot of us don't really believe that we can do this. And two, we're not so sure we want to,

[58:16]

because, you know, it means a kind of relinquishing. It means giving up our dramas. It means giving up a kind of possessive way. It means giving up the way we want to possess things, including ourselves, our children, our ideas of ourselves. You know, the same thing as like, I don't do that, or that's not me. You know, that's something we want to hold on to, because if we let go of that, it's scary. And we're scared of taking that leap often. I want to generalize, I'm not generalizing completely, I'm just sort of speaking generally, because each of you, each of us, in our own way, we take steps in that direction. If we weren't taking steps in

[59:26]

that direction, we wouldn't be sitting in this room, you know, and we certainly wouldn't be sitting in the zendo. And yet, there's a way in which one can hold back too. And I think that's why it's really hard, because we have to have faith in ourselves as Buddhas. You know that, oh, I'm a Buddha, all I have to do is realize it. How do I do that? But you really have to, you have to do your work every moment to do that. So we don't quite have faith, well, can I do that? It seems an awful lofty thing. Maybe it's just for people with long ears. And then the trickier question is, you know, do I really want to? Am I willing to relinquish

[60:38]

it? I think that's where we get confused, you know, that the very things that we feel sustain us are the same things that are often at the root of our separateness and our pain. So, I mean, I feel like this was helpful for me to think about it. Because it kind of got me to this point. And the practice, you know, it's very different. The sutras are very tough-minded. I mean, for Buddha, the answer is really, well, give it all up and put on these robes. And for us, we're trying this very difficult path of being householders, of having lives,

[61:48]

jobs, families, etc. And it's a danger. You know, in the Buddhist day, they didn't have any burger kings. I often think of what we, the hallmark of what we try to do is like, sometimes it's like burger king Buddhism. It's like, you can have it your way. But we can't, actually. And that's a little scary. So I don't know, I sort of want to throw that out. And maybe some of you have comments, thoughts. I have one question. Previous question or statement I made, I think it was first class, you just brought it up again. Buddha's answer, as you said,

[62:54]

was to put on these robes and give it up. And it seems that in that way, he's saying, simplify your life and to do the practice and really make that the center of your life, as I understand. And so we are trying to do something different by being household owners and things like this. So we're, we are doing, you know, we're sort of living sort of two different things, almost duality or something. But it seems like there is something about simplifying one's life. I mean, to me, that is part of what Buddha taught was to simplify your life. And that is part of the path. A simple, you know, having a simple life, what's really important is the center and building out from there. Well, I think that's right. And we'll explore, I mean, in the next two weeks, we'll explore what

[64:05]

that life, what the qualities and characteristics of that life might be, as we look at the Eightfold Path. But some large effort of simplification and renunciation or relinquishment is called for. I know some people have a reaction to the word renunciation, especially people who have a Catholic background. I know I've used that in some places, and some of my friends, it's like, ah, you know, I don't have a Catholic background, so I don't have that response to it. But how we do that is a challenge. And also, there is another, there is another kind of scriptural and commentarial tradition that evolves as well, which, you know, which is the Mahayana,

[65:13]

where nirvana is not something that emerges out of a really kind of vigorous act of renunciation or relinquishment, but it's something that comes up in the ordinary, that emerges constantly, flowing. But we should be careful, because when you really look at the roots of the Mahayana and those cortexes, actually, they don't let you any more easily off the hook. You know, in certain ways, they're even tougher-minded. In Nagarjuna, who's seen as one of the sort of fountainheads of Mahayana, basically says, have no ideas at all.

[66:20]

Or the fourth ancestor says, the great way is not difficult, only have no preferences. You know, so really, that's not any different a message. It just means you don't necessarily have to wear saffron robes, you know, and you can experience realization in whatever wholesome endeavor or unwholesome endeavor you're following. But the mental training, the training of your life, is just as rigorous. It's every bit as rigorous yeah. Um, because we don't have a specific renunciation. I mean, maybe we do in some metaphoric way, but not the actual, you know, letting everything go, taking on the robes,

[67:26]

and leaving your family in. And, you know, sometimes I have the fear, I feel at times, because in Soto Zen, it's Zazen. And then I think, well, would Koans be a way to be able to help me go through the letting go, you know, feeling a need for structure of actual, do this, you know, as a way of letting go of the craving. It's like you have the assignment or the understanding that you need to let it all go. You need to detach. You need to, like you're saying, but, and you need to have no thoughts, you know, or not no thoughts, but what did you just say? No theories. No theories. No ideas. No ideas. You can't have no thoughts. Right, exactly. But no ideas. No preferences. And the thing is, okay, I can

[68:32]

understand that, but getting there and just sitting on the cushion and getting there, I tend to have this feeling of, well, isn't there a little step I could take here, you know, that could get me to the next step, like Tibetan Buddhism, you know, that kind of, and it's, it's so stark in a certain way, and I mean, and I can see the benefits of that, but at the same time, it's, for me, it's... Well, different people need different, different kind of help and respond to different systems, you know, and what all of them have is, you know, a strong, all the systems have a strong mental discipline, you know, just one has slightly different, one has a different flavor than the other. I was thinking,

[69:33]

I was reading about Dogen's life and about his great experience of, his experience of emptiness or his experience of realization or cessation. So, in the course of meditation, a monk next to Dogen inadvertently had fallen asleep. Never happens. Upon noticing the monk, Zen Master Rujing, who was Dogen's teacher, thundered at him. In Zazen, it is imperative to cast off body and mind. How could you indulge in sleeping? He didn't say to Dogen, he said it to the person who was sitting next to him. This remark shook Dogen's whole being to its very foundation, and then an inexpressible ecstatic joy engulfed his heart. So, you never know when this gift of cessation, and there's different

[70:46]

levels of it, it's not that, that wasn't the end of it, that was the start. But having that kind of experience helps you to, because all this, this is experiential, that's the thing, that no words are going to be able to convey what cessation is. Just like no words can convey the taste of ice cream or the smell of a rose, or nobody can fart for you. There's no way to convey these things except by hinting at them, implication, referencing them. But actually, this is one of the hardest things to reference, because we have no conscious reference. So, it's this mental, the mental discipline, or the whole,

[71:51]

it's the mind-body discipline, which is the Eightfold Path. And koan study is the Eightfold Path. Shikantaza is the Eightfold Path. Visualizations is the Eightfold Path. So is how you talk to a person in your office, or how you respond to somebody you're driving next to, all of that. When the Buddha laid out the Eightfold Path, it's like he didn't go into a big, he didn't offer volumes of commentary on it. It's very simple, the way he lays it out. All the commentary was kind of added later. But what he was saying is, if you live this way, then you will live a life of realization, then you will live as a Buddha.

[72:59]

That's how you can do it. So that's, I think that's a challenge for us. Yeah, I have a question. I've been sort of waiting for a good opportune moment to bring this up all evening, and one hasn't presented itself, so I'm just going to take a leap. Maybe there's a really obvious answer to it I'm missing, but the cases that we've talked about, different people brought up different issues. We didn't really address one where somebody was facing, I mean, I think I was, when you were talking about your situation, I hope this isn't really what was, you know, what's going on or anything like this, but you know, if you were facing sort of serious sexual harassment or something like that in your workplace, and it sounds like your boss, like you said, makes sort of sexist remarks and so on like that,

[74:01]

I mean, I find, I mean, I know this isn't what you're saying to do, but just sort of accepting it and deal with your sort of resistance to it and everything else, I mean, if people only ever sort of accepted all the other things that have been done to them over the course of history, I mean, we wouldn't have the religious freedom to even have this temple or this practice. So where is the distinction between dealing with your own sort of resistance and some thoughts that come up in opposition to things that people say or do or circumstances that you find yourself in or conditions that you face, and responding to them in a sort of active way to change those conditions, because I don't think that you can just sort of accept the way things are passively all the time, and I, you know, how do you, how do you not set up a sort of mental resistance and create dukkha, but at the same time respond actively to things, to situations like that,

[75:03]

that I do think require an active response? Do you understand my question? I understand your question completely. Or like the same, this is along the same vein, which is something I was wondering about with Anne's people that she loves are ill or whatever, and so if you only take each moment by moment, why would you ever grieve anything until you're sick or you're, you know, you have other people, but when, how do you, how do you distinguish between what you feel and what you, you know, I don't know how to verbalize it, but how do you, how do you, when is it an active response appropriate as opposed to saying, well, I'm not in pain right now, I'll live in this moment, and it's okay. Well, other people may have some responses, but I think that, and I'd like to hear them, but I think that an active response is appropriate when you have really admitted into awareness

[76:07]

what you are feeling. And if you're acting out of anything short of that awareness, you're probably going to make a mistake. And, you know, included in that awareness as you brought up was, you know, who is this? Is this another human being? Is this another person who has their own suffering, their own habits, their own, they're carrying the fruits of their own karma, and you make as much of an effort to see that as possible. But first of all, to see it in yourself, to really understand what you're feeling and where that pain is. And that does not, to my mind, that doesn't call for passivity at all. Passivity is very destructive. You know, then you have to act. And I think that you act,

[77:15]

you know, you act according to some principles, and you also act sometimes, you might act knowing that the very action that you feel you must do may have not such a pleasant outcome, or may create, may be a karmic activity that has some fruit that you're not happy about down the road. And you just have to be willing to accept that karma. Does that make sense? But then, why is that, I mean, so grieving doesn't count as suffering? I mean, so I'll be suffering. Grieving is not suffering. Why is grieving suffering? It's only suffering if you make it suffering.

[78:20]

It's only suffering if you cling to it. Or don't want it. Try to push it away, or try to hold on to it, right. So now, that's why you have the distinction between pain and suffering. Yeah. Oh, I see what you're saying. So pain... There's pain. Pain is pain, and suffering is something different than that. Right. Okay. Grieving is just a natural, it's a natural human emotion, and you can meet it, you can even, in some strange way, feel some joy in your grief. You can be free in your grief. Somebody told the story of driving to, driving Ajahn Sumedho. His mother had just died. And they were just really astonished, because they'd always seen him as just this very free and realized person.

[79:26]

And I think he, maybe he grew up, did he grow up in California? Right. So his mother lived in California, I think, and she had just died, and they were driving him from the airport, and he was just sitting in the seat weeping. And that was just being with his grief. No problem. You know, whatever, until you're an arhat, you still, you have nibbana with, it's called with remainder, you have nibbana, that's still, there's still karma created, you're still living in, you still have the five skandhas that you are somewhat holding on to.

[80:27]

The arhats, I think this is really interesting, the arhat, Rwata Dhamma writes, the arhat may have performed many good deeds in his lifetime, but his actions are ineffective, because they are not motivated by mental defilement, such as greed, hate, and ignorance, and it's like, they're ineffective. I read that several times, you know, so that's not necessarily our model. Because they're not in this realm, so they can't interact. Yeah, I have doubts about that. That's not a uniform view. A uniform view of the arhat, yeah, and I don't want to put down the arhats, but. I think you need to study the arhats and give the dharma talk about them. Yeah. I would like to hear that. But at any rate, we're not arhats. And our grief is our grief. And even the arhats wept when the Buddha died.

[81:29]

The Buddha wept. I forget which of his disciples died. He cried. He could be sad. He just didn't suffer. Yeah. Yeah. That, I think, is a koan. I think this is what you have to, this is where each of us has to do our work. And you can hold that, and you can, sometimes for each of us, we find a koan or a question, it may not be a classical koan, but a question that really works on us, you know? And that's a good one, you know?

[82:31]

The great way is not difficult if only one has no preferences. Or one that's a koan for me is what Master Sheng Yen said, I feel sorry, it's leading time. Master Sheng Yen said in a question and answer in the Zen Do about 10 years ago, and Lori said, what's the most important thing? And he said, the most important thing is to regulate your life. That was it. He didn't say what regulate your life means, you know? But I've carried that, you know, what does it mean? And it's like I've been working on it, it's been working on me. So that's the question. Or what is right action in the world? You know, how does one take responsibility with what mind and with what spirit? You know, I think about Janet Reno,

[83:33]

because when you brought your question up, I thought, well, this is a long study of the path of nonviolence. And I thought, you know, with pride of all the measures I've taken to study what is nonviolent activity. And then I thought of Janet Reno, who with an army really acted in a nonviolent way in a situation that a lot of other things could have happened and a lot of other choices. And she had to respond in her way with as least harm creating as possible. Right. Although not everybody would agree. No, but yeah. At least the Republicans. I'd like to just give something from Ajahn Sumedho's. I did a retreat with him for 10 days, first three Noble Truths, assuming that we were working on a couple of parts of the Eightfold Path while we were on the retreat. And he put, he said something really wonderful about the Third Noble Truth.

[84:36]

He said, we spend a lot of time in our practices, most people on the first two, on looking at our suffering and looking at the cause. It's a tremendous amount of practitioners' efforts go in that. And he really encouraged us to really practice with the Third Noble Truth on this retreat. And his practice was to see, okay, there's the suffering and there's the causes of it, but to really let go and to experience that moment of letting go. He said, try to spend less time. You're all quite familiar from other retreats on all the ways you can create suffering around someone taking your favorite piece of yogurt in the morning. You know all this. To see what that process of letting go is and to really experience it because it happens more often than we think. And to notice what is that mind state like? Where am I? So that this place that, as you say, is always here and always available becomes a little more permeable because it's simply a reality we're not familiar with.

[85:39]

Well, that's, you know, and in fact, it's what Mel is saying all the time. And it's why some people sometimes have trouble with his teaching because he's not particularly interested in the shape of your suffering. You know, he just says, just really apply yourself in zazen right now. And it's the same thing that I experienced with Hirata Roshi when I was talking about suffering. He said, don't have a single thought about the future. You know, which is, that's the same teaching. And that's how you practice it is not, you know, not by going into fantastic detail and analysis about your suffering,

[86:42]

but using whatever tools you have to concentrate, be present and let go. And that is where we should be applying ourselves. I think it's time to stop. And so next week, we'll work on several steps. I forget how, I had it outlined in a certain way. Several steps of the Eightfold Path. And I think we'll start with the ones that are about prajna or wisdom, which are, everything flows from that. Okay.

[87:36]

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