And I'm surpassed, penetrating, and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. To remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tatagata's words. Morning, everyone. Here we are again. So tonight we're going to talk about the third triplet. in the Sandokai.

[01:33]

I thought I would read Suzuki Roshi's, this translation in Suzuki Roshi's book and then... How's the sound, by the way, out there in Zoom land? Okay, good. Okay. I guess I just will let you know that the prompts for the small groups will be, are in the chat. So you don't have to remember. Sue told me she could never remember the chat, the prompts. So it was important that we put them in the chats. So the section is relating to these lines. Eye and sight, ear and sound, nose and smell. tongue and taste. Thus for each and everything, depending on these roots, the leaves spread forth.

[02:38]

To share the essence, revered and common, each has its speech. In the Okamura translation, it's eye and form, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste. Thus in all things, the leaves spread from the root. The whole process must return to the source. Noble and base are only manners of speaking. So Suzuki Roshi starts this chapter by reiterating, sort of summarizing and repeating his takeaway from the first six sections. He says, although things are interdependent, with respect to each other at the same time, each being is independent. And he says being independent.

[03:44]

He says, when each are separate and interacting with each other, they're interdependent. includes the whole world, then each being is actually independent. And with regard to Northern and Southern schools, this means we shouldn't evaluate and judge which is better or worse. Both are expressing the whole of Buddhism in their own way. Dogen's teaching where he goes on at length about how we all should find the right teacher. And we should look for the right teacher and make a commitment. And then he says, and then we need to study the Dharma. And he gives us a lot of instructions on which Dharma to study and how. And then later on, he says, actually drop all that. That's nice, but then drop it.

[04:49]

Because it's only it's really. Only through our own personal practice that we can cultivate our own. We don't get, someone else is not going to tell us. Someone else is not going to tell us the words, give us words that are going to explain to us what awakening is, what impermanence is. We have to get it in our bones by experiencing, by our own experience, by our own Zazen experience and our own interrelationships with other people. So in this section, what's being brought forth is the way this is. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind are the gates to awakening, to our awakening. Okamura says these are called gates because stimulation from outside comes to us through them.

[05:55]

And we express our thoughts and emotions through to the outside. Somehow, when I thought about our thoughts and our emotions, are things like, ouch, that stinks. I don't like that. Ogemore makes a difference between the first five sense organs and the mind. I think I talked last time I spoke about the consciousnesses. There are the consciousnesses, which are the six, basically the six senses and the mind. And then there's the unconscious or subconscious, which is the Laya Vigiana and Manos. So the sense consciousnesses are available to us. We can see them.

[06:57]

They're in a way, they're in the light. The light, we can actually... Get the feeling. It's not something that's it's something outside. And yet it's not because as we see these objects. Where the part of our brain, there's a different part of our brain. For each sensor organ. That has a way of perceiving. So we we get actually, you know, physical responses. We get emotional responses or physical responses with the sense organs. The mind is different, though. The mind and Alchemer, it makes it differentiates the mind because he says the mind is something we cannot touch, but contains the imagination.

[07:59]

A donation includes thinking in abstractions, metaphors, paradoxes, putting all of our input into frameworks. Only when you analyze is there someone seeing and something being seen. So there's some where we are constructing something out of our out of our experience. And we're making them separate. In a sense, we're making them separate. We're naming them. We have opinions about them. And we're treating them as real objects. What we're looking towards is really... So in that way, they are dependent. They're independent from us. How do they become interdependent? How do they become... some part of us.

[09:02]

He says that. What we're looking for. In terms of our actually understanding ultimate reality, which is form is emptiness and emptiness is form. We have to we have to not see. We have. We have to actually see beyond. Our mind consciousness. Our mind consciousness is is something that's. that gives us an idea about dependent co-arising, gives us an idea about how, how our own mind, our own mind works, other people's mind. But it isn't that, that in itself is not, it's not going to help us to get in touch with experience, experience things as it is things at things as, as their emptiness, the emptiness of things. That is something that we have to use our practice for and use our way to try to penetrate through some of these things to understand that each is empty.

[10:27]

If we actually have to, he kind of advises us to look for how we can see the impermanence. How do we observe that on how they appear to us when we see it, when we see something, when we see or hear or taste. That's a real thing that we have to go beyond that. We have to go through that, penetrate that. So Suzuki Roshi warns us. objects and sense organs as separate or independent, but to think of them as interdependent and then to acknowledge that both are true. For eyes, there's form, but at the same time, there are no eyes in form. Both of them are empty and also interdependent. So he sort of gets out into the kind of stratosphere of emptiness, and then he suddenly pivots.

[11:29]

in this chapter, which is interesting. And he starts talking about the precepts. And first, when I read it the first time, I'm thinking, I don't know if anybody else had that when they were reading about it, but they were going through it and said, why is he pivoting to the precepts? And I think because, of course, you know, part of our practice is committing, precepts. And we have the ethical precepts, actually, to remind us that when we see things as empty, empty of own being, and coming and going and not having any permanent form, they're just thus, this is it. We can start.

[12:32]

We can start getting caught, maybe depending. But I'm sorry, but in really spiritual bypass, like we can we can see things. Well, if it's if there's no orange and there's no good and there's no bad, everything is essentially ultimate reality in the absolute sense. Then we can actually get caught. us that he's reminding us that, but he does it in a funny way. And I remember he starts talking about the earwigs and people killing earwigs. And I remember we used to have so many talks when I first started practicing here in the Zendo that we should hit a fly or, you know, or get rid of what we should do about spiders that bit us. And you'd see people doing all sorts of things. They would have paper cups and they'd start to catch the spiders in the Zen Center outside and let the spiders go away.

[13:45]

That somehow they were taking literally not killing means not killing, period. And Suzuki Roshi is actually suggesting that You know, there are when breaking the precepts is the most skillful thing to do or can't be helped or they're accidents. He says, sticking to some ideas of killing or not killing or for some reason why we don't kill is not the way observing the precepts. The way to observe the precepts is to have an understanding of reality. Feeling sorry about this, doing so is also included. He talked about and he brings up in that old Chinese stories of the two monks walking together.

[14:47]

Let's put it, let's say it's in the summer. I like to add things to it. It's in the summer. There they see a wonderful, beautiful young woman. stress. I add my own imagination to it. And she's having trouble because she needs to cross to the other side of the river. And one monk says to the other, look at that. Don't look at that woman. Look at that. She's bad thoughts. If you see that woman, we just should walk along. And the other monk says, well, she's trying to get... Getting in the water, she can drown. She obviously is afraid. She needs to get to the other side. And the other one says, don't you ever take it. You'll be breaking the precept. That'll be one of the worst things. You'll never be able to be practicing as a monk. And the other one, the other monk, just goes out there and rescues the woman and takes her across.

[15:55]

And then they say goodbye. And the two monks go, and the monk who was criticizing, touching the woman, keeps on berating the other monk. How could you break a precept by misusing sexuality by touching a woman? And the other monk looks at him and says, when carrying that woman across the water. It also reminds me of a Suzuki Roshi story that Sojin used to tell. When people went to Tassajara, some of them had been vegetarians. Many people weren't vegetarians, and they were having a really hard trouble not eating meat. So there were people who were sneaking and sneaked in like salami in their backpacks. But for those who were, you know, the vegetarian cooking, when people were leaving Tassajara, there was a barbecue place, a hamburger place.

[17:09]

And that was the first place everybody stopped when they got into Carmel Mountain. They went immediately to the hamburger place. So Suzuki Roshi went with a couple to the hamburger place. And one monk started immediately, why are we here? I hope none of you are going to order a hamburger. We can't eat meat. It would be the most terrible thing. And they had an argument about the rightness or wrongness of eating hamburgers. And then the hamburger and the one guy gets a hamburger and the other people are looking critically at him. And Suzuki Roshi picks up the hamburger and eats it, eats a bite of it. So he was saying, don't take yourself too seriously. Yes, there are precepts. There are. There are skillful things to do. There are beneficial things to do, but there's no absolute. There's no that I shouldn't say that. But there's good because we meaning absolute in two different ways.

[18:15]

So so basically he's. Things we can be caught and deluded by. falling into one-sidedness and even falling into one-sidedness about killing or not killing or stealing or not stealing. So then the next part of this verse is, he continues, depending upon these roots, the leaves spread forth. And Okamara's... talks about that as thus in all things the leaves spread from the root. All sense perceptions are dharmas and using our mind organ, we can look beyond their appearance and know how each comes to existence, basically dependent co-arising. Because of these roots, we exist as we are. So because of our conditioning, the roots are...

[19:19]

And it could be our DNA and it could be our experience. But the roots there are where it came from. Right. Where did we grow from? How did we grow into who we are? We had we came out of these roots. So. This this takeaway is when observing the many things observing. the many things observing the colorizing, we can use our mind to look beyond their appearance and penetrate, meaning the superficial and the dualistic, and to know how each thing comes into existence. We can also trust in our meditation practice where we let go of our conceptual thinking so that we can experience the real or the emptiness of each phenomenon. Trunk and branches Revered in common, each has its speech.

[20:23]

The whole process must return to. The source. The source of ultimate reality. Noble and. I mean, Suzuki Roshi says noble and base are only manners of speaking. Trunk and branches here means the same as oneness and individuality. Spiritual source and root and origin and essence are equivalent. Well, that's interesting, right? Spiritual source, root and origin and essence are all equivalent. So they're used differently. And certainly when you write a poem, you use all these different words to point at the meaning. And to give it some some. Just some some some density, some peculiarity, look at it one way, to think about it as roots or to think about it is how did this come about?

[21:31]

How did this come about? So. I want to see. I want to go into small groups now. And the prompt is, when a very poor person is starving or has starving children or has starving children, are they breaking the precepts? When someone kills in self-defense, is that breaking the precepts? Can lying be okay? What about eating a hamburger? Terry, how long are we in Greece? And so how much, what's the format? Well, we just took turns. We didn't have a formal thing that people could pop with popcorn, but we can also go around. But they're going to break into three groups of three people.

[22:37]

No, I mean, is it conversation? Is it one person speaks and the others listen? I think... I think it's both. In other words, people are I'm giving prompts so that people can share what their response to those prompts are. And then if they ask, they can ask of that person. So it's not one person speaks for three minutes uninterrupted. Everyone else listens and then it goes. That's right. No, it can be more conversational. Yeah. Do we break up in this room or are we just all about? Well, I think we're all of us. Mary, did you? She is, yes. It's happening now. Okay. There we go. I like to see them hop off. So we're five people and we have 15 minutes? Yeah, so we don't have much time. So if we were speaking individually, but we're just going to have a conversation?

[23:43]

Well, we could go over it. rather than have two minutes and then have a little time? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I guess what came to my mind when you read the prompt was, I'll start, is there a difference between breaking the precept and doing something wrong? In other words, you could be technically Breaking the precept. I mean, I think the way I've heard people talk about it is honoring the precept in its deeper sense or something. But the other way to think of it is, well, I broke the precept, but that was the right thing to do. In a way. So the common, the usual example is that you've got the refugee hiding in the attic, right? And of course, yes. But that's sort of upholding.

[24:45]

The intention of the precepts is non-harm. So you're upholding the non-harm. You still might be breaking the precept. Well, it's looking underneath the root of the precept. What's the real meaning of it? What is the real meaning of killing? I think it turns to the pure precepts. in that regard. Can you say a little more? Yeah. In the general sense of refraining from evil and doing good and saving all beings, that may require violating the letter of the law of one of the grave precepts. It's your example. Yeah. Well, and also, I was thinking, well, stealing food for your children is supporting life. Right.

[25:45]

So you may you may have to have to figure out when you're faced with the complexity of of life. You know, there's there's there's all all sorts of people to be doing what they're doing at any particular time. And so what is the underlying? I mean, we want to save all beings. What does that mean? I remember there was a story about Thich Nhat Hanh being asked, what about somebody who works as a soldier whose responsibility is to push the button on a nuclear bomb? And he said something like that it would be good if it was a person who practiced mindfulness. Something like that.

[26:45]

So, you know, you rather have somebody there who practices mindfulness because. So that and I think Trump Rinpoche also had something to say on this, which is. You know, it's something along the lines of. The weapon exists. Our world exists, right? It's complex. How. How does the precept apply when your finger is there? You're mindful. You're mindful of our relationship. I mean, you know, there's a whole thing. And we just were to take the military around conscientious objector. And we can look at many examples where, in hindsight, looking back historically, you say, well, for instance, you know, World War II was a conscientious objector. we might be living in a Nazi world, right?

[27:48]

So it's not, I think that the precepts sort of come down to, there's mind to really, really be. And so they won't. You know, what's the root of what's going on before you? You did once Zoom crashed.

[29:47]

Uh-oh. I think it's fine now. Mary. Mary's very frozen right now. Is it frozen or Mary? We're not sure what it is. Well, and I think that basically what this is, what we're learning, you know, being asked to do. You know, I can't make these dualistic judgment of good or bad, right or wrong, because everything is so without actually doing the work. And also the intention side. That's what your action is. Right. If it's selfish, you know. I need it for me. Yeah. And my pleasure mode. And your own confusion.

[30:48]

or something or like in the case of the man carrying the woman across are you doing it for the other person yeah you're saving somebody's life I'll call it simple sorry so I've been I've been finding it very supportive to take the fifth precept pretty literally for a while because that's just that's been very supportive of me because I haven't yet just being very strict with that has been a very skillful way to relate to that Would you say what it is? Just like abstaining from drugs. That's how I interpret it. And last night, yesterday was my birthday, and I went out to dinner. To a nice restaurant. And it was a Japanese, like, restaurant. And I decided to get the sake of air. Because it just seemed like a lot of fun. And I was like, and that was totally the right decision. And

[31:48]

Because I've been, you know, like, I was very careful about making that choice and who I was with and, you know, so, and like, yeah. It's like, even for things that are not as, like, heavily loaded as, like, nuclear weapons and... Killing. Killing, stealing. Have you been in situations where you have to tell your friends why you're not doing it? Yeah. So that, so it's been part of the conversation on your... Yeah. Yeah. Usually, you know, especially you're a 12-stepper. Yeah, you just help people. And for some people, they cannot touch alcohol. But for other people, or whatever it is, and other people are able to... It's still very selfish for me not to do it. It can be like... Yeah, but some people can do that, and other people cannot do that. You didn't change your basic intention. Exactly. Yeah.

[32:50]

So don't make an exception in this. And also it's like you're the person who's going to be hurt. Right. Yeah. And a risk to be in camaraderie with some people. Yeah. And you wanted to feel part of it and so forth. And that was okay. Well, this was a different situation. This wasn't quite like a... I've been in those situations where I've done that and it's been problematic in situations when I chose not to. This was much more like I was with... And it was just like, yeah, this feels like a really safe, enjoyable way to spend this evening. And so I chose to do that. And it worked. And it was great. Yeah. No, that's really, really good. I think that... One thing I relate to around that is this whole thing of the needs of the son. Be honest with yourself. And doing what you, you know, what you resolve to do. And then the needs of whatever other person you're with or the community.

[33:51]

Like, for example, tomorrow night, I'm going to be having dinner with the son of members who, the 11 of us who spent six days. Really looking forward to it. And when when I responded to, like, you know, what are you going to bring for the potluck? I right away said, oh, I'm bringing a salad and well. Well, I'm thinking and thinking about this now. I don't know what I'm going to do. And, you know, please get a hold of Ellen, who's also just, you know, just say to her, well, is that the appropriate thing for the group? You know? Yeah. Because there might be. Because there might be. And, you know, and is it your business to anybody else's sobriety? I will just like, I would say that because of the context, that might be inappropriate. Might be inappropriate, yeah.

[34:52]

Because it was a Buddhist group that went on a Buddhist where no alcohol was following you know, making it into something like a different kind of social thing where some people might come, might not come if they knew that it was going to be alcohol. I'm kind of curious how, I mean, I know we're responding to your prompts, but I'm also on this point of why, you know, what's the purpose in the context of this text for Suzuki Roshi to pivot to the precepts in this chapter, because I feel like what we're talking about, you know, we could be having it as precepts, right? But what does this conversation in the context of this, you know, the lines that we're studying in these chapters? Well, I think he is saying that

[35:59]

Judging North and South because of how they practice is dualistic. And making a judgment against those people based on your opinion about the way they practice. The same way as making a judgment about somebody breaking the precepts. The precepts are right and wrong. And the way... practice some people that the way to practice in the northern and the southern. And they fought. So they judged each other. So the precepts are kind of another way of looking at in our lives. We could be tempted to judge people on the basis of whether they break the precept or not. ourself on whether we bathe is the same as the northern people are more devout, and they are doing it the right way, and the southern people are doing it the wrong way.

[37:13]

Yeah, and I mean, that's one level of reading of the text, but I think both beneath that, sort of like he says in the introduction to this chapter, that in the last lecture he was talking about the meaning of independency. So this thing of being both independent and interdependent, you know, when you're, let's just say, well, like if I'm having a moment of being independent and discerning whether or not to drink booze, right, in this particular context, you could say I'm independent because I'm just acting and I just have a sense of, you know, there's an integrity to it. present in this. And then the interdependence is the co-happening in that moment is the intimacy, right? You're also aware of, and we could give words to this, but it's, you know, whatever you want to say.

[38:16]

It's a vibe. You could be wrong because, you know, it's like... You're saying something, there's a thought bubble of what you think it means, right? And the person next to you... completely different. But we don't really know. No. So I'm sort of approaching this from how is this expressing? Well, I think it is because every one of these precepts involves basically your effects on it. Are we about to come back? Yeah. How many minutes coming back in the white square at the very top? Raining zero. Well, let's get us back. But Mary is back with us. They'll hop back in. That's great that they came back. Can we? Mary, what are we doing here?

[39:17]

We need to move on. No. Yeah, we can hear you. Now we can hear you. I WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU A WARNING THAT THE GROUPS WERE COMING BACK, BUT YOU DIDN'T SEEM TO HEAR. SO, SORRY. WE DIDN'T HEAR THAT. THAT'S BECAUSE I DIDN'T BE MUTED, BUT NOW YOU'RE UNMUTED. THE SPEAKERS I TURNED OFF. SO WE DIDN'T. SORRY. NO, IT WAS. OKAY. ON HERE? SO WE'RE GOING TO MOVE ALONG TO THE NEXT SECTION. WE NEED TO CLOSE THAT. THERE WE GO. OKAY. Move along to the next session, which is about the following. Yeah. And I think this. But that's they're not they may not have to have their things. I think it's just Internet latency. OK. All right. So. So the next section in the light, there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. And the.

[40:19]

And Okamura says, right in the light there's darkness. Sorry, I think we've lost the audio. Jerry, we lost you. Right in the darkness. Jerry? Yeah? Maybe you would start at the top of that. We lost the beginning of your paragraph there. I was reading the next section. Can you hear us now? Can you hear us now? Yeah, maybe you could start again. That would be helpful. Okay. So the part we're going to be talking about now is, in the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. That's a Suzuki Roshi translation. Okamura says, right in the light there is light, but don't confront it as darkness. Right in the darkness there is light, but don't see it as light. They're pretty similar. The confronting is different. So here, again, to reiterate, light means that what we perceive with our five senses and our mind consciousness, or as I said, your conscious mind.

[41:47]

You could also say this is the realm of samsara. This is the phenomenal realm, the relative or dualistic world of words. Darkness refers to our subconscious. as I said before, the storehouse consciousness and the ego consciousness, manas, the absolute, the world that words and thinking cannot reach. Okamura says, often we see darkness, unity, or nondescript as enlightenment or nirvana, and discrimination as delusion or samsara. From the perspective of enlightenment, We need to understand that to get there, we give up light differentiation and to live in the realm of non-discrimination. It says in the Mahayana, we can't escape from either. The fact that our brain has the power to produce delusion is reality.

[42:51]

But if we forget this, we are completely caught in our own life and life becomes a mess. To transcend this is to understand that, that we need to include the darkness and the light. We have to always be aware of both and the complexity and the interaction between both. And to be aware of the The impermanence and the constant change so that there's light and darkness and darkness is light constantly. We can't say this is the darkness. They don't exist separately. The other duality Okamura points out is the problem created by thinking that darkness is negative and light is positive or vice versa.

[43:55]

The negative for darkness is the absence. of discrimination, the absence of the lack of intellect. The positive for light is that our rational mind has the ability to analyze or categorize or conceptualize to distinguish good from evil. On the other hand, the positive side is to recognize non-duality, non-discrimination, and ultimate reality. And the negative for light is that we can't exist in emptiness. In the human world, we need guidelines, ethics. So we need to expand our awareness and always include perspectives. Warm is emptiness, emptiness is form. There we go again. So we must go beyond the duality and experience Buddha's wisdom or Prajna Paramita. We have to use discrimination to help others so that we can identify skillful means to address

[44:59]

and encourage beneficial actions, how to integrate both. On the other hand, we don't want to get caught by preconceived views. Okay. Suzuki Roshi, in this discussion of light and darkness, As another interesting, I love he picks up. What I like about Suzuki Roshi is he takes your everyday stuff, you know, that this is what it's like every day. So he was talking about food. It's okay. What? He was talking about. Another question. Mary? There's a question. Is it okay?

[46:01]

I don't know your format. Is it okay if I ask a question, Jerry, or do you want to hold it? I would rather hold it. Okay. Yeah. So he's talking about food. He was talking about, again, in Tassajara. When you go to the dining room at Tassajara, people use discrimination. about which dishes to eat, which plates to put them in, how much to take. As if that were, and the implication is, that was really so important. You know, that actually what we're eating is to support our life, to create energy so that we can go about our life rather than having fixed ideas. that we put a lot of emphasis on what we like, what we don't like, how much of it we should have.

[47:05]

But he says, but whichever you pick, they all blend together in your stomach and contribute to your health. So it's kind of like a lot of these distinctions that we make, are they, When we get caught in our thinking mind and the distinctions and our opinions and our conceptualization and our way, then we miss the big picture, which he's saying is nutrition. Food is about nutrition. Of course, you can enjoy it, too. And he's not condemning enjoying food, but he's just making a point that we... We do that about not just, that's just an obvious example. In this section of Darkness and Light, he also talks about, he also said this is his poem.

[48:15]

The mother is the blue mountain, the clouds. All day long they're together. Yet they do not know who is the mother and who is the children. He's talking about this is this is the world of of being with. In independency. There are relationships to these things. There are interrelationships. And they exist together. And we we we. We don't make decisions about who is and who is not prominent. The clouds are there. The mountains are there. The movement is there. It's all going every moment. And anytime we make these distinctions that can get us into trouble.

[49:25]

We just have to be present. Basically, the mother is the blue mountain. The children are the white clouds all day long together. Who is the mother? Who is their child? It's really like it's really interdependent and independent. So the next prompt is how do you work with this integration of form and emptiness, light and darkness when feeling caught in suffering? or other negative mental formations like anger and judgment? What about when you think wisdom and entered Narana? That's the other side. So how do you work with this constant coming and going of form and emptiness in each object? How do we negotiate this? How do we get through it? Is it a conscious process or do we just flow with it?

[50:34]

Do we have intention related to it or do we just flow with it? So that's the prompt. Do you want to answer Heather's question? Yeah, first question. Heather, do you want to ask your question now? Yeah, I would love to. So there was a line in there where they referenced good and evil. And that's not really a frame that I think of very often in Buddhism. And part of our discussion in our small group around the precepts was why like where is the line between nuance, nuances acceptable around precepts, but there might be some areas where you just feel really black and white. And so I'm thinking about good and evil and interpretations in that way.

[51:38]

And I just wonder if you could say a little bit on hold the idea of good and evil. Um, I, I try to stay away from, um, from those, those, those terms, um, unless there's a really, you know, me, it's kind of a body, a body mind thing that happens, um, when that, that something really, I can really feel that, um, harm is happening and something has to be done. But still, it's not necessarily not necessarily saying evil. Not necessarily saying evil or good. Maybe beneficial or wholesome.

[52:41]

Words that are not so that do not There is no, you know, there's not any time we concretize something. We get stuck there and we can't see, you know. There, you know, there are some people who do terribly evil. It seems like they're they're using weapons and killing and whatever. And then and yet, where did that come from? You always want to look a little, you want to look below the activity that you're observing and actually really look, look at where things are coming from and really even look for the good. Is there any good? Always question mark, not ever getting stuck with that.

[53:44]

That is evil. I've got to get I've got to get rid of it. And yet. Sometimes we do. But the more things we plaster, that's why we're polarized the way we are, the more things we use those words as right and wrong, good and evil. Somebody has no redeeming qualities. One side has no redeeming ideas or suggestions for how things then we're caught because we're stuck in our own mind bubble of what we think and our opinions. So always have a question mark and always have openness to what we're seeing and what we're observing. Recognize everything we feel is a result of our conditioning.

[54:47]

We are totally... reacting out of our own little bubble, little life bubble. And other people are bouncing around. Rev Anderson used to talk about, we all have these little bouncing around. And if you're lucky, you can find places to overlap. view and those are the people you those are the people you can bond with and other people you're so you're so tight in your own conceptualization you can't even you have no idea how to what what what's right what's right around how do you know you're right how do you know question about that um yeah language is expression For instance, as someone who writes poetry, I don't want to eliminate words.

[56:01]

I don't want to eliminate vocabulary. I want to spin them. Poetry or songwriting are just two mediums that come to mind, but I could say artistic expression or any expression. Writing an op-ed, you know, making a sign at a mark. Do I not go to that march because there's signage there whose language I, you know, see in a particular. There are many voices, many expressions. How How, if you will, can I see the dichotomy of evil as independent and that the same is interdependent with other language?

[57:02]

Because this is something that I relate to more as a koan. Yes. Which maybe is what you're saying. Yes. Live in the question of it. Yes. As distinct from, don't use the terminology. use some other terminology. But if I'm talking to somebody who's talking about good and evil, well, I'm going to talk to them about good and evil. But there's something happening. If we're in person, you know, it's in gesture and embodiment. If we're in tone and, well, still gesture if we have the video. You know, because... Yeah, I guess that's how I'm relating to that. I mean, this is really the heart of this, actually. How we get caught in duality, and when we get caught in duality, that means we're going to be able to deal with these people over here, the northerners.

[58:16]

I'm going to have to go north because the people in the South, because we don't even have the same language. And we use different terms. We can't listen to what's going on. So it really makes harmony very hard. How do we harmonize? How can we harmonize? How can we, you know, and there are people like Indivisible, where they practice asking questions. They ask questions of people who they know have a certain view that's very different. And they ask, how did you come to that? When did you first feel that way? Or, you know, that kind of thing. So you get, you know, because for me, understanding that, the circumstances of what makes, what's made a person who they are,

[59:19]

When you understand that, you realize that you would be them if you had their circumstances, if you had their life experience. If you were poor, if you were abused as a child, whatever it is, if you had those experiences, or if you were in an evangelical town in Texas, you would feel that way. Also, recognizing that they are not inherently bad or inherently evil, although there are psychopaths and things like that. But it's not that easy. Hi, Jerry. There's another question online. Okay. Hi, Jerry. I was wondering, how should we think about... um, metaphor that Suzuki Roshi gave that you mentioned about, it's about nutrition.

[60:28]

Like, how should we think about that? Oops, I can't, we can't, we can't hear that. We lost you. You broke up for a second there. Are you interviewing the question? Put it in the chat. The question is about the metaphor about the selection of food that then becomes food in your stomach. Is that right? Yeah, I guess I'm just wondering, Jerry, what your thoughts are about that example? How does that metaphor extend to a... I had that question. You're doing great, Mary. Thanks. I'm not sure it's... Well, I think it actually, in a way... say, recognizing the same indifference in everybody.

[61:31]

And what is beneficial in terms of wake up? Is this beneficial at maybe having a question that how do we work together? How do we interact with each other in terms of harmonizing? When we see same and different in our relationship, how do we harmonize? How do we address that? How do we work with that? Because then assuming, working towards harmony, I guess that way. So instead of like nutrition, body healthy, working to make our minds open and pliable and compassionate to all. How do we make that?

[62:33]

How do we create? By reading things that somebody from a different perspective writes. I find I'm starting to do that a little bit more, trying. When I do that, there is not, the polarization is less. Start to see that I can understand more. That there are some things that that person says that makes sense. So that kind of thing. If you don't mix it all in together, right? If you just take Pick and choose. Not picking and choosing. Food. A process question. We're at 8.21. Do you still want 15 minutes on this breakout? No, I think we're not going to do this breakout because we did a discussion instead.

[63:38]

Okay. Thank you. So unless somebody else has, you know, wants to address something else before we- There is another question. Yeah. Jerry. Jerry, I was just going to say, can you hear me okay? Yes. I was just going to say that- We did, and then now you're frozen. I'm frozen. Am I still frozen? Here, I'll turn my video off. How's that? You're not frozen for the rest of us. I think the room is frozen. Can't hear me. Gary, I think the room is frozen. Okay.

[64:41]

I think it's the room, the bandwidth in the room is probably... Can you hear what Gary said? He hasn't said it yet. Put it in the chat. Well, I was going to say. Put it in the chat. I was going to say, can you hear me now? Yes. What is it? That when I listen to farmers, I realize why they're so. or why they're so particular about governance and governance oversight, because they get so manipulated. Nobody can hear me. Okay.

[65:44]

It wasn't a question. I was just saying that... I have compassion for those people, too. They're usually pretty red-oriented Republicans. They really struggle with water rights and things like that. Anyway, that's all. Uh-oh. Did we lose the room? I think we lost the room. No. Well, um... I have that effect. Clearly, this was a problem last week, too.

[66:48]

It's a problem in the bandwidth. Oops, it looks like they're coming back. Any better? We're back. We're on a different island. Well, I think what Gary was talking about is he would maybe coming from a more liberal background, thinking that, you know, the environment can be protected by all of these rules and regulations. And we're for all the regulations because those farmers are going to. Use use. toxic fertilizers or whatever, all the preconceived notions that we might have about people who happen to live in rural areas who often have certain kinds of opinions. So we kind of assume that we disagree with them on everything. So now we find out that they're working hard from... you know, the early morning hours to the late evening hours, seven days a week to make their, support their family and to deliver good food or whatever.

[67:59]

And there's some middle ground. There's a way to talk about that. And there's a way to think about it and actually discuss things and maybe come up with something that might be actually a good idea, a new way of doing it. I heard something today about, well, they were talking about that kind of thing, and it was a combination of liberal and conservative people having a conversation. And they were just talking about, well, actually, there could be something in what they say about the regulations. But it's long to hear that out, that we can't really... We don't have that time, so we can't talk to each other. It's too cumbersome. We don't want to talk to each other. So they found a reason not to talk. Another reason not to talk. They didn't even want to make the first step of, can't we figure out? Maybe if we come together, we could actually solve some problems.

[69:06]

So I think that that's what we're talking about. Same and different. Same and different, not really, or not as much the same or as different. So the last lines are light and darkness oppose one another like front and back foot in walking. Okamura says light and dark are each other like forward and backward steps. That's quite different. Yeah. Light and darkness oppose one another like front and back foot in walking. Light and dark are relative to each other like forward and backward steps. That is different. Yeah. Forward and backward steps is definitely different. It's very different.

[70:10]

Yes. Yes. Suzuki Roshi said these are equating front and back foot and light, absolute and relative. This foot and that foot pairs of opposites. This is a very good way of explaining oneness or actual function of a pair of opposites. It expresses how we apply opposites, pairs of opposites like delusion and light reality or ultimate reality. and idea, good or bad, weak or strong in everyday practice, people get caught in opinions about their own characters, beliefs and opinions of themselves or others, and find it hard to see through them to the truth, to the truth of pretty much emptiness.

[71:10]

They are so caught in the duality. that they cannot see through that because their mind is filled with conceptual thinking and opinions. There's a question online. Yeah. Jerry, it's Sue. I love, I don't know, I just caught something that they're not opposites, they're relative to translations. It's like, We can see things as opposites or look at the relationship of them. The right and left foot are related, not relative, but related. And as the opposites are related, slightly different. I like that. Yeah. Basically, it's interesting watching it, watching the front and back, you know, this and that, this and that, this and that.

[72:14]

And it keeps you, actually, if you're attentive to what's going on and all these relative interactions, you can actually have an opportunity to kind of be more creative and use your imagination and see things in different ways that you wouldn't have seen before if you didn't allow yourself to sense that open to something that you didn't make up. That you didn't... That wasn't in your mind bubble. Your mind bubble had these things in it. That's it, period. Impermeable. But watch, but recognizing there's coming and going. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's nice. The analogy is nice because the front and the back foot is not fixed. I mean, it's always... changing you know one foot is in the front then the other foot is in the front and so they're related to each other and and they're yeah not fixed yeah they're not fixed which is what he's trying to say I think that that form and emptiness are not fixed no it's not this is form and this is emptiness and then they're related to each other it's like sometimes you're more in the form sometimes you're more that's like you know more in the emptiness or something yeah well it's like it's like

[73:39]

I mean, that's that's like we have we have to pay attention to the phenomenal world. We have to we have to walk down the street. We have to cross the street. We have to go up and down stairs. We have to we have to eat. We have to go to the store, buy something, whatever it is we have to do. So we have the that part of ourselves, the phenomenal, you know, the discriminating mind has to be active. And we have to remind ourselves constantly that it's not always so. It's not always so. Another comment or question? Yeah. Go ahead, Karen. Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb. You know, we're talking about the relative and the absolute, right? Yeah. We could also look at that, those two concepts, as duality.

[74:47]

There's a duality in even what we're talking about. Sure. Yes, exactly. You follow what I'm saying? Yes, I do. It's actually dualistic. Well, that's right. That's right, exactly. Maybe there's something in between that. Well, actually, I'll raise you on more, which is that they're also no different. That's right. It's walking. They're walking. It's the walking that... They're walking and we're bouncing around with them all the time. They're harmonious. They can be harmonious if you accept both. If you're... If you get yourself caught the other, then you're threatened by the other. But if you can move with them, it's like any other flow in life.

[75:50]

If you're talking to farmers, Gary, you can say those people. You know, like calling people that you think are red and Republican. Stop saying those people. Maybe we can be front and left foot walking then. More related. Or front, back foot walking. I mean, whatever, yes. How many feet do we... Well, and again, you know, this... Light and darkness oppose one another. It's the end of this last, you know, the ninth chapter. What is it? The eighth chapter. He starts, he goes through this whole thing about front and back foot and walking and the interdependency of those.

[76:59]

And then he goes back again to to the precepts, you know, like we were doing. He did what we did in this discussion. In other words, we said, but we have to, you know, we have to have guidelines. We have to have values. We have to know stuff to fix, right? So he says, but he reiterates Suzuki Roshi at the end of this whole thing. He says, there's no fixed moral standard. Rather, you find your own moral code when you try to teach others. He said before Japan was defeated in World War II, the Japanese people thought they had a moral teaching that was absolutely right. But the code was developed many years earlier and really wasn't relevant. So during World War II, it resulted in their losing.

[78:01]

So they had a way of... of operating the Japanese, very self-righteous. They were the best country in the world and so forth. And they, by having that polarizing point of view, they ended up losing the war. And then we, of course, committed a worse atrocity. So who were the bad guys? We did Hiroshima. So who's the bad guys? So. You know, kind of. What's the takeaway? What is the takeaway? It seems like we need to include. Our whole we need to get in touch through our practice. We need to integrate the conscious part of our. minds, our life, the sense consciousness, the mind consciousness, with the unconscious parts.

[79:10]

We need to be able to through our practice into the unconscious and recognize how the unconscious and the conscious Interact in forming our opinions. And in making decisions. And making decisions in the present moment. Begin to see that. Actually see both. You know, oh, this is, I'm having this response because of, you know, I recognize this response. I always have it in these circumstances. It doesn't suit me well. And it usually doesn't work out too well. How do I work with that? How do I work with that information that and really accept this whole complexity of what the human mind is, both conscious and unconscious?

[80:12]

He says he talks about. They're really always working together. We just don't know. We're blind to it. We have to be able to see to use our practice. to use our meditation practice, our whatever parts of our, you know, our observational now to just be aware of this constant turning, this universal activity of form and emptiness. And really keep, you know, keep our We keep our eyes open in this way where we're looking, we're noticing the back and forth, the light and the dark. Then we can be more, maybe when it comes to looking at a situation, we can have a better process for discerning the most skillful response.

[81:28]

How do we operate with this? Jerry, it feels to me like what you just said feels like the best answer of all the separate food that we select than what happens in our stomach. The working together is what we're blind to, that we don't see, but it is actually that working together that nourishes us. makes something happen. And it happens in the dark. Yeah. And it is the dark side and the food on the table is the light side. It's the light side. Yeah. And you need both of them. You need that. You need that information that we get from our sense organs and our mind organ. We have to make sense of things to give some structure. And yet we have to let go of it. We have to keep on letting it.

[82:32]

We see it. We let go of it. We see if it works. I used to ask Sojin, how did he know? Sojin always had this thing about intuition. And he was always talking about intuition, that he would somehow, he would take it all in and then he would have this intuition. He would point to his, you know, point to his chest, something like he had it there. And I said, well, how do you know you're right? How do you know? How do you know? when you've discerned right action and appropriate action or skill collection. He said, I see how it turns out. That's why we have the Bodhisattva Sarah. I mean, I tried this. It didn't work. You know, that's another thing to add. More information. More information. Well, it also. Reminds me that humility is a really deep core expression in practice.

[83:39]

But you can have, I can have an idea of what humility is, but the reality of that is how my actions are reflected back to me. Yes. And their impact. Yeah. And then. Yeah, we'll see how, what happened, you know, yeah. I mean, you tried it this way. Yeah. I feel like he talks about having to say something for a talk. You just have to do something. And then see what happens. Because if you're going to be creative, especially, because we're in times when we don't know what to do. So you have to figure out, well, I'll try this. Seems like a good idea. Yes, maybe these times are more stressful or obvious, but you never... No one knows what to do. That's true. That's right. We can fool ourselves, right? The OCD people keep their life... Some of them do a pretty good job of keeping their life predictable.

[84:53]

There's no predictability. So you have to be open to that and not get so upset when unpredictability happen that you get angry and you start being overly reactive. I think it works. It just didn't work out. You know, okay, I'm sorry. It's like that co-on comes to mind of is the teaching of a whole lifetime and the teacher replies an appropriate response. Yes. Yeah. That's it. But how do you know it's an appropriate response? How it turns out, how everybody responds to it. I think that going back to Gary's comment or question about, you know, are we creating another duality with non-duality and duality? And actually, for me, the way that I've been putting it together is the theory

[85:59]

And because of how we are constructed with our six senses, we can see it from one side very easily, but it's just a perspective. And the other is just another perspective, but the actual reality is one complete reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's all happening. Just this right now. This is it. This is it. But we're just, we miss it. We miss it. We miss it a lot of the time. I remember Okamura, when he's talking about the five fingers in one hand, that he also said, you know, being one finger, you're only experiencing the one finger. You can't see the other fingers, but the one finger. freely as the whole hand.

[87:03]

So that's sort of the independent and, you know, interdependent. So it's also this faith, faith mind that we keep contacting through being fully immersed in the activity of the one finger. Yeah. Well, you know, by looking at the activity of the one finger and it's what's starting it and what's stopping it and the action where, you know, we get to see form an emptiness and inaction. We are now at 845. Yes. So I think that we will bend. This is just the right time. We've all, Gary has had an awakening with the family, with the farmers.

[88:11]

We've had our, yes, yes. So we need to pay attention. Elm is paying attention. Always. Yes. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Nations are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's wings are surpassable. I vow to be coming. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. It was very interactive. Have a good trip, Jay. Have a good trip, everyone.

[89:17]

Thank you, Jerry. Good night, everybody. Good night. We've got to figure that out, right? Yeah. LORI, GOOD NIGHT, EVERYBODY. LORI, CAN I ASK YOU, WHERE YOU SEND ME AWAY, WHO IS MONITORING THE QUALITY OF THE WEBSITE OR THE BANDWID IN THE COMMUNITY ROOM, SHOULD WE ASK ME TO LOOK AT IT? I DON'T MEAN THE WEBSITE, I MEAN THE INTERNET. It was better later on. The same thing happened last week. Tax had a really hard time with it. Yeah. When I came on, it was on Northcraft Precept, and I switched to Plum Mountain thinking that would be better, and it wasn't. It crashed.

[90:19]

You actually crashed and then rebooted. Yeah. But once we switched back to Plum Mountain, then it was fine. So it is kind of mysterious. And also that it wasn't like that last week. No, it was. It was. I've got to go pick up Helen, so I'm closing this conversation down. Okay, bye. In another way. Okay, bye. Thanks, Cherry.

[90:47]

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