I vow to taste the truth very early 70s. Doug lives in Port Richmond, which is a lab, many of the maintenance and care projects

[01:13]

every other week, and he's a member of the board of directors of Berkeley Zen Center. Welcome, Doug. We look forward to your words today. Thank you, Megan. When I received this ruksu from Sojin, he, nice calligraphy, huh? He said that I don't know anything about Buddhism. He said, Doug doesn't know anything about Buddhism, but he's very interested. And I really took that to heart. So, today I'm going to talk about two things that I don't know anything about. So, I hope your time will be well spent. The first one is the brain. I mean, I studied a lot smaller things.

[02:37]

And the other is enlightenment, which we... we think about sometimes. And when I told Solji and I was going to talk about enlightenment... Anyway, here's the one about the brain. You may... I'd like to know how many people have heard of this woman. It's Jill Taylor. That's pretty... well-known, yeah, she has a YouTube thing and so I'll talk about that but set this trail of interest off and so when I talked to Sojin he said well all my lectures are about enlightenment I thought this could be a hard act to follow and I better learn something about it so he gave me a book And I don't usually like to study because I spent my whole career thinking really hard, you know.

[03:42]

And I'd come home from work and my son would say, Daddy, Daddy, play chess with me. And I'd say, I can't, my brain is tired. But I've been retired for a while now, so. I dug into this book. So every place, this is the book, it's by Sung Bae Park, Korean. And I read it through the first time and I put stickers every place that I didn't understand something. And every place I thought there was something important, and every place I wanted to ask Sojin about it. So... I don't know if the library will take it back, but I'll probably have to clean it up. So... I read it twice. First time was really hard, but I was in the mountains, I had a dictionary, and I had no interruptions, so it was not so bad, it took a few days.

[05:00]

So this lady, Jill Taylor, that some of you heard about, I'll just give you a capsule of her. She's a neuroanatomist. She studies the brain. She studies what different parts of the brain do. And her life was going along just fine. She was a successful professional person. And one morning she woke up and she had kind of a headache, you know, and it got worse. And then she realized that her brain was going. She knew so much about her brain that she could tell what parts of it were going. And what she was losing was her ability to speak and her ability to think logically and her ability to read numbers and a lot of motor skills.

[06:10]

And But something very interesting happened to her. That's what caught me. And so I'm going to read a quote. She said, devoid of language and linear processing, I felt disconnected from the life I had lived. And in the absence of my cognitive pictures and expansive ideas, time escaped me. The memories from my past were no longer available for recollection, leaving me cloaked from the bigger picture of who I was and what I was doing here as a life form. Focused completely in the present moment, my pulsing brain felt like it was gripped in a vice. And here, deep within the absence of earthly temporality, the boundaries of my earthly body dissolved and I melted into the universe. As the hemorrhaging blood interrupted the normal functioning of my left mind, my perception was released from its attachment to categorization and detail.

[07:19]

As the dominating fibers of my left hemisphere shut down, they no longer inhibited my right hemisphere, and my perception was free to shift such that my consciousness could embody the tranquility of my right mind. Swathed in an enfolding sense of liberation and transformation, the essence of my consciousness shifted to a state that felt amazingly similar to my experience in Thetaville. Thetaville is her term for when you first wake up and you're not fully conscious and you're kind of in a dream state. I'm no authority, but I think the Buddhists would say I entered the mode of existence they call nirvana. So, given that, I thought, well, you know, I wonder what I think about that.

[08:21]

And so I read the book and I thought about enlightenment. And the first thing I read in the book was a quote that Park gives from Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma usually is over there, but he's not there today. But he's with us. Bodhidharma said, I came to China not to make people Buddhas, but to tell them they are already perfect Buddhas. So, and he's not talking about Shakyamuni, of course, he's talking of one of the other Buddhas that is Shakyamuni became when he understood everything.

[09:27]

Perhaps the probably not the Dharmakaya Buddha, but the Sambhogakaya Buddha, because that's more for human beings, more for us. Suzuki Roshi had a few lectures about enlightenment, and they're in Not Always So. And he said, real enlightenment is always with you, so there's no need for you to stick to it or even think about it. Because it is always with you, difficulty itself is enlightenment. Your busy life is enlightened activity. That is true enlightenment. So, that might be why I didn't study Buddhism so much. But I didn't have the whole picture. And then as I read further in this fellow Park's book, he says, he starts talking about Buddha and he says, Buddha is dependent origination.

[10:41]

I didn't know what that meant. And I asked some people and I didn't really get a straight answer. And it may be, of course, something that we can't talk about. But I tried to compare it with the experience that I'd had and the things that I knew about studying the world and physics and that sort of thing. So, if you start down at the particle level, You know, there's all these kinds of particles. They all seem to have relationships to each other. There's all these things that tie them together.

[11:44]

They have like the strong force, they've got electromagnetism, they've got the weak force, they've got gravity. They probably have something to do with whatever is dark energy. And there's also all the quantum mechanical things that don't seem to really be affected by space and time, like the Pauli principle and quantum entanglement, which is a relationship that that doesn't seem to care where things are. They are one. So, I've always felt that those sorts of thoughts made me feel the large picture of how everything is connected.

[12:45]

And you could look at this as like the Buddhist conception of the net of Indra. It's everything is connected. Everything affects everything else. But there's another interesting thing. And what we don't really stress in physics is that all of these things are connected. They all have natures, but whether or not there's an external reality. In other words, is it all emptiness, or is there an external reality to this net? And I thought about it, and all we know is that if we do things, if we do, you know, if you do an experiment, or I do an experiment, or someone in China does an experiment, we get the same answer. That's very strange. it might indicate that there's an external reality.

[13:49]

But still, we're just taking these things that appear in our head and comparing our notes. So, there's something, for sure, similar about us. And these things come together in some strange way. Like, for instance, we can't really predict what all the particles are, and that's a work in progress, but they seem to all kind of conspire and work together to give a complete set of particles. They kind of emerge out of this nest of interactions. And if you go one step up, the next thing is molecules. I know there's a nuclear physicist here. But let me just say that we can't really predict elements.

[14:51]

I'm talking about elements. Elements, we can't really predict with great certainty all of the elements that should be around. But they don't worry about it. They're there. And so they kind of emerge from this set of relationships, too. They just come up. You go another step, you go to molecules. Molecules, they're very complicated, you know. They got all these particles going around and everything. And they even depend a lot on what their geometry is. The same molecule have several different geometries. And we're just beginning to calculate this sort of thing, and it takes a whole lot of computing power. So molecules just come out of this net too. So it's like this big net of starting down at the bottom with particles, and then it kind of clumps together, and you get elements, and it clumps together, and you get molecules.

[16:01]

And then, somehow we get cells that reproduce, you know. That's really strange. Made out of molecules. So, everything is dependent upon everything else. It seems to be like this could be dependent origination. And then you get the mind, and you get hurricanes, and you get all these things they just come out so when these guys say that that enlightenment is always with you and and you are buddhas uh i interpret it as we're all pieces of this, we're all like little lumps in this net, you know, that come and go and disappear and people die and that bump goes away and another bump comes.

[17:07]

And it's not personal. So, that's the way I see that sort of thing. And I was reading the magazine of the American Physical Society. And they're starting this push to get the government to fund a new area of research. And one of those areas of research is trying to understand emergence. Emergent phenomena, which are all these things that I just talked about. And So here comes the government into Buddhism. How are they going to do the research? Are they going to send Zazen? We'll see. But what they say, they say the human brain is one of the most stunning examples of emergent properties.

[18:16]

It contains 100 billion neurons that transmit and receive electrochemical signals. Each neuron exists as an individual rather simple cell, but from millions of them acting collectively, there emerges the human mind. So they want to get into this area. So, that's probably as much as I can say or want to say about my feeling about Buddha. But you know, it's an easy way out to just say, well, we're all Buddha. Why sweat it? Let's just take it easy, you know. In Buddhism, and I'm reading now from Uchiyama Roshi, and this is from, he's discussing Dogen's Bendoa, and this is from The Wholehearted Way.

[19:30]

And he says, in Buddhism, The dichotomy of delusion and enlightenment is transcended from the very beginning. We have to practice and actualize right now, right here, the Buddha Dharma or the reality of life that transcends both delusion and enlightenment. This is great enlightenment. Therefore, from the first, we are neither deluded nor enlightened. Reality itself exists before we divide the name delusion and enlightenment. We are practicing this reality right here, right now. This is called attaining or actualizing enlightenment. We practice with enlightenment as our base. Practice and enlightenment are simply one. So that's why we're here. Practice and enlightenment are simply one. When they say actualizing, I think of bringing it to your consciousness.

[20:38]

And when you read Park, there's a whole discussion of how this initiates itself, and what he's saying is the initial thing is faith. Now, faith is a difficult word. If you look it up, it's something that you have to sort of take as a given But it's something that gives you the confidence to act and to practice. Now in my particular case, I've mentioned this last week, but what happened to me is I was studying for my PhD and I was

[21:49]

raising two children with another on the way. And I was really busy. And some friends of mine said, oh, why don't you come to this Zen place in San Francisco and see what it's like? So I went over and stayed with them and went early in the morning. And when I walked in this room, dark room with the men on one side and the women on the other, I just, I didn't consciously feel anything except comfort and peace. and I sat down and I didn't have any instruction about doing Zazen but there was so much of it around me that it just soaked in and it must have had its effect because in spite of my busy life and all the things I had to do and the fact that I wasn't really searching for anything I went back every day all the way to San Francisco

[23:13]

So that's faith. It made me do something. I didn't even know I had faith. You know, it's completely unconscious. But when I look back at it, I know that was faith. So you have faith that if you do this practice, it's not that you'll get anything, you have faith and you do the practice and you're enlightened. And it's very similar to, I realize that it's very similar to the faith that physicists have. You know, physicists devote their lives to this quest for knowledge. And they think that if they can do experiments and figure out these things that they'll actually learn something for some reason.

[24:19]

What reason is it? Why does mathematics work? It's just, the world's a very interesting place. So we come back to this lady. She's had this terrible thing happen to her and she's slowly putting her life back together and she decides that you can keep these feelings of oneness and expansiveness and peace and joy by deciding to keep them. And she has a lot of, she describes a lot of things that she does. But basically, what her experience did for me was to give me faith. It gave me a real solider feeling that something was there and it was in all of us.

[25:29]

And by practice, you get in communication with it, you actualize your enlightenment. So, that's how I feel about her. And when she came, when she started coming back and reconstructing her left brain, as she did that, she was able to reject character traits that she had that she didn't want to have. her right brain was like more in control and could tamp things down. So it's very interesting. And the question is, is she a single case? Well, there's been a lot of research both before and since, and the right brain is really a different creature. The nerve cells are much longer, they cover more area, and

[26:33]

So I was thinking about this, and I, well, I'll go into that later, but I want to say that she actually did what I would call a stroke of insight, a bodhisattva vow. She says, my stroke of insight would be, peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind. And that's the monkey mind, I guess. We try to make peace with it, and I think our practice makes it quieter. It's a combination of posture and breathing that go together that seem to work for what we are. So like Avalokiteshvara was practicing, we say this every day in the Heart Sutra, was practicing the Prajnaparamita and realized that all skandhas were empty.

[27:53]

And it's that kind of realization that is usually called enlightenment. And so I would say this lady had that type of experience. So as I was working on this, are we okay in time? Okay, great. I'm not sure I got an hour's worth. So I wanted to take a break from this. I was really studying hard. I really was studying hard. And so I said, I can sit down and read the New Yorker, man. And so lo and behold, in the latest New Yorker, July 28th, there's an article called The Eureka Hunt. How many have read that? Wow, this is a sophisticated crowd. So they're looking at insight.

[29:00]

And the guy's interviewing these different scientists. And they talk about some cases of insight. One is where some smokejumpers were in a valley, and the wind changed on them, and they tried to run to the top of the valley so that the fire wouldn't catch them, because it had come over to their side of the valley. And this one guy kept looking back and realized they couldn't make it to the top and they were going to get roasted. And all of a sudden he realized that what he should do is light a fire and let the fire open up some area. I think they were going up grassy slopes. And then he got in the middle of that area and put his reflective shield over him and put his face down by the ground and he lived. And only one other man of those 15 lived.

[30:02]

So they quote that to get people started to read it. And so you want to know, how do you have insights like that? But the interesting thing is, these guys developed an experiment that required some of the properties of insight. And what they did is they would give you three words. And here's an example. Pine, crab, and sauce. What word can be combined with all of those? And the word is apple. And what they found is that that doesn't happen in the left brain. And it won't happen if the person is trying really hard. In people that got it, they had sort of a of alpha wave formations, which signifies relaxation.

[31:04]

So, you have to have a soft mind, like Suzuki Roshi always said, have a soft mind to solve these sort of insight problems, which are probably similar to enlightenment. sudden enlightenment. So, they also found that when this would happen, when this enlightenment would come, there'd be a big burst of electrical activity in the right brain, and they associate those bursts with forming new paths. So, the enlightenment comes, the new paths are formed, it's permanent, And that's very similar to what Park says about practice. It says if you practice and if you're practicing based on this sort of strange faith, you don't stop.

[32:18]

You just keep practicing. Your whole life is practice. So this These things go on until you've remade these paths. So they tested a Zen guy. They tested a Zen meditator. Could be someone we know. And at first he didn't do very well, you know. He was really trying hard. He didn't do very well. And then he started getting all of them. And he did the best test they'd ever seen. When they say about him, they must have talked it over, he says, the dramatic improvement of the Zen meditator came from his paradoxical ability to focus on not being focused. He could pay attention to those remote associations in the right hemisphere.

[33:19]

He had the cognitive control to let go. He became an insight machine. So, when you do zazen, that's what you're doing. Could be anyway. Our practice spans a whole lot of different forms, but zazen is a very important part of our practice. And I think this is evidence that we are actually... You know, my wife used to say to me, I'd say, I'm doing zazen, I'm saving all sentient beings, and she says, you can't save all sentient beings unless you do something. Well, we're doing something. We're making this large net have a piece that is more settled, you know.

[34:23]

It's kind of like adjusting the drapery, you know. We're doing zazen. And it's a good thing. So, I'll conclude with, have faith. After all, you are Buddha. Zazen is practice. Do it. Balance your brain. Relax your mind. And be happy, don't worry. Perfect. Yeah, let's have some questions. Yes? The only thing I have a feeling for is that wherever it came from, it's never going to go away.

[35:42]

It'll get diffuse, very diffuse, but we don't know where it came from. as far as physics goes. There's ideas. no matter how far you go in this science, are we talking about ever finding what we would call the true nature of reality?

[36:54]

I agree with so what. I don't think we're I don't think that's a question that's up for grabs. I mean, I think we can go close to it in a bunch of different ways, but we're just this pile of mush that has some electrons bouncing back and forth inside of it, and we get these ideas. And that's all we know. So it would be nice to know ultimate reality, but I don't have a lot of hope. I think we have to live with just what comes to us.

[38:01]

Yeah. Is that enough? I think that there are a lot of, actually, there's a lot of people that have made that claim. And the way we sort through claims in physics is to do experiments. So that's the type of knowledge that I have faced here. So, if somebody comes up with something that tells me I can measure and give myself more confidence that that really is ultimate reality, then I would be willing to do the experiment.

[39:18]

Yes, thank you. I can answer that question personally. For me, it's not if I can figure it out or if I can do an experiment, actually. For me, it's just what comes from my practice.

[40:26]

And if it feels consistent with my practice and comfortable, and then for the time being, since everything changes, it's okay. And that's a dangerous thing too, because I mean, George Bush feels that way. Yeah, way in the back. You. I just wanted to say, you know, I heard this interview on Terry Gross. It's maybe on the internet. It was fascinating. I heard this woman on Terry Gross about three weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know about that. Yeah. Yeah. She's a good speaker. Yeah. Did you hear it? My wife heard it. Yeah. Actually, with the new schedule, we do have a little more time. Great, okay.

[41:30]

Alan? Well, to go back to something that you said in response to the last question, I think that Penny was right. You have to do something. Yeah. And the only way... So, in your physics, in order to verify something, you have to do something, right? Right. You have to make an inquiry. Yeah. The nature of reality that we're talking about down what we are, not just insight creating machines, but we're machines of inquiry. And that the reality that we manifest is by constantly asking how. And we have faith, I think, in that question and also in that activity, whether it's overt or

[42:38]

grasp, you can never quite be the questioner grasping the question itself. So we have to go on faith and allow this activity to unfold in its miraculous activity. I think that's how I would see, and every time you feel like you're reifying, oh this I agree with you. And we do the best we can. Yeah. Walter, yeah, Walter. Is Collider going to verify the cosine?

[43:54]

I know as much about that as I do about ultimate reality. I'm responding to the amount of use of the word machine. It sets off a red flag for me. What did you say about a machine? sitting with the idea that people are making artificial life now. Because they see it as a machine and that if you connect this and that, nodes of a new net, you will have a version, a quality that will be a new form of life. in this paradigm.

[45:17]

No comment. Yes? It's more with his concept of no external reality. Subject and object sounds like separate existences, but essence and function sounds

[47:01]

He did do a lot of things with words that I didn't quite approve of. But I think in the whole, a lot of things in there. I don't know if this is a translation or not. No, oh no, this guy, he wrote in English. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Behind Alan. Can you use this expression? No, it's a very spooky action at a distance.

[48:22]

What it is, is you can put two particles in such a state that they're the same thing. And then you can move them apart. So they have actually put things in this entangled state and moved them apart several meters and they change one and the other one changes at the same time. There's no communication between them. It's spooky. That's exactly what the net... That's exactly my point.

[49:43]

Basically, there's not things, there's processes. And that's, as I understand, that's dependent origination. This is a process, a process of everything that will

[50:01]

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