Good morning. Hi everyone, and welcome to BCC Saturday Lecture. Today I have the good fortune to introduce our drummer brother, Gary Artem. Gary started practicing at BCC in 1993, the same year he met his wife, Emily. He has held several practice positions, among them as head server, machine director, and kitchen keeper. Along with his Zen practice, he enjoys traveling with Emily, basketball, movies, swimming, and loves reading.

[01:07]

He grew up on the East Coast, moved to California in 1990, and was layordained by Sojin Roshi in 1997, and with Arshuso last year. He is happy to be a part of the Sangha life in the BVC community. Please welcome Gary. Good morning. Well, um... I'm on the wrong page. It's nice to be here and to see everybody in Zoom land and the Zendo is full.

[02:13]

There's like one empty seat and that's it. So great turnout and the weather's really nice and brisk. Before I start, I'd like to say that I I spent a lot of time on this talk. Ross gave me a, like, two-month lead-in, and it was difficult. I mean, my health keeps kind of shifting around. I have a bad back problem now, and that pain increases the agony of other things that I have. So be gentle with me. First, I want to thank Ross for inviting me to give this talk and lending me the Tiger's Cave, which is a book on the Heart Sutra, which I read and it's helped inform what I'm going to talk about today, which is emptiness.

[03:20]

It's usually chanted daily at most Buddhist monasteries. specifically ours in other places, I'm sure, or almost all monasteries. I also want to thank my wife for her advice and patience in listening and advising me on this talk. So I chose the subject of emptiness, and I struggled with deciding what to say on the subject. I listened to numerous podcasts, Red Tiger's Cave and... It was hard because it has so many ways you can look at it. So, you know, in talking with one of the senior students, he suggested, you know, I just narrow it and choose one aspect of it.

[04:27]

I'm mostly going to speak in regards to a Zen practitioner. I think I've gotten glimpses of emptiness through Zazen and Seshin, but I don't claim any great knowledge of them or of it. I'll include some antidotes from my teachers and on my own suffering and delusions. So it starts with a 35-year-old man who wanders into Berkeley Zen Center. He's arrogant and challenges who would be his teacher. He sticks around. He doesn't know why, but he does. He continues to practice because he likes meditation, and a meditation hall reminds him of a basketball floor. He tries to no avail to impress his teacher. As time passes, he does more and more, but nothing moves the teacher.

[05:31]

So to light things up, here's a joke that I think is kind of appropriate. A man is distraught and goes to his psychiatrist and says, doctor, you got to help me. The doctor says, sure, what's the problem? The man says, it's my brother. He thinks he's a chicken. The doctor says, no problem, just tell him he's not a chicken. The man says, I would, but I like the eggs. I may have told this before. Anyway, the joke seems appropriate to me because it kind of shows the delusion of both the man and the brother. They're both feeding each other's delusion. So be careful what you... take away from my talk, maybe. So some definitions on, you know, most people in their talks, I noticed, they spend time defining terms and things like that.

[06:45]

So I thought, well, let's get some definitions of emptiness from people who have practiced for a while. And first, the Western definition Webster says, the state of being empty, empty of content, void, space, vacuum, as emptiness of a vessel, emptiness of the stomach. From the Tiger's Cave, it says, or has a definition as, to have a taste of the world of emptiness, you must make at least some effort to separate ourselves from the world of relative values. I think he's pointing out that the duality of judgments, whether something is good or bad, enlightened or unenlightened,

[07:54]

et cetera, et cetera. You need to drop, drop, and look at reality in its raw, nonjudgmental form. That's my comment on it. The Mahayana Buddhists, which Zen Buddhists fall into, term it as sunyata. And that, and I quote here, in Mahayana Buddhism, the Skanda's make up a human art seen as empty sunyata translates as emptiness or without form teaching of the teaching of sunyata helps buddhists to understand that there is no fixed stable self and the universe is neither fixed nor stable either this is because everything is dependent on something else dependent origination and nothing has form of its own. This is true of the five skandhas and the self.

[08:57]

A Theravadan monk, I'm gonna mess this name up probably, Thasinsara, Inku, states, emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. If you look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there is anything lying behind them, you look at the events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there is anything behind them. So emptiness, is it a noun or a verb? Can you practice it as an actionable thing or process? In developing this talk, I wanted not to explain it, but I wanted to see if I could embody it.

[10:01]

Maybe come to terms with it and settle my habitual anxiety. Have I done that? More on that later. So this brings me to myself and my suffering. So if I bring emptiness to myself and my suffering, it would mean, I think, to not judge myself physically or mentally one way or another, to drop off those judgments and just open to the raw reality of being, something called suchness. In my gut or intuition, I think, that there is not a direct action that will lead to this emptiness of being I'm talking about. I think there are indirect openings to emptiness, but you can't go out and say, do this. I'm sure you'll move into emptiness, non-dual way of being.

[11:08]

The rawness is maybe being inseparable from the reality you are a part of. Maybe ordinary essence of being is that rawness. So in the Heart Sutra, Shakyamuni says to Shariputra that the five doors of perception are ultimately empty. No form, no feelings, no perceptions, no consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no body, no mind, no, no, no. He negates everything. And when you're ready to say, all is null, void, he turns around and says, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. In a Doka song with Sojin, Roshi,

[12:14]

I asked him, what are the pillars? What are the core pillars of Buddhism? And he said, non-clinging and impermanence. We teach the three seals here at BCC. And I think, well, impermanence is one of them. The non-clinging kind of works with no self. So the three pillars are impermanence, no self, suffering, and nirvana. Impermanence meaning there's nothing that's eternal and nothing that is independent of something else. No self is there's no abiding self. And suffering, there is sorrow even when there is joy. I can attribute to that, or I can attest to that.

[13:16]

When I was like a teenager, I could play basketball all day long. By the time I was 20, I could play one game a day, and then I started running, and then I could run one mile, then two miles, then five miles. Then my knees started to go, bone on bone. I had to give up running. Now I'm swimming. So knock on water, I hope I can keep swimming. And as far as Nirvana, I can't say much about that. I think somebody else has to tackle that. The non-clinging and impermanence seems to resonate with me as an element of emptiness. Impermanence being a catalyst for non-clinging. And how do I see that? You have to drop your stories about someone or something to truly see them, or it.

[14:25]

Form is emptiness, and yet their story is in a way real. Form is form. Excuse me, I have to blow my nose. I have a personal story about letting go and kind of works with emptiness. Once when I was in a Toyota dealership getting a tune-up or something, I was sitting in the waiting room. While waiting, I drank a couple of cups of coffee.

[15:29]

It was nice and relaxing. So anyway, after all that coffee, I had to go and found the men's room and went in and stood at one of the three urinals. I finished, zipped up and washed up and turned the handle of, I'm reading this, the door to leave locked. What's up with that? I tried again and then started banging on the door. Let me out, let me out. Panic set in, what to do? I paused, stepped back and looked to my right and saw another door. I was trying my hardest to get in the storage room door and right next to me was the exit door. I don't know how many times I've been at the wrong door and the right one was right there.

[16:35]

The day I walked from Kaiser head and neck department, after being told I had a large cancerous tumor on the back of my tongue, I held on to my wife and felt unreal, dazed. Having coffee at one of those street side cutouts, not knowing where firm ground is, is that a kind of emptiness of being? I don't know. I have a koan that I think I'm gonna kind of weave into this to try and try and help some. This is from The gateless gate, case 46, which everybody's pretty familiar with. Master Sekito says, how do you step forward from the top of a hundred foot pole?

[17:41]

Another eminent master of old said, even though one is sitting on top of a hundred foot pole has entered realization, it is not yet real. He must step forward from the top of the pole and manifest his whole body throughout the world in 10 directions. Here I think Sekito is teaching that emptiness is all well and good at the pinnacle of your awakening, but that's not it. It's not clinging to that place, that state, letting go of what's next, letting go for what's next and getting back in the flow, not settling. After a seven-day sashim, the feeling of getting an El Cerrito pool and feeling totally connected to the other swimmers, then I begin swimming and being just part of the water, no separation.

[18:51]

Of course, this didn't last, nor should it. I'd be stuck on that 100-foot pole or some heavenly realm. But still, I have my workout. my 72 lang, I'm sorry, 72 laps. These different events, Sashin, struggling with the door, cancer, all point to some letting go. As practicing Buddhists, we continue this, what would we call it, events, wake-ups, openings. Okay, now I'll ask you, let's, Let's stop for a moment now and ask you to let go of what you think of me in this talk. Drop the idea of Gary being male, aging, having had cancer, anxiety prone, wears big blue sneakers, married to Emily, travels a lot,

[20:02]

Where does he get his money? Lucky duck. Can you just see me as is? It's not so easy. We tend to attach to stories about each person. Maybe a bigger question. is can i see myself as is dropping the story of being stories and being okay with the simple problems that aging poses are maybe not so simple not making them a big problem in my head and just seeing them as another view the scenery of life in all its stages anyway you get the idea seeing Seeing, just seeing, hearing, just hearing, it's not easy.

[21:09]

Attaching to story usually keeps coming up. I'm not saying that story doesn't exist. I'm just saying that it's not it or all of it. If you ever had the pleasure of discussing the Dharma with Sojin, you'll recall how he would give you this big fat piece of candy, some agreeable statement, and then before long, he'd pull the rug out from under you, take it all away. He was a master at emptiness, of showing you reality with all its subjective colors, and then whoosh, pull it all away. He demonstrated to me the gift of emptiness. What is the gift? Maybe freedom. Now I have this sciatic back pain that's persistent.

[22:19]

My training here with Sojin was to find the edges of resistance and test to see if I could lean into them and not be controlled by them. I developed that attitude. but with this back pain, it doesn't work. I have to listen closely to my pain and fatigue and try to soothe it, an act of love, acceptance of myself. I'm still stuck in self-denial and I'm struggling. An image of myself as weak leaks in and is hard to accept this doesn't help i'm beginning again and needing to let go here's a quote from suzuki roshi a quote the thing itself is emptiness because you because you add something to it you spoil the actual reality so if you don't spoil things

[23:31]

That is to empty things. When you sit in Shikantaza, don't be disturbed by sounds. Don't operate your thinking mind. That's difficult. This means not to rely on any sense organ or thinking mind and just receive the letter from the world of emptiness. That is Shikantaza, end quote. What does he mean? I think Roshi is saying, don't make one into two or four into five, just let one be one and accept your difficulty and your wake up call. I just put together a few views of what I think of as like moments into emptiness. It's when Ross talked about passing a tree many times for years and then one day seeing the tree as if for the first time it's me remembering um or one time in the kitchen using one of those light sticks i ignite the stove and with a burst appears on my right hozong

[24:58]

Or Ron explaining to me how he's not watering the garden next to the Dokasan hut for BZC, but for everyone. Or me walking west on the street in El Cerrito as the sun begins to descend and really seeing the fiery essence. Last Saturday at Sashin, I dropped my chili on the floor of the kitchen. In an instant, I went from ready to enjoy my lunch to sadness. I thought of Sojin and my rug being pulled out, a mess to clean up. These are examples of mindfully letting go to what is there. I think these glimpses come and go. You can't hold on to them or bring them on, nor some of them would you want to, like dropping the chili.

[26:02]

You just wait for them. As Suzuki Roshi states, I quote, although we have no actual communication with the world of emptiness, we have some hints, suggestions about what's going on in the world, in that world. That is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see a plum blossom or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that's a letter from the world of emptiness. Let's take a step back and question if emptiness is something humans can actualize. I think I keep saying this. Maybe emptiness is not something or some way of being, but is all of reality, a circle. And as a student, you get a glimpse of it.

[27:04]

And then out of fear and ego, you snap back into the small eye. Maybe if we follow the path of emptiness being all of reality, we are already in it and have nothing to do that would have us realize it. Going further with this nothing to do, maybe to see it, for some of us, we need to do a lot of nothing to do to be that suchness. Brad Warner, explains emptiness in Don't Be a Jerk and other practical advice from Dogen, Zen's Greatest Zen Master. He states, I quote, that emptiness in Buddhist terms doesn't mean nothingness. It means that every single thing we encounter, including ourselves, goes beyond our ability to conceive it.

[28:06]

We call it emptiness because nothing can ever explain it. Reality itself is emptiness because we can't possibly fit it into our minds. So I'll finish up with finish up this meandering talk with where I started. It starts with a 35 year old man who wanders into Berkeley Zen Center. He's arrogant and challenges who would become his teacher. His teacher responds by saying, you should wash your mouth out with soap. This hurts and offends the man, but he sticks around. As time passes, he feels there's something there, something warm and comforting deep about the abbot. He tries to no avail to impress his teacher. As time passes,

[29:10]

He does more and more and nothing moves the teacher. Then one day at a ripe old age, he knows he loves his now teacher and knows his teacher will not show this back to him directly, but it's there. At that point, he gives up on impressing him and just does what he does without looking for reward. And he finally lets go. Then COVID and cancer hits, and he's knocked from the 100-foot pole. Where is the emptiness? So I said I was going to close with that, but I have an epilogue, and I do have a little bit more time. The other night I woke up, and these two koans kept going around in my head and I really, I kind of thought of them and I'll read this.

[30:16]

I'll read this. My koan as the Shuso was medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is yourself? And the other koan is Sekito. How do you step forward from the top of a hundred foot pole? An eminent master of old said, even though one who is sitting on top 100 foot pole has entered realization, it is not yet real. He must step forward from the top of the pole and manifest his body throughout the whole world in the ten directions. And, you know, the more I thought about the two of them, they seem to complement each other because, you know, what is yourself? And the other is saying to manifest yourself in the world in the 10 directions.

[31:18]

One koan being the call and the other being the response. You being the 10 directions and the medicine and the disease. So I just thought, kind of cute. I think it works for me. When I had the closing ceremony during the Shouseau, during the practice period when I was Shouseau, there's a part of the event where there's question and answer. I had to answer quickly, not overthinking. It was alive and bursting with energy, a kind of abiding, no abiding self of both the questioner and the Shouseau, a kind of emptiness of being. So I read this talk to Emily several times over and over, and she said, where are you and your feelings in this talk?

[32:26]

What is the raw you? Can you show yourself more? I'm sad and stuck, struggling with anxiety, depression, and trying my best not to give in to feeling sorry for myself. I'm hoping my rawness came through. I spend my days exercising at the pool, visiting with friends and trying to navigate big medical systems and sitting zazen. And yes, sometimes I pray for help. Any questions? We've got a good amount of time. I think, yeah, 15 minutes. Ross. For me, I think all that's a prayer for help. Sitting, swimming, exercise, all that stuff.

[33:31]

We're all, it doesn't look like prayer, but for me it is. We're all good. Thank you. Did everybody hear that in Zoom land? You should repeat it. Ross, correct me if I'm wrong, Ross. He said everything that I said at the end, the last paragraph, is a prayer. It's all prayer. It's all medicine. All prayer and medicine. Preston. I really enjoyed your invitation to let go of any stories I have about you and experience the robbery. And I was wondering if there are any particular stories that come to mind that you have about yourself maybe recently that feels especially sticky.

[34:37]

I have to, I jumped right to my back because I don't know if you've ever had persistent pain where you get up and the first, you know, you kind of struggle to get up. So it's like, that's a sticky story for me. And I haven't figured out how to get up without pain. And that kind of exacerbates the depression too, where I feel, you know, it just, it seems like it's maybe on the same channel in your brain or something that if you're at all feeling depressed and you feel pain at the same time, it's very hard to let go of it. And, you know, as the day goes on, it gets a little better. The pain's not as bad. I can swim.

[35:43]

I walk pretty freely, but I've found that I can't sit like this for long periods of time anymore. I have to keep changing positions and I can't lay on my back. I have to lay on my stomach, which is kind of weird. If my back is bothering me, I have to lay on my stomach to relieve it. So imagine coming into your house and you invited me over and you went for to get tea and bring it in, and you find me on my stomach on the floor. Anyway, so that's one. Thank you for that question. I have... Go ahead, Andrea. When you're reading my mind, Gary, I had to put my hand up, but I am thinking about something I could say. So thank you very much for showing up today. Sure. You spent a lot of time in the talk talking about releasing, letting go into a state of emptiness.

[36:55]

And I'm thinking of another common definition of sunyata is boundlessness. I wonder if that has any resonance for you or if you see a relationship between boundlessness and what you've been talking about. Yeah, I think the tenth direction... Please repeat the question. Oh, I'm sorry. Is there a relationship between boundlessness and how you've been talking about your experience of emptiness? Is there a relationship between boundlessness and my relation to emptiness? Andrea Ryushin Thatch asked that question. And I guess I'd go back to the koan, the 10 directions is kind of boundless. I view that as kind of a boundlessness where you're moving in vastness or vast openness.

[37:58]

Trying to think of some. go of some of your conceptions of all these different things in your life that define you and sometimes seem to restrict you right right there's a dropping away or an opening to being supported by and being possibly unlimited perhaps like flying off the other I haven't experienced that yet, but I would like it. I can't think of the word, but I gravitate towards doing something like doing that. I forgot to ask Hozan if he had any question or anything to say.

[39:06]

I had a comment. First of all, I think So just a patchwork quilt of your way of seeing things, which is wonderful. And the comment goes back to something that you, you know, you were talking about three marks of existence. And you said something like Nirvana, I don't know how to talk about that. Is that correct? Right. I said, I think someone else should talk about it. So, I just wanted, I said this last week. Sorchen Roshi asked Suzuki Roshi, what is Nirvana? Suzuki Roshi said, seeing one thing through to the end. And to me, you exemplify

[40:07]

Thank you, that's an awful nice time. That's what you've been doing for 30 years. Whether you know it or not. So I just, I think that we all feel that. So thank you. I don't think I could repeat that, but I'll say one thing. I tried to say, I tried to project my voice. I'll just say that Hozan said that Suzuki Roshi responded to Sojin by saying Nirvana is seeing one thing through to its end. I'm going to get, before I call you, I'm going to get some from Ron. Do you want to speak? You're muted, Ron. Still can't hear him. Okay. Can you hear me now?

[41:10]

Yeah. Okay. First of all, Hoson's comment just now is going to be the name of, hopefully, of Sojin's book, which is at the publisher, Hopefully. And we're going to call the book Seeing One Thing Through because it's not ended yet. But just to let you know that Hoson had the idea to do that because one of in part of Sojin's memoir, he talks about that experience. So just to say that. Well, my real question to you is, what's your experience of the connection with emptiness and Zazen? I kind of feel that I experience it more directly during the longer periods of practice when we do sesshin.

[42:25]

And I don't feel like... And kind of like Suzuki Roshi said that he sees it as a letter from emptiness. It's not something that I can do. It's something that visits me. And I get more visits the longer I sit. I don't know if that's a good answer. That is an answer to your question is like that that's what my connection or what i feel is my connection with emptiness how does the visit feel to you how does it feel to me yeah beautiful what's that i don't know beautiful why because there's no story there.

[43:34]

It's just seeing is seeing and hearing is hearing. Hearing is just hearing and seeing is just seeing. I think almost everything is beautiful really. When you're feeling that or when you're in that, I don't wanna say you're in that state Because that kind of makes it an object. But when you experience it, it's beautiful. Does that answer you? Yeah, I understand your feeling about that. Thank you. We have some more hands. Sandeep? Hi, Gary, can you hear? Hi, Sandy.

[44:35]

Hi, can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, great. I loved your talk. It moved me to tears. Your rawness, your authenticity came through, and I feel like I really, I really, truly appreciate it for being so vulnerable. Oh, thank you. And what your talk spurt within me was, isn't the taste of plums so wonderful in peak season? And I feel like you just get the flavors when things are as it is from nature. It's such a beautiful offering and it's kind of inspiring me to be the same. And I feel like it's on par with you about just being as it is or accepting things as they are without adding a story. So really, thank you for that. And I wanted to ask, is appreciating the flavor of things as they are manifesting the whole body in ten directions. Can you repeat that?

[45:41]

Just say yes. Okay. Jeff or Barbara? Thank you. And so many things came to mind as you shared. And I really loved when you asked us not to see you as the story we create, because I don't know you at all. So that was a really interesting exercise. I had this feeling. I'm not sure this is going to be a question, but I think it poses a question. question. I had this feeling when you said that sitting on the top of a pole, and then it said, the story says, step off. And I think I've suffered from back pain on and off for, I don't know, 50 years, since I was a teenager for a very long time and extreme sometimes.

[46:54]

And one of the ways that I think the heart sutra has helped me is by not identifying the pain as anything other than what a sound might be. So could it be that stepping off of the pole in the 10 directions, that pain is like clinging, and that in some way, if we can listen to the pain as we would a knock on the door or the the bell or it's, it's a call to emptiness and being in that moment. And I, I think, I think that's sort of, that, that is a question, but I don't know how to say it in the phrase of a question. I think you're saying that not to view pain as, as view pain as kind of a,

[47:59]

not as pain, as some sort of message. I think that's what you said. For me, because it's been so long, it's the letter that you're talking about. Oh, it's the letter from pain. Pain is something. It does feel like pain. But it also... could be like junk mail to me bam just call it spam and delete it okay susan uh no we still have time thank you okay because we have a ceremony okay this will be the last susan you have the last word thank you gary um at the very beginning you looked up and you said, please be gentle with me.

[49:01]

And you know, I just wanted to say, it's so easy to be gentle with you because you're kind, you're sincere, you're dedicated, you're lighthearted, you're intelligent. You know, the list goes on. And I was just wondering how you yourself are, learning to be gentle with yourself. I know that's the big thing. I mean, I'm not gentle with myself. I've been, like Hozan was saying that, you know, I've spent 30 years coming and doing the practices and, you know, it's a whole, it's a way-seeking mind talk in a way, but my father, was never gentle with himself. He always pushed himself to build and do everything and be kind of the 1950s kind of man where you don't give up, you're strong, you never show weakness.

[50:11]

And so I'm a product of that environment and I'm still having trouble learning how to be kind Like I put that learning how to love myself and be okay with who I am. I had a statement like that in the talk. But then I follow it right after it by saying I'm not that good at it. I'm not.

[50:42]

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