We commemorate Shakyamuni Buddha's Parinirvana, called the Great Decease. Nirvana, Nibbana, has a lot of interpretations, but if you think of it in a very simple way, as our essence of mind or Buddha nature. It's our natural endowment, but it's not obscured by greed, ill will, and delusion.

[01:11]

So with the absence of greed, ill will, and delusion, Nirvana shines forth. It's kind of like the sun and the clouds. The clouds of greed, ill will and delusion cover our natural order of mind. So in the Platform Sutra, the sixth ancestor says, just don't stray from your essence of mind. If you want to have prajna, which is the expression of nirvana, wisdom, intuitive wisdom, arising all the time, just don't stray from your essence of mind.

[02:16]

So, how do we stray from our essence of mind? But first of all, nirvana has two aspects. One is the unconditioned and the other is the conditioned. Nirvana in the conditioned means that one is free from the bondage of greed, ill will and delusion within the world. Unconditioned nirvana means that one is so released that there's no more karma. and therefore no re-entry, no consequences, no more consequences. So Buddha's nirvana is nirvana, unconditioned nirvana without consequences, without further consequences, further results.

[03:33]

But Nirvana is not, you know, some nice thing. It's not something that you should imagine as being violins and clouds and angels singing. So, and Suzuki Roshi used to always say, let your activity always be within big mind, which is the same thing, you know, a little different expression. Don't stray from big mind. Let your activity flow from big mind So, recently, many people that I've talked to in Dogasan, one after another, express the problem of hindrances.

[04:55]

Like, how do I act in my daily life? How do I find some freedom within my daily life? You know, when there's so much, so many obstacles, you know, we get very agitated or very depressed. These are like agitation, restlessness, discontent, and then there's the other hand, depression. So these are two of the five hindrances. There are five major hindrances, which we experience all the time. The first one is attachment to our own sensual nature to objects.

[06:08]

We're not attached to sensual objects, our sensual nature is attached to objects. we're attached to. Sensual means through the ear, through the eye, through the nose, through the taste, through the touch. So all of these doorways are sensual feelers. And what we see and hear, smell, taste, and touch dominate our sensual appetite. So we get attached to sex, we get attached to objects, we get attached to all forms, the forms of the world. So when we become attached to the form of the world through our senses,

[07:20]

our view is very cloudy. It's hard to see clearly our true nature because we're preoccupied. The mind becomes preoccupied with gaining something. As soon as the mind becomes preoccupied with gaining, it's a big cloud over Prajna. or it's a big cloud over Buddha nature or essence of mind. Flame drawing down the curtain. but our craving takes the center stage. Craving and desire take the center stage. So Buddha, this is the most difficult hindrance to deal with for a lot of people.

[08:28]

The second hindrance is ill will. Ill will is our reaction to aversion, our aversion toward things. The first one is grasping and the second one is aversion, pushing things away. And these are the two aspects that we're always dealing with. You know, picking, taking something up and pushing something away. Something undesirable. Desire and anti-desire. And causing many problems through ill will. And then there is worry and flurry or agitation and discontent when things just pile up too much and we don't know how to make a decision and we have so much that we just don't know

[09:58]

how to deal with it all. This is one of the biggest problems that we have. How do I deal with all this stuff that's coming at us? And so we become overcharged and restless. But the restlessness also comes with not getting what we want. It's connected very much to desire. And then there's sloth and torpor, which is just the opposite, which is manifestation of depression, where we get ourselves into a dark, dark corner or keep sinking down and not being able to move. And then there's skeptical doubt. You just don't know if you can believe in anything or if what you really believe in is something to believe in.

[11:11]

So we become, when we have skeptical doubt, then we don't know where our footing is. It's the lack of faith. So we keep searching around for something and then we keep criticizing all those places that we could have faith in. But we're never quite sure if that's right. So a skeptical doubt is lack of footing, and it makes us unsure. So, I just, I hear all this stuff coming up, you know, from all of us, all the time, and these

[12:22]

seemed to pervade our life. So when people ask me about them, they don't see them as the five hindrances, but I do, but they just see them as a problem in their life. How do you stay from, how do you keep from attachment to these hindrances when they appear in your life? How do you keep from straying from essence of mind? Essence of mind is maybe like a little island in this big sea of problems. How do we stay connected through practice to our deepest intentions?

[13:37]

And how do we gain the confidence to know that that's really the place to be. So, I think that mindfulness practice, being mindful all the time of what is and what is not practice, I think is the most important thing. The sutras always say to be aware of how these thoughts and feelings and emotions arise in your life moment to moment. When a thought of ill will arises, what do you do with that? out there to trigger ill will.

[14:48]

But if you just want an easy answer, it won't work. What can I do when ill will comes up? Well, you can do various things, but to actually deal with anger and ill will, you have to practice all the time. You have to practice all the time how to transform ill will into Samadhi or calmness of mind or goodwill, actually. How do we do that? You can't just do it.

[15:56]

It has to be a kind of constant practice. How do you let go of objects that are attractive to you? Well, you can't just do that easily. You have to practice it all the time. It has to be a constant practice. How do you calm the mind so that you're not always in an agitated state or a rushed state? You know, we become victims of our own anxiety. and our own agitation. Life is, you know, we become a victim of life. Joshu says to his student, you are turned by the 24 hours.

[17:03]

The 24 hours are driving you. He said, but I turn the 24 hours. I'm not a victim of the 24 hours. I'm not driven by life. I actually am the boss. Suzuki Roshi used to say, wherever you are you should be the boss. It doesn't mean you should boss people around. It just means you should be the boss of your own life. able to turn things, able to not let life pile up against you. All the time I studied with Suzuki Roshi, he was never in a hurry. There were times when he was in a dilemma.

[18:12]

Of course. And, you know, they were very tough decisions. But his basic temper was to always be in time. Always in time. And I think that was a characteristic that he was well aware of. As a matter of fact, he said to me once, don't be ahead and don't be behind. Just always be in time, always be in the present moment, because that's really all there is. Just keep returning to the present moment and abiding in it. main aspects of our practice is how do we bring life to life?

[19:16]

How do you not waste time? How do you allow yourself to live totally on each moment without being For someone, you know, who gets ahead of themselves, always, we have to practice holding back, taking a big breath, you know. In your daily life, it's a very good idea because our lives, because we're pushed by life. All of us are pushed by life to actually be able to Be in our step. Be in our seat. Be in our breath.

[20:21]

To do one thing at a time. To say do one thing at a time is a little funny because when you look at it, you never do one thing at a time. One thing includes a hundred acts. But those hundred acts are all doing that one act. So you're just doing that one thing at a time. If you can stay in the mind that's doing one thing at a time, one act at a time, in time, with awareness, then you can be the boss of your life. and when you get pushed over, you come back up. You know, we're always falling off. We're always straying from our essence of mind, getting caught, but the more we practice consciously, the easier it is to get back or to let go of our attachments, our attachment to our anger,

[21:42]

our attachment to our grasping, our attachment to our letting ourself be pushed around. With torpor and depression, there needs to be an inspiration. Often, sloth and torpor or laziness come from a lack of inspiration. We don't see the necessity of doing things. Or, you know, even if I do all these things, it will come to nothing. That's laziness or depression. I just, you know, nothing I do turns out right, so why bother? The antidote, you know, there are antidotes for all of these hindrances, but antidote for depression, well there are several antidotes for depression.

[23:01]

to read Buddhist literature in order to become inspired. And the other thing is to get a dog. skeptical doubt, it's like standing outside and criticizing, you know. There are many places where you can put your faith, but not putting your faith in any of those places, you know, doesn't mean that there's It means there's something that you're holding back.

[24:11]

Self-protection, actually. Withholding faith is like self-protection because bringing forth your faith and putting it somewhere is to make yourself vulnerable. is to open yourself and make yourself vulnerable. As we say, faith moves mountains, right? And it does. And if you withhold faith, then you isolate yourself, because faith is what connects you to the universe. And you may think, I doubt that. That's a skeptical doubt. I doubt that. I'm not sure if that's true. But if that's not true, then what is?

[25:19]

Faith actually is usually equated with enlightenment. If you have true faith, that faith is an expression of enlightenment. So we say that our practice starts with enlightenment. You have to have some faith in order to begin to practice. And then as you begin to practice and you gain more confidence, then faith grows stronger. But it's the enlightened faith that is the beginning of practice. Or you may begin to practice and you say, well, this is not for me.

[26:33]

But you should find something to have faith in. Maybe the dollar bill. Well, the dollar bill only exists because of faith. There's no other reason for it. value. It's all based on faith. Gold is just a metal. So, we use this metal as a standard for value, but the metal simply stands for faith. So, everything is based on faith. society is based on faith, in institutions, so forth. But what is the real foundation of faith?

[27:38]

That's the important point. Don't stray from that important point. The essence of mind, big mind, reality, So, in our daily life, to keep coming back to our essence of mind, as the Sixth Ancestor Sutra says, keep returning to essence of mind when it strays. Straying means you allow it to indulge in anger, you allow it to indulge in sensuality, You allow it to indulge in sloth. You allow it to indulge in worry and flurry.

[28:40]

And we allow it to indulge in skepticism. You know, anger is a big turn-on. It is. It's as much of a turn-on as lust, if not bigger. They're kind of two aspects. One is the grasping and the other is the aversion. And they're just the opposite sides, but we can get off on either one. So to be careful Because when this happens, we lose our essence of mind, or we cloud our essence of mind. So in practice, for a Zen student, what is the most important thing? The most important thing is not to stray from your essence of mind. To always establish yourself moment by moment in our Buddha nature.

[29:51]

And of course, all these emotions, which stem through our senses, will want to compete. There's lots of competition. But if once we have the joy of that realization, then that's where we want to be. to stay with the nirvana mind. So we get that taste through zazen, where we just let go of grasping and aversion. We let go of our depression. We let go of our agitation, worry and flurry.

[31:00]

We let go of our skepticism and just open ourselves, offer ourselves completely to our nature. And that's the same way that you practice in your daily life. It's no different. When you fall off, when your mind starts wandering, And when you become emotional and all this, you just keep returning to your true nature over and over and over and over again without being discouraged. So this is what creates the joy of practice. This is how the joy of practice arises, because you know that even though there's all kinds of stuff going on and your mind is being carried away here and being carried away there, still you keep coming back to this place over and over again.

[32:06]

And then you gain confidence in that true nature and begin to recognize what it is. The more you keep coming back, the more you recognize what it is. And then you realize a kind of selfless samadhi. The samadhi of letting a big mind flow So during our day, to really be within each moment, to really live within each moment, and practice some calmness within our activity.

[33:31]

when we find ourself getting pulled away, to recognize that. The sooner you recognize it, the easier it is to let go and come back to the calmness of mind, which isn't pulled around by anything. So not being pulled around by anything is how you become the boss. then you can make a decision which way to go instead of being compelled to go in some way. If you want to be angry, then you can decide that instead of being compelled or having it come up as a reaction or taking you over as a reaction. Do you have any questions?

[35:02]

Yeah? In my experience, this hindrance has become particularly strong when something big changes in my life. They seem to come up as some big resistance to things changing. When something changes? Yeah. Well, when I think that the change is going to be bad, then I become more attached to what I think I already have. I become agitated about what the change is going to result in. Or depressed about losing what I think I already have. So it seems to be part of a sort of general resistance Well, you know, this is the course Buddha says about the first noble truth, which is suffering.

[36:13]

Suffering comes about by not having what you want, by having what you don't want, by being with people who you don't want to be with, by not being with people who you do want to be with, and so forth so yes change you know but that's the whole point you know is being attached to what the pleasure or being attached to displeasure we get attached to our pain we get attached to our pleasure so non-attachment to our reactions is very important. Oh yes, the lady in the green sweater, the black hat. I think we use the term depression a little too loosely in this society.

[37:18]

A truly depressed person, if they got bitten by a dog, chances are the dog would die of neglect. Say that again, please. I think we use the term depression a little too loosely. Yeah, I heard all that. What about the dog? If a person who is truly depressed goes out to buy a dog, chances are that dog will die of neglect. Because depression is really, a real depression is a medical problem. And I think that there are certain things, a little agitation like general anxiety disorder or depression, true depression which... I'm not talking about that depression. But when you say that word, that's a clinical diagnosis. Yeah, I'm just talking about when we're depressed. But I'm thinking that people, there's a lot of stigma towards mental illness in this society. And when we apply that, you can lift yourself out of this just by your thoughts. It contributes to stigma towards the mentally ill, especially depressed, who need therapy, who need biochemical drugs to fix the biochemical mechanisms in their brain.

[38:23]

So I ask that we be really careful about the use of that word, so that we do not continue to contribute to the stigma towards the mentally ill. Oh, okay. Thank you. It's really a problem. Yeah. I appreciate what she said, but I have a different point. You said at one point, what is the foundation of faith? There's no foundation of faith. Why do you say that? You can never find a ground on which to stand to say, I have faith in this. You never can. That's part of the challenge that we have. That is the main challenge that we have. But what about having faith in this moment, which is always changing? Well, that's right.

[39:26]

That's exactly it. But to have faith in this moment, which is always changing, is to have faith in our true nature. Because that's what our true nature is. People have... that's a good way of putting it. If you say that you should have faith, people can get all kinds of funny ideas about that. They can. They do. And they will. But to have... What is that having faith in? To have faith in this moment is really to not have faith. It is... Anyway, I think... It's not to have faith? It's enough. It's just all those old sad paradoxes. Well, you know, you can, you know, make it go round and round in your mind, you know. But...

[40:31]

It has to be something in your heart or in your guts. Eric? I suspect a lot of us may get discouraged because we think we're going to walk through some door and that we're not going to have any problems anymore. We're going to stop making... effort will no longer be necessary. Would you care to comment on that? Well, effort, you know, is always necessary. We always practice with no expectation. It's very important to practice without some expectation of walking through some door where there won't be any problem, because if you listen carefully, we always talk about the most valuable thing is the problem that we have. So the problem that we have is that we now have is the catalyst for any kind of transformation.

[41:47]

And we say, defilement is bodhi, or that which is unsatisfactory is satisfaction. We're always looking for the opposite of what we have. As long as we keep looking for the opposite of what we have, we'll always go back and forth. To stay with the problem is very important. That's what the practice is. It's not to try to get some problem-free life. The fact of life is problems. How do you live within the problem?

[42:56]

How do you live within your suffering? Or within your pain? It's actually possible to be free from suffering. But it's not possible to be free from pain. It's not possible to not have suffering. But it is possible to have freedom. But freedom doesn't mean the elimination of all the problems and all the suffering. Have you ever seen this world since the beginning of history where there was an elimination of suffering or an elimination of pain?

[44:03]

Just a painful world. Just a painful world. That's what it is. But it's also a pleasurable world as well. But the suffering comes out of both. You can't jump out, you know. You can only be within it totally. In order to deal with your pain, you'd have to totally accept it, to be one with it. That's release. So we keep looking for ways to escape. But escape is to go into it, to be one with it. Then you have some faith in what you're doing.

[45:08]

One more question in the back. Oh, healthy doubt is important. Oh, well, that's the end. Doubt is... I talk about this all the time. Doubt is the balance of faith. So faith without doubt doesn't have... loses, doesn't have a rudder, doesn't have, you know, so faith, doubt is the kind of like the drag, you know, that keeps faith from going downhill too fast. In the old days at Tassajara, I don't know if you've been there, but this dirt road, it goes 14 miles and half of it's downhill, and they used to do, the stagecoach used to go down

[46:17]

Take people in to Tassajara in the old days down the dirt road, and they used to have this big log That they'd tie a couple of big logs. They tied to the back of the stagecoach to keep it from Going downhill too fast, right? So doubt it's kind of like those logs that that kind of hold, you know, a little drag or resistance or circumspection to give some guidance to faith. So yes, doubt is an important part of faith, definitely.

[46:57]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ