from all kinds of traditions, from Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims are marching for, walking for peace from Richmond to Livermore. Actually, I might go and have lunch with them. There's a schedule posted and there's places that you can sort of connect up during the week. So there are all these very basic things going on with the rising of the spring. And this is also the time of year, more or less, that Buddha came to his own enlightenment. And I thought that I would talk a bit about his really basic teaching today. because I've been thinking a lot about it lately and we actually don't talk about it all that much here.

[01:05]

So after sitting under the Bodhi tree and coming to enlightenment at the end of a long night and viewing the morning star, Shakyamuni Buddha then got up and bathed himself in the Niranjara River And then he returned to the forest where he actually continued to meditate and to deepen his understanding of reality and the possibility of freedom. He meditated for another couple of weeks or so, deepening his enlightenment. And also thinking about his family that he had left behind. and his friends that he had been practicing with for a good number of years, particularly his ascetic friends with whom he had practiced these kind of severe

[02:15]

austerities, very severe practices, getting down to eating a single grain of rice a day, which is not much of a diet. And he actually had some doubts that he could teach them about what he experienced, but he had made this promise when he left them that if he discovered anything new he would let them know about it. So he started walking to Varanasi, looking for his friends. And he found them there, sort of setting up, they had set up camp and were practicing in the deer park in Varanasi. And from a distance, his ascetic friends recognized the former Prince Siddhartha, but actually they pretended not to, since as far as they were concerned, he had veered from the politically correct path of mortification of the flesh, and they

[03:41]

They didn't really want to have any truck with him. But as he walked up to them, they could see that something had changed and that he was quite different and that he had become a Buddha, which means sort of an enlightened being. And they wanted to know how this had come about. They were curious, even though it wasn't their They felt he had not followed their path. They also were aware enough to have some real questions about the path that they were on. It wasn't exactly working for the extinguishing of suffering. So his explanation to them became, it's known as the first turning of the Dharma wheel. It's the first sermon and in that explanation he taught them about dependent origination, how all things are empty and also all things depend on other things and that they are without any inborn or

[05:10]

without their own nature and without any sense of all things or without any sense of me or mine. They just depend on each other. And he taught them about the middle way between this kind of harsh asceticism that they were practicing and a kind of self-indulgent life that he knew about very well from his childhood and his upbringing and actually his first almost 30 years as a prince. And at the core of his teaching, he taught them the Four Noble Truths. And on hearing these explanations, the ascetics were his ascetic friends were themselves enlightened and became the first monks.

[06:13]

And this was the birth of Buddhist community or Sangha, which is something that is a great treasure to us even now, 2,500 years later. So what are these noble truths? What is the noble truth of suffering or dukkha? In a way, this is the phrasing as it was offered in the sutras. Birth is suffering. Old age is suffering. Sickness is suffering. Death is suffering. Sorrow, lamentation, and dejection are suffering. contact with what is unpleasant and separation from what is pleasant are suffering.

[07:17]

Not getting what one wishes is suffering. In brief, clinging to the five skandhas, which are the components of what we identify as ourselves, form, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness, clinging to these five skandhas as being me or mine, as owning them, that's suffering. What is the noble truth of the cause of this suffering? The Pali word is tamodaya. The cause is that craving which leads with rebirth combined with pleasure and lust, finding pleasure here and there. It is craving for passionate things, craving for existence, craving for non-existence.

[08:19]

So this craving is at the root of suffering. What is the noble truth of the of eliminating suffering. That truth is the complete cessation of craving, the withdrawal from it, the renouncing of it, the release from craving. It is non-attachment. What is the noble truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering? In other words, how do you do it? And that is what the Buddha taught us the Eightfold Path, which consists of right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

[09:23]

So that the truth of suffering is to be comprehended, the cause of that suffering is to be abandoned, the cessation of that cause is to be realized, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering is to be cultivated. Now actually we don't talk about this very much in Zen, hardly at all. In fact, I mean, Usually I can't remember the whole Eightfold Path, and I think that's true probably of many of us, because we don't really practice in that way. A couple nights ago I went through all of Suzuki Roshi's books, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and there's no reference to the Four Noble Truths in it. Then I got more curious, And I went through Munna-Nidudra, which is a pretty hefty collection of writings by Dogen Zenji.

[10:40]

So these are sort of the two pillars of our practice, Dogen Zenji over here and Suzuki Roshi over there. I couldn't find any mention of the Four Noble Truths in Dogen, which really surprised me, because he talks a lot about doctrine and about fundamentals, but they weren't in there in an explicit form. And then I started thinking about trying to remember if I knew any Zen stories about the Four Noble Truths, and there was only one that I could think of, and that one only refers to them by negation. It's actually quite a well-known koan. Master Sagan Gyoshi, or Chinyuan as he's called in Chinese,

[11:44]

was the disciple of the Sixth Patriarch. Another Sixth Patriarch was Wineng, who was another one of the really key figures in the Zen tradition. And Qingyuan came to Wineng and he was troubled by the idea of practice as a kind of step-by-step process that you, you know, you let go of this attachment, you let go of that attachment, or, you know, your zazen, you know, first maybe you're counting your breath, and then you're following your breath, and then you're practicing those thoughts, just, and the notion of each one of those as a progressive step, and this troubled him. So he asked, Qingyuan asked Huining, what should I do so as not to land in some class or stage?

[12:51]

And Huining responded, well, what have you done so far? And Qingyuan answered, I've not even practiced the Four Noble Truths. And Huining said, well, then what stage will you fall into? And Qingyuan replied, If I've not even practiced the Four Noble Truths, what stage could I fall into? So actually this was a very impressive answer to the Sixth Patriarch, but we have to go some for it to be useful to us. I think what it implies to me is that the Zen approach to the Four Noble Truths is It goes without saying. I had a teacher in college, a writing teacher, who was talking about the authenticity of religious works, and he suggested that the Koran, which we were reading at that time, was a very authentic book, a very authentic teaching, because you don't find any camels in it.

[14:13]

I mean, the camels kind of, it goes without saying, that if you're writing about that part of the world, well, the camels are there. So, I think of that as kind of the context for how the Noble Truths work in our practice. And actually that our teachers and ancestors expect that we will make some effort to study this kind of basic Buddhism, just as they did, but not as a prop for our beliefs or as something to pin your understanding on, but just as a way to understand your experience, as a kind of lens to bring your zazen into focus and to cut through any illusions of me or mine that you might have.

[15:21]

So one way that I think of Zazen is that it actually embodies all the noble truths and that actually sitting down quietly and sitting cross-legged or sitting in a chair or lying down or standing up and walking, in any of these postures, within a period of zazen, we can experience, and we do experience, each of the truths. In fact, we can experience them within any single moment of practice. the truce of suffering or dukkha is, on the most blatant level, painful legs, or existential dread that comes up, or busy, distracted, sleepy minds.

[16:39]

or the fear that you may have about letting go and actually doing the practice, the fear perhaps about how others might see you, friends, family, or how you might see yourself. So those are some aspects of of suffering, and there's also other kinds of suffering that you can experience. Sometimes it's the feeling of our blissful zazen, and I use the word our in quotation marks because it doesn't really belong to you. It's the feeling of this blissful zazen slipping away. some time as you're sitting that's wonderfully peaceful and calm and it's slipping away and you want to have it and hold it, keep it and recapture some pleasant state of your mind or body and that's also the truth of suffering.

[17:56]

The truth of samudaya, desire or craving, is what happens once we have this painful leg or mind and we desperately want to get rid of it and think that we might do anything to rid ourselves of this pain. And as we're doing that, we find it grows larger. Or it's also the way we try to cling to any kind of moments of ease or relaxation as we sit and just in that act of trying to hold on to it, in that craving, we lose it. It's also, the craving is the way, I'm sure, nobody present has done anything like this, of sitting here and imagining gourmet dinners, or faster computers, or great sex with mysterious, wonderful partners, or maybe some kinds of simpler pleasures.

[19:29]

and forgetting that actually what you came here to do was just to sit quietly. But the end of suffering is also something that we experience and we might wish that we experienced it a bit more often or that it lasted longer or whatever, but actually it occurs dozens of times within each period of zazen. Every time that you bring your mind back and your body back to your intention to sitting upright to following your breath to watching your mudra that's the end of suffering and so we have we have this experience and then it slips away from us again but we have this experience a lot

[20:58]

And each time it happens, you get a small glimpse of the release from all pains. And it's not just a glimpse, you have the experience of it. And that can be very encouraging. The path is also built into Zazen. As Master Ching Yuan said, If I've not even practiced the Four Noble Truths, what stage could I fall into? Well, actually, we practice the whole Eightfold Path at once. Right view, right thought, those are expressions of wisdom. Right action, right livelihood, right effort, those are expressions of the precepts which we chanted earlier in the Bodhisattva ceremony.

[22:04]

Right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration are expressions of our meditation practice. So we're doing that all at once in our sitting and in the chanting that we do. together. And simply by recognizing this, in Zazen, recognizing our suffering and our perception of the busy minds and painful bodies that constantly arise and letting go, remembering our intention, that's following the Eightfold Path. In our daily lives, Actually, in our daily lives, we can also practice this any time we wish, and that's one of the things that we learn to do. Even though you're not supposed to fall into stages or view any progression, sometimes I view the Zen Do as a kind of laboratory, that there are relatively few distractions here.

[23:21]

It's a wonderful quiet place that you set aside from other places in your life to practice. And so you can learn in this kind of sheltered space how to pay attention to yourself. And then you can also do that moment to moment in your life, which is the real practice of Zen. It's what Dogen Zenji called Genjo Koans, practicing continuously, being able to pay attention to your activities, pay attention to your breath and your posture anytime you want. And at first, out in the world, it seems a bit artificial. Actually, recently, I actually work at a Buddhist organization, I work for a Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and I've been working there for more than three years, and it's only in the last month or a few weeks, it's actually in the last month that I realized, well, we could sit together quietly for five minutes or ten minutes a day.

[24:43]

We could turn off the computers and turn off the phone. after that occurred to me, it then took several weeks really to dare to propose that idea. And it wasn't like there was any resistance from outside. I mean, the resistance was, I had some resistance, you know, or it was something that I wasn't, it seemed sort of artificial, you know, to stop in the middle of the day. But actually we started doing it at two o'clock every day and anybody who wants to do it wherever you are you can do it at two o'clock for ten minutes too and then we'll all be sitting together and it's very nice it's really wonderful to do this in the middle of the day rather than at the beginning or the end of the day which is when we usually sit or when many of us sit

[25:49]

and actually to stop what you're doing, and to take this time to pay attention. It shifts your perception of what you're doing during the day. And, you know, it's not that hard to do. It may seem a little artificial at first, but you can just stop, and you can even just stop just for a moment. follow a few very natural breaths, in and out, and think, well, where is your breath? Where is it in your body? And how are you holding your body? Even if you're walking down the street, you can take the time to think about this. How are you breathing? How are you holding your body? And also, you can think, what flavor do your thoughts have? Are they driven?

[26:52]

Are they distracted? Are they full of desire? Are they relaxed? Are they at ease? These are all things that we can do very easily, and looking at things this way is right view. Right View is synonymous with wisdom in Buddhist tradition and it includes all of those other seven so-called stages of the Eightfold Path. Right View is... we've started studying on Thursday nights the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines and Right View And all it really consists of is, in its simplest form, is just paying attention to where you are right at this very moment, which is the essence of the zazen that we're doing.

[28:03]

So actually, practicing zazen this way in our work life and in our family lives, with our friends, reveals the endless opportunities for enlightenment that exist right in the midst of suffering, desire, and busyness. And that's one of the things I think that we can come to see, is that the whole of our lives exists right at any given moment, regardless of what's going on. In the Theravada and Tibetan traditions, they talk about all these various stages of the Eightfold Path in a lot of detail, as a kind of step-by-step course to liberation.

[29:11]

But again, as was implied by Master Chinyuan, Zen is It purports to be a kind of simple-minded approach. Katagiri Roshi, also one of the teachers in our tradition, used to say in Zen, Zen makes you stupid. I'm finding that to be true. It might be just simple aging. I'm not sure. it leads towards thinking of things in a simpler and less progressive kind of way. And so in that sense, actually just practicing the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, is enough. The Pali text refers to what it says, it says, in short, the five clinging skandhas are suffering.

[30:25]

that's in Pali is upadana-kanda-tukam, or clinging to the five skandhas is suffering. And these things are the building blocks of what you see, what we tend to think of as me and mine. But the key word here is clinging. And that's where the problems come up. This notion, any notion that I might have of something of me as a person, or of clinging to, or of mine, of something that belongs to me, can easily get me in trouble. Someone pointed out, someone was mentioning in resident meeting this week, they were talking with Mel about how hard a time they were having and kind of what was happening with their body as they were getting older.

[31:42]

And he pointed out that we don't own our bodies, that we just have the responsibility for taking care of them. My body is not mine. While it's healthy, I can rely on it, but it's not going to stay that way. And whatever it is, I just have some responsibility for taking care of it. Thinking that I own my own body or that anything really belongs to me is That's exactly where almost always I get into trouble and actually make trouble for others. And if you look at it in a more extended sense, you can easily see how this notion of me and mine can set friend against friend, race against race, nation against nation,

[32:49]

and actually turns us against our own best instincts and natural instincts to help people, to do good. So even as you sit here now, you can watch this claim. Where is it? Where is it right now? We've been sitting here for maybe almost 40 minutes, and for some people, your legs probably hurt. Or for some people, I've been talking too long. And even though you came here wanting to hear a Dharma talk, You're now very aware that it's this really beautiful, warm, spring day, and you might wish that I would get on with it so you could go outside and have tea.

[34:07]

And this is the way, you know, our minds are very slippery. They really move so easily from one desire to the next. that something that you think you want, one moment, all of a sudden, even though it's not even unsatisfactory, you might be having a perfectly fine time, something else pulls your mind in another direction and it just goes. For my part, where's my clinging? You know, I'm sitting here talking, I'm sort of half reading this stuff that I've written and half improvising from it and wanting to get it right. So there's some ego there. And maybe I want to be a Buddha. Maybe you want to be a Buddha.

[35:13]

And this is all clinging. And it's all not particularly helpful. And yet, there's also possibly something useful in it. If there's something useful in it, great. If there isn't, throw it out. Actually, the best teacher for me in this is my daughter. And my daughter Sylvie, who some of you know, she's about three and a half now, and she's pretty strong-minded and also fairly flexible, and wonderful company. But we catch each other in these conflicts quite often. I find myself, as a parent, you know, sort of falling back on the voices of my own parents and falling back on some notion of me and mine and wanting power.

[36:29]

And she's a very quick study so she's learning it too. She wants one thing and I want another. Now, there are times, of course, when The other day I found her, she had climbed to the top of the bookshelves. And this was not such a good idea. So there are dangerous things and you have to use some authority or even raise your voice. But ultimately, I think she understands, I hope she understands that there's some love, there's love in there, which is what it's about. So she doesn't take that so much to heart. But most of our conflicts are just about these kind of old habits and buried responses of my own and wanting to have some power.

[37:34]

And then I get tangled up in an argument with you know, an argument that I want to win with a three-year-old. And actually, she's a lot better at being a three-year-old than I am, although I go through a very rapid retrogression. But she's really good at it. So we get tangled in these things. It's like I want her to acknowledge my authority, but actually practicing right view or practicing zazen and non-clinging, non-clinging to me and mine, it actually gives me a moment to breathe and reconsider and change direction.

[38:42]

Before I really inflict all this on her, or try to inflict it, because actually sometimes you really can't, because she can win, she'll cry. And she will use all the tricks in the book, and I think I'm more socially limited. The tools that I have are more limited. But there's this moment to ask, do I really want to play this pattern out? Will I be happy? if I win, will it end my suffering? And is there any reason beyond just some expression of me and mine to inflict my will on her? And also to recognize that if I do it, I'm teaching her to do it.

[39:53]

You know, I'm teaching her about clinging, that she's learning from her father that clinging is okay, and teaching her how to be inflexible and win, and that I'm sort of condemning her to a place on this wheel of suffering, which I don't wish for her or me or any of us. And actually we almost always try to find a compromise. And often we do. We make some deal that's kind of comfortable to both of us that allows some yielding in either direction, in both directions. And it does involve, it often involves some giving up. And it's quite incredible.

[40:54]

She really in this realm she's really my best teacher and this is the way she teaches me about practicing the Four Noble Truths and about de-escalating from a confrontation between two wills to a notion of interdependence where we're working with each other to make something that's agreeable and whole for each of us and also between us that builds the relationship. So I think that's where I'm going to stop. Maybe we can leave like five minutes

[41:55]

for questions and answers for a little longer than I thought. But I'll stop with this here now. Ellen, I have a question. It was back at the beginning of your talk about the Four Noble Truths and the action that was required for each one. I remember that one had to be realized. Would you Say those again, that was very useful. The truth of suffering is to be comprehended. The cause of that suffering is to be abandoned. The cessation of that suffering is to be realized. And the path leading to that suffering, to the cessation of suffering, is to be cultivated. It's very much like the four vows that we take. They are sort of parallel, that we'll chant at the end here. Beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them or save them.

[42:58]

Delusions, which is the cause, are delusions now, are inexhaustible. What are they? I vow to end them. I vow to abandon them. Dharma gates are boundless. Dharma gates are boundless. That's the cessation. I vow to enter them. And Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it or to cultivate it. So that's really a restatement of the Four Noble Truths. consciousness? Could you tell me what detachment from consciousness feels like? Well, I'm not sure that you can detach yourself from consciousness.

[44:02]

Consciousness is the working of the mind that makes all the other ones work, but what you can do is just not to try to make it go one way or another. So in other words, when we sit Zazen, actually our eyes are open. And so, if a shadow passes, if a bug walks on the wall, our senses are open. If we hear the saw over there, or we smell the flowers, all that stuff is coming in, and your consciousness is working. It's working through the senses, and it sort of empowers the senses, but detachment is just not stopping on any of it. letting it arise in a simple way. So I think that's all it means.

[45:10]

Maybe the next argument is Sylvie, you should try crying. He said, in my next argument with Sylvie, I could try crying. See, I'm not sure she tries crying, she just cries. And I'm willing to do that, but actually there's almost nothing that we argue about that's that important for me. Whereas, you know, for a child, they can take anything There's no separation between themselves and the things around them or their activities. And so everything's an issue, you know, and not separate from themselves. Lois? And if you're saying there's really no progression, then it's true that you can cry without trying.

[46:22]

and because all things are happening at the same time, and you're three years old as well as 40-whatever, so it's just being attached to this notion of progression, which we've been taught, that keeps us from doing the things that we naturally are doing. She hasn't been so conditioned that way, so she's freer. Right. I mean, I'm wondering that, that's what... Well, I think that's true. I think that if I actually saw, you know, if I actually realized, oh God, she's being socialized into this whole thing, look at what you see, then I would weep. And that would be a natural response. And actually even as I say this, I'm very sad. Fortunately, there's some joy at being alive that also balances, and there's a joy of watching her, but it's a terrible responsibility.

[47:27]

What is the world that she's going to grow up in be like? I don't know. It's an act of faith to raise one's children, I think, in any time, but now it really is. And if you start asking, why would you do this? You can get in trouble. It hurts me when you say that, but it's also an active faith to let go of the notion of progression. And that is so contrary to the way we're supposed to protect ourselves in this world. And so, throwing her into it throwing yourself into it and me throwing myself into it is the act of faith. Right. I mean, it's so different from at least the way I was educated.

[48:28]

Well, somebody asked at class the other night if I'd ever met an arhat or a bodhisattva. And I said, there are a couple people that I have met that I think are pretty close. And I think that those people laugh and cry with complete freedom according to what's going on and they are moved with very few barriers to what is truly happening in their feelings. So maybe that is, there might not be any progression but still maybe you can move towards that. Well, I think the progression that's important to remember, though, with kids is that when you're three, you don't have the choice to think and to detach and to objectify. And so we may envy that because we can't get out of thinking and objectifying.

[49:32]

But three-year-olds don't have the wherewithal to do abstract thinking and objectifying. They don't have that choice. So when you teach a child to use what thinking power they have in a way that is to their benefit, that gives them more choice, then you help them have tools for freedom. And so it's kind of the poem, you know, does the baby have the sixth consciousness? Knowing what we know now, can we laugh? appropriate. So there is some, I think, progression. I think that's a good place to stop. We can continue outside over tea and cookies.

[50:27]

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