So, we are going to study the Xin Xin Ming for the next five classes. In this translation, there are many translations, and they're all a little different. Some years ago when I did this, again, 20, 25 years ago, the version that I liked best was Richard Clarke's version. But I tweaked it and substituted some of my own language into it. So basically it's his translation with my tweaks. And I assume that you have it.

[01:00]

I don't know all the stuff that Ron gave you. I gave you your other compilation that you had from Zen Center, the Blanche, that you gave me with all the other ten different translations, and yours as well. It's been out on the patio shelf for about three weeks. So everybody has yours plus all these. Right. But the thing I gave you, Okay. So, what I thought we would do before anything,

[02:04]

is chant a little bit of this Xin Xin Ming together. Not the whole thing, it's too long. But just enough to get us oriented and familiar with it. I assume that some of you have studied it and read it. So I would like to us to do the first four paragraphs. Just chant the first four paragraphs together. Anybody? You're going to use your edited version? Yeah. OK. So if you have just the thick booklet, what he's going to read from the one without the patio shelf, but that's also in a thicker booklet, the last translation, SMW. That's me. But you have to keep turning the pages. It's better to just do it off the written page.

[03:08]

Does anybody have a question about what we're doing? Or about the material that we're reading from? This one? I don't see one. It's green. What? You saw something flash? Okay. As long as we're good. Okay. So, I'm going to say Xin Xin Ming, and then we start.

[04:15]

Xin Xin Ming. The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When freed from love and hate, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised. A hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart. If you want it to appear, have no opinions for or against it. The duality of like and dislike is the dis-ease of the mind. When the deep meaning is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed. The way is perfect like vast space, where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Because of grasping and rejecting, you will miss its touchness. Pursue not the outer entanglements. Dwell not in the inner void. In oneness, in quality, confusion vanishes of itself.

[05:20]

Stop activity and return to stillness. Within that stillness is the great dynamic activity. Falling into one extreme or the other, how can you recognize oneness? not penetrating the unity of the way, both sides go astray. To deny the existence of things is to miss their reality. To fall into the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the more you go astray. Let go of speech and thought, and there's nowhere you can't pass freely. Returning to the root, we get the essence. Following up to appearances, we lose the spirit. One moment of inner illumination goes beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to go on in an empty world, we call real, as of ignorance.

[06:27]

No need to seek the real. So, Master Singtan, a Japanese Sosan, and when we chant our lineage in the morning, we chant our lineage from Shakyamuni all the way to Suzuki Goshi and all the women. teachers. So, Sosan, or Kanchi Sosan, Bodhidharuma Dayosho Shikibutsu, Bodhidharuma Dayosho, Kanchi Sosan, Taisa Weka, Kanchi Sosan, yeah, yeah, dies away.

[07:30]

So, Sosan is the third Chinese ancestor from the sixth patriarch. Before the sixth patriarch, So this is primitive Buddhism, primitive, not primitive Buddhism, but primitive, Sosan lived in the kind of primitive formation of Chan in China. Before, when we get to the sixth ancestor, we actually have Chinese Buddhism, Chinese Zen, Chinese Chan. Buddhism came to China very early, around the second or third century, and developed a bit with the aristocracy especially and the monastic community, but it was based mostly on intellect and scholarship.

[08:37]

There was a time when in the monasteries, the monks were having tea about every two or three hours, and they had servants, you know, serving them tea. So it was a kind of aristocracy that was in China in the early centuries after A.D. And when Bodhidharma came to China, of course, his influence changed that all around. And I don't want to go into the story of Bodhidharma and the emperor, but most of you know that. And so from Bodhidharma, Taizo actually, Man Kon, Kan Eno, who was the sixth ancestor. Well, the antenna is here, so perhaps just leaving it out, that might help with the reception.

[10:06]

Let's continue this without changing anything. Okay, okay. So, yeah, thank you. The sixth ancestor, Daikan Eno, was considered the Chinese Buddha. Bodhidharma came and introduced Chan, and then the five ancestors, up to the sixth ancestor, was the formulation of Chan. And the Platform Sutra, if you've read, I'm sure many of you have studied the Platform Sutra, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor, which is about the Sixth Ancestor's life and his teaching, was considered a sutra, Chinese sutra.

[11:12]

All the sutras were supposed to have come from India. And of course, who knows where they came from? But basically, sutras came from India. They were the Buddha's words. And so the Platform Sutra was considered the Buddha's words that came from China. And of course, the Chan people developed that. And they called the sixth ancestor, the Chinese Buddha, who was born in China, and then Buddhism became Chinese instead of just an import from India. So, the third ancestor, Sosan, nobody knows much about him. There are stories that are made up about him, but almost nothing is known about him.

[12:16]

He was apparently around 40 years old. He lived in the 7th century, and he was recognized by the second ancestor, Eka, Taiso Eka, when he was about 40 years old. He had something called feng kan, which is translated as leprosy. And he may have been cured, but probably not. Nobody was cured of leprosy in those days. It was always a fatal disease. But apparently his understanding really satisfied Daiso Eka. And so Daiso Eka anointed him as the third ancestor. And he's supposed to have died while holding on.

[13:20]

He said, look, watch this. He was holding on to a branch of a tree and he died. But nobody knows if that was true. Matter of fact, the history of Zen from that time is very vague, and there's a lot of speculation. People write, the longer the story about something like that, the less factual it is. That tends to be so. I just want to say something about Chinese language and Indian language. Sanskrit is a language with an alphabet. And English is a language with alphabet, and as you know, we put our words together with all these connecting words to make our, to define our speech.

[14:34]

But my understanding, although I'm not a Chinese scholar at all, that characters represent, Chinese characters, are symbols for certain nouns and thoughts, and sometimes, well, because there's not a lot of connection between the characters that define them, there's a lot of intuition about how the language goes together. So you have a number of characters, And it doesn't say how they go to, there's no connection. You have to intuit the connection given the way the language is spoken and the way it's understood. And it's much more intuitive than our language. So when we read these characters, we can read them in various ways.

[15:44]

embedded in the language, you have a better understanding about what the meaning is, but it's hard to discern the meaning unless you know the subtleties of the language. So, this is why so much of, in China, the monks and the teachers would use certain characters or speak in a certain way that's very abrupt. And when we study the koans, the language is so abrupt and seems disconnected. The characters seem so disconnected. I think a lot of that is because of the language, and we're not familiar. We always want something, some adjectives that explain the nouns, but they're not there.

[16:54]

So we have to intuit the meaning. So in this Xin Xin Ming, This is one of the earliest, maybe the earliest, long Zen poem, long Zen poem that expresses that understanding of Zen, Chan. There's the Shodoka by the Six Ancestors' disciple, Konin. And that's another long poem, very much like Trust in Mind. And there's several of those, but this one is the most famous, I believe, and most studied, and it expresses

[18:06]

Very well, the germinal understanding of Chan and China. So, Of course, we don't know if he really wrote this or not, we don't know who wrote it, but it's not, the facts are not as important as the expression. So, we can look at this and, oh yeah, the way it's expressed is actually in couplets. It's also expressed in four lines and in two lines.

[19:10]

It's deceptive because it's really couplets. And the couplets sometimes leak over into the next couplet or next two couplets. So it's not exactly, you can't predict exactly how it is, but it's not perfectly expressed in couplets, although it is in couplets. Sometimes the second line of the couplet is the first line of the next couplet, and sometimes it's four lines that express the whole thing. If you look at the This, that Ron just gave us, this is where there are 10, maybe, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, yeah, 10 translations of four lines, right?

[20:31]

First one, DTS, RHB, and so forth. Do you see that? Anybody not see it? I want everybody to be on board. I don't want you to get lost. Okay, so these are the ten translations that I have put together. And mine is on the bottom. So I'm going to read from my translation, but you can look at the others to see what they're saying. Okay? The way this is arranged is in four lines. So if you look at it, you'll see that it's two couplets.

[21:34]

Each translation is two couplets. Like if you get down to the bottom where it says SMW, that's me. So I'm going to read from there. So the great, and I put supreme way, is not difficult for those who have no preferences, and I put partiality. So that's one couplet. When freed from love and hate, like and dislike, it reveals itself clearly in undisguised samadhi, equanimity. So, I think, well, first of all, before we go there, I want to talk about the title. The title is translated in many, many ways, but it's not in that book, unfortunately. But I will give you some alternatives for the title.

[22:38]

Oh, okay. Oh yeah, okay, you're right. So mine doesn't have any title. This is 1995, okay. So, I'll just go through it without saying whose they are. One is on believing in mind, inscribed on the believing mind, affirming faith in mind, have faith in your mind, faith in mind, the mind of absolute trust, song of the trusting heart, That which is engraved upon the heart that trusts to the eternal. That's Naiman. I like Naiman. That's a pretty long title.

[23:43]

So shin, shin. There's two shins and they both mean different things. The first shin means something like upright or something that you can trust. And the second shin means faith or trust. So faith in something that you can trust. faith or trust in something that's upright and sincere and real. And Ming is something like the thing itself or mind. The most important thing, mind. But then there's what is mind?

[24:45]

So we have to question all these terms. We can't just take them for granted. So if we look at the titles, what is trust, what is faith, and what is mind? What are we talking about? People like to use trust, mostly, because it's non-sectarian, in the sense that, you know, faith is such a loaded term that people like to avoid it when we're talking about the dharma. But you can use either faith or trust.

[25:49]

And that one, faith sometimes is translated as belief, and you see it in Buddhist translations, belief. And some people say belief in mind, right? But faith, is a, tends to anticipate something to believe in, or something to have faith in, like a subject and an object. Faith is the subject, and the thing that you have faith in is the object. But it's possible to use the term faith if you don't posit an object. Just pure faith, that's all.

[26:52]

And then, but if you posit the object, the object is mind. Well, what is mind? And mind is another term that means so many different things, right? Thinking mind. Angry mind, jealous mind, mind takes all kinds of shapes depending on how it's used. But pure mind is mind that has no particular, it's like Buddha nature. So mind here is big mind, mind that cannot be described. And it totally, it's what we are. So our being is one with mind. We're not separate from mind. So mind is synonymous with Buddha nature.

[27:58]

Suzuki Roshi called it big mind. Big mind and small mind, he used those terms. And when we think of small mind, we think of our thinking mind and our imagination and so forth, and our intellect. But mind here includes intellect, includes thinking, but it's beyond thinking because thinking is simply an expression of big mind. Small mind is the way big mind expresses itself as a human. So, and that's actually, basically what this poem is talking about, big mind and small mind. The big mind is the parent of small mind, and small mind is the child of big mind. There's this wonderful poem,

[29:04]

The Blue Mountain is the parent of the White Cloud. The White Cloud is the child of the Blue Mountain. All day long, I need that word, all day long, They, um... I'll think of it later. I just can't think of that word. So, in the language, it looks like small mind is being rejected or put aside, but actually

[30:29]

small mind is the child of big mind. So, this will be discussed, this will be brought out when we discuss the poem. So, all these titles are talking about faith, or you can use either faith or belief, or affirming, or trust, trusting heart, so forth, that which is engraved upon the heart that trusts to the eternal. So here, somebody's using the term eternal, right? So there's a big, quite a variety of ways of thinking about this. A lot of people don't like to use the word eternal, or forever, or whatever.

[31:39]

But words are simply ways of pointing at something. So if we worry too much about the meaning of the word, we get lost. You can use any word you want, as long as you understand the meaning. You can use the word faith, you can use the word trust, you can use whatever you want. I like the word faith myself. The reason I like the word faith is because it's more intuitive. The word trust is more mental. It's more, I think, it's more cautious, whereas faith is more, liberating, I think. But we have to be careful, because it's not faith in something. It's faith in mind, but mind is not something.

[32:44]

It's not an object. So I think of faith as just pure faith, that's all. If you assign it, in some direction, then it becomes dualistic. So faith is actually the same as mind. There's not two different things. Faith is mind, and mind is faith. Big mind is faith, and faith is big mind. Do you have any questions? If you have any questions, yes. So that's why we say it's engraved or whatever. Engraved, yeah, engraved kind of has the meaning of it's there. It's not something that you get or lose. And you can't make it. Yeah. The word is in, that makes it an object, that objectifies faith in mind.

[34:02]

But if you take in out, it's just faith mind. Let's see, that's trying to explain it. So the title, some people try to explain it through the title, but if you just simply say, don't try to explain it, just present it, then you get it without making it dualistic. Faith mind. That's more Chinese, I think. without all the other stuff, you know, like in and out and stuff, like objectification or split between subject and object.

[35:03]

And that's one of the things that's brought out in this poem is the subject is the subject for the object, the object is the object for the subject, right? But forget that. Okay, so there is the title. Let's look at this with this book, I mean with these ten versions, because it's good to take it four lines at a time, and look at these four lines. Okay? So the Great Way, the Supreme Way, is not difficult for those who have no preferences. or partiality. I like the word partiality. So let's look at the Great Way. The Great Way is Dao, right, in Chinese, Dao.

[36:04]

In Centang's time, and before his time, when Buddhism came to China, the Chinese couldn't, it was hard to translate the Sanskrit into Chinese, the Sutras, right? And so they had a really hard time, the Indian monks had a really hard time with Chinese language to express the dharma, the sutras. And so what they did was they used Taoist terms to express Buddhist understanding because the Taoist of understanding was closest to Buddhism. In order to create an understanding for the Chinese to accept the barbarian religion, Because in China, everybody else is a barbarian.

[37:17]

That's why they built the Great Wall, one reason. And to accept a barbarian religion was a little oak tray. So they said that there was this legend that Lao Tzu had gone to India, Lhasa, the Taoist had gone to China and was reincarnated as Buddha, and then came back as Buddhism. That was a legend, right? And so that was a kind of excuse to accept the Dharma from India. Do you want to let people stand up for two minutes? Yeah, gee, we're there already. So, using Daoist terms to express the Dharma to a Chinese,

[38:31]

Taoism became sort of equated with Buddhism. And wherever there's something called the practice of assimilation, when Buddhism goes to another country, it assimilates the structures of the spiritual practices in that country. So you see that like in Tibet and in Southeast Asia and so forth, and in China, where the local, in Japan it's Shinto, right, which is the local, indigenous religion, but Shinto and Buddhism became kind of integrated with each other in a certain way, and then pulling them apart, there's something that remains, right?

[39:49]

the Taoists and the Buddhists kind of interchanged because they used these terms, and those people, and so the understanding of Buddhism was expressed through Taoism. And so the Tao and the Buddhists, Chan in China really has a Taoist flavor. which is good, actually. Although, you know, Dogen, there's this idea that Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism were the three, you know, happily got along in China. Well, sometimes they did, mostly they didn't. The three were always vying for the favor of the emperor. And Daoism and Buddhism probably were more aligned against Confucianism.

[40:57]

I don't want to explain all that, but, you know, when the practice comes to a different country, it really assimilates what's going on in the country, otherwise it can't survive. And also, like, in our particular situation, our practice came from Japan, but we're not Japanese. And we have a transitional, this is a transitional period from Japan to Status Annuitus in America. And we still have the zendo that looks like this, we still have the monks, the priests wear Japanese robes and stuff, but this is the assimilated period where everything is kind of mixed up.

[42:05]

and then it will have its own flavor. So, you know, it's beginning to assimilate its own flavor, but that happens gradually. Yes? In terms of that, I'm just wondering, you know, when I heard you say that just take faith, mind, you can leave out the in, So there's maybe a Chinese sense or fullness in what the character mind is, heart mind or that sort of thing. But in, say, in our culture, you see the word mind as an appropriate You know what, I don't care about our culture.

[43:10]

I think that's all okay. People complain, and I thought about this. Mindfulness is creeping into everything, you know. That's okay. I don't mind. This is the way the Dharma creeps into the culture, through terms and through practices. And you're not gonna get everybody to sit Zazen, but something flows out of Zazen, and it's not just Zazen, mindfulness comes through just Buddhism without Zazen, but it does come out of our meditative culture. And it permeates the society. So I don't care how it permeates the society as long as it's authentic. And I think mindfulness is really good, good term. to whatever it means.

[44:19]

You know, defining our meanings is difficult sometimes, but even so, what's wrong with everybody being mindful, even if they're criminals? People say, well, you know, criminals could be mindful too. Well, they're probably, yeah, some of them are dumb and some are really smart. But being mindful, you know, you can't make everything perfect, but I think it's a good idea. Next thing is Zazen, end of the culture. When people start saying Zazen, then everything will be corrupt. So anyway, this term Dao, what I'm getting at is this term Dao, which is actually not a Buddhist term at all. It's a Taoist term, the Tao, meaning the way, the great way. So there are many different ways, and they're all kind of Tao, but this is the great way, or the supreme way, which is the way to liberation, or the way of harmony.

[45:36]

So the great supreme way is not difficult. It really is not difficult. Practice is very simple. for those who have no preferences. So I put in partiality, because who has no preferences? Is there such a thing as no preference? No. We're always preferring something. We're always making distinctions between things. We're always discriminating, all the time. moment by moment, we make discriminating choices. Yes. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Thank you. But if you want to, I'm sorry, I don't want to cut you off. Yeah, I think so, but I appreciate that.

[46:55]

So the point is not that we should not have any choices or preferences. Chocolate or vanilla, right? I make preferences all the time about food. You know, that's one of my faults. But, you know, we're very particular about things. So we have to make a choice. Should I walk out on the street and get hit by the car? Or should I wait until the car goes by? You know, that's a choice, preference. But preference, in this case, has a different kind of meaning. Because preference is a little different than choice. we make choices based on what, right? If we make choices, preference has the feeling of egotism, self-centeredness, right?

[48:01]

So if we make our choices based on self-centeredness, then the way becomes difficult. But it's not difficult. if you're not making choices based on self-centeredness. So not being self-centered is to follow the great way. The supreme way is to let go of self-centeredness. So that's, so what does that mean, right? You heard it said, To go along with, and having no preferences, something comes up, you go along with. Is this what you mean? Like if someone needs your help or I don't know what? Well, yes. It's like the way Suzuki Roshi used to describe the frog or the cat and the mouse.

[49:11]

You know, the frog is sitting on a rock, just like that, you know. And then a fly goes by, then the tongue goes. And then if he likes it, it goes. If he doesn't like it, it goes. So this is choice. But he's not going to, in other words, to be settled in yourself and to be able to respond to conditions that we meet. That's the practice, very simple. That's the great way, is to be settled in yourself and to respond to conditions selflessly. It includes thinking, but it's also beyond thinking. Peter? His choice might be, oh, vanilla this time, or whatever.

[50:25]

Well, I remember, I told you this recently, when Suzuki Roshi and Katagiri were here around at Page Street. Katagiri Roshi Sensei and Suzuki Roshi were sitting next to each other across from me during dinner, and they were serving aduki beans, which I don't particularly like, and I had a lot of them. And they make the rice red, or kind of brownish, which I didn't like. my preferences. And I said, Suzuki Roshi said, I think he said, are you going to eat your beans or something? And I said, I don't like them. I don't know. I don't want to eat them. And so he turned to Katagiri.

[51:27]

And he said, Katagiri will eat them. And he put them in front of Katagiri, and he ate them. He didn't like it, but he ate them. He gave me nice lessons like that. I think Moosong says something like, if you're willing to defend your preferences, that's when it's really a preference. Yes, well, I would say it's a preference anyway, but defending it does turn it into a preference, yeah. So, the great way is to stay in the big mind? Yes, the great way is to live in big mind, yes. Oh, the same people asking these questions.

[52:31]

Short questions. Judy. Probably. Everything is relationship. Yes, everything is relationship. There's no such thing as something existing without relationship. So, when freed from love and hate, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised. So, that's a powerful statement because Don't we like love and dislike hate?

[53:32]

People always say, you know, so often they say, well, Zen, you guys don't talk about love. How come you never talk about, which is not true, because all we ever talk about is love. Except that if you don't, that's another term, another term that has so many different meanings. and everyone has their own idea of what that means to them. Does that mean, you know, food, I love food, or I love my girlfriend or my boyfriend, or I love blah, blah, blah. This is, you know, it's not, he's not saying, the poem is not saying that it's wrong to love. is not saying that, although it looks, the language has that feeling. Like, only those when freed from love and hate. Well, right, so it says freed from love and hate. It doesn't say just freed from love.

[54:36]

It says freed from love and hate. In other words, goodwill and ill will, basically, right? So it's freed from the dualistic, from the duality of, attachment and aversion, basically. Love here means attachment. In those days, like in various countries, you know, not everybody has the same idea that we do about love. People don't, in so many countries, people don't get married for love, they get married for children to continue the race. has nothing to do with love. Somebody arranges a marriage, you've never seen your partner before until you're face to face, you know? So, what does love mean? And especially in those days, well, I don't know anything about those days because I can't remember my, it was too long ago.

[55:37]

But love doesn't mean the same thing for everybody. We have this idea of romantic love. Love means something romantic to us, which is a very new kind of concept in the world. The Elizabethans had it like crazy, you know. When you hear Elizabethan songs, they're beautiful, the greatest music, but they're all about how tortured I am because of you. That's all it's about. It's how tortured I am because of you. So that's what he's talking about. And then, when you can't love, when somebody, when your love, goes to somebody else, the one you love faces somebody else the way they faced you, then anger and ill will arises. Because anger and ill will is the same as love. It's the same thing.

[56:39]

The emotion is the same. It's just that one is turned toward self-interest, and the other turned towards self-interest in a different way. If you can't love, you need the emotional charge to hate. It doesn't always happen that way. I'm not saying it does. But love turns to hate so easily. And when you look at little children, happiness turns to unhappiness so quickly, and then back it again, right? So what he's talking about, the duality of aversion and clinging. So love in this case, usually in Buddhism, it usually refers to attachment and aversion. So it's attachment and aversion. And the language is love and hate, but actually the meaning is attachment and aversion.

[57:43]

And they gave an example of how their behavior was described 100 years ago. And it was with this male bias. They just described the males, and they didn't even really go into the male behavior at all. They just kind of didn't even see that. And evidently, you can see to do it without that bias? Well, as subjective as science is, scientists are just people. So, if you love one side or the other, your description is going to have the flavor of that side that you love? Yes. Not just your description, but your evaluation?

[59:25]

It's so hard to not be biased. And when we investigate something, we affect it through our bias, just like you're saying. You can't examine something without consciously knowing that you have a bias, because your bias is there, and we don't even think about it. It's so hard to be non-dualistic, to be without bias. Yes? So the Buddhas today, do they love their wives and children the way they love all the sentient beings? Or is there any difference? Well, I can't speak for everybody. This is an area where everyone has a different, has their own peculiar way of expressing themselves.

[60:36]

I can't say. That's a loaded question. There's a question. When someone becomes ordained in America, because in the past, monks were ordained and were celibate. In Japan, they tried this in Korea, but it didn't work. In Japan, in the Meiji period, 18, middle of the 19th century, monks were kind of turned out of the monasteries and allowed to marry and have a family. So that started the temple system the way it is now today. So there, it's, most common for priests to be married and have children. So then in America, we follow that example because our teachers were all married and had children.

[61:39]

So the question is, what comes first, your practice or your family? That's a question that came up It doesn't come up anymore, but it did come up some years ago. And my answer to that is yes. When I'm with my family, my family comes first. And when I'm with my practice, my practice comes first. And my practice is my family. My family is my practice. I just practice what's in front of me, and that's my practice. It's not a matter of which comes first. Sometimes there's a choice. Well, should you go to Chicago or stay home and leave your family? We don't do that in America. In Japan, the priest can be in some other way, some other, for years, and the wife is patiently waiting for him to come back.

[62:44]

Here we don't do that. Although I used to go every year. to Tassajara for three months at a time, for many, many years, to lead the practice periods. And my wife was very patient, very patient. I remember when my son wrote something when he was about five, and he said, Daddy, don't go away again. These are the choices we make. But is this a selfless choice or is this a selfless choice? That's a kind of koan. Koan of daily life of a priest. Sorry, just to add, it doesn't matter for anyone. So right before I was leaving here, my daughter was like, don't go.

[63:46]

And I had the same thing. Am I making this out of like, Yeah, that's a great koan. So when freed from love and hate, like and dislike basically, or attachment and aversion, it reveals itself clearly and undisguised as samadhi. This is what samadhi is. I mean, I can't say this is what Samadhi is, Samadhi is many things, but it's to be freed from grasping and aversion. It's the state of equanimity. And we experience this in Zazen. This is what Zazen is all about. aversion, and grasping.

[64:51]

Soon as something arises, you either attach to it or push it away. And this is what creates our problems. When we don't push things away, and we don't grasp after them, and just let everything come and go, there's no problem. There may be some problems, but it's not that problem. you no longer have that problem. And so you're one, there's no separation between yourself and your small mind and big mind. That's samadhi, or equanimity. Samadhi means the balanced state. Any questions? So the next page, going to page, this is the famous statement, down at the bottom, SMW.

[66:02]

Harris-Brett's difference in heaven and earth are set apart, or there's a gap, duality. Set apart, what does set apart mean? So a hairbreadth difference between what? Heaven and earth. So what is heaven and what is earth? In Buddhism, there are 33 heavens and as many hells, but they're kind of symbolic. They're not real places. They're places in our psyche. They're not places where you go to, although That's where you go to, we live in our head. So heaven is like nirvana, and earth is samsara, right? So nirvana is samadhi, the balanced state.

[67:10]

And samsara is the dualistic life of Earth. We live in a dualistic society, in a dualistic world, where everything has its opposite. But the opposites are what make the oneness, and the oneness is what creates the opposites. So when there's a difference between the oneness of nirvana and the multiplicity of samsara, when that oneness is not there, then there's a gap. And at the slightest gap, creates a problem. Yes. It enters into your I, and then you express no preference, then you have some I. It enters in your being I, it enters into yourself, and you have some I. Oh, that I, which I do you mean?

[68:21]

I mean the being I. Oh, because you pointed to your I. The being I, E-Y-E, even, so. Well, I'll say that again. Well, yes. Yes. Or like it. Yes. Like or dislike. It's okay to like. It's okay to dislike. The problem is attachment to liking and attachment to disliking. Because liking will appear and dislike will appear. But when dislike appears, you let it go. And when like appears, you don't grasp it.

[69:24]

It's like there's a river of thought and feelings that are flowing constantly, but you don't get caught by the current even though you're flowing with the current, you leave it. You're still here, whereas the current is going, you know, a river is both oneness and diversity. Because if we look at the river from a distance, it's just this one thing, right? But when we get close, it's all diverse, and you don't see the whole river, you only see the particulars. So we let the particulars go and simply stay with the river, which is... Would you say that, is it that grasping or avoiding either one prevents us from understanding?

[70:35]

Yes. I wouldn't say avoiding, sometimes we need to avoid things, but aversion. A little different than avoiding, because you don't want to step in the goop, so you avoid it. But also maybe aversion. Like for example, if I say I have some pain. Yes. You don't need to understand it. You don't need to understand it. All you need to do is, as long as you want to escape, you're caught.

[71:42]

You cannot escape. Because when you try to escape aversion, you get caught by it. That's attachment. It looks like it's the other way around. But because you're attached to the sensation, you become a victim of it. But it's like I can be sitting on a nail and I can become, if I don't understand that that's what's happening, then I can just be kind of like a dumb, you know, dumb animal. I'm just gonna sit through this pain because I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna accept it for what it is. Well, wait a minute. An animal would do that. Yeah, don't sit on nails. Don't sit on a nail. You don't want to sit on a nail. You should get up and pull it out of your behind. I mean, you have to be reasonable, right? No, but if I don't know that that's what the pain is, the grasping or the aversion can keep me from finding the root of it.

[72:50]

Yeah, but why do you need to? There's no need to. The thing is, if, instead of running, instead of, you know, it's like, this is, Buddha says, somebody shoots an arrow into somebody, and the arrow goes in, and the guy says, what kind of an arrow is this? Why'd it go in? Look at those feathers. Oh, and it's stinging, oh my God. Instead of just pulling it out, right? This is archaic. This is one of Buddha's basic teachings, the arrow. The guy gets the arrow and he's wondering all about it. Where did it come from? Who shot that? I guess what I'm describing is, for example, I have a friend whose shoulder hurts.

[73:54]

I say one thing, she goes to that doctor and they do another thing. Nowadays, you can actually get an x-ray and look in there and find out what's happening. But if you don't really know for yourself, then you can suffer for a long time without finding the root. Go get an x-ray. If it's that bad, get an x-ray. Do something. Yes, you should do something, but, you know, there's something very fundamental about, instead of running away to go into it, to become one with the sensation. As soon as there's a gap, as soon as the slightest gap, suffering appears. because there's a gap, a discomfort.

[75:01]

Suffering is just a word, you know, has many meanings. Discomfort, we'll call it. And the more you want to escape from it, the more it hurts. And then, and in Zazen, you know, there's a gap. This is well understood by people who have done this for a long period of time, that opening up to the sensation frees you from the difficulty because it closes the gap. As soon as there's the slightest like and dislike, attachment to like and dislike, there's a gap. And that gap creates, that's where the problem is.

[76:03]

When you don't react to it, it's just a sensation. But this is learned over many years of doing this. Instead of escaping, trying to escape, you embody the sensation. So the whole body takes, shares in the responsibility. And it doesn't just become something local. And then the whole thing, the whole problem, what you consider the problem, is diffused by the whole body sharing it. And then just sensation.

[77:09]

So, just to understand it, in two cases. One, for example, when sitting in Zazen and the discomfort arises, just to observe it without bringing in any thought and labeling it. Yes. So that's one way of being in it. Yes. And the second case would be, for example, I'm going for a walk. and I see a snake, and to bring everything that is at my disposal to react to the situation as naturally I would, would still also be to be in the mind. Well, yes, we have a reaction to to the snake, right?

[78:19]

Because everyone has a reaction to a snake. Dogs have a reaction to a snake. People have a reaction to a snake. And there's the snake analogy, right? Which is very, you know. So, Fear may arise, whatever arises, like a sensation of some kind, and then where do you go with that? So where you go with that is here, and you go to your breath. You have a place to go to. When you practice zazen, especially in difficult circumstances, when you have a lot of pain, you go to your breath. There's nothing but breath. There's just one breath after another, and you're living in one breath at a time.

[79:20]

That's what your whole life is, just this one breath at a time, totally. And although, you know, and your body is very still, and there's no movement, and there's this sensation which you're accepting, And it's just one breath at a time. That's a big samadhi. Because you're not grasping it, and you're not trying to eliminate it, push it away, and you're just there with it. Yeah, it's samadhi. And if you make one mistake, it's like a tightrope. You make one mistake and you fall to one side or the other, but here you're just there without falling to one side or that side. And so you're, it's like walking between the twin towers which are no longer fixed in on a tightrope.

[80:32]

Robert? Distinction, what? Well, yeah, of course. Yes. And it seems like what you're emphasizing is that we have preferences so that when those distinctions arise, we choose between them based on preferences. Well, that's one aspect. I'm not emphasizing any particular thing. That's one of the things that we brought up about it.

[81:46]

There are many interpretations of this piece, and you can think about it in various ways. That's one way to think about it. But the way I've been talking about it is ... There's something called the discrimination of non-discrimination and the non-discrimination of discrimination. The discrimination of non-discrimination? Yes, the discrimination of non-discrimination. I hate to explain it because it's so beautiful. The non-discrimination, the discrimination of non-discrimination means that everything is one piece.

[82:58]

That's, and non-discriminated, but we discriminate something and divide it into pieces. That's the discrimination of non-discrimination. Everything is one piece. This is the wisdom of equality. There are four wisdoms which we'll talk about, but not now. But there's the wisdom of equality, when our self-centeredness, our ego, becomes transformed or enlightened, and then everything is seen as one piece. And then the discrimination, of that one piece is when our mind consciousness is transformed, we see all the differences of the one piece. So everyone in here is one piece, one person.

[84:02]

But we discriminate into various individuals. So yes, we're all individuals. The problem is that we have a hard time seeing that we're all one piece. We don't have a hard time seeing the differences, but we have a hard time seeing the one piece. Conventional reality sees just the differences. So we're mired in our differences. There is some aspect of seeing as one seeing it, but it's not universal. they get out of the Garden of Eden is to name everything. Yes, the Garden of Eden is like, you know, a great description of how we lost our innocence.

[85:05]

It really is. How we lost our samadhi. Yeah. And what is your take on why that happens? The snake. It's called the apple. By taking the buyer of the apple, it means that they saw duality. They saw that they were different. They said, oh my God, you know, you don't have any clothes on. Yeah, that's what happened. So we're all destined to be caught by, in the dualistic world. And it's Buddhism which is trying to help us get out of that. Oh, and it's time.

[86:08]

Oh, way past time. You should tell me when it's time. Because we all have to get up in the morning and do zazen.

[86:14]

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