Thanks for your patience. With age and garments, it takes me a while to get seated and settled. Today I want to talk about the question of desire and love. Within Buddhism, we have two views of desire. One is the Hinayana and the other one is the Mahayana. And the Hinayana view is much easier to understand because it fits with our way of thinking about things, with the way that language organizes things in terms of good and bad, true, false, so on. You know, the Mahayana and Hinayana is found in all traditions, including in Zen.

[01:04]

In Zen we also have a Hinayana and Mahayana. You know, for those of you who may not know, Hinayana stands for small vehicle and Mahayana for great vehicle. But this is just a way of speaking because the small can be great and the great can be small as well. Nowadays in the Buddhist world people criticize the distinction between Mahayana and Hinayana because it's seen as a kind of put down on the Theravada tradition. Since the distinction is one made by the Mahayana schools, the Theravada tradition don't see themselves as Hinayana. And since also the Theravada tradition is represented in the West, in sort of this Western version of Vipassana meditation, this distinction doesn't apply to them.

[02:19]

If we think of it outside Zen or outside the Mahayana, but if we think of it as inclusive, then it's different. For those who don't know, this distinction between Mahayana and Hinayana is traced back to the council at Vaisali, which was about 500 years after the death of the historical Buddha. And the Hinayana school emphasized the strict solitary monastic practice in sort of relative isolation from the social world. And the ideal there was the arahat who left the human world to meditate in the forest. And the Hinayana also made a distinction between the monks and the laity.

[03:23]

And the Mahayana school had the Bodhisattva ideal, which didn't make so much of a distinction between monks and lay people, nirvana and samsara, the mundane world and the super mundane, enlightenment and delusion. From the Mahayana point of view, true enlightenment is beyond enlightenment and delusion. Ordinary people and saints. So the Mahayana advocated strong daily practice but remaining in the world and practicing in the world and putting other people's enlightenment before your own. Since the Vipassana practitioners also remain in the world, this distinction doesn't seem to fit for them.

[04:30]

Within Zen, I think that the Hinayana and Mahayana views are represented by the southern and northern schools of Zen in China. In China, as reported in the Platform Sutra, Shen Tzu represents the Southern School and Winang, the Northern School. And Winang is the one known as the Sixth Ancestor. And they both wrote two poems that represent the spirit of both schools. And Hsuan-Hsu defined the practice as one of wiping the mirror of the mind clean. And, whereas Winang's poem emphasized that there's no mirror and no dust, and therefore even though we clean, there's nothing to be cleaned. So, at first sight, it looks like two different views, or that one is better than the other.

[05:42]

The Shen Tzu's view appears to make a duality between dust and clean mirror, or enlightenment and delusion. And in the Sandokai, which we recite every week, Sekito Kisen sort of tried to calm this conflict between the schools by saying there's no northern school or southern school. So in that sense, no Hinayana or Mahayana, but they're just two different aspects of the teaching and that apply for different people at different times. For the same person, at a certain time, one teaching may be better, and for the same person at a different time, the other teaching may be better. For those who think that formal practice is not necessary, which is one way that people have interpreted Wineng, then the Southern school applies.

[06:52]

For those who fall into dualistic views of the Dharma, then the Northern teaching of no attainment and beginner's mind applies. The Four Noble Truths represent the Hinayana aspect of the teaching and is considered the first turning of the Dharma Wheel. And according to the Four Noble Truths, life is suffering and the cause of suffering is desire. And as the cause of suffering, desire, is problematic or bad, And whereas nirvana is good and represents happiness and the extinction of desire and the overcoming of suffering.

[07:59]

So we have a clear kind of duality there between desire and nirvana. And from this point of view the solution to the problem of desire is to let go of desire. As one of the four Bodhisattva vows goes, desires are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. We used to chant that, then we changed it to delusions, because some people thought that it had too much of a negative view of desire that people in the West feel not so comfortable with. So, but in that koan, there's a koan in that vow actually, because if desires are inexhaustible, then how can you end them? They're always arising. There's no end to it. So the traditional solution to this koan of desire is to sublimate desire by turning desire into an aspiration for the Dharma.

[09:12]

The Buddha was the doctor for the existential pains of humanity. Buddhism is concerned with the problem of suffering, but this is existential suffering, it's not clinical suffering. For clinical suffering we have the professional disciplines, like psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis. For existential suffering we have Buddhism, the core question. Gautama lived in his father's palace. and his father tried to satisfy all his desires so he wouldn't have any feeling of lack or something missing that could turn him towards leaving the palace and turning towards practice and realizing that actually the world is not about the satisfaction of desire, finding objects for desire.

[10:30]

because the Buddhist legend says that a sage had told his father that Gautama would become either a spiritual leader or a political leader. And he was bent on Siddhartha becoming a political leader so that he wanted to make sure he had an heir to guarantee his succession. So for that purpose, he planned this strategy of giving Siddhartha a kind of hedonistic life. But Gautama's desire was not satisfied with all the objects that his father gave him. He still had some yearning and some curiosity And so one good day he left the protection of the palace and went outside the walls of the palace into the world, so to speak.

[11:34]

And there he came across the reality of suffering in the form of an old person, a sick person, a mad person, and a poor person. So old age, sickness, madness and poverty. And also he couldn't just go out and sort of hang out with people and stay with them. He had to find some kind of path, some kind of solution for himself and them. And so this points to how desire can't be satisfied by the objects of desire. And so all the satisfactions are impermanent and so life itself is also impermanent. And sometimes we're healthy and sometimes we're sick and sometimes we're rich and sometimes we're poor.

[12:40]

And sometimes being healthy and rich brings more problems than being sick and poor. So all human beings, you know, we feel a lack and a loss in our being. And we experience this lack in our being or this feeling of loss because of birth and death. At birth, Buddha nature appears, but at the same time disappears. The unborn is lost. So we always have this craving for the unborn. That's kind of the root of desire. And then we have to separate, you know, from our mother's body at birth, and then the child has to progressively separate from the mother as they grow up, because the mother is... there's other siblings, you know, and there's the father, and then there's the world, right?

[13:51]

So there's that constant separation and we depend on our family to support us. So this loss or this sense of loss or lack in our being, which is where desire springs from, becomes even stronger when the mother, for example, has died or disappeared in a child's life. So this is what happened to Gautama. Actually, his mother died when he was seven days old. And many Buddhist teachers have had this same experience. So it's as if, you know, Gautama was sort of destined to have to deal with this question of loss and lack and desire.

[15:03]

But the object of desire never can restore our being. And so he wasn't satisfied. And with the objects that his father gave him, and neither was he satisfied with his father's recognition. Oh, you'll be a great king. So what? Because often, you know, as a way of dealing with the loss of the mother, then the child turns to the father, you know, and idealizes the father and tries to get recognition from the father as a way of restoring or being, but that doesn't work either. So that even happens to Zen teachers, you know, where people are looking for this kind of idealized figure of father, and eventually this idealized imaginary figure ends up turning into vanishing. So, Siddhartha gave up both of these desires, both of these actual objects of desire, because maybe desire is different.

[16:29]

Desire comes from the unborn, but the object of desire can't satisfy desire. So, to many people, you know, this is sort of a very pessimistic, negative kind of teaching. Sometimes people think, oh, Buddhism is so hard on desire, you know. But why do you say that life is suffering? Why don't you say life is joy? Couldn't you just say life is joy as much as life is suffering? And people say, well, desire is fun, it's exciting. It doesn't bring only pleasure, it also brings pain. I mean, it doesn't bring pain, it also brings pleasure. People say, well, I desired so-and-so, my wife or my partner, my husband, whatever.

[17:30]

And so I was excited and loved them and married them. And then that could have been a happy ending, right? Except that most times, as we're all learning, you know, particularly in this country with the high failure in marriage and permanent relationships, that happiness is impermanent. So, life is not always this happy ending. or this never-ending drama either of, you know, always trying to go from one relationship to the other and never finding the actual person because the person is not it, you know. And sort of Hollywood feeds this imaginary, you know, view by either giving us, you know, all these happy endings or all these never-ending dramas, you know. So, the satisfaction of desire is never about the particular object of desire that we seem to want at any one moment.

[18:45]

It has that allure that this is it. And we go for it only to realize that it's not it. So, we're always making these contradictory demands to the other. We're saying, I ask that you give me what I want, but at the same time, I ask that you don't give me what I want, because if you give me what I'm saying I want, it's going to turn out to be disappointing. Because many times we think we want this, and when they actually give it to us, then we don't appreciate it anymore. Or this person, oh really, I don't like them after all. They thought I liked them, but then once I had them, then I don't like them so much anymore. So, you know, desire is extinguished not only by denial, but also by satisfaction. So this is what Suzuki Roshi used to say, that be careful with what you ask for or what you want because you may get it.

[19:57]

And once you get it, it may not turn to be what you thought it was, so you may be very disappointed. So And on the other hand, desire is also perpetuated by the denial of desire. We think that we're going to extinguish desire by denying desire, but that only just perpetuates it. So that's the problem with the Hinayana view. And I think this sort of, I think in my view, explains, at least to some extent, all the problems they're having in the Catholic tradition. And as well in many monastic communities. You know, that this how in trying to stop the fire, you fuel the fire. So the Mahayana teaching is called the second turning of the Dharma wheel. And the Prajnaparamita scriptures, which is sort of the main Mahayana scripture that we recite every day, the Heart Sutra,

[21:07]

says that the Four Noble Truths, which was actually the first sermon of Buddha at Benares, was sort of an introductory teaching. And the Mahayana brings out the deeper meaning of the original teaching. So it's still the original teaching, but it's just the deeper meaning of the original teaching. And the original teaching in the Mahayana interprets it in terms of emptiness. And in emptiness, desire and nirvana or samsara and nirvana are neither one nor two. They're not the same and they're not different. But this is very difficult to understand. What does this mean? So it's much easier to understand desire and nirvana as two different things, and that we transform desire into nirvana, delusion into enlightenment and so on.

[22:18]

But this also leads to a kind of perversion of nirvana or enlightenment, because we think then that nirvana or enlightenment is some kind of object of desire, just one more object of desire. So at first we have to not understand, not have a clue what the Mahayana is talking about. And this I think happens to all of us. We recite the Heart Sutra and we have no idea what the Heart Sutra is saying. And yet we recite it in faith. And over a long period of time it starts yielding its meaning to us. But if we can't accept that first moment of not having a clue, of not understanding, it's very difficult to go beyond that first kind of barrier, and we just give up. But this is ridiculous, absurd, doesn't make any sense, you know, what are you talking about?

[23:24]

So, because the denial of desire itself is itself an act of desire, So the denial of desire is an act of desire. It's an act also of ego defense. So there's still ego there in trying to deny and vanquish desire, so that itself has to be denied. So when Gautama left the palace, he transformed a hedonistic desire into an ascetic desire. So it's sort of, let's see now if religion can satisfy desire. But he went from seeking life to seeking death. He was almost dying, right? Almost a cadaver. So he soon realized that this kind of ascetic detachment, you know, you can say it's an ascetic attachment or an ascetic detachment, was not conducive to non-duality.

[24:36]

So he had only changed sort of the drunkenness of the wine of desire for the drunkenness of the wine of religion. Same thing, ultimately. So the Middle Way, the Mahayana Way, is the Middle Way. Neither hedonism nor asceticism. So in the teaching of no-self, there's no one vanquishing desire. And there's no identification or clinging to the object of desire. But if we deny desire and then also denial of desire, then what are we left with? What's left? Emptiness. Emptiness and emptiness only.

[25:41]

And emptiness is neither the absence of an object, like when we feel depressed and empty because our lover left us, for example. We feel empty. Well, that's not emptiness. That's just the absence of an object. But it's not the presence of an object either. So in emptiness, we're actually connected. Emptiness is interdependence. We're connected. Everything is included in us. We're connected to everything. And at the same time, we have no fixed idea of who we are, who the other is. And without any fixed idea yet, we're all connected in one piece. So we desire because we feel empty and don't understand emptiness. And so then we go looking for an object of desire and then we identify with that object and a sense of self arises.

[26:52]

But if we let go of the object of desire and do our mourning, so to speak, We have to mourn, you know. We have to give a good funeral to all our objects and our ego. Be present at the funeral, mindfully. And mourn. Then emptiness turns into something else. It actually turns into joy. Turns into joy and love, actually. And then... We don't have to cajole others into giving us what we want from them, because then people will appreciate us spontaneously. So, real love is neither the desire for an object of the other, like a nice body, nice legs or face or whatever, you know, things that we like about somebody else, you know, sort of part of sexual desire, you know.

[28:07]

It's not that and it's not emotional or sentimental love either. Emotional, sentimental love means that we want to be loved. And we want to be loved So we love the other, and we put him in this kind of pedestal in romantic love, right? We put him in this unreachable pedestal. Oh, you're wonderful. But we love them, and it looks like we're canceling ourselves in that love for the other, but actually, secretly, we just want to be loved. So it looks like love, like real love, but it isn't. So that's sentimental love. And it's kind of deceiving. And in a way, this also applies to altruism. Altruism, you know, is a romantic ideal. So in the Bodhisattva ideal, when we say, helping others, saving others, there's nobody to be saved.

[29:14]

So we have the vow to save all sentient beings, but with the understanding that there's nobody really to be saved. Because otherwise, we get into this kind of romantic altruism. Oh, I'm doing this for you. I'm such an altruistic person. So it's very egotistical altruism. And so that's a deceiving kind of love. It's not real love. So we feel love and compassion for the other because they're empty and devoid of self and so are we. And, you know, this is something, you know, that I work in a clinic with a lot of very sick people.

[30:17]

And the The mental health system and the drug companies, you know, have all these objectives and goals, altruistic goals and objectives, you know, how they want to accomplish saving others, right? And they market it and they sell it, you know, and it's good advertisement. It paints this kind of rosy picture of success. You accomplish these goals and objectives and so on and so forth. But the people who are actually working with people over a long period of time know that these kinds of goals and objectives are very temporary and impermanent. And pretty soon the illness returns, just like our thinking mind, you know, comes back. and people get sick again. And so you can't, and then people get burned out.

[31:19]

So they go from this kind of feeling very optimistic, you know, to that feeling very burned out and pessimistic because they have some idea of saving others. You can't survive unless you have no idea of saving others. So you're actually doing something for people but without a fixed idea of what that is and what result it's going to have. You have to give up idea of result. As soon as you have some objective, you know, people get better to please you, you know, or just for a little while and then pretty soon they get worse again and then you get very discouraged. So you have to let go of results. And the whole managed care system is about results. It's okay to want results, but if you've been around a few turns, you know that it's a long haul.

[32:23]

And you have to be prepared for the long haul, just like practice. Practice for your whole life. Without, with beginner's mind, So in a way, it's how do we get the wooden man to sing and the stone woman to dance? How do we accomplish the impossible? So sentient beings include the inanimate, Stone woman, wooden man, and also the living dead. People who are very sick are like living dead. So this love for all sentient beings, for this love for all sentient beings, we have to stop the river of our love.

[33:31]

The river of love turned into the cheese of the long river, as Dogen says. And bring the living dead back to life. And that's like the stone woman getting up to dance and moving the mountain. Actually, the mountain is flowing. So stopping the river of a love means how the river is actually still. And means all these ideas, all this stream of ideas we have about who we are and who the other person is at that moment. And then, little by little, we may be surprised when we're not looking.

[34:38]

Actually, the flower starts blooming. And then people get better on their own. So I think that's all I had to say today. And I want to open up for questions or comments. Yes? I think you make a distinction somewhat between Desire, yeah. Well, I thought at the end I was saying, you know, there's desire as sort of for these objects.

[35:39]

The other is sort of these, we objectify the other. And that's not so much usually what we think of love, you know, but then there is, you know, sentimental love. which is the romantic form of love, which looks like real love but actually is very deceiving. And then there is real love, which is to love with not holding on to anything in our heart, which I think is the way that Mel likes to talk about it. This love with the capital L, so, I just, the way I see it, with carntops and a loving kindness. A loving kindness. Right.

[36:44]

But I also, I think that that's also the root of desire, or desirally truly understood, where it's actually coming from, it's the same thing. Pure desire. When I think of... when it seems to me like there's something that approaches a real connection between myself and another human being, it's usually with the sense of, for whatever reason, for one second, I've been able to approach the world without my ego at center stage. Just like... And that seems to... I mean, that to me That's how I understand the letting go process of that constant effort.

[38:02]

And I guess that's what I understand Nirvana too, is the dailiness of that constant effort. But what comes back is reality. Right. So who we are independently from the way we would like to see ourselves in our idea that we have. to ego, two sets of senses of right, wrong, most of it are conscious, pictures, it's what you call fixed ideas, and if for one instant you forget about yours, sometimes it feels like there can be honest seeing.

[39:06]

The koans where the Buddhist teacher does something that, if it happened in the real world, he would look like a fool. It's fine. Because it doesn't matter. It's not about that. It's about putting that all to one side. I can't. Yes. Well, it's sort of trying to let go, trying to get the other to give us what we say we want. Right. And then see what comes forth from the other, you know, once we let go of that fixed, you know, demand. And we're always trying to change the other to give us, you know, so if they only change this way, then maybe they'll be more the way we want them to be, but that never happens, right? Yes. Sorry, Anne, after. Your countenance kind of answers my question, but I'm correct in saying that your clinic deals with very indigent people and... Disturbed.

[40:31]

Well, no, mental illness, you know, severe disorders. And you meet people one-to-one in clinical settings. Right. So, I'm wondering how you... Even after listening, I'm wondering how you prevent yourself from burnout, because you don't appear to be burnt out. Right. For years, I've seen this. Right. People do become burnt out. Right, they do. A lot, I think. Right, so you have to make practice the foundation of your life. So you detach from your client in a... I know better than to say that, in a way. Well you can't detach because if you detach then you can't be, you can't listen and you can't empathize, you know. So you have to stay open to be compassionate and helpful and yet you have to be able to be empty so you don't, you let go of things as they arise moment to moment with them.

[41:37]

So you can continue engaging despite all the stuff that is, you know, constantly arising. So in a way, now you're making me think it might be like Zazen in a way, where we're getting this input. That's right. So, you know, when people are really attached to their symptoms, to their delusions, you know, that's the problem. It's the problem of self, you know, and people who are very psychotic and delusional you know demonstrate that very clearly you know because they're so attached to their delusion there's no moving them from you know that identification you know so um so when you're hearing it you know they're trying to convince you of their delusion you know and so you feel like they feel like the part of them that's sick and saying oh you know they've been kind of dealing with this sickness for, you know, I don't know how many years. And even though they're really attached to their sickness, they're also suffering it.

[42:43]

And you feel like the part of them that is suffering it. And then from that place, you have to respond differently. Okay. Anne had one more question or something to say. by something you said. Toward the end when you said we must stop the river of our love. And then you clarified it by describing that as stopping our ideas of what we want as a result. Of love, yes. That's what I meant. But isn't there another way, if you left off our, isn't there another sense in which a river of love is not to be stopped? Well why don't we end with that question?

[43:54]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ