Good morning. Last night, in our class on Dogen Zenji's Ginjo Koan, this subject came up about love. And I've talked about this before. And it keeps going around in my mind. And I think it's important for us to have some understanding. I can't say that everything I say is correct. But I think it's right. Dogen's opening statements in the Genjo Koan, I'm not going to quote them verbatim, but I will say that what they refer to, which makes it easier to grasp as an image, is if you look at waves in water, the first statement is

[01:27]

our life from the point of view of the waves, the activity, the differentiated activity of our life. And the second is from the point of view of emptiness, or the point of view of the ocean itself, the source, the source and the waves. And the third statement is about the oneness of the waves in the ocean, the oneness of the waves in the water. So usually, by and large, when we start growing up, when we're born and for the first year or so, we're pretty much ocean. We haven't developed a consciousness of waves or activities. We're in our crib or The mother's carrying us around in her backpack, and we're still in the ocean.

[02:33]

But as we grow up, we become more and more wave-like, and we have wavelengths, and wavicles, and great activities, and we forget about the ocean. The ocean is always there, but we don't pay attention to it. We're only concerned about what happens in the waves, in the great action of the waves. The stormy life. We lose sight of the waves, above the ocean, of who we really, the basis of what we really are. So, when we realize that we're kind of lost in the waves, of life, we start thinking, well, where's the ocean? And then we start thinking about practice. And this is when we start tuning in on the ocean itself, trying to find it, actually, even though it's right there.

[03:49]

There's a statement, selling water by the river. Or the country bumpkin who flew into New York and said, well, where's New York? And this is the beginning of enlightenment. This is the enlightened thought. When we think, what's missing? There's something missing. That's the beginning of enlightenment. That's the enlightened thought that starts to take hold of our life. So, when it comes to... that may be a roundabout way of talking about love, but most of our love is based on the love that happens

[04:56]

between the waves. And so we love our friends, we love our companions, we love our husband, our wife, we love our children. We love that which is closest to us. And some people extend that to a wider picture. So there's The various aspects of this word, you know, love itself is hard to define because it has so many definitions. We love ice cream, we love music, we love mountains. Dogen says, mountains love those who love the mountains. That's a wonderful statement.

[05:59]

So, how far does our... we all feel like love, and love is sustaining, but where does it reach? Why is it? When I was a kid, not a kid, when I was in my twenties, when I was a painter, I was an artist, And I made this picture, drew this picture of the sun and the moon and various things. And I said, I captioned it, that love is what holds everything together. Love is the glue that holds everything together. And it's both personal and impersonal. We think of love as always being personal. But it is personal.

[07:02]

It's the most personal thing to you. But it's also impersonal. Because it's not about you. It's not about me. And it's not about you. It's about something bigger than just you and me. So, you can come in. So I want to talk about this. There's this book that Thomas Cleary translated one time. It's called Zen Lessons. or the art of leadership. And it has these little anecdotes of letters that were written by Zen teachers in China a long time ago.

[08:12]

And there's one called The Essentials of Leadership. But Wu Zhu said to It is essential to be generous with the community while being frugal with oneself. As for the rest, the petty matters do not be concerned with them. In other words, be generous with the community and frugal with yourself. As for the rest, the petty matters do not be concerned with them. In other words, be concerned with the fundamental. Mostly be concerned with the fundamental. When you give people tasks, probe them deeply to see if they are sincere. When you choose your words, take the most... The way he translates it is strange.

[09:23]

When you choose your words, take the most serious. Leaders are naturally honored when their words are taken seriously. The community is naturally impressed when people are chosen for their sincerity. When you are honorable, the community obeys even if you are not stern. When the community is impressed, things get done even if no orders are given. The wise and the stupid each naturally convey their minds. power and those who cannot help following them are pressed by compulsion. So, this is about disinterested love. Love for the community is disinterested love.

[10:32]

In other words, one is simply just doing something for the sake of the community itself, without picking and choosing. If a teacher has favorites, or favors certain people, even though a teacher will promote certain people, it's not through like and dislike. Although others will look and say, He does that because he likes that person, or loves that person. But it's not so. If a teacher starts expressing like and dislike for students, it's not a good teacher. Teacher's relationship to students has nothing to do with like and dislike. If like and dislike are playing a part

[11:35]

in the way a teacher relates to students, it's a disaster for the community. So, although it's not based on like and dislike, it's based on pure love. The teacher's authority is based on pure love. It has nothing to do with like and dislike. Like and dislike are certain aspects of a certain level of love, but it's a low level. So I just wanted to use that as an example. So I want to talk about two aspects of love. Partiality. and non-partiality.

[12:45]

Partiality is tainted in some way because it's based on self. So based on attachment to self. Often what we conceive of as love for others is based on what is in it for ourself. So that's OK. I'm not saying this is good and this is bad, or this is right and this is wrong. But in Buddhadharma, what we talked about is what leads to suffering and what removes us from suffering. So lower states of what we call love causes suffering. So there are four attachments to self, which are called self-delusion, self-belief, self-conceit and self-love.

[13:58]

And these are called the four vexing passions. of self-centeredness. Self-delusion and self-belief are the cause, are the basis. And self-conceit and self-love are the result. Self-delusion and self-belief means actually belief in a self. So if you can't get beyond the belief in a self, It's really hard to get beyond the idea or the understanding or the activity of everything that we do is based on self-love or self-conceit. So conceit is like not understanding yourself. Self-delusion is totally not understanding yourself.

[15:06]

not understanding the law of cause and effect, or the law of karma. And self-belief is actually believing that there is such a thing as a self, and not understanding that there is more than that, or less than that. Self-conceit is thinking I am alive. I had a teacher one time, he said, you know, the biggest conceit that people have is the conceit of, I am alive. It's only half the equation.

[16:07]

You're also dead. That's the other half. But we don't say that. We say, I'm alive, I'm alive. Which is okay, of course. That's the way we feel. But we're also dead. We're just a spark. It's a false sense of self. False sense of self. And self-love has two different aspects. If you've ever done a loving-kindness meditation, the first meditation that you do is loving yourself. And then the second one is you express love to somebody that you don't know.

[17:15]

And the third one is maybe someone you do know. And then the fourth one is someone you hate. Those are four aspects of loving-kindness meditation. Have you never done that? Yeah, it's a kind of vipassana meditation. First one, you express love to yourself. When you can do that, then you can express love to somebody else, because you're extending yourself. And so you extend yourself to a stranger. love, or somebody that you know. You don't express it to somebody you know right away. That's a higher... You get caught by that one. And then you express it to people you don't like.

[18:19]

And then you can express it to the whole universe. So that's a nice meditation. Very good. That's one kind of, but when you say express love to yourself and yet self-love is a delusion at the same time. So these are two different aspects of self-love. It's good to express self-love to yourself before you let go of it. So this is the self-love. One form of self-love is self-infatuation. That's the delusion. Delusional self-love is self-infatuation. The higher self-love means that the whole universe is myself.

[19:23]

transcendent understanding. That's the water and the wave. The water is the wave and the wave is the water. So, when you really understand yourself as the ocean of life, instead of relating to yourself only as this body-mind, you understand yourself as the whole universe. That's your true self. So yes, self-love, in that sense, is expressing yourself as the whole universe. And you can express yourself as the love for the whole universe by expressing it to one person, because that one person is also the whole universe. But if you get self-delusion. So, whatever we express love to, when we express love through one channel, it extends to the whole universe.

[20:45]

So, this is enlightened self-love. There are four kinds of love that are expressed in dharma expressively. One is loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Equanimity means stability or samadhi. So, loving-kindness is to extend universally, indiscriminately goodwill. Indiscriminate goodwill. Without picking and choosing.

[21:51]

And how do you express that without picking and choosing? It's because that's who you are. You can only express who you are. So, the expression of enlightenment, of an enlightened mind, of an enlightened person, is loving-kindness indiscriminately, because you are the universe. and you're expressing this fundamental aspect of the universe, which includes all of the lower forms of love, but within its big mind. So we can say that big mind is universal love, without partiality or picking and choosing.

[22:54]

So, love your enemies has nothing to do with you. It simply has to do with all inclusiveness. Compassion is to feel the suffering of others. And to express sympathy. I don't know about pity. Pity is okay. But concern and acknowledgement. And to offer whatever one can. This is compassion. To not ignore. the suffering of others, which is our own suffering.

[23:58]

And sympathetic joy is to be happy when someone becomes enlightened. People say, well, sympathetic joy may be because you've got a new car, or because you have a lot of money, or because you've reached some level of understanding. And we're very happy about that. And you may have been chosen above me, and I'm very happy about that. So equanimity is a great expression of love, because equanimity means impartiality, balanced state. And it's stable. You don't get pulled off by partiality. You don't get pulled off your emotional seat by something that's passing by.

[25:08]

You don't get caught by things through emotion and thought. So you have stability. This is called samadhi. Of course, in our Zen practice, we have various samadhis. It's really all the same samadhi, but it's called by different names according to how it's expressed. We have Komyozo Samadhi, which is samadhi of great, infinite light. And we have samadhi called Jiju Yu Samadhi, which is self self-joyous, because fulfillment gives rise to joy, and joy gives rise to love. So, this is the joy or the great love that you experience yourself, which you extend to others.

[26:20]

That's jujuyu-samadhi. It's also called big mind. and it's impartial. It's just, you know, it's just like a searchlight. It just goes round and round and just expresses itself in all directions. Dogen also called it shikantaza. It's just doing. Just doing. Without asking for something. Without... to tend to love is like wanting something for yourself. It's like generosity. Generosity is also an aspect of love, of course.

[27:24]

if it's real generosity, but usually, or not usually, but often, it's like, there's a string, you know, I'll give you a tit for tat, right? What's in it for me? So, in the great first case of Volca's record, where Bodhidharma is meeting Emperor Wu, Emperor Wu, who was a great emperor in China, and he promoted Buddhism, he created temples for priests, and he supported the monks, and he was really a great advocate for Buddhism. But when he met Bodhidharma, who came from China, from India to China, he said, I've done all these things, What is my merit?

[28:27]

Because merit was a big deal. I do something, what do I get for that? And Bodhidharma says, no merit. Bodhidharma is expressing something above give and take. You just give. The merit When you give, that's merit, but the result is not merit. If you want something for which you give, that's tainted merit. So we say, just give and forget. Just give and that's it. That's pure activity, pure generosity, pure love. Just give and forget. Because if you do something like that out of... I don't say it's bad.

[29:33]

It's great, all this stuff. Very good. But it's a tainted merit. So we have to keep striving more and more to be able to have generosity without getting something. But if you go to work, get paid. That's why most people go to work, to support themselves and their families and so forth. So you do expect something. But there's another side. What do you do when you're at work? You don't think, I'm doing all this, I'm getting paid. You don't think of that all the time. You might, of course. But you're just doing the work. Doing the work. And then, oh, I got a paycheck! Gee whiz, what a surprise!

[30:35]

So, attitude is everything. Actually, we get caught by reward. And then there's ownership. Typically, monks give up ownership. They don't own anything. Just like American Indians had a great culture until we ruined it because they didn't own anything, by and large. They would reign each other's horses and stuff like that, for horses and stuff. But basically, ownership was not a big deal. They didn't own this land and that house and stuff. Everything belonged to everybody. We want to go back to that, but we can't.

[31:43]

So ownership, I remember Suzuki Roshi saying, I do wear these glasses. They don't really belong to me. I guess they belong to you. Thank you for letting me wear them. And I remember, at Aiken Roshi, he said, I have this typewriter. It's just this typewriter. I can't say that it belongs to me. Maybe it belongs to you. But you can't have it. Because this is what I need to do my writing on. So thank you for letting me, you know, use it that way. So, yeah, of course this is typewriter. But the feeling is, it's the feeling, it's the attitude with which we use things that is important.

[32:50]

I'm a priest. I have a car. I have, you know, this and that. But none of it's really mine. Even though, if you take my car, I'll be sad for a minute. I don't know how I'll feel, but when something is gone, I just let it go. I don't worry about it. Sometimes I'm glad when something is gone. But I'm not a very good preacher, though. So one of the things that comes up is, what about my family?

[34:44]

What about my children? I love them dearly. Is that wrong or bad or whatever? It's all good, so to speak. I said I wouldn't have family judgment, but I will. It's a value judgment. Yes, that's good. If it's not simply self-centered love. You can love your family dearly, personally, without it being self-centered. Because it's the same love that you would give to the universe. When you're expressing love for your family, your children, it's the same quality of love that you would express universally. Otherwise it becomes exclusive and stingy.

[35:55]

Why be stingy? Because it's mine. When it's just mine, it becomes stingy. But if we want something too much, it becomes selfish. Also, I love you, how come you don't love me? That's a big one. Well, you just think you love me. I mean, I just think I love you. If I really loved you, you'd probably love me. But we don't know how to do that. But we think that all we have is love. But it's really self-interest. We get stuck in self-interest, which is the near enemy of love. So if I love you, I want to do something for you.

[37:06]

Not me. Something for you. But we don't know necessarily how to help each other. It's difficult. I don't know what's good for you. I think I know what's good for you, but I don't know what's good for you. Necessarily. I'm investigating this all the time. Why is someone so angry with me all the time? Well, there's something wrong with them. There's something wrong with them. They're always angry at me. But we're looking in the wrong place. Because it's like, what am I doing that creates in this other person anger at me? Because we do that. something in another person that comes back to us and we think that it's their fault.

[38:13]

And it just looks like their fault. We can't understand it. So we should always look. Maybe it is their fault. But we should make sure, by investigating, how am I contributing to this? I may not be causing it, but how am I contributing to this. What is it that I'm doing that's contributing, making this happen all the time? So this introspection is an important part of practice. And if you can investigate like that, that's an aspect of love. because you're actually allowing the other person their freedom from your contribution to their anger.

[39:17]

It's a form of love. Anyway, do you have any questions? Yes. Thank you. So in the spirit of Suzuki Roshi, I say he doesn't own these glasses. He's just universally letting him use them. People speak and emote in such a way that it's hard to feel that we're just borrowing them. Last night you said that we should feel good about letting someone go if they so-called fall in love with somebody else. We should be able to see that we don't really own them. It's an illusion. Yet, at the same time, if someone so-called falls out of love with us or wants to move on, so to speak. What advice do you give to the person being left to come forward in a way which is not glommy, but a way to meet the person where they may be able to reconcile?

[40:21]

Well, that's a huge subject. I'm not answering the quote easily in a statement. But I would say the basic thing is if you can rise above the attachment, then you realize that why I'm suffering is because of my attachment, not because of the other person. I am suffering because someone killed me. Because I've been killed, and I think they did it. Yeah. So we always attach it to the other person. Why? Why? Why do they do that? You know, that's natural and normal and you just suffer through it for long periods of time, you know. We've all done that. But we have to realize that it's our attachment to that.

[41:29]

And it's not even our attachment to the other person. It's our attachment to our own feelings. It's all here. It's all here, up here. Attachment to our feelings. Can we think that it's attachment to the other person? Because we have this image in our mind, and the image keeps growing, and taking on all kinds of fantastic, beautiful images, which we're making up. But it's really our own feelings that we're attached to. So instead of dealing with the other person, we have to deal with our attachment to our feelings. You're welcome. Yes. Thank you for your talk. It's given me a lot of food for thought. And I wondered,

[42:32]

When you talked about a sort of a lower level of self-love, it seems like that is similar to self-loathing in some ways. That there's an attachment there to a self. Well, either way there's an attachment to self. Yes, that's right. Self-loathing is the other side. Yeah. Yeah, there's this attachment to self in that version. One is attachment to self and grasping, the other is attachment to self and aversion. I don't like myself. Oh, I hate myself. Oh, I hate going. I want you to go away, but I'm who? I'm you. Yeah. Sometimes it can be a Dharmagate. It can be a Dharmagate, a delusion. OK. This is like, that's a good point. If I understand you correctly. Well, I don't know if I understand incorrectly. It's using this problem as a tool.

[43:39]

Exactly. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. And I also wanted to ask you, I really feel sorry for Emperor Wu. I'm concerned about him. Yes. We're all concerned about him. So he was a good guy. No matter what Barney Dartmouth says, he was a good guy. Do you think he ever... I mean, sometimes we do need our stickers and our merit badges. That's right. That's right. So that's, you know, the truth of... that's the truth of Megan Williams. We need that stuff. We're humans. So we need our delusions. We need to practice within delusion. But the delusion gives us a lot of problems. Just practicing within delusion brings up all these problems. Suffering.

[44:41]

So the other side is, well, maybe I should just go over to the ocean. Just let go of it all and just go over to the ocean. But it seems like, I'm sorry I'm picking this up, but there is an aspect of commitment, living by vow, in there. Yes, there is an aspect of commitment, living by vow, instead of living by karma. Living by karma is the waves. Living by vow is the combination, understanding that the waves and the water You can't live on the waves without living in the water, and you can't live in the water without living in the waves. That's called commitment to the way-seeking mind. Yeah, talking about these things, you know, we can easily fall into the abyss on either side.

[45:52]

Think you love somebody, to use your example, and they leave you and you're upset. You're pointing out the self-centeredness that is actually our own problem, our attachment. I would like to draw a different picture, or to start with the same picture. You love somebody. Let's say it's your child or your partner. They sound leaving. You might say, OK, go, whatever, I'm not attached. No. I wouldn't say that. So that's the danger of people kind of thinking, oh, he's telling us not to be attached, and that if we get upset, it's our problem. No, I'm not saying that at all. But we might say, no. I'm not saying that at all. OK. Within our attachment, within our suffering, that's when we have to find our freedom. Wait, I didn't hear.

[46:55]

Within our attachment, within our suffering, that's where we have to find our freedom. That's not by saying, oh, well, you know, goodbye, and if he's OK, blah, blah, blah. That's not what I'm saying at all. Good. Thank you. Thank you for that. But we're still on Sue. You OK? OK. I'm fine. I'm thinking I probably have a fair amount of company in this. My default mistake is to worry whenever I feel that there's some conflict or failure of connection with someone. My default thing is to think it must be my fault. And that's of course wrong too. I forget about their ulcer. or the fact that there are all kinds of reasons.

[47:57]

And it is egocentric, of course. It's more self-obsession for me to think it must be all my fault. But it's not a lot of fun. Right. There's a difference between it's my fault and how am I contributing to this. Those are not the same. How am I contributing to this is reasonable. It's all my fault. It's unreasonable. It's just emotional. But what's my part in this? It's not like it's all my fault. It's like I am part of whatever situation I'm a part of. And whatever situation that I'm a part of, I'm influencing. You can't say I'm not influencing in a relationship. So what part of my influence is imbalancing this relationship? That's different than, it's all my fault.

[48:58]

And I hear that all the time from people. Oh, it's all my fault. Oh, I'm so bad. It's hopping to the emotional unknown goodness. Instead of, well, in this relationship, there's this, and maybe I'm creating imbalance. that is creating a problem. So, what is my part in this? It's always there. Whatever relationship we have, you're playing a part in interlocking it. And you can create a balance, or you can create an imbalance. That's the difference. And I know that a lot of people are behind... how do you say them all? They're behind... One of my favorite quotes is by Temple Grandin's mother about love.

[50:04]

Temple Grandin was an autistic woman, and she asked her mother, what is love? And her mother said, love is what makes things grow. And so I come back to that a lot when I'm in a situation. So if I want to express love, how do I make things grow from where I am? or from where we are. That's right. It's our nature to nurture. But sometimes I think that nature creates both Lovers and haters. Good and evil. People who create, who destroy a lot of people, are just messengers of nature.

[51:10]

Dealing with population, population expansion. I know that's not true. Is that right? Well, thank you for being patient with me.

[51:25]

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