That visit was somewhat unexpected by me. But I'd actually heard about it, that that was going to happen, but I didn't know when. I don't read the bulletin board anymore. Not very much. So things passed me by. But that's very nice. a kind of combined Inner Sangha event of kind of pilgrimage, going to all the established practice places in Berkeley. I think they're doing that all in one day. And I think they would like to do this all over the Bay Area.

[01:10]

So I was just paying homage to each place and kind of connecting. Pilgrimage is something that happens a lot in Japan. happened in India, China, not so much here, but you can see that it's beginning to happen. For some people, this is their practice, this kind of pilgrimage. I've never done that myself. In Japan, in certain places in Japan, there's a number of temples on a circuit. And it takes three months or six months or something like that to do the whole circuit.

[02:18]

And then each place you go and stay, you have a little, it's not a passport, but kind of paper, you know, and they stamp, put this stamp on it. So the feeling of having contacted that place. Anyway, today I wanted to talk about self and no-self. The fundamental practice of Buddhism is non-clinging to anything.

[03:20]

That's really the basic practice. Buddha says, Shakyamuni says, the basic practice is non-clinging. If you can understand non-clinging, then you've understood the whole teaching. So, non-clinging means not clinging to self, to a self or a soul, or actually not clinging to anything in the world. Suzuki Roshi's main teaching was, everything changes, which is the same thing. from a different point of view. Everything changes.

[04:21]

That's his most fundamental teaching. When we're born, we don't have a feeling of self. Everybody looks at the newborn baby how wonderful. Sometimes the newborn baby is very ugly, but we say, how wonderful anyway. And women are especially drawn to newborn babies. You know, if you go on a bus with a newborn, with a young child, or a fairly newborn, all the women want to look at the baby. Something very pure about this newborn baby. We don't see this purity so much in each other, but we do see it in the baby, in the child.

[05:32]

And at some point, the child becomes self-conscious. And when you're a kid, We used to say, there are three of me, me, myself, and I. I don't know if you remember that, but we used to say that. I'm three people, me, myself, and I. But you're actually more. We say, the three marks of Buddhism Somebody says, I don't know how to explain Buddhism to people. But it's very simple. There are the three marks. Anata, Anika, and Dukkha slash Nirvana. The usual formula is Anata, Anika, and Dukkha.

[06:36]

Dukkha meaning unsatisfactoriness. Anata is no self. Anika is impermanence. And dukkha is unsatisfactoriness, which we call suffering. Sometimes people just say the fourth mark is the Mahayana says the fourth mark is nirvana or emptiness, shunyata. So this anatta, or no-self, we can understand impermanence, and we can understand nirvana. Dukkha. Yeah, we can understand dukkha. We all experience dukkha, we all experience impermanence, but this understanding of no-self is more difficult.

[07:47]

because we all feel like we have a self, me, self, and I. So there's the I am and the I have. I am is what we think we are. I am good, I am bad, I am right, I am wrong. I am famous. I am smart. I am stupid. I am whatever. I have. I have money. I have property. I have lovers. I have whatever it is. So this all centered around I, me and mine.

[08:54]

And of course, this I gives rise to dukkha. Because we cherish the I, it gives rise to dukkha, to suffering, to unsatisfactoriness. So, this is basic Buddhism, and we all know this. I'm just kind of going over this. This is basic, but the problem is that we tend to not really pay so much attention to it, ordinarily, even though we know this. We don't always pay so much attention to it. So it's difficult to let go

[10:20]

of this feeling of I and mine. And what do we have when we don't have I and mine? This is the problem. Okay. The problem is, what do we have when we don't have I and mine? Because we want something. So nirvana is kind of cast out there as a kind of wonderful thing. Buddha used a lot of expedience. And sometimes he would tell people that they would have wonderful things if they let go. But nirvana has got this connotation of being bliss, blissful.

[11:23]

And because the I-concept gives rise to self-centeredness, self-centeredness wants something wonderful and doesn't want something unpleasant. So people have this misconception often that nirvana is something wonderful as opposed to something unpleasant. Nirvana is another term for void or for emptiness. All beings, all five skandhas in their own being are empty. Forms are empty of their own being. Feelings are empty of their own being.

[12:32]

Perceptions are empty of their own being. Mental formations are empty of their own being. And consciousness is empty of its own being. So if we understand this, we realize that happiness is not the happiness which is the opposite of unhappiness. what nirvana is.

[13:40]

It's simply the absence of self-centeredness, of selfishness. So giving rise to a self, the characteristics of giving rise to a self are greed, ill will, and delusion. Greed clings to things. Ill will pushes them away. And delusion doesn't know which way to take. It's ambivalent. that's a characteristic of delusion. Risklessness and inability to decide and inability to settle and running around in confusion.

[14:53]

So self, actually, is called burden by Buddha. He calls it hauling around something that's a big weight and keeps bogging us down, bogging us down. And he says, let go of the burden. Just put down the burden. put down this big weight that we keep carrying around with us and experience lightness of being which is not self-conscious and not needy empty of ill-will.

[16:14]

I've been reading Puri Dasa lately. He says, people have spiritual disease. He said Buddha was interested in this, called the great physician, because he could cure spiritual disease. Buddha was not interested, not not interested, but not so concerned with mental disease. or physical disease. Mental disease and physical disease are taken care of by other disciplines. But Buddhism takes care of spiritual disease. The disease of I, me, my, I, me, and mine.

[17:38]

That's called that the disease which everybody has and is really hard to cure because of self-clinging. So spiritual disease is the disease of clinging and aversion and the arising of an I. With anger, the I is born. With desire, the I is born. With confusion or delusion, the I is born. So this I keeps being born over and over again, continuously.

[18:40]

And when the desire is not there, When that ill will is not there, when the confusion is not there, then it's just the natural state of mind, the nirvana state of mind, the empty state of mind. So Buddha attributes our basic problems to this birth of the I, birth of a self. But then we say, well, I do have a self. What about this body, this mind?

[19:42]

Yes, this is a self. But this self that is a self is not a self. If there was no self, we wouldn't be able to talk about a self. So there is something here. But this self is not the self that we imagine it to be. Some time ago, a few weeks ago, I was giving a talk and I said, it's good to sit with people in the Zendo rather than sitting at home by yourself. And I got a lot of people who said to me later, does that mean that we can't sit at home?

[20:51]

We shouldn't sit at home? No, it doesn't mean you shouldn't sit at home. I didn't mean that. You can sit anywhere you want, anytime you want. That's a good thing to do. But if you only have a private practice, it's very easy to create out of what is a non-self-centered practice, a self-centered practice. You can turn your spiritual practice into a self-centered practice, that's a problem. Zazen is the practice of letting go of self, the letting go of self-centeredness and sharing our

[21:57]

that practice with others. You can be a hermit. There are hermits. After practicing for 20, 30 years, a person can go and be a hermit for a while. But to divorce yourself from the world and have your own private world, your own private space, your own private spiritual practice. For some individuals, that may be okay, but for most people, it's easy to create a self-centeredness out of sitting zazen.

[22:59]

Most people still, I don't say most people, many people still sit zazen for some kind of purpose. To feel good, to feel calm, to gain some kind of merit. Maybe that enlightened stroke will come if I just keep sitting. Many people still believe that if they keep sitting, that stroke of enlightenment will come someday. So there's some kind of gaining idea. But the purpose of zazen, in its true sense, is to let go of self, to let go of a self, to not expect something good, to not expect something bad.

[24:25]

We think sometimes, well, you know, when we sit sasheen, no matter how it is, at the end, there's this feeling that we have, samadhi power. And we like that. We like that samadhi feeling. But we don't sit for that. That just happens to be the feeling that we have. And sometimes you'll have some good feeling. Sometimes you'll have some not such good feeling. And as soon as you start to judge it, oh, this was good Zazen. Oh, this is bad Zazen. then you fall into creating a self.

[25:36]

At that moment, the self arises. If you can sit Zazen, just accepting everything completely, without preference, without judging, without wanting, just totally letting it flow, then there's no self present. As soon as I like or I don't like comes up, then a self arises, is born. Then we fall into the realm of birth and death, spiritual birth and death. As soon as I comes up, I like, I want, this is my zazen.

[26:45]

I'm sitting here. As soon as my zazen comes up, then a self is born. As soon as I don't, or I do, comes up, self-employed. We can't help using these personal pronouns. They're very convenient for us. But see if you can avoid it for the rest of the day. Avoid. Or just notice. Just notice. When I, when my, I, me comes up. Just notice that and let go of it. See if you can live without the concept for a little while.

[27:54]

Nirvana is a peaceful state, but it doesn't mean that peaceful in the sense that there's nothing troublesome happening. It means in the midst of your troublesome life, you will have peace, deep satisfaction, no matter what's going on. And when we sit zazen, when we do sasheen, to find this peaceful place which cannot be disturbed by anything, We must keep going deeper and deeper to find this peaceful place.

[29:36]

I don't know peaceful, but this place which cannot be disturbed by anything, cannot be thrown off by anything, which is not influenced by the birth and death of yourself. So that's all I want to say today. Let's practice that way and have calm sitting. Calm, strong, powerful sitting.

[30:36]

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