Gil Franz Thal is a long time student of Zen, was ordained by Richard Baker Roshi in 1982 and practices at San Francisco Zen Center. He also is studying for his PhD in Buddhist Studies at Stanford and is training with Jack Kornfield in Vipassana meditation to be a teacher and is a good friend of mine. Welcome. It's a pleasure to be back here. It's a nice place. Nice people. You have these nice columns. I want to tell you first about my first and I think only hallucination I had in my Zen practice. Usually we don't talk about hallucinations. You're not even supposed to have them. And in the Zen tradition, hallucinations are considered to be makkyo.

[01:06]

And makkyo literally means something like diabolic phenomena. And they're strongly discouraged. They're things like strange sights you might see or hear or smell that happen sometimes when people's mind gets kind of still and concentrated and a little bit imbalanced. And in Zen tradition, I'm usually told to really ignore them. Don't pay any attention to them. Anyway, so I had one, and it was important for me. It was my first year, after about sitting for about a year, sitting regularly for about a year. And at the beginning of the period of Zazen, I sat down and faced the wall. And almost immediately, this huge column, Roman column, kind of this classic Roman column, rose up in front of me. and written down a column in big, beautiful Roman letters, noble kind of bold letters, it said, Z-E-N.

[02:09]

So, that was a hallucination. It was pretty real. I don't know. I didn't know where the hallucination stopped and where reality picked in. But the next thing that I was aware of was that I went to embrace this column and as I embraced it, it vanished and I fell forward against the wall. There was nothing there. So that kind of woke me up to something. So I thought about that for quite a while and one of the things I realized from that was that not to make a big deal out of Zen or Buddhism, and that I wasn't studying Zen to learn about Zen, that I had to look elsewhere, and elsewhere I was studying Zazen, studying Zen practice to learn about myself. And in some very real sense, there's no such thing as Zen, no such thing as Buddhism.

[03:21]

But there's us. So I'm very fond of Dogen's little saying, that to study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to awaken together with all things. And I'm serious about there not being any Buddhism in many conventional senses of the word. There's no Buddhist teachings, in a sense, about what is true. I'm very impressed by the early Buddhist tradition and how the early Buddhist tradition, the early sutras, how the Buddha talked about his teachings.

[04:33]

And he was very reluctant to talk about what was true. where he makes some kind of truth statement or statement about beliefs. In several places, but one place is the Parinirvana Sutra, the Sutra of the Buddha's Last Days, he describes what it was he discovered in the night of his enlightenment. And you think this is pretty significant. Here's the truth he's discovered there in his enlightenment. And what he describes that he discovered was he discovered a practice. He talks about various practices that he's discovered. He doesn't say he discovered some truth or some understanding about the universe or reality or life. He discovered a practice and that's what was significant about his enlightenment experience. So I'm a graduate student in Buddhist studies.

[05:35]

And one of the things that I'm privileged to do, maybe, is read a lot of these old sutras. But not just simply read them. We do kind of historical analysis of the sutras to see which ones of them are older and which ones of them are more recent. At Stanford, we don't believe that all the sutras were Buddha's gift to humankind, that they were kind of done. chronologically through time. They weren't all done in 40 years of his ministry. So we try to figure out what's older and what's newer, kind of like biblical studies. And what people have concluded is the oldest strand, the oldest layer of the Buddhist writings, Buddhist sutras, is in a text called the Sutanipata. I don't know how it translates in English, but it's called Sutanipata. It's a wonderful text. You can buy it. I'll get Shambhala. It's a very radical text. I think Zen students would love it.

[06:38]

It's a teaching before Buddhism became institutionalized and before it started having rules and ideas about how things were. This text is a very strong critique of all forms of spiritual materialism. It's kind of radically radically iconoclastic. So I would like to read today a couple of things from this text. I want to start with this one. Speculative view. This is the Buddha talking. He talks about himself in the third person sometimes. Speculative view has been given up by the Buddha. Therefore, I say that the Buddha, with a passing away, fading away, cessation, giving up, and forsaking of all imaginings, all mental disturbances, all selfishness, egoism, and tendency to conceit, is liberated without clinging.

[07:53]

Here's another situation where he's describing what's unique about his awakening experience. And the first thing he wants to say is that he's given up views, speculative views, all forms of views. And this early text, Sutanipata, over and over and over again is critical of views, of holding any views at all. Maybe we don't agree with some of the teachings in this early text, but it wants to do away with all views. All views are problematic. Some people would say that the teaching in this early text is non-dual. This is another quote from the same text. By abandoning all virtuous conduct and religious observances, as well as both blameless and blameworthy actions, desiring neither purity nor impurity, one dwells unattached, cultivating peace, abandoning both blameless and blameworthy actions and all religious observances or practices.

[09:17]

Those who are upright and who have investigated the various teachings rely neither on others or on views. Not seeing one doctrine as better than another, they have gone beyond dispute." There are various views which the early tradition was very critical of, more so than others. And one of them was the view that things either exist or that things don't exist. And both of those are considered somewhat of a fallacy in Buddhism. And in somewhat philosophical concepts, I think more in practical terms, I translate views as being stories. Rather than stories existing or not existing, often our fallacy is we take stories as being real or not real. If we think all our stories that we make up and live our life by is not real, I think there's a tendency towards lack of commitment and complacency.

[10:29]

If we take them as being real, then we're in big time trouble. There's kind of ignorance involved if you think it's real. So what's the middle ground between taking stories as being real or not real? Another one of the views that early Buddhism was very critical of, which I think most of you know, is the view that there is a self. And related to this is the idea of conceit. Early Buddhism was very much interested in getting rid of conceit. But they had a very interesting understanding of what conceit was. Usually we think of conceit as thinking that we're superior or better than other people. And for the early Buddhists, Conceit involves thinking you're superior, thinking you're inferior, and thinking that you're equal to others. All three.

[11:34]

All three involve evaluation, evaluating yourself in relationship to other people. And what is it to be in the world, to be in the world of people, without being concerned about whether you're superior, inferior, or equal? That's kind of a koan. And what is it to be in the world without being concerned about blameworthy or blameless action, as this text wants to say? And we form views and stories all the time. And especially people who practice form a lot of stories. I think when we sit zazen, we make stories. It's not so uncommon, some of us do.

[12:39]

Sometimes about progress, how we're doing, evaluating what's going on. Is this appropriate? Is this right? Am I doing it right? Am I making any progress? Am I going anywhere? Am I getting more enlightened? Things are getting worse. you know, all kinds of ideas and stories. Is it possible to establish our practice, establish Zazen practice in a place where we don't form any views or ideas of what's going on? And is it interesting to do that? Do you think it's interesting? Maybe it's not. Maybe we should be concerned about something. When I first, that first year that I first started sitting Zazen, I came to my Zazen practice with a lot of ideas about what I wanted from Zazen. And the strange thing happened after a few months, was that bit by bit, the various desires and wants that I had about becoming a better person, being happier, started to kind of fall away, or started to become less interesting.

[13:48]

It started not to happen. But I found it very strange that I kept on sitting. I continued to sit. And I thought it was really strange that I no longer had any reasons to sit Zazen, but I kept sitting. And I'm the kind of person who needs reasons for everything I do. So I thought this was really bizarre. And every day I'd sit twice a day, except by myself. I just kept sitting. Why am I doing this strange thing? I have no reasons for it. So I was kind of perplexed by this, and I kept sitting and kept thinking about why am I doing this? And finally, the best answer I can come up with was that, for me, Zazen was the deepest form of self-expression that I had. And I sat, that time in my life, I sat Zazen to express myself, like an artist expresses herself on her canvas, maybe. And Zazen was kind of my art, my way of expressing myself, of being completely who I was. So in its critique of views, early Buddhism was not interested in teaching or looking for, wasn't so interested in teaching or looking for the meaning of life, something that many people want to have.

[15:26]

What it was much more interested in was studying and finding out why we have the need to have meaning in our life. I didn't want to say we shouldn't have meaning, but I was very interested in understanding the need for meaning. Where does that need, that desire, come from? And if a person can understand that or clarify that, that story or that view that needs meaning, we can approach the whole task of finding meaning in our life, if we still think it's interesting, in a different way. And I would suggest, this is my opinion, everything I say today is my opinion because there's no Buddhism, so it can't be but my opinion, is that please don't look in Buddhism for meaning.

[16:30]

Don't read open Buddhist books and come to a Buddhist meditation center hoping to have Buddhism to give you the meaning of your life. I suggest that you won't find it. It's like this great column that will arise in front of you. It looks really impressive, especially with all these great hardcover books we have on Buddhism. And it just simply will vanish on you. I would like to read a quote, a poem by Dogen. All my life, false and real, right and wrong, tangled, playing with the moon, ridiculing the wind, listening to the birds, many years wasted seeing the mountains covered with snow.

[17:44]

This winter, I suddenly realized snow makes a nothing. Many years wasted seeing the mountain covered with snow. This year I suddenly realized snow is what makes a mountain. Dogen liked to talk a fair amount about mindfulness practice, but he had a different slant on mindfulness practice than maybe traditional Buddhism had. And he defined mindfulness of the body as one of the basic foundations of mindfulness practice.

[18:56]

And he said, mindfulness of the body is the body's mindfulness. Mindfulness of the body is the body's mindfulness. It isn't that we're mindful of the body. I think it's kind of a delusion to have this idea that we're the ones who then direct our minds and our awareness to our breath or our body or our posture. But rather, it's the body's mindfulness that arises. We kind of get out of the way. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things. And then he goes on in the same passage to say, when Buddhas become demons, the demons become Buddhas. When Buddhas become ordinary people, ordinary people become Buddhas. And the way I understand that is that the work of awakening, the work of awakening to our life, doesn't occur by avoiding or going around who we are, our life, our emotions, our demons, our shadow, and all these things, but involves bringing awakening, bringing clarity, bringing a sense of presence to them.

[20:28]

We can bring our presence to all aspects of our life. Those aspects of our life then become awakened. And my understanding of my understanding of awakening these days is a little bit maybe unconventional. And that is that what happens when a person becomes awakened is not that the person becomes awakened. There's no one who ever becomes awakened. There's no one, absolutely no one who ever becomes awakened. What happens in awakening is all things awaken. We give awakening to all things. When we drop our views and our stories and our ideas, we paint reality with. In some ways we're liberating those things in front of us. So awakening is our gift to the universe, to the world around us. We're not becoming awakened. We're giving awakening to the trees, to the columns, to the people, to the bell.

[21:34]

We're giving awakening, we're giving liberation to all things. It's not something that happens to us. And to think that it's something that happens to us, is to look for the mountain under the snow, to look for something which is real behind what's actual. And it's possible to just stay present in the actual and not to make stories and views about how things are. So this early strand, historical strand of Buddhism, the Sutta Nipata text, mostly spends most of the time criticizing views and having any kind of views.

[23:10]

As Buddhism developed historically in India, they kind of modified that to some extent. And one way they modified it was saying, that's all fine, but we need to have views, we need to have stories in order to live our lives. And what they wanted to do then was pragmatically, pragmatically recreate stories and views by which we can base our life, live our life by. But it was doing that after a person has come to zero, after a person had a taste, an understanding of how much our life is made up of views, and a need for views, and given up that need for views, that with some kind of clarity, a person that pragmatically adopts views again. The early tradition then became a pragmatic tradition, still not trying to talk about truths, what was true and what wasn't true, but talking about what was pragmatically useful.

[24:14]

So I think I'd like to end. with another quote. This is from a book called Impro. It was kind of a bestseller around Zen Center about 10 years ago. By a theater director named Keith Johnson. You have to trick the students. This is about theater, but maybe it relates to what I'm talking about today. You have to trick the students into believing that content isn't important, and that it looks after itself, or they never get anywhere. It's the same kind of trick you use when you tell them they are not their imaginations, that their imaginations have nothing to do with them, and that their

[25:34]

and that they're in no way responsible for what their mind gives them. In the end, they learn how to abandon control while at the same time they exercise control. They begin to understand that everything is just a shell. You have to misdirect people to absolve them of responsibility. Then, much later, they become strong enough to resume the responsibility themselves. By that time, they have a more truthful concept of what they are. So that's enough for me.

[26:39]

And now it's your turn. Do you want to respond or say something or take issue to anything I've said? Yes? You said you came to the view that sitting zazen was a form of self-expression. What self? It was a convenient way to say it. It's a sincere question. Yeah, yeah. That's how I felt at the time. And that was the best way I could put it in words, what I felt. I felt some kind of integrity, some kind of sense of presence that was complete in and of itself. And the language that I had at that time to say it was self-expression was the best that I had. And I maybe still would use it, but There's no self, there's no agent, there's nothing at the center of that, of that, of that self.

[27:49]

There's just expression. I, lately I'm sort of puzzling over, over this, um, because we, we talk about, we talk here we are, you know, talking about ourselves, and talking about our views, and talking about all of that, and that, and that, you know. Well, people would ask the Buddha the same thing. They say, you know, you go around attacking the view of self, but you keep saying I, or you, you know, or into yourself. And the way he would respond was that, On one hand, just saying I or you or self, he's often talking just from a conventional point of view. It's a convenient way that somehow fits the observation of how things are.

[28:56]

But in an ultimate point of view, there is no self. If you really investigate carefully and really find out what is this self, you won't find anything there. Is that looking for a mountain underneath the snow? Yes, exactly. But you're just cautioning him? Well, Dogen said, you study Buddhism to study the self. And to study the self is to forget the self. And my understanding is that you don't avoid anything in practice. You don't let go of anything in practice. You simply bring yourself up against everything that's there without any movement of preference or views or any holding on or pushing away. And if you have a view of a self, great. You don't value that or judge that as being right or wrong. Just hold it there for what it is. You don't try to let go of it even. To let go of something is already to miss the boat. It's already too late to be awakened. Yes, in the back.

[29:59]

Well, what I wanted to just point out is that the Buddhist tradition just didn't rest at this radical criticism of views because I anticipated there would be some questions about how useful that would be. And what the Buddhist tradition then said, as it kind of elaborated on that, was that we need to have ideas and stories and views in order to function in life. but that we have to have some criteria upon which we can establish what's a good view or what's an appropriate or inappropriate view. And the criteria for these early Buddhists was a pragmatic criteria. It wasn't that this view was right or wrong or true or false. It was, is this view useful, appropriate for the task of becoming more awake, becoming more free? Or is this view taking me away from freedom, taking me away from awakening? And since they were kind of narrow-minded in the old days, that's all they cared about.

[31:31]

That's all they would say, but you could expand it. Views about society, does it help society become more awake, more free, more peaceful? Yes. Oh, you were first. Go ahead. You said, don't come to Buddhism looking for meaning. When I'm here, it's always meaningful to me. And so that's part one. And part two is, then why do anything? So when you come here, it's always meaningful. When you come, what sense is it meaningful? A lot of other things too, but underneath it's always me. And this is Buddhism here? It's Buddha here. Or Buddhahood here.

[32:37]

Is that Buddhism? I don't have a clue what Buddhism is. Yeah. I've devoted my life to Buddhism. I've devoted my life to Buddhism. But there's no Buddhism. Then why have you devoted your life to Buddhism? Why do you continue now that you realize there is no Buddhism? I can't do anything else. For me, I have to continue practicing.

[33:48]

I have no choice. And I don't necessarily call my practice Buddhism, but it fits very pragmatically into all this stuff that we have. This is a nice container. But you have to... I feel that we shouldn't confuse the container for our own work. The container being Buddhism? Being Buddhism. Or a zendo, or a form, or a tradition, or anything. And all those things are pragmatically useful. And one can recognize their usefulness in one's life, importance in one's life, without taking them too seriously. Taking them too seriously means for me that you're looking towards them for your life, rather than

[35:06]

in this direction, but that's not really accurate either to say it that way. Why is your hallucination considered diabolic as opposed to any other thing that happens to arise? Do you miss the view that it's diabolic? Well, see, I'm kind of fond of it. I felt like I learned a lot from it. So I don't think it's necessarily diabolic. But I think it's diabolic and it has the potential for grabbing our interest and our attachments. We can either become afraid by it, or we can think really special, just, you know, angels are speaking to me, or, you know, all these things can happen to people when they start sitting. And if you get really interested and caught up in it, that's taking you away from yourself. to getting involved in views and stories and imaginings. And you want to be able to stay with the actual.

[36:09]

So, in the Zen tradition, they usually say, ignore it. In other Buddhist traditions, they don't necessarily say to ignore it. They say, be mindful of it as it is, without getting involved in the content. So if you see something, see a hallucination, just be present for the seeing. without being caught up in what you're seeing, or the content is, or the story, or anything else. And in just the seeing, there can be the awakening. sitting here looking, going, you know, should I pursue the grid?

[37:15]

Why am I pursuing the grid? Is it because I'm trying to somehow add another block to that house of self or something? Or, you know, it doesn't mean anything. It's like, well, I mean, you know, it's like we, you know, we're pretending. Well that again is the, I guess maybe the trap. Almost anything we do, that we can form some kind of identity around it. It isn't just going to gain a PhD, it can be just anything we do, virtually. Has that helped your practice? Yeah, it has.

[38:17]

So your question is, why am I doing it? To be honest, I'm not quite sure anymore why I'm doing it. But I had reasons when I started. I had been a priest at Zen Center for many years. I had done many years of Buddhist practice. I was beginning to get in a position where I was starting to teach more. And I felt a need to be better familiar with the tradition, the traditional teachings, and scriptures, and Asian tradition, kind of in a wider way. I'd done enough practice, probably, maybe. I had that as kind of a foundation. And on that foundation, I wanted to get a better sense of how I talked about Buddhism, according to how other Buddhists have said about it, talked about it.

[39:17]

Graduate school is a great place to develop your critical skills. I wanted to be able to think about and talk about Buddhism from a more critical point of view. For me, it was very easy to fall into generalizations and half-understood ideas about what Buddhism is or what practice was. So I thought it was a good idea. I checked around and my friends thought it was a good idea. So I went and got a master's in Buddhist studies. It was really fun. It was great fun. At Zen Center, I could never get any time to study or read. So it was really fun. I read all these sutras and all this stuff. After two years of getting a master's, I thought, well, that's not enough. I kind of just got my and just barely scratched the surface.

[40:20]

So I wanted to do some more of the studies. The way to do it is to go... If you have a Master's, the only thing to do is to go get a PhD. And so I wasn't very interested in a PhD per se, but it was just an opportunity. And then I was given a scholarship. And... And I only applied to two places in the Bay Area, because I didn't want to be away from my Buddhist friends here in the Bay Area. If I don't get accepted, then I'll just, so much for school. But they gave me scholarships, so it was great. This idea of view, I guess I want to use the word conditioning. And they're really interested in understanding how a person abandons those views or somehow sees them as just views.

[41:32]

And you brought up the question, how do you fill it in? I guess what I'm wondering is for myself, how do I know how to embrace a view? How do I embrace a view but don't cling to it? Maybe I want to answer your question directly if I might avoid it. But I'm very interested in the difference between the ideal and the actual. And there's the ideal, not to have any views, or not to cling, not to be attached, not to be conditioned, or whatever. And all those are kind of ideals. And to the degree in which they're ideals, they're the mountain under the snow. And I think it's much more interesting to be present for the actual.

[42:40]

So rather than thinking, oh, I have this conditioning, and I've heard that it's not good to have any conditions, so I'm going to try to get rid of it, and how do I do that? It's much more interesting to Just be present for that conditioning. Not in the sense of acting on it or indulging in it or not indulging in it, not being involved in it, but just penetrating it, seeing what that is. Don't try to let go of it. Don't try to get rid of it. See what it is. And as these people, early people, wanted to say, both the view that something exists and the view that something doesn't exist is a fallacy. And in some ways your conditioning is neither. It either exists or doesn't exist. Don't treat it as either. If you penetrate through it, it dissolves. And it dissolves by itself. Is there anything that comes in to replace that? You better believe it. Usually.

[43:43]

Another? Usually. Isn't that your experience? I guess I keep hoping that something will come that will That's the view, and is that view useful or necessary? Is it necessary or useful to have the view that there's something better possible? More than just simply being present with what's actual, with our shadows, our demons, our joys and whatever. Isn't that enough to be human? Okay, that is enough, thank you, it's been nice.

[44:33]

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