A must surpass, penetrating, and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Can you hear me okay out there? Good. I just want to take a look and see who's here. Really nice to see all your faces. and to see old friends in distant places.

[01:02]

And now we're off to the races. I don't have any more rhymes. Little housekeeping, just to say, for those of you who are out on Zoom land, we're having one day sushi today. And it's really, the crowd is like 26, 28 people here, as many as we've had in Zendo. And we're sitting all day. And just for you, for those of you who are here, let you know there's sign up sheets on the bulletin board, patio bulletin board for practice discussion with Karen sometime or Doka-san with me. this afternoon after work period. They'll be short, supposed to be short sessions because we only have about an hour and a half, but invite you to sign up and come for a conversation and bring the question, sort of bring yourself to some clarity about your inquiry before you

[02:28]

come in so that we can really get down to it. Thank you. So for the last week, I've been thinking about a particular subject. And I kept kind of circulating around this topic for my talk today. And Yesterday, several things came to mind, and I read something, and all of that cogitation went out the window. And just, if it's important, it'll come back at some other date. But I've changed direction, and it starts with remembering that today, is the anniversary, the 77th anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima.

[03:32]

And a couple of days after that, also the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, as I said, 77 years ago, August 6, 1945. And in the immediate blast, 70,000 people were instantly incinerated. 70,000. And several hundred thousand more in the short term and long term aftermath. I guess it was on the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima. I took part in a memorial at the Nevada nuclear test site outside of Las Vegas.

[04:44]

And it was a religious reflection and ceremony and memorial. And one after another clergy people, wonderful people came to the stage and talked about how unthinkable this action was and questioned how anybody could do this. And when I came to the stage, I said, for me, obviously, it wasn't unthinkable because somebody thought of it. And that if any, my feeling was if any of us were in the circumstance of the people who made those decisions,

[05:56]

if we were really in their exact circumstance, it's not realistic to assume what we would have decided. And because it's in the nature of our mind, it's in the nature of a mind that creates a self and creates another. And because that is a habit that we have, unless we address that habit directly, we have that capacity. We have the capacity to do things that people would like to say are unthinkable. So, We recognize that we continue to live in a dangerous time, in a dangerous moment, and maybe all moments in history are dangerous.

[07:13]

On the nuclear front, you know, the war that's raging in Ukraine includes battles that are taking place over nuclear plants or around nuclear plants in the Ukraine. And we don't know what's going to happen there. This is where Chernobyl still sits. And we have a moment of contention between the United States, Russia, China, And unthinkable things are happening. And they always have. So the other thing that spurred my thinking this morning was that I came across a short piece by Roshi Joan Halifax in

[08:30]

the July issue of Lion's Roar. It's just a short commentary called Practice for a World at Risk. And a sentence really jumped out at me. This is the sentence. The basic vows we take as Buddhist remind us that there is no other. And I think when we look through the teachings of Martin Luther King, we find how he put this in his own words. All of life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich. The betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother.

[09:33]

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. So those are, those are some helpful words. We spent a lot of time talking about emptiness and no self. And we take up the practice of no self. But, you know, as we remember and as we've been hearing, Sojin Roshi's teaching was constantly inviting us to look at things from the other side. If we put forth one proposition, to look at the other side of that proposition. So, If there's no self, let's consider there's no other.

[10:41]

There is no other, there are no others. And it's all very well to practice the way of no self. And it's important, it's essential to do that because by habit and delusion, we fall into self-centeredness. But a lot of the problems that arise in our world arise directly because we also unthinkingly carry the notion that there is another, that there are others. And maybe in a practical sense, it's more dangerous than our affiliation to the idea of no self.

[11:59]

To think that there are others seems to give us permission to do all kinds of things. So we have Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We have the Holocaust. We have the war that's raging in the Ukraine. We have a 60-year civil war going on in Myanmar. We have the genocide of Native Americans. We have the history of enslavement in this country and all kinds of things around the world that all of which are premised on this compelling idea that there is another. And that those others are less than

[13:07]

And in fact, whether we know it or not, we often have the delusion that myself is the only thing that's real. And I had actually had a friend, one of my oldest and closest friends who took up Zazen about the age of 50. And somewhere into his practice, he confessed, you know, I never really understood there were other people out there. I'm so happy that he could have that perception about himself.

[14:18]

And also so sad that one could live that way, which is possible. And many people do. And when we think about, there's a couple of teachings that come to mind. I think about also what I take as a, for me, really pivotal teaching of Sojin Roshis, which is not to treat anything like an object, not to treat anything or anyone like an object. So he was, When he instructed that often, he would hold up his cup of tea and say, that's why we hold this cup with two hands. Ah, very refreshing.

[15:21]

And somehow the water in this cup is now part of my body. It's not other, it's now part of me. but we hold it with two hands out of respect. And it is somewhat easier perhaps to respect a cup than to respect someone we disagree with or someone who has hurt us. That's really hard to practice. How do we hold that person as if they were part of us? You know, and this is their practices around this, the practice of Tonglen, which comes to us via, yes?

[16:31]

There seems to be an excessive flame on that panel. Is that just my eyesight? No, it's actually large, but my experience is it'll probably take care of itself. Or it'll burn the whole place down. Thanks for noticing, Hanko. The back of the candle, the wax wall, So it's dripping down and being caught here. So it's safe, but a little visual entertainment to account for your audio entertainment. Right. And teaching. Thank you for your attention. It's not dripping up onto the altar. Right.

[17:35]

And if the place burns down, just be very careful. It's hard to get out the doors, so be careful. You can always climb out the windows, I suppose. So the practice of tang len, giving and taking, is a practice of exchanging self and other, moving towards really the non-separation of self and other. But that separation happens really, really quickly. For me, the practice that I return to or the teaching that I return to is from the sixth ancestor of Zen, Wineng, who is the reputed author of the Platform Sutra.

[18:36]

which may or may not be actually the case, but it's described to him and we associate it with him. We associate the teachings with him. And in that Sutra, there's what he calls a formless ordination ceremony, which is very much like our Jukai and our priest ordination, it's the same form. And it begins like like our ordination and like our monthly bodhisattva ceremony with, well, it includes the bodhisattva vows, which are part of it. So we chant the bodhisattva, we'll chant the bodhisattva vows at the end of this, at the end of this talk, right? Beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them is the, is the, The version that we that we use and other places often they would say beings are numberless.

[19:44]

I vowed to save them. But. The six ancestors version was a little different and it speaks to what I'm talking about. He said sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them all. So sentient, first of all, it's pointing internally that this notion of self and other is a construction of our mind that in fact, everything is a construction of our mind. And the sentient beings of my mind are what are often running the show. And so these sentient beings of my mind are, you know, the beings of the, the Buddhist cosmology, the six, you know, the six realms, the human realm, the Deva or God realm, the hell realm,

[21:07]

the animal realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the fighting demons. These are all you can recognize as a sort of archetypal expressions of our deluded nature. And they're kind of, it's kind of an outline of the infinite stations that we may enact in our lives. There's, you know, we also have like the, the teenager realm, or the, the unruly two-year-old realm. All of those, we, those are alive in us, right? And the Zen idea of rebirth doesn't, is not something that transpires over three lifetimes, you know, over

[22:08]

sort of past to present to future. The Zen idea of rebirth as referred from many of our teachers is like we're reborn moment by moment, you know, and if someone insults you, you may be reborn as a, as a, as a fighting demon, You may be reborn in hell. You may be devastated emotionally, be a kind of emotional puddle. You know, if somebody, all of the ways that we interact with beings and with the environment potentially give birth to these sentient beings of one's mind. and to save them means really just to take care of them to meet them as part of oneself not as other not as something that you have to get rid of you know if you're angry you're angry you know and don't push that away

[23:34]

But you have to treat it as I think in the model of a skillful parent and child. You meet the child, a parent meets the child with presumably unconditional love, no matter what is arising. And so if we can, if we recognize the sentient beings of our mind as not other, you know, not something to get rid of in ourselves, but something that is part of the entirety of who we are, then we can take care of it in an appropriate way. And we have to find out what that way is. That's, you know, trial and error. So that's one aspect of sentient beings of my mind. The other aspect of sentient beings of my mind, to me, this is my gloss on this, is that right now, everybody I'm looking at on screen, everybody I'm looking at in this end though, is a sentient being of my mind.

[24:56]

And that's the world right now. Right this moment, That is my whole world. And from your perspective, whatever you are seeing, whoever you are seeing is your whole world. And there is no other. There's no other world. There are no other people. This is, as I said, There's no other, that there's no other is, at least in my thinking, the last couple days, somehow seems, it seems very powerful. And it seems very much to the point, whereas no self, we can get lost in abstraction. No other tends to be the feeling of otherness

[26:02]

is really in, there's a great sense of particularity to it. And that's what we work with. You know, so that there's no self and there's no other is to open the door of oneness. And, you know, the most effective way we have of opening the door of oneness is Zazen. That's what we're doing today. And that's what we return to in this room. And gradually it permeates our whole life so that we can turn to it at any moment. And we may not necessarily have some immediate wonderful experience of oneness.

[27:11]

But as we sit, things get quieter, things get quieter inside, things get quieter outside. And we begin, we can, we can feel there's no inside outside. Is that train, that whistle that I'm hearing, is that outside? You know, and just to be able to open to that reality of oneness is the opportunity that we cultivate in Zazen. which is so fortunate.

[28:17]

There's just seeing, there's just hearing, there's just sitting on the banks of the stream and being soothed by the flow of thoughts, just as flow. This is so, such a fortunate practice that we have. So it's good to look at what are the, what are all the ways in which we create another? And what's it like also in the moments when we just, when that falls away, not that we do something to make it go away, but just to allow it, you know, as we read in the Sashin directions that, you know, last thing Charles said was drop body and mind.

[29:35]

You know, that's not some necessarily some great mystical experience where, everything disappears it's just the sense that we have of being connected in oneness and when we begin to feel that connection in a small thing like you know even like this cup of water The practice is to let those boundaries widen. Let those boundaries widen to include and to notice where am I creating another?

[30:37]

And just to confess to you, I do it all the time, you know, and I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who was beyond that. That's part of our habitual growing up, but we can recognize that propensity. We can consciously set it aside. And we also have moments when it's just not there. And to really savor those moments, And to savor that the ease of those moments, even though the next moment may be really difficult. And again, that happens in our zazen as well. And it happens from period to period.

[31:40]

Some periods are just really so... centering and relaxing and easeful and other periods are one cannot find any ease or relaxation in one's body and it's hard. But we just sit there with that. We don't, we just accept that as the way things are and find a way to stay for that moment, not to stay for good, but just to stay for that moment with the recognition that that moment will move. And the circumstances we're experiencing will change. And I think that gradually,

[32:45]

There's a, you know, there's this distinction in Zen between the sudden school and the gradual school. But we belong to the sudden school. But as all of you know, sudden is a relative, is a relative descriptor and sudden can take a really long time to unfold. So you should be patient with yourself. And I think that, you know, most everybody in this room has been practicing for a while. And I think if you look internally, you can appreciate the things that have shifted in you and the ways that your mind, which still has moments of grasping and clinging, also has moments of release, release and freedom.

[33:57]

And to share that with those around us, that's our bodhisattva experience. Not to save them by necessarily by intervening and doing some kind of radical activity, but actually to point the way that one can be truly oneself, that if there is no other, the way our teachers or ourselves can work with our minds is the way that anyone can work with their mind. And we open that door for people. And we want to keep opening that door. That's why we're here in this Zendo.

[35:00]

That's why we're here in this practice today. So I think I'm going to stop there and leave time for questions and comments. Let me put up the... Participants so that people can in Zoomland can raise your digital hand and people in the Zendo can raise their hands. And I see Lori. There's a really interesting paradox in your words that you've spoken this morning. So in one case, you said several times, there is no other. But when you think about your friend, the key. he actually had to learn that there is an other. And there's another way. It's not just that the other is less than, the other is a huge threat. And that is how we get these long comments.

[36:03]

So it's a big mystery. And when I first heard the phrase mind only, to me it sounds like there's only me. It's not that there's no me. It's like there's only me and what's in my head. So, I mean, it's a huge mystery. Yeah. Can you, did you hear that in, out there? Yes. Good. Right. Well, Laurie was saying there is a, you know, a conundrum in what I was saying when I related the story about my friend who his perception, which was a wake up call for him was that there were other beings out there. And so that's the this is this is where I think this instruction constantly to look to the other side is really helpful because he was fixated on the self. And he was aware of this self fixation.

[37:05]

People who are fixated on the others are operating from their own fixation on self and self protection. in order to create another in, and I think maybe there's different senses of others. There's the other that is no different than myself, which is what my friend was talking about. And there's the other that is less than human, which is what we see in all of the horrors of propaganda that we've seen over the centuries in depiction of beings who are less than human and therefore can be treated, they can be disposed of, used, enslaved, killed, because they're not like oneself.

[38:07]

So I think what you're pointing to is there's the different dimensions There's different ways of looking at other situationally. Sue Osher. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. I keep coming back to geopolitics, not that I know much about it, but the limited resources exist, the division and income disparity are huge. And I really appreciate your view on there is no other. We're totally interdependent. How do we hold like Ukrainian grain and limited water in the Middle East? And we're very fortunate in our geopolitical realities in this country.

[39:13]

How do we hold there is no other with, you know, I want to get what's mine or I want to survive at least? Well, I think that the fallacy in your last sentence is get what's mine because nothing belongs to one and nothing belongs to people within kind of the if you will, artificial boundaries of a country. But we're quite happy to extract the resources of other places or even our own country. And if we think that all beings deserve an equal opportunity to thrive,

[40:15]

then that creates a different, that might create a different political reality than the one that we're operating in, which is the one with the most money and the most guns can extract the most resources for themselves, which is often the case. And in order to do that means we have to do that means consciously or unconsciously, we have to relegate people to the position of other. But if we think of them as ourselves, then something, a different mind can arise. You know, I know my experience, particularly after, really I started doing a lot of traveling while my kids were young. And, you know, the idea of Sylvia and Alex, the images of them were so vivid in my mind.

[41:24]

And when I would go to other countries, particularly poor countries, and it would see the children is like, right, these are children. These are just like my children. And my heart opened. to them I really wanted to do something so that their opportunities were going to be akin to the opportunities that were available to my children. That's a kind of example of the perception of no other. Dean. Thank you, Alan. I'm a little nervous asking this. I've been thinking about this othering thing for quite a while, and I feel like I agree with you, it's historical. Slave owners put an entire group of people in a position, they othered this group of people, and you need to be this and live like this, because that's what I need you to be.

[42:44]

one of what something that's come up here that's made me think about othering is that at one point you know when we were talking about the cultural awareness class at one point there was talk about it being mandatory and something about that felt very uncomfortable to me and um what suddenly there's a There's a documentary I've watched several times, it's called Reconstruction After the Civil War. And what I felt was that this whole concept of mandatory meant that the people who maybe weren't gonna take it, or I felt that that was a huge weight of other people, but for some reason, because it's coming down on the politically correct side, You know, I think there's a lot of value in the politically correct side of things.

[43:51]

But it was hard for me. And I sort of feel like it's carried further, even though it's not mandatory. There's this very strong suggestion that people need to do that. And it brought me back to what you said in the beginning that Roshi Joan Halifax said about that our basic view, Buddhist vows teach us to not other. And so I guess with myself, I'm trying to figure out how, as someone who sees myself on one side of things as far as social justice and all, but how when there is a social justice topic but it comes down to if you don't do this then you're not supporting me when i've seen the similarities with with othering and um i i guess i'd like you to address the other thing that happens because we have a strong

[45:08]

We, and I do mean the progressives, have a strong difference from conservatives. And how can what we know to be true and right, how do we deal with that when it also can be othering? Right. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. And just to say, and I'm going to talk more about this in a couple of weeks, but I was not comfortable or advocating a mandated training. And at the same time, I really want to encourage it. I think that, I mean, it's interesting because I know Roshi Joan and we talk about this a lot and I see how this has evolved in her sangha. Yes, if you really understand uh the dharma everything that you need is in there uh but you know the reason say that we have an ethics policy is and the reason you have commentary in any religious tradition on the basic tenets is because is to help people understand you know so we have

[46:39]

We have an ethics policy at BCC because in our community and other communities, we feel that certain kinds of activities had to be spelled out in particular, even though if you're really paying attention, it's all there in the precepts. There should be no need for anything beyond the precepts, but it seems because we are foolish humans, we need clear guidances and instructions. So I think in terms of what you're raising around othering, the idea and actually, how do we meet people that we really disagree with? You know, so it's not, it is talking about whatever disagreements, I don't think they're very major in this, in this sangha, but there may be things that we disagree about.

[47:52]

In, certainly in our country, there are some vast things that we disagree about. How do we see, this is really hard, you know, how do I see those people who are storming the Congress on January 6, 21, how do I not other them? That's a real personal challenge for me. And, you know, I think my, at least my stated intention is for myself is to be able to listen and talk to anyone. And sometimes if I can't, then I have to kind of step back and look at what's going on internally. So that's, that's my, that's my practice intention. And I think that the, the idea of save the kind of training that we're going to engage in is,

[49:06]

to open doors rather than to lay down lines and create walls. And, you know, there's no guarantee that's gonna work entirely. And there's no guarantee that, I hope that it's not an othering process, but I would also hope that people would have faith in the opportunity to try something, to see how it works for them. That's the best it can do, just to see how it works. And if it doesn't work, then walk away. That's okay. But I don't think, I don't think we can come to a conclusive response, but we're trying to cultivate, you know, it's like substituting, one idea of othering perhaps for another that's what it can feel like and uh let's see if there's a way that we can not do that but i appreciate your question and we're not done yeah ross okay oh i'm sorry go ahead thank you um thank you very much for your talk this morning um you said

[50:36]

that it's really difficult with people in the othering process and not othering them because... They talk back. They talk back. Whereas this Mukugyo is less likely to talk back unless I sound it so-called incorrectly, and then it's saying, stop hitting me so hard. You reference Zazen in periods of comfort and ease and wanting to savor that experience, while other periods, and I don't think you raised your voice, but I heard it with like an exclamation point, while other periods. So I've been reflecting on my attachment to those comfortable, easeful periods of zazen and those other periods of zazen which aren't so. So how do we not other other periods of zazen and just have it as one continuous period? Well, I think Sojin talked about that a lot.

[51:36]

And I, I think, you know, there's a lot of things that one heard early in one's practice that seemed not to make sense or it was like, well, it's good for you if you can do that, you know, but if you trust, I trust the practice and trusting the practice, I, come around to some of the things that he had said. For example, you know, like when I started for the first number of years, if it was a day of Sashin, it's like there was some buildup of anxiety, you know, the day before, you know, and it's like, oh, Sashin, And Sochum would always say, well, I don't think about it. I just, you know, it's just, okay, it's Sashim, just do it.

[52:38]

And it's like, how does he do that? But actually, I don't think about it anymore. It's like Sashim, you know, it's okay. That's what we're doing today. And with Zazen, I think that to be able to include whatever it is we're experiencing That is the whole arc. To me, that's the arc of Zazen and hopefully becomes the arc of our life. And so, you know, if I have a period when I'm restless or uncomfortable, it's like, that's just another period of Zazen. It doesn't establish something that is going to continue or it's not. nor is it necessarily going to disappear in that period. But I do feel like in Sesshin, I think we can experience, you know, sometimes our legs hurt, and then we do kidney in, and then we sit down, and often when we sit down again, it's like, at least initially, it's like, ah, you know, and like, then your legs may start to hurt again.

[53:57]

But it's like we start fresh. You allow for the freshness of each period. And meaning allowing for whatever is going to come up. So we can like savor certain friendships because of affinities and other friendships or acquaintances. Maybe we don't savor so much, but there's still an acceptance in being with them fully as much as we can, just with that period of Zagzen, that's a little difficult for us. Yeah. And it's also, I think it's like that that freshness when you sit down, even if it's a relationship that's complicated or fraught, when you see that person, if it, you know, that person's not a stranger, that person is someone that, you know, if you're in each other's world and you've been in each other's world for a long time, there is some really palpable, significant connection. And just in that initial moment, you can, if you touch that, it's really helpful.

[55:00]

It helps you remember we're, there's a oneness. Savor the connection. Yeah. And then, you know, you talk and the disagreements may arise, you know, but the connection doesn't go away either. That's, that's the way I think about it. Preston, and we're gonna have to end in a couple. I don't, yeah, go ahead. I'm, I'm guessing that all of us have friends or family who are experiencing poverty or incarceration or domestic violence or some other kind of oppression or deprivation. And I feel it's easier to see how their suffering is our suffering. But I think that you and Martin Luther King were also speaking to like a wider sense in which even people we are unfamiliar with, whether they're our neighbors or across the world, their pain is, it also impoverishes us.

[56:15]

And so I'm wondering if you can say something about how that is. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that we have, we literally have practices. I mean, the Tonglen practice, Mentha practice includes those who are unseen, those who we don't know. And I think we should always be aware that those people, that they're there and that what we do affects them. And I think it also behooves us to educate ourselves, to be really interested in the world, interested in what's, in how people are living and how our life impacts them. And, you know, it's mysterious.

[57:15]

Sometimes it's really, it's quite material, you know, it's we're taking this resource and they're, they're not having that or they're being, you know, paid exploitative wages, etc. But sometimes the effect is, excuse me, is less perceptible. You know, the effect of our Zazen on the world is, is mysterious and not immediately perceptible. But again, I have faith in it. You know, I have faith that how we are working with ourselves, how we are opening has some, it affects everybody that we contact. And that effect spreads out in ripples.

[58:15]

So, you know, that may be the best that we can do. and then I think we're gonna have to end. I just remember before I left, Sojin said something really unusual, which was he said that Buddha is everyone else, and I never really understood that. What do you make of that? What I make of it is that I think he was pointing to the fact that we should really learn from everyone. that everyone that everyone is our teacher and everyone is teaching us something you know priceless and we often don't value people that way in fact you know we we can dismiss them as we disagree with them or dislike them or whatever but there's

[59:20]

It's like, it's parallel to the expression that you find in Tibetan Buddhism that given the infinite amount of time and rebirth, everyone has been, every being has been our mother or father. And so to treat to treat them with the respect of a parent, treat them with the respect of a Buddha. I think that's what he was pointing to. And some of us need to remind ourselves of that frequently because I can be prone to forget that. That's a practice to remember it until one is completely awakened and has cut away everything.

[60:23]

And that's all that's left in which case you just respond to everybody as a Buddha. And that's within our capacity. So thank you all. Let's enjoy the rest of the day. Enjoy yourselves out there in radio land and I'll see you soon. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. surpassable

[61:27]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.13