It says all authentic practices of Buddha carry within them the three essential teachings called Dharma seals. Just as all important legal documents have the mark or signature of a witness, all genuine practices of the Buddha bear the mark of these three teachings as witnessed by Buddha, as witnessed by the Buddhas before him. You could say that these are discoveries of the Buddha that he spoke to while he was gathering his thoughts after his awakening under the Bodhi tree, but I also think that in the way that we see the long historical picture of Buddhism or Buddha Dharma, it wasn't so much

[01:04]

that it was a discovery, it was his awakening under the Bodhi tree was the recovering of wisdom that all the Buddhas of the past had and that in our world it goes through cycles where it's very vivid, but then someone, then it sort of, it tends to be hidden and we have to, a Buddha has to rediscover it. So these three marks, Trilakshina, Lakshina means mark, are Anicca, impermanence, Anatta, non-self. Then we have a question, in the traditional rendering of the three marks, the third mark is Dukkha, unsatisfactoriness or suffering, and in some of the Mahayana

[02:15]

teachings, the third mark is Nirvana, it's Buddhahood or cessation. And I just want to lay that out and I'll come back to that to see how I look at it. And this is, you know, these alternative views are also something that Sojourner Roshi spoke of in that lecture. The other thing that he said that I thought was really interesting is that you could, you could boil these, the three marks, if you use the three marks as impermanence, non-self and Nirvana, they boil down to one mark and that is the mark of interdependence, of interbeing. So let me speak a little about the nature of these, of these marks. I feel like

[03:25]

I'll go around once and then I'm going to review and go around again. The first of these, these are the characteristics of our phenomenal existence, of our existence in this world. And we see them as arising with the Four Noble Truths, with the Three Treasures, and they really speak to, they speak to our world. And what's, I think, important, the use that we put them to, is how do we live? You know, these are not just abstract principles. If they're, if they're left in their

[04:26]

abstraction, then they're really useless. You know, their, their ideas, it's just another philosophical perspective on the nature of reality, but that's not the point. The point is how to live. The point of Buddhism is how to live. So I'm going to start with Anicca. Anicca means impermanence. It's pointing to the fact that all phenomena, all things, all thoughts are unstable, are in a constant state of flux, that they will arise and there'll be a transformation and they will pass away. Our bodies are like this. You may have noticed

[05:37]

that our cars are like this. This is why God invented car shield. Our toasters are like this. Even a mountain is like this. The mountain persists for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, but it is changing at every moment. When I, Sojin gave his lecture in August from his office downstairs. And what he said was, I'm giving my lecture from the office and I gave my lecture last week from the office. And even though it, this is what he said, even though it looks the same, there are things that are changed in it. And I'm really experiencing this because I've been

[06:43]

working with Maria Winston to kind of sort through the office and sort through all of Sojin's papers and things. The last question he asked of me speaks to the nature of impermanence. He said, and I don't know if this was, I mean, I think you could take this as a Zen question or you could take this as a very practical question. He said, what's going to happen to all my stuff? And you know what? He doesn't care anymore, but we've had to deal with it. And it's interesting because we sorted through so much stuff and the office is both the same and not the same. So we have to be

[07:56]

mindful of all compounded things. All things are impermanent. And that includes of course, us. It may seem now, it may seem pessimistic and it may not. That is a question of our attitude. So I'll come back around to that. The second mark is Anatta, non-self. This means that all things, all phenomena do not have a fixed self. They do not have a irreducible, identifiable essence. And they are not eternal. They are not, nothing is independently existing. And at the same time,

[09:09]

we have the co-arising principle of impermanence. So we are changing. In a deeper sense, what we're encouraged to do is not to take any of our views or our opinions as correct or as absolute. And what we try to do, or what we try to recognize is that whatever we see and whatever we think is a mental projection. Something like a dream, except that we don't think of ourselves right now, because I don't think of myself at the moment as being

[10:16]

asleep. But there's something characteristic of my thoughts that is not so different from my dreams. That my thoughts, you know, if I'm looking at the screen, I'm having to see a little picture of Mary Beth, that is a perception. I can't tell you at the moment what the real Mary Beth is. Neither can she. But it's an idea I have. And it involves knowing her for quite a few years. So it involves my opinions. It's not self. It's not the irreducible Mary Beth. It's

[11:19]

the idea. When I look at her, I get the idea of who I'm looking at. I don't get the self. And given that it's impermanent, that idea can, of course, change. So this is a basic fact of our perception. So we have these two aspects of perception. Or reality, we have impermanence and we have non self, then we come to these other two characteristics. And to me, what I've come to think about them is that whether we perceive reality as of the nature of suffering, or we perceive it as nirvana is really a

[12:37]

question of our perspective on impermanence and non self. If you think impermanence and non self, that's a really bad idea. You know, and I really want to nail things down and I want things to be, I want things to be trustworthy and fixed, then you, we are going to suffer if we hold to that view. If we understand that impermanence and non self allows things to grow and change. If we celebrate them, and welcome those characteristics, then our perception, then the third seal is nirvana. So to speak to Dukkha first, it's the perception that we have that there's

[13:45]

something wrong. You know, we just sort of carry this subtly or not subtly in our minds and in our bodies. Because what we're grasping is what we're what we're influenced by is the instability of everything, of every thought, the instability and the transience that sooner or later, those things are going to change or go away. Or they're not going to be exactly, you know, if you leave, if I leave the flowers that are on the altar, but leave them up for a week, they're going to decay. And if I resist that, then that brings forth suffering, or pain. Um, if we think that I spoke to someone a few days ago,

[14:54]

who is putting on his shoes. And the shoelace snapped. And he got mad at the shoelace for its impermanence. He wasn't, he wasn't seeing himself, he wasn't seeing that he hadn't noticed the condition of the shoelace, he didn't realize, oh, these are shoes that are mine to take care of. And, and those shoes are part of my subjective reality. It was as if the shoe had a separate existence. And then it made some sense to get angry at it. So because we see things as separate from ourselves. We either desire them or we or we're repelled by them. Which of course, is the second noble truth, right? Now, nirvana is

[16:18]

interesting. One way to think of it is that it's the realization of Buddhahood. It's the full unfolding of our potential Buddha nature. That every person has the capacity to experience tranquility and enlightened view which, which fully accepts impermanence and non self. And another way of looking at is it means that one is liberated is free from the poisons of greed, hate and delusion. It means that we're free of non dual thinking. Something that Sojourn Roshi spoke of over and over and over again, that we have an almost

[17:36]

endless habit of imposing our perception of the world onto everything onto reality itself. And so we divide the world into self and other into beautiful and ugly into right and wrong. Into good and evil. Now, some of this, I think in a in a mammalian sense is perhaps unnecessary. It's been evolutionally unnecessary survival technique. But we have to understand when is it a survival technique? And when is it just a habit that divides? So as as we were talking in the class on the AFO path on Thursday, I think the idea of nirvana is one of

[19:04]

connection of how do we connect? How do we inter B or inter R as Thich Nhat Hanh says with, with all things, rather than dividing ourselves from them. Now, you're in the classical understanding of nirvana, nirvana or nirvana in the Theravada school. It's the only I even had, I really hesitate to call it a thing. But it points to something that is not not that is beyond impermanence. It's actually recognized as because it is. It's the unconditioned. It's not subject to change. And therefore it's not it's not impermanent.

[20:13]

Ah, that's it. That's a traditional and rather lofty conception to me. And, you know, when you read some of the early commentaries, what you find is that the goal of Buddhist practice is cessation. It's something that transcends our normal aspects of our life. It's actually pointing to permanence. That is not, I don't think that's a particularly helpful perspective in the context of our lives.

[21:17]

Um, a student once asked Suzuki Roshi, what is nirvana? And he said, seeing one thing through to the end. In the lecture that I was listening to a sojourn Roshi, he says a couple of things. He says nirvana is our everydayness. When we allow it to appear nirvana. So nirvana in Mahayana teaching nirvana and samsara are coexistent. But as I said before, the experience of nirvana is dependent upon your attitude towards impermanence and non self. If you understand that as the law, like a Newtonian law, then you can find that it will appear to you, nirvana will appear to you.

[22:38]

Another thing that sojourn said is when everything drops away, what is left is nirvana. Just quite elegant, I think. It's an elegant way of thinking when everything drops away. You could also say when everything drops away, there is just, you are seeing one thing through to the end. And you can see that on a macro level. The macro level, it's seeing one's life through to the end. Or you can see it at a micro level, it operates very subtly. For me anyway, maybe not for you. I can be doing something, writing something or editing something or practicing something on the guitar.

[23:45]

And out of the blue, there is some peculiar urge to just stop doing that and do something else. Did you ever experience that? It's not so unusual. So that's not doing one thing through to the end. That's allowing yourself to be pulled around by your monkey mind. Whereas, if you are doing the dishes, and you just do the dishes and finish them, that's seeing one thing through to the end. You may experience momentarily some pull to, I'm going to put these down, I'm going to go and do something over here.

[24:56]

When we subject ourselves, when we allow that to arise, that's already being pulled around by the world. It's not allowing everything else to drop away except the completion of the task that we have intended to do. So a few more comments. Looking at a commentary by tip not on. One thing that he says is, it's not that nothing exists. But it does change. So for example, actually, he uses an example from Heraclitus.

[26:06]

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, and he asked, tip not on asked and quotes him saying, when we bathe in a river today, that we bathed in yesterday. Is it the same river? Heraclitus said we couldn't step into the same river twice. The water, which is one of the elements that comprise something that we call the river. The physical water in that river is totally different from the water that we stepped into yesterday. Yet it's the same river. The water we stepped in yesterday is hundreds of miles away.

[27:08]

But we perceive the river as the same way. And I'm looking at, for some reason, I'm thinking of Jake and Leslie, who I see there, who live up by the Smith River. And we used to have some meditation, we had, we had some sessions up on the Smith River and was just was so wonderful to the river didn't appear to change, it was always what you would call the river, but it was flowing through completely and I think it's, it's, it's a wild river right. Yeah, it's like when I think it's the only wild river in Northern California. But that's when I saw this section sort of Heraclitus, that's the river that I thought of. So, what we see by understanding the principle of that of the river is that the river is the same river is not the same river, and it's not different either.

[28:16]

Now, that's true of me. That's true of each person that we see here. I wanted to point to a way that I practice with impermanence. It's become a really core practice for me. Thich Nhat Hanh puts it in, puts it in these very big terms, he said, when we are angry, what do we usually do. We shout, and we try to blame somebody else for our problems. Anger at each other in the ultimate dimension, angry at each other in the ultimate dimension. We close our eyes and look deeply. We try to see 300 years into the future.

[29:17]

What will you be like? What will I be like? Where will you be? What will I be? Now, in a practical sense, what I have come to do when I'm angry, when I'm hurt, when I'm frustrated, is to take either a mental or physical step back. And I asked myself, I don't think 300 years into the future. I think, how will I feel in an hour? How will I feel tonight? How will I feel tomorrow morning? You know, usually this is, it's both how I feel internally, but it's also asking what was the strength of my projection about this person that I feel angry towards or hurt by?

[30:35]

What will that projection, what power will that projection have in those respective, after those respective intervals? And I found that to be really effective tool. Because when, when something comes up that triggers me, you know, it feels like you've been stabbed, punched in the gut, knocked over the head. And I might want to respond immediately. And usually that response will be a, in one sense or another, a kind of violence. I think the practice allows me to, to take that backward step and reflect and know that the feeling that I'm having at this moment is impermanent and it's not going to last.

[31:51]

It's not going to have the same impact on me that it has, you know, in its immediacy. And I really found that to work. And I've avoided, certainly avoided quite a few confrontations that way. And it's, it's become a conscious practice. It's embracing impermanence in a very practical way. Now there may, it's not that everything, it's not, it's not repression. And it's not that everything goes away. There may be some residue of hurt. There may be something that has to be worked out or talked out. But if I do it tomorrow, it's likely to be more productive.

[32:57]

If I'm, if I have been triggered, it's likely to be more productive if I do it then. And I think that the, the, the related practice of the second mark, the mark of non-sense, not non-self, non-sense. Yeah, everything I've been saying. Work of non-self is. Also commit to, to tell myself that if, if I'm angry at a person. Or if I've been hurt by that person, that person does not boil down to that action. You know, a person is not just very bluntly a person is not the worst thing that they've done in their life.

[33:57]

Or not to go that far. It's not necessarily. Just they don't boil down to that. There's more to them. And usually, if one is hurt by somebody, it's because there is some feeling of connection that one has, and in the immediate sense, I feel that that connection has been broken or lost. And so I'll ask myself, how do I want to recover that. Finally, just to say impermanence and non self are not rules that have been given to us by the Buddha.

[35:03]

They are ways to see into the nature of reality. And like everything else and I've talked about this a lot. They are medicine. The teaching of impermanence is a medicine we take to heal ourself from the delusion or the sickness of believing in permanence. It brings us into balance. But if then we get caught on the idea of, say non self, then we fall into another error. These are not absolute truths. Um, did not says we do not die or kill for them.

[36:12]

In Buddhism, he says there are no ideas or prejudices that we kill for. The teachings of the Buddha are skillful means. They are not absolute truth. No self and impermanence are ways that we can understand truth, but they are not the truth itself. They're instruments. They're not the ultimate truth. And if we can understand that, then we have the fluidity to go in the direction of freedom from suffering and fearlessness. So it's it's very much what surgeon and Suzuki Roshi constantly saying, don't get stuck on anything.

[37:19]

Impermanence and non self are really good, useful ideas as medicine. But if we hold on to them, if we eat them as food. And we, you know, really pig out on them, they'll make us ill. So I think that's where I would like to stop. And we have some time for questions. I wanted to try something else for the question period. First of all, before we start, I'd like to take a minute of silence. And maybe once we once we say go, Mary Mary Bess can ring the bell after a minute so that people get to collect their thoughts and find their questions.

[38:22]

It'd be really great if you come up with a question. And also encouraging people to be lean of expression. Just to remember that the time, this time that we have, you know, the next 10 or 15 minutes belongs to everybody. And if you're like me, I'm in a different position. You know, it's like I was always wanted to ask the question. And now I feel like I need to make room for I don't ask questions very much in other people's talks. I need to make room for people to let the Sangha ask questions. So we practice, we can practice this principle in the Meditation Center communication guidelines of stepping forward and stepping back.

[39:25]

If you're someone like me who talks easily and frequently, just take a step back and wait for somebody to come forward who may do that less. So, those are my, you know, that's just some, some instruction for how we can address the Q&A. So let's have a minute of silence and then you can raise your digital hands and I think Heiko will call on people, is that correct? Okay. And he can call, he'll also, you can put a question in the chat and he will, he'll get that. So, Mary Beth, give us a moment, a minute here. Okay.

[40:34]

Thank you. So the floor is open. Thank you. We have a question from Gary. Unmute Gary. Morning. Morning. I, I don't have a question, but I, I thought of something interesting. Early, early when I started practicing at BZC, I had Dokusan with Sojin and I asked him, what are the, you know, what are the key marks or attributes of Buddhism? And he said, he said non-self and impermanence. And that was it. He didn't say anything about the third mark, which I think, you know, in listening to your talk, it's not, probably not something you would tell a beginning student or talk much about yet with a beginning student.

[42:18]

I just wanted to see what you think around that. Well, to me, those are the, those are the juicy ones. And, yeah, I mean, Dukkha, Dukkha can be discouraging. If you say it's one of the three marks, it's really subject to, it's like, oh, life is suffering. It boils down to suffering. That's, and you can certainly read some of the early texts with that perspective. And on the other hand, nirvana may be too remote a perspective for a beginner. It's like the beginner just has to learn how to sit and look at their mind. So I think that that's really good instruction. We now have a question from Daniel O'Hara.

[43:24]

Daniel, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Well, Hozon, you presented the idea of reality with two faces, a mundane and a super mundane face. Yeah, that was Thursday, right? I'm not sure. It wasn't today, but anyway. Oh, but with, in terms of like, is perception the one way of seeing only the, is perception the mundane aspect of reality? And is the law of impermanence governing dynamics only in that perception, mundane reality system?

[44:36]

Okay. That's a philosophical question. Certainly perception is, is one of the inevitable activities of our daily life in this body. And so that is, that is conditional. And so it's subject to impermanence and non-self. There are the, the seeing of the act of being able to, to see the act of perception itself. The act of awareness is not necessarily synonymous with Nirvana. It's still, it may be subject to causes and conditions that we can't necessarily see, but they're there.

[45:50]

And Nirvana, I, I can't tell you in classical terms what Nirvana is, but I'm much more interested in Suzuki Roshi and Sojin Roshi's perspective, which is to apply oneself to see one thing through to the end. And I still think that that, that exists. To me that the, the unconditioned or the super mundane feels, I know I'm supposed to think of it as the, as the goal, but it feels very remote and it doesn't feel particularly relational. It feels abstract. So, and the only way, and this is one of the things we talked about Thursday, the only way that you can arrive at that is by way of really looking very closely at how you live.

[47:06]

So right now I'm still at the stage of looking at how I live. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I know we have a question from Lynn Hurwicz. Go ahead. Unmute Lynn. Hello. My question was about the seeing through to the end. Because, of course, I experienced what you're saying with this distracted mind, and then all this and that. But there's another aspect that I feel is very profound. And in fact, as I'm finding myself less cerebral, I'm experiencing more ineffable communion with the inner dependence, the inner penetration.

[48:15]

Just direct. So this, this, when you say you're playing and then you're drawn off to this, and that's not seeing it through. Again, I've had this experience more and more recently, last few years. I'll be doing something and all of a sudden something else will come to my mind, or a person, or a feeling that just feels imminent. It just feels, oh, it's immediate. There's no question about it. Now we've lost you, Lynn. I think I lost something really important that you were saying. Where did I leave off to you? About 20 seconds ago. I said sometimes I'll have the feeling immediately that it's just an immediate awareness. Very present, no question, not rational.

[49:20]

So after they motivate, then I have to just go pick up the phone and call that person. And very often their child just does. So I'm finding more and more. So my question to you, how can you realize you're not being distracted? You're not dropping something away. Your attention is being brought to see you're sitting there playing guitar, doing your activity. And yet the whole universe is also inner penetrated and communing. So then at times this communion comes up where I feel, this is what's immediate. As Heracles said, this is what's active. How do you distinguish? You have to distinguish it. And this is what I said that what I was getting to is saying that none of what is in these texts or none of what I'm saying is the ultimate truth.

[50:29]

You have to decide what to do in a general sense. I really subscribe to Ike. I am aware of my distract ability and I don't feel I'm necessarily discounting my intuition. But. Also, I may ask myself. Oh, I'm having there's something intuitive happening. And let me just set that aside and finish the thing that I'm doing. Because. I will then then I move my up my attention to something else. This is what Sojan to me what I learned fundamentally from Sojan was. I've said this before. He had the practice of allowing himself to be interrupted.

[51:29]

If you knocked on his door, he would say. Hi. And you could come in and he would direct his attention to you. So. He wasn't causing the distraction. Something else was coming and distract and and knocking on his door and he turned and met it. You have to decide when it is appropriate to do that. There's no instruction book. Good luck. We have a question from Ken Paulson. Just a moment. Oh, no. Yes. Go ahead. Ken, please raise your unmute yourself. Actually, for me. Hi, Katie. Hello. Thanks for your talk. Can't hear you. Can you hear me now?

[52:33]

Could you get a little closer? OK, maybe that's it. Yes, that's better. OK, good. Sorry. I was just wondering. Sometimes when I hear the four noble truths or I really liked what you were saying about. Kind of the Newtonian laws of. You know, if we resist impermanence, then we will suffer. Sometimes my mind turns that into, oh, you're going to suffer. You better not do that. You know, and I know that's not what you were saying, but I was wondering if you have anything to say to that part of my mind. It's going to turn it into a way to scold myself. Well, that's a visual part of your mind. And. You can tell yourself. That is not the truth. Let me just wait and see how this unfolds, rather than predicting with a with a.

[53:41]

You know, a. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Did. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly something that I tried to do myself. Thanks. Thanks. Well, I don't know if there's any more questions. We have one more question. Hold on from Jeff and Barbara Joan. They can't raise their hand, so I'm going to call on them to unmute, please. OK, and let me spotlight you. The quickest moving. I don't know what. I see you. Where are you guys? We are here. We are here. Of course, you're here. Here. Can you see me? There we go. No, no, no.

[54:44]

No, I meant physically. Where are you? Oh, we are in Oakland. Oh, OK. Go ahead. In the other reality. Whatever reality we're in. In the physical reality. We're in Oakland on our couch. Thank you for your talk. This was. And I will work to make this lean. Not my forte. But. In. I. Deeply appreciate the. Recognizing the disruptor and continuing to fulfill the task. That's huge work for me. The question that arose was when the when the task is completed, whether I read an article and don't water the plants in the middle or finish washing the dishes before I finish the Sudoku. Is is that feeling of completion and satisfaction?

[55:50]

How? And then the idea of Nirvana and suffering as kind of two sides of the same third mark or two interpretations of the third mark. How did the attitudes towards it? OK. Yeah. Two attitudes toward. So does that mean then that perhaps Nirvana is accepting suffering, that perhaps the way to like there is this idea in my mind that Nirvana is kind of letting go, not feeling the suffering or the sorrow or the sadness and the pain. Could it be that it's. Oh, this death is another example of impermanence. Aha. And a kind of equanimity towards suffering.

[56:51]

I guess I'm struggling with the. The real feelings that arise when impermanence is accepted. Yes. No, I think that you're. You're on to something. In a sense. Perhaps it's distinguishing suffering from the particularity of your feeling. So a feeling of pain, a feeling of grief. You know, and suffering is. What we add on to that. Suffering is the aspect that another way that I mean, this is what Laurie and I talk about a lot, that at the essence of suffering is wanting things to be different from how they are. Or. Which would include.

[57:54]

Difficult and negative experiences. And then the question is, how do we encompass that? How can we be big enough and how can we be large enough to understand that whatever it is that I'm experiencing? It's very much what. What other people in so many places are experiencing. And so it brings forth compassion. So I think I'd like to be able to close if I can. I like to read this beginning. It's something that I wrote. I found it. I wrote it on March 21st, which I. 2020, which I think is pretty soon after we closed. After the pandemic to shut everything down. It's called the four marks of existence.

[58:57]

I suffer because I want things to be different from how they are. I want to go to the gym. And I have to do sit ups in my office. I long for tacos and beans at Picante. And I settle for lukewarm takeout. Impermanence is all I can count on. The world we knew has turned around in a handful of days. My God, will it always be like this? Yes. And it always has been this way. Blossoms fall and weeds grow. The ache of social distancing is the suffering of no self. I am pulled away from all of you who are myself. The woman behind me on the checkout line.

[60:03]

The prisoner I visit in a steel cage. The fiddler whose tune is now naked without accompaniment. Take a breath and enjoy it. Things change and we change too. Universal truths flourish even in pandemic. Resisting truth is suffering. Accepting truth is nirvana. Which does not make our life any easier.

[60:43]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ