Full Transcript

Good morning, everyone. I want to say thank you for being here and thank you for your practice. First thing, I haven't been with you for so long and it's just delicious to be with you. This morning, I had the sound of the shakuhachi coming outside up to the ground, these waves into my body and then on the Han, coming in through my ears and down and they just met and I almost wept with gratitude. It was just wonderful. So that's how I feel about being here.

As is my want, I'm going to start with an old Zen story. And this story has been very important to me. So once upon a time, oh, sorry, when will I learn? On page 40. Okay, so we're gonna have to edit all that. Yeah. It's all workable. It is all workable. Okay. Yeah. An opening the Sutra. So. Welcome back. We have found an infinitely subtle, Israeli method, even in a hundred of ages. Now we see it, hear it, receive and maintain it. May we completely realize the totaka's teachings.

Okay, I would like to start with an old Zen story. This one was very important to me and continues to be very important to me. Tova, I hope you can hear. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a very famous, well-respected Zen master whose name was Hakuin. Hakuin lived in a small fishing village at a temple. He had disciples and a very profound awakening experience. It's another day, another discussion about Hakuin. But one day, a young girl from his village, this little fishing village, discovered she was pregnant. She told her parents that Hakuin was the father. The parents were understandably pretty upset that this renowned, famous Zen master had fathered a child with their daughter. And they marched right up to the temple and they said to Hakuin, "You are a complete failure among you are a disgrace to the profession. And we're so dismayed with your conduct and you're going to raise this child. When the child arrives, it's your problem."

Hakuin listened. And I really picture him listening completely. And maybe you can imagine this sense of the disruption in his world and the shifting sense of identity. One minute is Zen master, one minute the accused. And you know what he said? He said, "Is that so?" Is that so? He didn't argue. He didn't defend. He said, "Is that so?"

When the baby was born, Hakuin received the baby, raised the baby lovingly for two years. By then, by our standards, he had lost everything. He'd lost his reputation. He'd lost his disciples. He'd lost what we would say, everything that mattered. But he raised this baby lovingly for two years. In fact, he had to go to get everything he needed, food and everything, milk for the baby. He had to go on begging rounds. So he had nothing left except showing up for this baby.

And of course, two years goes by and the daughter who had given birth to this baby tells her parents, "OK, it wasn't Hakuin. It was this young buck in the village, not Hakuin at all." And the parents, of course, you can understand, were very upset. They had vilified this guy and they knew who to point to and blame. And now it's ruined. They go back to Hakuin and they tell him and they apologize profusely and they beg his forgiveness and they tell him what an incredible Buddhist he is, what an example he is to the profession. And they just praise him up and down. And Hakuin says, "Is that so?"

So the reason this story really impacted me is because I thought then and I still think I want to be Hakuin. I want to nourish the one in me who responds to these incredible disruptions that life gives all of us all the time. It's relentless. Who can respond to those disruptions with that kind of no defending, no argument, just, hmm, this is what life's giving me right now. I found it really inspiring. And he was a real person, by the way, not mythological.

I'm not saying that I want to be numb or a stoic and just say, well, I can take anything. I'm not suggesting that. I'm really happy to be a human. I think it's a rare birth. And I'm really grateful for these emotions. I'm happy to entertain the huge range of human emotions. And I want to meet this life. What comes at me? With the willingness to allow it all. Sometimes I pull that off. Sometimes I have no choice. And in a minute, I'll tell you a recent experience of having no choice, but to be Hakuin.

And Hakuin makes it look easy, right? He just three words. Is that so? And in those in the space between they accused him and in that so interior in his interior landscape, he must have traversed a lot of territory having to do with the fact that I'm in territory, having to do with. Who am I? And what's happening? And how do I show up? But he was awake. So it didn't take him as long as it takes me to meet what's here, to meet this moment. And what did he do? He picked up the baby and he raised the baby. He had this sense of non separation from his life, non separation from the baby, the girl, everything that it was appearing right in front of him. He didn't have an opinion about it. He said, is that so? That's not a judgment. That's an open door.

I find this really an important story, and I think that Hakuin's story is an expression of mirroring. Hakuin was given a reflection from his world and the reflection was, you're the dad. And Hakuin didn't agree or deny or argue. He simply allowed the situation to be exactly what it was. And then he dealt with it, just dealt with it, even though there were consequences and outcomes and repercussions, none of which you probably really would have chosen. But that's what life provided to him in this kind of mirroring way. Somehow he went from Zen master with disciples and temple to, you know, Zen master and ill repute, with no disciples having to beg for everything and raising a baby like this. And he allowed all of that to move through him. May we all be able to do that. Let it all move through us.

By the way, when I written out this talk, I was reading a little yogachara, which is a philosophy. Some of you don't know about yogachara, but you will. And what popped into my view was Alana Visnana, which is concerned with a kind of teaching called the great mirror knowing. I never heard that phrase before. So another Dharma talk someday when I learn about it. But isn't that interesting? I'm sure I will talk to our friend Ben about great mirror knowing. Ben is a yogachara master.

So maybe the sense of a disrupted life and shifting identities is familiar to you. It's definitely familiar to me. I think of the last few years, the great disruption of covid and in my family, many, many disruptions and in my and in life and everybody's lives and many disruptions. Anybody who's lived 30, 40, 50, 60 plus years has worn a lot of hats, right? And they don't seem to stay on our heads. They seem to fly off all the time. They won't stay put like Hakuin. One minute is Zen master the next. One minute, a wife and a mother. The next minute, not so much. One minute, someone with a career. The next minute, not relevant. It's astonishing, really, how fluid it all is.

And this can feel like a disruption. But another way of looking at these changes is to consider them kind of an opening and a way of looking at interconnection. And in the moment, can we allow the interconnection that disruptions seem to amplify? Can we look at that disruption as an opportunity to change the way we think about it? To see how you have no idea how you got here to this moment that feels like a disruption and how can you meet it?

Maybe during the pandemic, you had a sense of disruption, maybe because of the war in Ukraine, you have a sense of disruption. And maybe in those responses, that interior landscape, you also feel connection. Maybe they go together. Maybe you had a sense of deep connection when you sit here in silence, in sangha, when you sit at home, when you follow your breath, when you look into the loved ones eyes, when you see yourself in someone else, when you look at the sky, it goes on and on. You can feel that connection.

So here's an easy example. For the last month, I've either been taking care of someone who has COVID or I've had COVID for two weeks, I had COVID. And one might call this time out kind of a disruption, right? For me, it was a great teacher about interconnection. Once I was sick, I couldn't be anybody but Hakuin. There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. I was stuck. It was a complete, full stop of my life. And it's a real precious gift when you have to stop, when you're forced to stop, if you can look at it that way.

And I was lucky because I began to unravel all the things that I think I can depend upon, like my health, which I've had really pretty good health most of my life, but it was gone in that moment. And I had nothing and no one to be and nowhere to go. And I was Hakuin, meeting what was there. And COVID was my baby. And the real benefit of allowing these disruptions to exist and going with them and being with them like Hakuin is that this interconnection, at least for me, really returns me to awe or reverence for life. And I revere COVID because it taught me this lesson again and again.

So interconnection, meeting this unbelievable mystery all the time, this amazing life. And we are doing that right now together, right here. Just this. If we look back to Shakyamuni's awakening, we understand that he was not alone when he was awakened. He didn't awake all by himself. Sure, he was sitting there under the Bodhi tree. Probably there was no one else sitting with him at that moment, although the milkmaid brought him some milk to support him. But he was still sitting with everything everywhere all at once in that moment, including the tree that he was sitting under and the stars that he noticed. And the entire cosmos, just as do we every time, every minute we sit, every minute we're not sitting. It's all together. All the time.

So when Shakyamuni sat underneath that Bodhi tree, he was recognizing himself. He was recognizing his body sitting there. He was recognizing his stories, his narrative, his what we would call baggage. He had to face all that baggage. It's not like you get to skip it. You don't get to skip it. But he recognized it all together as an inseparable phenomena of being a human being in this life. And he recognized it, recognizing him back. This mutuality. He saw that everything is already here, that there's nowhere to go and nothing to do. Everything is here right now, too.

And maybe we've all had that taste of recognition again in a loved one's eyes right now. I see you. You see me. We're having that moment when we sit, when we walk. And sitting here some years ago, I remember very distinctly having a very sudden awareness that there is no such thing as a Buddha by herself. You taught me that. There is no such thing as a Buddha by herself. You gave me that even if you didn't know it. It's all about us all the time. And by us, I don't mean just us. I mean, everyone, everything, everywhere, all the time.

So I'd like to try a little thought experiment. If you'd indulge me, it's easy. It's not threatening. Don't worry. If you're willing, please close your eyes. And I'd like you in your mind's eye to picture a mirror, a mirror without edges. OK, this mirror goes on forever. It completely fills the universe. There's no top and bottom and right and left. There's nothing but mirror. It's everywhere. Mirror. And you don't have to look in the mirror. Don't worry. Not asking to do that. Just know that that mirror goes on forever and in all directions. Once you have that image in your mind, please open your eyes. And I'd like you to continue to run that image kind of like a background process in your computer. Continue to run that image for the rest of this talk. And then we'll come back to it.

Hakuin demonstrate a major byproduct of Zazen, a major byproduct of our practice. He penetrated himself. He had already penetrated himself, I'm sure, when those parents came to see him. And how he could see through whatever it was he thought he was the minute before they arrived. And then be with whatever it was that was presented to him the minute they arrived. Again, he made it look pretty easy. But we do this, too, when we meet life as it is. We practice this when we sit, when we allow what's present to come and be and go. We practice releasing this idea of who we are and we meet it. And when we release that self, those myriad selves, we penetrate beyond them. And we penetrate beyond the staggering aloneness that we have led ourselves to believe. On a clear day of awareness, of interconnection, you really can see forever.

So what unfolds by meeting each moment, by being responsive to the call of this moment, like Hakuin responded to the call, you have to be a father, is absolutely not being about anybody special. It's not a new title. It's not a new role. It's nothing. You're extraordinarily ordinary when you realize this, because you realize you're part of everything. The interconnection goes on forever. You're just a little tiny piece, an incredibly wonderful, perfect little tiny piece. But just like everything else is perfect, wonderful little piece, nothing special.

And I also want to say that interconnection is not an awareness that comes through reading a book or practicing for 50 years or anything else. It comes through your seat. It may come through practicing, but it may not ever come. You have to be willing to die on this cushion. You have to be willing to surrender to the seat.

When Shakyamuni realized what he was and what he was not, he was unsure that he could teach it. You know that, right? He went around and said, I don't think so. I don't think I can communicate it. I don't think I can express it. I can't do it justice. How can you talk about this?

The other night, Wednesday night, Joel and the Santa Barbara Zen Center online talked about a Maezumi story, Maezumi Roshi. Someone gave him a compliment. All of your talks are so incredible. He didn't say, is that so? He said, really? I'm just saying the same thing over and over again, which I parried with because my preceptor Shoho, when I told him how much I love the old Zen stories, he said, you heard one Zen story, you heard them all. And maybe we're all talking about the same thing all the time. Inseparability, inseparability, interconnection.

So do we understand each other right now? Are we with each other? Do we hear each other? Can we create this moment together? Are we doing that? I don't think that the Buddha became the Buddha until he began to teach. I think he was awake, but I don't think he was the Buddha until he decided he was going to teach. And I think when he started to teach, he started to see relationships where he recognized someone's understanding and they recognized his understanding, this mutuality of experience.

So there's the mirror. That's the mirror that I asked you to imagine. Can we understand the character of all things? The line from the Lotus Sutra that Dogen made quite a lot of noise about was, only a Buddha, together with another Buddha, can realize everything. You cannot do this alone. And by the way, no one can. We're not doing this alone, ever. You cannot be alone, in fact.

Reb Anderson says it like this. Generation after generation can look at a few sentences between two masters and see all of Buddhist practice. The crucial teaching is about mutual recognition and mutual expression. In usual social interactions, people take turns. When I'm expressing myself, I take a little break and don't really pay that much attention and recognize you. Or people take different roles. And some people are really good at expressing themselves and getting recognized. And some people, and they're maybe not so great at listening. Other people are really great at listening, but maybe aren't so great at being recognized. In Buddhism, if the teacher cannot recognize the other, the whole process is dead. And then Reb says, the place of reality is where you are both simultaneously connecting. It's very hard for human beings to stay in that place.

We veer off to one side and take on one role, or we go to the other side and take on another role. Because it's so intense and so paradoxical to be fully expressing ourselves and fully, deeply listening to each other. But that's what all those end stories are about. Simultaneously meeting and making each other happen. Thank you, Reb, for that.

In our Buddhist teachings, this is called dependent co-arising. In the Sanskrit, it's pratitya samuppada, which is really fun to say. Pratitya samuppada, which means dependent co-arising. By the way, not codependent arising. Dependent co-arising. And then the third one is called dependent co-arising.

There are several quick views of pratitya samuppada or co-arising. Many of you are familiar with the great late Thich Nhat Hanh's expression of interbeing. He defined pratitya samuppada as the understanding that nothing exists as a singular independent entity.

Another way of looking at pratitya samuppada or interconnection can be expressed as logic. If this exists, that exists. If this doesn't exist, that doesn't exist. So that's a version of the teaching that is logical.

Dependent co-arising is often also discussed in terms of the 12 causal links, the 12 links of causation, the 12 nidanas. Nidana in Sanskrit, ni means "to into," and da means, not dana, da means "to fasten or bind." So fastened down or fastened into, guess what, fastened into samsara, into suffering. Samsara is the endless birth and death, endless birth and death, endless birth and death. So this dependent co-arising is interconnection is very much linked in the teachings to samsara.

I'm not going to spend any time really to talk about the 12 links. It's a whole other day and it's a big discussion. But I want you to know that they're very much inclined towards this understanding that samsara, your repeated behaviors, you don't even have to go to the next life. Because by the way, the Buddha did not say anything about there being a next life. It's one of the questions he refused to answer. So don't even bother going to the next life question. Just look at your life.

And the truth is in your life, you're repeating behaviors all the time. You're repeating your patterns all the time. And much of our practice is this effort to stop and look at what am I doing? Am I doing that again? I know this doesn't work for me. Can I stop? Maybe you'll get lucky and COVID will make you stop. Maybe you'll get lucky and you won't need COVID to make you stop. But you can recognize your patterns and you can cut off that cycle of samsara by making another choice, just trying another approach and seeing what else could be helpful because this might not work for you anymore.

So a good deal of practice is to take a very sober and serious look at this in your own life. And once you penetrate these episodes, these patterns, you have penetrated the self that is identified with that set of behaviors. You have gone beyond that self. And that's liberation. That's liberation. It is, and it feels great to have made another choice to decide you're responsible to yourself, to nobody else but yourself, ultimately to everybody. But in that moment, when you make that choice, you're driving your life. You're standing on your own two feet. You're making a decision. And that decision takes you all the way away from I and me and mine.

My computer is not going to last a lot longer, so I'm going to skip the part where we sing I'm Me Mine by George Harrison. But I will send you home with these lyrics. I will read them very quickly. All through the day, I'm me mine, I'm me mine, I'm me mine. All through the night, I'm me mine, I'm me mine, I'm me mine. Now they're frightened of leaving it. Everyone's reading it, coming on strong all the time. All through the day, I'm me mine. All I can hear, I'm me mine, I'm me mine, I'm me mine. Even those tears, I'm me mine, I'm me mine, I'm me mine. No one's frightened of playing it. Everyone's saying it, flowing more freely than wine. All through your life, I'm me mine.

So, if and when you find yourself feeling alone and separate, when you feel I, me, mine, and you're suffering and discontent and your world has been disrupted and you're on shaky ground, please look in that vast endless mirror and remember Hakuin and ask him to be your own. Remember Hakuin and ask yourself, is that so? Thank you.