Coming into the Buddha Hall this morning, I feel it's very quiet in here, and there's a lot of you here. It's pretty unusual to have so many people sitting quietly in a space like this. It's easier to notice how unusual it is when you're the last one in, like I was this morning. It's very striking how different it feels in this room than out in the hall or upstairs on the street. Sometimes I think it's difficult in this way to notice how connected we are and how supported

[01:04]

and upheld we are to sit quietly together like this, and how centering and focusing it is, centering, focusing, quieting, calming. If you come in sometime by yourself to this room, or with one other person, and you sit, you probably won't sit quietly for an hour. After a few minutes, you'll get up and leave, because it will be very hard to be as focused and settled as we are this morning. It doesn't, of course, necessarily mean that your experiences, that you're feeling pleasure

[02:10]

and comfort and ease and bliss. You know all those things? You might feel some discomfort, but at the same time, you'll feel some support and calm and some capacity to be with your experience in a quiet way, to be with your experience instead of, in some way, turning away from it. We have, essentially, three ways to avoid our experience. You know those three, probably. Traditionally, in Buddhism, they're called attachment or greed and aversion, pushing

[03:15]

things away. And the third one is called delusion. Sometimes I think those words, it's kind of hard to notice what we do, in order not to relate with our own experience and the world. Because to relate with our own experience and the world is to relate with pain and suffering and the difficulties of being alive. And the basic fact of having one more thing, one thing after another, whether it's pleasant or painful, to have to relate to. You know, it doesn't stop. As soon as you open your eyes, there's things, you see things, right?

[04:19]

And even without asking for it, you hear things. We'll hear all the noises on the street, even if you're trying to listen to me. You'll hear noises out there, and then people will cough. The person next to you will blow their nose. And you have to hear them, whether you want to or not. And the same thing with smelling. Whether you want to smell or not, you have to. So the person next to you farts, and you have a few minutes, you have to smell it. There's no help for it. You can't sort of turn it on and off. So the basic tendency called delusion is just the tendency to turn it off and down, and not have to relate to it. So the severe cases, you know, people...

[05:21]

This is also kind of the category of depression. Severe cases, people will go into their houses and not come out. And turn off the phone. Not answer the phone, right? Because the phone rings, and you're just going to have to talk to somebody. You know. And it's just more nuisance. And you can let the dishes pile up, because why bother to do the dishes? And the house doesn't need to be cleaned. And then, you know, things get quieter and quieter in a certain sense. Because you have less and less to relate to. But on the other hand, one begins to spend more time than is appropriate with each thought as it arises.

[06:22]

Because the thinking then still goes on, right? So then people can obsess. And you can obsess about one thing or another. Right? And because you don't particularly check it out with the world, you can think what you want to. Whether it has any correspondence with what's actually out there, and what other people actually think, you can make up for yourself what they think. Right? Hmm? I'm pretty familiar with this one. I'm essentially a reckless. So I know about this. And then if you... Hmm? The kind of person, the kind of tendency of attachment, so-called attachment, then instead of relating to something we can...

[07:28]

things, ordinary things we find, things we like to grab onto, and to bring closer, and to hold onto, and to not let go. And there's always something more interesting then. So you don't really get a chance to experience the wonderful thing you've grabbed onto before you're looking for something, the next thing. The next good experience. So this is the opposite tendency. Instead of spending excessive time with something, you spend so little time with something because you go on to the next thing. And the next thing, and the next thing, and you're always on the lookout for the next thing that could be rewarding, or satisfying, enjoyable, pleasurable. Help you to feel good. And then the aversion, the aversive tendency is, get it out of here. I feel actually pretty familiar with all of these.

[08:33]

I don't know about you. We sort of tend to lean in one direction or another. I find the aversion point coming up. You know, basically, phenomenal things, your body, your mind, stuff out there in the world, your friends, your lovers, your family, they don't do what you want them to. We make up a little scenario of how things are going to behave, and how it will all turn out, and everybody will be happy, and then it doesn't work like that, right? It's very frustrating. So, every so often when things misbehave, I'd just as soon be able to disappear them from the universe. You know, I'd like to just be able to smash something into oblivion. You know, just disappear it. This would be, it seems like at the time, it seems like it would be very satisfying, and then it's even more frustrating and annoying, and it makes me even more angry that this is not possible.

[09:36]

You know, when you're having a good fit, then everything can kind of feed it. You know. You know, when I talk about all this stuff, it seems to me sometimes I come into the lecture room, and as I told you, it feels so quiet and calm, and you all seem so together. I feel a little, I feel a little kind of like, it's not quite right for me to mention these kind of things, you know, in your presence. You know, it feels a little uncouth. Or kind of, you know, impolite. You know, that there are such phenomena as this in the world. You know. And I feel sometimes like you'd rather I didn't mention it, but, you know, I don't really know. Maybe you're happy to hear me mention these things. I mean, I'm just trying to make you feel at home. So.

[10:42]

But I mention this because as I talked with some of you last night, I mention this because I think one way to describe spiritual practice in a kind of simple way is to, is that spiritual practice has to do with actually relating with something. Which is different than these three tendencies. Go all up someplace and not relate to anything, and obsess over your thoughts. And the second one, not really relating to something because you're busy looking for the next thing that's better. And the third, to be pushing something away. Actively pushing it away.

[12:06]

And maybe, and of course our culture, and our lives in this culture, it's very, we're encouraged in certain ways not to relate to things. And it seems like the point of life in a way is to fill up your time. Sometimes I think with movies and television, and now it's VCRs and you can rent movies. And, and prepared foods, so you can buy the foods already prepared or you can eat out. And it's very hard at some point then actually to be relating with anything. It's just passing phenomena through you that's kind of safe. You know if you go to the movies it might be sort of scary, but it's basically safe. I was at a movie in, when I was in Boston last year I went to the Omnimax.

[13:14]

I don't know if there's anything like that here, but they have this, the movie theater is half horizon. It's 180 degrees. It's sloped. It's very steep slope and then the screen comes up in front of you and up over your head and all the way out to the sides. So you have full panoramic vision. And then you can fly in. Then they have, then when, beginning they show there's speakers all the way behind the screen too. So the sound actually comes out from the screen. So, if you close your eyes they give you a little talk beforehand. They say if you start to get sick, or feel dizzy, close your eyes. Close your eyes. In that situation it works pretty well. Close your eyes and then if it gets too bad, you can get up and walk out.

[14:14]

And when you walk out, walk up. Don't walk down. It's safer for people, they found, if they walk, they turn around and walk out the back, up. If they walk down then they might sort of fall over. So you get to, then you see you get this kind of, you know, then they have cars. You get in a little car and then you're racing down these roads. You know, round turns and different things and cars come at you. And all sorts of things happen. But it's pretty safe, basically. But I started thinking, you know, you could have, they could have war movies and then, you know, one third of you will not leave after the show is over. Now that would be something, wouldn't it? To be able to go to that kind of movie. It would be a little different than the regular kind of movies. Right? Look around you now. You know, one out of three people you see will not walk out. But movies aren't like that.

[15:18]

It's very safe, even though you can get scared and it can be sad. But essentially, just pass stuff through your body. You let the stuff pass through your senses and things and you don't have to respond. You don't have to take any action. And in spite of the fact, you know, there are certain movies where the audience participates then they say, they say to, don't let him do that. You know, they'll talk to the people in the movie. But essentially people don't do that in the movies. It's basically kind of a passive kind of thing. And, you know, we let other people make songs for us and so on. Anyway, I mentioned all this. I'm going to sort of stop with all this. But there's a difference between relating to things and not particularly relating to things and being a passive kind of recipient of experience. And meditation takes something very simple,

[16:25]

like posture or breath as an object to relate to and to practice relating with. If you follow your breath, when you follow your breath, it's not just passive. It's passive. And it actually takes some energy, doesn't it? You know, if something is real, if you've got a good gripping story or an exciting football game, something, you know, then you don't have much trouble paying attention. You actually, you know, but if it's just your breath, it's pretty simple. It's kind of nothing. And then suddenly it's kind of difficult to pay attention

[17:27]

and there doesn't seem to be much reason for it. All right. All right.

[18:29]

All right. What I want to bring up for you today is to look at, to ask you to look carefully at what your breath is, what any object is, what any object of your awareness actually is. What is the nature of an object? What is the nature of an object? It seems pretty simple and obvious at first glance that, well, the breath is the breath. Inhale. An inhalation is an inhalation. Exhale is exhale. Your hand is your hand and your foot is your foot. But

[20:04]

asparagus is obviously asparagus and onion is obviously onion and potatoes are potatoes. But is it that simple actually? I think actually one of the, one of the things, one of the reasons why it's so difficult to relate to simple phenomena of our breath or a vegetable or our friend or our feelings or thoughts is because it's the whole universe and it's not so easy to relate with the whole universe. There's a lot going on and we don't know what will happen moment to moment whether our friend will suddenly become angry

[21:05]

whether our feeling will suddenly change what will happen next. So I thought I'd bring up for you a story. A monk once asked a yin-men what is the teaching that transcends buddhism ancestors that transcends the teaching of buddhism ancestors and yin-men answered cake. So I want to, this is a little story to exemplify what I mean by thinking about the object and looking at the object. What do you suppose cake is?

[22:08]

What is, and so with that in mind what is anything? What is inhalation? What is the sensation? If we examine it from the point of view of in a certain kind of logical way we have the object we have the sensory organ and we have consciousness. So when we see something you see me then there's the object there's the eye that is receptive to light and there's consciousness. If one of them is missing then there's no experience. But when we talk about objects

[23:16]

you know we say I see you but and somehow our language always emphasizes the object. It doesn't mention that I have to have eyes and that there's consciousness. So where is the experience of seeing actually happening? I've been taking physiology class and anatomy class and there are these wonderful little points in physiology and anatomy where they say it's been explained in physiology that light hits the rods and cons and the rhodopsin changes into whatever it is and the cells there are normally already depolarized and then they become hyperpolarized and then this sends a nerve impulse through the optic nerve

[24:18]

and this is all happening in a little patch of retina. It's very thin and then there's hundreds of thousands of rods and cons in a little millimeter of space and so all these little nerve impulses are going through the optic nerve and then to the optic chiasma where they simply cross over to the other side of the brain and then they go on the optic track and then they enter into it's around the pons or the cerebral pedicles or something of the brain and eventually it gets to the occipital and then they say at some point it says we've gotten that far and then somehow we see things. Laughter Nobody has quite explained this.

[25:19]

Laughter So, what about this mysterious thing that nobody's quite explained? Huh? What about seeing? Where does it see? Inside or outside? Where does it happen? And hearing, smelling, tasting? And essentially so much of our life is based on manipulation of outside phenomena. We take the world as actually existing.

[26:23]

We take what we see as actually out there. That there's something out there. We understand that without having to think about it. Something is out there. But actually an experience is something out there or it's something mysterious happening on the cerebral cortex. Laughter And we can't even tell it's happening on the cerebral cortex. It, whatever it is that's happening. Laughter So, in some sense, you know, all of our seeing experience, everything, each thing we see, it's all just seeing. But the important thing for us usually is

[27:30]

what it is we're seeing. And then we decide what to make of it, what to do with it. The stuff that we're seeing out there. Should we ignore it? Should we start talking to it? Should we tell it to go away? Should we take hold of it? Should we kiss it? Should we hit it? Should we get mad at it? Should we be happy that it's there? So what, the question that comes up is what's the actual reality of the things we see? Do they have actual reality? Is there actually a thing there? Or not? And if there is a thing there, in what way is it there? Then we have to,

[28:44]

then we can start to think, you know, why is it when we see some things we smile and when we see other things we frown? What do you have to see in order to smile? You know, what do you see that will allow you to relax? What sort of objects are these out there in the world? So there's infinite numbers of objects that we designate as being one thing or another, one person, another person, another person, a nose, an eye, a cheek, a face, a hand,

[29:46]

trees, birds, we hear sounds. What do you do with all those things? How real is each thing as it arises? What sort of reality does it have? So when you pick up something to cook, you pick up asparagus. is of course you can think about it has a certain reality of having been in the ground and a certain plant and a plant that somehow knows in a certain sense what to do with dirt

[31:00]

and air and sun and water and it turns all those things into asparagus. It doesn't turn all those things into potatoes and it doesn't turn it into people. And we put asparagus in our mouth and we turn it into people. We turn it into a person and breath and thoughts and feelings. So when you put it in your mouth, when does it stop being asparagus? And start being you. And many people brought us asparagus. People we don't know and people driving trucks. But also, when you touch one thing, we should understand we touch everything.

[32:10]

When you touch something, it's not actually so obvious. When you think it's just asparagus, then you limit your experience. Don't you think so? When you touch something, then it's also your parents. It's your child. It's someone's smile. Someone's anger. And each thing we relate with, each thing we touch, it's not really obvious what it is. How will you touch it? How will you pick it up? How will you relate to it? How will you look at it? What will you do with it? So oftentimes, we relate with things as though, we relate

[33:32]

with them as though they're just another, they're just pieces of something there that we need to kind of whip into shape or make appropriate for consumption. So the asparagus is also our own body, our own mind, our own sensory experience, our thoughts, our feelings. Each thing is like this. Each phenomena is the cake that transcends the teaching of Buddhist ancestors. Phenomena itself, so phenomena itself, phenomena goes on and on. It's just ceaseless. It just

[35:03]

keeps changing, sights and sounds and so forth. There's nothing we can do about that. But what we can work on and practice is how we receive the phenomena, how we see it, how we experience it, how we relate with phenomena. And you can take, you know, in meditation, we take something quite simple, breath and posture, moment after moment to relate with. And we can even, and we can even do this with the delusion and the attachment and the

[36:35]

anger and the aversion. You know, the usual thing to do with the delusion is not to relate to it. And the aversion, we just get mad about it. And the attachment part, we like a lot, so we keep it going. But you can practice seeing each of those things. As soon as we actually start relating in the real way with something, then it changes and it's not what we thought it was. It's not as simple as that. And suddenly everything is there. Suddenly we have life. Do you notice when you, you know, I notice if I watch TV for a long time or I go to the movies, I notice afterwards, I notice my energy on the whole goes down, vitality goes down, interest goes down. Do you notice that? It's depleted. And it's a

[37:42]

different kind of depletion than like when you work hard at something, whether it's gardening or cooking or studying or whatever it is. That kind of, that's being tired from all that. That's different than a kind of depletion. Do you notice that? So the phenomena

[38:56]

when we actually relate with it is a kind of work, it's a kind of effort to relate with things, to give our attention to something, to be patient with things, to spend time with something not knowing what to do with it, to bear with things, to actually relate with phenomena, changing phenomena. Even the simple level of just denoting it, not as though we could do anything about it. The sounds we hear, there's nothing we're going to do about them. You know that there's that story about the person who was meditating in Nepal or someplace and he went off to the hut and started meditating on a six month retreat. After about

[39:59]

a month he started hearing music in the creek going by. And under some circumstances it might be rather pleasant, right? You know George Winston or something, I don't know. But he started hearing marching music. John Philip Sousa. It wouldn't stop. Day after day, marching music. And he tried different ways of relating to it. You know, like loving something to death and being kind to it and getting mad at it and telling it to go away, inviting it to stay. Nothing worked. So he went out and started moving the rocks around in the creek. Tried to change the music a little bit. This is the way a lot of our life

[41:09]

works. The music just goes on, the sounds just go on. There's not so much to do about it. Anyway, even marching music. Even marching music is another one of these teachings that transcends Buddhist ancestors. We get lots of them that we didn't ask for. At the Vipassana retreat I was at, I went to a three month retreat and then they said the last ten days of the Vipassana retreat are the dessert. Because lots of people go to ten day retreats or week retreats, ten day retreats. This is where you've had three months to prepare for the last ten days or seven days. So this is the dessert. And the funny thing is that

[42:17]

of course it may not be the dessert you ordered. So this is true of this yin-yang cake. It might not be the cake you ordered. It might not say, you know, happy birthday. I don't know exactly what else to say about this. I want to somehow, what I wanted to convey to you, and I'll just try to sum it up in a sentence or two. What I wanted to convey to you is something about the fact that the reality that we take for granted is not so obviously what it is and what we take it for. We see someone we like and we smile. We see someone we don't like and we frown. Is it that simple? I don't think so.

[43:23]

Everything we see, the person we see is also me, is my own, is my seeing. So if you frown then you're frowning at your own body and mind for seeing that too. And you're frowning at your children and your parents, your eyes for having the affront to present you with an object like that. So each phenomena is all of our life. And we have an opportunity on each occasion to

[44:29]

consider in some way how do we relate with everything. How do we greet a phenomena? How do we greet a person? How do we greet our seeing, our sight? How do we greet sound? How do we greet a person? And in some way that goes beyond the apparent reality of things and the apparent appropriate response of things. I was very struck, for instance, that story that Suzuki Roshi told about the pickles that they made one spring. They take the daikon radishes and put them in salt and nuka, rice bran. And the salt draws the moisture out of the radish. And so you start with the dry rice bran and salt and then it becomes wet

[45:36]

after a while. And then the salt goes into the radish, the water comes out, and then you have a salted pickled radish. And one year they didn't put enough salt in one particular batch. So the pickles, the radishes kind of spoiled before they got pickled. And so anyway. This is old fashioned Zen. This is not California Zen. Old fashioned Zen. Serve the pickles anyway, even though they're kind of rotten. And Suzuki Roshi was just a little boy then, you know, 10, 12 years old. And there's several little boys there and four or five of them, and none of them would eat the pickles. Yuck. And their teacher serves

[46:39]

them each meal. Continued to serve them anyway. And finally he said, you just serve the pickles. We're going to eat the pickles. And they wouldn't eat anything. They didn't serve anything else. So they didn't eat. So then Suzuki Roshi thought he would take matters into his own hands. He went in the dead of the night and he got the pickles, took them out to the garden and buried them. This is a simple thing to do with something you don't like. You dig a hole in the ground and you put it in there and you put dirt over it. And it's the simple and yet not so effective way, you know, because the next night they're on the table again. So they ate the pickles. Suzuki Roshi said it was the first time in his life he did something

[47:41]

without thinking, without a single thought. Because if I was to have had a single thought, I would have thrown up. It would have been too distasteful. So it was just chew, chew, chew. No thought. This is good. This is bad. These are rotten. I hate this. I like this. No thought. Just chew. This is not a bad story. I've heard worse. So I don't mean that we have to go out of our way to do distasteful things. But when the food comes, is it just food or is it someone's kindness and generosity?

[48:54]

Is it the compassion of the universe? What is it that comes then? In one of Ruka's sonnets he says, round apple, smooth banana, melon, gooseberry, peach. How all this apple and speak, death and life in the mouth. Apple, banana, melon, gooseberry, peach. Death and life. And your child. Your parent died. And the compassion of the universe.

[49:56]

Kali Giri Roshi in his book says that the compassion of the... One of the first things in terms of repentance, first thing is to realize the compassion of the universe. That each thing exists due to the compassion of the universe. And when he says when you understand like this, then we can... This is why we can go on living with mistakes or no mistakes. Beyond success and failure. Beyond pros and cons. And then we have some direct experience. And when we have direct experience, we thought we knew what it was. We thought we knew who someone was. But as you know, we thought we knew who we were.

[51:05]

The kind of person we were. And now with some direct experience, we find reality is not what we thought it was. People always surprise us. The person we've known for 20 years surprises us. We surprise ourselves. And suddenly we don't know. And it's not so obvious what's going on anymore. And yet we are fully alive and present and engaged with each thing. Thank you. Thank you.

[52:17]

Thank you. Can you hear the sound? Let's take a minute to listen. If you would, just listen to the sound of the birds and the traffic. And just to receive the sound in peace and calmness. Letting the sounds exist in vast space. As though the sounds fill the space and then disappear in space.

[54:14]

Just letting them be there, letting them arise and pass away. Just letting them be there. Without thinking of what's making the sound, without thinking of whether you like the sound, just like the sound. Just letting the sounds exist in vast space.

[56:29]

Without thinking of whether you like the sound, just like the sound. Without thinking of whether you like the sound, just like the sound. Without thinking of whether you like the sound, just like the sound.

[57:44]

Whether or not it's the dessert you ordered for today's lecture, I hope you can learn, can appreciate or learn to appreciate the sound of your body and mind. The sound of the teaching of Buddha and ancestors. And sense the compassion and warmth that is the life of the universe and the life of each one of us. Thank you very much.

[58:58]

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