Welcome to Jikoji.
For how many of you is it your first time here
Welcome. Thanks for coming up here.
Making that trek
My name is Nan Fen. I'm one of the teachers here.
And I like to begin every Sunday with
Kind of a recognition that we are on the unceded lands
of the native people here, the Ohlone people
who have lived in this Bay Area for over 10,000 years
And as I mentioned, this is unceded territory, meaning they did not give this land to us.
And I like to kind of
Bow in my heart.
to our interconnection with them, but for them
We would not be here.
And this acknowledgement is not to make anybody feel bad.
These efforts to separate ourselves from the others continue to this day. But to recognize
It's not wholesome
to take responsibility to the extent that you're able to in your own life.
For our vast interconnection
So may our practice today and every day
Help heal these fractures.
For the benefit of all beings
Let the happenings with the Ohlone and all people be a teaching to us.
And speaking of teachers
and teachings. I'd like you just for a moment. Just
Without thinking too much. Think of a teacher that has changed your life.
This person need not have been in a classical educator role, just somebody who helped you
see something vital.
That person probably comes to mind pretty quickly. Just kind of keep him or her or them alive in your heart for the rest of this talk, and we'll come back to them.
So I want to start today, as is the tradition sometimes here with
This one is Tao Wu's condolence call. It's case 55 from the Blue Cliff record.
This is the translation from the Clery brothers
This is a collection of 100 koans. These are all from the Chinese tradition.
And these 100 cones were originally collected or compiled by
Master Setcho, but then expanded extensively with commentary by Kagan or Master Juan Wu
who was a Chan Buddhist during the Song Dynasty.
So there's a pointer or an introduction. There's a case, which is the actual
Things for us to consider, and there are commentaries. I'm going to just do the pointer and case today.
So one, you introduces this case with something that I think a very guiding pointer. He says
Secure and intimate with the whole of reality. One obtains realization right there.
In contact with the flow.
Able to turn things around. One assumes
Responsibility
directly
And this is the case. What he's pointing to in the pointer is
kind of an intimacy with reality as it arises
And here's the case.
Tao Wu, also known as Dawu. These are the Chinese name
Tao Wu and Qian Wuan went to a house to make a condolence call. A condolence call is when someone has died, and you go to pay respect
Yuan hit the coffin and said. Alive or dead
His teacher, Wu, said
I won't say alive
And I won't say dead
You answered. Why won't you say?
I won't say
Halfway back
As they were returning, the student, Yuan said.
Tell me right away, teacher, if you don't tell me, I'll hit you.
And Wu said
You may hit me, but I won't say
And you want to hit him.
Later, Tao Wu passed on the teacher.
He died
Yuan went to study with Shishuang.
And brought up the foregoing story. Shuang said
I would say alive. I won't say dead.
And Yuan said, why won't you say
And Chuang said
I won't say, I won't say
At these words, Yuan
had an insight
One day Yuan took a garden ho into the teaching hall and crossed back and forth from east to west and west to east.
Shuang said. What are you doing?
Yuan said
I'm looking for relics for our old master.
She won't said
Vast waves spread far and wide, foaming billows flood the skies
What relics of our late master are you looking for?
And sway to added a comment saying heavens, heavens.
Yuan said
This
is just where I should apply effort.
The late master's relics
are still present
So
When the student wrapped on the coffin and said
Alive or dead
He was not conducting a coroner's inquest
He was asking not about the medical condition of this corpse.
He was asking something existential.
and deep
Something maybe much more frightening.
He had looked at that box
And saw our future
His future
And I think he had a instantaneous and powerful kind of
resistance
To that future. And his mind started scrambling for a handhold.
It's got to be something here to hang on to.
So he was really fundamentally asking the teacher
What am I? What is this meaning of life? How am I just like a bag of bones that's going to just die and rot
How do I make meaning
of existence
Is there something in me that survives that box?
He wanted to grab something that would make sense.
A concept
Some kind of certainty.
Because the weight of uncertainty is a lot for most of us.
feel familiar to you.
It does to me
A thousand years after this, Koan was written down. We're still grappling with alive or dead
with uncertainty
Grasping for answers. Because we know what's coming.
People come here to Jikoji
to practice generally looking for answers, often looking for certainty
Sometimes we grab onto these little pithies and responses to questions like alive or dead, like neither or both
But that's not really getting to the meat of the matter.
So let's try a little exercise in getting to the meat of the matter.
I'd like you to let your eyes
Kind of closed, not all the way if you don't want to, but just let them rest.
Feel where your hands are
Feel your breath coming in in your chest
body responding to that breath.
out as well
Feel your existence
Your shoulders, your knees
You're back
Feel your seat
Feel gravity
Consider, for a moment
You are now sitting on your coffin
Yes.
is the boundary line
of your existence
Right here and now
Not because you're about to die.
Because this body
This is the life right now in this body.
At this particular place.
From what you were asking
Your great questions.
For this moment
There is nowhere else to sit
Okay, you can open your eyes.
So the teacher in this koan, Tao Wu
I'm pretty certain he knew the body in the coffin was gone, was dead.
But he refused to play the word game the student really wanted.
He refused to give a binary answer.
Because what he saw in the student's question was not, is the body alive or dead?
But a deeper question.
He wanted
student wanted to kind of trap reality into
More
Concrete idea
concept
So we do this every day all the time. Whenever we catch ourselves sorting reality into this or that, me or other dead or alive
Good or bad
We kind of miss the actual unfolding of life.
So Tao Wu, the teacher
He's giving his student this great gift for which he got hit
But this great gift of acknowledging uncertainty
asking his student to be with not knowing
That this
Big question. Who am I? What's going on? What is this life?
How do I accept death?
It's not a question that could be answered by logic.
By even words.
The teacher knew that if he gave an answer
That would be something that the student would cling to instead of actually exploring his own experience
Of not knowing
of uncertainty.
Everything in our modern culture gives us ample opportunity to avoid these questions.
We consume our lives. Or I should say our lives are consumed.
By distractions
Anything to distract us from the existential truth.
And yeah, this underlying anxiety continues.
The uncertainty of our existence in any given moment
Sorry, I had to do that exercise because
Just for a second, this is it and you knew it because this is it.
And this is it all the time.
So even though we're tossed around every day by the news and by the changes in our bodies and our loved ones
Changing circumstances.
And by the endless opportunities for distractions to look outside of ourselves
To avoid
this
reality of now
Those nine questions remain.
Even as the distractions increase
these questions
Remain, and they've always remained.
The thing is, that pointer was telling us you, we, I, all of us.
have to engage with this question intimately.
I cannot give it to you. His teacher wouldn't
And couldn't give it to him.
It's an intimate acknowledgement of your own existence
We
Are basically compelled.
In our lives
To grapple.
with uncertainty
This is not knowing.
And so we sit down
In the middle of our shared existence.
In Sazen
And this is one way we have to face our experience.
And to face our experience of uncertainty.
With some practice sitting still. And allowing everything
That arise to arrive
Self that is
Bigger
Wider or deeper.
Then this little shoebox size
Personality
And Zazen
We can let go of having to be somebody.
So sitting down as you practice this morning gives us this really
Incredibly rare opportunity because most people would rather be distracted from these questions.
But we, all of you, take this opportunity to sit down and look
And consider the screens, both the digital devices and also the screens that we use to protect ourselves.
from this
Some of our screens are made of opinions
It's astonishing how many opinions we have
Some of our screens are made of fear.
Doubt.
Some from memory. Trauma, grief
When we make a drama around these pure experiences
We are bound for more suffering.
We can turn what is a painful part, a painful passage of life into chronic suffering.
When we make a story up about it
Like this always happens to me. Or I'll never be happy. Or I'll never have the love I need.
That's a story on top of the pure raw emotional experience.
We mostly don't notice the screens through which we are looking. Maybe we've gotten so accustomed to them, they feel permanently installed. But they are screens.
David Byrne has a line from a song. I better get it right. Hang on.
Everyone says the living is easy. But I can hardly see because my head is in the way.
Yeah, you get it, right? You feel it. I do too.
Well, with practice, we can start noticing the screens
And sometimes they dissolve
Or maybe the actual experiences that we see them and we can't hold them anymore. It's like, it's too late. I can't hold that up anymore.
And it dissolves through our just having noticed
And we find ourselves sitting here in the middle of everything.
With nothing to hold on to
Like the student wanting to hold on.
An old Buddha named Shoho
Once said this.
There is no special place
No destiny, duty bound by birth
No quintessential, just right place.
Nothing to carry us forever on in our cribs.
Cars are still honking. And that itching in the back of the neck is still there.
Nothing is perfect
Absolute ideal
And to top it off, we have the usual old age
sickness and death
There is just
this place
It is what it is.
And we might as well arrive there.
Since it's where we are anyway
Sitting down in Zazen
We are invited
To notice our screens
To see where we are
We don't have to condemn the screenings. We don't have to rip them apart.
We don't even have to assess them
Just notice
We arrive here, as Shoho said
And we might as well because
This is where we are
Here.
With all of its beautiful complications.
So like Dawu at the coffin
In salsa and we
practice having the courage
To be with everything.
It arrives.
Where we find ourselves
Wherever we find ourselves
Wherever we find ourselves is just the raw experience.
Not the story on top of it.
And with practice, this willingness to be with what is here transcends into all parts of our lives.
And we include in our
Experience uncertainty and not knowing. We allow that.
We allow the feeling around that.
And in doing so, the sense that there's this solid
self that's going to be somehow a continuum through all of these experiences
It softens and we become much less inclined, actually less interested
And defending this self
And making up a story that we are the center.
That story
And in that space
When you are no longer the dramatic center of your opera.
Something else arrives.
I want to call it responsibility, because that's how it has felt for me
But with that word
It's really leaning towards relationship as usual for me. It's my word relationship.
It is the responsibility of all relationships.
This is not a career choice.
that awareness is not a career choice.
It's just what flows out.
and
When the self boundary that we've created
Soft
So the one
Who feels
Open
To whatever comes
It's not asking for recognition of the world. Not asking for applause. Not asking for someone to laugh at their jokes.
They're actively listening.
Listening for what's actually needed
Instead of saying
See me, see me, see me
So
Ms. Cohen asks us to be really, really honest with ourselves and
I want to share a little personal story.
That taught me quite a lot about paying attention
to my own discomfort
with uncertainty
Many, many years ago in the very, very early morning at my home
I saw what looked like a little tiny bat
On the screen on a Windows screen
I called out to my younger son. His name is Theo.
And he came flying down the stairs in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas.
to go inspect the creature outside hanging
And we went outside
And it was not a bat.
It was a tiny hummingbird
Theo had this
-year-old, fierce
Love for creatures, all critters. He had like 31 different animals in his like 10 by 12 bedroom.
And it usually smelled a little bit like reptile stinky, if you know what that is.
And he would catch these creatures, research what they needed to eat, provide them with what they needed to eat, and then let them go. And we had never had a death
But this little hummingbird on the screen.
To my eyes, pretty well versed with impermanence
The hummingbird looked dead
He
Very tenderly. I mean, it's like 0.02 ounces. The hummingbird is like its body is about this big. Its beak is like this
You very gently got
The little clause off the screen and the beak out
and it's in his little cupped in his little hands.
It looks dead. It's big flops in this weird way, and its body is completely limp.
It is still iridescent, and the sun as he moves it.
And I say
Why don't we bury it and say some prayers?
And Theo
standing there and says
Mom.
It might not be dead.
It might just need a rest.
So
I nodded
Trying to move with whatever it is he was experiencing, giving him some room around
The inevitable grief
And I found a shoebox.
A Buzz Lightyear shoebox
Let me put a little towel on the bottom of the box
We put the bird in it. We close the lid. We put it on the kitchen counter in a dark corner
And we went about our day.
We made breakfast
We did schoolwork
We goofed around in the garden. We came in for lunch
Neither of us addressed the box.
You should know that, by the way, I don't know if you know this, hummingbirds are incredibly… like, they're little warriors, you know? They look really cute, but they're fierce. And we had seen a million of these fierce sky battles, where they're territorial, and they're fighting each other in this weird dance
It's quite beautiful. So, you know, it's possible that this bird had lost one of those battles
It also occurred to me that it could have seen its reflection.
In the glass
And thought that reflection
With someone with whom to do battle
But it appeared to be pretty dead.
So I spent the entire day in this very quiet and very intense friction.
between my awareness that there was a dead bird on the counter.
And my little fantasy that there'd be some resurrection possible.
I washed myself make up this story
Negotiating with reality.
Because I just didn't know how
To make that transition. Dead bird in a box.
Letting it go.
And as time went by in the day I saw myself as the bird in the screen.
Stuck.
And then I saw myself as a dead bird in the box
Suck.
I was just trying to manufacture an ending that I could live with, trying to make reality conform to something that would be more comfortable for me than this uncertainty.
Dead or alive
Meanwhile, my son seemed perfectly at ease
Content to live with whatever was going to happen.
Can completely comfortable.
And not at all worried about what was happening in the box
Just went about instead.
But
I was
Pretty stuck.
In this idea about what's happening.
What it might mean.
What was going to happen next?
So a couple of weeks ago, some of you were here and I spoke about
The Buddha's Awakening story
In particular, I spoke about
The 12 links of causation. I'm not going to do them all again, but to suffice it to say that
Someone at one point taught me this little pithy way of thinking about the 12 links as
Out of ignorance
I make, I grab, I attach, I acquire
Again, out of ignorance, which is not a lack of information, okay? Ignorance is forgetting interconnection and impermanence. Out of that ignorance, I make
I grab, I attach, I acquire
What we make is not only a narrative. Of course, we're usually the center of that story.
But usually an identity as well
This practice that we have of sitting down like the Buddha on the third watch, practicing just sitting with his own reality
His causes and conditions and noticing these 12 links of Samsara
They help us catch the making.
They help us catch the part where we're making a story, making some meaning about our actual raw experience.
So
I've learned to ask myself when I notice the making, which happens all the time. We're not going to stop ourselves from making.
But to notice the making
And I actually asked some of you sometimes these questions when I notice my making.
What am I missing?
What am I not looking at?
Am I imposing an idea about how things are supposed to be
Am I trying to make an ending I can live with?
Even before the ending has even arrived
Well, the little hummingbird in that little box
Was the perfect embodiment
Of my mind
making
And the question about whether or not that hummingbird was alive or dead
spread out across the kitchen counter into my entire day.
Dead or alive
So I spent the entire day fantasizing basically about reality.
Worrying about what was in the box
caught up in this story about
The drama of my own being stuck, my own stuck in this
And uncomfort with uncertainty.
In the early evening
Theo and I were sitting on a couch reading
And we heard this strange sound
A thrumming sound
Like
And it was really loud
We ran to the kitchen.
It was the box
We picked up the box.
We went outside
We opened the box
And the hummingbird was alive
It had needed a rest.
He was right.
It just sat there
It didn't even get up on its legs for a few minutes. It just sat there.
I thought, oh God, it's brain damaged.
Again, make it up.
We all just took each other in
It definitely looked at us.
Remember its little body's still down
It stood up on his little like grass stem thin legs
these incredibly thin little legs
And it stretched its arm like a yawn, just completely relaxed
And it's little bright shining in the light
It swings down
Theo picked it up in his hand
Two hands, he had little hands, picked it up
We fully expected it to fly off
It just sat there looking around
And then he said
Fly away, little friend
And it did.
I have no idea what happened to that bird.
Before it was hanging dead
on the screen what happened in the box
But something happened to me.
That day
I saw
How quickly
I could make up
Oh, catastrophic scenery.
to suffer with
I made it up
And we do this all the time.
All of that
Kind of a cage
A box, a jail that I made up and then lived inside for an entire day.
I was the bird in the box trapped
By my own unwillingness to be with uncertainty. To be with not knowing what the hell was going on and what the hell was going to happen next
And instead of poking at the box or asking questions about the situation or doing anything, my son was at the other end of the spectrum, just running around in his life
Having a good time
perfectly willing to wait for reality to unfold.
That's what we have to do.
That's here right now.
And we might as well be here, as Shouhou said, because it's where we are.
We're not in a future that we've predicted.
We're not even sure what's happening right now.
And this is one of the gifts of our practice, this
Willingness to be with not knowing.
It's kind of courageous willingness to
I'm not sure
Definitely recognizing that
Every moment does not need
us to fix it
Or to make it into something else
Or to decide what it means.
We can certainly just be with our uncertainty.
In the koan, the student is asking for help from his teacher. You can imagine how radical it would be to hit your teacher, especially then.
But he doesn't, and his teacher, if you don't know this, but
story is that the teacher says
It's kind of nonplussed by being hit and then tells the student, you know, this is going to come out, you're going to get in trouble, you should go study someplace else, which the student does, and then is awakened later on
So this teacher student relationship
is incredibly
I think powerful
Not a teacher doesn't need to be a Zen teacher. It could be an 8-year-old boy or a 0.02 ounce hummingbird.
Or a friend.
Someone who's willing to walk beside you.
Maybe.
hold up a mirror every time you say that about somebody else, every time you otherize your own experience.
Just hold up the mirror, friend.
Someone
And we allow ourselves to trust
And be trusted by
And hopefully someone who does not report to know something that you don't know.
If you'd like
Try to bring back now the name of the teacher that you thought of.
And just raise your hand and
Bring that person
Share that person with all of us
So I'll go first
Mrs. Smith
Now she totally awakened me
To capabilities and to appreciation of literature
That has stayed with me all my life.
continues to unfold
Thank you, Mrs. Brown.
Miss Gita
She was
My ballet teacher.
She taught me about my body
Per in Miss Violet
She taught me how to
If we can move
Thank you, Ms. Kita
Ms. Violand
Anybody online want to offer a teacher? Misha
Well, several to offer, but.
The very first one.
My first grade teacher.
Sister Joan Christine.
who taught me that you can be
A nun and a teacher,
And a lovely person.
And I never forgot her.
Yeah, there's
A couple of them and one
Just firstly, wouldn't come to my mind as a professor from college years, Professor Marshall Gantz from Harvard Kennedy School, who is teaching, organizing
and the story of power. Yeah, the narrative, the story. Everyone has a story to tell. And
If we
Really get to know where we come from and we can get the power out.
and motivate people from our own stories. So that's
years ago with those moments in his classroom
teacher from China, and he's the one who introduced me to Buddhism last year
really opened my eye understanding forward in a very different way introduced me to Buddhism and everything. So that's why I'm here and I
Grateful, hugely grateful.
Search options
Replacement begins and
Thank you for practice
Now it's your turn.
To ask questions or
Complain.
Anything you like.
Yeah, hang on one sec, Hector. Someone just started to speak here. Thank you. Go ahead, Michael. I feel called to share a teacher of mine.
Adrian, who had been
Last previous residency with with T. She has been my T teacher for the last
years and
In many ways and sitting here
right now because of her and and
the path that she has shown and more than
She's taught me through the leaf and through tea and
I think that there's
of reverence in being able to hold
a consistent space for a teacher to know that you can keep walking into the spot that they are cultivating
And be able to receive the message not just from themselves, but from what
Yeah, the lineage from which they teach.
Yeah, it's great reverence and respect for her consistently
showing up
Yeah
Okay, Akbar
Thank you. My question is
Why did we make up these stories? Are they part of the survival or protection mechanism that we have or
For our own amusement, what is the reason for this?
I think as you've answered it already, but yes, survival, yes
amusement in a very broad sense, which is meaning identity
Right? And also survival in a very profound sense. Like we need to use these discriminating minds, right? That is a saber-toothed tiger.
That is a mushroom I should not ingest.
So we need to make up stories to explain how to protect the self.
Because we are good at pattern recognition, and we need to learn how to survive.
And we also need to understand with some humility that
The answer is a movable feast.
It's moving all the time. So the idea is not to stop making up the stories. We are people of the word. We are going to make up stories. There's nothing to reject here.
It's just the awareness that
This is one facet of the jewel.
it's not the entire story. And you know this, we all know this, because sometimes we have a very strongly held view
Someone says something, we go, oh
Never thought of it that way.
And we have a new view.
We're like, oh yeah, I see that.
Principally, I think the real important part I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to make meaning as long as you know that you're making meaning. Right?
Okay
But the principal thing that we have to really pay attention to is anything that points that way.
I'm gonna point it back this way.
And that's hard for us.
It's much easier to make
to make up a story of suffering where we're the center.
It's just easier. It keeps this identity that we have to protect and defend. And then we don't have to face the existential truth.
But it doesn't work. At least at some point it stopped working for me.
And if you sit down long enough, I think it stops working for everybody. I think it's pretty reliable.
Barrier lifting, let's say.
So
I don't know that that there's a one why. I think there's as many whys as there are people, but I think it boils down to
Surviving
And
Continuing
a self
Thank you very much. I totally agree. Appreciate your answer. Thank you.
Thank you.
Empty.
Speak really loudly because they might be able to hear you.
I really liked your imagery of being in a box, and I guess
You know, using it as like a self jail. But I was thinking about what you thought about the idea of like hope
Because sometimes it can feel like a cozy shelter. But then you're also not being present, and you're
Not temporally here. So how do you also get out of a housing shelter and how do you
Get out of this
They're making up
you know, not depressing also
So MJ asked a question about the
box
The little shoebox in which we put ourselves, and it's kind of a jail and also
The feeling that it is maybe hopeless.
In that tail, how do we maintain some
sense that that's not kind of both a cozy place and a hopeless place
And am I close to your
Okay, go give me more then like some people, the narrative can be a jail, but for some people it can feel like a cozy shelter like the jail is safe. Yeah.
And you
What it is
The jail is a kind of safety
Yeah, right? It is safety. If we have a very fixed idea about who we are and what the world should give us, there's a kind of safety in that. I don't know that I can buy it
I don't, I know I can't buy it.
It doesn't feel secure in the way that not knowing feels secure. Isn't that strange?
But knowing feels very insecure to me.
So I think if one is in the jail, the self-imposed
Let's light your box
So look around, make sure you're really comfortable. Make sure it's really safe.
Now, that is not to say that there's not a time to
rest in a box.
a Buzz Lightyear box
to just say, taking a rest. But that is different than saying
But this is the only place I'm safe. Where I lock out the whole world
You have to be in the world. You have to be in your place in every given moment.
There is absolute value in resting. I mean, the bird came back to life.
We can too
I would say that we can't stay
In our own crypts.
can't protect ourselves by checking out
It doesn't actually work.
You might think, conceptually
This is a safe place, and it's cozy. Okay, enjoy it.
For a little bit
And then get out of the box
Be in the world
Suffer the slings and arrows
Because then you're alive
Or dead
Won't say
Thank you
I was wondering why
We begin following the meditation
Well, it's the whole thing about relics. Sometimes there are certain bones, and when you cremate somebody and those are considered very special and they're put in stupas and
Really, the point is
The teachers survived. He's everywhere. Not alive, not dead, just
Everywhere.
That's one way of looking at it. I encourage you to look at the
Go on yourself
I mean, the whole idea of a ho in the Dharmah hall, right?
It's really beautiful
Digging for his old teacher and teachers everywhere
Alrighty
Sean.
Like one thing that we think of as a constructing this question
It's like hard enough to accept uncertainty when you can't control the situation at all
harder for me to
No
What is
uncertain about whether I can change
I feel like some kind of
Read for pain and
Try to change something that's like
That can lead to suffering.
But I fear that the other
is that I can fall in with the
I see that a lot of people in the older than
about things they may or may not
So yeah, I'm not sure like
Balance those things
So Sean is asking about
The difficulty of being with uncertainty on the one hand
Sometimes not knowing how
to act
Knowing whether divining really whether or not
One has the power to effectuate change.
And on the other hand, in the space of not knowing
not acting, and whether or not that looks like apathy.
You know, I'm just not going to do anything.
Because I'd given up because I don't know that I can control anything.
And I think it's actually super great place to practice what you're talking about. To notice
This kind of arc of
Very kind of binary, like I can make a change here or I can just give up and call into my box.
Be safe
And both and
The real trick, I think, is to understand
Relationship. It's responsibility that arises when
We understand we are going to act even our non action, our inactivity
It's an act.
So then we have to be with the uncertainty. Long enough
We're not
reacting.
We are like looking in the whole field of possibilities. And that's actually hard in real life.
Because
Sometimes we're asked to make a decision now.
Right, especially in our work lives. You don't have a few weeks to contemplate how this might play out.
For me, what's very helpful is to let go of the idea that I'm in charge of the outcome.
This has been central to my
growing up
That I can come to a decision from a wholesome place, meaning I'm not hurting me and I do not intend any harm.
For anyone, all beings
But I am not in charge.
of the outcome
Because I cannot control how you're going to respond
Even today, right now, some people will like this talk and some people will go got nothing. I don't even know what she's talking about.
I'm not in charge of that
I'm giving it my best. We're all giving it our best.
I'm not in charge of the outcome. So you act
With what's in front of you, with what you as open-hearted and wide of you as you can take.
She's full of compassion
And you act.
I don't think you will be apathetic. You.
I don't think you'll be apathetic
I think that that is the posture of someone who does not want
to own the relationship.
To say I'm part of it. I know I'm part of it. There's no way I can deny that I'm part of it
That's not where you are, Sean. At least not from what I can see when I hold up the mirror to you.
And you hold up the note
You're committed to the relationship, whatever it is. So I'm not worried about you having apathy. I can understand you're being tired
I mean to make
Wholesome decisions.
And I fully encourage everyone to take a rest
Go into the shoebox for a little while
and rest.
You know, just
Take a break.
And then come back out and stretch your wings.
Keyu, Daryl.
Thank you, Ninshen. Thank you for the koan. It actually reminded me of something that I had read
recently regarding neuroscience. There's a controversy brewing that consciousness and personality, the individual, where does it reside in the brain?
The controversy is that there's no particular structure in the human brain that holds our
our id, our consciousness, our self. Uh, case in point is that
There was a woman who suffered from epilepsy. Her seizures were so severe that she would have a
Other than 27 seizures or more a day.
And a radical procedure, they removed half of her brain, cutting through the corpus colorum and removing the entire
portion of her brain. They… the concern was that she would not be able to live a normal life once she had this done. But…
And a surprising turn of events. The other surviving hemisphere.
took on the processes of the missing hemisphere, the missing half of the brain. She literally retained her personality, all of her memories,
And was able to function a normal life.
So, my question is…
If the personality is
A result is not a result of a single structure in the brain, and the causes and conditions of our existence is not relegated to the self.
Would it be contingent on our existence that we depend on everything that
makes us up, not just as an individual, but as a community, a Sangha, a world.
Everything that exists.
is it?
Is it that…
everything that is here now is us and we are it. The Buddha said that
If you see the Buddha in the road, kill the Buddha.
Well, I don't know if it was Buddha or selfless, but the question is, if you see the Buddha in the road and you kill it, does the Buddha still exist?
does the teaching still exist? Do we still exist as individuals?
And as…
everything that supports us.
So…
Thank you.
I kind of want to be a smart alec and say I won't say. But
I also really appreciate
this question about consciousness. I'm reading a book about consciousness. I guess we're all kind of in the water of consciousness
And I'm very interested in
I think what you're actually pointing at, Kiyu, is
What is this experience that we call self?
What is it? Where is it locatable?
And I'm not going to answer that question. I want you to, you know, sit that question.
But I want all of us to sit, where is the self that we're trying to locate? You know, you could say it's in some
in this body
But I don't know. I mean, I think it's in every hat we've ever knitted. Every meal we've ever made.
Certainly in the DNA of our children, everything is so
profoundly, deeply connected that what you're pointing at is that
It is us
That this thing that we call menzen or Kiyu or Akbar or Sanho
is actually an expression of
Everything
Instead of
We are
A distinct, only distinct entity. One way of thinking about this is
You know
For me, I often think about my skin. It looks like a boundary, but it actually doesn't feel like a boundary to me most of the time. It feels like it's in relationship with right now this robe, which by the way
Colin sensei gave me this robe right there. This was Coban's robe, so I feel it on my skin. And I feel the air on my skin and the sun on my skin
There isn't a place where the skin is separate from the experience. So is there a self separate from the experience of life?
You work with that
I will too.
Say it louder.
Same one. You'll find aggregates
Grasping his suffering
Anything else?
Relationship and responsibility.
So the question is about relationships
and responsibility.
Well
I'll speak from this little
Individual experience that when you occasionally have a sense that, oh, there's nothing solid about this self. That I can't locate the self you that there's nothing solid here.
And that it's kind of
It's hard to talk about this, but there's nothing very solid to hold onto that is just
This me. There is this experience
That is our shared experience. That is the only way I can locate myself in
Being.
And so then what's left? If there's no cell that we walk around all the time thinking there's this self I'm holding onto, from my own experience, what's left
When there's nothing stable
Which for me has been a liberative thing, not so scary as liberative.
What's left is relationship.
And for me, it means responsibility.
That's literally what I'm doing here.
Being in relationship with you right now, with this right now. That's what we're all doing in life.
There isn't any other way to exist except noticing the endless relationships. It's impossible, which is the problem in the ultimate defect and pointing to someone and saying they're the problem.
It's ridiculous
I mean, I can't believe it. Even when I want to do it, I don't believe myself, right? I don't believe that story. That it's out there.
So the responsibility is
Here
And if I take care of that impulse to make up a story that someone else is the problem.
If I take complete responsibility for my practice
That's what he says in the beginning. So you've taken us right back to the pointer
If I take complete responsibility
It's all about relationship all the time. So he says secure and intimate with the whole of reality. One obtains realization.
Right there.
In contact with the flow. Everything changing. Nothing fixed.
Able to turn things around
One assumes responsibility directly.
So this is a practice. You try this.
Your mileage may vary in any given moment, but especially when you find yourself reactive
And
This
That shouldn't be happening.
Why? Why shouldn't it be happening? Is it happening?
Is what you're imagining happening even happening?
That little gap
Is incredibly powerful. And then you start noticing.
Oh, I'm part of this.
There's a relationship here, and is it this one right now?
Or is it someone from my history?
Or is it some fantasy I have about me being
The most important person in the room
needing recognition, whatever it is. There's a lot of that around.
So
What I can offer is that what's left when there's no locatable cell
is relationship
And for me, that has slowly morphed into this sense of responsibility.
So the danger for me, and maybe for some of you, is that then I want to help.
I want to fix things. I mean, I Somebody teased me. I said I'm a recovering fixer and she actually said Are you sure you're in recovery?
I'm not so sure. Some of the time. I mean, even little things.
My friend was showing me exercises, you know for mobility, and these are healthy things. And I thought
Oh, I need fixing
She wasn't doing it that way. But I was thinking that's my impulse too. I see somebody suffering
And I want to I want to help. Well, who is that one? And is it helpful?
It was no problem.
But you have to be always looking this way
And taking responsibility for what you are making up.
about reality. And then just doing your best to meet it.
Where you are
It's actually fun. Life is great. It's also everything else.
But it's fun, right? To ask these questions like, huh.
This wonderful Dogan scholar likes to say. Wait a minute. Is this real?
It's a good question to ask.
Okay, I'm going to say we're going to start
And we're going to do another gatha, and then we'll have some
I'll make a couple of bows, and then we'll have some social time.