Gail Sher Branching Streans 4th Talk Transcript (YouTube automated transcript)

It's a privilege to be here today passing on to you the teachings of my great teacher Shunryu Suzuki-roshi and by passing on his teachings passing on the meaning of the teachings of all the great buddhist ancestors all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha.

A student was telling roshi about a conversation that he had overheard one person had said well what makes the roshi the roshi and the other person said because he has students you can't be a roshi without students and so this this this was being said to roshi and roshi said yes without students no teacher um and students encourage the teacher so right away right away there's the theme underlying the words of absolute independence there's a student and there's a teacher and interdependence without the student no teacher and all of it dependent co arising which is a a phrase uh often used in in zen dependent co arising just means everything depends on everything so we're not there is no individual existence um reb anderson roshi says that that's the disaster of humanity is that we think that we exist independently and we do um so then so okay roshi's having this conversation and then he says if it weren't for students he wouldn't be giving a lecture and if he and about and because he's giving a lecture he's studying and then as he studies he drifts off into studying whatever he wants and never mind the lecture and that's just how things are and it goes and that's just how the world operates so but then he says it's good you know um just to feel good we study and to feel even better we do zazen and eventually he says this purposeless practice will help us so now we have three just in this tiny little bit of things i just said there's dependent colorizing which which includes absolute independence and interdependence and then there's purposeless practice you've heard this purposeless stuff before so we've already had three important ideas brought to the brought to bear on this talk and another important idea is going to be to listen to the meaning behind what you hear listen to words meaning more than they seem to mean so um in buddhism um there's this concept of this is this because that is that um this is this because that is that and that is that because this is this and it goes back and forth like that and roshi says there's actually an echo that back and forth this is this because that is that that is that because this is this there's an echo and we should listen to the tone of it it being it being this dependent co arising that's this is this because that is that is dependent co arising and we should listen to the tone of it the tone um roshi makes a distinction between sound and noise sound being coming from our practice sound actually he says sound is both subjective and objective that if we hear a bell it's both coming from our practice and also it encourages students so um there's both subject and objective he says noise is just objective um then he clarifies very poetically and i want to read you this passage it's it's it's so nice so this is roshi talking out i may think the bird is singing over there but when i hear the bird the bird is me already actually i'm not listening to the bird the bird is here in my mind already and i am singing with the bird if you think while you're studying the blue jay is singing above my roof but its voice is not so good that thought is noise when you are not disturbed by blue jays blue jays will come right into your heart and you will be the blue jay and the blue jay will be reading something and then the blue jay will not disturb your reading when we think the blue jay is over my the blue jay over my roof shouldn't be there that thought is a more primitive understanding of being because of our lack of act of practice we understand in that way so that's that's the end of that passage um and i want to say that um i think he was giving this example of blue jays because Tassajara was uh rife with blue jays and uh they call cod all day long in this harsh harsh very demanding and complaining call and and they ate everything that we grew they were just all over all over the food that we were growing and Tassajara is located off of a 14 mile very windy dirt road and we needed to grow some of our food because it was hard to get it in um and actually most of the students detested the js and they actually had a meeting one time and talked about shooting shooting them that would that didn't happen but um roshi had his ear to the feelings of his students and i think he was um saying because of our lack of practice we understand in this way that they're just making a racket um we haven't taken them into our heart but i want to say that um the other day i was at someone's house that had a big backyard and right outside the window was um this tiny little bird feeder swinging on a branch and it was meant for tiny birds and there was a blue jay on another branch right near the bird feeder and it like i mean the blue jay was like determined to get the food inside of this tiny little bird feeder and it was truly making a racket and it was doing somersault so that i mean it it couldn't get the bullet the blue jay was about four times the size of this feeder and it was turning itself over and like pecking from the bottom and it was cracking from the side and then it would go off and just like fluff its feathers to rest a while then you come back i mean it must have come back like 15 times just while i was watching it it was i mean it was hilarious because i mean it was pitiful also because um there's no way this blue jay was going to get into this tiny bird feeder and it was so um dramatically having its mindset on doing so anyway i was just reminded of this whole time at Tassajara with all the blue jays and there this is talk about double-sided this is a really double double-sided is going to be another theme today and this is another very double-sided issue these blue jays so roshi says um a bird comes from the south in spring and goes back in the fall and this is the way things are kind of inter interrelated endlessly um and even though a bird stays in the same place for a long time the world is its home and so that's how birds live the world is a time often so then then he says um in zen sometimes we say that each one of us is steep like a cliff and no one can scale us we are completely independent but when you hear me say so this is roshi you should understand the other side too that we are endlessly interrelated if you only understand one side of the truth you can't hear what i'm saying roshi is saying if you don't understand zen words you don't understand zen you were not yet a zen student this is roshi is saying this very clearly zen words are different from usual words like double-edged swords they cut both ways you may think i'm only cutting forward but no actually i'm also cutting backward this is roshi watch out for my stick he says do you understand sometimes i scold a disciple no and the other students think oh that person has been scolded but it's not actually so where she says because because i can't scold one person over there i'm gonna scold the person over here but most people think oh that person's getting scolded but you should think if someone is scolded you listen you should be alert enough to know who is being scolded and that's how we train so then he tells a story about being um a young disciple i think he i think he was 16 when he left home and entered the monastery against his parents wishes and a group of the disciples were joining they had gone somewhere with their teacher and they were coming back and it was pretty late and japan apparently is covered with venomous snakes and so they were they were walking um maybe like through a woods and um the roshi their teacher stopped and said you all go ahead you have you're wearing tabi which are little socks um and i'm not so you go ahead and um i'll follow you and so they all scampered off and when when they all got back to where they lived the roshi said everyone please sit down and he said you know if i'm not wearing tabi you shouldn't be wearing tabi oh you i gave you a warning i said i'm not wearing tabi you should have taken your tabi off and we all went back walk back together under the same risk we should be alert enough to hear what is behind words that's all we should realize something more than what is being said and the teacher was saying when i give a message to you as straightforward really is i'm not i the teacher i'm not wearing tabby you don't just scamper off and pretend like you didn't hear that and then he tells another story about when he was at Eihiji and he was given and he was he was scolded um and the scolding was um don't open he was closing um the shoji the the shoji screens and he was scolded for closing um the left the left one and so the next day he closed um the right one and he was scolded again and he's so he scolded for this side and he was scolded for that side and he didn't understand and then he realized that when he um opened the left door there were guests there and then and also when he had opened the right door there were guests there but his point was is that no one told him why he was scolded he was just scolded and then he had to figure it out and that's how at a at a height and other monasteries that's how you're trained you listen you listen to the words and you know that there's meaning behind there's another meaning also that their words are double-edged their words are double-edged and the Sandokai the poem that roshi is explicating right now that the Sandokai's words are also double-edged --one side is absolutely independent and the other-- interdependency goes on and on everywhere and yet things stay in their own place and that's the point of the Sandokai that's the whole point of the Sandokai this play between absolute independence and you could say absolute interdependence both at the same time this is this because that is that that is that because this is this all over the place everywhere and so it's not like we have what we feel we have an independent existence um so so roshi was not only attuned to the feelings of his students he was also attuned to the to their language to the words they used you know english is a second language and he's he's always trying to learn english better and um at tassajara he picked up this expression henpecked so so this so this according to roshi henpecked means um and and he's referencing by the way he's referencing his own marriage with Mitsu-san so he's referencing his own marriage and he's saying that henpeck means there's no chance for the husband to raise his head he is always pecked by the hen so still he needs the hen so he feels it's impossible to live with her and it's impossible to live without her and so maybe we should get a divorce but as soon as he thinks that no i can't live without her and so he can't live with her and he can't live without her and so what should he do he's saying all this he's saying all this so what did he do and he said this is the kind of problem we have in the world of brightness in the world of brightness it's difficult to live alone and it's difficult to live with others and that's the problem we have what should we do but he says if you have even the slightest understanding of the world of darkness which we get through zazen if we have even the slightest understanding of the other side of the world of brightness then you will find out how to live in the world of brightness all we need is the slightest understanding he's saying so darkness is the is the numeral world that's the world last week where we were talking about g and re that's re the numeral world whatever we deal with in the dualistic world is the world of brightness g but it is necessary to know the darkness where there is nothing to see and nothing to think about and that zazen so a visiting student asks a question um and he's talking to roshi you said zazen is darkness and the lecture is brightness and you have also said talked about re being dark and g being bright but what i want to know is whether you can really separate them that's that's the visiting student asked this question can you separate them and roshi says that's a good point we are purposely separating something that cannot be separated it is like two sides of a coin this side is brightness that side is darkness and i'm talking about the bright side and your practice will give you the view of the dark side and then you'll see the whole picture of the sandokai right there so then another visiting student says you say that your talk on the sandokai is supposed to give us understanding but you also say that we can't understand the bright side unless we understand the dark side unless we have good zazen is your talk just skillful means meaning encouraging us to do zazen and roshi says um so then he tells us the difference between a teisho (t-e-i-s-h-o ) and lecture and when an enlightened teacher a roshi gives a talk that's teisho and when somebody like myself gives a talk that's that's a dharma talk that's not teisho um and roshi says that um usually your attitude like for these visiting students their attitude in in listening to a tesho is to think about is it good or bad you wonder what is he talking about and if it's you know maybe i'll accept it and maybe i won't and he says you don't need to be so careful he's telling these visiting students if you listen you don't even need to try to understand it if you don't understand it's okay and if you do it's better but that's all there should be no special not even a special intention to listen just to listen is how you should receive teisho it's different from studying so he's he's basically telling the telling the visiting students just just listen just take it in and don't even think about it and then he says as your mind works logically i have to be logical if you were not logical i could say whatever i like i could sing a song so from today's talk here are what i think the most the most important points um and the first one is just we study just to feel good and to feel even better we do zazen and eventually that kind of purposeless practice will help us this idea of purposeless practice is repeated again and again and here's yet another time and it's always among the most important points this other one about um when you're not disturbed by by blue jays blue jays will come right into your heart and you will be a blue jay and the blue jay will be reading something and then the blue jay will not disturb your reading that point i can't help but remember myself the other day i was certainly not having the blue jay be right in my heart but i wasn't as disturbed as i have been by blue jays um so i don't know maybe i've learned something but that point about that's really the difference between sound and noise and when it's sound the blue jay can come right into your heart and and then the blue jay will be reading and uh along right along with you so then this other other point about zen words are different from usual words like a double-edged sword they cut both ways she says you may think i'm only cutting forward but i'm cutting backwards also all the time roshi just says that whole book remembered not always so that's nothing is always so and he's also said yes but is the essence of zen yes but well yes that's true but so this fourth point we should be alert enough to hear the meaning behind words we should realize something more is being said and then finally on the same subject the Sandokai's words are double-edged one side is interdependence one side is absolute independence and this goes on and on everywhere and yet things stay in their same place and that's the main point of the Sandokai i want to give you some things to think about during the week and ideally write about because it helps you digest writing is a tool for for understanding and discovery so roshi's uh so this is about what to think about during the week roshi's instructions for how to listen to a taisho which is to listen without trying to get anything even understanding those instructions are also double edged in that it's an instruction about how to live as well as an instruction about how to listen to a teisho so you may think that if you do this you will starve if you um if you just listen without trying to get anything or if you just live without trying to get anything you will starve but the other side the dark side is that if you don't do this you will starve do you understand think deeply you so this is the thing that i want you to think about this week think deeply about how you could hold both of these truths and live in the world very well so this purposelessness if you do it you might starve and if you don't do it you might starve it's double-edged and how to live with that well how to live well with that so and then the second thing is roshi says i may think the bird is singing over there that when i hear the bird the bird is me already actually i am not listening to the bird the bird is here in my mind already and i am singing with the bird so this dependent color rising um please as roshi instructed listen to the tone of it as you're going through your week do what he asks listen to the tone of the echo of the this is this because that is that listen to the tone see if you can hear it so all of our relationships are double-edged sort of like roshi so transparently talked about his own marriage so in his case there's henpecked and then there's the dark side where they are together and they always have been together and i wonder if you could think about your own relationships and how this applies to any of your own relationships and then another one the story about the tabi that i told you in my opinion the teacher was not nearly strong enough he was making a very important point about respect and um having a teacher in the first place that you're the student and the teacher is a teacher and he should have said something like well no i don't want to say so your assignment is um if you were the teacher what would you have said and hint he didn't he wasn't strong enough he he was um he was way too passive he was he was sort of um letting them get away with it almost he should have been way stronger and so what and so you have your opinion what would you have said if you were the teacher and then also um this idea of purposes purposelessness if you don't already have something in your life that you just do because you do it maybe you could try to invent one so that you could have that experience in your body and relate back to it later so i wonder if um if there are any questions thanks Gail yes we have the first question here um as these talks go on i find myself losing track for a minute i'm following and then things slip away and i leave with the sense of what just happened i can't remember anything could you say a few words of encouragement this is it's very ironic actually um don't forget that um the reason it's so hard to teach zen is that zen is about nothing and so you have to and roshi is really good about teaching nothing and so zen words tend to slip away they do they really zen words do slip away and so if you leave feeling like now what was that about i can't even remember anything um i mean if we say that in zen there's nothing to teach than if you leave with nothing what do you think i mean i think you did a pretty good job and i know that um i i used to always feel like um i couldn't remember one thing and uh it was as if i hadn't been there and yet you know i had been there i was there and um it wasn't even the words it was uh the spirit of the words it was the spirit and um i'm not qualified to give a tasho but i hope that i'm by passing on the spirit of a taisho that um you can feel something i'm hoping and frankly hearing you say that you can't remember anything and you you feel like you leave with nothing i fee i feel encouraged by that because um zen really is about nothing that's all okay the second question we have is somebody said i came to buddhism from hearing the more noble truths of suffering there is a way that out is how does today's talk fit into this picture you know the four noble truths um the existence of suffering you know the life is suffering basically is the first one and and then the cause there because suffering has causes is the second one and that that there is a way out of co out of suffering is the third one and then the fourth one is the eightfold noble path which is what we need to do to get out of suffering it's a very um it's a very practical and direct um way of addressing suffering and the Sandokai is all about addressing suffering but it's addressing it at a more subtle level um most of our suffering is because we believe and experience ourselves as having an independent existence and the sandokai is about the other side the dark side the complete interdependence of all beings animate and inanimate so it fits into the so the sandokai fits into the picture of that the four noble troops present um by simply addressing the same subject on a more subtle level buddhism is all about suffering and both of them are all about suffering that's my answer we have a comment also somebody wrote i agree with the law with the last comment that it seems the talks are getting harder and harder to understand and yet i feel like my life has been getting significantly better since i started listening to these talks i appreciate i appreciate that um you know um i'm i'm i'm giving this series um secretly sort of i'm giving this series in preparation for the next series which is on the precepts the bodhisattva precepts their 16 precepts and i think you will find um there it's way more there's one side of the precepts that are very practical but they're not what you think of course and this series of talks is going to make that uh quite easy for you and so if you could bear with you're saying that you've since you've been listening to the talks you feel better i i really encourage you to just hang in there and i'm i'm kind of trying to um make them as uh concrete and absorbable as possible i'm aware they're difficult these talks i'm aware they're difficult um but i think that um it's number one it's not going to get more difficult we've already hit the top it's not going to get more difficult the difficult part is this dark side that the the truth of interdependence being being our actual truth that's so hard um to understand but it's not going to get any harder than that so um so maybe that's encouraging too okay thank you thank you for your comment hi Gail this is Bryan. Sahar's internet is is acting up so she texted me the questions so i'll ask the next question that you have is or it's actually a comment um they say i've heard it said that since there is no limit to cosmic being there is no limit to our mind it includes the stars right now i do not experience my mind in this way um there's there's a reassuring story from Reb Anderson-roshi and here's the story so one day a monk asked a great teacher, Matsu, what is buddha mind and Matsu said mind itself is buddha later someone told Matsu i hear you said mind itself is buddha i say that to children so they'll stop crying he said what do you say after they stop crying i say no mind no buddha and Reb comments no mind no buddha is not difficult to practice but it's difficult to explain no mind no buddha is just i don't have to understand anything just listen to my dog don't understand anything um sitting still is not difficult to practice because it's like the sky but it's difficult to understand like the sky is difficult to understand so i want to say just be kind to yourself and patient everyone here is doing very well not to worry that that's all the next question is when roshi says if you if you have even the slightest understanding of darkness which is the other side of brightness then you will find out how to live in the brightness of the world how do we get even this slight understanding i have been doing zazen for a while but mostly i'm dealing with pain i'm not feeling that i'm getting any understanding you know we just talked about the four noble truths question we just talked about buddhism is all about suffering and the four noble truths are all about suffering and um the Sandokai is all about suffering and so when you say that your zazen is mainly about dealing with pain then it seems like you're dealing directly with both the four noble truths message and the sandokai's message that life is suffering and and we're stuck with it and then there is a way out the the four noble truths are really you know explicitly about there is a way out and then the eightfold noble path out and then um but the sandokai also is about sitting zazen practice or any kind of practice that um absorbs your mind with full concentration um gives you a taste of the dark side and with that taste you will know how to be in your life and that's that's what we're doing here that's that's the be all and end all of what we're doing here so that you'll know how to be in your life that's what we're doing how to live it's really how to live uh that's all the next question uh when roshi says as your mind works logically i have to be logical if you are not logical i can say whatever i like i can even sing a song i don't understand so um when buddha first he attained enlightenment and then he began to teach and his first monastery that he set up so that people could live there and practice together the monks were gathered around him and he was he asked some question i wish i knew and um no one answered and then one student in the very back raised a flower he just raised a flower and with that there was instant dharma transmission to that student um that interchange is very famous in buddhist circles everyone knows that story and lifting the flower and smiling and that student was then roshi's not roshi's buddha's first disciple and i want to leave you with that story as a koan just take that as a koan a koan is a kind of question that um you can't quite answer with your mind so i'll leave you with that as a koan the next question is if the seeing the illusion of the separate self is the way to end suffering then how does seeing both sides that there is no separate self and there is also a separate self does that mean that we still will have some suffering in particular with thinking about death and the fear of death so the first part of your question that that everything you said in the beginning it's all the same that um there is no the the real truth that buddhism teaches is that there is no independent existence of anything those flowers on my desk are me everything in this room is me that's that's a truth that um the beings that have enlightened minds teach us and um so so there's both and when we when we live live in such a way that we experience both my understanding is that that's the end of of of suffering that when you actually experience dependent co-arising and that that's and that every single being is a part of that melody really that roshi is saying we should listen to the tone of um that's that's the that this everything that we're talking about the sandokai and the four noble jews all of that is about ending suffering i don't know i hope i answered your question i'm not sure i did uh you you answered it i guess the i guess just thinking about death if you think of yourself as part of something greater that goes on forever then it's easy to disregard death but if you see yourself even as it's an illusion as a separate self that will end then the fear of death comes back yes you know um just to preview this next series on the precepts so i mean i i don't want to go into it we're going to have a whole series on it but the for example so there's 16 precepts and um so there's this and that and then and then there so there's a group of three and another group of three and then there's something called the ten grave precepts and the first one is um not to kill that's the first that's the first grave precept so do not kill or actually um life is not killed life is not killed um and then the other side of that which we don't usually hear in these kind of teaching the other side of that is it's impossible to kill so don't worry about it it's impossible to kill because there's no you and there's no other being to kill so the and so there's no killing there's no you there's no the other and there's no killing because of this interrelatedness um and so for me um i have found this these teachings extremely relieving around death because i feel like um it's just we're changing form every day every day we we we're older we're weaker um we fall apart and um and then at death we our farm just changes uh and it just continues to change that's all it's just a continuation of the change that we've already experienced our whole life so in a way it's not a big deal it's almost more a big deal um the big deal seems like you know this is so this is the bright side now this is the bright side where there is where there is um absolute in independence and that absolute independence mind would would uh miss the person terribly that's in a way the death is is worse for the people who haven't died but anyway i have felt enormously relieved about with these teachings regarding death i'll just i'll just say that the next question is do buddhists think or try to improve the american government directly does anyone think it's possible to improve society on a grand scheme um buddhists the buddhists um teachers um now there's a whole cohort of teachers buddhist teachers these days who are um really mainly doing social justice work but um buddhism per se um stays out of those questions and and here's why they feel that um the practice of zazen absorbs absorbs the uh vibrations of pain in the world and uh what they're doing is zazen practice and i know that seems irrelevant to people who are um activists let's say but i'll just i guess the best example is Thich Nhat Hanh who uh very famously uh attends peace marches and he he does his walking his walking zazen practice um because he says you know you guys are yelling and screaming about peace but i am being peace i am being peace and you can say that about zazen as well that you are being peace and that's what you're doing about social justice i'm not talking about right or wrong i'm just saying that that's what that's what um many buddhist practitioners uh follow that that that way of practicing and addressing the pain in the world that was the last question all right um i i'm so grateful for your attendance and your effort which i feel and we'll meet again next week thank you so much