So,
To start off,
Dogen,
Zen Master Dogen,
Who was the founder of the Soto Zen School of Zen Buddhism,
Famously wrote that to study the Buddha's way is to study yourself.
And to study yourself is to forget yourself.
When we forget the self,
We realize our intimacy,
Our non-duality with all of life,
With all of life,
Important factor.
So non-duality literally means not to.
That two things we have understood as separate from one another are in fact not separate at all.
They're so dependent upon each other that they're in effect two different sides of the same coin.
This is a way of understanding non-duality.
For example,
Rich and poor seem to be two different concepts,
Right?
But if you think about it,
They're not really separate.
You can't have one without the other.
If you don't understand what poor means,
You don't know what rich means and vice versa.
And psychologically it's important because if the most important thing in your life is to become rich,
It also means that you are preoccupied with poverty,
Afraid of being poor.
So another useful example,
Which was pointed out,
A lot of my research comes from the work of David Loy.
He's a meditation teacher and he wrote a book called Non-Duality,
A Study in Comparative Philosophy.
I'll say that again.
It's Non-Duality,
A Study in Comparative Philosophy,
And I recommend it.
And so in his book,
He points out another idea,
Which is sort of the idea of pure versus impure.
So if the most important thing for you is to live a life of purity,
The implication is that you're living a life preoccupied with impurity because you need to constantly be looking for sort of like all the ways that your thoughts and your acts are not aligned with purity.
The meaning of each of these concepts from rich and poor and pure and impure is they negate each other.
They only have meaning in relationship to each other.
Good versus evil is another one because again,
You can't have one without the other.
Good is what is not evil and evil is what is not good.
And we're seeing this on the world stage right now with what is happening with the anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hate speech that's floating all over the airways.
Our whole world is framed by splitting things into separate sides and you can really see this duality.
Yet on the Buddhist path,
We're learning that there are other ways of experiencing the world right here and now.
So how do we actually transform our usual way of experiencing the world?
This is where meditation comes in.
It's my understanding that our path,
Our spiritual path,
Involves a deconstructing and a reconstructing of how we experience the world and how we experience ourselves because the world includes this sense of solid self.
The sense of self is constructed by the ways that we think,
How we act.
So when we let go of the ways that we've learned to think,
Which can happen when we're meditating,
We can experience life differently.
And what I was considering,
Which David Loy brought in his book,
Is that this reconstruction process that is part of our meditation practice,
It really touches on karma.
It involves transforming our motivation because our motivation actually causes us to experience the world in a particular way.
So in the Buddhist teachings,
If you're motivated by what are known as the three poisons,
If you're motivated by greed,
If you're motivated by hatred and ignorance,
The karma that's created in that motivation is dukkha,
Is suffering.
So someone who is motivated by greed and hatred and ignorance lives in a very different world than someone who is motivated by generosity and loving kindness and wisdom.
So by transforming our motivations,
That determines how we relate to other people and to the world at large.
We actually come to experience the world differently,
Not two,
But one.
This is the direction.
So the freedom of self and no self,
It's interesting with these concepts,
These ideas,
It's seen as part of this ever-present expansion and then contraction.
Self and no self appears and disappears all the time in our lives,
In our daily life.
We have the self that is useful to stay oriented in our world.
We know our phone numbers,
We know our zip code,
And we can hold to and understand that we are part of this mysterious being human.
We are part of consciousness made up of the same material as trees and earth and ocean.
We can hold that understanding,
Not self.
I can also drive on the right side of the road and pay my taxes,
Self.
Both are true,
Right?
The very nature of being human is temporary,
Which means we are in constant process,
Physical and mental process.
And when we become non-dual with these processes,
When we become one,
The past is not something that sort of falls away and the future is not something that's coming.
We're living in what is often called in this container,
The eternal present.
The eternal present.
And it's interesting because the etymology of the word eternity means without beginning and without end.
So what's without beginning and without end now,
Now,
But we usually overlook that and experience the present as something is constantly falling away,
Becoming past because we're always reaching out for something that's not now that's in the future,
Right?
We're habitually grasping at something that we think is going to fill us up.
It's going to fill this sense of lack.
Always rejecting what is now for what will be in the future and missing what's here.
There's a very important teaching that I really love and I want to share with you as we come to a close today.
It's by the Indian sage,
Nisargadatta,
Who said,
When I look inside,
I see that I am nothing.
That is wisdom.
When I look outside,
I see that I am everything.
That is love.
Between these two,
My life flows.
Between these two,
My life flows.
Our basic delusion or ignorance is of separation.
The sense that there is an I that is inside and a world that is outside is the most fundamental and problematic duality that is causing the most suffering in our world.
So again,
When I look inside and see what I see is I am nothing.
That is wisdom.
When I look outside and see that I am everything,
That is love.
And between these two,
My life flows.
Thank you for your kind attention this morning.
