The Buddha’s Discovery

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We were just talking about Brad Warner in the kitchen, so I'm going to tell him that I can get lots of prestige when I tell people I know him. If you read his book, you'd know that his understanding of Buddhism is very, very closely based on his own real experience. This is very, very important. In spiritual religions, we look for an experience which we don't have. We hope to have it. We long to have it. But in Buddhism, when we look for the experience, we look at the experience that we're having. So when we say, what is life, or what is reality, it means not the reality we don't have yet, but the reality that we're having now. So all of Buddhist teaching is about the reality that we're having or experiencing now. If it's not based on real experience, I'm not interested.

Looking at the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, who lived around 450 BC, I believe that he based his teaching on his real experience. So I have written out the story of his life as I understand it. It's a little different from the traditional stories. But I can't understand the traditional stories. From the traditional stories, it sounds as if Gautama Buddha, while sitting, suddenly created a very complex system of philosophical thinking from nowhere. I think that's impossible. So here's my version. I changed it to suit my experience. This is absolutely forbidden for a scholar. So if I read my story to a Buddhist scholar, they will leave through the nearest door.

So here it is. Around 450 BC, in India, the prince of the Sakya clan was living a luxurious and materially comfortable life in his father's palace. But he noticed that his life, based on material comfort, did not make him feel satisfied. Although he had every material comfort, was married with a wife and a son, and was heir to his father's throne, deep down he felt dissatisfied. Intuitively, he felt something was missing, and he couldn't get rid of this feeling of dissatisfaction with his life. So he decided to search for what was missing. Leaving the palace, he wandered around and eventually met a group of ascetic yogins. Yogins are related to yoga. They lived in the open, in the forest, and they denied themselves all physical comfort, only eating the minimum amount of food to stay alive.

They pursued higher levels of spiritual consciousness, which they believed they could attain by a spiritual practice called dhyāna. In Sanskrit, dhyāna means meditation. They sat with their legs crossed in the lotus posture, and they starved themselves. By this means, they stimulated their minds to create and enter higher realms of the spirit. They believed that at the highest level of consciousness they would be able to see the fundamental events that created the world. They believed the world consisted of fundamental particles, which they called dharmas. Dharma in Sanskrit has many meanings. These dharmas came into existence because they stayed in the world for a short time and then disappeared. They believed all existence was based on this coming into existence and going out of existence. They also believed that the very highest level was spiritual consciousness. They thought they could see this creation and destruction of reality. This is what they wanted to get.

So the young prince was caught by their zeal and enthusiasm. He was caught by their enthusiasm and their search for the highest state. So he joined them. He sat in the forest with them. He starved himself with them. He followed the same goals for about six years. He practised very sincerely, and the stories say he gritted his teeth. Do you know this expression? Holding his teeth together, gritting his teeth and denying himself lots of things that, in another part of him, he wanted, denying himself food and comfort and so on. But still, he felt dissatisfied. Intuitively, he felt that what he was searching for, the thing that was missing in his life, he couldn't find in the forest.

So at last he left his companions, and his dream had been shattered. The story says that he walked out of the forest and bumped into a girl who was herding goats, who offered him a gourd, a cup, a bowl of warm goat's milk. When he drank it, he realized that eating is important, drinking is important. After many years of denying himself all physical satisfaction, he felt the simple happiness of drinking warm milk.

He set up his camp on the edge of the forest, under a large tree. The weather in India is very warm, so you can live outside very easily. His six years of hard practice had made him quite tough. The practice of dhyāna, which he did with his yogin friends, had become second nature to him. He felt very comfortable sitting on a cushion, with his body held vertical, his head balanced on his shoulders, and his legs folded in the lotus posture.

So he sat in his simple camp and contemplated his life. He remembered he'd been deeply dissatisfied with his materially comfortable life in the palace. At the same time, he had to acknowledge that his dream of attaining some special state of consciousness had been broken. In this aimless state, late one evening, while he was sitting on his cushion, he noticed the stars in the sky above him, and he felt at peace. It occurred to him that to feel peace just at that moment was enough. In that moment he realized clearly that what he'd been searching for for so many years was right there in front of him.

He realized that the whole of his life was right there in that place, just at that moment. The whole of his life and the whole of the world felt just right, as it is. His dissatisfaction disappeared. He was amazed that the answer to his problem was so simple. He continued to sit and reflect on his experience for about a month or so, and he realized that he had found some kind of deep balance in his life. At last, the internal conflict inside him, which had made him leave the palace, go to the forest, leave the forest and come to where he was— he realized that he had found the middle way, between the two extremes which had formed his life so far. On the one hand, the extreme of material pleasure; on the other hand, extreme spiritual enthusiasm. At last he noticed another way, which wasn't one or the other. It was between the two.

The days passed and he realized clearly that sitting in the posture of dhyāna was in some way connected with his balanced state. He felt that although he had learned to sit in this way to pursue some spiritual goal, the practice itself was very, very important and valuable. He was sitting in a posture where the weight of his upper body was balanced on his cushion. He didn't need to make a strenuous effort to sit upright. It seemed natural to do so. He realized intuitively that this balanced posture was deeply connected with his simple realization about his life. He felt that through this simple sitting posture he had returned to his natural state as a human being. So the prince felt at peace. But something still pushed him forward. He felt some kind of mission. Just sitting in his camp at peace was not enough for him. He realized that he needed to try and explain to his friends what he had experienced. How would he be able to explain to them the simple experience that had changed his life? How could he put it into words? Surely they would misunderstand him.

But he felt he must try. In fact, he couldn't stop himself. So he left his camp and went to find his five friends. After some time he found them in the forest and approached them. Seeing their old friend coming up to them, the ascetics did not feel happy. They thought that the prince had abandoned them, and they wondered what he wanted. Then they noticed that he looked very well. He looked radiant. They welcomed him and he sat down.

‘Since leaving you, I have come to a deep understanding of myself and the world, and I have woken up,’ he said. ‘What kind of understanding? What kind of awakening?’ they asked doubtfully. ‘I don't know if I can explain, but I will try. I have noticed from my own life that there are some fundamental truths about life. Let me explain. For example, we often feel dissatisfied. We feel dissatisfied when our life is based on pursuing material comfort, physical comfort and pleasure. We also feel dissatisfied if our life is based on a spiritual search for perfection. Human beings seem to wobble between these two states, but we feel deeply dissatisfied with both. But I have noticed that a lot of the dissatisfaction comes from our attitude. We want to get something. We want to escape from something. We want to be better than we are.

‘And it's this wanting that creates our dissatisfaction. The more strongly we want something, a different state, a different life, a different world, the more dissatisfied we feel. But I have found another truth. I found a way of being that is in the middle between these two states that generate dissatisfaction. I have found the middle way. Sitting in the balanced posture of dhyāna under my tree, I notice that really, I'm only living here at this moment. Although I often think about the past, or dream about the future, they are not real. But sitting in dhyāna, both of these dissatisfactions disappear, and I am at peace in the present moment.’ The prince's five friends were astonished. The truth of what he said had hit them in the right spot.

‘And I have noticed one other truth,’ he said. ‘There is something we can call reality. Yes, in fact, you, my friends, have been looking for reality by pursuing the dharmas in your meditation. But reality does not exist in the higher levels of spiritual consciousness. It exists here in this place, now, at this time. It is not a state which we haven't attained yet.

‘It is not seeing dharmas. But it is a universal Dharma. It is an all-embracing reality. And we all exist unseparated from reality. We are already part of it. It is already part of us. But it is whole, not formed of parts. The universe is whole. Although we think we are separate from it, we are not. Although we experience our bodies as separate from it, they are not. This reality is almost impossible to describe in words, but it is real. It is this moment. It is our life itself. It is the universe itself. When I sit in dhyāna, I am experiencing that wholeness, that Dharma, that reality.

‘This truth embraces all other truths, but it cannot be understood with the mind alone. Understanding the nature of myself and the world like this, I am free at this place, free at this time.’

And so, 2,400 years later, in a different country, in a different culture, we can rediscover the same awakening of the Buddha again and again in our lives. Sometimes trapped by our dreams. Sometimes caught in our memories of the past. Sometimes seeking a life which is better than this one. Seeking a self that is better than this self. We create our own dissatisfaction. But if we're lucky, we can stumble over the truth of Buddhism. And sitting in the same posture as the Buddha, with our body held vertical, we can discover for ourselves that we're just here. We're living just at this moment, and in doing that, we experience the same state that Gautama Buddha experienced. The end.

Question: I think, or I feel, we should explain the different meanings of the Sanskrit word Dharma, because in your talk you used Dharma in, I guess, three different meanings: Dharma as a teaching of the Buddha, Dharma as a reality, and dharmas as things all around you. Maybe we sometimes got lost in it.

Mike: Yes, it's a very, very difficult word in Sanskrit. Dharma has more than four meanings, but the four main meanings are thing, object: for instance, an atom, a small thing. So there are lots of dharmas in this room. There are lots of dharmas on that plate. Then Dharma means behaviour or conduct, in the sense of a kind of rule of behaviour. And Dharma means a law, legal. And then in the ultimate sense, Dharma means some kind of universal law that governs the universe.

I think we could draw a curve. So we can say that everything that we discover in science, the law of gravity, or some mathematical law, all the things we discover in medicine, all the facts we discover in sociology, all the rules that we discover in our work to make things move smoothly, are all discovering part of what the universe is, part of Dharma. So the whole of human civilization is trying to discover what Dharma is. Some people think it may be to get lots of money. And they get lots of money, but they're not satisfied. So they look for something else. So we're trying to find out how things work, how the world works, how the universe works. So that's Dharma. Then dissatisfaction in Sanskrit is dukkha.

Participant: It's important to translate it as suffering.

Mike: Dissatisfaction is the opposite of satisfaction. The feeling of dissatisfaction, which we all experience. Sometimes we can call it a kind of suffering. But I prefer ‘dissatisfaction’. I suffer sometimes. Not so often. But dissatisfaction comes and goes very often. Any questions? Any comments?

Question: I'd like to ask, this is something that I've been thinking a lot about for some time, for a couple of years. The way you explain Buddhism in your talk is basically—not that I want to boast or anything, like I'm as good as you—my experience too. And I think, well, I don't understand why it doesn't work when people hear a talk like that, which is pretty clear and simple and makes sense to me. And I also find satisfaction in sitting zazen and not looking for anything special. And I'm also aware of my stupid and crazy ideas and feelings, and I realize that they are not necessary, or they are not the essence of my life. I find that it is enough to practise zazen and to be normal, to try to live a normal life in harmony with other people. Some Buddhist masters, such as Kodo Sawaki, teach in exactly this way: don't be silly, calm down and just be yourselves. But we also know that it doesn't work for many people: people have very complicated ideas and don't believe this, maybe this is not good enough. So the question is, why do you think, or why is it necessary, that someone like Master Dogen had to explain so many different complicated matters, that he wrote this well-known Shobogenzo, which has ninety-six chapters or something? And with my teacher, Roshi Kwang from California, who was Roshi Suzuki's disciple, the way we practice and what he teaches leaves a kind of feeling in me that Buddhism is not simple at all, that it is something that we have to work and practice so hard at to come at least a little bit closer to the idea of Buddha. And so I often ask myself why it is sometimes so simple and clear and satisfying, and why it is sometimes so complicated, like in Dogen's teaching or my master's teaching. When you read Shobogenzo, you think, Oh, this—I can never be where Dogen was, because he's so wonderful, he's so incredible.

Mike: Master Dogen's teachings are not difficult. But reality is very complicated. Frankly speaking, even our translation of Shobogenzo is— So I'm making interpretations of the chapters, which are clearer. Master Dogen lived in the 13th century. And in the 13th century, they knew nothing about science or psychology, or many of the concepts which we accept naturally. So he talked in a different paradigm. So it takes some time to understand Master Dogen's paradigm. This is not so difficult.

For instance, when I went to live in Japan, I entered a different culture. I couldn't understand anything, not only the language but people's expressions. They seemed to speak different words at different times. It was very strange. So if we go back to 13th-century Japan, it's very difficult to catch what he's saying. So we have to continue feeling puzzled, but not give up. If we give up, we can never understand. But actually his teachings are not so difficult. The reason that I can speak more clearly— for instance, my master— is because he can't speak fluent English. So I studied with him for many years. Then I understood what he was saying in his paradigm, and I digested it like a meal. And then I could speak freely. But many people don't want to hear about reality. It's too boring. It's too simple. It's too severe.

They don't like the person who is in front of them. They like the idea of a better person. In Europe, this is the result of 2,000 years of Christianity. Even though we say we are not Christian, or even though in Czech you had many years of communism, much deeper than that, we're still Christians. We separate good and bad. The East, China, Japan, Korea, doesn't separate good and bad in that way. We believe in becoming better, becoming closer to something which is perfect. These ideas all come from Christianity, although they are also natural human qualities.

So when people talk very simply about reality, most people aren't interested. Reality says, if you go to bed late, you can't get up in the morning. But we want to go to bed late and we want to get up. So we don't want to hear it.

Question: So the teachers have to react to the conditions in society and to the way their disciples think, right? They can't just go straight. Sometimes it's necessary to react to the complicated ideas of the students and somehow connect with them, right?

Mike: Yes. Buddhism is following reality. Not reality in here, reality here. If we study Master Dogen, for instance, when he came back from China, he introduced very many procedures and rules for the temple, and described in great detail how to lead daily life. But if we want to spread Buddhism in modern society, we have to look at modern society. If we just follow Master Dogen's rules, they may not suit our needs in terms of temple rules or temple life. In Master Dogen's time, if you wanted to practice zazen, you had to leave your family and become a monk. Productivity in those times was very low. Everybody was working to make food from morning to evening. There was no time for zazen or reading books. So you leave your family and become a monk. And then you have time to study and practice. But the modern world is not like that. We can all be monks and nuns and ordinary people at the same time. So four or five other members of Nishijima Roshi's group and I feel that the best way to spread Buddhism is not to create temples and have a hierarchy.

Jana: Oh, what's it? Hierarchy.

Mike: Yeah, they do. Here is a master.

Jana: Administrator?

Mike: Ordinary monks, lay people, ordinary people.

Participant: Animals.

Mike: So it is the standard hierarchy. But in a more natural way, which we're doing now. Any more?

Question: I want to ask about zazen some more. When you practice zazen and you sit, I wonder, do you keep your eyes fully open, or should they be halfway closed? And which way do you look when you practice zazen? Should it be at some kind of angle? I don't know much about this, so I'd like to know.

Mike: Everything in zazen is in the middle between two extremes. If we open our eyes wide, that's one extreme. If we close our eyes, that's the other extreme. So somewhere between the two. If we look at the wall very carefully, we can see faces of angels or devils. If we lose focus, we feel we're dreaming. Neither. Between the two. And this is the same with everything, but we don't notice it so clearly. If you learn to ski, you're finding a balance between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Ice skating. So we're finding a very fine balance. So sometimes, when we first practice zazen, we sit too stiffly, or we sit too relaxed. Neither. So for some months maybe we... Is it this? Is it this? Today this, tomorrow this, and then we find another position with our practice.

Question: I know the situation with breathing should be the same, should be natural. Should we breathe through the nose, and breathe in through the nose and breathe out through the mouth, or should it be kept the way the person is used to breathing?

Mike: Normally we keep the mouth closed and breathe through the nose. I think this is normal social behaviour. If somebody suddenly breathes through their mouth, they usually look a little strange. So normally we breathe through the nose and keep the mouth closed. But if our nose is blocked, we can breathe through the mouth. And I've never stopped breathing yet. I think so. So I can breathe quite naturally in zazen. I don't concentrate at all on breathing. And Master Dogen said, if you want a short breath, take a short breath. If you want a long breath, take a long breath.

And Master Dogen said it's permissible to close the eyes. But if we do so, usually we fall asleep. So he didn't deny sitting with eyes closed. But at the same time, it's better to sit in the middle position. Thank you very much.

Participant: Thank you.