The Buddhist View of Living Itself

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If anybody living in this area, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or so on, wants to buy the Shobogenzo books or the Shinji Shobogenzo book, which are published by me, you can buy them from me at a very cheap price. If you contact Pavel, he can email me, and I'm happy to sell the books to people over here. I think five pounds for one book and about five pounds postage, so maybe ten pounds, book plus postage. If you buy them somewhere else, they're quite expensive.

Shall we chant Kaikyoge?

[recitation, 00:02:53–00:03:36]

Today is the last opportunity to have a talk, so I'd like to talk about the Buddhist view of living itself. The Buddhist view of living itself is rather different from our normal view of our life in society. Living in normal society, we all create our life by remembering what happened in the past and planning what will happen in the future.

For me, I have an image of my life in my head. I'm going back to Bristol, and Bristol exists over there. I came here from Bristol last week, and now I've spent a few days here in the Czech Republic. Tomorrow I'll return to Bristol. Then next weekend I'm going to an accordion workshop. Later in the year, I'm going to Scotland for a retreat. And I'm going to visit my daughter in Australia. So inside my head, all this is my life.

We all hold an image of our lives inside our head. And that image is like a straight line of time: the past is back here, the future is over there, and I'm in the middle. So I'm moving along from the past through the present to the future, like a train. In order to move forward into the future, I need to think what I'm going to do next, plan, and then do it. This is our normal view of our life. And this is the way that society works, because we plan our future activities in cooperation with other people. And so we can all meet here together.

But the Buddhist view of life is a little different. I'd like to say more stupid. But the word stupid is not exactly right. If you remember, I talked about the spider on the first day here. And I said the spider is doing and thinking as one thing. That is, the spider's actions themselves are intelligent. So without thinking, the spider acts intelligently. In Buddhism, the view of our life is similar to that.

Buddhism says that the past, everything we did in the past, has already ended, although we hold the memory of the past with us all the time. That memory of our past we are holding in our consciousness in the present. And although we hold an image of the future in our consciousness, actually, the future hasn't happened yet. So we are in the present. The past is in the present, and the future is in the present. Our whole image of our life is in the present. Everything is in the present.

In the present, we are already receiving the result of what we did, of what we ate, of how we slept and so on. If we stay up late and don't sleep enough, we feel sleepy. If we've had a lot of wine to drink, we feel heavy. So in the present, we are already receiving the result of our past conduct.

However, the future hasn't been created yet. Or, more accurately, we are creating it at every moment. My action in the present creates the future. I pick up the sheet of paper, and the world changes. You put your hands together, and the world changes. If you leave at one o'clock this afternoon, it's different from if you leave at two o'clock this afternoon. So at every moment we make small choices, and those small choices are stepping into the future, step by step.

So although in our minds we may be thinking about plans and making arrangements for future things, actually, at every moment we make one step. One step. And our action at every moment creates the next step. So we're creating our lives at every moment. We create our own future, and we live the result of our own past. We cannot escape the result of our past conduct. We are free to choose which direction to go in this moment.

So Buddhism says that in this moment we have freedom. Not freedom in the sense of I can do anything, if I have lots of money, I can do anything. Not that kind of freedom, but a very simple freedom. Put my leg up or leave my leg down. Cough or not cough. Blow my nose or wait. Talk or keep quiet. So Buddhism says these simple actions in the present actually create our future.

But normally we don't think like that. We think about some goal or aim we want to get to, and we try to get ourselves towards it without noticing where we're going. So sometimes we don't end up at our aim at all. In fact, we never end up at our aim, because our aim is only an idea when we make it. But when we arrive there, it's always different.

For instance, if you book a hotel in the south of Spain for a holiday, looking at the beautiful photographs in the brochure: Should we have this room? That would be nice. And when we arrive, the hotel isn't finished yet. Or we worry ourselves about an interview we have to go to. We think, oh dear, I'm going to make a mess of it, I feel very nervous. But when it happens, we perform quite confidently.

So although we are always creating aims, we don't notice that we never reach the aim which we created in our mind. Where we actually arrive is where we arrive from each action, moment by moment. So this Buddhist view of life says that our action in the present is important. Although we might worry about big problems in the future, actually, we can only take one step at a time. And taking one step, the problem itself changes.

If you've been hiking in big mountains, you might have had the experience of walking along and looking at the place you're going to in the mountains. But after five minutes, you look again, and everything looks completely different. Another ten minutes, and everything looks different. You can see round the corner, down the valley. So you have to change where you're going according to what you see at this moment. I talk about walking in the mountains because I've done a lot of it. But it's similar walking through a city. Every few metres, your view of the city changes.

And this is true of our life. So although we might have a big problem to solve, we can't solve it completely from here, but we can take one step. Then the problem may change a little. Then we take another step. Then it might seem like a different problem. So we can proceed stupidly, not finding a solution to our problems from here, but solving the problem by walking into the future. Because our walking into the future is intelligent even when we don't think about it.

Although the spider is not thinking how to make his web, as he moves, he creates his web. Where is the plan? The spider has a little plan. It's mysterious. So living itself is intelligent. We can move forward in our life, acting in our life, not always thinking where we're going. I don't mean we shouldn't think where we're going. But we should notice that living itself is intelligent. So our lives unfold in spite of us.

In spite of our efforts to plan, our life unfolds as it does. I don't mean we shouldn't plan. But our life itself is a series of steps, moment to moment, and those steps themselves are intelligent. In Buddhism, this intelligence is called prajñā. Prajñā in Sanskrit: pra means before, like Latin pre, and jnana, the verb jnana, is like the Greek gnos. It means thinking or knowledge. So prajñā means before thinking, or before knowledge.

So, in Buddhism, we say that our life is led by prajñā. Some people translate this prajñā as wisdom. But it's more subtle than wisdom, and sometimes more stupid than wisdom. We're walking along the street on the left-hand side, and we cross over to the right-hand side, and something falls on the pavement. There are many situations in our life where we make choices without knowing why. We notice these in very severe or emergency situations. Sometimes in an emergency situation, we act and then we say, I don't know what I did, I just did it. We act intelligently without thinking.

Dogen calls this different from thinking, because we can't say it's not intelligent, but we can't say that it's normal thinking. So Buddhism says we can lead our lives in this way, according to prajñā. It's a valid way to live: just acting at every moment, adjusting our plans according to the scenery at this moment, noticing that each step is some kind of small solution. So it's a nice way to live. But you can't become rich, or famous. So lots of people don't like it.

So I'll stop talking now. Please talk about anything.

Participant: I would like to say something. You said that in our lives, we always like to project some goal into the future. So I would just like to share my experience. I started playing guitar when I was eight. And for a long time, I thought that the only thing in life that would satisfy me would be to become a professional player. So for years I was practising, playing shows, but somehow it was always a struggle. And finally, at one moment it happened, and at that moment I realised that that's not it. What I imagined it would be was completely different in reality. It was a dream. But then, after some time, again I started to enjoy playing, just playing.

Participant: There are some situations that feel very natural to... When I'm cycling through Glasgow, the streets of Glasgow have got many potholes in them, and I have to avoid the potholes, otherwise I fall into them. So I suppose my question is: why do we sometimes not follow that way in some situations?

Mike: Because we're human. So the best we can do is to notice that there are two situations. One is social reality, which is the world we create in our lives with other people and society and work and so on. And this reality exists in our consciousness, or in our head, not only our head. And then ultimate reality, which is our simple actions at every moment. So everybody lives both of those. Everybody. So Buddhism doesn't belong to Buddhists. Everybody on this earth is living in both those ways.

But society doesn't teach us to live in the ultimate reality, simple reality. So we have to rediscover it for ourselves sometimes. You can't get rid of the other one. But while you are rushing forward to reach some aim, you can notice your feet. So both ways of living are the same. It sounds like a contradiction.

Participant: Except that one is real and one isn't real.

Mike: Yes, but they're both the same. So while we are living in our created world, we are also living in the real world at the same time.

Participant: It's interesting, though, isn't it, that this sort of instantaneous view, or the instantaneous nature of existence, is called the Buddhist view.

Participant: Yes, but actually it's real, and in fact it's the other way round, isn't it? This is real, and maybe we should talk about the human view, because that's the one that is a view, a perspective.

Mike: Yes. Well, no, it's a perspective or a view. It's my view, for example, or Nagarjuna's view, or your view. It's a way of looking at life, or thinking about life. And when we're in our normal social role, we have another way of thinking about life. But life itself is only one. It doesn't have any view or any words. It's just life, and we do it. So not Buddhist life or social life, just life itself.

Roman: I think you mean that the Buddhist view points to reality, but it's still a view. It's a way of explaining something, but we still call it Nagarjuna's view or Dogen's view. But you mean it points to something real that is beyond views.

Participant: Mike, if we have something in the future which is very worrying for us, it can be very hard to live step by step.

Mike: Yes, but we are living step by step. Very hard, step by step.

Participant: Recently I've been told that I may be made redundant after 20 years working for... And it may not happen for a year or two years. But I've been really surprised by how anxious that's made me feel, and the effect that it has had on me, or on how I live. I don't know what my question is.

Mike: It's natural to feel anxious and afraid and rejected and all the feelings like that. And you can't avoid it. The way forward is to feel like that. But as the days pass, things will look different. It may get worse. It may get better. But it will be different. So we can't avoid problems. Problems are our life itself. We can only face them. Even when we're crying and shaking, we can face something. If we try to avoid problems, our life becomes very miserable.

But we can have some other kind of stability, which we can hardly notice if we are very, very worried or anxious, because that stability is not in our mind. It's in us, in our moving forward. In the Shobogenzo, Dogen wrote a chapter called Zazen, the State Like the Sea. He wanted to make an image: deep down, the sea is still, but on the surface there are storms. So we can't avoid the storms on the surface. But zazen can give us the stability of the deep ocean, which is not the same as a peaceful mind. So even when we are worried, frightened, upset, very, very chaotic, still we can have stability. This is called coping with life.

Roman: Last night I couldn't fall asleep, and I kept thinking about something, and maybe until three in the morning I couldn't stop, couldn't fall asleep. But at about three, I realised that I wasn't worrying about not falling asleep. And I know that maybe five years ago, I would have been very furious, and maybe I would have broken something out of frustration. So I think this is the difference between... I think maybe the session helps me too, or maybe the session is the reason why I couldn't fall asleep. But definitely, I think zazen can help us face a problem without jumping out of the window or hitting someone. So eventually I fell asleep.

Participant: But if we have a goal, it greatly increases the probability that we will reach it, or maybe not exactly the image that was in our mind, but something like that.

Mike: Yes, it's true.

Participant: That means it's quite important to have a goal,

Mike: Yes.

Participant: so that... And the question then is: what is a worthwhile goal in life, for example? What...

Participant: A carrot on a stick.

Mike: Just up here, then we get up, and then we wash our face, and then we go to work, and we come home. So it's important to have a goal, yes.

Participant: And it's important to throw it away.

Participant: Both.

Participant: Perhaps the problem that some people have with goals is the expectation that they're going to achieve the goal, rather than just going along.

Mike: Yes. I'm not saying you shouldn't have goals. You can live a goal-driven life, and lots of people do. And without a goal, we don't get out of bed. But the Buddhist view is that the goal gets us out of bed, the goal gets us into the bathroom, the goal gets us down the stairs. So it's a different kind of view. It doesn't mean you have to throw away your other views.

Participant: Is each of those actions the giving up, like, you know, when you do zazen, you should just give up, or like a sportsman, I suppose?

Mike: Yes. For instance, if you watch professional tennis players playing a match, you see them waiting for the new serve, and they're bouncing about. Why are they bouncing about? Because they want to get themselves into a position where they're not thinking where the ball will come, or they're not thinking, I might miss the ball, or I want to hit the ball, but they're just waiting there. Or if they've just missed a shot, you can see them trying to forget, to bring themselves back into the present. And bringing ourselves back into the present is to throw away our goal.

So in that sense, we have to keep throwing it away, but we also need it. I'm sorry I can't give a simple explanation of the whole of life. But I just do my best.

Participant: I was recently reading a book about Shunryu Suzuki, and one of his students apparently made the point that there's just too much suffering in the world. And he replied, No, there's just the right amount of suffering. It struck me as quite an outrageous comment at the time. But for me it points to something really quite... how other this kind of Buddhist viewpoint actually is from my own, really, culturally perhaps.

Participant: I mean, Suzuki had a very difficult life, lived in a difficult period of history, and had a lot of personal tragedy. It wasn't coming from a place of complacency. It wasn't sort of sitting on some lotus.

Participant: That's right.

Roman: He wasn't complacent. He wasn't pretending to be perfect.

Participant: He had lots of tragedies in his life. He knew what suffering was.

Participant: What is it you said that made them laugh? Are you a religious one?

Participant: No, no, no. I just want to say to Paul: I got made redundant four or five years ago. And I was terrified. And in fact, I got made redundant, and I spent a few delightful months cooking and spending time with my baby daughter. And then I got a job which was much nicer than the last job. So I think it's very bad the way that companies make people redundant, because they tell you months in advance that it's going to happen, which encourages you to worry about things which haven't happened yet. But in fact, the things that haven't happened yet are completely different from the way you think they will be.

Mike: So a wonderful job is waiting for you.

Roman: I think it also applies to breaking up with people. Yeah, a beautiful...

Mike: A wonderful woman is waiting for you.

Roman: Oh, and it leaves you? A better one is waiting there.

Mike: No, not better, but also one that is different. A wonderful future is waiting for us all. And here it is.

Participant: I'm not here.

Mike: Thank you very much.

Participant: Thank you.

Mike: Shall we recite Fueko?

[recitation, 00:57:01–00:58:02]

Thank you very much.

Participant: Thank you.

Mike: And thank you very much for interpreting.