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Happy To Be

I'm David Cohn. What I'm assuming about all of you is that we're all here—you're all here, in your own unique way, to be freer from suffering than you are now, a little more liberated than you are right now, which is compassion.

So we all share this. It is so human. We all share this human quality of compassion. Isn't that nice? It's like a field, a field of compassion. Not just among each other, but with your family and your friends, and everybody in Redwood City, everybody, all beings everywhere. Poor people in war-torn countries, poor people who are afflicted by climate, floods, and heat. But just on an everyday level, you all know it: dukkha^[1]. Do you know what dukkha means? The Buddha said dukkha is a quality of inherent dissatisfaction that human beings have.

All beings have dukkha. All beings want to be free from dukkha, free from suffering. All beings have this. We share this compassion for ourselves, for each other. Not just human beings, all beings. Insects scurry away when they feel your approach. And we also share a desire, kind of the two sides of one coin: the desire to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be at ease and peaceful, to have some sense of well-being, which is like a quality of love. We have some intrinsic love that wants to be happy, wants our loved ones to be happy, wants our loved ones to be peaceful and at ease. Does that make sense? We share this love. Isn't that wonderful? We share a field of love in here. We all have this. In your own way, you're all meditating tonight and motivated. You came here tonight motivated in some way by these tender heart qualities in you.

So I was reflecting as we were meditating: who am I? Who are we? What am I? How did this all come about? There is a saying by Milarepa^[2], a saint and a national treasure in Tibet, who said something like: "Strong and healthy, we don't think of sickness until sickness strikes like lightning. Caught up in the world, we don't consider death until death strikes like thunder." So those are other things that we share. I am older than most of you here, but very soon, all of you will get sick, and won't be able to sit here and meditate.

That observation was meant to say, let's not waste time here. We don't have much time here. What do you want to do with this time? Do you want to get distracted until you get sick? None of us want to get involved with the five poisons—greed, hatred, jealousy, pride, and all these things that hurt. We don't want to do that. But sometimes we just want to spend this time thinking about what really matters to you. What do you want from this time, honestly, truthfully? What is meaningful to you?

The Buddha's Search for Meaning

The Buddha was amazing. He had what many people would consider the perfect life. According to the worldly value system, he had wealth and sensual pleasures. An oracle had told his father, "You're going to have a son who is going to take one of two paths. One path is going to be that he will be like you, our great king, with power over many kingdoms, revered, respected, and feared by many people. Or he'll become a renunciate. He'll become a sage, a monk, a spiritual seeker."

His father didn't want that. So he created this haven of earthly delights. He was not exposed to any suffering whatsoever. A nice scent pervaded the castle, with music and art and a loving family. He was the best at athletics, he was so smart, loved by his parents, and he had a family. He had a loving wife and one son, Rahula.

But then he went into the town, unbeknownst to his father. I forget how old he was, maybe in his late twenties. He saw sickness. He saw somebody who was clearly very ill and asked his charioteer, "What's going on there? I've never seen that before." And the charioteer said, "Well, that man's really sick." Then he saw an old man and asked, "What's going on there? I've never seen that before." "Well, human beings get old." Then he saw a corpse being carried through the village. "What's going on there? What's that all about?" "Well, human beings die." And then he saw a man with a shaved head and robes, walking peacefully through the village. "Who's that?" And he said, "Well, that's a spiritual seeker. That's a sage."

This struck him deeply—that human beings get old, get sick, and die. He became obsessed with what was going on here. Whatever was happening with him before—these earthly pleasures, these earthly delights, reputation and so forth—paled in comparison to this question of: Who am I? What am I? What's meaningful?

So he left the castle, left his family behind, wore robes, and pursued yogic practices. He pursued the most strenuous yogic practices that were going on in India, with the greatest teachers, and he surpassed all of his teachers in these practices. But he had no answer to these questions; it didn't really resolve anything. Then he did concentration practices, the jhānas^[3]. He surpassed all of his masters in these concentration practices, and he went into deep levels of space, peace, and nothingness. But he would always come out of those and say, "So what? Nothing's happened here. Nothing's happened to me. I'm no further along in understanding what's going on here, this mystery of finding meaning, of finding who I am, of what's truly important."

He had five friends who were ascetics, and they were practicing extreme asceticism. They barely ate. All these practices and pursuits didn't bring him any peace or resolution. He became so thin, like a skeleton. It was said that only a mustard seed could separate his spine from his belly, and he almost passed out by the side of a river. I hope it is okay I'm telling you this long story; it will come to a punchline pretty soon. [Laughter]

A shepherdess was watching him from across the river, and she understood what a great sage he must be. She saw him almost die, almost collapse by the river as a skeleton. Her name was Sujata. She crossed the river and brought him a bowl of rice milk, and she said, "Venerable sir, would you accept my offering of some rice milk?" The ascetics around him were just appalled. They would not be drinking this bowl of rice milk, but he did. He said, "Okay, I will." He drank it, and he revived a little bit. The ascetics left in disgust, and he went over and sat by a tree.

Letting Go of the Self

He had just given up on all this striving. All the wanting to become, all the wanting to get rid of negative states of mind, to get rid of thoughts, to get rid of distractions, maybe even emotions—he gave it up. He just sat by that tree, and a memory came to him from when he was seven years old, just an innocent boy sitting by a tree watching his father do plowing exercises out in the fields.

This is what I'm getting to: he just gave up. He just sat there and gave up striving, and he just became himself. He gave up trying to become somebody else, trying to become some goal or something other than just this. And he became enlightened. Something wonderful dawned on him. He had a lot of very positive karma that had been built up that allowed him to have this fantastic experience, but it just came over him. This enlightenment came just by being himself.

He described what he had been looking for all this time: "This is peaceful. Not even me, just this. This is profound. This is natural. This is beyond concepts. This is luminous." Who knows exactly what he said, but these are some words that have been passed down. And he sat with that. He sat at ease with that.

There's a story about a rabbi, his name was Zuzia^[4]. He was a great rabbi, and he had many congregants that adored him. People would give him gifts and money, and he'd always give everything away. His family lived in utter poverty, but he was just a totally kind, good man. When he was dying, his congregants gathered around him, and he was crying. His congregants asked, "Zuzia, why are you crying?" He said, "I'm afraid to go to heaven." They said, "Why are you afraid to go to heaven? You'll present yourself to God. You've been as kind as Abraham, you've been as wise and just as Moses." He said, "I'm not afraid that God will ask me, 'Zuzia, why weren't you more like Abraham? Why weren't you more like Moses?' He'll ask, 'Why weren't you more like Zuzia?'"

This craving that we have to create some kind of superior self, or get rid of inferior selves, or to adorn this self with praise from others, with reputation, with achievements—hoping for all these adornments of self. I think it's safe to say these are common to all of us. We want to be praised. We want to be liked. We want to have a good reputation. We want to achieve, we want nice things, we want pleasures for this self. It's all about the self. We don't want to be criticized. We hate to be criticized. We hate to be judged, and we judge ourselves. We hate to fail. All these worldly endeavors have to do with a dualistic perspective, that there's this "me" and "other," and I want this "me" to acquire, be seen, and so forth. The pain and the suffering around the self is something that's addressed by all Buddha Dharma. It's the problem. The self is the problem.

And when Zuzia wanted to be himself, and when the Buddha let go of all striving to become—all striving to be like Abraham, to be like Moses, to be like the other patriarchs, just to be himself—it is like a no-self. It's like giving up and just relaxing into whatever this is. In the Theravada tradition, it's called no-self. In the Zen tradition or the Mahayana tradition, it's called emptiness. In the Vajrayana tradition, it's called the Dharmakāya^[5]. It's understanding that we aren't a self.

The more we understand that, and the more we let go of our grasping to self and our aversions to what's not validating the self we want to be validated, the more we let go of this dualistic perspective and come back to what is really no-self at all. The degree we can do that is the degree that we are relieved of suffering, the degree that we are happy. There's a correlation: the less we think about, are concerned about, and strive about ourselves, the more at ease we are. Doesn't that make sense? So it's like we don't have to do anything at all. Just to be is enough. Just to be.

Spiritual Materialism vs. Emptiness

There's a story of a great master who was speaking to a large congregation. He was on a platform or podium, giving a talk to his followers, and over to his side was the president of the congregation. The master said, "My dear followers, my dear congregation, I've come here today to tell you something very important, very profound." And then he started to cry. Tears came into his eyes, and he said, "I have finally discovered that I am nothing." He started to weep, and there was silence in the auditorium. People were enrapt, just looking at what was going on here.

Then the president walks over and addresses the congregants. He said, "You know, I've been your president for so many years, and I've followed the Great Master. I, too, have finally plumbed the depths, and I realized that I am nothing." And he's crying too. People just don't know what to think; they're struck.

Then, from the back of the hall, there was a small, older man who'd been the janitor taking care of the building for thirty or forty years. He was so moved that he fell to his knees from the back of the hall and yelled out, "I am nothing! I am nothing! I know that I am nothing!" And he was crying. The president goes up to the Great Master and says, "So, look who thinks he's nothing." [Laughter] Yeah, so there can be spiritual materialism as well as worldly materialism.

But to examine this idea of no-self, this idea of emptiness, it's like a bit of a scientific proof. We're clearly not our bodies. I'm holding out my hands; if you feel your fingers, you feel the pulsations. The body is changing on a micro level. It's just pulsing, pulsing. The whole body is in constant change from microsecond to microsecond—the blood going through the system, the digestion of food. On a slightly more macro level, the breath is constantly changing. We're always changing. Our form is always changing, so we are not this body. I was a little boy not too long ago; look what I am now, an older man.

So you're not your body. You're not your mind. Your thoughts are like butterflies flickering and flickering, changing. What were you thinking thirty seconds ago? Just thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. We often think, "I'm this thought, I'm that thought, this happened to me." But it changes very, very quickly. Even the most stuck thoughts give way relatively quickly. And thoughts are teabags for our feelings. Feelings change a little more slowly, but what were you feeling a half hour ago? What are you feeling now? If you listen, what are you hearing? You can sense the changing; you can't grasp it. With seeing, we think we're seeing something, but really I'm just seeing pieces. My focus is always changing. We're in a state of complete change all the time. So we're not our sense perceptions, we're not our thoughts, our mental formations, and we're not our body.

What are we? What are you? This is the question that was driving the Buddha. From a scientific perspective, quantum physics tells us that the particles that make us up are the same particles that are everywhere. When looked at under a microscope, it's all the same. And what's more, atoms are made up of subatomic particles, which goes on ad infinitum. You cannot actually see a particle, and they're moving at hundreds of thousands of times the speed of light. To add insult to injury, we are 99.999% space. So in a way, we're like that great master: we are nothing. We are nobody, and we have nothing, because it's all just changing.

That's a very cognitive perspective, but it's true. Contemplation and inquiry are a very healthy part of our spiritual practice, to get down to what is really here: Who am I? What's worthwhile? Why am I practicing? What do I want? It's important. The Buddha concluded: just to be. Just to relax, to let go. To not try to become some illusion that we're pursuing, and just be like space—open and empty.

Luminous Consciousness

But we are not nothing. We can see and hear, vividly alive and present. It's wonderful what we are. We're conscious. As we were meditating just now, I was reflecting that we have this awareness. We're conscious, and I was looking out thinking, all of you are conscious. We're conscious of hearing, conscious of sight, conscious of thinking, conscious of feeling. The Buddha named eight consciousnesses^[6]. Besides the five sense doors, there was thinking. And then he had a whole separate category for the self—"me, me, me" thoughts, feelings, and impulses. The "selfing" consciousness. Wonderful, I have this selfing consciousness. And then the afflictions, the habitual afflictions.

So just look around today: what consciousness were you involved with at the time? Were you involved with the consciousness of an affliction, like low self-esteem? Or were you conscious of the breath, of sensory perception, or hearing? When we relax and just be, we are not just empty. We are not just nothing. We are vividly luminous.

Q&A

David Cohn: So does anybody have any questions, comments, or thoughts that have been raised in you?

Speaker 2: Thank you, David, for the discussion. I really liked the part where you mentioned checking our level of consciousness as we sit and meditate. It allowed me to think about whether I am striving for something when I sit, or if I am conscious of the breath—or whatever it is that I'm trying to focus on. So thank you for helping me be aware of that.

David Cohn: It's good to have the breath as a support, but not as a goal. It is a support to be conscious, to be aware. It supports consciousness, a support for just being here. Simply being. Not trying to be the best breath meditator in the world, just a support to be simple and humble.

Thank you.