{"id":17159,"date":"2019-02-13T00:48:03","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T00:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/?p=17159"},"modified":"2019-02-13T02:00:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T02:00:57","slug":"20190213","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/20190213\/","title":{"rendered":"Eko&#8217;s talk on Sawaki Kodo&#8217;s &#8220;To you&#8230;&#8221;, February 13th 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M8vh_ogDpiE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>20. To you who like to hear ghost stories<\/b><\/p>\n<p>People often ask me if ghosts really exist. Somebody who racks their brains over something like that is what I call a ghost.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIt\u2019s said that the dead appear as ghosts, but that\u2019s only true as long as you have the living. When the living are dead, they won\u2019t see any more ghosts. In Yogacara philosophy, ghosts are the tools of the living.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nOne person says he saw a ghost, someone else learned of somebody\u2019s death in a dream. What\u2019s all this besides individual scenes in the theatre of transmigration.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t everything a hallucination? It\u2019s only because we don\u2019t recognize this hallucination as a hallucination that we wander around in life and death.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEveryone is dreaming. The problem is simply the differences between the individual dreams.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen you are dreaming, it isn\u2019t clear to you that you\u2019re dreaming. If somebody hits you in the face, it hurts. But this pain is also only in the dream.<br \/>\nOne dream keeps another company, that\u2019s why even a dream doesn\u2019t recognize the other as a dream.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSome underpants are hanging to dry on a branch. Somebody sees them and thinks they\u2019ve seen a ghost. Maybe you\u2019re thinking that something like that hardly ever happens in reality, but when we think, \u201cI need money\u201d, \u201cI want to become minister\u201d, \u201cI want to get ahead\u201d \u2013 aren\u2019t we all taking a pair of underpants for a ghost?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEveryone is talking about \u201creality\u201d, but this is only a dream. It\u2019s nothing more than the reality inside a dream. Good!<br \/>\nWhen people are talking about revolution and war, we think that something really special is going on, but what is it besides struggling inside a dream?<br \/>\nWhen you die, you recognize your dream. Someone who doesn\u2019t put an end to dreaming before then is an ordinary person.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSomeone or another wrote this when committing suicide.<br \/>\n<i>That which beats and that which is beaten:<br \/>\nBoth, when they fall, return to the same dirt.<\/i><br \/>\nIt\u2019s a bit late to realize this when committing suicide. It should go:<br \/>\n<i>Both, even before they fall, are the same dirt.<\/i><br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe can neither plan nor rehearse our dreams. In the same way, dharma is a dream, the teaching is a dream. A dream teaches a dream within a dream.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIf somebody treats you to a meal within a dream, it\u2019s still just a dream. It doesn\u2019t have any calories.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe are fooling ourselves when we take the hallucination of the self we find in our consciousness to be our true self. The immortality of the soul which the new trendy religions are talking about is based on this hallucination of the self.<br \/>\nThe true self is the true nature of all buddhas and living beings. It dwells in the inseparability of mind, buddha and living beings.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhat we call our \u201cfree will\u201d is nothing more than our personal mind.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe go wrong when we judge good and bad out of the hallucination of our \u201cfree will\u201d.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIllusion consists of serving again and again the warmed-up leftovers of our consciousness.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nOur weak point as living beings lies in the fact that we produce our own hallucinations.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nAll people live in perplexity and fear.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYogacara philosophy teaches, \u201cWhen inner consciousness turns, it seems as if there were two sides.\u201d Though it\u2019s only the functioning of one single consciousness, it seems as if there were a subject and object. That\u2019s why chasing after one side or running away from the other side becomes such a big deal.<br \/>\nWhat strange illusions we have.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWandering around inside your own illusions means living your life like a sleepwalker<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEven if we put on a cool face, illusions are brewing in our heart of hearts.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nA year from now, think back to the illusions that you had yesterday during zazen:<br \/>\n<i>Two bulls made out of mud have disappeared fighting into the sea.<br \/>\nNo one has seen or heard from them since.<\/i> [T\u014dzan Ry\u014dkai]<\/p>\n<p><b>17. To you who say you don\u2019t get along with others.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Everyone talks about their own point of view, but who really cares? It\u2019d be better if you just kept your mouth shut!<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSome say, \u201cWho do you think I am anyway?\u201d An ordinary person, what else?<br \/>\n\u201cSome are proud of their wealth, others of their name and position, still others of their satori. In this way they\u2019re just showing off how ordinary they are \u2013 people these days are so stupid!\u201d<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nPeople always have something they can\u2019t forget. If they\u2019re rich, they can\u2019t forget their money. If they\u2019re intelligent, they can\u2019t forget their brains. If they\u2019re talented, they always think about how good they are at this or that. But whatever it is, it always gets in the way.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIt\u2019s only because we\u2019re so concerned about this sack of flesh that we think of ourselves as rich or beautiful or whatever. But when we die, everything is one. Nothing is yours anymore.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe\u2019re always trying to promote our ego. The only question is: How many years can we keep it up? When we\u2019re dead our body is just a piece of meat.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe same moon sometimes seems to smile, and sometimes seems to cry. Sometimes we simply admire it over a glass of sake. But whichever moon people look at, they only see what corresponds to their karmic perception. None of that is real.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEverybody reads the newspaper differently.<br \/>\nOne person looks at the stock prices first, another reads the sports section first. One dives into the serialized novel, while another is mainly interested in politics. They\u2019re all different: their human thinking varies so much. They differ so much because they\u2019re all lost in their own various consciousnesses. Only outside of these varying consciousnesses does the world that everyone shares reveal itself.<br \/>\nFor this world hasn\u2019t been thought up by humans. It doesn\u2019t fit their personal viewpoints.<br \/>\nThe more humans consider something, the more they\u2019re fooling themselves.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou say, \u201cI saw it with my own eyes!\u201d Nothing is as unreliable as your own eyes. They are just the eyes of an ordinary person.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou\u2019re fooling yourself if you think that the world as you see it is reality. Everyone only sees what corresponds to their personal karmic perception. A cat sees differently than I do; and what does a bacillus, who weighs only a thousandth of a toilet-fly, think about? Certainly not the same things as I do. The bacillus and I have different perspectives on the world and on life.<br \/>\nThe true world only appears when we have finished once and for all with all of these karmic views.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nPeople\u2019s heads are all rigid. Every \u201c-ism\u201d is a form of rigidity. This rigidity is the reason we don\u2019t recognize the buddha-dharma \u2013 no matter how close we are.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou cry out, \u201cPeace, peace!\u201d, but if you would only be quiet, it would be so much more peaceful.<br \/>\nYou say, \u201cIn my opinion&#8230;\u201d, but it\u2019s precisely when opinions and theories come into the picture that the bickering starts.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nPeople let themselves be manipulated by the laws of their time when they believe that good and bad exist. In the past, blood feuds were legal, today they are illegal. In the past, adultery was illegal, today it\u2019s legal.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe believe that good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, right and wrong all exist, that there are always two sides. But are there really two sides? No. Reality is only one. And even that \u201cone\u201d is empty.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThere are no two things in the universe.<br \/>\nSo when we see pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad, right and wrong, that\u2019s simply because of our personal karmic perception. And everyone differs from everyone else according to their points of view.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEveryone differs in their karmic perception. Happiness and unhappiness, joy and sorrow \u2013 it\u2019s all nothing more than karmic perception, and it varies from person to person. The problem is that everyone only considers what they themselves see to be real.<br \/>\nA grandmother preaches to her grandchildren what she considers to be real, but there\u2019s absolutely nothing real about it.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen you open your mouth, you\u2019re only putting your illusions on display. You are speaking out of your karma and your illusions.<br \/>\nThe mind of an idiot is in his mouth; the mouth of a wise man is in his mind.<br \/>\n[Footnote: Compare with <i>\u201cthe fool sees himself as others, the wise man sees others as himself\u201d<\/i> [Tenzo Ky\u014dkun] of considering an utterance three times before blurting it out [Shobogenzo Zuimonki], or of staying silent nine times out of ten]<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nPeople just need to be natural, but they try to squeeze even this naturalness into a framework. And because everyone has their own framework, they can never agree.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEveryone has their own consciousness. No one\u2019s consciousness is like anyone else\u2019s. It\u2019s completely individual and different.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe \u201cself\u201d is nothing fixed. You say, \u201cIn my mind \u2026\u201d But there is no such \u201cmy mind\u201d.<br \/>\nIf I hadn\u2019t by chance become a monk, then I probably wouldn\u2019t be talking about the buddha-dharma now. I\u2019d probably be a gangster boss who wouldn\u2019t have anything more to say than, \u201cAnd now I\u2019ll rip out your guts, you stinking dog!\u201d<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSince the beginning of human history, this bickering has never stopped. The greatest wars have their origin in this bickering mind. War is simply the most exaggerated form of this.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the same way a fly carries bacteria, war carries epidemics and culture.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\n<i>\u201cBoth you and me are just ordinary people.\u201d<\/i> [Prince Sh\u014dtoku, 17-Article Constitution]<br \/>\nSince, in any case, it\u2019s just ordinary people who wage war on each other, everybody is wrong, friend as much as foe. The winner and the loser are in any case just ordinary people.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s so sad to watch the world\u2019s conflicts. There\u2019s such a lack of common sense. One hothead swings a sword, another fires a rifle.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe world is whirled around by karma. Karma arises because we act out of ignorance.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the middle of a fight about irrigation it suddenly rains \u2013 since the fight was only about the irrigation of their rice fields, the rain solves all problems.<br \/>\nA beautiful woman and an ugly woman: what\u2019s the difference when they\u2019re eighty?<br \/>\nOriginally everything is empty and clear. <\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>20. To you who like to hear ghost stories People often ask me if ghosts really exist. Somebody who racks their brains over something like that is what I call a ghost. ** It\u2019s said that the dead appear as ghosts, but that\u2019s only true as long as you have the living. When the living are dead, they won\u2019t see any more ghosts. In Yogacara philosophy, ghosts are the tools of the living. ** One person says he saw a ghost, someone else learned of somebody\u2019s death in a dream. What\u2019s all this besides individual scenes in the theatre of transmigration. ** Isn\u2019t everything a hallucination? It\u2019s only because we don\u2019t recognize this hallucination as a hallucination that we wander around in life and death. ** Everyone is dreaming. The problem is simply the differences between the individual dreams. ** When you are dreaming, it isn\u2019t clear to you that you\u2019re dreaming. If somebody hits you in the face, it hurts. But this pain is also only in the dream. One dream keeps another company, that\u2019s why even a dream doesn\u2019t recognize the other as a dream. ** Some underpants are hanging to dry on a branch. Somebody sees them and thinks they\u2019ve seen a ghost. Maybe you\u2019re thinking that something like that hardly ever happens in reality, but when we think, \u201cI need money\u201d, \u201cI want to become minister\u201d, \u201cI want to get ahead\u201d \u2013 aren\u2019t we all taking a pair of underpants for a ghost? ** Everyone is talking about \u201creality\u201d, but this is only a dream. It\u2019s nothing more than the reality inside a dream. Good! When people are talking about revolution and war, we think that something really special is going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17159"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17169,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17159\/revisions\/17169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}