Originally when I was asked to speak this evening, my topic was going to the question, where are you? Or it could've been, where am I? And then I was reminded that this whole fall, all the topics should be on the Buddha's essential teachings, and I thought maybe my title was in alignment, but anyway, just to be safe, I checked out one of my favorite Thich Nhat Hanh books, The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings.

And just perusing the different kinds of sutras and teachings, I was struck again by how all these teachings, there are so many lists. There are the Two Truths, which is what I'm going to talk about tonight, but there are the Three Jewels, the Three Dharma Seals. There are the Four Noble Truths of course. There are the Four Immeasurable Minds. There are Five Aggregates and Five Precepts, and it just goes on and on. Six Paramitas and six of this and six of that and Seven Factors of Awakening. It's like, wow, the Buddhists really like to make lists.

So I decided to start at the bottom of the list with the two things, the Two Truths. As it turns out as I began to explore that, my original topic isn't so far off the mark. So the Two Truths, we're going to talk about those tonight. What are the Two Truths? Well, there is the relative truth, which you could also call the worldly truth, and there is the ultimate truth. I think Thich Nhat Hanh explains it really, really well, so I am going to use his teaching quite a bit.

Basically, the relative truth is what we live with every day, and it is also the way that we begin Buddhist practice, because the Four Noble Truths actually are relative truth. The fact of suffering, the causes of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the cessation of suffering, those are all relative truths because something that causes you maybe to suffer probably or could very likely not affect me very much at all. So each of these things is very relative and personal. So in that sense, we start out in the relative world of truth, and as we learn and practice, we grow more and more toward the ultimate truth.

Here is how he says it: "We enter the door of practice through relative truth. We recognize the presence of happiness and the presence of suffering, and we try to go in the direction of increased happiness. Every day we go a little further in that direction, and one day we realize that suffering and happiness are ‘not,' too." And maybe we get glimpses of that as we go along the path, but once we realize that, once there is that realization, I think we find that it is difficult to explain. The words begin to drop away. The words begin to not have as much meaning. They don't convey the meaning that we are trying to experience.

Here is another way he says that: "We enter the path of practice through the door of knowledge, perhaps from a dharma talk or a book. We continue along the path and our suffering lessens little by little, but at some point, all of our concepts and ideas must yield to our actual experience. Words and ideas are only useful if they are put into practice.

Perhaps you have this experience. Since I began practicing these teachings, I have noticed differences in the way I respond to things or the way I react to things. I've shared this experience with some of you, but every day I drive to work on 635, and even though I am coming not at a peak traffic time, it astonishes me how fast people are driving and weaving in and out of traffic. That used to really distress me, lots of unkind thoughts coming through my head, and I'm thinking to myself or saying out loud, "That is so dangerous. Why are they doing that?" And other things that I won't repeat here.

But one day I noticed a huge pickup truck coming up behind me really close, going really fast, and then whipping over to pass me, and then I could see him at weaving in and out of traffic. And my thought was so different, it startled me almost. My thought was, oh, man, I hope you get where you're going safely without hurting yourself or anyone else. And the realization that that thought, it was so different from the usual response that I recognized it. Like I said, it kind of startled me. Wow.

And that, I think—I am positive—that can be attributed to the practices, the Buddhist practices, because immediately instead of criticizing, judging, condemning, cursing this person, I felt a real sense of a desire that he be safe and that everybody he was encountering be safe. So that is exactly I think what Thich Nhat Hanh is talking about here. At some point, our concepts and ideas must yield to our actual experience. So we can sit around and read and talk and discuss all of these things, but until it becomes a part of how we live, we are still pretty much in that relative truth place.

So the question, where are you? It's like you could ask yourself, am I in that place of relative truth or am I approaching ultimate truth? I like what he says. He sort of animates a wave in the ocean, and this is how he talks about that. I'd better find that if I'm going to talk about it. He says, "When we look at the ocean, we can see that each wave has a beginning and an end. It crests, and then it falls back into the ocean, and we could compare waves one to another. Probably people who surf do that because they're looking for just the very perfect ways to surf.

But if we animate one of those ways, we could say that maybe one of the waves says to herself, "Oh my goodness. I wish I was as beautiful and as tall as that wave." Or, "I wish I was as strong as this wave." And, "I am just headed to the shore where I will die." So, that is a relative way to look at things. It would be sad if the wave didn't know that it is actually the water and that it will flow into the water and that it will rise again, crest and fall and become a part of the water.

So we can think of that like we are maybe that wave, that crest, and without comparing ourselves, recognize that we are a part of the consciousness, the ultimate reality. A wave can be recognized by signs: high, low, beginning, ending, beautiful, ugly. But in the world of water, there are no signs. In the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells. She feels that when she falls. She may think I am high or I am low and even develop a superiority or inferiority complex. But when the wave touches her true nature, which is water, all her complexes will seize and she will transcend those ideas of good and bad, birth and death, etcetera.

Another way of talking about this that I have heard recently is the teacher/author Eckhart Tolle. He speaks about—I compare it to relative truth. He says, "When we think about our lives and all the things that are occurring in our lives, the situations, the events, the people, the circumstances," that he calls our life situation. And what we are truly is life, so we have life situations, and we are life, and we access life in exactly the way we did earlier tonight. That is one way at least, to meditate, to get present, and to be in the present moment. So, relative truth, I compare to Tolle's idea of life situations, and life itself I think of as ultimate truth.

Thinking back to the Four Noble Truths, as Thay teaches, they are relative. They are meant to be our starting point. They are not meant to be where we stop. They are meant to be our starting point. And so as we practice, we began to gravitate toward life situations that bring us more joy, more peace, more contentment. And this is very like the teaching in this part of the book.

In his discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma, the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path. But in the Heart Sutra, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara tells us that there is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path. Is it a contradiction? No. The Buddha is speaking in terms of relative truth, and Avalokiteshvara is teaching in terms of absolute truth.

When Avalokiteshvara says, "There is no suffering," he means that suffering is made entirely of things that are not suffering. I'm not going to go too far into that because several dharma talks could be done on the Heart Sutra, but the basic, the thing that I really wanted to take away from this is that we are all operating a good bit of the time in this place of relative truth. And so it helps, I think, occasionally to ask ourselves where am I, what am I doing?

And as Thich Nhat Hanh teaches also, to ask ourselves the question, am I sure? Because when we can question like that, then we begin to look more deeply into our current life situation. We begin to look more deeply into what we perceive as the truth, and this I think guides us, helps us to begin to find our way to that place of ultimate truth.

Also, in Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, there are what we call practice songs. These are very simple little songs, but they are profound in meaning. One of them is what I would like us to look at right now. So the words are really simple: I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. Just words I left out. I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I have arrived. I am home.

To me, this little thing is so profound because this can be taken as relative truth. You could say, as we sit here, we feel comfortable. We have arrived and we feel at home we feel like this is family. So we can think of it in relative terms. I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. So here we are here and now, and maybe you've left some of the past and some of the future thoughts behind for now. So this is relative.

But if we look more deeply, I think we begin to see that we could also think of this in terms of the ultimate truth. "I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now" takes us to a place beyond the relative truth to a place where we recognize ourselves as this continuing consciousness, spirit, whatever you would like to call it.

And then the next two lines: I am solid. I am free. Again, to me, it could be taken as relative truth or ultimate truth. If you think of it as I am solid, perhaps solid in my practice, solid in my perception. Mostly I think of it as solid in my practice, and being solid in the practice is very freeing because being solid in the practice allows us to let go of some of our limiting beliefs, afflictions, strong, destructive emotions. So if we are solid in the practice, we get more and more free from the things that cause us to feel troubled or suffering.

And then the last sentence: In the ultimate, I dwell. So this could be an aspiration. You know, maybe we're not all here all the time, but we aspire to be. It is the ultimate aspiration, enlightenment, being in the place of the ultimate and dwelling there. So perhaps we can dwell there occasionally and more and more as we practice.

So I know some of you already know this song, but I would like you all to know it so that you could maybe sing it on your drive somewhere, thinking about staying present and wherever you go think, I have arrived. I am home. If you can be comfortable in your body, you can even think of it in terms of I have arrived to comfort in my body. I am home in my body.

So, this is how it goes. I'm going to sing the whole thing. If you know it, sing it with me, and after that, I will do just a little bit of time, and then we can repeat it. So, it goes like this: (sings) I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I am solid. I am free. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate, I dwell. In the ultimate, I dwell.

So, opening, "I have arrived. I'm home." And then you repeat it.

(Bobbie sings) I have arrived. I am home.

(Everyone sings) I have arrived. I am home.

(Bobbie sings) In the here and in the now.

(Everyone sings) In the here and in the now.

Okay. Put those two pieces together, and let's sing all of this part.

(Everyone sings) I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now.

Okay. Do it again.

(Everyone sings) I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now.

Okay. The next part. (Sings) I am solid. I am free.

(Everyone sings) I am solid. I am free.

(Bobbie sings) I am solid. I am free.

(Everyone sings) I am solid. I am free.

(Bobbie sings) In the ultimate, I dwell.

(Everyone sings) In the ultimate, I dwell.

Again.

(Bobbie sings) In the ultimate, I dwell.

(Everyone sings) In the ultimate, I dwell.

Okay. Let's put it all together.

(Everyone sings) I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I am solid. I am free. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate, I dwell. In the ultimate, I dwell.

I may ask you to sing that again before we close. One of my favorite Rumi poems—you probably know it, too, but he wrote, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. That is the ultimate truth." It makes me very hesitant to say any more.

Thich Nhat Hanh speaks a lot about interbeing, the way that everything is interrelated, and so I think also relative truth and ultimate truth inter-are. We enter ultimate truth through relative truth. Like Rumi's home, we go to that field, so we go from relative truth the ultimate truth. And in the same way, the Buddha was an incredible teacher. Having realized and awakened, he realized that people needed to begin in the space of relative truth, because if he had started talking immediately about the ultimate truth, we would probably not be here now. We must begin where we are.

Back to my question of, where am I? Well, I am still pretty much in relative truth, and once in a while I get a glimpse of ultimate truth, and I don't even think I could call it a glimpse because it is not something I see. It is something I feel. It is something to experience, and thus Rumi says, once you experience that, the world is too full to talk about.

I would like to hear you sing the song one more time, and then we have lots of time for sharing. So, let's sing "I have arrived" maybe one more time, and then we will hear from you. To me, that is a really important part of any dharma talk is to hear what you have to say. So let's sing again.

(Everyone sings) I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I have arrived. I am home in the here and in the now. I am solid. I am free. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate, I dwell. In the ultimate, I dwell.

Thank you, dear friends.