Leonard Cohen, Sasaki Roshi, & 'Love Itself' - Part 1 of 2

A number of years ago.

At a retreat in Ithaca, NY.

Leonard told me that he was going to retire from music.

And then

A few years later.

He came out of retirement.

And he came out with CD that he called 10 new songs which of course, sort of fits right there new songs he came out of retirement?

And.

The 5th cut on that CD.

Blows me away.

The whole album is dedicated to quote our teacher.

Joe Sasaki, Russia.

Inside the works of Leonard Cohen, which are known all over the world.

Of course in the United States even more so in Canada.

Where he comes from he's got a house in Montreal?

Where he grew up and very much in Europe, especially France?

His works are not.

All over the world, but what is it known is that they are peppered with inside illusions to the teachings of Sasaki Roshi, the 5th cut on the 10 new songs.

Is called love itself?

And it's Leonards version of that a show or Zen talk of Sasaki Roshi unless somebody pointed out you wouldn't realize that.

So Sasaki Roshi has only one talk.

There is 0 but 0 is inherently unstable because it consists of all of the positive and negative in the universe. Therefore inevitably it breaks apart do expansion and contraction expansion. Only knows how to expand contraction. Only knows how to contract so in between. They create a vibration called space an that vibration is further nurtured and matured.

In the cleft between them and in a evolves into a feeling thinking self that either knows it just came from zero in which case we call it enlightened self or it doesn't. If it knows where it just came from. It knows to give it the positive that it received from father back to father and the negative that it received from other back to the mother. Therefore, it disappears. There's nothing in between father and mother anymore and they come back together.

To create a new?

State of 0.

Oh.

You don't understand.

OK, well, I'll try to say a little more.

Then he says exactly the same thing.

And then I see you still don't understand well, let me see if I can say some more.

But you see each time he says it he lives it.

So he could see it forever.

He lives that cycle and if you sense that he's living that cycle you could you could hear him say it forever?

So anyway, you're going to see in this song there's are afraid.

It imitates the style of Sasaki Roshi, but there's more to it.

Sasaki Roshi talks about this.

Little room of space where father and mother.

Vibrate OK and that's

Come into contrast, you reunite come in a conscious reunited always describes it as like a private little room.

Where all there's only the 2 sides of the source now?

Many of you have have experienced that there are different flavors of.

Flow different flavors of impermanence.

I look upon the expansion and contraction as the fundamental flavors when a wave comes up on the shore. The Top of the wave is expanding the bottom of the wave is contracting and in the cleft as their shared apart is born all this Phone.

So there's WAVY flow. There's Vibra Tori, flow, which is analogous to the foam.

But underlying it all is this expansion and contraction.

But often

The most prominent experience of flow or change or impermanence is a kind of scintillating Misty bubbly kind of flow.

It's very blissful often an your whole body in mind, and the external world can dissolve into and it's like trillions of Little Motes of dust.

Sort of just shimmering.

Some of you have had that experience.

Because it's blissful.

Uh.

There is the danger of.

Being attached to it, but if you don't become attached to that then.

It all sort of.

Flat lines into 0 on the little vibrations go back.

To the source.

Father and mother come together.

And there is.

Shalom Beam, Rome of the piece of Heaven.

So.

If having that.

Champagne bubbly.

Experience of flow is like?

Being made love too.

In a sense.

What's beyond that.

Is the gone?

And what's beyond the God?

Well, after gone.

Is no place to go but?

To come back.

To self in world?

But to see it in a different way.

For having had that experience and to do this over and over and over again.

Until.

There is no fundamental separation.

Between the

Experience of the source and ordinary experience there on a continuum.

There's not a duality between the deepest transcendent.

Empty timeless space lus.

Cessation there's not a duality between that and any ordinary experience there on a continuum.

So that's living Nirvana there's nothing in between one's humanity and that which is beyond the human.

And that would pretty much describe the world of a master.

So there is the formless.

There is the foreman, then there is.

They're not being fundamentally separate.

So.

In the end.

If you want to experience what Sasaki Roshi calls true love haunton, or I use that expression says everybody wants true love, but they don't realize.

That true love is 0.

True love is.

What happens if you're willing to let go of?

The most Celestial.

Forms form of love.

Other than true love so you'd have to even let go of the massage of the spirit.

So.

Understanding this you are in a position to completely understand.

Leonard song.

Called Love itself.