There are secret teachings, Sam. But it's really your secret. I mean, there are other kinds of secret teachings that are secret just because it works better. It's no big deal. It just works better to... discuss them in a way that's clarifying. It makes sense to discuss them publicly, even though if you discuss them publicly, which you've done, you don't understand that they're secret. I mean, in other words, you say the same thing publicly, you say it secretly, it's the same teaching, but it's different. So it's not really a secret you're excluded from. I guess it's the easiest analogies, because there is some similarity, is to being in love.

[01:17]

Someone says to you that you love. I love you. It's public. It means nothing to you now. It's secret to you. It's public. Because it's meant only for you. You meant it only for us. But the main sense of mind-to-mind transmission, direct introduction to mind, is secret because it's your secret and you have to reveal it to yourself. It's not something far from you, but it passes unnoticed.

[02:26]

Now, even for a slow learner, I've been practicing an awfully long time without knowing much. I've been practicing for a pretty long time now. I suppose I could have started when I was eight, but given when I started, I've been practicing reading most of my adult life, all my adult life. It's taken me a long time to see the import of a fairly simple thing, and some that I realized pretty early on in practice. It reminds me of Smokey Robinson's song. Smokey Robinson's song. I don't know if it's known in German. I don't know what Smokey Robinson translated, Jim.

[03:35]

What's the word for Smokey, Jim? Oh, I don't know. Robinson? He's probably famous. Anyway, he's He's an interesting singer. In fact, somebody, I mentioned this before, but somebody supposedly got their equivalent PhD from Cambridge by proving that Smokey Robinson knew more about love than Aristotle. He compared the lyrics, Smokey's songs, to what Aristotle says about love. It's a worthy thesis, I think. Anyway, one of his songs has something like, I can't remember, the lyrics are quite long and there's variations on this, but one of the variations is something like, This may not be the love I've heard about, but this must be love.

[04:42]

This may not be the love I've heard about, or is written about, but this must be love. So you hear about these teachings and you have some experience of them. And it may be 10 or 15 years later that you realize, oh, this must be it. For some reason, I don't know why it's like that. And when you realize this must be it, it happens in your life in a different way. But how to get you or me or, you know, to realize this must be it. You can't... There's no way to tell somebody. Now, the problem with intellectual understanding, and somebody brought up yesterday... Whenever I give a lecture like this, it's lessened a bit intellectually.

[05:50]

Jesuitical. I don't know. The real subject was the energy. But in any case, Buddhism is, because we are not a revealed teaching and we don't have any place to turn to or depend on, The Buddha said, his last words, we don't put anything above your own head. We use everything in Buddhism, preeminently intellectual teaching. And some schools emphasize that primarily. But Zen emphasizes direct direct realization through meditation, and meditation understood in a variety of ways.

[07:05]

But it's still, the edifice is still not intellectual. And the whole thing, the intellect can get you to the door, it just can't get you through the door. It can even tell you this house that you can't see is there, but you have to see it. And as I've said to those of you who have practiced with me more, I think in the West we need more intellectual understanding of Buddhism because we just get it all wrong. I mean, just the simple idea of practicing with the idea of oneness You practice the idea that, like Evan Wentz, who really is more theosophical than Buddhist, translated to that book of the dead, says everything springs from the one mind, everything, etc.

[08:13]

And when somebody asks, everything returns to the one, And you say, well, where does the one return to? So if you practice one idea of all is one, your practice may benefit you, you may feel better, and so forth, but you're always going to be outside the door. So I think having some intellectual understanding is essential, particularly for us, because a lot of the assumptions that are carried in the Buddhist culture, the Buddhist life and the monastic enactment of enlightened life through monastic practice is not here. Now, I am assuming you guys are sophisticated enough, intelligent enough to not get caught by

[09:21]

fooled by intellectual understanding. To know its usefulness, but its secondary importance. You can understand things to the intellect, but you can't realize them to the intellect. And the intellect in no way reaches the fullness of our being. Lama Govinda's books I liked, read them years ago. Because they're very intellectual, but they know exactly where the intellect stops. So I haven't read them in many years, but I appreciated that. But then, if it's still true, at that time, that's how I experienced it. Now, the problem with intellectual understanding is sometimes you end up with a honeycomb and not the honey.

[10:24]

That you produce a kind of facsimile, a xerox of understanding. In other words, if you're an imaginative, intelligent person, you can come pretty close to what realization is like or understanding is like but it's not quite yet still within the realm of your personality if an expanded personality or still in the realm of your thought and still viewed as whether you see it that way as not as a kind of possession something you have or you do there's a deliberateness about it It's almost like maybe in a room, you've taken this room, which you've kind of understood, and you've blown a balloon up in the room.

[11:34]

And the balloon is almost co-existent with the room. So it looks like the rubber is touching the room and all sides, but you're still in a cage. and you're walking around, you have to keep this thing blown up, otherwise it'll collapse in a bubblegum. And if a real test in your life comes, it pops. Then you're no longer in the room. But sometimes you can blow that bubble up, that balloon up, and it pops and you find yourself in the room with windows and doors and no roof, no floor. You don't really know how to give you a sense of practice.

[12:52]

Thinking about it in contrast to description of certain dimensions of practice to familiarize you. Maybe it's like when it's been not snowing now. snow snowing is that you feel that snow everywhere softly descending in you lying on the ground in you maybe the honey isn't just in the honeycomb but in the flower whether it be the honey may be in the flower before it even gets to the flower. There's a kind of sweetness to practice.

[13:59]

It's different when you have a kind of dry, facsimile realization. which is the danger of intellectual, for particularly talented people, danger, is not that you think you can understand through the intellect, but you're creative enough to create a facsimile through the intellect. Make sense? Well, if it doesn't, it's too bad. So there are things about practice which I can try to give you a feel for.

[15:06]

We can try to have a feel for together in session. But there are some kinds of... But there's a quality to teaching that can only be understood in a non-competitive kind of environment. One of the reasons a kind of absolute faith or trust in the teacher, which you can't have absolute faith and trust in another human being, but you create a kind of trust Because without a trust and a non-comparing understanding, certain things can't be told. Because they can't be heard. So you have to have this... there has to be some kind of grandmotherly quality.

[16:16]

That may not always be there, but it has to be there at certain moments. And maybe a teacher, a disciple, spend quite a bit of time together, and there's only certain times when there's that feeling. When there's that feeling, certain things can be understood. And maybe it is like somebody told you something when you were a child. seemed unimportant, but you keep remembering. Other people said, school teachers said, maybe your grandma or somebody said something to you. You don't know why it keeps coming up later in your life as something you kind of anchor yourself with, turn on, refer to. Well, there's a quality in the way it was sent to you that allowed you to hear it.

[17:24]

How do we create that quality? That's one reason teacher and disciple lived together for quite a while. Finding that quality of relationship is rare, not usual. And we don't have any inherent trust or way to trust in a safe way another human being. We emphasize individualism so much. Most of us can't trust our parents too much. Most of us learn you can't trust the person you love. as much as you'd like anyway. And it's hard to come to that distillation of trust, which allows something certain teaching, understanding to occur.

[18:30]

And a lot of it has to do with a certain quality of energy that's present in you. And your voice or your activity or your prana, your breath, your breath, voice, activity are all considered as distinct from body and mind and are kind of practiced in themselves But as long as you see this energy as in you and not everywhere, there's a certain breakthrough you don't need. It's funny, it's a kind of uprising of energy at the same time a kind of resignation or humility. In which you don't care what happens. Or you don't value yourself.

[19:43]

You respect yourself, but you don't value yourself especially. And then, maybe like the bee, you find the flower has everything you need. So you come to understand that in your posture, whatever it is, now we do sadhana, and you find stillness in your posture. But you should be able to practice so whatever posture you have, that posture can be a mountain.

[20:49]

Whatever posture you have, you can find that stillness. You don't have to say, oh, I need to go, I need to do zazen right now. I should go to zazen. That's normal, natural. Good. But also, you should say, right now, in this posture, no matter how kooky it is, you suddenly find solidity. That's awesome. And there's no problem. And when you look at things, you practice with your eyes, You see them. Sometimes you see things, what can I say, with clarity.

[21:51]

And you just stay for a moment in a kind of fixed state, seeing things with preciseness, almost a glow. The edges of things take on brightness. Now you may think this is indulgent or important or you had such experiences before you started practicing Zen. So what we're telling you, what I'm telling you, is this is important. It's like another edge of being edging into your awareness. Or as a practice, I've given you a practice that's in line with this, is you don't see things, you visualize them. As if I close my eyes and I visualize Kent, the altar. But I open my eyes and visualize the altar.

[23:00]

This practice... which do now and then. Until sort of it's a kind of habit, just you tend to do it, no effort. First it's deliberate, and then it's natural. Now someone else asked me I said that the two fundamental assumptions are fundamental and essential necessary assumptions in Buddhism are that everything changes and that

[24:07]

is mind and mind and transformation of consciousness. And this person rightly pointed out something fundamental to Buddhism, that there's a contradiction here. On one hand, everything is changing, but mind, big mind, is presented as unchanged. Now there's a contradiction only at the level of language that sounds like a contradiction. And Nagarjuna and other philosophers of emptiness have tried to deal with this question, turning it, turning it, turning it for ages. And we could try to resolve the contradiction in language by saying something like, everything changes, but every non-thing does not change.

[25:27]

How can a non-thing change? But I would say that the big mind also changes. However, in our practice, there is such a big difference, in contrast, that's as big a difference as the tree changing in the wind, and the universe, the space of the universe changing. The scale of the universe changing is another. So there's that kind of feeling of such a difference in scale of change. Space doesn't change. And space is likened to mind. The nature of mind, at least. Mind, which we can say mind thinks, and we can say the nature of mind, or big mind, not conceptual, not dualistic mind, is like space.

[26:35]

But it's space, both are empty, space and mind, but mind is aware. So there's always a human dimension to this practice. It's not philosophy or something abstract. I think that you have more of an intuitive sense of it if on every moment you're willing to disappear. If maybe you practice disappearing on each moment. Does that make any sense? Could you feel that? On each moment you are so relaxed you could disappear.

[27:38]

And yet, so much energy, you disappear too. It's a kind of an aroused but relaxed state. And it feels a little dangerous. It feels unpredictable. There's something like a wild animal about it. tell you what he was something you don't know. I thought it would too. Maybe you'd come in to listen to the Dharma, but you don't know what it would do.

[28:42]

We had a Bobcat that used to come into the Zenda. It turned out to be mostly wild, but part tame. It once been owned by some of the And we would lock all the doors and stuff in. Because we didn't want to come in. And then through a high window, we would leap home, land on the window, on the platform. We'd sit, sneak. I'd be giving a lecture. Quite amazing. It took light, put its teeth right through the thickest boot. Straight through. And then stopped right in your skin. It used to go up and grab people's ankles and go right through your boot. And a lot of it was made up. And we had a whole hierarchy at Tassajara of middling cats and boss cats. But there were no boss cats when the hot cat was around.

[29:45]

took over the scene. We had him around for a month or so, and we had him taken away. I have a photograph of it. But you could pick him up sometimes. You could, like me coming to Zendo, you could, if you just did it without hesitation, you could grab him and pick him up like this. But you better not hesitate. So he was tame and wild. Zen practice makes you tame and wild. So as I said, it's a normal. Here's this practice which emphasizes everything changes, that you have this other sense that Space mind, big mind, just doesn't change.

[30:49]

Which is a direct experience, a tangible physical feeling, not an idea. You feel it. You feel it in your backbone. You feel it in your limb. You feel it in your taste, mouth, eyes. So a lot of practice is we could describe as the dharma palace is right here. And you're walking in and out of it all the time, but you keep not noticing that you're walking in and out of it. But you have more and more of a feel that you're walking in and out. But as long as your mental continuum is still primarily embedded in your personality, you can't value the experience of walking in and out of this dharma palace.

[32:01]

So you have to have a personality change, a kind of resignation. kind of love or something that makes the imperatives of your personality less convincing. And then you enter the stage of walking in and out of it. And knowing you're walking in and out of it, but still living, not able to live there all the And to most people, maybe they feel something different about you. But it does not. But you feel something. And your teacher will definitely feel it. Once you've been in this house,

[33:22]

this dark palace, you recognize when other people are even in the entryway. Even if you've only been in the entryway, you recognize when other people are in the entryway whether they know they're in the entryway or not. It's really a matter of living outside your personality as well as inside your personality. This condition arises when you have the repeated experience of seeing through your thoughts. Seeing your thoughts are only the arising of mind. And seeing your thoughts as just something arising is not the same as living outside your thoughts.

[34:36]

But a kind of spiritual familiarity, something like that, begins to occur. And you can take and you can begin to feel the energy of your body, of your metabolism, of a kind of spiritual vibration or heat that appears. And when it appears in your practice, you can begin to focus that anywhere on your body. Or you can focus it on your mind or your thought.

[35:37]

Visualize it spatially. And doing this is no big deal. I mean, it's not some magical thing or mystical experience, though some might see it that way. Mainly, just becoming more familiar with yourself. It's like becoming familiar that as your baby, you can use your arms to do things. You can then learn to walk. It's a kind of learning to walk. Or some... A pinpointed feeling or an itch may occur. Instead of scratching that itch, you concentrate your energy instantly on that itch.

[36:40]

You may find that itch was trying to tell you something. It's like tapping. And most of us scratch it. But if you don't scratch it, sometimes it's right on an acupuncture point. Or right on an energy point. Which is suddenly... So what is teaching? Teaching is teaching not to scratch. It takes a long time to learn that. Because you can't believe yourself. Buddha tap imaging. Just an itch. Or it's an ant. Must be an ant. It's an ante. So in a way, you become aware of a higher order of detail

[37:51]

in your environment and in your life. Higher order detail in your environment and in your life. And the detail that you can't observe, act with when you're thinking. Or when your personality is a major way to function. I don't know why I'm telling you that. It probably doesn't make any sense. But I'm telling you anyway. See it? Are you exactly where you're sitting?

[39:05]

Is your mind and awareness clear state as your body? Is your energy contained and yet doped. Can you feel a certain heat now? Good feeling. Breath. Back. back of your lungs, back of your lungs, back of your eyeballs.

[40:19]

So eyes are not just for seeing out the front, the back of your eyes so you can feel something. actually can be in everything except your body. I've got to become familiar with this kind of body and energy in mind without straying into generalization about it, without noticing it.

[41:31]

Feel it, but don't notice it. If you notice it, you are outside. Maybe you're feeling now some kind of Your feeling now may extend to other people in the room. Because we've been practicing together for six days, it should be easier than if you were in an office or on a bus, but it's not that easy.

[42:34]

What? Wait, no one else. What is this world? No one else. But you have no doubt about it. Zen is not knowledge about anything, knowledge about the world. It's direct experience of the world, the nature. And the more you can integrate yourself in this experience so you don't stray

[44:10]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_80.47