Well, first of all, especially for the new people who are joining our practice period, Sashin, I'd like to thank you for coming. And joining what I feel, and helping us actually, in this experiment or occasion to practice, find out how we exist. I'm sorry that Ulrika can't stay the whole time, but she has to go back to Europe and then to the Holy Land, Jerusalem. But I hope that For us, at least in some fumbly way, this is our holy land. Or at least it's wholly your land.

[01:10]

Excuse me. So we've been talking about... this practice period, the phenomenal world as part of our practice or as equal to our mind. Certainly one of the first steps has to be to discover mind in your own body. And we can play with that, you know, I sometimes point out. If I move my hand, it's mind over matter. I have just the gentlest thought and my hand will move.

[02:13]

Or as We just mentioned recently, you can take your right hand and explore your left hand. Take your left hand and explore your right hand. Or in practicing, one of the things I notice often is how people, I mentioned this the other day, tend to want to have their gassho close to their mouth, their face, you know, as if it was cozier. Probably is. But you can begin to see, and I didn't go into it much, but anyway, just a suggestion at least, you can begin to see psyche or karma on your posture and in your body. And during Sashin, that will certainly usually be the case. I mean, in a way, we're taking a psychological vacation, or at least a vacation for a week. but it's also often will be a psychological purging.

[03:20]

If you really stay with the schedule and stay with your posture as much as possible, it is a purging or cleansing or process which throws up things to us, as you well know, who've done sesshins. Now, what you're seeing, of course, is mind, in this case, in the form of karma and psyche, on your body. How you maybe resist certain physical aspects of practice, even though what difference does it make what posture you take, really, unless it's harming you. One of the most basic things you do, which we can't really do, I mean, I suppose we could do it here if you wanted, but in traditional Japanese monastery, you always hold your hand in shashu all day long, always, walking everywhere.

[04:26]

It can't be a harmful posture, but it will kill your back eventually. Your back will say, please put your hands in some other posture. But if you can stay through it till it's easy to do, your back loosens up. It's a kind of clear hold which, by going through it, opens up all the territory, psychic territory, psychological territory, karmic territory of your, particularly your back, which is such a big storehouse for experience. And we see it sitting too. And your back can open up, but it'll take years, actually, for your back to really clear up by little increments. So sesshin, the whole schedule and the sitting posture and so forth, we could say is a kind of, is a clear hold.

[05:38]

which comes into conflict with all the many ways we hold ourselves in unclear ways. And eventually you can sit with some ease and clarity. So, you know, you will see that your mind in many ways on your body and coming up in your practice of these days through the mental and physical posture of sesshin. Now, as I said, Buddhism assumes, one of the most basic assumptions of Buddhism is that there's an equivalency or a profoundly equivalent participation, analogical participation of mind and body and phenomenal world.

[07:16]

And how do you discover this? You know, in our contemporary world, we look to science for basic answers to questions, or answers to basic questions. How do we exist? How does the world exist? Etc. But Buddhism and Buddhism and... I don't know if I can say in general yoga culture or Chinese culture, but in any case, somewhere in there, a mixture of yoga culture, Chinese culture, Buddhist culture. You ask these questions of your own experience. And, you know, the Chinese have... and I can't really say how much is Indian Buddhism, how much is Chinese Buddhism, but the Chinese emphasize ritual as the way in which we inform, form within our acts and our occasions of experience.

[08:40]

And this mixture of analysis and practicality Well, contemporary science is a Western creation. The Chinese discovered decimal points and the essential features of numbers a couple thousand years before the West. And the abacus, soroban, and so forth. So there's a kind of science built into this practice of how to discover our existence and also our existence as an equivalency or a profound interaction with the phenomenal world. Now I'd like you not only to have a psychological purging or vacation here during this week but also to enter maybe to

[09:50]

forget who you are. You know, as we talked in the practice period, Dogen starts his piece on Angor, the 90-day abiding in peace of practice period, with Tendel Nyojo, his teacher's statement, to find the true structure of practice and carve a cave in emptiness. And if you complete these two, finding the true structure of practice and carving a cave in emptiness, you will complete the lacquer bucket, he says. Now, if you have a lacquer bucket, it means a black lacquer bucket. If you look into it, you can't see the bottom. You can't see. It means your past and future, even present, is cut off. You don't know what you're seeing.

[10:54]

So how do you ask these questions of yourself? Well, your mind has to, you have to There's, you know, there's the, let's say, the phenomenal world, your experience of the phenomenal world, and the mind that receives the experience. And what mind receives the experience of the phenomenal world? I like our new Bodhidharma on the altar. You know, he was whoever he was. He was an Indian guy who brought, supposedly, is attributed or said to have brought, let's say he did bring Buddhism from India to China. So we have Bodhidharma on the right and Sukhya Rishi, who for us at least brought Buddhism from Asia, Japan to us.

[12:06]

And when he found the king, emperor in southern China, didn't seem to be ready for Buddhism, they say he crossed, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze on a reed. A reed. I have a big scroll of that. Maybe I'll put it up next to our beautiful Kannon, Kanzayon. And when, it's supposedly the pilgrim, the sutra-seeking pilgrim, Sung Yuen on his way to India or coming back met Bodhidharma. He was carrying, he only had one sandal. So this guy's got one sandal. I don't know if it means he's carrying one and walking barefoot. Maybe that's what he's doing. But supposedly when Sung Yuen returned he spoke to Bodhidharma's disciples and they

[13:10]

opened his grave and found only one sandal. So this kind of story emphasizes that the bringing of the truth or entering Buddhism is you travel in some unusual way, not the usual way of a reed or with only one sandal, leaving one sandal. Bodhidharma said my successor is He's going back to India, supposedly. He says, my successor in China will continue the path, my path. And there's a scroll in Russell's that says, Sawaki Kota Roshi wrote it and drew a nyohe, something like this, and said, Bodhidharma did not, a famous comment. Ganshan, when asked by his teacher, why don't you travel to visit many teachers like so many do?

[14:22]

He said, Bodhidharma did not come to China. The second patriarch did not go to India. It means you don't have to travel. Ganshan's teacher was Bodhidharma and the second patriarch. Now, what I'm speaking about here is, I'm coming back to this sense of one aspect of this correctly assuming consciousness, or accurately assuming consciousness. In other words, a consciousness which, well, let's make it simple. If the background assumption of your consciousness is permanence, you won't perceive the world accurately. the background assumption of your consciousness is impermanence, you'll perceive the world, more likely perceive the world accurately.

[15:31]

So in Buddhism there's a training in how you develop your consciousness and what assumptions underlie your consciousness. And again, this is the beginning of the Eightfold Path, right? Views. So I want to show you, or suggest to you, how this is worked out and what's behind what we do in the meal service, for example. Since this is what we're doing, I'd like to start with what we're actually doing here. And I keep coming back to the Uryoki and the meal service as a source of as much teaching as we need. So this morning I told, I suggested to Russell that when people walk in, they come in to this pillar a little farther than the way where the people are, where the others of you are sitting on the ton.

[16:51]

And you definitely do not come in the door and just make a beeline straight to the first person who's hungry. So what are you doing? And what underlies this is... We don't like the feeling of... We say you don't want to be treated as an object. But in Buddhist teaching you are first viewed as an object. Viewed as an object, not treated as an object. A flower is an object. So there's a kind of order, a priority given to things. When you're standing there, the first priority is the phenomenal world. So exactly as you are, or where you're standing, there's the first priority.

[17:57]

The act of each act is just where you're standing. The second is the situation, the room. So when we're serving, you're actually acting out this ritual, which is a kind of philosophy merged with experience. And man, you know, we are taught and manners are important in the West. Manners, at least nowadays, and I'm not enough of an anthropologist to discuss the manners as they've developed over centuries, but manners now center primarily around eating and the toilet and sexuality. And they... modulate our behavior, control our behavior, define the edge of the abyss, and create mutuality.

[19:06]

Whether you have three forks and two spoons, etc., or whether you have just a simple way in which food is served, or a family decides to eat together. And I'm sure it's quite clear that families that don't eat together with a certain kind of formality, something goes wrong. But in Buddhism, still, and maybe, I mean, they're a kind of, maybe a primordial sense of ritual exists. And here, ritual, when we say form is emptiness... We don't say stuff is emptiness. Well, I suppose, you know, we could, but the sense of form is emptiness is form is all those aspects of anything that connect it, separate it, and so forth.

[20:13]

Bateson's The Pattern That Connects. And so what forms allow us to recognize this equation of the phenomenal world and yourself? Or this flow? Flow and non-duality. And that's what non-duality is, is to recognize the flow of yourself and the phenomenal world and others. That's the point of seeing through the subject-object distinction. So first there's the recognition of the phenomenal world as a palace of light or something like that. And just where you're standing, you know, your feet, your body, etc. And then the room.

[21:19]

And so we recognize the room first before the food. So we come in and recognize the room. And once we've done that recognition by walking a certain way that articulates the space as us, you know, we often say, you know, in Zen, the teacher will hold up a stick and say, what is it? Don't call it a stick. Well, there's various ways to respond, and one is just to take it and use it in some way. So this room, as I say, is not, um, we've talked about folding the mats. The mats themselves are space. You are space. This room is space. And you use this room. The room exists through your use of it. So you recognize the room first, and that's basic to our oryoki. First of all, you recognize the room.

[22:21]

First yourself, the final world. Then the room. And you articulate the room by the way you move into it. We wipe the eating boards. It's quite beautiful. I find it very beautiful. And then the serving comes in after an homage to the Vajracanapada. Then we start in. A kind of homage at that moment. Sambhogakaya Buddha. And then you stop at a certain place and then you go do the serving. And what we chant, one of the things we chant is we offer this food of three virtues and six tastes to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and all life in every world.

[23:28]

We offer this food of three virtues. Now, three virtues, really not so important to know what they are. They could be nourishment, producing jobs, and enough food to practice the way. You can make up your own virtues. Or it's Dharmakaya. Traditionally, it's Dharmakaya, body, prajna, and enlightenment. But more specifically, in relation to the food, it's pure order, subtle order, and true order. So we offer this food of pure order, subtle order, and true order. Already, that's rather interesting. This food of pure order, of subtle order, this phenomenal world as food, as pure order, subtle order, and true order.

[24:36]

Three virtues, these three virtues, and six tastes, sweet, salty, sour, bitter, hot, and neutral. to the Buddha, to the Dharma, and to the Sangha, and to not even this world, all life in each world, all life in every world. So we immediately imagine a vastness, an immense lacquer bucket. To all life, We offer this, I mean, that's, you know, you're just eating, having lunch. But, you know, stop for a moment and you are eating a lunch of pure, subtle and true order, especially when Russell and all you guys cook it.

[25:39]

And of these sensate qualities, these sensate qualities, these six tastes, to all life in every world. Now you could practice with this phrase, rephrasing it, during this session. You meet someone, instantly the phenomenal world is first. You're just where you're at. And then the person as object, like a flower. as the room as object. So we are, and then you stop and you say to yourself, you know, your mind, you have this accurately assuming consciousness which presents or exhibits without having to go in a linear way, sequential way, we offer this occasion, we offer this meeting, we offer this moment of pure order,

[26:54]

subtle order and true order and various sensate qualities to every life, to each life, to all life in every world. It might improve your relationship with others if you had that moment of recognition. And then the bitter taste, the hot taste, the sour taste. They're very sour. But first... So this way we physically do it and what we say is actually based on creating a consciousness that accurately assumes, that makes accurate assumptions about the world. And if you can develop a consciousness, and this is again And I'm looking more at Buddhism in depth now as a combination of experience and analysis.

[28:00]

So you're bringing a kind of philosophy or analysis of the phenomenal world, its vastness and its particularity. In some habitual way into your each act. And that's what sashing practice is. Practice period, carving a cave in emptiness. Of finding the true structure of practice. We're talking now about the true structure of practice. We offer this moment. of three virtues, of various kinds of order and various sensei qualities to every, to all life in every world. That's just in our meal chant, which we kind of rush over. But it's this ritual, and the word ritual is related to harmony and arm and order and arithmetic.

[29:10]

The decimal point Where's the decimal point in your mind that allows you to see things as they are? To fit things together. So ritual, art, to fit things together. So how do you have a mind which allows things to fit things together? In this koan we've been just working on, it talks about the one-eyed dragon. And this means that one eye looks out and one eye looks in. So maybe you should all go around squinting during this session, with the feeling at least of looking at the world of the unfindability, which is the middle way, the majamaka middle way, is unfindability. of the extremes, of material or spiritual.

[30:16]

Unfindability. This one-eyed dragon which looks in and without. One eye in and one eye out. So that this vacation you're taking of Sashin, this vacation in a lacquer bucket, Maybe. We could advertise a sheen. Would you like a vacation in a lacquer bucket? So I'd like you to disappear. I mean, if your thoughts could disappear into your mind as water disappears into sand. And if your mind could disappear into your body as water disappears into sand. And if your body could disappear into the phenomenal world as water disappears into sand.

[31:27]

Then you're beginning with this feeling, this view, you're entering the absorption of sasen mind. where you don't have past and future. Even the present is unfindable, immeasurable. Not even a one-eyed dragon can find it. Or you can practice with the patience of the third paramita, of the patience to see things as they are. The patience to go through your, to stay within and be informed by your own karma, your own suffering, your own purging. And drop, even that disappears into the sand. into the absorption or patience, the patience of our kanzeon, beautiful kanzeon, bosatsu, with, you know, from being outside or being avlokiteshvara, kanzeon, her face is bathed, her body is bathed in tears.

[32:52]

Maybe you can bathe like a one-eyed dragon bathing in this world, or like Kanzayon through generosity and patience and compassion, bathing in this world, in this lacquer bucket you can... So you don't have to be the person you are. You can disappear as a person by finding security in your posture. in the schedule. There's going to be meals served. Isn't that true, Russell? There will be meals for the full week. We have meals three times a day. Okay, so you'll have meals three times a day. And in this practice of just now in this phenomenal world and honoring offering, recognizing this world of this occasion, this moment of three virtues of pure, subtle and true order and many sensate qualities.

[34:15]

We offer it to this lacquer bucket, to this vast, vastness of all life in every world. So this kind of practice, the physical acts of doing it in the serving, stopping for a moment, entering the room, and so forth, is the Buddhist ritual of way of informing, finding how form connects and separates, how the mind of non-duality flows in this, So, be, sometimes I hope you'll be a one-eyed dragon and sometimes Bodhidharma and sometimes Kansen on bathing in this phenomenal world which is truly and subtly inseparable from us.

[35:42]

And this can't be discovered by some kind of thinking. Analysis may help you place yourself in the practice, but it's the muddle, the muddling through of the practice in which you'll find perhaps a stillness which reflects and informs your most basic questions. How do we exist in this world as the person you are, as the person we are? Thank you very much.

[36:37]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.12