self-conscious as we are, this is what interdependence means, that there's an enfolding of interior locations. In other words, if we just take a photograph, maybe I'm belaboring this point, it's obvious to all of you, it's not always obvious to me. If we just take a photograph of the tree and the bird. There's the tree and the bird, but we don't see the tree inside the bird, nor do we see the tree that would be there if there were no bird. There would be no tree there if there were no bird. The bird's necessary for the tree. And it's enfolded within the bird. And the bird's enfolded within the tree. The tree lives in such a way that includes the bird. And so forth and so on. Now, this interior enfolding of each thing and the other is the teaching of the Wayan Sutra and is the Great Mirror Ocean Seal Samadhi of Samantabhadra.

[01:10]

And it's a way to say big mind also that in this sense of an enfolding interior location that tree, bird, you and I are all participating in each moment is a way to say everything is mind. And it's a way to say, what we try to say by time, space, material, is this great being space or great life space. This great life space which occurs when we enfold each moment. And we become a bodhisattva when we unfold each moment according to the paramitas. Because you have a choice about how you enfold each moment and you have a choice about how you unfold each moment. You unfold it in your breath, you unfold it through wisdom, you unfold it through compassion, you unfold it through generosity.

[02:13]

So how you unfold the enfolded moment is what creates a bodhisattva. Okay? Thanks. I couldn't have unfolded this without you. If it's unfolded at all. But zazen, sashin, is this process of being present at your own enfolding and unfolding in each moment continuity. What a relief. Our intentions equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[03:26]

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Neda wakua nyorai wo shinjutsu gyo geshi tate matsuran An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vowed to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[04:42]

So we're practicing together in Sashin. And I'm sure you, I feel what we are doing and what I'm recommending we do is to not notice too much. Let the mind kind of rest but be ready. Rest but be absorbent. See if you can find that kind of place. Now, someone asked me earlier in the practice period to speak about this idea, this distinction between sudden and gradual enlightenment or sudden and gradual approaches to practice.

[06:40]

And what I've learned over my almost four decades now of practicing in Zen and much of that time teaching Zen, is what I've learned is not to talk about enlightenment. For those who are likely to experience, let's use the word enlightenment, I don't like it too much, but for those who are likely to experience enlightenment, I don't have to say much. And for those who aren't, the more I say just doesn't help. And I won't speak about it with anyone or with a practitioner who has any feeling of it, I have to have it.

[07:46]

I don't even want to talk to somebody who has those feelings. Or someone who feels negatively or positive that it's a kind of status. A negative status, I'm not a good student because I haven't had enlightenment yet. If you have those kinds of ideas, I won't speak about it. Even in Doksana or other circumstances. Such an idea is crazy and completely defeating. And if you have some idea that it's something that will give you status. Now I'm enlightened or something. Yikes! This is just as bad. Yeah. Or if you've had some experience of enlightenment and you've turned it into a kind of secret status, this is also the same problem.

[09:00]

Okay, so maybe I should stop right now. That's enough said. Robert agrees. But, you know, it comes up and so it's also a mistake not to acknowledge enlightenment. Now the word enlightenment, of course, in the West we have the enlightenment of the Renaissance or the historical period after the Renaissance and so forth. And the word in Chinese and Tibetan, it has various meanings as far as I know, but it includes things like immediate order or simultaneous order or at a single stroke or all at once. Now, it's also a political issue, and it's such a powerful political issue that once it got started in southern China, it influenced all of Zen, all of Buddhism, it influenced Tibet.

[10:36]

I mean, Buddhism had to deal with this idea of sudden enlightenment. And it became, in that sense, primarily a political issue, though to some extent it influenced the teaching. But its importance to us is as a pedagogical, as a way of teaching, as a way of practicing. The Buddhist practice of interjecting, interjecting, interceding, interjecting, putting into, interject means to throw into, eject is to throw, to throw into your thinking an enlightenment phrase, as I said the other day in talking about the various ways Zen practice relates to the thought stream.

[11:41]

the interjection of an enlightenment phrase or a right view, Buddhism, Zen uses both, to interject it into your thinking so that you repeat it is basically an enlightenment practice. Because it presupposes that the presence of this other view, right view or enlightenment view, in your thinking can create a shift in your thinking. And if you don't understand or have faith in, let's say enlightenment again, this bad word, you won't have the faith to keep repeating it. You'll get bored after a while. What the heck am I doing this for?

[12:44]

I've been saying moo for two and a half years, and you know, not a single male or female cow has appeared. I've been mooing up the wrong tree. It's simply, you can't keep doing a practice like this unless you have faith in this enlightenment. Now, the view that we have some kind of pure nature that's underneath our present nature, this is more a kind of tathagatagarbha, view, a simplified Tathagatagarbha view. And this is the classic, the mirror that you're going to wipe.

[13:48]

I don't know if any of you have seen this movie, Good Will Hunting. I'm almost certain it's based on the sex patriarch and the monastic, because this kid writes this I mean, the teacher writes this thing on the blackboard in the hall and this kid goes out and he's a genius and he solves the problem. And it was written by two Harvard kids who I know know quite a bit about Buddhism. I'm quite sure it comes from that story. But anyway, as we know, the Fifth Patriarch asked this question and the head monk said, we just keep wiping the mirror. because our true nature is covered by defilements. And if we get rid of the defilements, our pure nature comes out. Well, there's some truth to this. If you get rid of your defilements, you'll be better off than when you're defiled.

[14:49]

No question about it. But will you be enlightened? Not in any sense. I understand enlightenment in Buddhism or in Zen. Now, if we think of this pure nature or original mind as being structurally different, not just covered up, but actually being a different order of mind, then you can understand why you have to make a leap, because you can't get there from here. Makes you think of that New England joke. You know, you stop and ask somebody directions, and there's some Vermont guy who says, Well, you can't get there from here. Well, enlightenment's a little bit like that. You can't get there from here. Because it's the understanding of Buddhism in this Zen way of practice which brings together several major teachings that realization that realization that realization

[16:02]

true mind or true nature is structurally different than the way we usually function. I think you should take these words like sudden, gradual, incremental. Incremental is an important way to look at it in contrast to gradual. Incremental means little jumps. Like, you know, people have... There's a negative example. People have strokes which are tiny strokes and they don't notice it. But they'll have a stroke, and they don't know they've had a stroke, but over a number of years, they might have, I don't know how many, I'm not a doctor, but 20 or 30 strokes, and slowly they become impaired.

[17:08]

But it's not, it looks gradual, but it's actually incremental. But they don't experience the, they don't notice they've had a stroke. Like some people, I think women more commonly than men, have had heart attacks, and they don't notice them. A doctor can examine the heart and see, yes, you probably had a heart attack a year ago. Well, enlightenment's a lot like that too. You can have incremental realizations that you don't notice. You're not equipped to notice them. You don't have the habit of noticing them. And in this sense, there's Dogen's emphasis on initial enlightenment. The decision to practice is basically an enlightenment experience. When you are in the midst of your life and at some point you say, this life is not satisfying.

[18:16]

And you say it so fundamentally that you decide, I'm going to live differently. It's just a decision you make. I mean, I can remember, let's take one of my initial decisions to practice. I'm in New York on the 28th floor or something like that, some tall building. I look down and I see, when I was down there, it looked like clear air, right? And I'm on the top of this building or on some floor and I look down and I could see it wasn't clear air. There's about two or three stories of crud floating, you know. And I could see this kind of orange mustard fog from cars and stuff. And I looked down and I said, I'm not going to live this way much longer. And it was a very clear decision in my whole body.

[19:18]

And we could say that was a kind of initial enlightenment experience. It definitely led to me leaving New York and led to my starting practice. Or another simple example, I'm sitting with a friend who's saying goodbye, who I cared a lot about, and we're sitting in a... I tried to do... I don't know if it was very... I tried to do something nice, and we went out to a restaurant which had some Mexican flamenco dancer. It was totally ridiculous, but I was trying to do something, because he was going away. I knew I'd probably never see him again, or very seldom. And we'd both met Tsukiyoshi, and... I'd sort of looked into practice. Some of you know the story. And he said to me, we're sitting there and we had some food and I guess a beer or something like that, I don't remember. And he said to me, you know, Dick, if we were serious, we would do nothing the rest of our lives but practice in.

[20:22]

I said, yes. I don't know. I said, yes. Yes. Next day I was driving into the airport and I said, thank you for what you said last night. He said, what did I say? He didn't remember nothing. He didn't even remember it. But for me, he said, yeah. So this kind of decision... is understood as an initial enlightenment experience which can be opened up by practice. And you've all had that kind of position, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Yeah, I think I'll do a sushin. This is an initial enlightenment experience. Now, if you know that, and you have the courage to really look at that decision and follow where it leads, then you're opening up this decision.

[21:30]

If you think it was a moment of kind of, geez, I was a little crazy that day that I decided to do Sashin, but I'm going to last through the seven days, but then I'm going back to my life, then you're not working with the depth. You're not opening up the depth of that decision. So there's incremental and then there's these initial decisions where you change course. Because the idea of enlightenment is that it's basically a shift. A shift. Everything, I mean the Indian idea was many lifetimes of practice finally culminated in a realization. Then Dogen takes it back to the first idea of practice. Not many lifetimes.

[22:33]

Now, I think in monastic situations it's a little easier to talk about enlightenment because if you're committed to a monastic life and you're living it for... Well, I think in Japan I would say one or two years is to get your license to be a priest. Four or five or six years is probably serious, but ten years is really what's considered minimum. If you're in that kind of context where you're talking, five or six, I remember Sri Krishna said, I asked him once. We were driving in a car. I was in the back. And I said something.

[23:43]

This was in the first months I knew him. And I said, do you suppose, I can't remember now exactly what I said, but it was something like, can we really do this, us Westerners? And he looked, suddenly he just looked back and looked right at me and said, you can, if you try. And then at some other point I asked him, but, and he said, two years, three years, but he was just getting me started, putting, you know, two or three years, turned out to be a lot more than two or three years. But, but, Let's say if you're in this monastic type commitment and you're clearly just going to do it for five years or ten years, then we can talk about enlightenment because your life holds you into the practice. But if you're going back into lay life, it immediately becomes some kind of status or something or some discouragement or...

[24:52]

something, you know. There's no context anymore for it. And it becomes just a good experience. And you can have good experiences and you can have ecstatic experiences and so forth. They don't have much to do with what Buddhism means by enlightenment. Maybe I could define enlightenment in Buddhism as a deep recognition or giving your oneself over to the world and letting the world in. So deep a giving over that there's an experience of disappearing. Kind of like that. Now basically what I'm practicing, what I'm teaching and practicing, and what I've decided to practice, and this has made me over the years, and giving this lecture even makes me think about what the heck am I doing?

[26:12]

What am I presenting here to myself and to you? And I would say that what I'm doing primarily is presenting you with what I would call transformative practice, not gradual practice. I'm trying to give you a sense of the transformative I'm trying to put you in possession of your own lives. And lives which will be fulfilled through wisdom and compassion.

[27:23]

Now this is not quite the same as enlightenment, nor is it the same as the freedom one realizes in enlightenment. And I think one of the characteristics of enlightenment is that you feel liberated or freed, deeply freed. Now I just should say as a caveat I am convinced and I've seen examples of people who are quite enlightened physically but not emotionally or mentally. Or enlightened mentally but not emotionally or physically. Or combinations of that. And that's usually quite detrimental. Because if you have some freedom in one realm but it's not paralleled by one's emotional maturity or one's mental freedom or vice versa, You're kind of like a psychopath, perhaps, almost.

[28:31]

So, there is an experience of enlightenment. Again, I'm using this word loosely. that, as I've often said, parallels very closely in its phenomenology descriptions of Protestant conversion experiences. And this, then, is a capacity of human beings. It's nothing to do with Buddhism. Buddhism makes use of this capacity in practice. and in a certain context. Okay, so let's put that aside for now. Perhaps I'll come back to it in another lecture, but I will maybe digress toward it.

[29:53]

Now, that's what maybe describes all my lectures, a digression towards. If we take a fundamental, let's just keep it simple, most basic view of Buddhism, an assumption I take to be a fact, Everything is changing. Now, to recognize that everything is changing is a view. That's not called to recognize it. It's a teaching that everything's changing. It's also a fact. Let's call it a fact. And somebody can tell you that. So there's this view in Buddhism that everything's changing. How does it become a teaching? It becomes a teaching when you hold that view in your thought stream.

[31:00]

You make this effort to hold that view in your thought stream. So that's the first step in which everything's changing as a teaching, is to hold the view in your thought stream. And your mood stream, I don't know, whatever you want to say. Then you begin to recognize its operation. You begin to see everything changing. So, you notice that your moods change, you notice the scenery changes, you notice if I hold up one finger, the background is always different, you know. You notice your breathing, your heart's beating. So you begin to simply notice changes rather than permanence. But it's very interesting because the noticing of changing is a kind of continuity.

[32:12]

So you're beginning to develop a continuity that notices changing. This is simple, but when you look at something that's simple carefully, it's quite subtle. So you're noticing everything changing and you're developing a continuity of mind that notices everything's changing. And now the teaching is, okay, the thing that's most obviously changing that you can join this continuity of mind to is your breathing. So this becomes the basic practice, to bring this continuity of mind that notices changing to your breathing. That I would call the second step, a recognition of the function of changing and now holding, settling the mind into change itself.

[33:19]

The third stage, I would say, in turning a philosophical view or fact like everything changing into a practice, into an actual teaching, is to experience the changing. Now, when you are simply bringing your attention to your breath, bringing this continuity of mind that notices changing to your breath. You're noticing changing. You're recognizing changing, but you're not experiencing changing yet. let's say you're not experiencing changing from the point of view of change.

[34:27]

Now the word I would use that indicates that you're now experiencing change, you're experiencing this view that everything's changing, it's your actual experience, when, as I said the other day, when in fact you find everything unique. That's the actual experience of change. As long as you don't find everything unique, each moment unique, each breath absolutely unique, and you rest in each breath as if there was no tomorrow. This is the actual experience of change. In other words, you've made a shift from observing that things change to being change itself, or something like that. I'm seeking for words. Now you're experiencing this teaching.

[35:35]

This is very refreshing, and it's so refreshing, we could call it, why not call it Kensho? It's so refreshing that it is freeing. I'm not saying it's enlightenment, but now you have to ask, is this a gradual practice or is this a sudden practice? You have taken a view, you've noticed it, recognized it, recognized its operative, its operation, its functioning, and you've made a little shift to arising from, shall we say, being based in change itself. Well, that shift is a kind of, it can be, it can precipitate what we could call Kensho.

[36:42]

But it depends on your state of mind, how you approach it. You're taking something very simple, everything's changing, and you're using it in a transformative way. So there's another shift possible here in this simple example, because you not only shift to each and each, or one, You're now, when you count your breaths, you don't feel like it's one to ten anymore, it's just one and one. When you're a beginner it's one and one because you can't get to two, you start thinking about things. That's the beginner's practice of counting to one. The more advanced practice of counting to one is just one. One. Nothing else is there.

[37:52]

And then everything reappears. So I'm throwing these out to ask you, is this sudden or is this gradual? Or is it useful ideas? Let's look at where these ideas of sudden and gradual are useful and where they're not useful. Okay, let's take what I... said yesterday. We have everything as interdependent. And if you're a scientist, you can study that interdependence. You can study how the tree is affected by the bushes and other trees and climate and soil and

[39:08]

And insect populations and so forth. And you can see that everything is interrelated. And you can see a causal, usually, sequential thing. If this happens, that happens, etc. Now, Buddhism teaches that everything is interdependent as well. But we're not, as Buddhist scientists, we're not studying... it causally in the outer, outside world, but we study this interdependence in ourself. And there's various ways to study this independence or observe this interdependence. I say inter-independence in yourself. But staying with the way I've mentioned yesterday, you notice that each moment, now that you've practiced changing enough, seeing change to rest in each moment, you now have the awareness, the field of awareness, the awareness of mind enough to see each moment forming.

[40:35]

You can expand and contract this each. And there's a, as I said, a growing together, a sedimentation, a layering, an associative event, a self-organizing or own organizing event of this moment. And Zazen practice should give you the space to observe this, of this moment forming. Now, this probably comes after the practice of following thoughts to their source. So you get in the habit of seeing how a mood arises and you can now, you can query quickly after developing some skill, see how that, where that mood came from. What thought, what sound, what perception, what memory led to this present state of mind. You can reconstruct it. You can hold it.

[41:37]

look at it, see how it's constructed. That's one kind of psychological practice in Buddhism. And it's very helpful because you don't feel the victim of your states of mind anymore. You can see how they're constructed. You can change them. It's not easy to do because our chemistry, our genetics, our habits, all... rush in and form our state of mind, we don't have much to say about it. But with serious practice, you really are on your cushion and you just are there. You can really, you can do this practice. Now, one problem with this, and with the idea of enlightenment too, in our culture, is although there are in America and Europe enlightenment intensives and so forth, There really isn't much space in our culture for enlightenment.

[42:40]

If you talk to most psychologists, most people who are working with their mind, they don't believe that like that you can change everything. And of course you can't, but you can make a very fundamental difference. change the basis on which you work with yourself. Okay, so you've developed the skill through practice to see how a particular state of a mind has arisen and you don't, mostly you just accept it, you notice it and it's better not to fiddle with it too much at first. Because that's who's doing the fiddling. Usually some kind of person who... Basically the best attitude is whatever state of mind I have is fine.

[43:49]

I'm schizophrenic, fine. I'll learn how to be enlightened as a schizophrenic because it'll help all the schizophrenics of the world. You know. You don't try not to be schizophrenic. I'm going to be an enlightened schizophrenic with this kind of view. All right. Of course, it's also, if you want to work on not being schizophrenic, because you're more effective as an enlightened non-schizophrenic, that's okay too. But the attitude is one of acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. Okay. Now this field of mind, and you're comfortable enough in your field of mind to know where it came from, and now... your sitting is also stable enough. Am I doing okay here? Am I going? Okay. I'm talking about something totally invisible.

[44:52]

I wonder if you're all holding it here. Okay. You're now able not only to see and feel in possession of or own up to your own state of mind. But you, just as you don't identify with your thoughts, you don't identify with your state of mind anymore either. You accept it, but you have, you identify now with the one who is not busy. You identify with the field of mind itself, not the contents of mind. Just like as you have with this working with everything changing and you come into an identification with each, that's one shift, each and you have the experience of uniqueness.

[45:54]

The other shift is, that happens very closely related, is you shift to the continuity of mind that observes change. Now, these kinds of shifts begin to build a different, weave a different kind of person. You know, one of the measures of, one of the measures of really understanding change is the actual experience of uniqueness. Another measure of really realizing, experiencing interdependence is you come to the point where basically you get along with anyone. As long as you're not getting along with some people or don't like some people, you don't really, you haven't realized the experience of interdependence.

[47:03]

Now I can try to explain a little bit what I mean. Oh dear. Oh Rodin, if I could now turn the stone. Oh dear. Generally we, our feelings about people are determined by their character. That's one. whether they're a nice guy, honest person, or creep, or whatever. Second, what attitude they have toward us, whether they like us or not. And third, probably, whether we can trust them. And fourth, probably, what level of reciprocity there is. There's a kind of experience of, it's almost like chemistry, kind of reciprocity in others.

[48:13]

You're with somebody and there's tiny little things that you understand what the other person's body is doing. And to some people, the reciprocity in tiny little things is not there and you kind of But those are usually attitudes we bring to the situation. We have determined something about their character. We think they might betray us or something or in the sense that we can't trust them or we think they don't like us. We're carrying some kind of feeling. When you really both recognize how everything's changing, and how interdependent we are, those things aren't present in each moment of being with a person. You're just with them and then they sort of, who's that?

[49:15]

It's like that. I don't know who you are, said Bodhidharma. When you actually feel that I don't know who you are, but there you are, it's hard not to get along with people. So one of the tests of practice is, and advancement in practice, is one, this maya hana shift to really be practicing for others, and the realization of that in that you pretty much get along with anyone. If you're holding kind of this anger and you get, you know, you haven't realized some of the basics of Buddhism. You may understand them, but you haven't really, you don't experience them. Today I decided not to bring my watch so I don't have to worry about the time.

[50:17]

It's behind me. You think I should... Okay. Okay. Okay, let me just finish the tangent, tangential digression I was envisioning. You now have come to the point where your state of mind is stable enough that you don't identify with the contents but with the state of mode, field of mind itself.

[51:23]

We can call that shift a kind of kinsho or small incremental enlightenment realization. The shift is the realization. And you know how your mind, state of mind has arisen. Now you can begin to pay attention to how each moment arises from the immediate circumstances, as the present moment, not as a moment coming from the past. So you've been working with how the moment has arisen from the past. You're working with more of the karmic elements, how each present event is partially made up of past events. That's one experience of time, that the present is made up from the past. in our human experience, for sure. Now you're shifting to notice how the concrescence of the present moment, how the present moment gathers this each, this interiority.

[52:40]

And you can then, as I suggested, express that through the paramitas, through your breath, through your presence, or you can absorb it into the next moment. Now this concrescence, this interiority of this particular moment, right, is actually what exists. Everything else has gone to make that. Your body, the world, everything goes to make that moment which is empty. It can't be grasped, held on to, anything. This is emptiness. The most central thing in our life, at each moment, this gathering of the present together,

[53:49]

This each, which becomes the next each, and is our present existence, is entirely ungraspable. Now, as I said, it's also an interiority of the tree, the bird, and each of you, and so forth. that is this present each forming. And this is also an understanding of mind, as I suggested, in the big sense, but this can't be got to gradually. I can describe this and you can think it, but to suddenly feel this mind present in all of us and the tree and the bird, this is a jump and we could call that a realization or enlightenment experience. Because it can't be... It's sort of like, I can see this tree, I can see the building, but I can't see everything from up above.

[54:57]

Or it's like arriving in a foreign country suddenly. You don't know how you got there. You're in a foreign country. To arrive there suddenly, all at once, and to see everything all at once... This is also a description of enlightenment. But to live there in that country takes time. You can see the houses, but to move in the houses and start living there, this is transformative practice. Okay, so I am teaching a transformative practice that I would call pre-enlightenment and a transformative practice that I would call post-enlightenment, and both are pedagogically directed at the edge of reality. In other words, this pedagogically, sudden practice means you practice this uniqueness as if you're on the edge of reality.

[56:08]

This unique moment which you have removed all sense of predictability from. There is of course practical predictability, but the basic feeling you have is, you don't know. Now if you can practice that way, this deep don't know bodhidharmas, that rests in the absolute uniqueness of each moment, this approach is the best approach best state of mind in which to practice in, gradually, incrementally, immediately, slowly, whatever way, it's the best way to practice. So you bring some phrase in, just this. Perhaps something like that.

[57:13]

Well, as usual, I've said too much and too long. Thank you very much. Genminyo no wa Hyaku sen man no iwo ayo Goto katashi Ware man ken mo shi suhi Suru koto etari Negawa kuwa nyorai Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji

[58:31]

None surpassed penetrating and perfect Dharma Is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million Kelpas Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words Good afternoon. I would like to start every lecture with how lovely it is to be here with you, but I think you'd get tired of me saying it.

[59:37]

The Diamond Sutra, which we read usefully several times a week or so, there's one little poem in it. Those who seek for me, you know, about the 32 marks and so forth. Those who seek, those who look for me in form or seek for me in sound are on a mistaken path because the tathagata cannot be known in this way. Something like that. This is true. You know, I mean, when you read something like that, if you're practicing Zen, not everything in all the sutras is exactly correct. But basic things like this, you can just say, hey, what the heck does this mean? What does this have to do with my life?

[60:46]

And look at your own experience. Look at what you yourself do. Those who seek for me, who look for me in form, those who look for me in form, those who seek for me in sound, they are on a mistaken path. For the Tathagata cannot be known in this way. The Tathagata means the Buddha in the biggest sense. And it means you. And so you should notice, are you seeking for yourself in form and sound and so forth. So I'm trying in this session to give you another picture, feeling, sense, experience, to show you another body. And that's part of this approach to how can we let our body guide our practice.

[61:57]

Now let me digress a bit. Supposedly they've discovered a new megalith like Stonehenge or Avebury in Egypt. that's much bigger and much older. Great, huge, monolithic, monoliths, actually, of rock, arranged. Now, generally, anthropologists and so forth explain these things as a way of predicting the seasons for the farmers, you know, flood time in the Nile, or I don't know what, you know, things like that. I don't really think that's what they're about. Of who am I to say, but that's, you know, my opinion. And, of course, they...

[63:04]

I'm sure they were used for that and that's part of their importance and usefulness, but my own feeling would be that they are meant to mirror the heavens. And mirror the heavens not just in a simple way, but rather like a conduit for the energy or power of this world as it appears. Because there's no doubt, you know, these folks, before electric lights, didn't have much to do at night, you laid out on your back, and all these stars were there. They spent a lot of time looking at the stars, probably. Particularly in Egypt, which has, like here, a lot of dry air. The stars look very black. The sky looks very black. So it's quite natural.

[64:06]

To see this as, because everyone knows that when the order is right, not mental order, not order you forced on yourself, but when you feel an inner order, and that inner order feels consonant with the world, you feel a kind of power and clarity. There's power there. So I would say that these folks had some kind of power being exhibited, some kind of order. There's some kind of order here. And so they tried to make their own order, which mirrored it. And I would say it's almost like an electric plug. They sort of thought, okay, we'll plug the heavens in here in Stonehenge, in this place in Egypt, and let it flow. Now, you won't believe where I'm going.

[65:08]

I maybe will, but I don't believe it. Okay. Now, I... And also, you know, these things, these monomegaliths, as they're called, groupings of monoliths, are found particularly along the whole coast of Europe in Portugal and Spain and France and England and Scotland and so forth. Maybe there's some in Germany, I don't know. I don't want to offend anyone here. Anyway, I'm sure there are. And they're found along, and they're cited along what people experience as so-called ley lines. Now, ley, L-E-Y, just means a field or meadow in English, British English.

[66:18]

And so I think it's the sense that people could feel some kind of line. I mean, in the mountains it's harder to feel and see, but in just an empty field you could feel there was something different in this half of the field than that half of the field. In any case, this is all part of an experience of the world as energy and force, a kind of flowing of energy. Now this kind of feeling was, yeah, this kind of feeling is kept, is still very much alive in China and Japan. And the study of it has become a kind of fashion now, kind of simplistic versions of it called Feng Shui. Now I don't, this is not something I've more than casually studied and I'm not particularly involved in spiritual places and ley lines and things like that.

[67:33]

But one thing that is, must be clear to you, is I want this, a place, one of the I want this place to survive for some generations. I say modestly 500 years, optimistically 1,000. And I want it to do so because if we're going to be here, we might as well make a nice place that lasts, you know. It's not going to be sold to Marriott or somebody, you know, at some point. And I want to do it really because my main desire in this life is to ensure the continuation of this lineage in you guys. And I feel that will be supported if we also can establish a temple lineage.

[68:44]

Yeah, I'm just confessing my weaknesses or something here. Proclivities. But there is, you know, there's the temple lineage and the person lineage, the ancestral lineage, are separate. They're understood to be separate. And often you chant the lineage of a temple separate from chanting your personal lineage. But they also overlap. And if you can make a temple that is separate developed through a number of successors, it helps to continue the lineage. So that's, you know, what we've got to do in the West, or otherwise this is kind of silly. Fun for us, but... I mean, Sukhiroshi, as I've said the other day, Sukhiroshi coming to the West means nothing unless you realize his understanding.

[69:47]

He only actually arrived if he arrives in you. And he only actually arrived if he arrived in you and he arrives in your disciple and so forth. So this job has fallen to me to create a place where we can try to help Suzuki Roshi and each of us arrive in this practice of wisdom and compassion. I feel it's important for each of you and I feel it's important for our society, actually, too. Anyway, somebody should do this, so that's what we're doing. Okay. Now, if we're going to create a place which is a place that lasts, it has to be a place we want to take care of.

[70:51]

We have to take care of our 80, perhaps 100 or so acres. And we have to take care of how we've made this place our own. First of all, we built... We started staff one, what's going to be Gural's house, Gisla's house. And then we couldn't finish it, so we started staff two, which... That's just a tough shed, as you probably know. It was delivered from Colorado Springs or something on a truck and put up in a few hours. Then we put in windows and so forth. That was the first thing we did here, other than have the house we inherited from Lindisfarne. Although we have a connection with Lindisfarne and Sim van der Nieuw designed it and so forth, so it wasn't from nowhere. But we have to create a place that is we want to take care of and a place that is in place, that feels in place.

[72:00]

Yeah. So I gave a lot of consideration to where we located the Zendo when it became possible to build a Zendo. I, we doused this place in four different ways, and finally decided, and then the final decision was whether it aimed toward the mountain or north-south. We decided on north-south. In early times, the basic things are, you know, a roof. You need a roof over your head. And then next, after the roof, there's a door, the threshold. And then there's the bed, the chair, and the table.

[73:06]

Now, in Chinese architecture, the making of furniture was complicated. was the same design closely related to the buildings, to the architecture. It was kind of the same thing. The building was what was the roof, and most Chinese and Japanese buildings are basically roofs. Great roofs, and then they have these walls of various kinds. And then inside, to be off the floor, you had to have a bed, some kind of platform. And these times that we're sitting on are ancestors of this. some kind of platform, some kind of place to put the food or the altar, and something to sit on. Now, those implements, those murs, movables in French, those movables, furniture,

[74:12]

were considered also to be conduits of the energy. Not really different than the idea of Stonehenge. That each table or chair was designed in a way that moving it and putting it in the room transformed or changed or settled the energies in the space. Now when you make something like that, It's not these, like, what are these big companies which sell cheap furniture, American furniture or something, and they have couches for $100 or $300. I mean, they make tables. I don't know where they make tables. I don't even know. I mean, I don't know. They probably get the wood from the moon or something. I don't know. And it's squirted out of machines, etc., Now, I'm just revealing my arcane nature.

[75:19]

And I'm not saying this is right or wrong or anything like that. I'm just kind of revealing my peculiarity, I think, in this. But when you make such a table or a building like this, you choose the wood. You choose the grain. And you make one. You don't make 30 or 50 or 500. You make one. and the next one you make is another one. And this building, you know, it's 26 pillars from trees around here. So there's 26 trees from this area that support this building. And what we want here is a very solid, settled space. And I hope that's been achieved. But part of the way it's come to is, you know, we have this floor, this diagonal floor.

[76:25]

We have six ceilings. And we have two levels of ceilings. And we have in the middle space very constricted spaces, those four constricted spaces. which are quite tight, and then a very open space that kind of opens up from those tight spaces. So the tight spaces are very much a part of the open space. We have these wonderful Noguchi moons. And the floor itself is the same shape as on the mandala of the bowing cloth. It's the same kind of shape. So the floor shape made by the tans is a mandala. And I think that we cut one tree down, a kind of scrawny tree, but we cut one tree down that I believe was about where the altar is.

[77:28]

I wanted it to be where the altar is anyway. And then where the altar is, we also dug a hole and buried some precious and personal things, including Gisela's hair when she was ordained. And I guess Kural put a little Buddha in, is that right? And then we put various things in and we buried it under where the altar is. So this... What we do here is centered on the Zendo. The zendo is centered on the altar. So everything we do here comes from the altar and comes toward the altar. And even the Buddha wearing robes, I'm sitting here wearing robes and I'm facing the Buddha.

[78:33]

And I wear robes not really because I'm a priest or a monk or something like that. I wear robes because Sukhiroshi wore robes. It was that simple. Because I wanted to mirror him. I wanted to do everything possible that would put me in tune with him. That's why I went to Japan, too, to study his home culture, to live in his home culture. And in fact, the services we do are exactly this kind of mirroring. We talked a little bit about it before. But the idea is the Buddha's there and we all gather to chant the Buddha's words. Diamond Sutra, for example. And the person who's leading the ceremony, myself or Randy or Mark or whoever happens to do it, is

[79:37]

The idea is the person establishes a relationship with the Buddha figure and the Buddha figure comes alive. The Buddha appears out of the incense burner. There's no Buddha till we offer incense to it. It's the activity of offering incense which makes that statue a Buddha. Otherwise it's just something in a museum or on somebody's table in the living room, something. It's the offering It's the treating it like a Buddha that makes it a Buddha. So I love, on top of Gisela's hair, her incense burner is sitting there. See, I said this is arcane. This is the way I think about things. So there's this mirroring again of this image of maximal greatness, which I ineptly am trying to mirror.

[80:40]

And I try to, you know, at least get my robe straight and feel this potentiality. And by feeling this potentiality, there is a kind of conduit. The statue becomes alive and I become alive in the terms of what the statue represents. And supposedly if that conduit is created, then the whole service participates in it. That's the idea anyway. Let's hope we're achieving it to some extent. So this is all to say that I'm very pleased we have this table, this new table, because I feel this table is one of those objects which was made to be a conduit of the energy that is this all-at-onceness. It's different from the other tables, but it all began from this gift of Walt Dixon of the table in the back.

[81:49]

which is a very nice table for the Buddha. But the center is the incense burner, which is that point, which is the relationship between the Buddha and us. And the incense burner sits on this table, which happens to be, its top is, I think the top and its apron are are just exactly the right length for this room and the right height. I can't believe it. If I'd designed a table and had it made, it could not have been, I could not have done this well. So, I mean, this is only to say that, you know, it's just a table, right? But for me, it is the center of our practice now. And I feel very fortunate. And it's in place in a way. It's a movable that's now in place, holding up the incense burner to the Buddha in a way that I think, I mean the things that hold this place in place are the zendo, I think, otawan, guanyin,

[83:11]

And now this altar. These are things that will be taken care of for a long time. So at least for me, creating a place that will stay in place means paying attention to details like what table we have or what incense burner. I've spent the last seven months or more looking for an incense burner for Johanneshof. I looked in Japan, everywhere. I looked in other Asian countries. I looked in Australia. I looked in Germany. I haven't found one yet, but I found what may suffice, which is I think a third century incense burner from China. It's in the Guggenheim Museum show right now. If I'd been in the museum with my robes, we might have it now.

[84:29]

But since Lynn Blustein and Gisela are good potters, I've gotten pictures of it, and we've made some colored Xeroxes of it that Atmar made, and they both agreed to try to make one. So maybe we'll have one of a thin, slightly crackled green glaze. And as you already know, part of our connection with Johanneshof is taking incense powder from here and putting it in the incense burner at Johanneshof and vice versa. Okay, that's all about that. I also want to say that, well, tomorrow I'll start joke signs. And by the way, let me, I know that when you've gotten joke sign instructions, you're told that always someone forgets and puts their shoes outside.

[85:42]

and then steps onto the inside floor, the mystery gate, the genkan, from Vimalakirti's 10-foot square hut, and then up onto the... And if you do that, you get grit, and you have to... This kind of house, I think in the Sun dynasty, the Chinese went to chair... and table living, but before that they had mat-level living. And mat-level living is a combination that the mats represent the dining room table, the bed, the chair, and so forth. So you have to think of it, you're stepping onto the dining room table, you're stepping onto the bed. So generally you step, come up backwards to the first stair, take your shoes off and never step on the genkan floor, but up onto the stair. And also you don't step on the threshold. I think in Europe they still have some thresholds where there's actually a wooden board. The door isn't floor level. It's up.

[86:44]

And you don't step on that, at least in Japan. You step over it. It's like carrying your spouse over the threshold or something. You step over the threshold, not on it. Because the threshold goes back to these real basics. The door, the roof, the bed, etc. Now, Another topic. I have my watch this time, so I have no excuse. Okay. But I know that you two would keep an eye on the clock behind me. A fellow named Helmut from Austria and New York is going to come here. Maybe. I think he's coming. Could he say he's coming? Okay. Okay. Maybe the last day or two. Will he come during Sashin? Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah?

[87:48]

Okay. Anyway, Helmut wants to make a film about Buddhism. We talked about it. I haven't talked to the whole Sashin about it, but we talked about it before. So I should warn you. You have to put on makeup, you know. Okay. They'll all wear Buddha masks. Anyway, or at least some antabhadra. We have an elephant around here. Anyway, so I and a sort of we have agreed to let him come and do some kind of filming. And I don't, you know, I've had quite a lot of experience with the media. And my general feeling is to stay away from it. But my experience has been if you stay away from it completely, you get that this doesn't work. You're part of this society. You have to be partially open.

[88:49]

And in the 70s, because just for historical circumstances, there was a lot of attention that came my way. Television specials in New York. And I said no to everything. Because I felt if I become a public person, it'll interfere with my simple relationship with you guys. So I probably made some mistakes in over-shunning these opportunities. I suppose they were opportunities. But anyway, I did. And as much as possible, I've kept the centers where I've been responsible out of the media. But I feel you have to say yes sometimes. So it's a kind of experiment. And this is a friend of a friend of mine, partly funded by people I know in Austria, So it'll be made for Austrian television, but it'll be open to probably be sold to German television in North America. But anyway, the idea is you'll do, it'll be a, I guess, 40-minute or an hour program with, in three parts, one part on us as a practice center, one part on some Tibetan group as a practice center, and then some interviews.

[90:08]

Now my general feeling is, is that if anybody's going to film us, we should be filmed like the cameraman's a birdwatcher. If you get too close, we fly away. So I would like, for instance, we might agree that he might get filmed for a few minutes, some footage of my giving a lecture, but I don't want the lecture taped just to be a camera back there, something for five minutes or something. Or we might do the zazen for a few minutes, or the service. I don't know if we're going to. Depends also how you feel. But if we do, I don't want any extensive, complicated thing. If they can't do it in a few minutes, I don't want them to do it. And I feel quite comfortable to tell them to leave.

[91:11]

I have no obligation, I don't feel, even that they arrive here, I don't feel an obligation to do it. So anyway, that's coming up and I ask for your cooperation in this experiment in should we have, to some extent, let the media You know, there's a kind of precedent for this, which is that there's a tradition in Asia that a monastery is always open to the public officials who have authority and to the major donors. Because if you're going to give money or you're the governor of the province, you have a right to see that this monastery is actually practicing Buddhism. So there's this custom that you... under special circumstances, even during practice period, or sashin, the society can come in and see if you're really doing Buddhism or not, or something.

[92:12]

Who knows what we want. Maybe we're all sitting here bird-watching. Anyway, that's that. So this... Letting this helmet and... I guess two people are coming with him, is that right? it's letting energy into this place and we have to see how that works but our practice is also letting energy in this image of Samantabhadra which I can go back to a bit and the ocean seal samadhi, or ocean seal mind. Now, in psychology they talk about an oceanic consciousness, artists have or something like that, you know. And often it's pejorative, that means negative. Like it's some kind of regression to a childlike, infantile state of mind.

[93:22]

And it's just a metaphor, oceanic consciousness. But ocean seal samadhi is a teaching in the title itself. The ocean is, or a mirror sometimes, this is a multi-dimensional mirror. It's as if you could imagine a mirror that was multi-dimensional, that you were inside the mirror.

[93:50]

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