Good afternoon. I think I'll start Doksans tomorrow, the fourth day. Usually I start on the fifth day. But the reason Sashin and Yohannesov I started earlier, everyone liked it. I could see people once, once is required. I could see people two or three times. Four, maybe that's too many unless you stop counting after three. But there's 20 people less here, so I don't really have to start earlier. But anyway, I think I'll start tomorrow. Yeah. I wish I could just somehow... pop what I'm feeling into each of you and then watch it, if it would, flower and I could see the ways in which I'm not clear and I could see the ways in which you don't understand and then we could refine it together.

[01:19]

Yeah, maybe that's happening, but anyway, I still have to say some kind of words. Let me start with Yamada Momon Roshi, who was my teacher in Japan, a statement which I've alluded to a couple times recently. He said that the most important and fundamental thing in human life fundamental point of human mind, is to have a clear realization of absolute respect for yourself. He didn't stop there, but I'll stop there for a moment. Because, you know, we want to practice, we want everything to happen, But you know, it rests on very simple things like to have a clear realization of absolute respect for yourself.

[02:30]

And he goes on to say, by seeing that accepting feeling, knowing that you are here, and that the entire world is working to make your life possible. That's a fact. Maybe completely obvious. But it's, how do we enter into such a, so that we can make each, this world which has done its work to bring it to this, bring this moment to us, how can we now make this moment flower? How can we see the stars in ourselves, which are obscured by too much daylight?

[03:48]

There's a saying in Buddhism, the problem with people is that they have an upside down view, which means they try to get pleasure out of samsara. Now I'm asking myself, here we are, you know, we've come together here at Crestone. And by the way, I've been meaning to ask someone, at night during the hot drink, when I say something, can the people in the back of the room hear me? Yes? And when I spoke in meditation the other morning, during meditation, could you hear me? Oh, okay. I don't know how the acoustics work exactly. Thank you. So I'm asking myself these days, what am I talking about?

[05:07]

What are we doing here? What am I teaching you? We're trying to discover through practicing with you, Well, one I've talked about is the habit body. And I think we can recognize the sense of that. To fully see how it's a shell that encases us, the habit body as a mental image, and so forth. It's not just habits, accumulated patterns, but it's a structural... It's a... mental structure we apply to the situation. It's deeper than just our accumulated habits. But I think we can understand what I'm speaking about. Let's call it, lump it all together as habit body. Then maybe we can have an unobstructed body.

[06:14]

The unobstructed body we realize through enlightenment or some epiphany. I think the word epiphany is quite good in English for one kind of thing which Buddhism would call an enlightened experience. And then we could say there's the generated body. And I'm trying to sort this out in talking to you because I don't think it's always clear to you when I'm speaking about a generated body and when I'm speaking about an unobstructed body, when I'm speaking about a habit body. Now someone wrote me a letter recently from Europe and she said Please give me a con.

[07:16]

I want to realize my Buddha nature. I thought it was a nice letter to get, you know. And it's a precious feeling, this woman has. For I can tell in the letter, and knowing her, that she understands Buddha nature is real. As real as things get. that it's something real, it's something possible. And Buddha nature depends on, if you look at any definitions and studies of Buddha nature, it depends on a recognition in yourself of its reality, actuality. So she has this feeling. She also... wants to do it. She has the energy to act on it. This is good. These two things are good. But the problem she expresses, that's in this little letter, is that she thinks it's causal.

[08:28]

She thinks there's some cause that she can get hold of and do it. Well, nice idea. And it's nice that she has trust in me, that somehow if I give her the right koan, she will have the right cause, and yeah, etc. So I really appreciate the preciousness of this moment for her understanding and her confidence. in practice and in me. But her understanding of causation practice, it's not so clear. Could be deeper. And she doesn't realize, maybe she, I've given her hundreds of cons.

[09:36]

She's not alert enough yet. I mean, if I say to you, just now is enough, this is a koan, and you, unless you work with these phrases that prime you for working with koans, which cons are essentially not really different than working with a phrase like this, it's pretty hard for me to give you a con. You want something kind of pinned to your lapel. So she needs to be more alert and recognize that I've already given her many cons. So let me speak about, okay, so again, I guess I gave you all these lists, but really my idea in giving you lists is just to say, make your own list.

[10:48]

I made that up. Well, you can make one up too. What are the basics of practice? Posture has to have some duration. You have to develop the ability to stay with something. Breath is the best. We could talk about how breath, the many aspects of learning, coming to stay with your breath. As coming into trust, we could open up the flower of trust into what Yamada Momon Roshi said. to come into absolute respect for yourself. A clear realization of absolute respect for yourself, conjoined with and inseparable from the understanding that this whole world is working at this moment to give you life.

[11:53]

So, this is trust. So today I'm giving you this list of habit body, unobstructed body, and generated body. Now I'll try to give you some examples by speaking about Buddhist culture, because we're living here together, or we stay together sometimes here, And much of what we do here is Buddhist culture. You know, a school bell, at least in American schools, class, and then you have to go to class, you know. And then you sit there and then the teacher's just in the middle of something and goes, and then you have to get up and leave and go to another class. We could call this a signal.

[13:01]

which signifies that class is about to begin or is ending. It's a signal or maybe a symbol. But when we ring the Han, hit the Han, it's a signal, but it doesn't signify, it represents. So we hit the Han, The Han doesn't mean, okay, Zazen's about to start. Of course it means that, partly. But it doesn't mean it as a signal. It means it as a representation. So it has to have duration. And it represents the process of getting to the Zendo. Do you see? That's quite different. Different than a school bell. It doesn't make any difference. They could, you know, they could Some schools have buzzers, some schools have bells. But it does make a difference whether we use the Densha or the Han.

[14:08]

Or, you know, if we had the money, there's a lot of other things we could buy that indicate different sounds, but, you know. When all of you get rich, you know, I'll ask you for money for equipment to fill up the monastery with bells and drums and things like that. No, I don't want you to get rich. I want you to stay here. It's much better. Our life will be richer if we stay here. At least my humble opinion. My selfish opinion, rather. So the Han... parallels our activity of coming to the zendo and represents the activity, not only represents the activity in terms of getting ready in the first round, entering in the second round, and the abbot or the doshi entering in the third round.

[15:10]

So it represents what's happening. That's the umpam, the drum before the lecture and things. These are representations, symbols. This is Buddhist culture. And, you know, you could change it. Rika works in this school, you know, in Germany. She could introduce the Han. In the gymnasium, it'd be great. I'll stay here. She's very popular. They want her to stay, so she should say, I'll stay, but only if we introduce the Han to start classes. Who's going to hit the Han? The kid who doesn't smoke. She's always trying to get kids not to smoke. Okay. This is radical. I mean, it would be radical to introduce the Han into a school.

[16:11]

If you think of how radical it would be and that somebody has to take the time to hit it, you can see how Buddhist culture differs. You know, for a therapist, the waiting room If the waiting room for a therapist, you have to wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes. If the waiting room was intentionally 40 minutes long, this is Buddhist culture. Okay. Now, I gave you, again, this favorite phrase of mine. Yesterday I mentioned, just now is enough. which is both a practice and a fruit.

[17:12]

The condition for and the fruit of realization. But now let's also look at the physical. I don't know if I can actually give you the feeling of this, but I'm going to try. The physical, instead of a verbal phrase, the physical act which is the same. All right? So we have our meal serving. And two people are sitting. So you're one of the servers. And you're coming to the serving. You're coming to serve somebody, two people, and you stop I said, let's pretend you're the two people and I'm the server. So I'm coming along, zoom, and I stop in my big bowl, my big pot. And then I have to serve the two of you.

[18:16]

Then I stop, and when you two are ready, we three bow, and then I go to the next person, okay? that this is actually a practice like just now is enough. Because when you come to this spot, all coming and going should cease. There shouldn't be any feeling you came from anywhere and any feeling you're going anywhere. But often, almost always, We start to bow and the person is anxious to bow to get to the next person or we can hardly get our hands up and they're gone or something. This is quite common. Now, if the bow is to the tanto or the ino or me, if we feel that this person is so full of coming and going, we should just wait.

[19:27]

Sometimes we just wait and the person then bows and leaves. Come back, little Shiva. That dates me. But really this is an opportunity for all comparisons to end. Coming and going to end. And if you, when you, when you're coming to the place, when you stop, that you're ever going to go anywhere disappears from your mind. This is Dharma practice. And we could call that, making up a term, context-dependent interdependence.

[20:28]

Because everything is interdependent, but in practice it's context-dependent. It's interdependent, but it's interdependent at a particular moment, in a particular way, in a particular place. Do you understand? It's like there's a little aura there. And it takes all three people to make it. The three people have to come together to bow. It is like a receptacle. I could say a container, but... One of the delusions is that the world is a container, so let's not use the word container. Let's say it's a receptacle in which time and space are poured in, or the three people are poured in, and nothing else exists. And if you really experience no comparisons, I mean, not as an idea, actual feeling, everything may go black around you. Because even light we see by comparison.

[21:31]

the actual experience of no comparisons is quite voluminous. So every time, all of this we do has these, this is Buddhist culture, and I spent a lot of time in Japan trying to distinguish between Japanese culture, Buddhist culture, yogic culture, Zen culture, and so forth. And I tried to limit what we do to Buddhist and Zen and yoga culture. I mean, I have little symbolic things, like I won't wear tabi. I refuse to wear tabi. Tabi are these little white socks with a little thing. They have nothing to do with Buddhism at all. They're just Japanese culture. And sometimes I'm in very formal situations with all these priests and fancy brocade, and they all have their white tabi, and I'm barefoot.

[22:37]

And they don't like it. They say, we know your feet are so big you can't buy tabi. I say, yes, that's right. But in actual fact, I have several, quite a few pairs of tabi that fit quite well. But I just feel I just don't want to do Japanese culture. I'm trying to do Buddhist culture. So I have my little idiosyncrasies. I did a part of, I led a ceremony for, with the bishop, I guess, at the cathedral in San Francisco for Fritz Schumacher. E.F. Schumacher, who wrote Smallest Beautiful, when he died, we were quite good friends, and so when he died, they asked me to come lead a ceremony at Grace Cathedral. And I was barefoot. I had on my robe now, but I was barefoot. Quite cold floor, I guess you would imagine. I felt a little embarrassed.

[23:39]

So we can call, if you want to try to look at technical Buddhist terms and put them in the context of our actual experience, we can call that moment in which you stop and bow letting everything be poured into that moment, nothing going out of that moment. The two people who are serving, being served, and the server, those three people are being poured into that moment along with the soup. And if comparisons cease, and there's no longer a flavor of coming or going, we can say thus. That's thusness. Now the biggest name for Buddha is Tathagata, which means coming and going. Thus coming, thus going. And what that means is not just that this moment is thus, that for a Buddha the coming is also thusness and the going is also thusness.

[25:02]

It's not just the stop which is thusness. But we have to practice. We're beginners. So we practice with a stop, and we let things stop. This is what we could also call timelessness or thusness. That stop, that thus, is the same as just now is enough. It's just, it's also the absolute respect for oneself, knowing that we are here, everything's working to make this moment. This is a koan, this is good enough to practice with. Not to understand, to come into actual feeling of this. So interdependence isn't an idea.

[26:07]

Yeah, I'm really independent. I know ecology and all that stuff, you know, flowers and birds and clouds and water, pollution, etc. But rather to have a context-dependent experience of interdependence. Or we could maybe try another technical term, Sight-dependent actualization. You don't like my terms? You think they're funny? What am I going to say? I have to say something. I have to figure out how to say these things. It's actualization, but it's dependent on the sight. It's actualized through... It's not actualized in some airy, fairy place. It's actualized right here in this particular moment. Just now is enough. sight-dependent actualization.

[27:08]

Sorry, but that's actually fairly accurate way to say it. So our meals. What do you do? You serve meals in the Zendo? Somebody in Boulder will say, oh yeah, we do a lot of sight-dependent actualization one after another. Oh, I think I won't go to Christ, though. You know, Proust, since I've been mentioning Proust recently, I'll mention one of, certainly maybe the most famous passage in Proust, which is probably the seed of his entire work. The time when he comes home, he's rather depressed, everything seems dreary, and he's kind of overwhelmed with things to do, and his mother, who's quite sight dependent on his mother, his mother offers him a cup of tea.

[28:11]

And he's bored with tea, he doesn't want a cup of tea. He says, okay, oh. But for some reason he says in this passage in the book, So he'll have a cup of tea. And so his mother says, well, can you go out and get some petite madeleine, which are these little scallop-shaped cakes? They're quite tasty. The first thing I went to Paris, I said, I want a madeleine. Years ago, I had to have one. What do you want? Anyway, so he goes out and gets them. He comes back. And he drinks his tea in the funniest way. He has a spoonful of tea with a little crumb of Madeline in it. And he takes it. And suddenly, he says, he doesn't know where it came from. We call it non-referential joy. You want a term? He doesn't know where it came from. He said, joy flooded my senses.

[29:13]

Couldn't understand it. And then he said, but so I stopped and became aware. And he said, the whole, the next day, which seemed so depressing, suddenly my life, which before had seemed so short, seemed of endless length or no length. All the vicissitudes I felt disappeared, seemed unimportant. And he says, everything flowered. He said, he uses the example, some little Japanese thing they must have had in Paris in those days, little wads of paper that you drop into a cup and they open up into different kinds of flowers. They looked like just a little wad of paper. So he said, it was like these little wads of paper, suddenly everything started flowering around.

[30:17]

He said, and all from a cup of tea. A dreary cup of tea. Now, this person who wrote me this letter from Japan... I mean, from Germany saying that she would like a Cohen, I could say, well, get a cup of tea and a Madeline. How can I recommend, what can I recommend? Yeah, mm-hmm. I can't instruct her to have a dreary cup of tea in a spoon. That's waiting by a stump. LAUGHTER I can just say at tea break tomorrow morning, you're all having little spoons of tea. Well, it's the wrong kind of Madeline. I know. That's why it doesn't work. But I could instruct her to stop and pay attention and give attention.

[31:28]

Because I think that's the key to the whole experience, that he felt something coming and he stopped and in awareness allowed it to come. So he intuitively discovered thus. I could instruct her to do that, and I'm instructing us to do that. To shift from consciousness to awareness so your inner stars become visible. He stopped and let everything pour in. This is also Dogen saying, again, one of his most famous quotes, when you carry yourself forward and reveal or study myriad things or understand myriad things, this is delusion,

[32:44]

You carry yourself forward and understand myriad things. This is delusion. Well, it's a delusion we... To say it's a delusion doesn't mean never will I do that again. No. I mean, as usual, if you have a job, you have to carry yourself forward and understand many things. But it is delusion. It's an upside-down world from a Buddhist point of view. And Dogen goes on to say, but when myriad things come forth and experience themselves, this is awareness, this is awakening. When myriad things come forth and experience themselves, this is awakening. Zazen practice, Buddhist culture, keeps trying to put ourselves in situations to so structure the Han, the bells, the food serving, etc.

[33:57]

So you have myriad opportunities to find that thus in which things come forth and experience themselves. That's all there is to it. Or that's some of what there is. Buddha nature, a Buddha is one who lets myriad things come forth and experience reveals themselves.

[35:01]

So this feeling, this koan, this sense of the world Let it seed you. Let it seed us. S-E-E-D. Thank you very much. May your intention be clear, and trade every piece with the true relative as well. Should you want what you have, say you want what you have. Thank you.

[36:11]

Thank you. um um O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

[38:09]

I am unsurpassed in trading and perfect dharma. It is rarely the name that's repeated even in a hundred thousand million chapters. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I am able to taste the truth of those countless words. For the most part, to the extent that there's any merit to my practice, it's that I've been doing it a pretty long time for one person.

[39:56]

in the West. And I've committed myself to practicing with others, interactively practicing with others as we're doing here. So what interests me right now is what practice do I actually have? What is my practice after all these years? Not what it should be or what it's supposed to be, but actually what is it? So I'm trying to again find some language for this. Today I mostly would just like to share my I guess, my thoughts, my observations with you.

[41:02]

You know, I think of when I, just to give you again this sense of context, once I went to the Carmelite monastery here, Christmas or I don't know. Anyways, they invited us to come. And part of it was they took, they did communion. So I took communion. And I found out later it caused something of a stir. What is this Buddhist? I mean, maybe somebody they didn't know took it. They'd say, well, maybe he's thinking of being a Catholic. But they were quite sure I wasn't thinking of being a Catholic. Yeah. But, you know, when I'm with Dean Morton at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, he has me march in the procession and take communion and do everything, but that's Episcopal. It's not the real thing, you know. It's some British version. English, what do they call it?

[42:17]

English Catholic? Anglican Catholic. Something like that. Yeah, but you know one time there was a kind of religious convocation at Harvard and the various people came in and Harvard has this great kind of sort of non-denominational Protestant chapel. It's quite a big church actually on the campus. And everyone came up and When the Buddhist person came up, he bowed to the Christ figure. Everybody thought that was a little funny. The Muslims didn't, and other people didn't, but the Buddhists do. When I go in a Catholic church and I find the water and I cross myself, and I'm not sure I'm doing it right, but I do the best I can. But from a Buddhist point of view, in which things are, using my term yesterday, context-dependent, once I'm in the service with the Carmelites, it's too late.

[43:37]

I'm part of the context. So there's no meaning to my not doing it. or doing it is just part of the context or something like that. I mean, if we were doing Buddha's birthday here, ceremony, anybody who comes can offer incense. We don't say, well, you better not offer incense. Robert Duncan, who was my, one of my teachers and poet, he says, he says, oh yes, it's something about we must be saved in Christ or something like that. But he says, um, He said he can't agree that the only game in town is salvation and everyone else is damned. He said, I don't want to live in the city of salvation. I don't have anything against it, but I don't want it to be the only adventure in life. You either play this game or you're out.

[44:47]

You know. But of course that's a whole different way of looking at things. Even using the word game. Rather shocking. So maybe it's just like for us Buddhists, it's like when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When Sukhyoshi... He seems to have studied, practiced at a Rinzai temple. I'm sure he looked like a Rinzai or a layperson. I know when I was at Daitoku-ji, they didn't let me wear my Soto shoe robes. They insisted I dress as a layperson. They have two categories, Rinzai or lay. And you can look at it as sectarian. But I don't think it's really so sectarian. There's an aspect of that. But I think it's mostly this sense of context. I have to fit into the context. And I fit in better as a lay person.

[45:53]

They knew what to do with lay people, but they didn't know it. But they, of course, treated me as a monk and an ordained person who happened to have a hakama on instead of a kolomo. Dan, you practiced at Daitoku-ji too, huh? Ryutake-ji. Ryutake-ji. But weren't you ever at Daitoku-ji for a while? No. Oh, yeah, Ryutake-ji. We were both... Shokoku-ji. Oh, yeah, in Kyoto. Yeah, well, that's right. We were both Rinzai renegades masquerading as Soto monks. Ha ha! I don't know what we are, actually. I am, we are, you are. And if we're giving a lay ordination, anybody who's present could take the precepts.

[46:59]

We don't say, no, you shouldn't take the precepts. Now, I'm not presenting this as a criticism any other way. I'm just presenting it to emphasize... How much Buddhism is just, if you're in the room and you want to take the precepts, fine. There's no, you know, it's just, you're already part of the situation by being in the room. So we can't deny that and say, you shouldn't take the precepts. There's no magic. There's no way it's supposed to be done exactly. What is real is the way it is done. So again, I'm trying to look at what is real in my practice and our practice, you know. A bowl of lightning would appear, all yellow, and he would suddenly be dressed in a red suit, a set of brown robes or something like that. Abracadabra, you know, it's what magicians say.

[48:03]

Do they say abracadabra in Germany too? Oh, yeah. It was originally an amulet. It was something you wore. They arranged the letters in an inverted triangle so that they worked out a certain way, each line having one less letter. So later it became this magic word, but it was meant to protect you from disease. Abracadabra. So I can just see, what do we say in the, oh, son, we say in the, in the reactive, then you say, oh, son, maybe we say abracadabra. This would be good. Maybe during mealtime, one of the servers will bow and say, abracadabra. Yeah, but something, you know, you can't do this.

[49:09]

So what are you doing when you're doing this kind of vow? This kind of bow or vow? You're enacting, we can say, find some words for it, you're enacting Buddha's mind. Now that doesn't mean you're going to realize at that moment Buddha's mind. I mean, I hope you do. But... And... So let's just use the words gradual and sudden as they come up more or less naturally. If you... Well, let's take another example. A standard practice is when a thought comes up, you observe that the thought has no inherent nature. When you observe an object, you observe that the object is conditioned and has no inherent nature.

[50:10]

That's standard practice. What you're doing, if we describe this as a practice, you're applying a wisdom view to the mind thought and you're applying a wisdom view to the object. Now the idea of dharma is you're stopping change in its tracks. And Cleary has a book out, I think, I don't know if it's recent enough, called Stopping and Seeing. And he's using stopping for shamatha and seeing for vipassana. And that's quite good. I haven't read the book, but quite good stopping and seeing, and we could say shamatha practice is a form of stopping. You're stopping yourself. You're stilling yourself. You're silencing. Shut up. Silencing yourself. And then you're seeing.

[51:15]

Seeing from this place of being stopped. Now, you do increase your skill at this. There's a gradual increase in skill. But there isn't a gradual increase in enlightenment. But there's a gradual increase in skill and a gradual increase in the conditions in which realization and enlightenment might happen. I mean, if the conditions are so good, you're enlightened and you don't even notice it. You're, you know, because what you're doing when you're doing this kind of practice of enactment, applying, mentally applying a view or physically enacting a view, mentally applying, physically enacting,

[52:20]

you're creating a receptacle. If you keep enacting, now there's nothing wrong, why not? If you've got something to do, you have to do something every minute, right? Why not enact Buddha's mind? Among the choices, this is one of the best. So the practice of everyday life would be enacting Buddha's mind in everyday life. Now this does not mean you're gradually being enlightened, but you are gradually increasing your skill, you're gradually increasing the receptacle, the openness. Openness four and openness two. And you're increasing your awareness then the more that awareness is accompanied by stopping. I think of Harry Roberts.

[53:24]

Remember Harry Roberts? He used to say, at least we remember Harry Roberts. Good old Harry Roberts. He was a white man who was an Indian. Or he was a white man who grew up as an Indian. I don't think he had any Indian blood in him, but he was taught by Robert Spott who was a, I guess they say he's the last Yurok shaman, medicine man. Anyway, he was a great person and lived with us at our practice center at Green Gulch. And one story he told, of many, but this one I always remember, is when an example of going and asking somebody if they would be your teacher. Which every now and a few times in our life, I hope we all have that privilege. Somebody goes to their teacher in the Yurok tradition and says, would you be my teacher?

[54:30]

And the teacher to be says, yes, but ask me again and bring me six flowers. Now, if the person turns away to look for six flowers, he's finished, he or she. If they reach, at that moment, reach down and pick up six blades of grass or anything that's there, then, oh, okay, well, maybe we'll think about it. I'll be your teacher. Because this is the mind of just now is enough. You don't go look, you want six flowers? Here. Here's six rocks. I mean, there's none of this fooling around. No, I think I'd better go find six pretty flowers. And you act. In that situation, you act. So go find me six flowers is a little bit trying to confuse.

[55:42]

Oh, okay, I guess I'll... You know, it's like these Zen phrases, I'm always close to this. Not knowing is nearest. Everything we need, we can say, this is also the mind. Everything we need is here. Now again, I don't say this is the only mind, but it is the most fundamental mind. So the more you enact this mind, the more you Make yourself a receptacle for realization.

[56:44]

And when we do an opening eye ceremony, the Buddha, ancient ceremony, we have to do it in Hanesaf, I guess, in February or March, for the new Buddha, the new early Edo period Buddha we have. We have to do this, we should do an opening eye ceremony. We could do one here, too. We could make a stupa here for Sukhya Rishi too, for the moment. Because there's, again, this sense of, I have some of his ashes, so there's this sense of actualizing it, you know, not just a symbol, but yes, Sukhya Rishi's ashes are here. So opening the eye of the Buddha is really exactly the same as opening yourself to the generated body, to a wisdom body. Now we're... I mean, I think one of the things we have to kind of shake ourselves loose from is the nationalism and idealism and simplification of D.T.

[58:01]

Suzuki's Zen. Which I think hangs like a cloud over us. But it also helped us a lot because it did idealize and simplify it enough to make it accessible. And also the politics, the simple politics of Zen, including this overemphasis on sudden practice, or gradual as some kind of alternative, which is, you know, kind of the early scholarship, picking up the Zen partisan politics, also confuses what we're doing. Yeah, so I'm trying to speak to that and sort our way out of it because I not only have to find language that uses the same words but uses them differently, but I also have to find a way that contrasts enough which we all have unconscious views or wishes or sureties about how Zen is.

[59:17]

how we want it to be, how we think it is, or how we've projected on teachers what it's supposed to be. So let's look at our actual practice. Each of you look at your actual practice. I think we can only trust our actual practice when we look at our actual practice, and our actual practice will only develop when we start trusting actually what it is, not what it should be. You know, what it could be is fine, but first we always have to look at what it actually is. And it usually is actually more than you think, for sure more than you think, and usually more than you notice. Usually, in anybody's practicing, even a year or two, my sense of it is all the aspects of Buddhahood are there, just not watered, they're just not noticed.

[60:35]

or there's just not sufficient commitment to realization. So when you, for example, a thought comes up, you apply the view. Now, again, basic practice is to hold. Let me go back to my example of sitting. When you're sitting, like this statue there, I wonder what his experience is. What experience does that posture represent? When you're sitting, as I give as an instruction, I say, you're Your posture is informed by Buddha's posture or you wouldn't be sitting in such a pretzel-like way.

[61:44]

Your posture is informed by Buddha's posture. There's an implication in this posture of realization of Buddha's posture. And there's also your posture. And just simply when you're trying to sit, you sit straight, your back curves, and you do this and that, right? But always you're being informed by the way you'd like your posture to be or a Buddhist posture, and yet you have to accept your own posture. I mean, this is such a fundamental dynamic in Buddhism, to be informed by the ideal posture to accept your own posture. There's always this kind of movement. So in daily life, you're just bowing, you're serving food. Whatever your mind is, you accept it. However you serve the food, you've got big chunks of rice on the Roshi's bowl, or on somebody else's bowl, or whatever, you know.

[62:54]

But at the same time, you're informed by wisdom mind, empty mind, stopped mind. And the practice of everyday life is to allow yourself to be informed by enlightened mind or realized mind at the same time of accepting whatever your mind is. This dynamic is essential. If you say, if you put down either side, your practice isn't fertile. You say, oh, I'm not good enough or something. This is nuts. Or you say, this, I didn't do it right. This is, oh yeah, maybe you didn't, but it's not very important. So in practice, you're always confronting yourself with wisdom. Wisdom views. If you just say everything's impermanent, you're confronting yourself with a wisdom view.

[63:56]

Everything's changing. That's a wisdom view. If you take a phrase, I say, already connected instead of already separated. We all assume we're separated. We can make an antidote view, wisdom view, already connected. So you confront your habit of already separated with a wisdom view of already connected. You confront your... You put face to face. You allow to inform each other your sense that just now is not enough with the view that just now is also and has to be enough. Because there's no alternative. So all these phrases are various kinds of wisdom if you use rubbing a tile.

[65:01]

Well, rubbing a tile doesn't stand on its own unless you know the koan. But if you know the koan, you can use rubbing a tile. Some phrases like, I'm always close to this, the phrase stands alone without the koan, though the koan helps. But you can use the phrase, I'm always close to this. And this use of phrases, this intercession, this interjection into your thinking of wisdom views through phrases and through enactment is classic and perhaps unique Zen Buddhism. It doesn't have to be koans or sutras, it can just be the stuff of your life. But, you know, you can take in the Dhamma Sutra, non-person, non-self, non-living being, non-lifespan. These are four ways in which we implicate the self, or four ways in which we implement the self.

[66:08]

That's far out. Non-lifespan? I mean, we're all aware we have a lifespan, but what in this epiphany of Proust, one of the things he realized in the middle of it, he felt bewildered almost by the fact that he had no sense of lifespan. Everything stopped. There was no sense of duration. This is Buddha's body when there's no sense of duration. Just now. Like this. No comparison. Here we are in this room. What else is there? Everything's here. What do we need? Aren't you all quite happy? Satisfied? What's the problem? There's no problems. Unless you start thinking.

[67:14]

Stop thinking. think if you want, but also know this world in which everything is making this possible at this very moment. Working to make this possible. So every time you confront an object with the wisdom view that it has no inherent nature, everything's changing, it has a conditioned nature, there's a little taste of emptiness. Every time you think something and you remind yourself, apply the view that the thought has no permanence, it's not something you can identify with as yourself really,

[68:15]

There's a little taste of emptiness. Now, I'm not too clear about how to find the words for this, but I'm calling my book, Original Mind, The Practice of Zen in the West. But original mind is a really rather simplistic idea, and the underpinning for a rather simplistic view of Zen. I like the word John Locke uses, tabula rasa. I haven't read John Locke in a long time, so I should read him. But tabula rasa means erased tablet. And that's not bad, because it's better than original mind, because original mind is the idea there's something there waiting to be discovered. This is not so. But you can erase things.

[69:19]

Every time you say, well, this thought has no inherent reality, then you're erasing it a little bit. So really, if we understand original mind is not an inherent given, but an experience of emptiness, then maybe original mind is useful. But it changes when you, the idea of sudden enlightenment, I think, for the most part, as it's presented, depends on an idea of original mind. So if you think of original mind as really not as something inherent, but as an experience of emptiness, then the idea of sudden enlightenment has to be, I think, understood through the realization of an unobstructed body and a generated body.

[70:29]

An enlightenment experience or epiphany, we could say, is an experience of an unobstructed body And that becomes the basis for a generated body. Because you can't really generate a body until you somehow free yourself from your habit body, free yourself, see past your mental body, until you, as Dogen says, drop body and mind. Once you drop body and mind, if only a feeling, an insight, the basis is there then to see that at each moment you're generating this reality, this actuality. You're actualizing this moment, finding each moment absolutely unique, finding each moment

[71:37]

waiting for actualization, then you put your energy into situations differently. Then awareness, awareness instead of consciousness. Instead of being conscious, you're aware. Consciousness is something that is one aspect of awareness. So we're actualizing the present tape recorder, actualizing this presence we share together, practicing this so-called late afternoon.

[73:00]

As I said last night, Seeking the one, finding the many. Finding the many, sensing the one. The breezes in the mountains stir the pines. How much more pleasant it is heard from close by. Do you know how we got here? By what road we got here? I've surely forgotten. I'll depend on you. May our intention be ready and ready to breathe in any place.

[74:18]

May the future be ready for all of us. May the future be ready for all of us. That's a good one.

[75:23]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching. I am the king of the world.

[76:37]

I am the king of the world. I am the king of the world. I am the king of the world. And I know I'm absurd, vast, constricting, and perfectly normal. In square eight, when I tried to keep it in a hundred-ounce-a-billion-tarpus, I had the image to see and to listen to, to really remember and to accept. I don't know anymore how I'm supposed to chase the truth about all this talk and all those words. I wish these were the Tathagata's words.

[77:41]

Yesterday I described my talk to Russell as a fireside chat, at least a candle side chat. But I don't know, what will we do today? I woke up this morning about an hour early, completely wide awake. But it was still an hour before wake up now, so I slept lightly. Anyway, I recognize it as what I would call the a habit body kind of dropping off, and I felt quite refreshed.

[78:52]

But then later this morning I felt rather heavy, kind of leaden, and my mind was dull and wouldn't work. And so I asked myself, what's wrong with me? That was my koan today, what's wrong? So part of it is, you know, I'm so impressed and touched by your practice, how rich it is, that it makes me wish we had more resources here. Because, I mean, some of you would like, I know, to... practice more, and some of you can, both as lay adepts or monk priests or lay persons. And so I wish we had more resources here. I've been designing the new dormitory in my head. Your head, too. You haven't noticed it yet, perhaps.

[79:59]

And It'll be a wonderful building, I hope, and more income here so we could support people practicing, as is the tradition. But if we have more people who practice, then I can't, you know, I can't do it all myself, so we need more teachers, so we need more of you to become teachers." And then suddenly I felt very happy. How am I ever going to do that? I mean, I have maybe ten more years of life, productive life. Optimistically twenty, but let's say ten. Ten years I'll be seventy-two. Maybe I should retire. Early retirement.

[81:06]

Today. No, not today. So anyway, I thought, how? I even thought, jeez, I should just withdraw my book from the publisher. I just want to do this and not stop for another few months to finish it. So anyway, sometimes I felt, I can't do it. On the other hand, you know, I feel I have a perfect life. Both Crestone and Johanneshoff are, for me, perfect and going very well. Johanneshoff has had about a meter of snow in the last... few days on top of already a lot of snow. They couldn't get out this morning.

[82:06]

They couldn't get the four-wheel drive Mitsubishi out. They had to bring a snow plow and get it out of the parking lot. But we have a snow plow there. We bought a snow plow. Pretty big. drive it. It's quite big. And it shoots snow off in the air. As you can imagine, Corral loves to run it. So if there's even a little bit of snow, Corral's up there. Snow goes flying in all directions. And here we have, you know, we need more space for sleeping. But still, this is quite excellent. So how do I take us from where we were yesterday, if I can?

[83:16]

I think of China again. Jared Diamond has written a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel, I think it's called. It's quite interesting. A far-ranging book would be an understatement. But he speaks about China, how China has always virtually been China. The six most populous nations in the world, except for China, all are very recent, like America, Russia, Indonesia, India. They're recent political formations. India has 850 languages. Indonesia has 670. Brazil has 210. Europe in the last 5,000 to 8,000 years has produced 40 languages. has a variety of alphabets or variations on the alphabet.

[84:19]

And yet, from around 200 BC, China has been one language, one nation, et cetera. It's unbelievable. I mean, North Chinese and South Chinese, they say, are more different than Swedes from Italians. but still there's one language. It's a remarkable invention, the Chinese, social invention, linguistic invention, societal invention. And You know, here we are in our puny little Crestone Zender trying to feel out this wisdom which has evolved, and I really do believe in large part it's evolved through the continuity of the language over centuries.

[85:33]

But we have to do, as I say, we have to do something that sounds, this is good enough to do, to try to feel out this Chinese Buddhist wisdom. Now I remember when Sukhya Rishi said to me, said in a lecture, not just to me, about the mirror, because I'd been using the mirror, the image of a mirror, because it comes up a lot, and he'd been using the image of the mirror as... And there's lots of ways to use a mirror, given the number of lectures about the mirror. But in a simple sense, you know, getting the dust off it, or seeing the world as reflected in the mind, But then one day he pointed out the limitations of this image.

[86:45]

And I remember thinking that it was useful to use it, but how do I stop using it now? And I think that we were at that point yesterday with the image of original mind or something we uncover or discover or erase. And some of you have spoken to me about it in Doksha. And the problem with, you know, I think it's useful for us in practicing to see the conceptual basis of practice and to see also how we implicitly use a conceptual basis, whether you recognize it or not.

[88:00]

Now, is it useful to go further and say something about it in terms of, say, like the Diamond Sutra speaks of non-dwelling mind? Now, there's a koan in the Shoyaroku 74 which, if you want to study it, it sometimes tries to deal with this. And it's, we've studied a belief here. A monk asks Vayan and says, I hear there's a saying that all things arise from an are established on a non-abiding basis. What is a non-abiding basis?

[89:05]

That's a good question. I mean, it's a question I think a number of you could have asked if you thought about, what's really going on here? Do I don't, is there an original mind or is there something I'm uncovering? Is there, you know, Now this is a little subtle to talk about, so I'm going to try to talk about it. And Thayen said, when asked, what is a non-abiding basis? He said, form arises before substance, substantiation. Names arise before naming. Now this is an interesting way to look at the mind, that the mind doesn't abide anywhere.

[90:10]

I mean it doesn't stay still. So before, the idea here is, in this kind of Buddhist, we could say, psychology, or mindology, is that we name things because the mind is restless. And we substantiate forms because the forms are because the mind is restless. But if the mind is restless, meaning everything's changing, how do we practice? With what concept do we practice? Then the koan says, you know, jump off a 100-foot flagpole and the whole universe is vast.

[91:11]

The extent of the universe is your whole body. Well, these are nice things to say. They sound good. But I don't know if they're very helpful. But if you grew up in a... If you grew up where there's a lot of flags, like I did, and not very tall, and low buildings. My father taught at a military, believe it or not. And I know how to do all that marching and changing your feet to go left and right, things like that. I went to military summer camp. I wore a little hat, you know. Maybe I see this as some sort of Zen Academy. Anyway, I grew up on this campus, at least anyway, and we had a lot of flags.

[92:14]

All the flags all over the place, and people always doing trumpets. Very early in the morning I could hear. I lived on the other side of the lake. And I could hear, first thing in the morning, I could hear the drum and bugle corps going to breakfast, you know. It was quite a, I thought everybody heard those things in the morning. And they'd raise the flag and take it down and all that stuff. But the flagpole is pretty high. And it's quite wonderful, actually, a little kid, didn't you, to see a flag going up the poles. And then it goes up into another weather, like our mountain, especially today, is in another weather. It's coming down here, though, it feels like. And the flag goes up into where it finds breezes that aren't on the ground. So it seems more of the sky. So then, to actually climb up the pole and jump into the sky, this is, I think, a powerful image if you're

[93:23]

We have such a different relationship now that there's airplanes and everything. But the sense of, you know, a concept, maybe let's call a flag a concept, it goes up, it reaches quite far, but then it stops. And we have to go further. That's the sense of this image. And then in the Blue Cliff Records, Shui Feng's, what is it, Cohen 51, also I think pertains to this. And in it, it says, if there's, Cohen asks, is holding fast or letting go right? When you come to this point, is holding fast right or letting go? Now this is also a question coming up in your practice implicitly.

[94:35]

Do you hold fast? Do you concentrate? Do you develop concentration? Or do you let go? Do you let go and just let things come and go? Or do you hold fast? Or is there a third alternative? Very basic actually, very basic. Do we concentrate on our breath? Or do we become distracted? Or do we not become distracted but let things come? Do we hold fast or let go? And then the koan says, if you come to this point and there's any trace of an interpretive root, you are still caught in concepts than language. This is interesting. You get to this point.

[95:36]

Do you hold fast? Do you let go? If in any way you try to answer this question in language, you're lost. If there's any trace of an interpretive root, So that's the question you asked me. I gave you all this stuff and the conceptual basis of practice up to a certain point. What do we do now? Is there any trace of interpretive root now?

[96:08]

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