Well, thank you for still being here and helping me so much to discuss this elusive and somewhat difficult topic. Yeah, difficult. Difficult because we're noticing our own, I think, our own habits, what we already do. Not difficult so much because it's something new. But perhaps because it's a new way of looking at what we already do. So what's the point of doing that?

[01:04]

Well, the process of clarifying how we function, how we exist, not only lends clarity to how we exist, but the process of coming into clarity itself is a realisational or meditational process. concentrating practice.

[02:06]

For some reason, clarifying is also realisational. By realisational I mean that we have an experience of knowing who and what we are. And we come into an internal centeredness. which goes beyond just achieving clarity. By the way, I used this staff yesterday and today. Because it's a staff that is very similar to what you might see in an Avalokiteshvara Kuan Yin Kannon statue.

[03:21]

And I've pointed out its characteristics before. But it's the typical of this kind of yogic culture. This is obviously a lotus stem. And down here is the lotus embryo, which is a folded up leaf. And you get them in Japanese soup sometimes, little folded up embryos in a clear kind of packet. And this is the bud. This is the seed pod. Quite nice, huh? And this curve represents the backbone. So this is this area in here. This is this area here.

[04:43]

And so I have my hand, I hold it on the source, on the embryo, the lotus embryo, which then represents this chakra. And this is more this chakra here, and this is this chakra. So this becomes this little staff as a teaching staff represents the essential body of Avalokiteshvara. Yeah, it puts me under a pretty hard to lecture holdingness, you know. But I always have to ask then, what's missing? Could we have the embryo, the bud, and the seed pod?

[05:46]

Well, some of you know the answer. The bloom, the flower. And where is the flower? It's empty. Or it's you. So if the teaching is good, then it blooms here with us. So when you see the statue of Kannon, they have all these elements, but they never show you the bloom. Because you're looking at it is the bloom. It's like the fifth point of the square. Okay. Now let's see if I can make sense of something I'd like to talk about. When I was first year or so practicing with Suzuki Roshi, he showed me how to do the mokugyo, the wooden drum or fish.

[07:00]

It's shaped like a heart. It makes a heart-like sound. But it's also a kind of dragon with a jewel of realization in its mouth. And it's a musical instrument. They're actually quite hard to make and unfortunately very expensive. Expensive, mainly because they have to be made out of one piece of wood and there aren't trees that big on the planet anymore. So above a certain size it's very difficult to get them. The big ones for a big temple are like this one. So he was showing me how to do it.

[08:27]

So I was going boom, boom, boom, you know. And then I said to him, well, at this point is where you usually speed up, isn't it? And he said, oh, you don't speed up. You always go the same speed. Okay, that's what the Zen master says. But then I listened to him the next day. And he went... You don't have to translate that. Thank you. But it took me a while to understand what he meant.

[09:34]

First of all, what's happening when you do the mokugyo? Where is it happening? It's happening in the heads, ears of whoever's listening. So you're right inside people's heads and you're also in people's heartbeats and breath and you're also in their energy and movement and you're also in their coming together as one And you're in the words.

[10:55]

So you've got a rather actual subtle event of words, of breath, of heartbeat and of the group coming together. So what I discovered is if you try to go the same speed As people start coming together, you start going faster. Faster by some outside comparison, but not faster in the context. So the effort is always, when you're doing it, to maintain the same speed. But a proportional speed, not a comparative speed. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, sometimes for some reason the group sort of loses it.

[12:18]

Then you have to let yourself maybe come in a little bit ahead of each word. But sometimes it's better to come in behind each word and push the chanting. And sometimes it's better to be right in the middle. And sometimes it's better actually to make a mistake. Because everybody loses it for a moment, and then when you bring it back, they come together better. And these are all decisions you can't... They're totally contextual. I'm using the word because Ivan Ilyich... has pointed out so much in my conversations with him, this importance of proportion.

[13:33]

Yes, so it made me recognize that Buddhism, it's best to call intelligence in Buddhism proportional intelligence. And if you look at the definition of intelligence in Buddhism, of course we are differently endowed genetically and so forth. But that's of some importance, but it's not the most important. So, intelligence is the 22nd of the 37 wings of enlightenment. So the first four are mindfulness, the four foundations of mindfulness.

[14:49]

So first it's expected that you develop mindfulness. Also zuerst wird von dir erwartet, dass du Achtsamkeit entwickelst. The next four are the four abandonments or enhancements. Die nächsten vier sind die vier Aufgeben oder Verstärkungen. Which are to know what is wholesome. Das ist zu wissen, was nützlich ist, was förderlich ist. by yourself, through yourself, and to enhance what is wholesome, what leads to wholesomeness, and to abandon what's unwholesome, and to abandon what leads to unwholesomeness.

[15:51]

And that just means what's good for you and others and to know what's not good. But the important point is you know it for yourself, not from your society. So it basically frees you from society. Because the importance is not what is supposed to be good. You find out what's wholesome for yourself and what's unwholesome for yourself. And for yourself and others, you make the right choice. And that takes some kind of intelligence and discipline and so forth. And caring for yourself as one example of a human being. Yeah.

[17:09]

And then there comes the five faculties, which are also the five powers. And that's aspiration, effort, intention. Aspiration, effort, intention, analysis. Confidence. So through aspiration, effort, and that turning into an intention supported through analysis and then there's confidence and then there's joyous effort that joy is part of your effort that your effort arises from caring and joy And then a new level of mindfulness.

[18:19]

One pointedness. Yeah, and then intelligence. That's 22. Because the first five of those are counted twice, that makes 22. First they're counted as faculties and then they're counted as realized powers. And now we might call you intelligent. In other words, you know things, let's say again, proportionately. So if I said to Suzuki Roshi, you know, you went faster. He might say, well, comparatively, that might be accurate.

[19:21]

But it's not very intelligent. For intelligence is to know this, enter into this situation of our coming together and chanting. And to find a way to enter into the situation. So intelligence functions moment by moment. Anyway, this is a rather complicated explanation. But I'm trying to give you some sense of why Suzuki or she would say it goes the same speed when by a comparative way looking at it, it goes faster.

[20:33]

Okay, there's another idea I want to bring out. Which is a word called sparsha. It can be spelled S-P-A-R-S-A or S-H-A. You don't have to spell it. I know it's hard to spell. Um... And it's sometimes called, defined as contact.

[21:38]

But I think this is a definition that arises from a Western definition of not really getting what it means. Again, going back to this intelligence, this is an intelligence that knows connectedness. This is a knowing that flows through a connectedness and flows back into knowing. So the emphasis here is on connectedness and context. And timeliness. Time not as duration, but time as the right moment for something. Now, Again, this is a matter of emphasis.

[22:54]

Of whether you think of time as duration, something passing, or whether you think of time as the continuous presentation of timeliness, Now these are different ways of looking at things. Just like already separated is quite different than already connected. It's more difficult. That's why already separated is quite different from already connected. It's like that. And if you really, as I've been saying, enter into this noticing, already connected, already connected, you find yourself in a different situation.

[24:14]

And if you are feeling not that you're in time or out of time, I don't have time, but you know you are time these particularities are time and you can't be out of time you're manufacturing time all the time and so time is always the moment for something It's just a different way of thinking which is contextual and connected. So the meeting of the three is the sense organ, the object of perception, and the perception that arises.

[25:33]

Or we could say the field that arises. So if I see Goethe with my eye, that's the organ of perception. Goethe is the object of perception. And sense perception arises. or a field of perception arises. Now that's called the meeting of the three. Sometimes. But it's also, and as Herbert Günther points out, not just the meeting of the three, but the tuning in of the three.

[26:36]

And there's a tuning in process of perception. Okay. Now that's fairly obvious when you... are looking at eye perception, ear perception, and so forth. But it gets more interesting when it's a non-sensuous perception. In other words, a mental perception. Okay. Let's come back to, I'm trying to come back to from a little different point of view, this sense of the present moment being unique.

[27:59]

And known only through itself. Now this is also the fruit of proportional or connectedness, connected perception. Because it is to know the totality of a situation. Okay. As an object of perception. Okay. So if each of you now perceive this room And all the people in it. Something like the Mokugyo. And perhaps there's a silent Mokugyo going here. A kind of silent Dharma drum.

[29:01]

Mm-hmm. And each moment that arises from the totality of the situation, that's perceivable. That knowing it, there's a word for it, sparsha. Now, why don't we have words for this? Because we're dumber? That these guys really got into this and they're just not, you know, in a way that we've never done? That's partly true. Not the dumber part. I mean, we might be dumber, but that's not the point. I mean, it's like Western science is the result of a large number of people working together in great detail, studying the obvious.

[30:02]

Studying light, green, photosynthesis, etc. So what these guys did is they took the same kind of effort, but they studied light. in great detail, how we think, notice, perceive. But I think the big difference is they based it on a view of connectedness rather than on a view of separation. If your context of study is always assumes connectedness, then your understanding and perception has to reflect connectedness, not separation.

[31:34]

And the more you see and know everything through connectedness, which is also a word for compassion, then you have this kind of understanding of perception. So that this understanding If I look at this staff, it can become an object of perception and we can rest on the object of perception. But this is a sensuous object of perception. And there's closeness and touching. Now, if it's a non-sensuous object of perception in other words, it's a mental object of perception the totality of this moment at this moment

[32:42]

which gives rise to an experience, an understanding, or an action, is also an object of perception. But it's a non-sensuous object of perception. But you can rest in it just like I can rest in this. Okay, so this is another way to understand the mind as one of the six senses. Because the mind in this sense, the mind not only is an originator of knowing, It's the organ of non-sensuous perception. It's the organ of knowing the bloom which you don't see here.

[33:54]

And feeling it and touching it, the Buddhist texts describe it as a kind of touching. You could describe it as closeness and not touching, but you have to distinguish it from sensuous perception. So now I went into this. Only to give you a taste of this Yogacara. Zen is basically a Yogacara teaching. To give you a taste of this Yogacara development. of connectedness as the basis for intelligence, of basis of knowing, and the basis of Buddhahood.

[34:57]

So when you start practicing something like already connected, you find yourself entering now into a world where perception of connectedness occurs. Connectedness doesn't just become a view. Connectedness doesn't just become a view. an assumption behind your acting but it becomes a way of knowing and perceiving you begin to perceive connectedness so at each moment in this room sparsha means you perceive the connectedness

[36:21]

And that's the meeting of the three. In this case, the totality of the situation that is arising anew each moment. Mm-hmm. Now, I think it's the case that if you know something about what I'm just talking about it helps you begin to perceive this way. Maybe not immediately but it creates a permission and a sensitivity to the fact that the totality of a situation the momentary empty totality of a situation empty because it's non-graspable

[37:35]

can be an object of perception, that one can rest in, and is the fundamental act of compassion. And you feel it perhaps most of all in your heart, not in your thinking. And I think you feel it mostly in your heart, not in your thinking. Thank you very much. May our intentions be the same, every thesis and every word of truth.

[38:44]

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