And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if 20 years from now all practice centers are all men or all women. But I would like us to continue to make it possible. Okay, so... Green Gulch and the San Francisco Zen Center, both which were developed and were quite big, were meant to prepare people to go to Tassajara. And it takes two pretty big places to make a small monastery place work. And Tassajara led to Crestone Mountain Zen Center. Okay. And Crestone Mountain Zen Center has led here. But that isn't the only history of this place. This place is primarily developed through various individuals here And some who are not here.

[01:27]

And also through the sitting groups and the seminars. So more than anything, this relationship between the seminars and the sitting groups have led to this place. So I would like to continue. We don't, and I think Guralt and Gisela and Sabine are quite open to letting this place have its own identity. It's not a replica of Crestone. And I would like this not to supplant or replace the sitting groups and the practice in other places, the larger Sangha, but that it enhances the practice, the larger Sangha. But if we can have, over the time, we can have less of a conference center, retreat center going on here,

[02:39]

I don't know what form we should take, but clearly I know various Buddhist professors and like that who would come here for a month and do something on the Yogacara or Majamaka for us, things like that. And from something Gaurav and I have discussed and ideas from other people, I've thought of creating something that in my mind I'm calling the Committee on Social Proportion. We're various people who may or may not be Buddhists, but really want to interact with us somehow, can participate or meet here occasionally or something. Now the development of Christon Mountain Zen Center was aimed at eventually doing practice periods. And I don't know if we can ever do practice periods here.

[04:23]

A formal practice period. A formal practice period means there have to be 15 to 40 or more people who are willing to take three months off from their jobs. And it means that this place has to be developed enough and have a rich enough enclosure that it can be enclosed for three months and no one leaves for three months. Christian, we have quite a few buildings and we have a lot of acres and it's remote, so people don't leave for three months. I don't know if we can do that here.

[05:26]

Put a fence around the place and a gate and guards, Buddhist police. Unless we bought the neighboring farmhouses or went up the hill, it has to have a feeling you can be in here. And we have to have certain bells and drums and things like that. So whether we can do that or not, I don't know, but we can maybe, maybe we can do month-longs of some sort with a sashin on the third week and something like that. But what we do and how we can open this place up to a flow of practice through it 365 days a year, let's find out what we should do. Creating opportunities for practice here is creating opportunities for practice in ourselves.

[06:33]

Yeah, okay, so now that's all I wanted to say about that. I know that Ralph brought something up yesterday I'd like to speak about. Is there anything you'd like to bring up or would like us to continue with this morning? It can't be that clear. Maybe you can talk about the environment and the practice that leads to this stainless state of mind or that helps towards this mind.

[07:49]

Besides, breathing practice is not practice you emphasized yesterday. But besides that, like, a daily practice, a daily environment that supports this practice. I think we have to think of I think we had as good an introduction to this idea of signless states of mind as I can manage yesterday. And... But I... And I think it is the big difference between Sangha and ordinary society, the true difference between Sangha and ordinary society.

[09:20]

But to understand this, I think, to really know this, I think, let's see if I can say some other things about it. It's really a kind of intelligence. But it's not dependent on the usual intelligence of some sort of conceptual brilliance or skills. It's an intelligence based on being present in the details of things. It's a, maybe we could call it a subtle intelligence. I don't know what words, we don't have a word for it. And it has a lot to do with character.

[10:21]

With virtues. What was the... Was it enzymes we were discussing once when I talked about virtues and relationship? Catalysts. Catalysts. A catalyst is something that allows a... My scientist friend here can... A catalyst is something which allows a interaction to occur at lower energy levels... which otherwise would like burn the body up. But a catalyst allows an interaction to occur, you know, anyway, you can say. Yeah. And virtues are like that.

[11:30]

Characters like that. It allows interactions to occur. It allows something to happen that just won't happen. A certain kind of clarity and subtlety won't happen unless these virtues are there. It's not something you can do to yourself, it's something that happens. Yeah, I know I'm becoming a little incoherent here, but let me continue. And what I would, you know, the book of serenity, the Shoyaroku, the first koan, if you know the book, the first koan is You have to have the intention and the realization that you need to be in a teaching situation.

[12:51]

You can't do it all yourself, and it's not about doing it yourself. It's about recognizing our mutual identity. And to recognize our mutual identity in Buddhism means to enter the deepest wisdom stream available to you. This is different than creating your psychological separateness or something. This is entering a wisdom stream of our mutual identity. And that's like a new birth. You're born and then you make this decision as an adult. And it's a decision beyond ordinary ego. That's the first koan.

[14:03]

The second koan is about bodhidharma. And the second koan emphasizes wisdom itself. Emptiness. The third koan is practice. And what is practice? Breathing. The whole Shoy Roku is based on the practice of breathing. And it starts out even with prior to Bodhidharma, Prajnatara. The 27th ancestor from Buddha was invited to dinner by a Raja. I just like to hear, hey Bodhidharma, or no, you're the teacher of Bodhidharma, why don't you come to dinner tonight, we'll have some wine.

[15:07]

So anyway, this Prajnatara goes to this feast and the Raja asks him during dinner, And says, why don't you read the sutras? Why don't you read the scriptures? And he said, this poor wayfarer, this poor wayfarer, when breathing in, does not dwell in the realms of mind or body. When breathing out is not caught by myriad things. And I reiterate this hundreds of thousands of millions of scrolls of sutras every day. Sukhiroshi used to say, we don't need any special teaching.

[16:23]

Teaching is here. But you have to know the mind which reads the world as scripture. Yeah, it says later, the whole earth is the student's scripture, the adept's scripture. The whole world is the adept's eye. So what is this eye? What is the world as scripture? And the whole koan says it's breathing practice but breathing practice in the deepest sense of when you breathe in you do not dwell in the realms of mind or body.

[17:26]

And breathing out, you're not caught in myriad things. So you can all practice this. Breathing in, don't dwell in the realms of mind and body. Breathing out, don't get caught by things. Okay. A place like this or a practice period, the longer you can put things aside and try to stay in this kind of intention and attention, the better. But you can do it anywhere. Not dwelling in the realms of mind and body means signless states of mind.

[18:46]

Now let me come to what Ralph brought up yesterday. As he implied, our usual image of things is of uncovering an inherent nature. As if the center comes prior to the parts. And the parts are an expression of the center. And the center is more essential. Such an idea is built into our way of thinking. It's not Buddhist.

[19:55]

Okay, so what would be a Buddhist idea? Okay, if this is my hand, this is my hand in fact, these are the parts, and we could say this is the center. Does one come first? But there is a sense of center here, but there's also parts. Yeah. If there is going to be a prior-ness, a priority of prior-ness, we would say in Buddhism, the parts come first. And depending on what parts you put together, a group of parts have an implicit center. Now, in some ways it's not so important to understand this.

[20:58]

But it's very important if you're a teacher. And I would say that probably 80% of Zen teachers base their way of teaching and guiding their students on the idea of uncovering. It works well enough. It just happens to be wrong. And it won't work in the deepest sense. But, you know, behind all of our thinking there are analogies. And in the end, those analogies control the subtlety of the results. So, I mean, clearly we're born. There's something there once the baby is born. Yeah. We tend to think of the baby as an already complete individual.

[22:18]

So we start training the baby right away. But in yoga cultures, they actually think of the baby as unformed when it's born. So they indulge the baby tremendously in the first year. It doesn't know what it's doing yet, so let's just make it happy. But when it gets older, we're going to control that sucker. And we have the image of control it when it's young and give it freedom at 18. Now, how do you put these together? Indulge it as a child and indulge it as an adult or control it as a baby and control it as an adult? Yeah. Anyway, the image in Buddhism is that we make our center.

[23:49]

So that implied in our states of mind, implied in the reflections in the mirror, that those reflections will become clearer and clearer if we put silver behind the reflections. So it's like we generate this, there's a certain implicitness to original mind, but it's also generated by our practice. Now this is hard for us to get because we have such an idea that there has to be something before that creates. But in Buddhism we talk about beginningless time.

[25:03]

If you have to have such a conception, Buddhism would say, it's just always been here. Why think there has to have been a beginning? That's just an idea we have, that there has to be a beginning. It's always beginning and ending, beginning and ending. It's a mixture, which the whole thing is just going on, beginning and ending, beginning and ending. All right. So in this sense you're born. And there's these various parts you are. And one of the things we're doing, you know, blended tea. I believe they blend tea not so much to make a great tasting tea. They blend the tea so they can make a commercial product that tastes the same year after year. So they're going to develop a market for English breakfast.

[26:15]

It's got to taste pretty much the same every year. Which means every year you have to take the different... Because every year tea from a particular hill tastes different. So, you know, we don't want a blended mind. And we tend to try to have a blended mind that tastes the same all the time. We could talk about practices unblending the mind. And Vijnanas, as you know, Vijnana means to know things together through their separateness. So our practice is to know the mind of each separate sense. And the mind in the way it's organized as feelings, perceptions, associations and so forth.

[27:27]

And these are the inner postures of the mind when you un-blend it. And then you can start making your own blend. And discover that each sense has a mind which has its own center. So Buddhism would be a teaching of the mind of many centers. But implicit in this and the way is that there's... Mind, once you have the parts, you can discover the source of mind. But not exactly the source that was there before. The source that you discover you can generate the parts from, but you discover it through the parts. Like you might discover that your hand works better if you have a feeling of a center in your palm and you open your fingers from that.

[28:44]

So you don't have chakras that are just born, you generate those chakras, you awaken those chakras through how you use your body. So as you know, our Yogi practice is part of the way we generate, so it's eating practice, is also developed to generate our chakra centers. So we can call original mind the realization of an accurately assuming consciousness. Now we say original mind, but you do not have an original mind if your mind is contaminated bent and confused by inaccurate assumptions of how the world works.

[30:08]

But as your assumptions get more accurate, you begin to develop a clear initial consciousness. A mind before thought arises. A mind before thought arises. It means before emotions, etc. Okay, now I also said I would speak about what I meant. Breathing in, I do not dwell, this poor wayfarer, breathing in does not dwell in the realms of mind or body, of mind and body. And breathing out is not caught by myriad circumstances.

[31:21]

This means you have a mind which is not affected by exterior circumstances. It's a mind isolated from exterior circumstances. So it's called the mind of isolated perfection or something like that. And this means a mind based in mind. So you interact with the world, but this deeper mind is not affected. It stays quite clear, no matter what happens. And that isolated mind, let's call it the technical term, mind of isolated perfection, is a kind of physical mind. And it's based, it is related to Akshobhya practice or stability, et cetera.

[32:40]

So you, you, but again, it, it, It arises through developing, let's say, sin. Okay, let me start over. You're identified with your thoughts. You begin to withdraw that identification from your thoughts. And you bring it to your breathing. And this also begins to develop a different structure of consciousness. Because it's not just your interest and desire and all that stuff that makes you identify with your thoughts.

[33:47]

It's because you invested your personal history and future in your thoughts. And you have been trained to only identify experiences... What can I... You've developed the habit and in fact been trained to only notice experiences that you can conceptualize. And that has to do with the structure of mind itself. So you're doing, again, something quite revolutionary, revolving, by bringing your mind over a period of years.

[34:50]

It can take two to ten years. Sorry. To deeply develop the habit of having mind naturally with breath. Okay. Now, when you do that, there's all kinds of things going on, but let's keep it simple. You begin to physicalize the mind. Now, you're a body, your mind, you're born and you have this consciousness, but obviously if you're dead, your consciousness is gone. Yeah. So we talk about mind and body being together. But through the medium of the breath, you actually begin to experience the physicality of mind.

[36:02]

And the mentalness, the mental aspect, consciousness aspect of the body. which is obviously there. I mean, I feel something. But that feeling is sort of abstracted from things. So when you begin to... You're literally weaving mind and body together in your consciousness through the breath. This generates a more, actually generates a more subtle mind. A more, this kind of physicalized massaged mind. You're using mind to massage attention and attention to massage mind. I mean, you're using breath to massage your mind.

[37:13]

And at first you're bringing, in a way, bringing mind to the breath. Eventually they become one. And then mind becomes more subtle and can begin to penetrate the body in a new way. And that mind that begins to penetrate the body we call a subtle breath or subtle mind. In other words, your attention is not just conceptual now, it's part of the body. Now we know that if you have to jump, for instance, if you have to jump between two buildings. It's something I used to do as a kid. Not as often as I've talked about it. Sometimes I'd feel in the mood to do it, and sometimes I'd think, Jesus, I could have fallen.

[38:30]

I always liked to climb buildings, and then there'd be these alleys, and if you took a running leap, you could jump across. In Forbes Field, where the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers used to play... There was two roofs of these, I don't know, six or seven stories, where one was slightly below the other, but you could jump across this gap, which was, you know, real... It was quite easy to jump across the gap going one way. The other way was up two or three feet. It was actually... I only did it a couple of times. Some kids did it all the time. But you can do trapeze. Yeah.

[39:30]

We did a trapeze together at a friend's house, circus trapeze. You know, the hardest thing is grabbing the trapeze itself. it's a real circus rig so this was our vacation so you have to stand on this edge you're up about three stories and they tell you to hold on to this thing here and then they grab the trapeze right sounds easy but it's bloody hard because the trapeze is really heavy it's a metal bar heavy rope going way up and it has to be heavy to swing straight swing through so you grab hold of it and it immediately pulls you up.

[40:40]

And your one hand is over here. When I was a kid, I used to be able to pull myself up with one hand and I can't do it anymore, I'll tell you. So I didn't want to be out there with one hand because then you have to pull your legs up and... So, it's quite difficult because it's pulling you in. In any case, it was fun. And she said, you go first. I said, that was terrible to be a boy, isn't it? And then she was better than me, of course. She almost got caught, in fact, where you let go and somebody else catches you, you know. And if you don't believe this, we have pictures of you. Doctor, you know, things like that. In any case, when you do something like jump across a mountain stream or jump between two buildings,

[41:43]

You can't be distracted. You've got to put your mind in your body. If you're talking to somebody else and thinking about something, you know, you might be in trouble. So I sometimes call the hara the stationary leap Because if you're going to jump across something, you've got to put your mind in your body and jump. In a way, the hara is the same thing, except you don't move. You put your mind in your body. You can call it the stationary leap. So as you begin to be able to put your mind in your body in a natural way, not just when you're jumping somewhere,

[43:17]

you then can begin, you actually change the way your energy works. Your body and your energy, mind and body kind of permeate each other. And when you really develop that as a center, we call that the mind of isolated perfection. And it parallels original mind or accurately assuming consciousness. And all of this really develops not from, this develops actually quite simply from continuing Buddha's way. Sukhiyoshi used to say, if you want to realize Dogen's mind, just do Dogen's practice.

[44:35]

This is practice before enlightenment, practice after enlightenment. This is just practice. And More than anything else, I would say it is related to developing an inner trust and ease with yourself. And if you have that inner trust and ease, that will help your breathing practice, And your breathing practice will increase the inner trust and ease. And what I called earlier an intelligence I'm now calling an inner trust and ease.

[45:39]

Where you feel complete with yourself and complete with the world. And why not? Quite normal. And it's wonderful that it really is as simple as a wise breathing practice. So as I said when we started, we're in a conspiracy together. Okay, that's probably enough, huh? Something else? Yeah. Okay, that's probably enough, huh? Something else? Yeah.

[46:41]

Now, when I feel it, I think, are artists in the circus or dancers or something like this profession, are they more used to this mind than other people? Yes. Well, I think that mind, to some extent, in any physical activity, is more part of what you're doing. And as Michael Murphy had discovered long ago, that athletes exhibit many of the same development and wider perceptual capacities that yogis he met in India had.

[48:05]

The basic recognition was the background of his developing his family estate into Esalen. But what he discovered was usually this, I mean for instance in a football player, it has nothing to do with their life. It's limited to their sport. And even they can't talk to other athletes about it because it's not a common, they don't mutually develop it purely, now, you know, except unconsciously. It's clear a lot of artists, painters and writers, as far as it's clear to me, are painters and writers because of this kind of experience.

[49:12]

For example, James Joyce speaks about the epiphanies of knowing that came through writing. But he had certain experiences through reading and writing. And he discovered there was a moment at which you knew things in a new way. An ecstatic knowing, he called an epiphany. And his whole life was involved with seeking that again by writing it. And it wasn't carried over into the whole of his life.

[50:25]

So sometimes we say that writers, dancers, and poets should stop writing, dancing, and poetry and re-establish their identity in practice before they go back to their art. Because the artist's taste of these things is often partial and then it becomes part of their ego. Yeah, and then that's even more difficult than the usual ego. Because we know about artists' egos. Yes, something like that is true, though. Nico asked, you asked about fantasies, delusions and things like that.

[51:46]

You said that there's a Buddhist instruction that anything you perceive is basically true, but on the other hand we definitely have projections and imaginations, but sometimes it's not so easy to sort that out. Why is it? Well, I think that First of all, I think I would recognize that this fear is a form of social control. is that embedded or big part of our society is, you know, that, as we've talked about, is that thoughts and feelings that we can't share or verify are dangers.

[53:09]

And the devil may be at work in us. Or we may be going crazy. Now, I think, of course, it is true, some people are crazy, but the fear is there much more than the actuality. So first we have to get past the fear, I think. But even if you have a delusion, the delusion is real. So you can accept the delusion is real. Whether it's real in other senses, that's something else. But what I'm speaking about is not experiences that benefit or hurt us or cause us suffering or give us ego gratification.

[54:26]

And I would be suspicious of experiences that have a lot of advantage or emotion or fear attached. And you have to be able to sort that out. But there are experiences you can have. Let's stick to meditation. experiences in meditation which don't seem to have anything to do with projection or anything it's just something new and there's no reason to say they're not real except we have a habit of saying they're not real These experiences aren't hurting anybody. And so part of practice is beginning to discriminate between what's real, that's new, and what's some kind of delusion. And you can go to a therapist and try to sort it out, but at some level the therapist doesn't know any more than you do.

[55:45]

Because we're all kind of a new territory. So you really have to be able to make this discrimination yourself. And it's really after a while pretty clear. One makes you feel complete or nourished or okay and the other kind of makes you feel terrible. So, you know, in the end it's up to you. And this is why, maybe why we could say I'm emphasizing a kind of trust. You have to start trusting yourself. Yes. Unscientific state of mind can be observed.

[56:55]

But it's not observed by an eye, nor by an it. Okay. It's all right. There's a... No, but I think working with language like this is important. Whether you say I or it in some ways, what difference does it make? We should translate it to Julio's question. Go ahead, Julio. A mind without signs can be observed, can be experienced. My question is whether it is experienced by an I, by me or by an ex. Well, I is just... It is just I with a T attached.

[58:03]

So whether we call it an I or an it, you know, I don't know. But what's interesting is if we call it it, we have one kind of flow of energy toward it. And we call it I, we have another kind of energy flowing toward it. But there's a difference between an observer with which you identify as I and an observer which you identify as a temporary function. Now, for example, a lot of people get into, you can have this experience. And you can observe it. And then you can have this experience, which is bigger, and you can observe that.

[59:11]

And you can have this experience, and you can observe that. So they conclude there's a big observer in the sky. And one of our main contemporary philosophers is completely tied to that idea, which I will not mention who he is. You get the idea of a big witness. But this is still the pattern with which we think through things, and that pattern shapes how we analyze it. So this thing can create an observer. can reabsorb the observer. And this event can create an observer, but it's not an observer here, it's not an infinite regression, it's each situation in the way we are, we can observe the situation.

[60:19]

And that observer... The fact that we can create an observer doesn't mean that observer is something permanent or that goes to heaven or something like that. That observer arises... Have you ever seen somebody hit their translator? I'm afraid the translation I got back would be too much for me. Anyway, what's interesting when you look at it the Buddhist way, What's interesting, if you look at it in a Buddhist way, is that this witness doesn't belong to us or to some higher being.

[61:29]

This witness is something we're always generating. And we generate it together. And that center is everywhere. In that sense, when we walk in this room, we're walking on our center. So that's this sense of not isolated individuals, but isolated individuals which are also a larger individual called all human beings. Which takes the form of languages we create together and, you know, culture and so forth. But behind the languages and culture is still this silver of the mirror. Which is the mutual consciousness we generate together.

[62:32]

Which is also interdependent with everything. So we're talking about an interdependently generated center. An interdependently generated center. Now I would think, you know, you as practicing acting, professional acting, if you could really have a sense of generating that observer as you're acting, you could probably transpose it to the audience. In other words, that observer of yourself isn't just belonging to you, it could also be transposed to the audience.

[63:40]

And you could turn the audience into your own observer of yourself. At least that's a more Buddhist way of thinking about it. as I'm trying to speak often, to that observer that is not present here now, but will be present when you're doing zazen. So that some of this teaching will become useful to you at the point at which your practice creates an observer who remembers this teaching. And do I know what I'm doing? No. I'm here trying to enter a field with you That lets me do what I'm doing, but it's really, I really do not feel I'm doing this separately.

[64:54]

You know, I'm doing this, some kind of field we're putting together, we're generating together. And I loved being here with you this weekend. And the only problem I have is it's too short. And I haven't had time to spend much time with you individually. Last night when I went to bed I thought, each of you is here and I've hardly spoken to you. I've just been sitting here. But it's anyway. Anything else? I forget. Modeling. Yes. I'm interested in this observer and that you can put the observer outside to the public.

[66:08]

Is it a little bit like, I mean, some people have this idea, now everybody's watching me. It's a neurotic way of putting the observer outside in a way. Is this a kind, I mean... how you switch the observer. I mean, that's not a very good way to do because it's negative-based. But it is, I mean, the inner way how you can switch an observer. I'm interested to play with the observer. And his wife isn't around, he needs a companion, so he... ...generates an observer and employs with... ...generates an observer and employs with... On the other hand, you can also do it negatively in the neurotic way.

[67:20]

There are people who say, oh God, now everyone is watching me. And there are many people who suffer from it. And my question is whether it is a similar mechanism to change the observer. Well, let me just say that I think probably a significant percentage of what we call mental illness or neuroses, etc., is really the... How can I put it? The... the inability to recognize our larger self, or the inappropriate manifestations of our larger self.

[68:36]

so that it functions neurotically. I don't think all mental illness is. But I think of James Joyce's, I think his daughter committed suicide. And she went to Jung, I believe. Freud... Joyce sent his daughter to Jung, maybe. I think so. And Joyce went to Jung and said, well, what's wrong with her? I'm just like that. And Jung said to Joyce, she's drowning where you swim. And I think a lot of people drown in not knowing how to develop their larger self.

[69:46]

So probably in a sense like in sports also and I think sports and psychiatry and psychotherapy have led us to recognizing possibilities that may come out through developing ourselves through meditation. And definitely meditation is understood, serious meditation is understood in Asia as a way for those people who can't find their identity in the society to find their identity. Suzuki Roshi even spoke about himself in that way. I remember he said something like, people like myself who, I can't remember how he put it, He implied something who... who feel things too strongly or too differently and can't find a way in society to express that, need something like meditation.

[71:37]

So in a way, it's not about feeling less and not thinking. It's about finding a bigger scope for feeling deeply. And I think we're all actually in this situation, the most ordinary of situations. I feel that we've talked enough. Yeah. So let's sit a few minutes and then we'll have a break. Exactly 11 o'clock. I wish we had a few more days.

[72:51]

So you can think of your breathing as a way of developing continuity from moment to moment. And counting your breath helps give you a sense of continuity in your breath. And following your breath, joining your breath helps develop a sense of connectedness. Connectedness with the world and your own body and your, our mind. And naming helps develop a sense of separateness.

[75:20]

This breath. This person. This moment. And the kind of attention that you bring to discovering this oval, this circle in your breathing, Helps develop one of the bodhisattva functions of self. Presence and the potency of presence.

[75:55]

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