Yeah, good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, we have this wonderful, pretty wonderful zendo to practice in. A place, for the most part, sacred in the sense of dedicated to a single purpose. Mm-hmm. And we have this beautiful garden, yeah, wonderful garden around us. Particularly happy we got the electricity in the old house and middle house fixed. I heard they found one electrical part which was so ancient it may go into an electrical museum. So, you know, our practice is supported by, you know, slowly taking care of this building and having this space dedicated to Zazen.

[01:04]

Yeah. Why am I saying this? I don't know. Because it came up when I thought, yeah, sometimes before a taisho I'm kind of tired. Yeah, I feel something inside me, but I don't know if I can... Get it out into our mutual space, our mutual body. And the Zendo helps. And all of us having practiced together for so long helps. And I don't want to say much. I just want to talk about this. History is a path. This word Dharma... Let's say it starts, we don't know for sure, but let's say it starts with the Veda Rita, the course of things.

[02:32]

The sense that everything's changing and this changing is a path, can be a path. And we can find this path within ourselves. And everything is talking to us about this path. Talking? Talking to us about this path. All insentient beings as well. And here we end up with an idea that is in appreciably like the idea of God actually in grace. Somehow we're in the continuous presence of a kind of higher order or fundamental order of things.

[03:40]

And when we know this fundamental order, course of things, which is the continuous presence around and within us, This is Dharma capital D. The truth, the law, the order of things. Yeah, well, it's so great, but how do you... Yeah, but how do you enter into this? How do you enter into change? This was the big question. Okay, there it is. This is the dharma of small d. That's usually the distinction made. King Melinda, the question to Queen Melinda, picking up some water.

[05:04]

What's the sources of this water? The rain, the stream, the Rhine. How do we see into this continuous flow? How do we see into this continuous flow? Flow of the world, of our mind, of our consciousness. Well, you know, Abhidharma really said what we need is the sword of wisdom. You know, we can feel that this present moment is gone. Momentarily, every moment gone. We can see this. But we, you know, to function in a kind of experience of duration, What kind of scanning back and forth of a bunch of moments which we put together as the present?

[06:29]

The basic idea is we cut moments into space. How are we going to make this cut, though? With a little thought, we can feel, understand that actually existence is momentary. With a little thought, a little observation, we can know that existence is momentary. How do we experience this? Maybe you've noticed that most Zen rituals are pauses. You know, I try to suggest this in your own flow of activity.

[07:32]

Pause for the particulars. No, I gave you, I will give you, or Otmar will give you Xeroxes, I hope it's a little bit of work, but of Koan 4 and 20, not all the pages, but some of Koan, what is it? Is it three? Maybe it's three. Okay, three and twenty. I don't know what I'm doing. And most of the pages, but not all the pages of those two koans. And I marked the parts which have to do with the Abhidharma. And I marked the parts that are related to the Abhidhamma.

[08:34]

These are two, yeah, late Zen, these koans are rather late Sung Dynasty development in Zen. Based on Tang Dynasty figures but made up in the Song Dynasty into Zen stories. So here is the flowering of Zen in its fullness and late stage. There's a later stage right now, but yeah, a late stage. And you can see built into these two koans are references basically to the Abhidhamma. And one of them says in walking In sitting, in walking and sitting, means daily life and zazen,

[09:48]

And walking too means all the four noble postures, walking, standing, sitting, lying. In walking, in sitting, just hold to the moment before thought arises. Im Gehen und im Sitzen halte dich an den Augenblick, an den Moment, bevor ein Gedanke aufsteigt. Halte dich an den Augenblick oder verweile bei dem Augenblick, bevor ein Gedanke auftaucht. You can do it. Takes a little mindfulness practice, takes a little intention. Takes noticing with the body.

[10:51]

Takes noticing with the senses. Developing the habit of listening for darkness. The units. The notes of the bird song. Seeing dharmas. Smelling dharmas, noticing. In each little molecule there's a smell happening. In smelling, there's molecules of smell happening. Tasting. Sukhiroshi would say, don't add salt so often.

[11:54]

Find the salt in the food that's already there with your tongue. This is a teaching I don't always observe. Okay. So, find these Dharmagates in the body. In the senses. In the breath, in the inhaling and outhaling. And in the perception, the sense of the act of noticing itself. So in this phrase, in walking and sitting, hold to the moment before thought arises.

[12:58]

Not to the thought, but the space between the thoughts. And then look into this seeing. It doesn't say look into this thought or something. It says look into the... He doesn't say, look at this thought, but he says, look at the activity of seeing itself. And then see not seeing. This is also the, this is, but first of all, classic Dharma practice.

[14:07]

It's essence of what the Abhidharma is talking about. And it's like this practice I could give you of only just appearing. Or maybe in English, just appearing. And now, nothing else but just appearing. Nothing else but or only. A phrase like this, only just appearing or just appearing.

[15:10]

Or nothing but appearing. These are phrases, distillations of the Abhidharma, we can say. The way the teaching is instantiated instantiated means you create an instance of it you establish an instance of it instantiate Yeah, the way that teaching is instantiated and actualized in a single phrase. And there's a whole tradition of this developed, first of all, I believe, in the Tien Dai or Tien Dai teaching. Which is what Dogen studied first, before he studied Zen, on Mount Hiei. In Kyoto, or on the edge of Kyoto. It's also called the three-fold single thought. And this is the attempt in later Buddhism to take the teachings and distill them into single thoughts and single phrase, which then, when you turn it, opens up the teaching.

[16:47]

So when you hold to, in walking, sitting, hold to the moment before thought arises This is cutting change, we could say, the flow into spaces. The moment before thought arises. There is nothing there. The moment before thought arises merges with the infinity of space.

[18:06]

Merges with, yeah, as Elizabeth said, the background mind. So when you begin to... Open up the change into dharmas. And isn't it funny that that which holds, that which is always there, is space? Emptiness. Hmm. And those spaces get bigger and bigger. And pretty soon it feels like there's a word space.

[19:12]

Word space. There's a word space. It's a word. Things slow down. Because somehow now, as in the four foundations of mindfulness is basically the same kind of practice fundamentally, is you now find yourself located in, identified with the space and not the forms. And the Arbi Dharmas were concerned with the karmic potential of each moment. Wholesome moments and unwholesome moments. What's the karmic potential of each moment of consciousness?

[20:30]

It can dissolve karma or it can reify karma. Or it can be karmically neutral. And the space is karmically neutral. It tends to break off your karma. Karma is resolved and refined and wholesome states of mind. But more fundamentally, karma really drops out of functioning in you. with these spaces, these dharmic cuttings.

[21:30]

And then you begin to have what are called, in Abhidharma, karmically neutral moments and karmically Karmically neutral moments and functional moments are both karmically neutral. And then it starts that we have karmically neutral and karmically functional moments. And the more you have these functional moments that don't carry karma and karmically neutral moments, this is called the activity of a bodhisattva or an arhat. So...

[22:32]

These phrases we have, these wisdom phrases, wados, are meant to shift our view into karmically free ways of looking at things. And the rituals of daily life and monastic life, All right, meant to be little swords, little pauses, little wisdom swords. So when I meet you and Bob, you know, I'm sorry to explain all this. I'm sorry to explain all this. As I've said often, you bring the hands up through the chakras.

[23:54]

In a sense, you can say mechanically, it's so mechanical the way I'm saying it, but you activate this fundamental karmically free body. And you show that or join that with the other person. And you have what I called earlier interlocking participation networks. And you have what I would call this interlocking... Interlocking... Participation... No, networks. The networks that connect with each other, that participate with each other. Yeah, but, you know, whatever that term is, it's something happens... There are ways that our mutual body, because we are really much more mutual than we're separate. We awaken this mutual body.

[24:55]

and support this mutual body in each other. When we come into the center, we bow to the front of the cushion and we turn around and bow the cushion behind us. The whole thing is to break up your psychological, social, cultural habits. So you're not relating to the world and to others through your social, psychological and cultural habits. And you can think this all you want, but you need some way to actualize it in the grammar of the body. It's assumed that we have a Mental language, most of our language.

[26:34]

And it's assumed that we want to, using the breath usually, root our language, our speaking in the body and the breath. And in the body language, the grammar of the body. So as I pointed out, the oryoki is this kind of practice. And so we're trying to develop in Dharma practice. Abhidharma practice. Is first of all mechanically to bring these pauses into our activity.

[27:35]

And finally these pauses get more and more, you know, our habit. And we begin to inhabit the pauses more than the... What's in between the pauses? And this, yeah, we can say this infinity of space and consciousness, their background mind begins to flow into the pauses. So that, you know, we first of all ritualize the pauses and, you know, actual bowing and so forth. But eventually the pauses We pause for the space now, not for the particular.

[28:56]

And these pauses were almost always relaxed. The more the pauses become relaxed, what we inhabit. Again, this is parallel to the four foundations of mindfulness then we don't inhabit our unwholesome states of mind. It's not that we kind of get rid of greed or ill will or anger or delusion. It's more that we just don't inhabit it anymore much and it tends to just fall apart.

[30:10]

Hmm. You know, there's the practice in Zen of Enso, of making circles. And the Ketchumyaku is a circle. Ketchi Nyaku, the lineage paper you're given when you receive ordination. Ketchi Nyaku. So the precepts are, you know, basic Abhidharma kind of precepts and starting out the first practice is precepts or wholesomeness. But what Zen has done is accompanying this with the Ketchinyaku.

[31:11]

So the Ketchinyaku represents Buddha's mind. And this Ketchinyaku... or Bodhidharma's Buddha Mind Seal. Why did Bodhidharma come from the West? To show us the Buddha Mind Seal. Okay, so the Dharma moment, this Dharma unit, The moment before thought arises and including the practice of whatever you notice, whatever you see, etc.

[32:16]

But more subtly, it's the moment before you see, before you hear. As I said, this is also then resonant with or slows in to this practice of the infinity or sphere of mind, sphere of space. Sphere of consciousness. So the practice which accompanies the kechi myaku, and particularly at the stage of transmission, if not at the stage of ordination, Is to imagine you're in a field, a sphere of mind, a sphere of space all the time. Which really does flow from the practice of these Dharma moments before thought arises.

[33:17]

So you're in this sphere that right now includes all of you. In the garden, in the building. Where's the boundary? And yet I can pull that in too. This pulse is very basic Zen practice. So the practice of the Enso, the circle, is to pull this sphere in and then feel it in you, kind of distilled, brought in, and then you draw it. So some Zen teachers have this practice every day.

[34:35]

A piece of paper in the morning, they feel the sphere, they stabilize it, they pull it in, and once pulled in, they put it in their hand and draw it. And some people draw Bodhidharma every day. It's conceptually the same as the Yogi practice. Pull this in and then have it come out. The other day I was driving from somewhere to somewhere. It must have been from Boulder to back to Crestone, I guess.

[35:37]

And I was getting sleepy. Well, no, I wasn't getting sleepy. I was quite alert, but I couldn't hold my consciousness. You know, I could see everything. But I couldn't quite put it together. Well, that's a road and a car. What are they doing there? So I thought I'd better take a rest. So I pulled in and it was blazing hot and I couldn't find any shade for the car so I pulled in behind this building next to a door. And put the seat back. I was going to sleep for, I don't know, half an hour or something.

[36:39]

But people kept going in and out of the door and peering at me. So I had got about ten minutes of rest. But it was fine. I could then drive. It was interesting. I had the feeling that... Before I took this rest, which I didn't sleep, this really isn't about sleep, ten minutes, you know, or six or eight minutes, people going in and out. It was like before I was driving, my mind was sort of like balloons, and they were just all blowing around somewhere. I could see them all, but I couldn't hold the strings in my hand. So in a way I wasn't sleepy, I just couldn't hold the consciousness in my hand.

[37:42]

The balloons of consciousness. Because to drive, you have to put it together in an organized way. The balloons have to be, you know, sort of like in the right place, or otherwise you drive right through somebody's front lawn. But after these few minutes, where whatever happens, you can't call it rest, I got the ability to put the balloon strings back in my hand. And then I tied it. And then I tied it and I drove off. I have this image of the balloons all filling the windshield. I can't see. Anyway. So only just appearing.

[38:57]

So what I'm suggesting in this Abhidharmic practice is that you're in a cafe or restaurant and somebody's sitting at the table next to you. Old, young, whatever. And you just feel their appearance. If necessary, you practice mechanically. You close your eyes and then open them. And you can actually get a mechanical feeling of the person appearing. And each moment you open your eyes, the person, this old lady or young person, is a bit different. Or you can just go from one person to the other person, and one person to the other person, and feel each appear as you look back and forth.

[40:15]

Disappear, appear, disappear. So this appearance and disappearance or the absolute and provisional existence just for a moment that's absolute but yet Provisionally, they're there. Somebody's there for a while. There's provisional permanence. Now, the threefold practice in a single thought It's just this. You notice appearance, disappearance, and then you balance the two.

[41:15]

That's the threefold. So at first you notice appearance and you notice disappearance. Disappearance. Yeah. And then after a while, you notice both simultaneously. That's called threefold practice in a single thought. So all of this kind of practice, which is at the center of trying to enter into change, karmic moment to enter and to change in the karmic moment and to free yourself from social, psychological and cultural views and to

[42:23]

Free yourself from suffering and enter into the suchness of each moment. Well, this is basic Zen practice and it is derived from the Abhidharma. Developed from the Abhidharma. And I'm more or less on time. Thanks.

[43:09]

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