In a way what we're really talking about is just two habits, a new habit. I'm speaking about, I would say, trying out, playing around with a new habit of being present to appearance. First of all, really getting a feeling for the world as appearance, as I said yesterday. You know, I somehow was present in San Francisco during the 60s. I wasn't particularly involved in the famous psychedelic culture.

[01:16]

Although I was an editor of the Psychedelic Review. My friend Ralph Messner just put me on there. I never did anything. And I did organize the first and only LSD conference in the United States. But I never took LSD. I liked Z-E-N better. Zany in the sky with diamonds, no? But certainly some of the excitement of taking psychedelics is the world appeared.

[02:32]

You've really had the experience of the world appearing and And that appearance being truer in some ways. Yeah. So, you know, I'm saying... There's some similarities to when you really find the world as appearance. It also does feel truer. And one aspect of... The question, what is reality, I haven't spoken of, is what is true, what is the truth.

[03:42]

And I don't have time, we don't have time to go in that direction. But really we are speaking about, and one of the measures of this as a practice is, Does this new habit I'm suggesting make yourself feel more real or true and the world feel realer or more real or true? Can we make that in little steps? Okay. But certainly one of the things I'm talking about in having a new habit is... that when you get a feeling for the world as appearing, it confirms one's practice because you feel more real or true and the world feels more real or true.

[04:54]

One of the questions that's often interested me is I, you know, as people describe this big valley that's out in front of us at Crestone. And it's certainly one of the longest, straightest roads in the world. And it's often called locally the gun barrel. That's often the case with the locals there. Not only because it's so straight, but it's so flat you can shoot a bullet along the surface and never hit a bump.

[06:01]

It's an ancient lake bed, so it's very flat. Where the fish sleep. You even find a few octopuses curled up. Tintenfische. Tintenfische, yeah.

[07:03]

I am used to this road. I drive it all the time. But if a movie opens... And a big wide screen and a long road going off into the distance. I feel there's a real road. Somehow the movie... you feel the road is something beautiful. When I drive, it's just, oh, gosh, it's another 35 minutes, you know. Or you see the ocean, you know. Sometimes movies have a picture of the ocean, just waves coming in. And you feel some timeless quality.

[08:08]

But what's interesting is, I find, when you begin to find the world as appearance, This is the first of the five dharmas and the first of the four marks is appearance or birth. But we could spend the whole seminar on just this appearance. Because really when you do start feeling this appearance, especially when you've got the craft of, I'm sorry it's a clumsy term, but field perception,

[09:15]

Did someone suggest a different... I added it. Oh, okay. You also have this feeling that's in the movies or in the theater. Now does that mean that this way of perception is some kind of theater or movie? Film? No, it suggests more or less the opposite to me. It is that theater and movies, films are so powerful and from ancient times at the center of any evolved culture.

[10:24]

Because it enacts this fundamental way of perception. Reproduces. It's a fundamental way of producing. Reproduce. Thank you, everybody. Because what is theater but something gathering? before you on the stage. And it's really basically unpredictable. When it's too predictable, we're bored with the movie or the play.

[11:28]

Through this unpredictable gathering which is theater and film, which sometimes gives us a deeper feeling for the same things we have in our ordinary life, that deeper feeling is within this craft of appearance. No, no, what is this? I'm just trying to say something, I don't know. This craft of appearance. This gathering.

[12:29]

This indwelling. What's the word you used? Kore? Kore. Kore. And what does it mean? It means... This. It's a Japanese term. It literally means where we are. Kore is a Japanese word. Kore hon, this book? Like that? No, I'm sorry, it's Kore. Kore, yeah. Kore is the word, and it literally means... Where we are. But literally, it means inside this. So, this word Kore, meaning inside this, not just here... Also dieses core, das heißt in diesem drin und heißt nicht nur einfach hier.

[13:36]

It's really very close to what the word interest means. Und das ist dem Wort, was Interesse bedeutet, sehr nah. In English, interest is inter, is between or among. Inter im Englischen bedeutet zwischen. And est is is or to be. So interest literally means to be in the center of what you care about. Between or among Not outside, not with a glass wall, but between, among, to be inside. So this gathering is also to let things gather. Now, this time you let things gather, this pause in which things gather,

[14:48]

Is it measured by the stopwatch? Baker Roshi told me we should let things gather in our cadence. I tried it at three seconds, I tried it at seven. Doesn't make much difference. No, it's measured more by gratitude. When you have the... And again, when you're released from the defining... I mean, I love language. Here I am talking away. I don't want to keep knocking language. But language... I mean, Germans are different from Americans.

[16:02]

Yeah, it's wonderful differences. I notice it all the time. Yeah, and French folks are different from German folks. Bertrand's attested that. And if you're French, you sometimes like to go to Germany. If you're German, you sometimes like to go to France. Or Italy, or... Are they different people? Well, maybe, but it's a different language. In the syntax, the grammar of language is embedded implicit behaviors. Language not only teaches us a certain logic in how to think, it also teaches us behavior.

[17:11]

We have a philologist here and I hope she agrees. A Ph.D. I'm a Ph.D. So language is defining, not only defining, it articulates our behavior and our thinking. We're gathering, letting things gather. Now, if you let things gather, unfortunately, thinking doesn't let you gather.

[18:19]

Thinking basically... Again, I don't want to knock thinking. I love thinking. Knock means to criticize. But... To really think well, I think you have to suspend thinking in the midst of thinking. Because thinking not only defines, Den Denken tut nicht nur definieren. It hides the thinking behind the thinking that's in the words. Es versteckt das Denken, das im Denken hinter den Worten liegt.

[19:32]

You use the word interest, we use the word interest, we don't hear the thinking that's in the word. Wir kennen das Wort Interesse und verwenden das Wort Interesse und wir And what I call gate phrases doesn't have the... It's a useful phrase, gate phrases. It's a useful phrase, gate phrases. Just the word gate phrase is a useful word. It's a gate phrase. Got it, got it. But the word in Chinese is Wado. Well, it's W-A-D-O in Japanese and H-U-A-T-O-U in Chinese. No? It's nearly the same.

[20:45]

I think, but she's smarter than I am. Anyway, Wado, and Wado means to get to the... One reason I don't like original mind is because it's a useful concept, but it suggests that This is a mind prior to our mind. I'm going to start translating her. I prefer originary mind. And I use originary to mean to find the origin in the present, in the immediacy of things.

[21:50]

Not in the past. So the original mind isn't prior. The original mind is right here to come into the mind's origin right here. And to feel in words the origin and gesture of the words. So when you use the word interest like in a Wado, a mantra-like phrase, and you're repeating it, There's a gesture in it.

[23:04]

You feel among, in between, being. That's a kind of gesture, a physical gesture, an image. So to really think... So if you really think, then you have to express the words So the mantric use of phrases in Zen is to try to bring you, to give us this, by reiterating, by repeating, to slow down the thinking to let the words gather their own origins and gestures, their own images.

[24:25]

So that isn't just a simple repetition. It's you have to repeat in a way that these words call forth within you all their experience and association. Now here I'm trying to respond to, was it you, Agatha, who brought up memory? How does memory come in? So... Here I'm not simply talking about memory, but experience, our accumulated experience, drawing it out. To go slow enough to kind of find your own meaning for these words, the meaning embedded in you, not in dictionary.

[25:46]

A little again, like the iPod and the iTunes. Gives you a chance to go back to this mantra-like quality somehow. music phrase has for you from at some point in your life. When I was in high school, I walk alone, but to tell you the truth I'll be lonely. Als ich im Gymnasium war, war das mein Glied, ja.

[26:49]

So that's a kind of mantra, I walk alone. Das war eine Art Mantra, ich laufe alleine. Okay. So these words, alone and I walk alone, this has some meaning for me that's not in the dictionary. Also dieses allein, ich laufe allein, das bedeutet für mich etwas, was man nicht in einem Lexikon finden kann. So to go slow enough with certain phrases of the teaching that they call forth in us and in the world, how things actually exist. Yeah, or a phrase like, just now arriving. How many times have you arrived in a garden or at home or to look at a flower?

[27:50]

So in every action you can feel just now arriving, arriving, arriving where? Arriving, yeah. Each of us now is just now arriving. And there's a physical quality. You know how you feel when you arrive somewhere, how you stop. We have one of these guidance systems in our car. It came with the car. And when you get somewhere, it says, you have reached your destination.

[29:07]

You know, in the parking lot here, I set it for the coal burners, so I just drive up the street and then he says, you have reached your destination. Then I set it for Herr Schreed. Now, we have two pillars here. One is Agatha and the other is Felix. sitting holding up the pillars. And Felix brought up the other day this koan of Prajnathara. Fritz, I mean.

[30:14]

Fritz, yeah. So, Prajnatara was Bodhidharma's teacher. And the koan is, as Fritz reminded us, the Raja asked Prajnatara, Now, when there's a Raja in a story, or for Bodhidharma, the emperor of China, southern China, this means this is a teaching which has the power of an entire culture. Because the emperor or the raja who establishes the local culture goes to Prajnapara or Bodhidharma to ask what is reality.

[31:34]

And he says to Prajnatara, why don't you read the scriptures? Now, I've been asked this question by Protestants and Jews in America quite often. How can you How can you live if you don't have a book, the Old Testament and the New Testament, or the teachings to go back to, to establish your truth? And when you don't have that scripture at the center of culture... the whole thing might turn into the mess this world is in often. So when you have a story like this, it's good to imagine

[32:59]

Oh yeah, I've been asked that myself with such strong feeling that they can't imagine practicing Buddhism or even respecting Buddhism. So the Raja says, what do you do without a scripture? Why don't you read the scriptures? Or read the writings. And Prajnaparatar was sort of a smart aleck, you know. Smart aleck? You don't know how to translate that. You had smart Alec in Ireland? And how do you say smart Alec in English? How do you say it? She did. A smart shitter. I didn't even think you knew that word. Okay.

[34:32]

Anyway, I don't know. This is terrible. Somebody, Baker Roshi, called Prajnathara the smart shitter. Okay. Prajnathara said, I don't dwell in the realms of mind and body breathing in. Then you have to say again. I don't dwell or reside in the realms of mind and body, breathing in. And breathing out, I'm not involved in myriad circumstances. This is exactly the craft I'm talking about. What is samadhi?

[35:42]

The Eightfold Path. ends with not wisdom, you know, but concentration. What concentration? It's not the concentration of somebody studying hard at a desk and they don't hear anybody. If you speak to them, they don't hear you. They're just concentrating. This concentration is samadhi. The samadhi that gathers in, absorbs, doesn't leave a stone unturned. Okay. Let's go back to the tree that we're... I mean, I don't know.

[36:43]

It doesn't seem like we'll have time for another break, so if you want to Put your legs around your ears or something like that. I saw you almost do it yesterday. Yeah, or whatever you'd like to sit. If you put a knee up like Paul, You're taking the posture of the future Buddha, Maitreya. Those that continue. Going back to the tree. The twigs, the branches, the leaves. The space the tree occupies.

[37:44]

The whole of the tree all at once that you can't think but feel. I've often used the example of, you know, you see the leaves moving. It's like the ocean wave returning to silence, to stillness. The leaves, too, are returning to the trunk and the roots. At least until autumn. So in the movement of the branches and the leaves, you can feel the stillness of the trunk and the depth of the roots. Mm-hmm. It says in the commentary of this koan number three in the Shoyuroku, it says, you must hang the sun and moon up in the shadowless forest.

[39:04]

Hang the sun and moon up in the shadowless forest. Den Mond und die Sonne im schattenlosen Wald aufhängen. How different that is from saying timelessness. Wie anders ist das als zu sagen Zeitlosigkeit. Timelessness is an abstraction. Zeitlosigkeit ist etwas abstraktes, ein Abstraktum. An abstractum, yeah. But if you see shadows and you feel shadows, a shadowless forest, the shadows suddenly have their own past, present and future. The shadows are not just the tree and the angle of the sun. The shadows are shadows.

[40:25]

The tree is the tree. There's that kind of feeling, this paratactic feeling. The shadow just is there. And you see the sun and the moon, and they hang in the sky. And then it says in the commentary, to discern, to feel the spring and autumn on the budless branches. This is just Zen stuff, but how extraordinary it is. The sun and moon hang up, the sun and moon in the shadowless forest. And yet simultaneously on the budless branches to feel the spring and the autumn all of time present as well as timelessness.

[41:52]

Yeah, is this nonsense or are they talking about something, a craft? Are they suggesting a craft of practice that can give us a new and perhaps fuller reality? Let's all stand up and then we'll start again. I get worried about you, so I think. Ah, I've just now arrived. Gee, some people hold up the pillars and the rest hold up the ceiling.

[43:27]

Andreas? Yes? We should have been here when you took out the wall. Andreas removed the wall. Just for a moment, I bring the saw. Okay. And then I will look what you're doing. Okay. I don't know. So we can understand samadhi as a mind which gathers.

[44:55]

Is samadhi only mind without content? Or a mind free of thinking? Or rather, is there, yes, it's that, but is there a dynamic to contentlessness? Yeah. Mm-hmm. because it is the contentless mind which can gather. If language and thinking is there defining it, it jumps over the gaps of real thinking.

[45:57]

If language is there defining, if there's content, if the content is language, not much gathering occurs. Defining occurs. And generalizing occurs. So we want to take that out of the mind that gathers. And this mind that gathers has a timeless quality, sun and moon hung up. And there's a stopped quality to perception, like as if the shadows stopped.

[47:03]

And yet the buds of spring and the leaves of autumn can gather. So it's not gathering like trying to remember something. It happens sort of by itself. The way, you know, maybe a magnet can pull metal filings out of a pile of sawdust. So samadhi has a magnetic, a magnet-like quality that it draws out of you, calls forth in you and draws out of the situation the essential aspects of it.

[48:21]

What's it pulling out? The essential aspects? In Japanese people would try to say, oh yes, we have a word for that, maa. And Ma, you can visualize Ma as if there was a string attached to all of you. And attached to all the lamps and everything. But at each moment, that configuration of strings was changing. And at each moment, the strings all kind of crossed. There was one focus point. And you could take hold of the whole field of the situation by knowing that point where all the strings crossed.

[49:30]

Can you say it again? You could take hold of the field of a situation By sensing, intuiting, where at this particular moment all those strings cross. And you touch it and then they cross differently, and then you touch it and they cross differently. That's the Japanese idea of ma as the dynamics of a field. And you can't think your way to where that spot is. You are either it inside and among it or... It doesn't exist. So samadhi as concentration in the eightfold path is that kind of concentration which gathers our speaking, our livelihood,

[50:36]

our behavior, our mindfulness, and transforms our view, the first of the Eightfold Path. So how extraordinary this simple path is of the Eightfold Path for lay person or monk or anybody in any century I can imagine. I always think of this.

[52:02]

We did a lot of work in this black neighborhood in San Francisco that was surrounded by Zen Center. And there was this great woman, about 70, who was one of our cohorts. And she, cohort, no, it's just part of your gang. And she said, I met this Chinese woman and it sounded like, I don't remember her name, it sounded like a fork hitting the floor. Okay, so Chang Dong has a verse, versifies this koan. He puts some aspects of the koan into verse form.

[53:14]

And it says, the cloud rhinoceros gazes at the moon Whoa! A cloud rhinoceros. Gazing at the moon. What all-engulfing radiance. Light. This is a description of the samadhi mind which gathers. That's why I wore my Mexican moon raksu. One of my disciples is in...

[54:16]

She's good at Roxas and she's made this one. This is my Mexican moon. But all engulfing radiance. Is engulfing encompassing? Engulfing is like a flood engulfs a town. Something that overflows. So the all-engulfing... So you have a... You have a cloud, which looks like a rhinoceros, filled with moonlight. So this is the image or the experience of a clarity of a contentless mind, a cloud-like mind, Das ist das Bild eines inhaltsfreien Geistes, eines wolkenartigen Geistes.

[55:44]

And there's a story, this kind of myth is that the rhinoceros' horn grows when it sees the pattern of the moon. And the rhinoceros traditionally represents the Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva? Well, maybe Bodhidharma. Because the rhinoceros is one who's free of the jungle, free of the culture, independent. And it's as strong as anything gets. So it's a symbol of strength and... And the one pointedness of mind, the horn is the one pointedness of mind.

[56:59]

So the rhinoceros is this immovable independence. Which is thought to develop from this craft of Being in the world through samadhi. In a magnetic quality of And then it says, the next line says of the poem, the wooden horse romps, romps?

[58:00]

Romps. Yeah, jumps around. Boom, like Sophia. Following Juliana. Juliana and Sophia romp in the spring. The wooden horse romps in the spring. Free and unbridled. Here's another image of the ox which needs no fences or bridle. So the horse and the ox, these are all images of the body as mind. And a wooden horse, you know, wooden horses. But a wooden horse means... Everything is alive.

[59:08]

When you have this mind which gathers, it gathers from the aliveness the living presence of the world as well as from yourself. So we have a kind of image here, a teaching of how you, breathing in, don't dwell in the realms of mind and body. This is contentless but embodied samadhi. And you're not caught involved in myriad things breathing out.

[60:18]

You're not caught in that wooden horses don't romp. In this mind, wooden horses might romp. And tables might leap if the atoms all go in the same direction. It's a statistical but unlikely possibility. So here we're talking about in the four marks, things that appear or are born and have a certain duration.

[61:24]

And that duration is alive in the way I'm speaking. This duration is a gathering in, in the space of and more likely to occur when you have this feeling of gratitude for no reason. The kind of experience sometimes you have particularly vividly at a place like Crestone. When Simply, water comes out of the faucet.

[62:34]

You're overwhelmed by gratitude. Isn't it really great? Look, water comes out of the faucet. Boy, when it doesn't, it's, you know, which is... Was it Potmar that got frozen into Pine Hut One? There was snow and rain and it all froze and he couldn't get out. His whole door was frozen. And he had to wring. Oh yeah, that's right. So no one's up, right? Help! I need to wake people up. Okay. Patience. Gratitude. caring, interest.

[63:53]

So it's not just a boring sort of stopwatch pause. It's the pause that occurs when you just feel the gratitude of arriving. Mm-hmm. For patience is just the respect, letting things have their own pace. Finding your own pace through the world and not through your thinking. Find it without thinking? Not through your thinking.

[64:58]

The pace of the physicality of this world we were each born into. And if you're forced to have a Caesarian birth, well, that's okay. But if you don't have to, the pace of being born itself It's essential for the pace of our whole life. And no matter how we were born, in a funny way, we're in each moment in a birth channel. And the four marks starting with birth, it doesn't just say, oh, it's not like a, it doesn't mean it just begins.

[66:00]

Oh, that doesn't mean it just begins. It's not a synonym for begin. It's birth. All the depth of the word birth means for every mother and father and every one of us because we were born. For birth is a process which occurs. So we could also say this pause is a kind of letting something gather or be born This entering in, this interest, this inside this.

[67:04]

And then, of course, as the four marks suggest, The release of this being born. Okay. So this is this cloud rhino, this engulfing radiance, So a koan like this is trying to, in various ways, show us the craft of being in the world.

[68:06]

A world in which has a timeless quality to it too. Eine Welt, die auch eine zeitlose Qualität hat. Like the road or ocean in the movie. Wie die Straße oder der Meer in einem Film. A timeless quality and yet on the branches, budless branches of winter, we feel spring and autumn. We know spring and autumn. Und dennoch auf diesen Gründen, What is reality? What is true? Here we have the Eightfold Path. We can see our whole life in the eightfold path.

[69:39]

And we can see how this samadhi, this engulfing radiance, and we let the world gather in us the way the world actually exists, that gathering in, that way of being, changes each aspect of the Eightfold Path. It changes every aspect of how we are, of the eightfold path, transforms our views, how we inhabit our speech, behavior, and how we inhabit this world.

[70:53]

Okay, I mean, this is enough, huh? Luckily there's a clock. There's a shadow on the clock. So let's sit for a few moments. You know Andy Warhol, the painter? He had 30 cats. They were all named Sam. You know, there's an old teaching about sameness. There's an old teaching about sameness. Cloud engulfing radiance.

[73:43]

The wooden horse romps in the spring. Free and unbridled. This poor wayfarer, this poor wayfarer is not caught by the realms of mind and body breathing in.

[74:48]

And body. Breathing in. Nor caught. by myriad circumstances, breathing out. This scripture, this sutra, I repeat hundreds of thousands of millions of times. This is lay practice, this is monk practice, this is breathing. Letting things flower in us and in the world. Thank you.

[76:12]

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