demanding nothing of myself beyond my own divine and totally fascinating company represented by the mountains, forests, the desert, the sea. Yeah, that's from a poem, a chapbook poem, actually that Gregory gave me. Philip Wayland, our Dharma brother, my disciple, a poet, one of the beat poets. Anyway, thank you for the book. Demanding nothing of myself beyond my own divine power, and totally fascinating company, represented by the mountains, forests, the desert, the sea.

[01:03]

Yeah, this is clearly Philip's voice. But he's saying what Dogen's saying, the blue mountains walking. If we don't live in a container world, Then what kind of world are we in? We're in an interactive, mutually generated world. So when you walk in the mountains, your walking is inseparable from the mountains, and so the mountains are also walking. You may object to the implications that the language suggests, but the experience, how do you express the experience of a non-container world? When I walk up the steps to my little room, the tower room, I'm making the steps as I walk.

[02:06]

I mean, somebody made the steps, Sim Vandren designed the building. Yes, they were made for someone to walk on, but every time I walk on them. If I stopped walking on them, eventually they'd, I don't know, if no one walked on them, eventually they'd be unwalkable. So this is a way, a metaphoric, a mapaphoric, Like a metaphoric. It's a metaphoria. Anyway, I better stop. You know, I said last time, and I thought I didn't really... I wasn't able to find a way to make clear what I wanted to say about factic...

[03:08]

Unitary experience. In order to make something clear and practicable by you, I have to find some shared fulcrum, some shared gate, experiential gate that we can enter together. So I'm, you know, in this lecture I'm searching for that fulcrum. Dogen said the knowing of thinking. Here we have a new term. Now Dogen talks about the non-thinking and by implication the knowing of non-thinking. But now he's talking about the knowing of thinking. What makes thinking, not just thinking, but thinking which is knowing thinking. Yeah, much like Philip.

[04:11]

He says, the knowing of thinking is the mountains and rivers. The wondrous subtlety of the mountains and rivers. What the heck is he talking about? I think we have to not just slide over it and say, oh, yeah, that sounds good. We have to, like, first doubt, what the heck is he talking about? The knowing of thinking is the mountains and rivers. Yeah, of course, in those days, where Dogen lived, and Japan is, you know, when I lived in Japan, it had half the US population. was the size of Montana, with half the US population, something like that. And four-fifths of Japan were mountainous. Four-fifths of Japan basically are uninhabitable.

[05:12]

So one-fifth of the state of Montana has half the US population. I mean, the density of people in Japan is... You cannot believe it. It's exciting. It is metaphoric. I mean, metaphoria. But in any case, the mountains are very also present and prominent. So mountains are something you have to, rivers are something you have to cross. Mountains are something you have to cross. And yet, so we think of them, if you think of them as the container, they're out there, they're obstacles. But in a container world, they're not, in a non-container world, they're not obstacles. I'm coming back to, you know, I mean, you know, for 50 years almost now I've been talking about container world, etc.

[06:14]

And sometimes, you know, I think it's a simplistic kind of idea and I say it now and then. But as I get older I think actually you really have to look at these fairly simple ideas and see how pervasive they are in our thinking. if you want to understand Buddhism at least, or if you want to know things as they are, at least as Buddhism thinks, feels, experiences them as they is, the is-ness of things, the thus-ness of things. So, The difference between, and I think it's worth examining, a container world and a non-container world, we really have to, you know, kind of feel that, play with that.

[07:16]

And the difference it makes. Okay. Okay. The knowing of thinking is the mountains and rivers, the wondrous subtlety of the mountains and rivers. To put this knowing to use is a dragon, makes a dragon. Well, dragon, you know, I remember Herr Dr. Konze, Edward Konze, created Sanskrit Buddhism, identified Sanskrit Buddhism, Buddhist Sanskrit. I knew him quite well. We had him teaching at Zen Center for quite a while. He was a curmudgeon, though. One day he was ranting about the Japanese.

[08:24]

He said extraordinary things in classes about females in the class and I don't know anything I mean where's that pasty faced health food addict up there who has some kind of idea that he's smart he'd say to some he'd say to somebody who's one time he was ranting about the bandy-legged, bow-legged Japanese buck-toothed, something practically like that. And then he looked down, he saw Sukershi's picture on the cover back of Zen Mind Management. Turned it over. Anyway, he was okay. Sukershi told me to study with him. And I introduced him to Sukershi at one point. Anyway, he tells a story about some Western scientists who wanted to, someplace in Asia, wanted to spray the ponds with something to stop malaria to kill the mosquitoes.

[09:39]

And the local Buddhist sort of head person told him they couldn't do it. He debated it and came back the next day saying, no, you can't do it. And the scientist said to him, what does your reason? He said, but if you spray the ponds to kill the mosquitoes, the Buddhist said, what will happen to the dragons and the fishes? Well, the scientist didn't quite know what to make of that answer, but they didn't spray. But it's true. What happens to the fishes? Yeah. The dragons means all those things you can't account for. In any analysis, the things you can't account for should be there. The dragons. So when there is the use of the knowing of thinking, it becomes a dragon.

[10:44]

And he says the slightest use of the knowing of thinking requires the slightest use of the knowing of thinking Is the mountains and rivers of the entire world known to their utmost? Is the mountains and rivers of the entire world known to their utmost? Without this intimacy, without this intimacy, he says, between the knowing of thinking and the mountains and rivers, there won't be even half an understanding. Well, what is this intimacy?

[11:52]

Well, it's the intimacy of a non-container world. And again, I'm trying to search for a way to give you a feeling of this. So let me speak about, again, this practice period, one of my favorite subjects, the Oriyoki. Now, here I'm also trying to speak about The enactment of metaphor, not symbols. This is not a symbol because this can be enacted. A scepter, you know, a king carries a scepter, a bishop carries a scepter. And a scepter, I guess, comes from Agamemnon's staff or the Roman staff with an eagle on it and so forth. And then, you know, it had a dove on it sometimes, and sometimes a cross if it's Christian, sometimes a little shrine on it. I think it's called the finials or something, the end part.

[12:53]

Well, whether it's a dove or an eagle or a cross even, you can't enact it. Now, why do I say I can enact this? This is not a symbol. In fact, if this had an eagle on it, or was gold-encrusted, or something like that, it wouldn't be Buddhist. So this is a teaching staff, and it's something Sukershi gave me. And so it does represent a certain authority, or represent that he asked me to try to keep teaching his stuff. Why do I say it can be enacted? Because, well, first I watched him with this staff and another one he had. When you give lectures, you could see his energy and how he would hold the staff. And kind of like he'd be fully concentrated, but there's another dimension that he would be

[13:57]

would be happening in his hands with the staff. So I could watch his hands in the staff and almost feel what was coming next, according to when he straightened the staff up, et cetera. Well, the staff, clearly, I mean, I always say it looks like something in New Year's, you know. Wine! Blows out, right? And it originally was a back scratcher. So as a teaching staff, it can reach anywhere. So I'll get back scratchy. But it's also been made to be the backbone. That's the backbone. And this is the breathing through the chakras. So it's enactable. I know the word enact is hard to translate in German, but anyway, you can enact it or feel its use. So I actually feel this in relation to my back bone when I'm here.

[15:04]

Okay. So I'm trying to say what's the difference between symbols and and metaphors that can be enacted, not just a representationism. Okay, so what is the overriding, the controlling metaphor of our Aoyoki practice? Well, it's appearance and cessation. Now this is also, the background of it is, and you've heard me speak about this before, In the West, the metaphor of the way we eat is we eat off the ground. The ground becomes a table, the table becomes a plate, but basically we eat off the table or the ground. You eat from the table. But in Japan and China, Asia, most of Asia, you eat from the hand. You eat with the hands. The bowl is the cupped hand.

[16:11]

The chopsticks are the extended fingers. Now, if in the West you're at a nice dinner party and you pick up the soup bowl and eat it, this is not considered very nice unless the bowl has handles. And even then you have to watch to see if anybody else who's a boss might pick up the bowl. But in Japan, you pick up the bowl because the bowl is the hand. And the chopsticks are an extension of the fingers. And actually, the word ohashi means respected bridge. Hashi is bridge. It's a bridge to your food. And we cut up the food on our plate, the meat or whatever, if you eat meat. But in Asia, they cut it up in the kitchen. so that you can eat it with your fingers. The fingers aren't a knife.

[17:13]

You don't have a knife. A knife is in the kitchen. So the sense, first of all, that comes from Asia in general is that we eat with our hands. A bowl is like a glove or the palm of the hand. You eat with your hands. And in general, this is because extended in Buddhism to do everything with your hands, with two hands. So one of the conditions of this oryoki practice is it's done with two hands and with the body. Okay, so the over... arching metaphor is appearance and cessation. So the bowls are folded up in a circle. A circle is not a square. A circle, the boundaries still.

[18:14]

So a circle represents emptiness. A circle represents the moon. A circle represents completeness and so forth. Roundness. So you have a circle. And you unfold it. And tying is important, you know. The Ise shrine in Japan, they untie. It's tied together. Every 20 years, they take it apart and retie it. And the basic, the central symbol of every ceremony I ever went to in Japan, festival, et cetera, is you take grass, and you tie the grass in a knot, and then you place these tied grass knots everywhere, and at the end of the ceremony, you burn them. So to tie something together is to create civilization, to do what humans do, but then you burn it. It's like the Tibetan mandos, which they make elaborately, and then you brush it off.

[19:17]

So this appearance and cessation is a basic metaphor in Asian culture and very specifically in Buddhist culture. So we unfold our bowls, untie our bowls, open them up. And now the main metaphor within that is interpenetration. The bowls are nested and you penetrate each other and you take them out. And interdependence is there because the serving, the mutual serving. Even in Japan, if you're in a restaurant, the cooks often serve you. There may be intermediate waitresses or waiters of various kinds, but in general, in most good restaurants, you sit right at the counter and the cook serves you. And in general, Japanese food is unique in that, for the most part, it's mixed in the eating and not mixed in the cooking. What I'm trying to illustrate here is just that metaphor as a map is very powerful.

[20:25]

The metaphor, these metaphors of eating in Japan convey, carry everything. How you hold the bowls, how you eat. And again, as you know, where you hold the bowls, just watch a Chinese or Japanese person in at least first or second or third, second generation, they hold the bowls at these chakra points. The body is involved. The mountains and rivers are involved. Everything's involved. The knowing of thinking is when that thinking is through the physicality of the world, through the activity of the world. And that's one of the reasons in our Oryoki practice you do not clean the chopsticks. Unless the second serving is finished, you don't need them to show that you're not eating. And unless you're in the midst of eating, you don't have, you don't sort of say, oh, nothing to do here for a while.

[21:31]

I guess my chopsticks are dirty. You pick them. That's, you know, you can do it, of course. I mean, there's no Buddhist police except me watching you. But if you really have a feeling for the Yogi, you would feel weird when you did that, because it's a mental idea. It has not come from the activity of actually eating. So it's a kind of luxury to clean your chopsticks off early, but you only do it when you've finished food, and no one else, and everybody else is still eating. Then you can, just as part of finishing eating, you can clean your chopsticks and put them down. Now this is all a kind of metaphoric indexing. In other words, how do we use our daily activity to shift our horizons to a way of thinking and knowing which self is not dominant? Now, you also don't clean your... If you're the last person eating and everyone's sitting waiting and you've finished your bowl, you then don't clean your chopsticks.

[22:48]

You kind of have a little bit of courtesy for the others who are waiting for you to finish. Sometimes they don't wait. There's more strict teachers than I. You're in the middle of eating and they just signal, hit the clackers, get that guy going. But I usually, and one reason it's left to, the main reason it's left to the abbot or whoever's the senior person in the group to decide when the bowls are cleaned is so it isn't rushed. So the abbot or doshi or somebody makes the decision of let's give everybody time to finish the meals because monastic eating tends to start rushing. At a heiji you have to race to get your damn breakfast in. And it's so hot, I used to have to line my mouth with yellow pickles because it was so hot. Trying to eat it in time to finish before everybody went, I don't know.

[23:48]

But anyway, you don't have to do that. And in more places which aren't controlled by young monks all competing with each other, it can be more leisurely. Do you see that to clean, to only clean your chopsticks when you're in the midst of eating, is the knowing of thinking? Is the Blue Mountains walking? Is Philip Whelan saying, I demand, demanding nothing of myself beyond my own divine and totally fascinating What's he saying? Mountain, river, mountain.

[24:50]

Totally fascinating. Company. Company. Accompanying himself. Company. Thanks. Company. Represented by the mountains, rivers, mountains, forests, the desert, the sea. So the knowing of thinking, which is the mountains and rivers, which is the activity of eating or walking in the mountains. It doesn't mean we don't do other kinds of thinking, but the thinking that's inseparable from your activity, your situation, is the thinking which has the power of the dragon, the mystery, And likewise, when we finish with the water, you know, the water starts out as nice clean water, then it becomes dishwater, garbage, then we drink it.

[26:05]

This is the tantric, wayan, interpenetration side again. In the sense of teaching, interpenetration is the main motif indexed in the Oryoki. So when you pour it out, because it's garbage, you hide it. Pick up the bowl, you hide it. So there's the bowl. Pick it up and hide it. I mean, you don't have to do this. I mean, you know, I can just, you know, I have problems in restaurants. Somebody, after I've been here, you know, in practice period, Someone comes to me, a waitress, and says, do you want some more of something? I say, no, that's not very good. And if I, you know, pour something, I say, no. But you don't need to do this. But anyway, if you do it, you hide the garbage water, and you're giving it to the dragons, the various spirits. So you dump it.

[27:07]

And you don't want to be greedy. You want to give them at least 50%, 60%. But you save about a third for yourself or something like that, a fourth or a third. And then you actually, because you are also the various spirits and dragons, you drink this elixir. Elixir is the alchemical idea, philosopher's stone idea of changing base metals into gold. And there's a kind of alchemy to this. Asia also had alchemy. That the water is clean water, becomes garbage, and becomes an elixir of ambrosia. And then we fold up the bowls. The appearance disappears. back into the circle. What is the circle? It's also Buddha's skull. And your skull.

[28:11]

So this appearance opens and folds back in. And the metaphor of appearance and cessation, which is dharmic teaching, appearance and cessation, that's dharmic, to complete that which appears, appearance and cessation, dharmic practice, appearance and cessation is also birth and death. Before marks, birth, duration, cessation or dissolution, cessation or disappearance. Birth and cessation. And so the skull is both life and death, birth and death. Now, most of us, unless you can really feel the mapping of the metaphor, you don't notice this much, except, yes, you have the habit of it.

[29:15]

It appears, and then you fold it back together. It appears, and you fold it back together. So basically, it's an enactment of basic dharmic practice with these other teachings, interpenetration and so forth, indexed within it. Yes. Okay. Thanks. Bye.

[29:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_90.06