You know, I lived in San Francisco for nearly 25 years before I left, more than 25 years ago. And somehow my, some sort of life in others and myself has continued there for the last 25 plus years. And it was, yeah, interesting to see it. When I gave this lecture, people, even from when I worked for the University of California in 1961, three, four, at least four people separately showed up, two together and four, altogether four people separate, you understand, showed up at the lecture. I recognized their, I didn't remember their names, but I'm quite surprised. And it seems there's a certain kind of, I'm using the word intentionally, enfoldment.

[01:09]

One's life is sort of enfolded somewhere and unfolds and folds back up and unfolds, you know, something like that. And I was repeatedly asked, I said, why can't you just come here for six months instead of Europe for six months? And I said, Hans wouldn't like it. I mean, might not like it, maybe he'd like it. And others. But I also don't have these alternatives anymore. When you're young, you think you have alternatives. It's not always true you have so many alternatives, but my age, I don't have such an alternative anyway. You have to move your, I mean, alternatives are not just alternative, they're, again, using the word enfolded, they're, you have to see what fold of an enfoldment you're going to enter into.

[02:16]

Now, when I was there, I spoke about medium, the medium you practice in. and incubating rather than understanding situations, practices, and so forth. And this seems to, you know, I started using those two words here, and it somehow became the concept and theme, in a sense, of what I spoke about there. And I'd like to see if I can reach into this sense of meeting and speaking and incubation in a little deeper way, perhaps a different way. So let me start with the six, go back to the six paramitas.

[03:21]

Well, you know, I often have said that the first three paramitas, generosity, discipline, learning, receiving, that's the second paramita, and the third, patience, are something like the wisdom of ordinary encounters. Now, when I speak of a fifth sense, I'm speaking about something that I find completely obvious and completely not obvious at the same time. In other words, we are, as separate individuals, at the same time inseparable from others. I mean, you're born through others, obviously, generations of others, and you were brought up and educated in acculturated, etc., through others.

[04:24]

And this through others is, you know, there's formal ways to do it, you know, the way you are in a meeting or going to school and so forth. But how to plug into this through others, this Others which reach in all directions. And being in San Francisco, I realized that I, I'm gonna put it this way for the sake of this discussion today. I realized I discovered and entered into the pace of Suzuki Roshi sometime in 1961 or so. And I never left that pace, or I hope I've never left that pace.

[05:27]

Yeah, and also I sort of think of migratory birds, you know, the medium for a bird is obviously the air, but the medium is also perhaps the proximity of other birds when you're migrating. Or perhaps magnetic fields by which birds migrate. I don't know, that's what they say. I've never been a bird that I can remember. But certainly the proximity of other birds. And I found myself practicing with Sukhriyashi in a particular kind of medium which in some ways I felt I kind of lifted off into a kind of migratory pattern with the lineage. And in a way, the seminar worked well because I kind of landed, the ITP students of Michael Murphy kind of made a landing field for me, which I was able to land on and give this lecture and do the seminar.

[06:44]

And it somehow worked extremely well because Michael and I are Clearly, I mean, we feel it and recognize it in a horizontal lineage. And there's much that occurs. We are in a vertical lineage, but we're also in a horizontal lineage. And Paul... Rosenblum was there throughout the seminar and David Chadwick throughout the seminar. And it was clear people could feel the horizontal and vertical lineage of the several of us who've practiced together for years. This is also a kind of medium. Medium. And one thing, you know, once you discover this medium of practice, this dharmic medium, it's very hard to live in another medium, or it's very difficult to not want to discover this medium with others, which is bodhisattva practice, which is discover this, starting to migrate with the lineage, flap, flap, flap.

[08:01]

I've told you this story quite a few times, but after I'd been practicing with Sukersi a few months, I don't know how long, six months or something, I don't know. I was working for the University of California and I, because it's such a, I could see the whole picture in front of me. I tell you the anecdote as a picture. I'm walking along going back I'm trying to drive back to San Francisco, a bus back, I don't remember, in the evening, and I saw all these people around the building, and I climbed. I couldn't get in the door, but I knew the building well, so I climbed in the window, which was quite not so high, and sat in the windowsill, and here was this guy sitting bearded guy, little tiny guy, bearded with flowers, Hawaiian flowers, and loops around his neck.

[09:12]

Talking about, talking in a nice soft voice. Anyway, I didn't know who he was. So then I went out to the car. I mean, when the people went out, I didn't go out through the window. I went through the door, but the window was fairly near the exit door, so I got out fairly early. And I find myself pushed by the people sort of right up near this beflowered, bearded fellow. And I'm standing there, and I suddenly thought to myself, he's pretty good. I've told you this story before. And then I thought to myself, how do I, why do I have this idea he's pretty good? And then I realized I had coordinated without knowing it Adjusted my breathing to his breathing and decided on the basis of how he was breathing that his state of mind was pretty good You know that was sort of I realized at that moment That was one of the realizations early realizations that I'd entered a kind of medium with Suzuki Roshi migratory medium perhaps in which my heartbeat and my breath and

[10:31]

tended to tune themselves with the heartbeat and breath of others that I was with. And as, you know, if I carry this metaphor a little too far, as in a sense the ITP practitioners, I call them the IZP after a while, and had made a landing field for me, or Michael had made a landing field for me. There are some landing fields which are unseen, of secret. There are landing fields that only occur in zazen, or certain states of mind, and sometimes a kind of dreaming mind where things come together in certain ways. So certainly if you are with another person and not in the admixture of their personality, etc., etc., but more with their, as I often say, with their aliveness, with just their bodily presence, their breath and heartbeat and...

[11:55]

basic sort of biological rhythms. This is a medium. And on the one hand, it makes it difficult to land in landing fields which aren't like this, you know. You feel funny. On the other hand, if you do catch the feel of this, It can't be done consciously exactly, but it can be done, again, by this, the intimacy of the autodidactic apprenticeship, which is Sangha life and practice with a teacher, practice. Once you have a feeling for it, yeah, the more settled it is, the more... invariable, no, imperturbable it is, or continuous it is, something like that, the more you tend to bring, even for moments, other people into it.

[13:18]

So from that you can do it. You don't have to live in a monastery area of your life. You can do whatever you want because you've internalized, you've embodied, literally embodied this a somatic pace of the lineage or of a teacher like Sakyurashi. Now in the six paramitas, you know, the first is Is generosity the second discipline, but really it means something like receiving, or the discipline required to be, to receive, allow another person, to allow the unfoldment of another person, deeper than just receiving and learning, but allow the other person's unfoldment. Now here, when I use the word unfoldment, I'm trying to use a word which we can practice with because, you know, early Buddhism, as I often say, emphasizes interdependence and later Buddhism emphasizes interpenetration.

[14:27]

But interpenetration doesn't allow us so much to practice with it as... say in fold and we in fold the physical world and out fold when really you know everything is mine there was a big flag waving there at the in the middle of the field it's a former army base fort baker i don't know who this guy baker was but anyway it wasn't me and uh And it was kind of great. They had a huge, tall flagpole and a flag, and you could see way off, somewhere away from the flagpole, the shadow of the flag in its fluid, amorphous shape. The flag, and of course then you can't help but think of the kind of cartoon-like story of It's about the two monks arguing and saying, is it the wind moving or the flag moving? You know, I asked Sophia, I said, is it the wind moving or the flag moving?

[15:33]

That's both. It's a step in the right direction. And I said, well, you know what the sixth patriarch said? It's the mind moving, Sophia. Big deal. But It's not just that you notice the mind is moving, but that you then incubate the mind moving, so everything you see is the flag moving. So always, whatever you see, you see the activity. And what happens with this activity, and this activity is also, and going back to what we've talked about in the earlier lectures, it shows, is the hidden landscape. When you look at the Bodhidharma says, if you want to see the fish, you look at the water, watch the water. But when you watch the water, you're actually seeing the wake of the fish, the net, what could happen in the water, etc.

[16:40]

So the context of activity is a hidden landscape. So, okay. So we're inseparable from others. How do we plug into this territory of others, which, you know, there's this phrase of six degrees of separation, which are really two and a half or less or zero. Maybe there's no degrees of separation. How do we plug into this no degrees of separation? Well, it is amazing that this simple thing of the encounter with another person, feeling, I'll do anything you need, whatever you need, I'll give you. I will receive whatever you offer. And now I have the patience to stay there. And this second thing, Paramita, to receive whatever a person offers is also the realm of acceptance and attunement into completing that which appears and so forth.

[17:55]

Find yourself in that incubatory space or womb of the Bodhisattva. And isn't it amazing? I mean, I think it's amazing that somehow the Bodhisattva who represents the aspiration, the highest aspiration of Mahayana Buddhism is incubated in the ordinary encounter with others. That's what the six paramitas are about. At each moment with any person, whoever that person is, to be in that incubatory space of up to Whatever you need, I will give you, unfold, be present to. I'll receive whatever you offer. And I have the patience, the space of mind, not the contents of mind, that space

[19:14]

in which this incubation can happen. Through, over years, every encounter, every encounter, each encounter. And that opens you up to this unobstructed energy, this fourth unexpected vitality, energy, presence, the fourth paramita, and then That transforms meditation, and that is then, wisdom then is what's incubated. And as you know in these lists, usually you enter the list, the highest fulfillment or the deepest practice are usually in the beginning of the list, and you usually enter somewhere in the middle of the list. In this case you enter, as is customary, through meditation and mindfulness. There's a list, a list like this is a territory of appreciation, a territory of, like you're here in Zendo, there's a certain territory about we do things, blah, blah, blah.

[20:28]

The six paramitas are a subtle territory to bring you into each, into the wisdom of ordinary encounters. the kind of medium you discover in these encounters. And it actually, at least my experience is, if you watch the water to see the fish, you watch this encounter to see the mind or to feel the bodhisattva as the attractor. By attractor, again, it's like gravity doesn't control the flow of a waterfall, each separate waterfall, but it attracts water. the water of a waterfall. So the Bodhisattva in this, the ideal of the Bodhisattva in this incubatory encounter, incubated over and over again in your life, is the attractor.

[21:43]

or how your innermost request, if you can discover your innermost request and accept your innermost request, whether, as I said the other day, the shape which has no shape, the shape which has no shape is the biggest shape, which attracts, which is an attractor in infolding and unfolding your... your life with others and your life through others, and your life through yourself. And if you find yourself in the middle of this incubatory space, almost always you'll see psychological habits. If you watch the mind, you watch the space. Psychological habits of thinking of trying to find yourself slightly superior or trying to create a difference, trying to make something distinct or separate.

[22:51]

There's almost always a move to have a little bit of separateness. A little bit of difference that you feel safer or feel protected or feel better or something. Very hard to drop those. They're sort of really structurally in us. That's why it's such a fruitful incubatory space for the bodhisattva and bodhisattva practice. So in every encounter the bodhisattva is somehow there in the midst taking away the degrees of separation or suggesting the possibility You know how they say, and I know people who've had the experience, in fact, a friend of mine who was an astronaut has had the experience of all your life flashing before you.

[24:02]

or very much of your life flashing before you. You experience your whole life flashing before you. This is a sense of the enfoldment. It's like your whole life is folded up. It's in little dots somewhere in a little thing. And if it looks like you're going to die or you're in a situation where you could, it just opens up and there's like a different kind of space in which you feel like your whole life is there. Well, that's an... Your life is enfolded somehow. And I would say that going back to, you know, again, trying to make use of the same things we know from practice, the three birth minds, the fourth mind of Zazen, and all the fourth minds that are developed through Zazen, the wisdom minds, don't just overlap the three birth minds. The three birth minds are folded up in Zazen mind. folded up in the space of mind in our ordinary activity.

[25:08]

So dreaming mind is the context of all that's happened and all that could happen. It's all folded up, non-chronologically, non-sequentially, folded up and present. In Zazen mind, conscious mind doesn't let it unfold much. The zazen mind or the space of mind, the actualizing space of mind, lets it unfold a little bit or enough in each occasion. And this is part of the third paramita, is letting this unfold as the incubatory space of the bodhisattva. And this is the same idea as the Tathagatagarbha. Simultaneously coming and going, simultaneously womb-embryo. You can imagine the world as an embryo, or you can imagine the world as a womb, but you can't conceptualize it as simultaneously womb and embryo so easily.

[26:15]

This is the in-folded and out-folded concept, feel for the space of actualization in our life. Yeah. Do you have a better alternative? Why not? Thank you very much. May our attention be put in every being and place.

[26:58]

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