Now, as most of you know, I've made a contract with myself and with the Sangha to finish the book I've been sort of writing for a quarter of a century. It's not long, 25 cents. And as I've made clear to myself, especially, that the process of writing and the process of teaching orally simply don't fit together for me. They're both, as I've said, a kind of letter document to the Sangha in Europe. I've already gotten some responses from people about it. that they're both twenty-four-hour processes for me, and it's hard to put two twenty-four-hour processes together.

[01:09]

Nevertheless, well, as part of that I don't know exactly what kind of schedule I'll follow as part of the practice period, because for the first time in fifty years, about, I'm going to put I'm not going to define what I do through the schedule, but I'm going to define what I do through what I'm doing and see if I can... what parts of the schedule I can follow. And although, as I say, writing and speaking orally don't work together for me, I intend to is, we'll see. But my intention at present is on zero, two, five, and seven. This is a, what, a five-day, I guess? Seven-day.

[02:12]

Okay, thank you. My Anja is always on duty. I'll see if I can speak... about practice. It's going to arise from the process of writing, but I'll see if it can also parallel, if not arise from, the process of the practice period. I've been able to do this because the sangha is mature enough now for it to function without me. I don't have to hold it together. And also because it coincides with my

[03:21]

decision even if I live another 20 years or who knows what my decision to incrementally step back because I think during my lifetime I really want to see the Sangha develop and it'll be it'll develop differently and more through itself if I play a a foreground and background role in the Sangha. And I'm very curious because, I mean, my life is to have successors and have, if possible, a Sangha that continues. So I guess I have three goals. Successors, a sangha that continues, and what's occupied most of my time, but is actually tertiary, is that these two centers we've started continue.

[04:32]

Okay. So this decision, which has to do with the book and my age and the maturity of the Sangha, all allow us to explore practice together in a maybe more vivid way. That's what I'm hoping. And what's clear to me is that I can't, not that I pretended, but I can't... Not that I pretended that we could continue the teaching in the traditional way, and I think we will continue the teaching in the traditional way, but we also, I think, are going to continue it through, as what I say, a lay adept Sangha.

[05:41]

The emphasis, as I'm putting it, I don't think has ever been put quite with so much emphasis on the Sangha as continuing the teaching. It's usually on individuals, at least in Zen, it's usually on individual teachers and their successors. And usually the practice has been revived through individuals. So this different emphasis is also the fact of how primarily we define ourselves through the secular world. The secular etymology comes from probably the word seed.

[06:54]

So how we seed ourselves, become what we are, become what the coming is, through seeding ourselves in the secular world. Yeah, I read recently about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Is that how you pronounce his name? Bonhoeffer? Bonhoeffer? Thanks. And he's a kind of Protestant saint and become such because he stood up to the Nazis and criticized them and was involved from being a pacifist I think earlier on to becoming someone who plotted to kill Hitler a number of times and somehow got away with his positions until 43, when he was arrested and hung in 45, executed just before the war ended.

[08:01]

In any case, during his time in prison, as I think is well known by everybody who knows much about him, he wrote about maybe we need a religionless Christianity or a religionless religion. And to me, this is one of the responses to the fact that we define ourselves, as Buddhists do, through the secular world and as individuals within the secular world. Now this definition is so powerful, virtually none of us can escape it. And when you no longer define yourself as... I mean the word cosmos has been used in Christianity to mean what's not Christianity.

[09:09]

The cosmos was that which God created the world and we went to heaven and that was separate from the cosmos. We defined ourselves through, in Christianity, through going to heaven, something like that. But if there's no, if there's nothing outside the imminence of the particular, of the secular world, How are we going to define ourselves and practice? And I think this practice period gives us a chance to explore this, and I hope that this practice period will be such. In the past, and this is things I was working on recently because I had to write a couple of letters which describe some of what I'm doing.

[10:20]

In the past, as Sukiroshi used to point out, farmers and merchants and so forth, storekeepers, that was their life. In Japan, you lived above the store and you were there 24 hours. available 24 hours, you didn't really have time to devote your life, much of your personal time, to practice. You made a choice between full-time practice or full-time life as an ordinary person in the world. Now we have nearly the opposite. have time in our personal life to practice there's enough leisure and time off and money usually to be away from a job or something we're simply wealthier as a culture in the western world and uh and individuals are wealthier not just a few people

[11:34]

So nowadays we can practice in our lay life in a way that wasn't really possible, at least in Asia, for centuries. Practice seriously, not just some more faith-based practice. And yet we don't have the time, or we don't make the time maybe to retire or something, to practice, to make our entire life practice. And the transmission of Buddhism has depended on a significant percentage of people making it their entire life. And not many people can. And so the pool of talent is, from the point of view of continuing the teaching, there aren't, I mean, in Japan it's considered that to embody the teaching needs at least five years in the monastery.

[13:00]

And this is not just an idea, it's what people experience, what I've seen myself. And to embody the teaching sufficiently to teach and understand the teaching sufficiently to teach, it's the idea, the experience is that it takes ten years. At least ten years. Or ten years in an apprentice, daily apprentice, or regular apprentice relationship with a teacher sometimes is something equivalent. Most of us won't do that. So is that the end of transmission Buddhism? Well, I don't know, it might be. There will be a few people who do make practice their life in a monastic sense. But I think what we're going to have to find out is we're going to have to make our lay life adept practice.

[14:06]

And so what I would like to see this practice period, in a way, you're practicing your monastic lay life here, if that makes sense. Discovering a practice you can continue in your lay life. Because if the adept learning Sangha is going to transmit the teaching from generation to generation, then we have to rethink, as I've said, what is lay life as practice and rethink what is monastic life. So some of you will have three months here, that's all. But I don't think that means that you should necessarily be here for five years or ten years. I mean, it's nice if you are, because, you know, I get to like you and it's nice to hang around with you and so forth.

[15:12]

And one of the reasons I practice this way is because this is the best kind of friendship I know. And so I just decided early on, the way I want to be friends with people, this is the best way, so I'll just do this. So another way to speak about it is being a Buddhist is becoming a Buddhist. Now I'm going to try to make a little clearer of what I mean. We're not a Buddhist by some kind of prior definition or some idea of what a Buddhist is that we conform to, but rather Being in the process of becoming a Buddhist is a Buddhist, is being a Buddhist.

[16:15]

Okay, what is becoming, what is being in the process of, what is becoming a Buddhist? Well, we sit zazen, and we sit zazen within certain strictures. Certain limitations, strictures like don't move. We sit within, as I've said recently many times, we sit within the mental formation, the concept, don't move. That concept is almost like an object. It's like an egg that we're hatching. So the concept, don't move, transforms our practice. It's one of the structures and strictures through which tzazen is formed.

[17:20]

And within those strictures, we basically, she could tzazen, is to let whatever happens, happen. To see what shows itself. And all the teachings of Buddhism can be in this process of allowing what shows itself through not moving. So you have a chance during these three months to practice a lot of not moving and see what shows itself. Now you can bring certain things into it, counting your breath and so forth. But basically you're allowing becoming to become or something like that. There's a kind of really actually radical openness required.

[18:20]

An openness which actually requires us to transform, change, shift our worldviews. Now, I, again, you all know I speak very often about the practice, the kind of acupuncture-like practice of pausing for the particular. If you develop the habit of pausing for the particular, that begins to function within you within your activity in a certain way. But now, I would like to shift the emphasis a little, a lot, from from the emphasis on not moving in zazen to a parallel feeling of to stay, let's say, stay within the particular.

[19:41]

So what I'm asking you to do during this practice period is as often as you can, when you're, whatever you're doing, develop the habit of staying within the particular, remaining staying for as long as you can. And at the same time, notice the adhesions or categories or resemblances or divergences or whatever that draw you away from that. Now, I think if we can... You can understand the admonition, the mental formation of don't move as allowing all of Buddhism to appear. We can think of staying within the particular as not just a particular practice, like counting your breathing, counting your breaths,

[20:55]

but we can understand it as a kind of maybe zazen, an ordinary activity, in which all of Buddhism can appear. So I'm suggesting you take on as we just do in zazen without even thinking it's a mental formation we're sitting within, which is don't move. Let's take the mental formation of the concept of stay within the particular as a basic practice in which your lay life can resonate with monastic life, even when you're not here. Now you have the schedule and so forth to help you.

[22:00]

And we have the wonderful limitation of just being here, not going anywhere, and just being with us. Now, the particular is also the other. So let's use these words, particulars. what is vivid within the senses, what appears within the senses, when you're not going anywhere other than the particular. So again, what shows itself. So now, the particular is the vividness of situate, of where, of Situated immediacy, I say something like that sometimes. Situated immediacy, perceptual immediacy, spatial immediacy.

[23:07]

These are all words you can use. I'm sorry, they're English words for some of you. But words you can use to find yourself within the particular. And now let's also use the word otherness. Now we define ourselves through otherness. We define ourselves through the other. Through what we read, through our family, through our society. We define ourselves through the other and then we forget about the other. We remove the other from the definition of ourself. And I think the subject-object distinction, which is talked about so often, is rather, for a Buddhist, kind of nonsensical, and it's hard to make sense of it, except I think my sense of the root of it is that it's based on a kind of freedom, we could also say secular freedom, where you are free, and these things are other than you.

[24:17]

So it's positive root, it's a kind of freedom. And the other becomes other than you. Even though you've defined yourself through the other, growing up, the culture, et cetera, the other then becomes other than you. So you remove yourself from the definition of the other, even though you've defined yourself through the other. When you define yourself through the secular world, you're defining yourself through the other. Now, what can a Buddhist do? Can we have a religionless Buddhism? I don't know. I'll explore the difference, similarities between practicing and this. What is this? It's just a schedule.

[25:20]

We're together. And we are the other. Now, if you think of the other, if you think of the particular as the other, it allows you to explore when the other is other than you. And when the other is also you. Now, what I'm trying to get at here is I'm trying to create a situation, a feeling for us as practitioners in which we can locate just as you've noticed what happens when you When you decide not to move, often the mind starts moving. Discursive thinking starts. The body, the more there's discursive thinking, the more the posture slumps and so forth.

[26:27]

So the admonition not to move shows you a whole lot about yourself. that you identify yourself with discursive thinking and so forth. So if we, in a similar way, notice, even if it's only for a few moments a day, notice when we can stay within the other without any other thinking or noticing or ideas. Your entire immediacy An experience is just what is before you, within you, around you. So you can fold the other into yourself, you can fold the other away from yourself, and you can use the word fold in English. What is the other? I can define a bodhisattva as a disguised layperson.

[27:35]

And I think the followers of Bonhoeffer, some I take, from what little I know, different interpretations of his theology. But still, even in a religionless Christianity, the Christian somehow was thought to have a presence in the world that's different than other persons. Well, the bodhisattva is one who has a presence in the world which is the same as others but is different in that it includes others in a different way than most people include others. And many of our practices are about how we include others

[28:42]

in our acting and definitions of the world and self. So I think Nietzsche says at some point, don't take concepts as gifts, as a kind of dowry from some kind of wonderland, and the philosopher only needs to polish them or something like that. He says concepts have to be recreated. remade. And that's exactly what Dogen is saying. I think Dan Koyoroshi spoke about Dogen's comments on the practice period, which I like so much. Because I think what we need, we have words like society. Really, what is society? We just take it for granted, but what is society? and we are defining ourselves through our society but really if you ask yourself what is society you have a hard time defining it even though you define yourself through it so practice spirit gives us a chance to look at what is society or what is the world whatever the world is includes everything that's within the world

[30:09]

the immanence of the world. And immanence means to remain within. Now, in theology, they say sometimes God pervades the world, and that's God is immanent, or God is transcendent outside the world. But let's just think of immanence as being not the pervader, God pervades everything, but imminence is our experience of everything all at once, or everything that is, is present. Everything that is, is present. And that's actually, to really be there is one of the doors of enlightenment. Okay. So if we now imagine... Let me go back.

[31:23]

The bodhisattva is a disguised lay person, but a bodhisattva is also one who actualizes the field of otherness. And when you understand a bodhisattva as actualizing the field of otherness, a bodhisattva can also be a sangha or several individuals who together actualize a field of immanence, an immanence of all possibilities. Now, as I said to someone recently, we tend to think of the world as converging. Even if you don't think of oneness and unity and things like that, we tend to think of everything as converging. You can see it in Western and American movies. There's assumed unity behind the film, or at least the film has to come together at the end, or something.

[32:29]

We expect some sort of convergence, and I think we implicitly expect some kind of convergence in our own lives. I hate Buddhism. Buddhism conceives of a world that's always diverging. That means your life will always be incomplete. you'll die with a life that's incomplete. And there's no sense in living your life now hoping for convergence at some point in the future. I mean, that's in the background of our thinking. The only completeness there is or convergence there is, is the convergence you bring to each moment.

[33:36]

There's some sort of saying, life is what happens when you are planning something else. And to some degree, that's always true. I mean, even people who plan everything, it's always partly true that life is what happens when you're planning something else. So Buddhism is emphasizing the becoming I'm talking about is allowing the something else to the divergence, the incompleteness to be the dynamic of your life. Well, if you bring this practice of to remain or stay within the particular, to remain within otherness, the imminence of otherness, which is always diverging,

[34:54]

What is otherness? What is the Sangha? What is the world? I brought this little card that you read or mentioned in the ceremony. which David Beck's partner wrote out for us. So Dogen, if you take a concept, society as a concept, the idea of the world as other or society as other or whatever, those are all concepts. Dogen completely explodes here the concept of practice period.

[36:03]

But also so does the Diamond Sutra when it says, no idea of a life span. Now this practice period will be most fruitful if you have no idea of a life span. Diamond shooter says so, so why not practice it now? Can you practice no idea of a lifespan? Your practice, the adeptness of your practice is measured, monitored, and measured by exactly how strong a grip the idea of a lifespan has on you. Space is always collapsing into time. So we could also say, instead of remaining in the other, remain in space and don't let it collapse into time. Now the more you can remain in space, there's no comparison, there's no lifespan.

[37:17]

That's also, can you just be in the schedule? and you just be on the cushion. You don't care when the bell rings. That's also no idea of a life span. So whatever is for you, if you can take these three months and make the entirety of your experience, the imminence, the presence, of these ninety days which actually can't be counted. So that's what Dogon was trying to say here. Dogon's teacher said that it is in a practice period you form the structure of true practice. Well, practice period, you have a chance to form the structure of true practice. He said that.

[38:23]

It's now translated into English, perfectly or imperfectly. But we can't exactly understand it. It's like numbers, which you can't. You know, pi, 3.14, blah, blah, blah. It's part of the world. It's a real thing, but numbers can't contain it. So you're acting in the world in a way that you can't grasp, but it's a process of becoming. And that becoming is forming the structure of true practice. So you don't want to grasp at what is true practice or the structure of true practice, but rather find yourself

[39:25]

in a process of becoming a Buddhist, which is being a Buddhist. And that, we could say, is forming the structure of true practice. And Dogen said the days and months of a 90-day practice period, really, are the body and mind of the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors. It is their enlightened vision. Can this three months be the enlightened vision of Buddhas? Well, if you can take these three months and you can free yourself from any idea of a life span during these three months, that's very close to or is the enlightened vision of the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors. and the root of their life. I'm just taking this one phrase. No idea of a lifespan becomes the root of the bodhisattva, the Buddha's and Buddha ancestors' life.

[40:30]

Can you find yourself so fully in the particularity as also otherness? Practice period is not new. Not ancient, you can't make those comparisons. You go, well, it's an old tradition, proper blood, it's new to you. But in fact, it's neither new nor ancient. It's just what shows itself to you within these strictures. It does not come. It does not go. anywhere, the time of a practice period is immense. Immense. Larger than one, larger than ten, larger than a hundred eons.

[41:39]

What's a hundred eons? Everything is imminent. The hundred eons don't exist except in imminence. the field of our mutual presence. And the presence of otherness folding within us and away from us. And you know, in the field of otherness, another person is a whole world. So, in the field of otherness, the other person is like a door. You may not be able to enter it, but it's a door nonetheless. A world of the possible, of the virtual. In a practice period, time functions within unlimited time.

[42:48]

However, if you seek the reason for it, if you look for its basis, you'll only find ninety days.

[43:05]

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