Marie-Louise repaired my usual koromo, but I don't know where she put it, so I had to wear this one. This is one I sometimes wear when I ordain people. Anybody want to be ordained? Step right up. Okay. Now the ideas views behind what I was speaking about yesterday and hope to speak about today. One is that views make a difference.

[01:08]

The Buddha's first teaching, the Eightfold Path, starts with perfecting or right views. Enlightenment is a transforming of your view. And practice is a transforming of your view so that enlightenment is more likely. So partly what I'm speaking about is to recognize That views are part of your life, activity, etc.

[02:18]

And that your views can be kept in view. I mean, just in a little experience, you can feel a shift in view. In some little experience you can feel a shift in view. Example I've used quite often, I mean not often, but several times this year. Because it just occurred to me, I don't know. Is in the year, I don't know, 62 or something like that, walking down Washington Street in San Francisco. Getting to the edge of a hill and seeing a cloud over a building. Yeah.

[03:25]

Cloud over a building, yeah. No big deal. But there's something about the... I'm sorry, I said a building over a building, but it was a cloud over a building, of course. Yeah. Yeah. It was a cloud over a building, up above a building. What did you say, a building over a building? Apparently, I didn't notice it. You're dreaming. Anyway, it certainly was no big deal. But then, I don't know, it was the particular context, particular configuration of the place that I suddenly lost the usual up and down, you know, here.

[04:32]

here and there kind of feeling. And the cloud was over me, it was over there, but it was over me, it was over that building, depending where you were, it was over all kinds of things. Yeah, I suddenly lost a sense of location. How do you locate anything? It's all in relationship to other things. And in feeling no sense of location, I was relocated in the location in which I was in a new way. And it wasn't until many years later I realized... the fullness of this experience of non-referential space

[06:04]

But the seed was there, and practicing over the years, I was bathing in that seed, or bathing with that seed. But the seed was there, and practicing over the years, I was bathing with that seed. So in each situation, actually, it's held together by your view. So part of mindfulness practice... And the continuity of mindfulness practice is to begin to feel how things are held together. How they appear. And you're always on the edge You're always in the midst of a view and at the edge of a view at the same time.

[07:19]

So one of the things I'm speaking about is to notice as to... Notice how views are part of your activity all the time. Perhaps first to know that they are, and at some point maybe start noticing that they are. No, I said... I lost a sense of location and then was relocated. Now, Dogen's most famous fascicle essay... the Genjo Koan, can be translated in a variety of ways.

[08:40]

Three of them are presencing things as they are. Mm-hmm. Another way is actualizing the fundamental point. Another way is completing that which appears. Now, what we're trying to understand, we're not trying to get information by reading Dogen. We're trying to find ourselves in his shoes, or at least his geta.

[09:40]

He was probably tiny as Gator, probably about this big, you know. 12th, 13th century Japanese man was probably pretty small. Yeah. None of us could fit in his shoes, though. Okay. But where are his shoes? Well, one place they are is the words. Dogen's words are his shoes. We can find ourselves walking in his footsteps or... in the footsteps of his mind and experience. Not by reading a lot of Dogen, but by taking any phrase that sticks with you and looking at it really closely. Until we experience what we don't experience in the words, what we don't understand.

[10:58]

Yeah, because we, you know, After all these years, we get in the habit of thinking we understand words. So we read a sentence and, you know, we sort of generalize what its meaning must be. And we go on to the next sentence. You can't practice that way. I mean, if you spend a lifetime on one sentence, that's, you know, much better. Years on one koan is common.

[12:00]

Or years just on one phrase that a teacher said to you or something occurred to you at some point. Because you don't get it, you stay with it and let it puzzle you until it resolves itself. It might never, and it might after some years. Also einen Satz zum Beispiel, den vielleicht der Lehrer dir gegeben hat oder der dir so untergekommen ist und an dem du einfach Jahre herumkaust und der dich immerzu, der dich im Unklaren lässt und bei dem du aber bleibst, bis es dir aufgegangen ist, vielleicht tut er es auch. Sometimes it puzzles you from age 20 to age 30. And then at age 30, really nothing much happens except your life changes around 30, 35, and suddenly the phrase which you've been bathing in opens up. Or it might be 40 to 55 years old.

[13:13]

Or 20 to 55 years old. You've got to have the guts to stay with what you don't understand. If you think, well, I don't understand this, I'll just let it go. You don't have then the kind of constitution that actualizes the fundamental point. Because the other idea I'm speaking about in Dogen and yesterday and today is that everything changing, that everything changes means that everything is simultaneously cultivation. And what Dogen adds, authentication or awakening.

[14:36]

Now if we understand that everything changes, it's easy to understand that in fact then everything is a kind of cultivation. But to carry that the next step and see that the act of cultivation is working with your views and hence the condition for enlightenment. And then he uses authentication in two ways. Und er nimmt dieses authentisch machen auf zwei Weisen.

[15:38]

If we authenticate, which we are going to do implicitly, is authenticate things, author them, make them our own. Also was wir implizit tun, ist ja unsere, die Dinge als Autor sozusagen herauszugeben, sie authentisch zu machen, sie zu unserem Eigensten zu machen. If we make them our own through the self... This authentication is delusion. If we present things as they are, then this authentication is enlightenment. So, we could also translate Genjo Koan as be here now.

[16:38]

Again, a useful phrase in the 60s in America. But it glosses over the depth of the fundamental point. Presencing things as they are. Completing that which appears. Losing one's here, losing one's location and relocating. How many, what kinds of here are here? Here, here, here, here. Yeah, like that.

[17:49]

That's good. I hear. Dogen also says in the same fascicle with Genjo Koan. A bird flies in the air. And no matter how far it flies, it doesn't reach the end of the air. A fish in the ocean swims in the ocean. No matter how far it swims, it never reaches the end of the water. Yeah, everyone knows that. It's pretty simple. What's he getting at, of course? He says, of course, if a fish... leaves the water, dies immediately.

[19:02]

If a bird leaves the air, it dies immediately. But each at the same time never reaches the end of its element. So he says, water is life, air is life. The fish is life, and the bird is life. And The fish in flying uses the totality of its element. And the fish, the totality of its element. Okay, now he says this, you know, like... You know, kind of repeating himself like that.

[20:09]

Yeah, to sort of get us to settle into it physically or mentally. Yeah. But he says the bird... If it tries to reach the end of its element, it won't ever do anything. He says something like when the bird makes use of its actual place, The entirety of its element is used. If we translate again The Genjo Koan is to complete that which appears. There should be a second phrase because in addition means to complete that which appears knowing everything is simultaneously particular and all at once.

[21:23]

So the particular place utilized by the bird or the fish is dependent upon and uses the entirety of its element Again, what is he talking about? He's asking what kind of element we live in. And presencing things as they are. This is what I was trying to speak about yesterday. Our element, you know, You know, it kind of fools us because, as I say, we don't see the air.

[22:38]

We see it when it's cloudy or misty or something. Yeah. So is our element the floor we stand on or the cushion I'm sitting on? No, Dogen means something more like, and I really don't know what words to use, maybe somatic space or somatic presence. Or physicalized space. Now, the word soma, you know... Yeah, it may go back to, as you know, a psychedelic plant, actually. A few thousand years ago in India.

[23:40]

And the word soma means something like to swell, to get bigger. It also means a tomb. Tomb. And it also means to save or make healthy the roots. And maybe it was used or came from this psychedelic plant. Because with psychedelics you often feel... Spaced out. Expanded. You say that in English, huh? I mean, you say that... Yeah, we took that. I see. That's the influence of the 60s on Germany. Mm-hmm. Um... It's an expansion or changing of one's boundaries.

[25:04]

So if you study mathematics. You know you're perhaps cultivating the mind. Cultivating how we think. If you go jogging, you're cultivating the body. Perhaps if you study psychology or do psychotherapy, you're cultivating your relationships with others. So it's not hard for us to understand the idea of cultivating. But what Dogen is saying that actually at each moment you're cultivating How do you bring each moment into the act of cultivation?

[26:25]

You know, I used this stick today because it's this, you know, this lotus embryo, lotus... bud, lotus pod. And the lotus embryo goes in my hand. And the blossom is not on the stick but is you. So it means if I'm teaching here and this is in my hand, you know, you see in these figures often there's a flower here that goes and turns into clothes, etc., you know. That's somatic space. Buddhism doesn't have much to do with symbols. This is not a symbol of the lotus flower.

[27:30]

I think a better word to use is a prefiguration. To anticipate, to prefigure. Because It's actually a kind of description of teaching, practice, holding, and the activity of our being here together in this space. So it's not a symbol of what we're doing, it's a kind of little map of what we're doing. Yeah. And the Karta, yeah. Body karta. Dharma karta. Dharma karta, yeah.

[28:32]

Dharma karta. There's the Magna Charter. No, that's something else. That's England. You're all getting restless. Time is flying. I'm just getting started. You know, let me just change the topic to clothes, dressing, etc. Mm-hmm. You know, I really don't know about Chinese clothes because I've never lived in a place where... I've been in China, but I've never lived where there's people in traditional, not modernized dress. Communist dress. But in Japan, I'm quite familiar with the concept behind

[29:34]

Tsukiroshi used to point it out as an example too. The Japanese traditionally don't make the clothes fit the body. And of course the Japanese would find somebody might have a beautiful nose or beautiful shoulders or something. I mean, they wouldn't find that I had a beautiful nose. In fact, once I was in a restaurant in a way from the mountains where they served things what they could pick and get from the mountains.

[30:52]

And there was these Yeah, women, young and middle-aged, who worked there, who weren't too familiar with Westerners. And I was with a group of people. We were all sitting at the table, and I noticed this about five waitresses were... all sitting in a line down there, all looking toward me. Yeah, and I looked, I said, what is it? And they said, does it get cold on the end? Well, I, you know... I suppose people's feet get cold, they think my nose gets cold.

[31:55]

But their first priority is not body parts, but the activity of the body. So what's beautiful is how Close revealed The activity of the body, not the body parts. That's the first priority. So the clothes are supposed to be ahead or behind or in relationship to the movement of the body. Spandex is the opposite. Do you have spandex? No. Spandex is elastic sport clothing. Spandex is the opposite of a kimono. So we create clothes to fit the body because we have an inside-outside distinction.

[33:20]

And the Japanese and yogic image is more of a layered world. The clothes are a layer. And you're in relationship to the layer. There's not a feeling you're dressed. There's a feeling of... You're naked under the clothes, within the clothes, and the clothes are a layer that you're relating to. And the world is also a layer. And so the sense of it is, is the body should be free inside the cloth.

[34:35]

And the body should be in relationship to the cloth. And the body should be free. should be able to maintain its own temperature inside the clothes. So in Japan, for instance, this is called the window. And in the summer, you open the window. In the winter, you close the window. We don't quite, wouldn't think of clothes like that. This is a window, because we don't think of it as a layer. And they don't think of their houses that way either. They don't think of a house as a container of hot or cold. We think of a house as walls. They think of a house as roof.

[35:38]

Their emphasis is the roof. The house is a roof. And there's no clear wall. There's a series of layers. between inside and outside. So Dogen would have a feeling that the bird actually flies through a layered space. And the bird would feel when it's in a place, one of the layers it can actualize. Yeah. We have various kinds of attention.

[36:56]

And as I said yesterday, the pause for the particular. Perhaps now I would say to get the sense of letting the senses rest. In what appears. Like I sit there. More or less where Myokin Roshi is sitting. And I have this gold brocaded pillow and bowing mat. And it's actually gold, you know. They cut it up in thin strips and they weave it in with the silk thread. And silk is certainly one of the most permanent of fibers.

[38:09]

But a couple hundred years later, the silk is mostly gone, but the paper, gilded paper, remains. So when I'm sitting there, Yoko Ono she is, My eyes rest in this atmosphere of gold. And thoughts break in two. And just an atmosphere of gold fills me. this living activity. Or if someone walks while serving through the zendo, there's a kind of sound and air feeling of the feet itself. And the My, the hearing can completely settle in, rest in the sound of the feet.

[39:31]

Each is its sort of different layer. So exterior attention takes the form of the senses. Yeah, and this practice, our practice is, and where Dogen's coming from, and teaching these things about letting all things come forward, and cultivate and authenticate the self. Letting all things come forward is like letting the senses rest in whatever they light upon.

[40:38]

Mm-hmm. And attention, interior attention, cultivated interior attention, through the four foundations of mindfulness and so forth, becomes the light of the mind. Or we can say something like that. Now I'm speaking about one at a time attention. There's the attention of overall attention. You know, Attention may be just in the air sound of the feet.

[41:43]

But there's also an overall attention, the field of the room. And both can be cultivated. The overall attention can have attention brought to it. And the gold of the the sound of the feet can have attention brought to it. Or the interior attention can have attention brought to it. And when you're not conveying self to things, If you bring attention, say into the mouth,

[42:45]

You feel you're in the room of the mouth. Yeah, I don't know how to explain it otherwise. I don't know what words to use. What shoes. Yeah. Or breathing, you feel the holes of the nostrils. And as this attention is cultivated, you begin to feel the channels of the body. the channels of the spine, the breath.

[43:51]

So Dogen, when he says cultivate and authenticate, is coming from this kind of world of practice. Yeah, that's enough for today, thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

[44:15]

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