Well, we've covered quite a bit of ground in the last few days. And let me see if we can sum up a little bit what we're talking about. The theme is... actualizing mind. And in particular I'm not speaking about actualizing the various faculties of mind in this case. But because we have this text we're speaking about actualizing the mind as Dogen defines it. But also I've been emphasizing that we take our life seriously.

[01:11]

I mean, you can't practice unless you take your life seriously. And I'm emphasizing not only your personal life, but our societal life. I think it's apparent that, as in some of the examples I've given you, there's a memory culture going back tens of thousands of years. But at each point, any point, our life is actually quite malleable. And our society's life even is malleable.

[02:17]

Because both are rooted in individual and shared intentions. And intentions are rooted in views. So we're working here with Dogen's views of mind. And I've also spoken about that when we looked at the architecture for Crestone yesterday. We've also spoken about that we're as a wide Sangha creating two institutions.

[03:19]

And though some of you may feel very little connection with Crestone, for instance, both Gerard and Gisela, their entire practice practically was developed at Crestone. So what does it mean to put this institution down in these two countries? And it's not lost on me that they used to be enemies. Nor, in what we're studying, used to be the other enemy, Japan. And what we're studying comes from Japan and China, which was also the enemy for the United States in the war. So how much the world has changed? And not only this text, this institutional text of what does it mean to create an institution in a society, not the text of how we read each other,

[04:56]

know each other. And I've been trying to speak about the Sangha as some kind of extended way we extend our power in the world. And discover our power in the world. And in ourselves. Because, you know, this is just another version of friends, family, and so forth. But what kind of version of friends and family? It's so easy to get this mixed up. I'm not speaking, yesterday afternoon I was not speaking about a common mind, discovering a common mind, but rather a shared mind. By a shared mind I mean the differences are emphasized, not the similarities.

[06:18]

It's the opposite of the coercion of a group mind. When you're lost in a snowstorm and you see a light out there, You don't really care whether the person is a conservative or liberal. You're lit up by his or her sentience. Nor when you meet a baby, see a baby, you don't say, oh, this baby is going to grow up to be conservative. But we get so lost in our thoughts and aren't in the world as it actually exists that we're always...

[07:20]

Determining how we relate to people at basically a level having to do only with thoughts. And the whole practice of the Bodhisattva and the Buddha is different. I said, even when a motorcycle whizzes by in the night and wakes you, you say, ah, a sentient being. I'm sure this is the way the Dalai Lama feels, for instance. He doesn't think, oh, another one of those motorcyclists. This is possible for all of us. You just have to be willing to be a little schmalzig. Or we think of it as that way. Yeah. Now you can only really

[08:36]

open yourself to the differences and the... Open yourself to the differences of each person. When you feel intact and complete in yourself. When you're not seeking and needing dependent relationships. And the whole point of zazen is to free yourself from dependency. So you can truly interact with other people accepting them as they are. So again, you come to this mind that doesn't need anything. And it's discoverable in zazen practice. So this kind of mind is the root of Sangha and the spirit of helping each other practice.

[10:10]

No, we may feel that we can't change the structure or conditions of our life. And maybe it's difficult. You have responsibilities and so forth. But at the same time, you know you can change, don't you know, you can change the quality of your life. And the quality of our life is rooted in how we live. act and behave and see things. What I'm saying is, of course, very simple, but let's look at things simply. You know, you can have Different people can live in the same circumstances.

[11:43]

And one can be quite happy and the other quite depressed. Why is that? Well, there's of course often psychological reasons. Or genetic reasons. But still I think a great deal of it is rooted in the views we have of the world. And our practice of either realization or delusion. Now meditation is, we get stuck in delusions. our three minds again, given minds, waking, sleeping, and dreaming.

[12:51]

And we're trying to give you, and Buddhism is saying, okay, hey, you don't have to take psychedelics or alcohol or something. Here, just by changing your posture... Sitting still, you can discover another mind. And someone said to me, what somebody mentioned yesterday, can we make decisions from this mind of zazen? Well, I don't know. You have to make decisions however you make decisions. Wie auch immer ihr Entscheidungen trefft, ihr müsst sie treffen. But I would recommend, if you have any experience at Zazen, to review your life, review your decisions in Zazen. Aber wenn ihr Erfahrung im Zazen habt, schlage ich vor, dass ihr euer Leben aus der Sicht des Zazens betrachtet.

[13:59]

Discover what you really want to do. Und versucht herauszubekommen, was ihr wirklich tun wollt. What you feel true about. So I think again we need this lion mind. To know that all situations are workable. That things can be changed. that there's a way to do it and that you can do it. This kind of confidence is necessary. And if you don't have this confidence, then this is the work of your sasen practice. Forget about enlightenment. Just work on having a certain basic confidence in yourself.

[15:03]

Just see if you can trust yourself as you exist at this moment. Why not be happy? Among the choices, it's the better one. It's quite enjoyable just to be alive. Such beautiful things are appearing all the time. Rain, sun. bound up bamboo. We're trying to take care of it so it doesn't die in the winter. So, Dogen, we're speaking about this genjo koan.

[16:29]

And our theme is actualizing mind. And Dogen is asking us to recognize, again, recognize. as all things are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and enlightenment. Practice. Birth and death. Buddhas and sentient beings. We could say this is the entirety of Dogen's teaching. And again I ask you, can you believe this? Can you believe what these people say?

[17:35]

Or do you say, well, they're special? Or they're a good writer? Something like that. But let's look at Let's look at the so-called third in the patriarchal line. He died maybe in 606, I think. No one knows for sure. And we chant his name every morning. Third after Bodhidharma. That's that guy. And you just... And you just say his name every morning and you think, yeah, nothing.

[18:46]

That's a whole life there. And each of those names you say quickly is to honor for a moment or recognize for a moment a life at least as complex and full as yours. And here is Zenzan who said the great way is not difficult. Good. Only don't pick and choose. So let's believe him. Maybe the great way is not difficult. Can we understand what it means not to pick and choose? Can we find a practice that Can we actualize this in a practice?

[20:04]

You know, this is a pretty innocuous thing to say. What's innocuous? Harmless. You could walk around here in the neighborhood and say, you know, if you didn't look too crazy at least, Make a little song, you know. The great way is not difficult. Oh, they don't pick and choose. They think he's a little crazy, but he's harmless. Oh. But this guy was considered so dangerous in his society that he had to feign mental illness and hide in the mountains for ten years. From 574, for the next ten years, he hid in the mountains to avoid

[21:07]

pretended to be crazy. So here's this person who we mention his name in the morning as quickly as possible. Who to bring to you a simple thing, like the great way is not difficult, hid in the mountains for ten years pretending he was crazy. Maybe he was. It's great, isn't it? Okay, so... He's willing to make that sacrifice.

[22:28]

Let's take this phrase seriously. If all things are the Buddha Dharma, then we live in a world of Buddhas. and the potentiality of enlightenment and so forth. We haven't spoken about the section yet about enlightenment and the moon and the water and so forth. Okay, now, Dogen gives us a sense of what the practice is in the title, as I said, of the Genjo Koan. To actualize or complete just what appears.

[23:30]

Verwirkliche oder komplettiere das, was erscheint. and to actualize each thing that appears, each particular, as if it covered everything. So we can look at the practices we talked about. There's maybe three views and one practice. One practice to actualize these three views. The first view is to work with, to hold this view in your mind and body. That everything is equal.

[24:31]

Each thing is equal. You can't take this out of a situation, the whole world would fall apart. Everything is needed. We know this from ecology and so forth. Each thing is equal. Each thing covers everything. We don't live in a container. Everything is contained from here out. And everything is you, or everything is me.

[25:32]

For you, you'd say, what I've often practiced with, whatever appears, I say, this is me. Or this is also me. Yeah, it's hard for me to say, think of that water perhaps, gurgling out of that bamboo pipe. Yeah, but maybe I intellectually know it's me. In some big ecological sense. But I want it more intimate than that. So I just get in the habit of saying, this is me. Or perhaps this is also me, a little politer. I don't say, this is mine.

[26:45]

I just say, this is also me. So if it's a bird song, this is also me. And if you practice with this, actually things begin to appear inside you differently. And this is quite simple, but you're trying to recognize something profound. So if it's a tree, this is also... If I look at any of you, I feel you are also me. So I'm discovering, opening myself Another way is to work with saying already connected.

[27:53]

These are all practices I've given you. We usually, unconsciously, have the practice already separated. Whenever you look at something, your assumption is, oh... I'm already separate. So everything feels quite far away. But if you work with already connected, You can begin to feel you're immersed in a different kind of liquid. So we're working with a very simple practice here in various forms. I'm trying to treat each thing as equal. Each thing is also me.

[29:08]

Each thing is including everything, covering everything. And each thing is equal to everything else. So these are several views we're working with to actualize mind as Dogen presents it. This wide sense of mind we intuit. And the main practice to bring these views together is to treat each thing as equal, to bring your energy equally to each thing. How can I give you an image? It's a little like the more you practice bringing your energy to each thing equally, You want to get in the habit of doing it all the time.

[30:25]

But perhaps at first you have to dedicate ten minutes a day to it. If you each dedicated ten minutes a day to it, Sen San would say, oh, ten years of craziness was worth it. of trying to just treat each thing, bring your energy equally to each thing. And what happens, it's funny, it's like smoothing the lake. It's like smoothing the lake of reality. Suddenly you see deep down into things.

[31:26]

You're seeing beyond your preferences. I don't say deny your preferences. Preferences are fun. But I also say, don't deny the deep reality of our existence. And really, once you notice that this practice is working, when suddenly you start feeling transparent and the world sort of just passes through you. The other day, I don't know why I was doing this, it was completely dark in my room at Creston.

[32:30]

It's quite dry there. When I first come back, it takes me a little while to get used to the dryness, because you're high up. Down here, I feel like I'm in thick air. In Crestone you're in thin air. And it's quite dry. So the first week or two at night sometimes I get quite... And I have a wood-burning stove. I only heat in the room. So... I keep a little pot of water on the stove. It was quite dry in the room, and the fire had mostly gone out, but not entirely.

[33:40]

But I could tell immediately by my throat that the... water had evaporated. Or was getting low in the pot. I don't know why I'm telling you this long story. So I went over and I began pouring water in the pot, but it was completely dark. So I put my finger down in the pot to feel when the water got near the top. I kept pouring and pouring and nothing happened. I... And I thought, hmm. You stopped there.

[34:41]

Hmm. Maybe... Very good translation. I thought, I'd better stop, because if I pour too much and it goes onto the stove, there's a big explosion of boiling water. So I stopped, and I stopped just in time before it went over the edge. Because strangely, the water was exactly the temperature of my body. So I couldn't feel it on my finger at all. It was exactly the same temperature. So I had no sensation. My finger was wet. And I looked at him and... But you know, somehow, when you treat everything as equally, it's almost like the world becomes the same temperature. And you don't feel outside-inside distinctions anymore.

[36:01]

It's the same. And a simple practice like this Has this kind of effect. And you can begin to feel this wider sense of mind. This mind of connectedness. This mind which lights up sentient beings. This mind we can call a Buddha field. Then you begin to have the capacity to not to free yourself from an abiding sense of self. Now, Dogen is being quite subtle here because he doesn't say a permanent self.

[37:03]

By abiding, he means a subtle sense of permanence. As I said last night, when you begin to have the habit of bringing your energy and attention equally to each thing, whatever it is, you don't have so much tendency for your energy to go into various forms of self. And you begin to have more of what we could say a functional sense of self. But this functional sense of self you no longer view as, in subtle ways, permanent.

[38:13]

So I actually think it frees us more to mature our self, mature our story, than when we over-identify with our story. Maybe it's useful in this case to think of ourselves as having many lifetimes. Maybe many lifetimes that run simultaneously. Maybe Sosan, Sensan is one of my lifetimes. One of your lifetimes. And perhaps each of you is one of each other's lifetimes. But you have a responsibility to mature this lifetime, this story of this lifetime. But to know that this is only one of the possible lifetimes.

[39:29]

So Buddhism is trying to widen your perspective from your personal story to our wide life in the world. And to develop a mind that's more pliant. Because only a more subtle and pliant mind can recognize how we actually exist. Several times people, I think you asked, what is this cypress tree and Iron Man about?

[41:03]

This is Dogen's way of thinking. Okay, see if I can say something about it. Okay. Now, on the one hand, he means life is not like a cypress tree. He means both ways here. To view life as a cypress tree means we view it as something has a seed and grows and etc. That's one way to look at it. But really, like the Diamond Sutra said, a bodhisattva is free of the idea of a lifespan. I find that quite a radical thing to say.

[42:06]

Right now, but really right now. I mean, as you get older, you notice this. I guess I often remember this man who was 90 who said, I feel just like a young man with something wrong with him. So, you know, I'm getting to be rather elderly. And... It looks the same as, always looks the same, I don't know. I don't feel any different. So in that sense I have no sense of a lifespan. It's just this moment. Quite fine. So to view life as a cypress tree, is a kind of delusion, he means, in this sense. And to view death as an iron man, in this sense, something which doesn't move.

[43:21]

This is also a kind of very limited idea of death. Dogen says, he's so strange, he says, even if a cypress tree hinders a cypress tree, death does not hinder birth. I love this phrase, does not hinder. Okay, so what does he mean? He means something like, if you have a car. I went out on my porch this morning and there was the most complicated thing going on in our parking lot.

[44:24]

Cars backing up and coming and going. I couldn't figure out exactly what was going on. Do you have a game called musical chairs? Do you have a game called musical chairs? This is sort of like musical cars. I couldn't figure out what it means. But when you have a car, the car hinders the car. Do you understand? To get it going, the car itself hinders you getting it going. So Dogen means that being a cypress tree hinders being a cypress tree. So although... When something appears,

[45:40]

The appearance itself hinders the appearance. It's hindered by itself, not by death. And the fact that everything will disappear doesn't hinder it appearing. So to actualize, to complete what appears... means simply to recognize that you're part of this appearance. Hmm. And also, you see, cypress tree and iron man are technical terms in Buddhism. So Bodhidharma, the other side is, Chow Chow was asked to... Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?

[46:49]

And he said, the cypress tree in the garden. One of my early seminars, we were in a garden, and it was rhododendrons. So I still meet people now who went to that seminar back in 1984 or something. And they still chant occasionally, rhododendrons in the garden. So the cypress tree in the garden means Buddhism appearing here. Without some sense of lifespan or anything, just Buddhism appears here. And iron man means maybe lion mind.

[47:54]

And there are certain ceremonies you do where you are identified as having the imperturbability of an iron kind of core. So to leap clear of the one and the many means to be free of counting, measuring, free of a lifespan. Just actualize this moment. Many things go on, but the core of this moment is to actualize this moment.

[49:03]

If you practice this as much as you can, you'll be surprised at how much it transforms your life and actualizes your mind. Thank you very much. May our intentions be the same, to read and read everywhere, is the true merit of the Buddha's path. Shulam uem vsegando. Mano-mushin-se-kan-dan. O-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah-mah.

[50:09]

The feelings in my heart are countless. I believe I can overcome them. The feelings in my heart are countless. I believe I can overcome them. The feelings in my heart are countless. I believe I can overcome them. The results are unreachable. I believe I can overcome them. Jēn jēn mīmyo noho wa yāpūsē man bupō ni owaido koto kata shi

[51:52]

Parayan enmonchi yujisoro koto etari. Deyavakuan yoram. I, Yoshin Jitsun Yokeshita de Masura, I will never talk to you again. and drama can also be read in hundreds of thousands of millions of different languages. Now that I can read and listen to you, I think I know the truth of the three-day task. Well, is it the case that we changed the schedule slightly?

[53:26]

So this afternoon we have zazen instead of the group discussion? I volunteered to have Zazen now instead of Teisho, but I thought if we're going to talk less, it should start with me. Once when I was in third grade, the teacher kept saying I talked too much, so she kept threatening to take my mouth shut. So I came one day and taped my mouth shut. She tried not to laugh. So I thought this morning, where do I come back to?

[54:38]

So I appreciated yesterday afternoon's discussion. Partly because it shows that you're actually practicing. If you're scared of practice, it means a practice is affecting you. So if you get worried about Sangha and group and Zazen, yeah, it's good. But we still have to think through the problems, and that's also what you were saying yesterday. And I'm afraid there's no assuredness we will come to answers.

[55:48]

Or better solutions. And one of the most... thoughtful and intelligent person that I practiced with years ago, has concluded that only personal practice is possible. I think I'm expressing his view Which is, he thinks the cult of, probably he would say the cult of personality, is so strong in our Western American culture anyway, that as soon as you have people living together, too much, there's a kind of meta-personality that gets created and is out of control.

[57:04]

Yeah, and we know that can happen. That's right. And we know that can happen on big scale as well as just on a small scale. It can happen in schools and villages and nations. And some of the anecdotes I told you yesterday are kind of response to, you know, certainly Japan and Japanese Buddhism is not free at all of aggression and deluded behavior. In fact, the Soto school in Japan recently apologized publicly and in writing

[58:09]

Apologized for their role in supporting the Japanese war machinery. And that was prompted a lot by Americans, and particularly one American, Brian Victoria. Yeah, I don't see him. I haven't seen him in years, but he was an old friend of mine. And he was a peace activist in Tokyo and as an ordained monk. And he lived by begging on the streets of Tokyo wearing his straw hat and everything.

[59:25]

And he became a national figure. I mean, all the Japanese newspapers would report what he did. And when I first went to Japan, there were these huge marches of millions of Japanese saying, Yankee, go home. Because Americans occupied Okinawa. I know I was walking along in Kyoto once in this... very well organized, exciting march came by. And I was walking along with my wife and daughter and it looked so interesting. I said, can I join the march? And I was there with my wife and my daughter, and it looked very interesting.

[60:32]

And I said, can I just march along? And marches, they were very organized. Everybody was chanting, and one person would chant something, and then the whole group would chant something. It was all divided up into hundreds of groups of about 50 each. So I jumped in and linked arms and off we went. And I said to the guy next to me, what are we protesting? He said, Raishawa is coming to Japan. Reichauer, he was a professor and later ambassador to Japan. And I said, oh, my old teacher. Anyway, but Brian is very active and he really has put a lot of public pressure on Soto-shu to be upfront about their role in the war.

[61:49]

And it became an issue in this book of Suzuki Roshi's, which is out there. I think there's a couple copies out on the table. And as I said in the introduction to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, he was head of a small peace group during the war. And Brian actually challenged me on this and said there was no Zen priest. dared to have a peace group during the Second World War. Well, so I changed the wording slightly because it depends what you mean by a peace group. There was no organized legal peace group.

[63:04]

But as David's book has established, all through the war, Sukhya, she met with young people and tried to get out of military thinking and influence the other people in the larger community. And he kept at this meeting with these young people and others in the village throughout the war somehow able to do it without being taken away.

[64:09]

I mention this also because we are the recipient of an idealized form of Zen and an idealized form of Aikido and so forth in the West. But at the same time, these idealizations of these practices can also be real. I mean, as I discussed with someone the other day, Suzuki Daisetsu, D.T. Suzuki, is definitely presenting a Japanese nationalist point of view about Zen. He really did not know that much about Zen. He'd studied Zen considerably less than many of you. But he was a scholar, knew Sanskrit, and he's an important figure. But you can't learn much Zen from him. I'm trying to be realistic here.

[65:52]

and emphasize the degree to which we are rooted in a tradition and simultaneously on our own. And we have to look at the tradition with some scrutiny, too. But part of my point yesterday was even when there are forms of antagonism or aggression that are part of related to the yogic culture, which Buddhism is part of too. I don't say they're better or worse, but the way in which one expresses aggression and so forth is different.

[67:17]

Yes, and I really don't like these things, Zen and the art of swordsmanship and stuff. We might as well Zen and the art of machine gunning or something like that. But there's still some difference. Sekiroshi's son was quite good at kendo, at sword practice. And by the way, Hoitsu Roshi, Tsukushi's son, I think will visit Johanneshof next April.

[68:19]

I heard we were in some contact with him, and he really was interested in what we're doing, so he's going, it looks like, come to Crestone for a week or two, and then come here for a week or two. He can help us with our chanting. Okay, we have the world.

[69:30]

Let's start big, right? Yeah, well, it's not so big. There's also the multiverse. Okay, so we have the world, and then we have human culture. Then we have Asian and Western culture. And within Asian culture you have yogic culture. Then within yogic culture you have Majjamaka Yogacara teachings. And Zen is a Chinese form of Majamaka and Yogacara teachings. So we're looking at something very specific, and even in Asia, although it influences the culture, We're looking at a very specific teaching which is not co-extensive with Asia or Asian yogic culture.

[70:43]

So I'm trying to simplify some of the philosophy here. I would like to try to simplify some of the philosophy here so you can catch the direction of our practice. Simplify only because it's easier to speak about it in terms of practice for now. We make the assumption again implicit assumption that there's entities out there. So entities make us look for matter first. So there's a big question in science, at what point does matter change into consciousness? An amoeba or Oscar?

[72:21]

We know Oscar is quite conscious. And at what point do we have self-consciousness, self-observing consciousness? And it's a big question. At what point do you have stones and chemicals, and suddenly there's consciousness. I think part of this is just we have an assumption that there's some kind of substance out there. So now all of this has brought us to there's an virtually immaterial dot of matter, which suddenly big bangs into all of matter in immeasurable length of time. Now, this is a far-out idea.

[73:59]

You must admit, this is pretty far out. Sort of like that, everything appears and et cetera. You know, it's backward measurable. In other words, you can measure things back and say, oh yeah, there's this central point. And it's presently quantifiable, I guess. But it stretches the idea of what matter is, for sure. Now, Buddhism does not try to start with some scientific saying, mind is first. But Buddhism says, if you want to understand how we exist through and as mind consciousness, we have to work with the presence of mind.

[75:02]

So we have ideas like original mind, the mind before your parents were born and so forth. Now, Buddhism doesn't look for substantial entities. Buddhism is always looking at interactions. There's only interactions. Now, if you only see interactions, you're not necessarily... because interactions require two or many. And if you just look at interactions, in what kind of space do these interactions occur? And if there's only interactions, then there's no passive existence.

[76:30]

There's no kind of thing that just appears passively and is there. It's always a form of interaction. Even if you don't see the stone as interaction, it's still an interaction. and the result of interactions. So this view is the background of completing everything that appears. Because whatever appears, you're part of that interaction. And you can't just be passive, you have to have a relationship to it. So Suzuki Roshi had a teacher at Komozawa University in college. And that teacher told him, formal education is explaining things.

[77:49]

Actual education is letting things explain themselves. Now that comes out of a different world view. It comes out of a worldview where things have their own almost decision-making process. There's an interactive subjectivity to everything. So what this teacher Takada said is simply a version of what Dogen said. Dogen says, when we advance And reveal myriad things.

[78:59]

That's delusion. It's maybe a useful approach, but the approach that he calls enlightenment, is that when all things advance and reveal themselves, this is enlightenment. Do you see that that's a different worldview? And why we have to work with our views? Because if you have a view, an assumption of entity-ness, even at subtle levels, you won't understand this letting all things advance and reveal themselves.

[80:08]

So I'll go forward just a little bit with this, partly because our esteemed translator Don't be vain. Just translate what I say. It's not about you, it's what I said. And I translated it wrong. If you think it's about you, then there's a substantial sense of self-presence. It's just words, esteemed translator. Just puffs of air. Aren't you glad you're not translating?

[81:45]

I can't tease you. Yeah. But he's asked me two or three times to come back to this distinction between self and phenomena between early Buddhism and Mahayana. Now, when you first hear these things, I think most of my mind at least goes, I don't know, my mind gets grayer. But they're so commonplace in Buddhism because they're so familiar with them, Yeah, no big deal.

[82:47]

But this is so normal in Buddhism, and everyone knows it, that it is simply nothing great. No. So people say, the object cannot be grasped, the mind cannot be grasped. Now, you can sort of get that. And you can experience it. But a great deal of thinking is behind that ordinary statement that Zen people toss off all the time. Okay. So, a property, there's a property of position. Property like property of hardness, etc. Property of position. Now, he's sitting there, I'm sitting here.

[83:57]

We can't say much else about that. Everything else is analyzed into parts. So there's position. And position gives the sense of oneness. of one thing. So each thing arises, each thing appears? Yes. It has a position only for a moment and then that position changes. So it has no substance but it has position for a moment. Okay. And also there's a property of pervasiveness.

[84:57]

So this position also extends, covers other things. Now, believe it or not, the Buddhists have spent quite a lot of time analyzing that neither position nor pervasiveness is any form of unity. Because knowing pervasiveness or knowing what the American Indians call the long body like you're about to phone somebody and you phone them and they just pick up the phone before it rings and say, I was just phoning you.

[86:04]

Science denies this, but it happens to a lot of people. And it happens to dogs. You know that story of Rupert Sheldrake filming the dog? I'll tell you real quickly. They put a camera beside this dog, and they put a camera with the woman who was the dog's friend. And I've seen the film. And this dog gets quite upset when the woman goes shopping. But finally he goes and lies down. And then you see this woman going shopping.

[87:07]

She's in some English town. And then, after about two hours and a half or so, before she talked about maybe she could go home, the dog didn't move. And then she says, okay, they sat down and there's a film and she sits down on a park bench and she says, I really think we should go home now. So the guy, she says this too, and the camera registered this and the dog instantly gets up, you know, 20 miles away and goes to the window. I mean, it's like that, instantaneous. We just watch Oscar to have some idea of where Petra is. But it's interesting that Petra is probably not as sensitive to this as Oskar is.

[88:25]

So our thinking consciousness does seem to interfere a lot. Now, you could assume this meant there's some unity There's some pervasive oneness. The Buddhism says, no, this isn't the case. The pervasiveness occurs only infinitely at one layer of infinite layers. In other words, There's no... Because if you thought that, say, pervasiveness is like a fishnet... That pervades everything, right?

[89:33]

Then there has to be something that pervades, like... a fishnet laid out on a beach. And if you think that, then there's some idea of a substantial permanence. But there's no place to spread the net out onto, because there's nothing that's permanent. Okay. So, if you say one and many, it's still a subtle form of permanence. Even if you think of the many as just pervasiveness, So this dual sense of emptiness of self and phenomena.

[90:44]

And what Dogen says, that's why Dogen says, to transcend the one and the many, to leap free of the one and the many. That was an experiment to see if I could explain this. I hope your brain doesn't feel grayer. So again, this is partly I'm trying to deal with the text. To show you what's in the background of a simple phrase. I like to leap free of the one and the many. Now, what this means for us, we could make it simple.

[92:00]

Why doesn't Zen give guided meditation? How can you have a guided meditation when there's not even one in many? You can have a map for a city. But it's actually quite interesting to explore a city without a map. I think it's worth doing both. I prefer to explore without a map. It's fine to use both. No map and a map. But if you were building a city within a city, if you were building a new city within a present city, there'd be no map to this new city. And that's what you're doing when you're practicing Zen.

[93:18]

You're building a new city in the midst of your present city. I believe that we need Sangha. I am trying to work with you together to develop a Sangha. that is a fruitful part of our life and practice. But the maps we have of the city we live in keep getting extended on top of this Sangha. I mean, in other words, you have a map, I have a map, etc.

[94:29]

So we start living together and we just spread our maps out onto the group.

[94:33]

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