I want to thank you again for doing, and Randy getting me to do it, this ceremony for Suzuki Roshi today. You know, I do little ceremonies on my own as part of my personal practice and for Suzuki Roshi, of course, too. And so I don't necessarily feel a need to do them, you know, in the place and I'm a little hesitant, you know. I'm sort of a, sometimes anyway, a shy Buddhist. And I know I'd like to push something on you. Oh, okay, thanks. But when I, you know, am requested three times, and Randy requested about thirty, I finally say, okay, let's try it.

[01:04]

And then I feel quite joyful to do it together. It's such a nice day out. It makes me think of being at the Haus Distilla near, in Germany, near Rosenberg. where we tend to recently have been doing the Taishos, the lectures in the morning, and then having time to just walk around the lakes or ponds on the grounds of the house distiller. Now, since the rest of the world is an hour different from here, they went to midnight saving time or I don't know, something. So we're even more out of step, I'm glad to say. So it's quite warm, so maybe if I give a short talk, we can have time to walk a bit.

[02:15]

We don't have lakes, but we have quite a nice place to walk. a little dusty. Maybe we'll make, I hope, some of you have seen the plans for how this will be, I hope, eventually, and hope to make some kind of grounds and garden out there and out here. Hope we can do that. Now I'd like to try to give you a map of sorts into, I don't know if I'll say much about it, but the beginning of a map into, maybe you can sort out a little bit to what I'm talking about. And I would say that the way I'm teaching falls into three, roughly three categories.

[03:26]

One is enlightenment practice. And that emphasizes just facing the inexpressible, inexhaustible, incomprehensible aspect that's always present. Just facing it with no mind. And then second, Realizational practice. And I often use realization, because I don't like the word enlightenment too much. It's kind of a funny word, but it's the best we got, I guess. And often I say realization instead of enlightenment, but right now I'm using realization in a different way. Maybe realization is more like changing something through a landslide or a flood. And enlightenment is changing, transforming through a fire.

[04:30]

And it's not to say, you know, I mean, there's this confusion between gradual and sudden, and it's mostly a polemic. And anybody who's deeply into practice knows as a fact of their own experience that There are aspects of practice you'd have to call sort of gradual, and hopefully you'd have to recognize realization or enlightenment. Now the trouble with saying gradual is that it suggests that you get to the same place through a gradual practice as you do through enlightenment, and that's not the case. So the words gradual and sudden are not accurate.

[05:40]

It's again a kind of Buddhist politics. there is realization in your practice that you come to, you first establish a view, you know, through analysis or intuition or teaching, and then you realize that view in your practice. And the chemistry of it is, Not the same as when there's a critical mass change. So our practice is usually a mixture of realization and enlightenment. And enlightenment is often many tiny sudden changes.

[06:40]

changes in kind or direction. And third would be maturing practice. And maturing practice is a maturing both of enlightenment and realization, and the maturing of both together. And maturing practice also includes perfecting the personality, realizing the precepts. and other qualities of practice. So when I'm speaking I go back and forth among around these three usually I find, if I look at what I'm doing.

[07:46]

Now I've been wanting to talk with you about the paramitas and I'm doing it gradually over a period of lectures and trying to give you a feeling for it. And one of the most... I mean, I think the key idea I'm using now to talk with you about the paramitas, the perfections, is the idea... of an accurately assuming consciousness. Now, for me, in Sesshin, each of you is a bodhisattva. You know, you're no longer, for me, during Sesshin, who you were before Sesshin or who you will be after Sesshin. So, Katalin, for instance,

[08:53]

she's an architect, or maybe she's wondering whether she's an architect or not. But that wondering whether she's an architect or not is also an expression of her Buddha nature. And each of you, whatever your sort of occupational and familial identity is, before and after Sashin, when you're in Sashin, For me, and I hope for yourself, you are a bodhisattva. You may wonder what you're going to do afterwards, but right now, you're a bodhisattva. Sukhyoshi used to say that in our everyday life, we're expressing the way in which we're a Buddha. It's a horrible, scary idea, isn't it? Giving Buddha a bad name. But it's true, because one of the persons we are as a Buddha.

[10:01]

So in your everyday life, whether you like it or not, you know, I don't want to burden you with this idea, but whether you like it or not, you are expressing one form of what it is to be a Buddha. That's quite useful, actually, to know this. So what is a bodhisattva, you know, if I say each of you is a bodhisattva? So I'm wandering around a bit here, asking questions like, what does it mean to be a bodhisattva? As Genjo-san, that's Gisela, her Buddhist name, is Emyo Genjo, so in my mind I call her Genjo-san many times. Though Genjo-san really asked us the question the other day during the Shiso ceremony, what kind of body do we have that it can be penetrated by a smile?

[11:07]

What kind of body do we have that it can be permeated by an inward smile? Yesterday I talked about seeing each thing as unaccompanied by anything else, as as just in its own state, shall we say. But that's a kind of, I mean, now I'm talking about mindfulness, that's what we could call maybe a conjugal mindfulness. It's a mindfulness in which you feel joined with whatever you look at. whatever is in your consciousness, or in consciousness, or in your sensate field.

[12:15]

And there's various kinds of mindfulness, of course. And mindfulness is softening you up, developing a continuity of mind. And when you practice what we could call excessive mindfulness, which is like, as some of you are doing, working on the koan mu, until mu, or whatever phrase you're working on, the part of working with koans, replaces all your mental activity and all your thoughts. When that happens, the sun comes out from behind the clouds. or your energy can be completely unobstructed, somehow at the point that you actually can bring all mental and sensate activity into a phrase.

[13:26]

The whole dynamic, own organizing or energetic dynamic of being changes. So this is also a mindfulness practice. So with your breath as platform, as alchemy, and with the various ways you can practice mindfulness, you are Not only you're creating the conditions for a fuller way to live, a freer way to live. Easier, actually, way to live. And sesshin is a little test tube, you know, beaker where you can pour yourself

[14:36]

in for a week and let the juices roll. And see through the beaker or test tube. Like the Zen story and Zen painting of the squid caught in a glass jar. That's how they catch squid in Asia. looking through the glass and seeing the moon. Now the sense again, coming back to a correctly assuming consciousness or accurately assuming consciousness. When I, one of the most basic things I try to talk about is the development of a background of creation, creation and development, and discovery of a background mind.

[15:53]

I mean this is, you know, what can I say? This is as basic as anything in practice. Basic as following your breath and so forth. And it's expressed in various ways in the koans all the time. I mean, the most useful one, perhaps, for us is Yunyan, Dongshan's teacher, who I mentioned today. Dongshan said, I honor Yunyan Tangshan because he did not reveal the teaching to me. But anyway, you know the story. I've told it many times. Yunyan is sweeping. And his brother, Dharma and real brother says, blood brother says, too busy. And Yin-Yang said, you should know there is one who is not busy. So knowing there is one who is not busy is recognizing, embodying, realizing actually background mind.

[17:07]

Or finally a background mind that's foreground, inner ground, and so forth. But at first it's something you begin to sense or develop that's parallel. Simple parallel consciousness. At first it's embryonic, you know. It's only partially developed. And then it becomes more of a simple parallel background mind. Then it begins to have the function of non-attachment, not detachment, non-attachment. And you begin to function through non-attachment, and that's a more developed sense of background mind. In a way, first you're creating it or discovering it or developing it, and finally, or later, you're educating it. Now from non-attachment, now we can begin to experience this as an or as the possibility of an accurately assuming consciousness.

[18:25]

Now again, the most basic for every person, accurately assuming consciousness, is one that recognizes, implicitly, instantly recognizes, automatically recognizes, present in all your activity, mental and physical activity, that everything is impermanent and non-inherent. Funny, you can say impermanent, but you can't say inherent. You have to say inherent, maybe. But anyway, non-inherent. Now, impermanent means no, means unpredictable, no predictable structure. And inherent, non-inherent would mean unique or no predictable function, no predictable nature.

[19:29]

So everything is empty of inherency and empty of permanency. And so the basic mind of, I think, any human being, unless you find very good reasons, liturgical or you know, whatever, liturgical, you know, beneficial reasons for having some other state of mind in service of some kind of production, productiveness. But I would say, in general, for any human being, ideally you have a mind of, which assumes implicitly or explicitly, I don't know what to say, is made up of the knowing and realization of impermanence and non-inherence. Okay, now, a bodhisattva

[20:38]

in contrast to this so-called any ordinary, clearly comprehending person, the background of a bodhisattva's mind, the accurately assuming qualities of a bodhisattva's mind, are the paramitas. And the first is generosity. And generosity means your heart cracks open. Generosity doesn't mean that your heart is broken by love, but it's broken in love or broken through love. When something happens and you say, oh, I didn't do it, this is not the practice of generosity. and says she and I are practice weed.

[21:46]

If anyone did it, you did it. So you say, oh, I'm sorry. We'll change it. I'll change it. And this habit of immediately not seeing yourself as different from others is the background mind of a bodhisattva. The accurately assuming consciousness of the body. And it's really just a development of the idea of non-inherency and impermanency. But it's the development not of a morality, though that's important too, and the parmitas are a kind of moral practice of generosity, discipline, patience, and so forth. But really they are the background mind or the accurately assuming mind of a bodhisattva.

[22:50]

And the second is conduct discipline, but really it means precepts or even prayer. I mean, if we can take the word prayer away from Western religion and look at it as a word, it means to inwardly entreat. And entreat means to act in a very particular way or to act in a way that confers honor, like you treat someone with medicine. So it's inward treating of a situation and requesting, postulating at the same time. So the second paramita is a really inward asking, inward intention. Your intention body. And to know that your consciousness before thoughts arise, before emotions arise, is inwardly intending or has an inward vision or inward vow.

[24:10]

which the vow can be to recognize impermanence and non-inherency. And the third we've talked about, some like patience. And the fourth... energy or at this point your energy body or to have 100% at your disposal. Like when we do the service, whether we are tired or what type, you bow and you chant 100%. the discoverer, if you have this kind of energy. And then meditation and mindfulness and wisdom.

[25:22]

And meditation then would be the mind of zazen or the mind of absorption, the mind of heightened awareness present in your consciousness. So you can see the practice of a bodhisattva is not so remote or you have to be magically entrained, but rather it's a realisational practice as well as an enlightenment practice. Because you can begin to realise and participate in your background mind, in your field of consciousness and you can begin to find through analysis and through insight and through enlightenment too, which really makes it possible, this change in direction, you can see how generosity, the cracked open heart is

[26:27]

the background mind, foreground mind, of course, of a bodhisattva. Like Randy says, you know, your movements come from your hara in this yogic culture. this cracked open heart, your emotions, not your movements, but your emotions come from your... You can feel it. It's not just an idea. It doesn't feel like you're operating from here anymore. It feels like, there's a reason this is called the heart field, it feels like you're operating from here. And emotions through this are discovered to not be just energy in the service of ego and personality, but energy in the service of equanimity, energy in the service of compassion.

[27:43]

Because the seed of emotions is our basic energy, human sentient being energy. perceptual energy too, a kind of perceptual energy, but from the heart. So we could say a bodhisattva is one with a cracked open So then this background mind can begin to be developed as the six paramitas. First it's embryonic, and then it's a simple parallel background mind, and then it's non-attachment, and then it becomes, as your practice develops, what we could call an accurately assuming consciousness, and then a paramita consciousness.

[28:54]

And finally, a non-dual consciousness and awareness and presence itself in Buddha nature. So there'd be eight stages in the development of background mind. All the way from the beginning practice through their discovering there's one who's not busy, to the functioning of Buddha nature itself. Now, I have quite a few other things I want to talk about, but it seems like that's enough. I really appreciate being able to go through the paramitas with you. Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[30:06]

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