What is reality is the kind of question that is on my mind these days. What is reality? And sometimes I'm a little afraid of big questions like that. I mean, I'm OK when I have them, but to talk about it, I don't know. But on the other hand, that's just what's present for me right now. And I talked to Sophie yesterday, and she asked me, what will you talk about in your lecture? And at that point I didn't quite know, but I said, oh, you know, I have this question, what is reality? And then she said, it's not what you think it is. And I thought that was a pretty good answer, actually.

[01:05]

It's not what you think it is. And Baker Roshi mentioned to me recently that he asked this question, asked Yamada Muman Roshi this question, and when he asked it, Yamada Muman Roshi said he had to answer it later, And then at the next, during the next sitting period, when everybody, he waited until everybody was settled in, and then he said, this is reality. So is thinking getting us away from reality?

[02:14]

Is when we get rid of thinking, is that the entry into what reality really is if it's not what we think it is? Is this an answer to the question to just get rid of your thinking and then you know better? I like this... that was coined by George Spencer Brown, a British mathematician and logician, and he coined this term to draw a distinction. And why I like it is that in this term, the activity of the making of a distinction is present.

[03:16]

And this is how I think of thinking, actually. Thinking is to draw distinctions. We have to draw distinctions in order to perceive something as something. And actually, I think it's this... It's before that there is a kind of attention draws at distinction, paying attention to this bowing mat. But not as a bowing mat, just visual distinction. Not that, this. And it's almost like lifting it out of the background, having it that way, delineating it. And then within that, another distinction calling it a bowing mat and not a chair.

[04:22]

And then within that, another distinction calling it a bowing mat that comes from Japan and not from somewhere else. And within that, how much care went into doing it. I mean, there's distinctions within distinctions within distinctions, and then placing those distinctions within a context of other distinctions. That's the activity of thinking, I think. And it's complex. I mean, it's so complex that it's hard to know how we got there. And it makes a world, and it's very, I think it's a very creative process. It allows, it's fascinating that the human mind can make distinctions between these subtle differences. And when the distinction is drawn, it can be drawn again, and that makes something first cognizable and then recognizable.

[05:30]

That's how I can see it again as the same thing. It is said often, I think, because this thinking business is such a big deal in Zen, and it's often said that thinking is not the problem, but identifying with the thinking is the problem. And how do you make, I don't know, I'm asking, how do you make sense of that distinction, the thinking and identifying with the thinking? For me, this opens up when I, now I'm using this term, drawing a distinction, the drawing of the distinction is not the problem. Once the distinction is drawn to see it as the reality of how things are, it's the problem.

[06:30]

And forgetting that the distinction was drawn and you think that the drawn distinction is what reality is. Okay, this is just trying to make sense of it. That's how I try to make sense of it. So maybe then we need another term to refer to reality before distinctions are drawn. I'm just going to use the word actuality to do that, something I think Hershey suggested. A word that I recognize from his talks, but let's call that actuality. And maybe that can be, we can think of that as undifferentiated, without distinction. But it's funny, you know, this is already, you know, to create this term, you already have to make a distinction, you already have to just differentiate it from...

[07:40]

the activity of drawing distinctions. But anyways, otherwise we can't talk about anything. But I think it's interesting to see that it's within thinking you can't get out of that activity. I sometimes for myself, I'm using white light as a metaphor for that. actuality. White light, I think scientists say, as far as I remember, that it contains all colors, but you can't see any color in it. It's undifferentiated colors. And it needs a prism to break the light into making the colors visible. Or you need to place an object into the light and then the object absorbs some of the frequencies and reflects others, and that's the color.

[08:44]

So it's like, true reality is like the medium in which it needs to be broken by drawing a distinction in order to know anything. We're thinking. So then a second, I mean a different question, but related then for me is how can I practice, yeah, that's called, I want to call it practice, practice reality or actuality. How can I practice it? Meaning how can I, how can I not throw out thinking completely, but use it without falling into its... into its problems. The problems being that the drawing of the distinction is forgotten and the distinctions are reified and thought of as something real.

[09:54]

I have I have a problem in my backbone these days. It feels like there's a kind of a kink in it. It's kind of like that. And it's, well, one thing is it's kind of, it's quite painful. It affects my whole body, the alignment of my body. It doesn't go away. And But it's been kind of a good problem for me, speaking of enjoying the difficulties, it's been kind of a good problem because it has increased my awareness and my backbone. And it's... You know, it's something that Roshi has suggested so often, you know, try to reside in your backbone as you do things. So I'm doing this more consciously because of my problem.

[11:01]

And... I've made a new observation, which is hard to describe. I'm trying to give you a feel for what I mean. But for some reason, when I reside in my backbone, it feels like I'm floating or something. The ground loses its solidity. It's kind of lifting up, and it's like floating through the world a little bit when I'm actually in there. And this is enhanced when I combine it with a practice that Roshi suggested often too, to inhale through and up my backbone, breathing in and breathing out and letting the air drop in front of the body, making a circle. It's a kind of lightness and ease in movement.

[12:12]

Sometimes when I walk and do this, it feels like I don't quite know. I don't know how to walk. And it's weird because there's kind of an openness. And then I fall back into my habit of walking, how walking feels. But there's this slight uncertainty about how walking actually works. It's a very interesting space And then I found a way for me to describe this, the relationship. It also feels like a shift in the medium in which I exist or something like that. And then so I described to try to find a phrase that captures that difference. I know it sounds a little dramatic, but that's what I came up with. I'm saying to myself, breathing in, the world comes together to live this body.

[13:24]

Breathing out, this body flows out to live the world. breathing in this, the whole world comes together to live this body. Breathing out, this body flows out to live the world. And it... There's still a distinction, you know, that's what I'm trying to investigate. There's still a distinction between the body and the world. But it's... But the distinction is I'm present in the drawing of that distinction. The world comes together to live this body, or this body flows out to live the world.

[14:28]

It's happening in the activity. And thinking about it, I was reminded of Dogen's phrase, undivided activity. There's a line in there that I remember. It says, when you ride in a boat, when you ride in a boat, your body, mind, and the environment, the environs, it says in Ka's translation, the environs, together, your body, mind and the environs together are the undivided activity of the boat. We've actually spoken about objects as activities, and that's something that's on my mind.

[15:48]

I'm trying to make sense of it. And then the other day, thinking about it, I noticed when I was reaching out to a drawer, I was noticing how the knob at the drawer was made to meet my hand. If the knob wasn't there, it would be kind of difficult to use that thing as a drawer. The knob there is... In using it, it makes this object into a drawer. And... and I'm enacting the object. And the object makes my body into, brings it into this, I mean, very simply, just into this position. It allows this activity. So, you know, It's very difficult for me to feel one with the world, but it's not so difficult to feel, you know, this phrase that we often use, to feel not two.

[16:59]

And that's in Dogen's phrase, undivided. It's divided, but what kind of view is necessary to undivide so that it is undivided? And it's a feeling of it acting, for me it's a feeling of it acting things into what they are. Well, we could say maybe that, or maybe an objection to this that I have in my own mind is, you know, the world is so complex, it's so, you know, if you, I'm supposed to practice or live reality, there's, how do you, you know, this little knob of a drawer, you know, what is that in comparison to having to make decisions and meeting expectations that people have and the culture has and so forth?

[18:08]

And in reading Dogen's Versical and Undivided Activity, I also found this line where he says, you ride the boat, and your riding of the boat makes the boat into what it is. That's like the draw, you know, I feel. But then he goes on and says, investigate such a moment. Investigate such a moment. And that was interesting to me. Investigate such a moment. It's just one moment of rowing the boat, but a shift in view makes it into my riding of the boat makes the boat into what it is. And that for me is becoming aware of, as I said earlier, in thinking, drawing a distinction, but it's also making aware of enacting something as something into what it is.

[19:24]

And then there's a presence in doing that, and there is a freedom. The objects already exist, of course, but my enacting them again and again makes the object into what it is again and again, new. And if I should want to not do that, there is a freedom to not do that. But that's complicated, you know? It's like saying you have a choice. Yeah, I don't know if that makes any sense. being present in that enactment, being present in that drawing of a distinction. And I think in order to do that, we have to somehow practice what we do, you know, to slip out of thinking into a present that is not occupied by thoughts about the past or the future.

[20:44]

I was very intrigued by how Roshi described how in a non-conceptual mind, if I remember correctly, the contents of the alaya-vijnana float to the surface of the mind, and they're ready to engage events of the world as they unfold. I mean, we could say that we create the reality we live in by drawing distinctions and so forth, but I don't think we can say that we create the actuality of the world. I mean, the actual reality of the world creates us as much as we create it. That's not... It's because that is prior to distinctions. Okay, so things are just happening.

[22:07]

Some things just happen. But how we engage them, how we enact them, is how we construct our reality, construe our reality. I find that very interesting to find a mind in which the in which the past experience can be present to engage the world. But that also means for me that intentions can be present to engage the world, different from how I'm conditioned to engage the world. Maybe I don't have so much of a choice in what I do, but there's an activity of cultivating intentions and letting them be present at the surface of the mind, ready to engage with whatever happens. So then I'm not doing so much to create the world I want to have, because I think that's a better world.

[23:23]

It's also as much waiting for the world to present the event and the opportunity to engage my intention. That's how I can make sense of this phrase, non-doing. Non-doing. Because of course there is a doing, but it's not a directed doing, it's more The activity that I engage in actively is more the cultivation of intention and the readiness to engage with the world. So it's not passive, but it's also not active in the way we think of action. And when that works, it's quite beautiful because it feels effortless. Something happens just as you wanted it because you were just ready to pick it up when the opportunity presented itself. And that's the dynamic that I also feel how I can engage the third and fourth paramita, patience and energy readiness.

[24:35]

in letting the world come forward as it is, in its actuality, and in responding to it, creating a reality, unavoidably, but informed by cultivated intentions. So after this kind of playing with these terms, maybe in the end, it's different from... It's not that reality is not what we think it is. Reality is what we think it to be. Then there is a... Our practice, I feel, is an empowerment and a freedom to do this creatively and in a transformative way.

[25:57]

Thank you very much. May our intention equally betray you.

[26:23]

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