The basic assumption here is that in this room right now, what is the kitchen club? Do Buddhists belong to the kitchen club? I need something. Okay. You didn't translate that, so all right. The basic assumption here in this room that we're each enacting is that... mind is interrelated with connected with posture and hence there's the assumption that we have

[01:17]

more than one mode of fundamental mind and and hence more than at least more than one way of knowing reality and that we can best enact I know enact is hard to translate but we can best enact this other mind and other way of knowing, through assuming, through taking, through assuming this posture.

[02:33]

You know, I went, I had a, A little anecdote. You know, I had this radiation therapy four years ago or so. Yeah, and so, you know, I still have these tattoos on my hips where they aim the guns. Yeah, I didn't say electrons, but yeah. You said guns, right? Guns, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I could always feel it going in.

[03:55]

It didn't seem unusual to me, but they thought it was unusual. Most people, I guess, don't feel it. I had a dental x-ray the other day. I said, that one didn't work. And they said, no. They looked in the computer, it hadn't worked. I said, no, it didn't go through. A dental? Dental x-ray. A zental, I mean dental. Did I say all that? Well anyway... So what I realized happened is I protected myself here and really tightened this up like an iron band around because I kept trying to protect myself from the radiation.

[05:00]

This is really too long an anecdote. Sorry. But anyway, I realized just a while ago that I was having a lot of problems with my legs because I was so tight here. So I got Daniel, who practices here, to loosen this up. Then I found out that I'd compensated somehow and this shoulder was extremely painful to move or turn my head. So I went to see this guy in Creston who Christian sees. And a friend of mine, also a woman who studied with Ida Rolfe,

[06:05]

So he asked me to sit on this table. So I sat down on the table. Why not, you know? And he said, you look like you belong in that position. He said, you look like this is where you feel most alive. Yeah, and it was true. I said, well, yes, I guess you're right. I didn't just seem to be another. Yeah, but anyway, I guess he was right. I was surprised a little because I feel okay in most every position. But he felt in this position I looked more alive or basically alive.

[07:31]

There's something like that. No, I suppose it's understandable. Doing this a long time. But the assumption of the Abhidharma is that you can't practice or understand the Abhidharma until you know this posture. It's not some kind of philosophical exercise that you can study. And Kumarajiva, who is the, we could call him the teacher of Buddhism to China. In the fourth century of the common era.

[08:34]

It's not important, but it's politically incorrect in scholarship in English to say Christus. Because if you're doing anthropology and you talk about Polynesians in the Christian era, it's rather odd. Yeah. If you're doing what? Anthropology. Okay. So he said he could not teach Buddhism to the Chinese unless they understood the Abhijamma. And he taught, I mean, not only did he teach, was the main translator of text into Chinese and the main translator of what we study.

[09:57]

He also taught the thousands, literally, of monks who worked with him on the translations. So I'm just trying to give you a sense of how important the Abhidharma is considered within the history of Buddhism. Now, it turns out that this is called a catch-up, but it's more, I think, a refresher, because more of you are part of the winter branches than were not part of the winter branches. Yeah, and I didn't really treat this as a prologue day, and then we're starting today.

[11:16]

I started yesterday, so I'll just mostly continue. Yes, but why do I think that it's important for us to know something about the Abhidharma? No, I know many of you study Buddhism as well as practice with the Dharma Sangha. But I discovered that quite a lot of you just study what I'm talking about and don't really study Buddhism. So I ended up doing some sort of self-help program, which is called Buddhism, but you don't know anything about Buddhism.

[12:28]

And we call it Buddhism, but you don't know anything about Buddhism. So I thought, jeez, you're going to be embarrassed in front of others. Once I die, you're going to say I'm a Buddhist, and they'll say, what's the Abhidharma? And you'll say, huh? So I thought, man, it's going to be so embarrassing when I die for the first time. Then you'll say, I'm a Buddhist, and you'll say that in front of others, and then we'll ask you, what is the Abhidharma? And then you'll just say, huh. You can say, I'm a Dharma Sangha Buddhist and I don't know anything. So I thought we better, you know, at least understand something about Buddhism. Partly so you can express your own understanding in a context. And not that you accept the context in its entirety. But that you also know something about where Zen fits into the context and what parts aren't part of Zen.

[13:50]

And that's important also because it really should be clear to us this is not a revealed teaching. This is a continuously being developed teaching. And you're not just the receiver of the teachings, you're also the creator of the teachings. And if we don't really know that, we won't have depth and vitality to our practice. So the Abhidharma is After the Buddha died, there were three councils, gatherings of senior practitioners to discuss what to do.

[15:22]

And Buddha said to a sick monk, I mentioned the other day, Buddha said to a sick monk who couldn't come to see him. Don't seek me in my person. Don't seek me in my body. Seek me in the Dharma. You'll find me in the teaching. You'll find me in the Dharma. Where is the Dharma? So that's what these councils basically got together and said, what is this Dharma in which we will find our path? The first council occurred, I don't know, just after he died or within a few months after he died.

[16:39]

And then they had another one 100 years later and another one 200 years later. So roughly 500 years before the common era. 400 years and 200 years. And they had the second 400 years before and the third one 200 years before the common era. There was one 500, there was one at 400, and there was one at 200. Okay, before. Before, yes. Roughly, those days. And they tried to put together the Buddha's teachings. So they collected all the rules, the Vinaya Pitaka.

[17:58]

It's called the Tripitaka. The three baskets. And then they gathered all the rules of how you live together, how you exclude somebody who doesn't fit in and so forth. And then they gathered all the discourses, the sutras, the teachings. And then they tried to put together what they called the higher teachings, which was the Abhidharma. And the higher teachings, so-called Abhidharma, are not like the discourses set in a narrative scene. They're philosophically kind of organized as lists.

[19:12]

So you can practice with them. I remember my mother was a newspaper reporter. And she worked for newspapers, different ones, off and on, from the time she was, I don't know, in high school, practically. She used to say, with very common knowledge, that you have to always get the four Ws in the story. Before Ws. Yeah. What, where, when and why.

[20:14]

And she actually kept those in mind when she'd be doing a story about something. I could tell what it is and where it happened, when it happened and why it happened. If you leave one of those out, you get fired from your job. So this was, you know, I always was struck by this because it was a kind of list. It's obvious, but yet you keep it in mind as you interview somebody, say. Yeah, well, the Abhidharma is quite like that. There's various lists that you keep in mind while you observe yourself, your activity. Now, as people like to authenticate the teachings that it really came from the Buddha, blah, blah, blah.

[21:31]

Various stories that on the fourth day after his enlightenment, he contemplated the Abhidharma. There's another story I told yesterday that he preached to the devas in a higher realm than the human realm. Okay. But in fact, the Abhidharma was developed over 500 to 800 years. Along with Western science, it's one of the great creations of human culture, human activity.

[22:34]

And to teach Buddhism without understanding the Abhidharma might be something like trying to teach chemistry without... Who's smoking out there? I don't know. What happened this morning? It's just nothing. It's the system. It needs to be checked. He had a report last week, but he cancelled that because he was sick. Oh, okay. It's not something I said, you know. Well, as long as we know Atmar is on duty, we'll just sleep through it. As long as we know that Otmar is fulfilling his duty, we can just sleep through it.

[23:55]

Why don't we sit for a moment until they come back?

[24:31]

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