The slant of light, so warm and beautiful. And so precious because of how quickly it changes. Each instant of it unique and precious. Jeder Augenblick einzigartig und wertvoll. So this life of change, of continually gathering in and rolling out.

[01:05]

Everything continually changing. And yet somehow for many of us, We're secretly hoping that we won't change, that we can remain constant and observe the change. And there's a teaching in Buddhism, many of you are familiar with, called the Three Seals. Anika, Anatta and Nirvana. Everything is changing. There's no permanent sense of self.

[02:11]

And in the midst of this there's the possibility in each moment for some kind of awakening and freedom. In the teaching of change and selflessness are very closely interwoven. As was mentioned in the last talk, Bodhidharma asking his disciple Thaiso Eka, what is it that engages in continuous practice? Thaiso Eka said, because I know myself very well, I can't really say Bodhidharma said, that's right, you're my disciple.

[03:27]

This is in the stream of his teaching of don't know. And these teachings are not so much descriptions of reality. They may be, but the point of them is to make what our practice is experienceable, not just conceptual. So the teaching of impermanence means to practice impermanence. An important practice for me has been and remains a saying of the monk Kodana

[04:27]

And for a period of time I repeated to myself over and over again a phrase that came to him when he heard the Buddha's teaching on the Four Noble Truths. He said, all that arises is subject to cessation. Thank you. Yeah. All that arises is subject to cessation. And the ordination name that the Buddha gave him, Kodana means something like the one who sees into the nature of things.

[05:54]

And it's not so much about knowing the nature of things. The English word, particularly in English, knowing carries a lot of cognitive baggage. But it's more noticing the world. It's more noticing the self. And much of the practice that we're engaged in is simply noticing. Noticing into the nature of things. And it's come up in these days and came up this morning for me.

[07:14]

How to describe an engagement in the process of noticing? How to describe Noticing not so much the content of our experience, but noticing the process of our experience. What Sekharoshi often describes as awareness of awareness. And this morning a phrase came to me. And I don't know if Baker Roshi said this.

[08:16]

You have to tell me first. If he didn't say it, he would have said it. This is true. We'll find out. It's about fastening noticing to noticing. And it's about... I never said that. You didn't? I could have. I think you could have. Fastening. Yes, fastening. Thank you. I said in a talk that Suzuki Roshi appreciated Dogen so much not because of his brilliance, Because he was such a sincere practitioner. Somebody said, when did he say that? And I realize, I don't know.

[09:37]

But if he didn't say it, that's the kind of thing he would have said. So there's a physical feeling of fastening the activity of noticing to noticing. Strapping it together tight. So it makes these teachings of What makes these teachings precious and of value to us is that we can experience them and make them real in our life. It's the way this practice can continue.

[10:51]

It's why it depends on each of us to continue this practice. So the implications of change as it relates to who we take ourselves to be. Dogen has famously said in Genjo Koan, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. This word study in Japanese is norau. And it means to be intimate with.

[11:52]

And it also has the feeling of repeating something over and over again. And it also has the feeling of repeating something over and over again. So studying the Buddha way is continually, over and over again, intimately repeating the Buddha way. What does it mean to say that? It means continually putting the hands, placing the hands across the chest in shashu is studying the Buddha way. Making gashos over and over again.

[12:55]

Just making gassho is studying the Buddha way. In an intimacy in this ceaseless continuous practice. So this nurau, as investigating it this morning, the characters for nurau, the kanji for nurau, has two components. And the top component is a bird's wings. And the bottom component is self. And it's how the self can take flight the way a bird over and over again attempts to and then finally can take flight itself.

[14:33]

Und das ist die Art und Weise, wie das Selbst immer, immer wieder zum Flug ansetzen kann, so wie ein Vogel das auch tut und dann letztlich selber losfliegt. So the baby bird doesn't know how to fly, but it watches its mama and papa bird. So in it, there's the possibility to know its birdness, its flight from its birth. And those of you who have known very small birds and seen them develop and then finally take flight, they struggle. Sometimes they fall out of the nest.

[15:37]

They stretch. They stretch. Dogen says that Zazen practice, sitting practice, Is the true form of the self being itself. Stretching our wings in our sasen practice. The possibility of taking flight. So to study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[16:55]

And it may include some intellectual study. Reading Dogen can be Maybe intellectual study. But it's the true form of the self as we're able to practice the teachings. Aber es ist die wahre Form des Selbst, so wie wir in der Lage sind, die Lehre zu praktizieren. Das Selbst in jeder Situation zu wiederholen. Sich damit vertraut zu machen, das Selbst in jeder Situation zu bemerken. and everything changing may be expressed as each arising is an activity, not an entity.

[18:13]

And so the question of does the self, is there a self or does the self exist? It's a kind of non-question. It's a question like... A lawyer might ask, have you stopped beating your wife? It assumes that there are entities that are arising, not activities. But the self as a process or a function or an activity is not subject to existing or non-existing.

[19:17]

In the continuum of everything arising is subject to cessation. There's no self to affirm or deny. But there are multiple ongoing functionings and relationships that we can perceive and enter into a relationship with ourselves. But there are many functions and relationships in which we can enter than the functioning and the relationships as a self. jewel hidden in a mountain of form.

[20:23]

The jewel is mutual arising. The jewel is our participating in the jewel jeweling itself. The jewel is our So it's more accurate to say that we can notice the self through its functioning. Not through its being or not being. There's a teaching about the four functions of self. Separation.

[21:24]

Connectedness. Continuity. And context. Separation is there's a here and there and an in-between. Without it, we'd be floating on the ceiling or in the clouds or in the small pool of water by the half-moon bridges. So it means there is a bowl and cereal and a spoon and a hand and a mouth.

[22:25]

And because things are distinct and separated, we can actually eat breakfast. It's a useful way that self can function. And then there's connectedness. The bowl, the spoon, the cereal, the hand, the arm, the mouth, they're all connected. All of us eating breakfast together are connected. Bodily and in our particular activity. And then there's continuity. there are self-like functions taking place in a continuum.

[24:02]

And yet that continuum is continually revising itself. So we can establish some identification in a continuum. This self-revising flow of activity of arising and cessation. And then there's context where things are arising and ceasing in a particular, specific, exact location and set of circumstances. Our presence and attention makes this room a zendo. makes it a room for attention.

[25:19]

Attention to breath and posture. And we don't need to have self-referencing for these functions to operate. And we don't need self-assertion for these functions to work. Zazen is the true form of self acting as itself. Zazen is the true form of self acting as itself. It can be the function functioning without an identity. Es kann die Funktion sein, die ohne Identität funktioniert.

[26:20]

We can sit facing the wall not as a German person. Wir können sitzen und die Wand anschauen nicht als ein Deutscher oder eine Deutsche. A Hungarian or a Croatian person. An Austrian or an American person. We can simply face the wall, not adding anything. And things may come up, man, woman, old, young. But they're kind of accretions, add-ons. Something we paste on to this bare awareness, this bare space that needs nothing.

[27:30]

Just simply facing the wall and letting our narratives and stories and identities rest. I've talked to you about my great good Dharma brother Issam Dorsey Roshi. And he started a hospice in the Castro district in San Francisco. And Ikkyo Roshi was the head priest at that Zendo for a year, something like that. More? How long? Two years. And there was the Hartford Street Zen Center.

[28:32]

And then somebody loaned the money to buy the building right next door. So we broke through a wall and made the hospice right next to the Zen Center. And there was the Hartford Zen Center and the hospice was right next door. And then we made a breakthrough through the tape and made the two directly, I don't know what it looks like, made the two directly next to each other. No, the two houses were assembled and you just had to put the door in and the two houses were connected. Yes, exactly. And I was involved with helping as I could Issan in making this hospice.

[29:37]

And I would also visit the people in the hospice. And these are people that are dying. I mean, it's a nice Victorian building, but you walk into the rooms and there are hospital beds and there are people that are dying. And there's no room for anything extra when somebody's dying. They're not interested in your story. how great you think you are how wonderful your day has been it's really meeting somebody in a very essential and basic way

[30:42]

Basic. Bare. No adornment. Free of accretions. And there was one man... who I would visit regularly named Bernie. Did you know Bernie? And Bernie was very slight frame. Meaning thin? Very thin, like a pencil. Would you say like a pencil? They all have been at the end. They all turned to pencils somehow. But Bernie would, he'd love to paint his nails.

[31:53]

He would paint his nails different colors. And one day I came and above his bed he had, do you remember this, this big sign, Bernie's party. Here's this guy, he's dying of AIDS, and he decided to put, like a birthday party, he put this thing above his bed, a sign, Bernie's party. And so these people bought him balloons. I mean, it was Bernie's party. And he actually was one of the hospice's failures. And he was actually one of the cases where the hospice failed.

[32:54]

Because he got better. And he went back to Haiti. Do you know how he did when he was in Haiti? But he got better. He didn't identify with a fixed sense of self. This is kind of extraordinary. If we can have a sense of a self that functions, not an entity, old age, sickness and death will be cured. I don't necessarily think so. But he was inspiring to me in his ability to function in these self-like in the continuum of his very challenging life.

[34:09]

Not be caught by them. So this sense of change and a self which is continually changing means there are numerous possibilities in each situation. Not just the ones that we tend to believe or tell ourselves or identify with. And so when we don't carry these identifications and ideas forward, we may begin to see ourselves in many new and different and sometimes each situation. So this sense of a continually changing self is why Dogen calls it the true form of the self.

[35:36]

We don't need the self we're familiar with, that we're referencing all the time, to keep our lives together. The self itself is keeping itself together. A verse adapted from the monk Sogen. We are drops of white dew.

[36:51]

Wir sind Tropfen weißen Taus. When we settle ourselves just as we are. Wenn wir uns niederlassen, genauso wie wir sind. On the fallen autumn leaves. Auf den fallenden Herbstblättern. We're golden beads. Sind wir goldene Perlen. With drops of white dew. When we settle ourselves just as we are. On the fallen autumn leaves. We're golden beads. Thank you very much. Vielen Dank.

[37:31]

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