Yeah, you know I don't give lectures or I usually don't give lectures in the sense that I have some lecture somewhere that now I'm giving you. Sometimes I suppose I do that. But my feeling is usually and And what I find much more dangerous, you know, is that I really feel dangerous in a, I suppose it's a good sense, but it's still dangerous. Dangerous in that I feel I'm actually finding the edge of a lecture. And then, I hope to go over the cliff with you. Anyway, I have some feeling like to see if I can find the edge and then we can go over together if you're willing.

[01:07]

Help. So I have to amass or get together the this and that to help us locate the edge. Yeah, sometimes it's very hard to locate the edge. And I think that, I feel fortunate that we start the chanting in Japanese. And if I, you know, if Tsukiroshi had been an American, I was a third or fourth generation American Western teacher, practitioner, we probably would have dropped saying the Japanese, and then I would want something else. because I find at least it's useful. We start the lecture and we don't know. I mean, if any of you are interested, you can figure out what we're saying.

[02:09]

But to the extent that I know, which I sort of know sometimes, you know, but I forget, you know. So we're just saying words that don't mean anything to us for the most part. And yet we try to pronounce them correctly so we can say them together. So there's a preciseness in trying to pronounce them as correctly as we know how. But you don't know what you're saying. You're just sort of going along in these words, trying to pronounce them correctly, bringing attention to the words. It's great. And then we shift into the English translation. Oh, sure, I do know what we're saying. The translation is there. But actually if you study the Japanese, it's not quite the English translation. But in any case, the English translation there. And then I like to have the feeling in the English of not knowing quite what the English is.

[03:16]

So the English also is a kind of, I find both a kind of edge. And we say at the end, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I mean, do you really? That's an edge right there. You say, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. If you fall over that edge, you're going to be falling a long time into what it means to vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. What's the limits of these words? Where are they? Yeah, like that. So I've come up with this phrase, somatic mind. I mean, I've said things like this, you know, forever, but somehow this particular joining

[04:27]

of words, I find the most useful, at this point, most useful term for something like bodily mind, which I've discovered so far, And it allows me to, and it's discovered through my need to allow myself now to speak about practice in a certain way. And I can say, and I find using the term somatic mind, I can say, as I did in the text you have from yesterday, I guess the somatic mind extends itself It's not just an event of body and mind. Somatic mind extends itself. It doesn't even have to extend itself.

[05:32]

It is an extension into situated immediacy. Into immediacy. Or the embodiment of appearance. Or we can say the embodiment of closure, because an appearance is a closure. It kind of suddenly takes a certain kind of definition. Now I was, I, yeah, quite, I don't know what word to use, rather amused actually. That's a difficulty. I'm sorry, you had difficulty. I've heard several reports now in this seminar yesterday, difficulty in the first half, trying to discuss the text externally, I guess you'd say, and not from the point of view of practice.

[06:36]

And certainly the questions I put together, I meant to make it easier for you to use the text as a topic in the seminar. Didn't seem to work that way. And the first questions were, you know, modest practical questions. I say modest because, you know, I recognize that I'm making something when I write. I'm making something, and making something, it's, you know, it's made not just for me but for others, but the making of it, affects me and I'm really right now in this practice period I'm specifically making it for you and that helps me write more not only write more clearly but find resources from which to write because I have a sense of you as the reader

[07:47]

So my initial questions are asking you to share the making of it with me. And, you know, I do. I mean, you know, my problem is every word is like a stone. I don't know what that means. But in other words, a stone, you jump from stone to stone. If you can imagine, in Japan they have stones that you cross streams, they've been there for centuries. And some of the stones are so large that you can have lunch on them. So they put a table on it and they serve you food on it and the waitress or waiters come out on the stone stick, right? So in my mind, words are like stones, but every stone is a lunch stone. But sometimes if every stone is a lunch stone, you never get to the other side. You keep having lunch and then you have breakfast, et cetera.

[08:52]

So sometimes I have to, if every stone is a lunch stone, nobody can ever read what I've written because you stop and have one stone is the whole book, something like that. So I have a phrase like, self-referential, cumulative, blah, blah, blah, personal, dah, dah, dah. And I think, that's a lunchstone. And so I want to make, somehow in writing, I turned it into, changed it into personal self-narrative. Yeah, personal self-narrative works just as well. It's not as big a stone, but it's kind of like the same lunchstone made into a stepping stone, so you just go across it lightly. But somehow I want every word or every, in this case, every word to be both a stepping stone and a lunch stone or a meal stone, not a millstone.

[10:00]

And... Perhaps a millstone. And... So these are decisions I have to make mostly myself, but I'm happy to have help. Or you say, it's clogged up with lunchstones, you know. And that's what I do when I go back. I often take out the lunchstones and try to make more stepping stones. Because it is useful to get to the other side of the sentence or the stream or whatever it is. So this stone, this lunch stone, this word of somatic mind allows me to speak about extending, that extends to the immediacy of each situation. Okay, now what does that mean?

[11:07]

Again, are we speaking about to act through situational immediacy, as I said. Now, what we're trying to do here is limit self-narrative thinking. That's, you know, we could... All Buddhism is something like that. Now, what's that about? Well, we can say that... If we go back to the three birth minds, non-dreaming deep sleep, deep sleep and waking mind, consciousness is suspended, or not so much present in dreaming, and consciousness is suspended in non-dreaming deep sleep. which is equated, as we heard in the earlier seminar a while ago, linguistically with enlightenment, with prajna, with wisdom.

[12:17]

Now, we could say that Zen practice is to suspend consciousness in waking mind. One way to look at it. Suspend consciousness and waking mind. So then the question is how do you suspend consciousness and suspending consciousness and the job of consciousness is I always say Is to make the world predictable, but we can also say the working of consciousness is to establish signal signifiers Words are signifiers. They signify something What does that mean It means that consciousness tries to create structure. Consciousness is always seeking structure. It functions through structure. Now I'm, in a way, speaking about Tien Nang Ru Ching, saying the 90-day practice period, in the 90-day practice period, we make, create the

[13:24]

Structure of true practice. The structure of true practice. Now I spoke about that last day show. But here I'm talking about consciousness is always making structure. It's seeking structure and in seeking structure it's making structure. In seeking structure it's making structure. Now how does that relate to the structure of true practice? If we're using the same word here. So I'm trying to sort that out in how I'm speaking with you as well. So the image I have, I don't know if it's a very useful image, it's like, say that you're swimming. And you want to get out of the water and you need a ladder. I mean, like a swimming pool has a ladder. So imagine you're swimming and

[14:29]

You need ladders. So your swimming makes ladders. Doesn't make sense. What an image. Doesn't make sense. Swimming produces ladders and pretty soon you're swimming in a bunch of ladders. Because your swimming itself generates ladders. Does that make any sense? Yes, it does. It's like a jungle gym underwater. You know what a jungle gym is? That's those things kids... German speech. Kids play on and they... bars, and you climb up the bars, and it's called a jungle gym. Do they still have them? Dan? Something like that. They're plastic. Okay. What do they call them in England? Jungle gyms. Jungle gyms. Thanks. Jungle gyms. I wonder where that came from. Anyway, Dennis will tell me later, I'm sure. Okay.

[15:35]

So swimming turns mind into structure. So swimming, in this case, thinking, consciousness turns consciousness into structure. Consciousness can't be conscious of something unless there's an objective quality to it, unless there's separation, unless there's closure. Trying to say this in a lot of different ways to get it across. And by the way, when I said in one of the questions I asked is, does it feel true to you? And what I meant by that, it's really a reference back to Suzy Kiyoshi, who often said during lectures, sometimes I feel I'm lying to you. And I've been in situations where a friend, who's two people I can think of, who are in the midst of serious mental suffering,

[16:50]

They're smart. They understand practice pretty well. I mean, they can understand practice. But if you say to them, if they get the idea and they say, I think what it means that if you do zazen, you can free yourself from mental suffering. And I might say, well, yes. But it feels like I'm lying to them because they have just not possible for them, in the midst of their suffering, to free themselves from suffering. They hear it and they say, oh yes, but actually they don't believe it. For them it's a kind of lie. So I guess what I was saying is, did the text feel like it was true, or is it just in another category? Now it's rather, you know, what I said again in the last Tay show was, can you hold non-associative mind?

[18:00]

Can you hold non-comparative mind? And then I'd add another mind I often speak about, can you hold non-conceptual mind? I think without... From one point of view, this is quite an advanced practice or developed practice in the sense that you have to really be able to have a kind of one-pointedness where you can stay with a bodily sensation which is the concomitant or the other part of a mind. So that does take some practice to be able to begin to map the topography, the physical, the somatic topography of mind.

[19:10]

You have to do a lot of zazen. 10,000 hours, this recent popular book based on research done years ago actually, which says 10,000 hours is the mark between people who really are proficient in something, people who are more skillful or average. It probably holds for Zazen. I mean, they can all start calculating how many hours you've done Zazen. Sashins. And then you can add in mindfulness practice. An hour of mindfulness practice is worth half an hour of Zazen. You can start calculating. But it takes a while to map the somatic topography of mind. But the real problem isn't that. The real problem is you either don't believe it's possible, which is not in the category of what you do, or you really don't want to do it because you really like, even though you say you don't, like spending your time in cumulative self-narrative thinking.

[20:35]

It feels good. It feels familiar. And it might someday satisfy the ego. Of course it won't, but it might someday satisfy the ego. But if you can really... intend and lock that intention into place with a vow. I vow to taste the truth of the talkative's words. I vow to map the somatic topography of mind. That probably happens. And you find through that vow that you already know it quite well. You just don't really notice you know it quite well. Now for some reason I like to use examples of trees. And there are enough around here.

[21:41]

So say you stop and look at the trunk of a tree. You just look at it. Now you can block comparative thinking, self-referential thinking, associative thinking, you can block a lesson by simply observing the tree. Just observing the bark, contours of the bark, the shadows within the contours of the bark, the occasional insect. And after a while you can This may sound crazy to you, but anyway, after a while you can feel the curve, the space of the tree. Curve the bark. Now the more you give up associative and self-referential thinking, and through just the simple technique of giving attention to observation,

[22:55]

After a while the tree begins to occupy space in a new and almost transparent way. You're just, you know, you're just exploring what the mind does, can do. And it occupies space, and then after a while And you can feel yourself occupying space, but then after a while, it's not occupying space. It is space. The tree is making space. And you are making space. Okay, so what I've done here is I've been able to shift, from saying the tree occupies space, which is a reasonably accurate external description.

[24:00]

But it assumes space as a container, as if space was already there before the tree. So to say the tree occupies space is in a usual sense where most people, quite true. Strictly speaking, it's not true. Because it implies there was a space prior to the tree that it occupies. And in fact, the tree is making space just like the rocks and the mountain and you are making space. So in consciousness now, making effort, I can find, I can say the tree is making space and I can say that myself looking at it is making space.

[25:06]

So that's, you know, consciousness seeking signifiers. It's consciousness trying to make structure so that I can speak to you right now. Yes, but what about the space between the tree and myself? Now, it's the same with the somatic mind. I can use it, I can use a term. You know, this might get kind of slippery, but it's fun for me, and I hope that it becomes useful to you. So if I say somatic mind, yeah, I can say that, and it means something, and I can say it extends to space, the immediacy, the site, and the situation. But actually, how do I describe a body where there's no body?

[26:08]

There's no body, so how do I signify a body which has no body. This is the basic problem of zazen. And why we want to suspend consciousness which tries to find signifiers for our experience. So if we go back to the tree and the space between, I mean, is the space, can I say the space between me and the tree or me and the stick or you guys or whatever, is this space here occupying space? How can space occupy space? Well, I mean, maybe space is occupying space, but is space making space? Well, what actually happens, I find, is when you really feel the making of space, which is a decision of existence.

[27:21]

In fact, you're deciding on existence. And the tree is deciding on existence. The space between becomes some sort of unsignifiable intimacy. A kind of kiss held back. So this is an unfolding of something other and more than kisses. It's an extreme intimacy and when the world appears in a transparency that is, I could almost say, ultimate satisfaction. But there's no way I can get words to go there. So in Zazen, maybe I should start this, I don't know, this practice period with... Yeah.

[28:32]

Zazen is... The shape... Yeah, shape... What is the shape of Zazen mind? It's not the... It's located... more or less where your body is located. In fact, quite closely where your body, your body, the body is located. And it's more vertical than horizontal usually. But as we live within our body and live through and within our minds, we can begin, we also live, for you who are practitioners, we who are practitioners, we live within zazen mind, but zazen mind is not a container like the body can be experienced as a container.

[29:36]

Zazen mind has a shape which we can't describe We can say generally it's usually more vertical than horizontal. It's located as a look. It's local and somewhat non-local. So all of this is also to say, let's begin this this practice period with finding ourselves living within and through zazen mind, but a zazen mind which is also a somatic body, but which, if you try to signify it,

[30:42]

If you try to get a handle on what the experience might be, then it's no longer zazen, because consciousness, it all turns into ladders. And once it's ladders, you're no longer swimming. You've got to prevent the experience of zazen turning into structure, into ladders, into words, into something. How do you abandon yourself to experience without structure? This is the essence of the Thousand Practices. One reason we emphasize the structure of sitting itself, toning your practice through the structure of sitting itself, is that the only ladder you have Thanks a lot.

[31:45]

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