Giving lectures, participating in the session in this way. It's not something I think my way to. It's an activity I'm in the midst of and the activity itself. makes most of the decisions. And it's an activity in which we're engaged in together. But every now and then I stick my head up above the water of the activity and say, is this useful to anybody? What am I talking about? Yeah, and sometimes it doesn't seem like it probably is. Yeah, but since I don't want to think my way to what to say, I will continue with the activity. So somehow I find myself speaking about, you know, the... Yes?

[01:14]

Do you want to say something? I wouldn't dream. I would love it if you want to say something. The... Zen Buddhist idea of enlightenment. And it's really three categories. Original. Initial. Actual. Okay, wirklich. Yeah, and we could add gradual or incremental.

[02:16]

And I say maybe, because maybe we could add, because the Zen has positioned itself... clearly on the side of sudden and not gradual enlightenment. That doesn't mean that there isn't, I prefer incremental to gradual, but there isn't incremental or gradual enlightenment. It doesn't mean there isn't. But it means that the way the teaching is conceived is to emphasize sudden enlightenment.

[03:28]

And in fact, I think it's better to not say sudden, to say gradual enlightenment, it's better to say gradual realization. I don't know how you can say these things in German, but that's your job. All of your job. But gradual realization or incremental realization would mean that through the context of insights and practices, there's a growing understanding and realization of the teaching.

[04:32]

Of course, this is most of what I practice in fact is. Yeah, it's good. What's the problem with it? Could we just ignore the idea of enlightenment? Or rather, if a person has an enlightened experience, great. But we don't organize the teaching around the enlightenment experience. And I would say that Zen is really the only Buddhist school that organizes its pedagogy around enlightenment.

[06:09]

And it causes a lot of problems for practitioners. And that creates a lot of problems for the practitioners. When am I going to have my enlightenment experience? Is this an enlightenment experience? I haven't been enlightened yet. I don't know what I'm doing in Zen. I better switch schools. This is all a kind of, really a kind of vanity. I remember one of the things that led me into Zen practice is actually I was walking along the docks in San Francisco. Sitting on the dock of the bay.

[07:09]

And D.T. Suzuki, who... in all his books rarely mentions Zazen, if at all. So I'm walking back from the warehouse where I... I'm walking back from lunch like Blanche is on the dock. Blanches. The woman was named Blanche, and she had a place called Blanches. Yeah, back to the warehouse where I worked. And I'm carrying a book, but not reading it. And I thought to myself, I'm not good enough to meditate.

[08:13]

So I opened this book of D.T. Suzuki's because I often read while I walked. I walked while I read. And the sentence said, It's a form of vanity to think you're not good enough to practice meditation. This was a message from God. Anyway, I closed the book. I said, okay, I start tomorrow. This is a true story. I did. I started the next day. I sat on the girl's side. They had a girl's side and a boy's side. I sat down and somebody came and tapped me and said, go over there. The room was all dark. I couldn't tell girls, boys, so I sat down. Yeah, but it's hard to get out of the vanity of doing experience, enlightenment, etc. Okay, but it does cause a lot of problems, I think, this idea of enlightenment.

[09:36]

In the Zen school. Okay, so why don't we just abandon the idea in Zen and just go... to the idea of incremental realization. What's missing in that idea? Thank you. First, it makes you almost completely dependent on the teachings. The realization is in the context of the teachings, not your life. And it denies the sense that there's something fundamental prior to even Buddha that is in all of us.

[10:37]

There's some idea that if some kind of neutron bomb wiped out Buddhism, People would discover it again. Because it's something about the way things actually exist. So enlightenment brings in the idea which realization doesn't. Erleuchtung bringt also eine Idee, eine Vorstellung hinein, die Verwirklichung, Realisierung eben nicht schafft. That the capacity for enlightenment is... I can't use the word inherent, because that's a bad word in Buddhism.

[11:40]

A banned word, if not bad. But it's inherent. Nature, well, sort of like almost inherent. So the idea of enlightenment also has the idea in it of original enlightenment. And it also has the sense that you from your experience not only can arrive at Buddhism, you can verify the truth of Buddhism. And it's there in the nature of things, not through taking psychedelics or not through enlightenment intensives, you know, on the weekend.

[12:44]

And that kind of view, which is one of the reasons I stopped doing back in the 60s, they would wire you up and try to measure your samadhi and stuff like that. And I found that then people were, the lab assistants and all, would then start discussing who had the best samadhi and all that stuff. And then it's supposed to be secret, but the lab assistants would talk to their friends, you know. So, and then they began to say, ah, now if we can measure the brain waves, enlightenment is some kind of brain wave thing, and if we can then figure out how to induce the brain wave pattern, we'll enlighten people through our machinery.

[14:10]

Yeah, exactly right. And that was all part of the thinking of the 60s, particularly in San Francisco. And I was a kind of lone holdout against this thinking. Because the basic sense of it is, you don't have to do anything, it's already here, it's just a matter of how can you notice it. If enlightenment is anywhere, or as an experience, it has to be here. It's not something you get too gradually. Okay, so there's a particular dynamic of the practice, if you keep having to think, it's already here.

[15:29]

So something happens to you through that dynamic, which is part of the teaching of Zen. incremental realization pretty much ties you to the teaching doesn't include the idea that you are actually the source of the teaching and it doesn't allow for originality, or creativity, new things to come into the practice.

[16:39]

And if new things are brought into the teaching, they're usually, at least in Tibetan Buddhism, old things discovered hidden somewhere. Or old things discovered in yourself. So the process of verification has to actually still come from the past. And I don't feel I'm being critical of Tibetan Buddhism when I say that. It's just a different way of looking at it. For most Buddhist schools, Buddha is the... The beginning and the end point.

[17:50]

Most of the Buddhist schools justify their or verify their teaching by saying, we're going to achieve what Buddha achieved. But for Zen, Buddha is the beginning, not the end point. In Zen, we may experience things the Buddha never experienced. I'm sorry. But the kind of lecture I'm giving is characterized of a Zen lecture. It's not based on text. I mean, I don't know what I'm saying. It's just popping out. Mm-hmm. We say we are born in the same lineage, but we don't die in the same lineage.

[19:08]

In various ways, your practice may be born through practicing with me and... together in the Dharma Sangha. But you may all end up and we'll end up in different places. But we want to, as part of the transmission process, we want to really understand if we can both be in the same place. But we're not committed to the same place. Yeah, that's part of the idea of winter branches. We're all the same kind of branch, but we may blossom differently when spring comes. And for a long time it may look like we're not going to blossom, but then when the right conditions occur, we blossom.

[20:19]

Okay. I don't know what I'm allergic to, but dust or something, excuse me. Okay. So original, initial. Actual. Ursprünglich, anfänglich, wirklich. Okay. Now I just pick those words because in English they're the clearest, I think, to point to the center of the ideas.

[21:25]

Und ich wähle diese Worte, weil sie im Englischen zumindest am ehesten auf die Mitte der Vorstellung hin zielen. Now, to say that each person... All beings are already enlightened. It's a standard statement in late Mahayana or Mahayana Buddhism. That means we're all, everyone's originally enlightened. But that doesn't mean, it's not a statement like all human beings have a skull under the skin of the head. Just under the skin, there's enlightenment. It's not that kind of statement.

[22:33]

Remember, strictly speaking, there's no entities, there's only activity. So, all beings are originally enlightened means all beings originally have the activity that we call enlightenment. Okay, that's like saying all human beings who aren't dead are alive. All human beings are aliveness. Aliveness is an activity that we know. We eat, we sleep, we have relationships with people. Okay, so if we take as a practitioner original enlightenment, original enlightenment means aliveness or an activity.

[23:39]

Okay, so that means that in our activity, there's something fundamental about our activity that actually is enlightenment. And in my experience and understanding, that is true. Okay. Now, what again, what does it mean for us as practitioners? It means that when I relate to each one of you, and isn't it weird that we in our culture call another person other? And other, what does it share roots with? Alligator. Alien.

[24:47]

Alien, yeah. Something other than, separate from, different from. But we're not other, we're same. Well, there's some differences, but... So I view each of your sameness, not your otherness, as the particular person you are, but I also view you as... A Buddha or potentially a Buddha. And simultaneously while I'm looking at you, talking to you, feeling your palpable presence. I feel that. presence of a Buddha in you too.

[25:59]

And sometimes I wonder why don't you notice it too? It makes me a little sad sometimes, but then it's also kind of amusing. It's right in front of you and you don't see it. And I sometimes feel like, hey Buddha. See, I told you I don't know what I'm talking about. Or what I'm going to say next. So it's an activity. That would be a description of the activity of original enlightenment in relationship to... I can't say other. Now, original enlightenment acts as an activity also in how I relate to my now, which is not originally possessed by the self.

[27:27]

Now, you know, when I say that I'm kind of fooling around, right? But if you always think of yourself, oh, myself, I won't do this myself, etc., you're reifying, reinforcing that all the time. So, you really need to, it helps to substitute in your language at least a feeling of, yeah, I don't know, my nature, myself, my Buddha nature, my... now which is not originally possessed by the self. And if you do think that way or notice that way, you can perhaps feel, oh, am I going to let this now be possessed by the self or not?

[28:35]

Can I notice self-referential thinking when it comes in or when it's less present? Okay. So the activity of original enlightenment is really to really firmly know and have faith that enlightenment is all, whatever it is, it's in this situation, including myself, including... Yeah, one way we say the self which covers everything. So it's present here if I could just get the right angle on it.

[29:55]

And enlightenment experiences feel like that. It's just, you know, everything's the same except suddenly it's different. And they have the characteristic of being incontrovertible. I mean, true. It just feels like true. It's true. And it also has the quality of indelibility. You always know that this has happened to you and is somehow, even if forgotten, somehow still present. And, of course, some of the characteristics of an enlightened experience is really pretty much mental suffering is gone. I mean, as Buddhism understands it.

[31:36]

And physical suffering is not very important. Or physical pain is not very important. Physical suffering is mostly gone too. Yeah, and there's other characteristics. Okay. Okay, initial. Initial is, as I said yesterday, especially Dogen's idea, That your decision to practice is really an enlightenment experience. And your continuing to practice is a maturing of that enlightenment experience. Opening up the territory, the obstruction, so it can function. Yeah, and I also think that's true.

[32:56]

And not only think, that's my experience, it's true. But for most people, even those who know it, other things, things that come up through their personality are more important to them. And I think that's pretty natural. Why not? That only becomes less important when you really, the more you do things, feel, are open to the suffering, of this world, predicament of this world. And Avalokiteshvara, as I mentioned to someone recently, is the one who hears the suffering of the world. Yes. He doesn't end the suffering, he hears the suffering.

[34:17]

That means your practice is to be open, not close your ears, not close your experience to what's really going on in this world. But you don't destroy yourself because you can't do anything about it. Mostly we can't do anything about it. But when we can do something about it, we do. And if you, that's the first part, and the second part, if you conclude that most of the suffering is rooted in delusion, and self-referential behavior. And then you conclude, we've got to free people from this delusion. And then you conclude, well, I better start with the person I know best.

[35:36]

So first I'll free myself if it's possible. And if it's not possible, it's worth the try. And only when that is mostly possible accomplished, do I really try to help others. Or rather, you help others in every practical way, but your emphasis is still Your own practice. And creating the opportunities for others to practice. And out of that vaal comes a place like this. A Zen youth hostel in a beautiful garden. Something like that. I always talk too much when I have nothing to say.

[36:48]

So the initial enlightenment, which is really there when you start to practice, really matures when you recognize that at least the way you see things, Someone has to do this because it will make a difference in the world. Really, only when you feel that you're making a decision in the context of others is there enough power to really do it. And the idea is, of course, not to proselytize. Proselytize? No, you just, basically the idea is you have a known address. And if anybody shows up, you practice with them. If they don't, you don't. So that's the idea of initial enlightenment as an activity.

[38:25]

And actual enlightenment Enlightenment, yeah, is the experience of enlightenment. And creating a teaching that makes it more likely that you might make use of enlightenment if it occurred. That we say a A bee, I don't know if it's a statement, I don't know if it's true, if a bee flies into an unclean hive, it flies back out. And it means, one of its meanings is, if an enlightened experience comes into a person who's not ready for it, it just kind of goes back out.

[39:26]

So many of us get ourselves really ready for enlightenment and it never happens. But so what? What do you need? Who cares about enlightenment? What do we need? We've got everything we need right now. And a person who's enlightened feels, I have everything I need right now. They don't care whether they're enlightened or not. So you can all start there. Start feeling, I have everything I need right now and I don't need enlightenment, fine. That's the trick of language. But it's a trick that can trick you into enlightenment. Really? That's the pedagogy of original enlightenment.

[40:46]

Which is part of the activity of actual enlightenment in a sangha. No, that was supposed to be only the beginning ten minutes or so. I really want to talk about something else. We have tomorrow.

[41:13]

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