generally the rules of our society. Really not because they're right or wrong, but because it's considered to others. And as you become more sensitive, you discover what makes you feel lousy or nourished or sick or something. In general, in Buddhism, there are, of course, The precepts don't kill, steal, don't take what is not given. But they're more guidelines than hard and fast rules. And in the end, as I said earlier, morality grows out of discovering for yourself what holds in the numbers. And discovering also how what's wholesome for you and wholesome for another affects you and so forth.

[01:05]

So you build up a functioning morality based on non-duality, based on a sense of wholesome and nourishing. For instance, when you feel conflict, you don't feel so good. When you feel conflict with another person, you don't feel so good. But sometimes we have to accept a certain degree of conflict. But one of the things that characterizes a feeling of bliss is there's no conflict. That's why you know something is true, because there's no conflict. And emptiness itself cannot be experienced with contradiction. But as soon as there's contradiction and division, there's no experience of emptiness or bliss. So in a way, meditation itself begins to buy, and I think the guidelines are, a feeling of completeness and a feeling of nourishment.

[02:13]

And if you use that as a guideline, you usually will treat other people pretty well. If you start talking badly about another person, you start feeling loved, unless you're a psychopath. Then we have to control such people that control themselves by rules. But Buddhism's view is the majority of people in a society has to have a morality that comes out of an understanding of themselves and what benefits themselves and others. So that is a problem, particularly for Westerners, because there's so much of our society, particularly that we've gone through the carnage of this century, so that more people killed, outright murdered, and killed in wars than in all previous centuries. It's the bloodiest century in history. But we want rule. But in the end, Buddhism says you have to find those rules yourself. But there's no outside system to tell you, except practicality.

[03:18]

You hit somebody and they need you back. But our rules aren't working very well for us. We're certainly in a mess. Yes? Well, there's something about conflict and how it's not easy for us in the state of conflict. For me, saying that everything is here automatically verifies that there's something outside. Just like saying, Do you know what I'm talking about? Saying that everything is inside automatically creates outside. You can't have the body outside without the body outside. And that creates a conflict. Yeah, but that's also a problem of language. So what I said was that inside without any outside. And I can't say more.

[04:20]

And, you know, anyway, if we get too philosophical here, it gets very complicated to demonstrate logically what's possible and what's not possible. But sometimes it's maybe useful to imagine that we're in a big stomach. Yeah. You can imagine you're inside. Everything is inside. But it's easier to see where the outside-inside distinction develops. I think if you see how you function with an inside-outside distinction, you then can begin to see that that boundary is quite varied. Some people you feel close to with their insides. So that boundary is... Doesn't have to be there at all. But to some extent, it's there because each thing is separate and connected simultaneously.

[05:31]

OK, I'm beginning to feel we're talking too much. At least I'm talking too much. Yes? Well, following up on that, There is, for all the inside, it's extremely spacious inside. One of the concepts of the universe is being infinite. You can't get beyond what goes on. Well, we don't know. It's like we don't know. We can't imagine it being infinite, except verbally. We can't imagine it having a boundary. What's on the other side? Boundaries. Some things are not conceivable. But it's very spacious inside. Maybe that's something I'm hearing. What do you mean by penetration? What do I mean? Did I say it? Good word, Kim. Well, penetration is a idea.

[06:33]

one of the schools of sutras, and it means that things not only interconnect and are interdependent, but also interpenetrate without interference. But it would be like, in a simple way, that molecularly these things are separate, but atomically they are interpenetrating. That make sense? I mean, it is at the atomic level. It goes right through everything. But at the molecular level, they're differentiated. I guess. I'm not a scientist. So it's like David Bolland's explicate order. There's an interpenetration of everything without interpin. And as an idea, it's interesting, but when you, as a practice, to practice with this idea is something else, but again, it's something you can hold in view.

[07:42]

And it's related to this idea of g-code, of mind or a cell which covers everything, penetrates it. And you get certain intonations of this when people have dreams, precognitive dreams, which their twin shares. Obviously, you know, twins both use an obscure Danish toothpaste. They were brought up separately. They both have dogs they don't eat. Something's going on, but in Buddhism we say that's in the intermediate world. That just can't be explained. Anyway, let us sit for a couple minutes and then we'll take a break. drinking tea and telephone.

[09:31]

Oh, having a cappuccino and telephone. I don't want you to know what he's doing. Okay. I think we are... You know, the kind of teachings we've gone through today, even, as most of you know, traditional practice would go, we wouldn't go through so much in a month or two months or three months in a practice situation. And we'd go through at the rate at which you can practice these things in a realizing way.

[10:39]

But we're trying to develop new ways for lay practice, which at least I'm trying to develop ways for lay practice, which don't dilute the teaching. and allow you to hopefully receive enough that in those contexts of your ordinary life, these, I hope, like time release capsules, these things open up additional But I can feel we're going a little faster, talking about more than we can absorb at a level of practice. I'm sorry. Alternative sit more question. So is there something you'd like to bring up or speak about? Lastly, you mentioned something called horror power.

[11:45]

That's not a phrase I've heard before. Well, you know what the horror is. No? I know the word in general. Yeah, no, it's not there. It's a few, well, you know, it can be anywhere you want, but it means an area of two or three fingers or four fingers below your neck. And that exists here, but also just here, not limited to inside the body. And this feeling can also be pressed behind you or in the realm around you. But in general, the sense of horror, as I think Roth von Durkheim, I know Roth Durkheim in the pioneering of horror, brought to the West's attention the physicality of intelligence. or the body's ability to act, be aware, relationship to this.

[12:48]

And Zen happens to particularly emphasize this area as a place to discover your meeting of mind and body. And I know that my teacher said to me when I first started grad school, he said, I told you, he said, one of the things he said is, put your mind in your hands. Well, just out of college and so forth, I know, I mean, I tell you, I have no idea what he's talking about. Put my mind in my hands. I mean, I thought he was totally great, and I loved practicing. I'd like to ask him to put my mind in my hands. I mean, I was quite stupid. I had no idea what to do, you know what I mean? Like, you were the things I said earlier. So that's all he said. So I imagined my brain. My brain.

[13:50]

I tried all kinds of things until I discovered my mind. That's also then easy to transfer, make a connection with God. I was intrigued by this, such in large part because of what I interpreted of your desire to explore ways to reach the repetitionists. I am very much a late repetitionist with all the self-doubts. I'm wondering what sort of insight beyond starting with zero and working on it and recognizing when you've overextended and go back to zero and starting again. You might offer, I know it's a loaded question, this is a big question, but I'm not going to second the answer, but maybe Tom would appreciate it. Well, what you just said was quite good. Start with zero. and have a sense of when you over extend and go back to zero, that's really quite good advice.

[14:57]

Thank you. Well, you know, I am a, excuse me for saying so, and you may think I'm joking, but I'm a lousy practitioner. Because I'm such a lousy practitioner, but I need it so much. I've got Nardane, you know, and I practice in monasteries, and everywhere I go I have people help me practice When I go to a new town, people meet me and say, well, let's start practicing. I think, good, because if you didn't meet me at the airport and suggest that, I would have forgotten. So I've arranged an internet for life where everywhere I go, you can remind me to practice. So I'm not a good late practitioner, but I'm trying. And I think that... My way is to get a lot of people to help. But you also can help yourself by reminding yourself through certain things, like your backbone.

[16:02]

And the most common things I suggest is every time you look out a window, identify your mind in the sky. Every time you go up or down the stairs, pretend it's a monastery. You're going up and down the stairs, and you can pay attention to your breath. And so you just find things like that, where every time you touch a surface, consciously, like your arm on the desk, or your bottom of a chair, or your feet on the floor, say that you're waiting for something, use that moment to discover the world through that point where you're touching. Things like that. And partly this just is a holding practice of you, of the one who is not visible. Yes?

[17:07]

A couple of times you used the phrase, not a single thing he says. Can you explain that, please? I did. I explained it, actually, I think quite well. Because... For real. Because it was unexplainable for me for a long time. I didn't know how to give anyone a sense of it. Even though it has a kind of poetic and spiritual resonance for me. And if it does that for you too, that's good. You just stay with that resonant. Sometimes, well, I'll come back to that as practice. But to explain where that comes from is to say about the non-object bearing continuum.

[18:08]

Do you understand that? OK. When you're, you know, I have a kind of phobia of repeating myself. I kind of hate it to talk about things that are very important. But it's taken me, you know, 30, 40 years to find out how to talk about this. I only have a certain kind of limited repertoire of examples. And I work with these examples myself all the time, but verbally they are kind of boring. But in any case, when you are waking up from a dream, and you're trying to remember the dream, if you think about it, you create a state of mind that can't remember the dream.

[19:14]

Because thinking mind is not a mind that can't support a dream. Now this goes into these three minds of daily consciousness, of borrowed consciousness, secondary consciousness, and immediate consciousness. But in any case, you In order to remember the dream, you have to kind of recreate the feeling of the dream. Now, one of the techniques that works quite well to recreate the feeling of the dream is not to think about the dream, but to reimagine a scene of the dream, right? A visual image within the dream. What does that tell you? That tells you that dream consciousness, or dream mind, supports images but not thoughts. In other words, you put thoughts in it, and they disappear, they sink.

[20:17]

They won't float it, it is . Or they change dream mind into conceptual mind. Then you've lost the dream. So what that tells you is that there is a mind which is generated. In other words, when you think conceptually, you don't just think thoughts, you generate a mind of thinking thoughts. You generate a mind that supports the thinking of thoughts. Most of us live in that mind unless we get a little drunk. I think that's why we get drunk. We want out of there. Too many people told you how that mind is supposed to be. You don't feel free. But a dream mind, if you think about it too much, you don't dream. But it does support images. All right, so now if you can imagine, there's a mind with the quality of liquid in which thoughts will float.

[21:22]

But images don't float too well, of their own power. Then there's a mind which supports images. Now imagine a mind which doesn't support any objects, either images or thinking. Right? That is called a non-object bearing continuum of mind. From that non-object bearing continuum of mind, not a single thing exists. I told you, I thought I explained it quite well. At least as well as I can. Yes?

[22:23]

I know in the Catholic tradition, the left-wing, starting with Baldwin, Thomas Murray, there has been a move to get out of the monastery and in the world would you change? Is there any such thing? Here we are. Well, I knew that story. Can't surprise. There's a tradition of engaged Buddhism. which is pretty much worldwide now. Headquarters, I think, are in Thailand. But it started in America, spread to Japan and Thailand and other places. But it's really inspired, I think, by Christianity. But this sense of getting out of the monastery isn't just Thomas Merton.

[23:24]

Thomas Merton was quite interesting to be said, in fact. I know. Fantastic. Christianity in general is engaged with the world in the way Buddhism is not. So that's one thing Buddhism can learn from. I mean, in Buddhism, you don't want to interfere with people so much. So you let people make their own mistakes. You don't help them too much. But you're present. You watch them. You're around them. You pay a lot of attention to them. But the sense is not to interfere to them. Because if you do too much for people, you've disempowered them. So a Buddhist view toward welfare would be rather conservative. On the other hand, most Buddhists are quite liberal in fact. Yeah. I'm curious about my offshoot of these leaders when it relates to some of the environmental movement.

[24:31]

Do you look at that phenomenon in a similar place to the phenomenon in which Dr. O'Neill here talked about how Zadman becomes Secretary of the York? Do you think it's a different look at that? I really don't know what to say. You know, I was very involved with the ecology movement, and I reviewed Rachel Carson's Blue Science Frame back in 1961, 2, when it first came out. And I ran a publication in the San Francisco Bay Area Science Guide and so forth. I was quite involved in ecology. Ecological thinking is quite close to Buddhism.

[25:31]

And we know a lot. We're open to Buddhism in ways because of ecological thinking. And ecological thinking very quickly got on to the fact that Buddhism as a practice of philosophy has . But my own feeling is that I say that I really don't know what to say, although quite a few of my friends are involved in this deeply college movement. I really don't know what it means. And do you? I think that we are so profoundly interrelated with the world. And even you say deep ecology is some kind of taking that and making something that's socially, politically important. But I don't know if it comes to practice. But I really don't know too much about it. It's one of the, I mean, about 10 years ago I said, I mean, I've done quite a lot to be

[26:34]

on too many fronts to act and work in the world. And I'm an old man now, and I think the younger generation can take care of this. And I'm such a poor practitioner, I better get down to business. I've only got 30, 40 years of good practice left. Hang in there. Only practice. So pretty much I only practice. Talk to me. In some Zen practices, or groups anyway, there seems to be, to me anyway, a great deal of ritual, things like chanting, which I find myself uncomfortable with, quite often because they're in Japanese sometimes. I'm wondering if you see that as an issue, or how you deal with that. Yeah, somebody else, you had a question about the stick.

[27:39]

Kidding with the stick. Well, these are kind of diversion we're talking about. We want to be a little less dense. Yeah, there's a lot of it. But there are a lot of rituals anyway, because your own life is quite ritualized. But you don't notice it because it seems natural to you. You get up in the morning, you shave, you wash, you walk down the street, take your cup of coffee, you read your newspaper. That's all ritual. And it makes you start the day right. So a Zen practice place should alter those rituals that make you feel uncomfortable. Because what difference does it make what you're doing?

[28:43]

Why do you care what you're chanting or not chanting, what language you're chanting in? I mean, what difference does it make? Form is emptiness, andliness is form. I'm just flapping my lips together. I mean, it's not a big deal to me. And I like, I mean, I try starting... You're not sitting in a chair. I found the perfect conversation. I tried starting the regulatation without chatting in Japanese and just starting in English. Something mysterious. You know, because people are coming in from various places. They're coming into the lecture and their minds, then they chant in English, their mind continues. You chant Japanese, they say, what the hell is that? And it stops the mind in a certain way that it was made easier for me to give the lecture. And also, I really don't want to westernize Buddhism too fast.

[29:50]

So I'm real slow. I mean, we have translations, for instance, of all the sutras. the chant. We have translations of all the echoes. And people are always coming up to me and say, can't we chant in English? And sometimes they re-translate it. I already have a translation. They re-translate it. I say, well, I think you re-translate it. Let's chant it. Then we chant it in English for a while, and then we sing it in Japanese. Because I'm not in a hurry. I want this rubbing together of the two cultures. I don't even know. People ask me, what does the chants mean? I don't even know what my Buddha's name means. My Buddha's name is Zen Tatsu Myo Yu, and I want to go for God. I'd like to go for God. I'm also kind of stupid. Someone asked me, too, is Len real strict, you know?

[30:52]

Like me. Actually, I can be quite strict. I'm afraid so. And do we use the stick? We don't much. Sometimes we do. But the stick is quite nice. It's a, you're hit in here, just to demonstrate. And hitting well is a real skill. And it really does wake you up. And your shoulders get tight. Generally, we don't do it unless somebody asks for it. And I think in Japanese, they overdo it. I mean, they really hit you. I mean, really hit you. I used to sit in this monastery. where you face out that token. And they'd come around and eat you up now and then. I got so, boy, I didn't sit there.

[31:55]

I mean, for two and a half years I was there. But after the first few months, they didn't get me anymore. I was up and alert. And if I didn't get a chance to, I'd at least take a, if I'd been up a while, I'd be up late, I'd take a five-minute nap or something before entrance. They'd really hit you four times and eat you up now. and you lean forward, and if you resist it, it actually knocks the wind out of your body. So you just have to kind of give in. But it's kind of great. It's quite stimulating. Well, whenever I felt any resistance, then I'd always volunteer. I felt like Jesus. But some guys aren't very good at it. And they hit your ear. And then there's the sign of the stick when they hit on the edge.

[32:58]

But I think the stick is a good part of Zen. But there's two things that are quite interesting. We cannot use German. People, I mean, I've had revolts over it because of the war. People start crying. Men and women, even martial arts teachers who sit with me, hate the stick people. So we basically stopped using the trick. Although some people have had some breakthroughs by learning to just accept it, and then it's The other thing that's interesting is women have a very hard time being realistic. There are some women who are very good at it, but generally, the average woman, men are kind of . And you hit so softly that it becomes useless. And some men are like that. So a large percentage of women take a little while before they can hit just . I guess culture.

[34:06]

But anyway, Crestone we don't use the stick much, except during Sashini or some periods. So if you want to come to Crestone, you probably won't get hit. If you come to Crestone, you'll probably have to at least listen to some chanting. Yeah. I have a procedure question about that. Normally, if you have a student visiting who freaks out by it, and they don't do that, is it a traditional pattern of lying? Is that a problem? Well, it depends on the place. Generally, most places would hit a person who is new or involved. Okay, is that enough, or is there something else? Yes. If you manage to happen upon this awareness of the mind, does it hold in each one thought?

[35:17]

And then before, it seems like you had mentioned it with the story, there is one who is at the deep. What do you do then with the deep? That's a good question. Now what I've done is I've tried to give you, look at Zen pretty simply, and look at this inventory of what's here. And how do you notice what's here? And obviously, again, There's form, and that form takes various forms. And you can kind of look at the categories or notice what those categories are. We've talked about that. Now for most of you, practicing even, unless you're really practicing a lot, or you've done it for a while, most of your practice is going to be kind of getting caught up in your thoughts, not getting caught up in your thoughts, letting them go, seeing all kinds of stuff come up.

[36:38]

And your practice doesn't go much beyond that. You may intentionally practice with the vijnanas. It's important. But at some point, when this process of re-contextualizing self in your sense of narrative personal history, plus all of the sensory impressions that are stored in you and are always interpenetrated, you begin to be able to stay present in particular states of mind. And you begin to notice, I mean, all this time, while you are, say, let's say, first year, having all of these associations come up and thoughts, et cetera, actually a lot more is going on.

[37:44]

But you don't notice it because you're attentiveness, that part of your mind which notices, is noticing the thoughts. It's not noticing other things before you. But when you begin to develop the ability, capacity to not notice the thought, you discover you've already been practicing a wonderful thing. And you've begun to, you can begin to start a new kind of inventory of various states of mind. And you can begin to see how you can abide in them, what you do that refers to them, what you do distills them. OK? We got that far. Now, next step is you, at that point, can begin to notice how that state of mind feels. Now, what makes Zen practice the swift path or short path?

[38:47]

is really this point that you learn to know states of mind in the body. So then, instead of having to go through many practices to reach that state of mind, or wait for happenstance to bring you that state of mind, You can generate that state of mind immediately from reminding yourself of that feeling. In German they talk about your Schatzkiste, your treasure box, where you can remember what's in your heart. You remember a lover, friends. You can also remember states of mind. So you get to know a certain state of mind, like this non-object-vary continuum, And then you can just actually shift into it. That make sense?

[39:48]

I mean, this is a kind, I'm trying to emphasize this practice now as a craft. A depth craft. And to show you that it's quite accessible, that you do have constituents of mind and body, you can participate in how those constituents are put together. Somebody asked me about emotions, and I think implied to what extent it was a psychological process on the island. Well, these first months, years or so of this recontextualizing of self and narrative is a psychological process, we can say, even though there's no sight. And also a kind of psychological practice, which would make it different to yoga, is to follow a thought to its source.

[40:54]

It's a very basic practice. You begin to have the ability to see a state of mind or a state of emotion or a state of feeling arise, and you have enough presence to say, where did that come from? And you could trace it back to, oh, there was that thought, and there was that observation, and there was that sound, and that sound related, et cetera. And what you do is you can actually see what created the state of mind. As soon as you do that, you're actually into the five skandha practice, which is different than the jnana practice. But now we're talking more of a crakta practice. Because here, I've given you these ingredients or suggested your inventory of ingredients and how they mix and so forth. You can discover your own inventory. For instance, you, if you don't mind my saying so, as a Christian, you might have a slightly different inventory. But you can still do the same kind of approach, which is to look at the inventory of what you think is here.

[42:01]

and then see how to give. Given these practices, given these ingredients, what tools are we going to use to observe these ingredients? or study disagreements. That would be the next step, logical step. Because I think we all agree that sitting here in this moment, this moment constitutes everything we are. And it falls into certain identifiable categories. How now are you going to study those categories? Well, the first, obviously, is through meditation. And through posture, as we looked last night, today we talked about, so the first we can say is posture and recognizing how certain postures transform your state of mind, your feeling, and so forth, and how the relationships between postures, breath, body, backbone, etc.,

[43:22]

And second would be practices of mind, but primarily not just postures of mind, but developing a concentrated mind, both one-pointedly and as a field, which from that one-pointedness and field can't analyze things. So Buddhism is based on yogic analysis, which means an analysis that arises from a concentrated state of mind. So that's the second technique. In other words, you're going to look at this inventory, these ingredients, but now you're going to look at them through a concentrated state of mind. Now what do I mean by concentrated state of mind? Again, I have this simple example. You all look at this. If you can get so that you can look at this without straying from it, we call that one-pointedness.

[44:35]

If you have to keep bringing yourself back, that's one state. If you come back naturally, that's another level. If you don't even have to make an effort to come back, and you don't even stray from it, that's another level. These are different levels of one-pointedness. You can develop, and whatever you look at, if you look at this guy, a certain state of mind arises. In other words, mind arises through its object. So a particular mind arises through this object. A particular mind arises through this object. A particular mind arises through the sound of this voice. So whatever, let's say a mind, a bell striker state of mind has arisen, or a state of mind certainly that can bear this, an object-bearing continuum related to this striker, okay?

[45:46]

Now, you're concentrated on this, okay? So you're reasonably well, reasonably one-pointed. I take it away, and you stay concentrated What are you now concentrated on? You're now concentrated on the field of mind itself. Mind is now concentrated on mind. And that's called samadhi. When mind is concentrated on mind itself, you call it samadhi. Now, the object This mind has arisen through concentration on itself, okay? Got that? Now you can bring this back up into it and study it, independent of this in a certain way, because you stay concentrated on mind itself, all right? Then you analyze this differently.

[46:48]

You see it differently, and you can bring other things up into this field. So, strictly speaking, that's the past. is the insight that arises through a state of mind that analyzes from concentration. Mind, body, center, and earth. But you're now analyzing it through the concentrated state of mind, and this is going, basically, is what the Eightfold Path is the second time around. First time around is bright views, whatever views you have, inventory of your views, And then speech, behavior, conduct, your livelihood, what your job is, and so forth. And then effort. that mindfulness and concentration. But then developing that concentration through a process of looking at your views and how you speak and whether you leap when you speak or whether you're derisive while you're speaking and so forth, you develop mindfulness, a real energetic effort, develop a concentration, then you bring that concentration back to your views.

[47:58]

And now you're using a concentrated state of mind to look at your view, to look at your behavior, to look at your speech, your voice, your lips, people, path, etc. So, this is a tool of Buddhist practice, or Zen practice, of looking at your inventory and then using this looking at your inventory and developing a state of mind of concentration or mental postures as well as physical posture. That makes sense. Now a third, we'll stop in 10 minutes or five minutes, I'm told. 4.50, someone tell me what the brochure says. I'm trying to do it right. See, I follow outside rules. So maybe I'll just do just one more tool, which is this use of language to point to things.

[49:19]

Or the use of, like you were speaking about, this object-bearing continuum, et cetera, is that you You can use a view or language which contradicts or confronts deluded views. So you can have some views that you hold in view that are antidote to the views you are holding by habit. So that's one thing. One practice and one thing koans do is present antidotal views. It also can present views that are not only antidotes, medicinal, but views that can precipitate enlightenment. This view takes hold of you, you'll realize, So some practice is to hold a view and keep holding it as a kind of presence.

[50:23]

You don't force it, you don't do it, just hold it with you and it keeps working on the views you, either as an antidote or as a precipitate of my realization. You can also hold views to point to, to develop you, to learn things, and so forth. But this holding in view, often through a verbal phrase, and more subtly through a non-aggressive feeling, or this kind of knowledge of a Schatzkister-type knowledge, a knowledge of a state of mind or being that you can hold in your body and hold back as present. So that's also a very characteristic Zen practice, to hold in view a verbal phrase as an antidote or a way of learning something or a precipitant of the life. So that's the second way in which, or third way, in which you can study your inventory by

[51:25]

Looking at what's there and putting something in contrast to it and holding it. But not forcing anything. Not putting yourself down. Just holding it in view. Which is also the basic teaching of mindfulness. To just hold in view. To notice that you're getting angry. Not trying to not get angry. More angry. Less angry. The same kind of thinking. And very powerful. I think for lay people, probably combined with some meditation and mindfulness practice, the most powerful practice for a lay person is to hold in view a saying or a teaching. So, should we take a look at the committee?

[52:27]

Aye.

[52:28]

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