This is the last day that our Dharma Wheel guests will be here in our practice period. And some of them transform themselves into Sashin guests during our practice period. And Coco is our first new Sashin guest who's just arrived. Now I'm trying to sort out something, sort out a way to say something that I haven't quite done it yet. But I thought the best thing to do is to start with a very classic, classic, one of the most classic practices, Zen practices, is to use the phrase, or I guess in German it sounds better to say sentence, just this.

[01:06]

Now, I mean, it's so simple, just this, maybe it doesn't even belong in Buddhism, or maybe you think that it's too simple to represent. Yeah, bringing together the whole history of Buddhism up to, into the and some dynasties and then sort of reduce it all to just this. Well, you know, it can be used in a reductive way and a way that oversimplifies practice. But the complexity is you yourself. And the complexity is the moment-by-moment appearance of this world. The question is how do you join, how do you plug yourself in or unplug yourself, yourself, I mean, I can't say it any other way, from this world which isn't separate from you and yet we experience it as something we do have to make a choice to interact with and how we make the choice

[02:25]

makes a difference. Heisenberg says something like, I don't know what he says, he says, observation itself generates discontinuity. Observation is a process of discontinuity. Dogen says, arrival hinders arrival. I've always liked that phrase. Arrival itself At each moment we're arriving, and yet the arriving itself hinders arriving. So we bring just this into our practice. I suggest for the Sashinya, bring it to each inhale and each exhale. What are you doing when you do such a simple thing? I'm walking around on the planet here, or this part of the planet.

[03:29]

Going to the main house and so forth. You see if you can bring your attention into this phrase, just this, and bring whatever your situation is into the attention generated by the phrase. Now, attention is very sensitive to words. And attention is your most, what could I say, your most precious dynamic. Accessible and precious dynamic. So you bring attention to words. You use the words to kind of gather, to catch hold of, focus your attention. Attention, not your attention, attention. Attention comes before your attention.

[04:36]

No, it's a kind of way of doing zazen in your immediate situation. Now someone had a problem with the phrase, how things actually exist. And existence does imply that there's a going-on-ness in the world. that we observe. Now we're aware that if we drive cars and burn coal and all that stuff, we change the planet. Yeah, so it's clear that we're making choices all the time. But somehow in our personal life we have the feeling that we're observing a world that goes on but we're actually altering at each moment a world that goes on.

[05:49]

We're generating what I think you could call singularities. So when you're practicing just this, you're bringing, you're interrupting We could say how things actually exist or how being... What does Heraclitus say? No man, no person can step in the same river twice. At each moment the river's different and the person's different. Buddhism would say something like, the river changes you and you change the river. And a practice like just this is not observing the river, but changing the river. You're making a choice. And the choice generates a different world. And it's amazing how surprising and amazing how when you generate your world, it's a little sort of world in the midst of the world, but it's part of the world.

[07:05]

It's not just a little isolated event in the world. It becomes part of the world. And the kind of Manjushri sword, or the way you bring the fullness of your complexity into this phrase, just this, cuts off thinking, enters you into another way of being present, You know, satsang is something like intention, which are concepts. Intention, you bring to your sitting posture, how you sit, that you don't scratch, that you sit still. And you develop a bodily stillness and a mental stillness and solidity. And that bodily stillness and mental stillness joined to intention creates a singularity or brings a kind of somatic knowing to the world.

[08:25]

And that somatic knowing What can I say? There's a dissonance which is not consistent with this somatic knowing, and so insights arise. So through the process of mental and physical stillness and intention, insights arise. And we begin to notice the insights. And you won't notice the insights if you're thinking that you're just observing a kind of being going on, but rather you notice the insights when, through a practice like just this, each thing has its particularity and singularity. It doesn't necessarily lead anywhere, but something will happen. So with a phrase like just this, such a simple Zen practice, you're making choices all the time.

[09:38]

And those choices, those observations, create discontinuities. So phrases like Joseph Campbell's, let's go with the flow, Yeah, I don't think that's right. I mean, Joseph Campbell, I knew him slightly. He was kind of a great guy, a scholar. He did Hero with a Thousand Faces. He was a big presence in bringing the work of Heinrich Zimmer and then bringing the Indian way of thinking about things into the West. It's interesting that somebody like Joseph Campbell, even with this great Buddhologist and Hindologist and scholar, for him, you know, he would say, somehow he'd imply it reduces to go with the flow. But for us, it's more like to go with the interruption.

[10:46]

Interruption, interruption, interruption. interruption disrupts, and appearance is transformed. Or we could say halt, halt, halt. Because dharmas are such singularities. So with a phrase like just this, you're in a sense training yourself, training the mind out of its continuity to notice discontinuity, and then how continuity often reappears. So just this... helps this mindful attention to be present in a way that doesn't assume continuity.

[11:49]

And it also is making a choice to root you in percept-only mind. to root you in, that's what I call, I've been calling in this practice period, a factic unitary consciousness, or the pulse of factic unitary consciousness. But the trouble with pulse is like the heart pulses, and it's the same old heart pulsing, but in this way of looking, maybe the house parts and then suddenly the next moment it's a stomach and not a heart. Because if everything changes at each possible moment, change is discontinuity. At each possible moment, the new is there. The fresh waters of the river are upon us. But it's not that the fresh waters are there.

[12:57]

The fresh waters in us it's maybe not even water anymore. This is a kind of freedom. I shouldn't say kind of freedom, it's pretty close to absolute freedom. And it can arise through this kind of training, training attention, training ourselves out of our habits of assuming continuity, of assuming that we're entering into being and in fact we're entering into non-being. We're unplugging ourselves and plugging ourselves back into being. And there's a relaxation in it too. In each moment, there's a relaxation of... Well, you know, a book that influenced people a lot, and a phrase that influenced people a lot, like, go with the flow, you know, was Dick Alpert, Bob Arandas's Be Here Now.

[14:23]

which was, you know, a number of people that some of us know. We started the center around Alpert and others at Lama Foundation in northern New Mexico. Be here now. But I would rather say, because be here now implies there's a here to be now with. I'd rather say, give here away. If you're going to use a phrase to direct your attention each moment, give here away. So just this brings us into our... As I said, percept brings us closer to our... The third skanda, percept-only mind.

[15:39]

And that's a choice. And that makes a difference. So with just this, you're making a choice to root yourself in percept-only mind, primarily, instead of associative mind, fourth skanda. Or instead of consciousness, you're interrupting consciousness. You know, they say that Gute's finger He always held up a finger. Whatever somebody said, supposedly he held up a finger. Whenever you hold it up, things are different. And they say this is a teaching, a practice that can never be exhausted.

[16:40]

And in the same way, just this you can never exhaust. can come back to it anytime in your life, or it can be implicitly the background, an articulation of how, without articulating it, of how one is present in the world. So I would say that if you want to practice Zen, and you want to seriously engage Zen with your life, with your moment, with your existence, you get in the habit of a phrase like just this, or it could be only this, it could be whatever you want, you can change it around. And because attention is so sensitive to words, you know, if your language is German or Spanish,

[17:43]

Probably ought to try something similar to just this in Spanish or German, French or Dutch. How do you say just this in Dutch? Probably sounds very strongly just this, I would guess. Just this. So, you know, you can take this sashin to see if during it you can really train yourself, get in the habit of gathering attention into just this and letting the world gather itself into its singularities. Completing that which appears through just this. And I, in a way, don't have to sort out what I'm trying to find a way to say, because if you practice just this with attention, it will go beyond any way I could find to articulate a teaching.

[19:01]

So what you want to do with a phrase like this is you want to find a way that it just becomes the structure of how you notice things. So you do it for a while, maybe the week of the session, you might do it for a year and three quarters, or one quarter, I don't know. And then you don't do it for a while. Because it's already started to restructure how you are present at each moment. And then when you come back to it, maybe six years later, six months later, it then can refine how attention and the world meet. May our intention equally penetrate every being.

[20:21]

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