This is the last day, if you haven't noticed. I hope you haven't, actually. We had fun yesterday with the translation of donkey. And one nice thing about Zen as a religion is both translations are believable. In fact, so believable, Arika asked me afterwards, Are you sure that it means donkey? She said, how do you know? Can you show me in the koan why? I think I have, there's two people I haven't seen yet in Doksan. And I should have time to see some more people.

[01:35]

If you want to come, I'll just start ringing the bell and when everybody appears, I will visit with you. And I'd like to... Some of you have asked me for koans. And I've given koans to a number of you in the past. And some of you are still working on them, of course. And I'd like to respond to... everyone who wants a koan or who would like to take a koan. And I've tried to present enough in this session so that you have a feeling for koan practice, a little bit.

[02:44]

And if I'm teaching Zen at all well, then much of what I say actually functions as cons for you in the way that it works in you, hopefully. But to give you a specific koan requires a, I mean I can do it sometimes, but it also requires a kind of intimacy and time that it's hard to have in a sashi. So Frank has been asking me what the title of this extra week next September will be connected with the Sashin. And I think it will be something like koans and lay practice or something like that.

[03:57]

And what I'll try to do is give in koans, work on some koans individually with people and together we'll work on one or more koans all together somehow. And then practice the teachings that come up during the Sashin and of course during the seminar too. Hopefully all together in a way that helps you practice Zen in your daily life. My dream is to have, to know, to join, to be with you, to be with people. How can I say that?

[05:10]

My dream is to, that there be many people realized lay people practicing here and there in the world. And I have a rather big idea of the importance of that because I see that the intimacy of the world now as a kind of global media village, means that historical processes are speeded up a lot and that the situation actually has considerable volatility.

[06:15]

Able to catch fire or to be unstable. And you know there's a phrase misplaced concreteness. Which means to make the world concrete when it's not, to see it as concrete when it's not concrete. And I see a perhaps even greater danger in misplaced wholeness. is an attempt to make to realize wholeness through externals through external systems that's why I brought up the other day how I see communism and probably national socialism of Germany

[07:45]

as having significant dimensions of a corruption of religious or moral insights. And to create through political and government systems wholeness which is actually a spiritual realm, not a political realm. And in the present world, minds are so connected that all minds and one mind have a very powerful relationship flipping back and forth.

[08:56]

So I really believe from the observation of my experience, somewhat more than half a century of sort of experience, that one person or a few people actually seeing things as they are makes a very big difference in the world. Sounds like a sermon, I'm sorry. Oh boy, maybe I should go out and change my robes and come back in again.

[10:00]

Or put on a t-shirt with Yoda on the cover. Um There's an expression in Buddhism, in Zen, people like to talk too much about the crowning achievement of the age. People pay too much attention to the crowning achievement of an age and not enough to the sweating horses of the past. And this has several meanings.

[11:00]

One meaning is that we pay too much attention to achieving enlightenment and not enough to the many practices that make the capacity for enlightenment possible. And it also means we value too much our own personality as the crowning achievement of the age. As if we arrived at this naturally and we belong to me. without being aware of how much the mind you have inherited is inherited from the effort of many people. I mean, I think...

[12:15]

Just a few decades ago Bertrand Russell was still talking about inert matter in contrast to being, something like that. And it wasn't... In contrast to living matter. And it wasn't too long ago that novelists had to depict their characters as arising out of circumstance and rationality and so forth. And circumstance. A lot of this actually, excuse my little historical side, goes back to the intolerance of Christians for each other in the Thirty Years' War, which turned Germany into a killing field for the rest of Europe.

[13:42]

And for a long time, people were afraid of any kind of tolerance or ambivalence or pluralism. And it's really only in this century that we've come to accept things like stream of consciousness and how mind and the world are mixed. And insights are ways of viewing things that we take for granted now. But this much of, I think... much of... We're at a place in Western culture where it's a kind of cusp in how we look at the world.

[15:12]

Cusp? Cusp, a point, like the curve of a wave or something. The cusp... We're at a kind of cusp in western culture in terms of science, psychology and so forth in how you look at the world. And the whole situation is ripe for a next step. And I think that whether you know it or not, you are part of the next step. Why? I don't know. What happened that we're stuck together in this room? Or each of your different lives has brought you to a place to look at the world in terms of Western culture and Asian culture and your own culture.

[16:26]

And to trust your own individuality. It was a breakthrough for Jung just to be able to look at his dreams without thinking they were the work of the devil. It took tremendous courage for him to do that. To immerse himself inside. So it still takes you courage to do it, but not the kind of courage that it has taken for the sweaty horses of the past. So I think that if you, my feeling is that if we see how we're not just individuals, but part of our times, It gives us more confidence and courage and more humility and less ego because this practice requires less ego.

[17:40]

We could say that I could define humility as ego. A combination of enormous confidence and small ego. A hard place to get to. We usually think the way to confidence is through ego. That's a serious mistake. Okay, so maybe the sermon's over. Now, I've been meaning for the last four or five days to talk about several kinds of emptiness.

[19:12]

And somehow it hasn't fit in or arisen when I've been talking with you. But I think it's useful to say something about it just because it's part of the assumed teachings that go into what we've been talking about. And emptiness naturally is rather confusing. So one kind of emptiness is the conception of emptiness which is used to transform your worldview. And to establish a worldview which is called three natures. And many of you have gone through this in some detail.

[20:29]

It's extremely important, but I can only touch on it here. And the three natures are conventional reality, The relative reality and absolute reality. And absolute means emptiness. And relative means to see the world as conventionally real but only conventionally real. and then conventional reality is to take reality as real when it's not or misplaced concreteness Maybe conventional configuration in some ways would be better in English.

[21:42]

Because the word configuration very literally means to shape in dough or clay, to knead like you make bread. Now, the importance of this three natures, it doesn't just say there's two natures. You could just say, oh, there's two natures and the other one's a mistake. It's not the way it works. Because there will always be that mistake. And in that so-called mistake of conventional reality which you could also call Manjushri's leaking In Manjushri saying too much when he pointed out that this is the Dharma of the Dharma King.

[23:03]

In the sense, all teaching is leaking. Okay. Now, The reason conventional reality is... We can also say that conventional reality is a form of compassion. It's how we exist with others. But as a configuration, it's where the world's energy and individual energy is tied up. If you mess around with conventional reality and don't know what you're doing, it's like putting your hand in the light plug. So you may end up in prison.

[24:10]

Immured, which means surrounded by walls. And you could say, this is only conventional reality, but you'll have a hard time getting out. So the adept uses the energy of conventional reality to break through into emptiness. So these three natures and how to practice in the realm of conventional reality, the relative and the absolute, are the basic teachings of Zen. Both upaya... skillful means of wisdom and compassion.

[25:23]

Okay, so One kind of emptiness is the emptiness that's used to, through understanding, through observation, establish three natures. Another kind of emptiness is what happens when you experience the absence of permanence. Absence of permanence. So when you really see that the world doesn't have any inherent identity, that we in fact are all falling in space right now and just happen to be falling at the same speed.

[26:47]

And you can see that without trembling or distress. This is the beginning of bodhisattva practice, it says in the sutras. So to really see the absence of permanence is a revolution in the basis of your personality and worldview. Okay, so that's the second view of emptiness. The third view of emptiness is not the experience of the absence of permanence. but the experience of the presence of impermanence.

[28:09]

Now this is a very important point and this is the vijñāvāda, vijñāvāda and yogacara position. The first I mentioned is more the prajñāpāramita, nagarjuna type teaching. The second is the Majamaka position. For those of you who are interested in these things. Third is more the Yogacara position. Which emptiness is not just an absence, it's actually something you can directly experience. And original mind, again, beginner's mind, the uncorrected state of mind. The teaching that the primary inner posture of zazen is uncorrected mind. is the gate of emptiness as presence.

[29:34]

Experienceable presence. Okay, that's the third kind of emptiness. Kinds of emptiness. It's great, go to the grocery store, I'd like four kinds of emptiness, please. And the grocery clerk who happens to be an adept said, shut up, you've got them already. The fourth kind of emptiness is the huayen position. In which form is seen as exactly emptiness. And form and emptiness are experienced simultaneously.

[30:44]

And this is called thusness. And one of the gates of that, as I've talked about, is non-conceptual perception. Now, do you need a rest? Is that all right? Are you doing okay? What? You need a bath, you said? A what? A bath. A path. Oh yeah, I mean a way of practicing. Well, that comes next if you're ready. I mean, I'm trying to, I guess, since this is our last class date, I'm trying to give you some teachings that tie up the package a bit so you can make use of this and unwrap it when you get home.

[31:47]

But sometimes I try too hard and everybody gets exhausted and doesn't remember anything. And I get very excited about this teaching. And I'm feeling inside, wow! And yet I can't get it across, you know. You guys are saying, jeez, won't he stop? My legs are killing me. Stop. Now that we've seen sort of the, one of the,

[33:13]

end products or developed descriptions of practice as we've done in the last few days now I think it's easy to go back and look at the beginning Now, if you're going to practice the instantaneous or sudden school, sudden enlightenment school, the conditioner of that or the approach of that school, this school, is to firmly establish you in the view. Without being firmly established in the view, no matter what experience you have, it will cause confusion.

[34:23]

Okay, so you're attempting, I'm attempting, practice attempting is to firmly establish you in the view. And firmly establish you in the clarity and possibility of uncorrected mind. Or fabricated mind. Which is what Suzuki Roshi calls beginner's mind. Each way you phrase it is a slightly different gate. Now, basic practice is called shamatha and vipassana. And these are usually translated as absorption and insight.

[35:56]

And or tranquility and insight or something like that. I think absorption is a pretty good translation. But as good as I can find in English. But insight is not a very good translation. It suggests that you're going to suddenly have a lot of insights. And really what it means is more a seeing from inner. An inner seeing. So inner sight might be better than inside sight. You may have insights, but this is actually a way of seeing.

[37:05]

So let's call it absorption and inner sight. Now inner seeing might be a possible translation. But the problem with inner seeing is it sounds, at least in English, like you're seeing inside yourself. And that's not what I mean. I mean you're seeing the outside from inside. Now, so I call that, I'm calling that today inner sight instead of insight. Now, what is inner sight based on as basic practice? Basically, it's based on the establishment of absorption.

[38:06]

And that's what you're trying to do here in this Sashin and in your Zazen practice. Okay, are you with me so far? Good. I'm with you. Mm-hmm. Okay, so the first, in other words, you can't have inner sight unless you have an inner calmness and stability. Unless to some extent at least you have established your seat. So one of the things you do when you have the experience of maybe almost all of you have the experience for at least a few seconds of establishing your seat.

[39:39]

And if Wednesday or Thursday morning at 10.10 you had 10 minutes of establishing your seat and then you went into displays of ego Still, those ten minutes, if they actually happen to you, you can pivot your life on that knowledge. If you want to. And if you, I mean, real thinking is consequential. When you think in ways that doesn't have consequences, oh, I thought that once, that's not thinking.

[40:42]

That's just stuff floating through your head. When you think something or experience something, And there's a degree to which we are open to experience to which things actually happen to us. But if this ten minutes happens to you in the context of your life so you see how it refers to everything that's happened to you And you can feel or see its possibilities, what it means in this life of ours. Then you'll immediately take the precepts and... I mean, even if you only take them inside yourself, You'll say, here is the pivot of compassion and wisdom.

[42:03]

And our lives are open to such changes. Have a little courage. You know? It's all up for grabs. You're probably the freest people this planet has ever seen. In the sense that you are more free to make choices about your life than any group of people have ever been. You may have to give up your second home. I don't know. I don't know. But you may turn it into a zendo.

[43:10]

What I mean is the sacrifices, external sacrifices that we have to make aren't very great. The internal sacrifices are hard. But they're possible. Okay. When you find your seat for ten minutes or ten times, you are establishing this continuum of being. You are establishing the possibility the capability of interiorized seeing. But in any case, you are coming toward the possibility of one pointedness, of being able to see things with clarity.

[44:15]

without too much ego and so forth. Now, going back a little bit, one of the gates of this kind of practice is non-conceptual perception. Now, I know it sounds contradictory, non-conceptual perception, but just accept the phrase. Now, one of the most direct way, one of the shortcut ways to learn non-conceptual perception Non-conceptual perception is also the perception of emptiness. Or thusness. Because conceptual perception is the perception of the world as divided. And non-conceptual perception is the perception of the world as undivided.

[45:52]

Now, I didn't say the perception of the world as one. The undivided world is not the same as oneness. Hmm. You may have an experience of oneness, but that's not the world is one. That's a theological idea. Now, non-conceptual perception, by definition, is that way of seeing the undivided world. Okay. Now, one of the, as I started to say, shortcuts to realizing non-conceptual perception is to practice the differentiated vijnanas, to practice the sense fields.

[47:01]

Because the sense fields have more immediate possibility of being a form of non-conceptual perception. In fact, the sense fields are non-conceptual perception unless you add thought to it. And you probably most of the time add thought to it. Now, hopefully during our walking meditation outside you were able to have occasional or often perhaps feelings of non-conceptual sense perceptions. And I hope that during the G-meditation outside you have occasionally or more often had experiences of these non-verbal perceptions in your fields of consciousness.

[48:16]

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