I can't change my habits. I guess Gerald and Mark worked in the pipe. And Detron. It's frozen. What's the difference between pretty much change? . Get water through. Pressure. So it's not frozen solid through, but the hole isn't big enough to get water down to the tank. Why isn't any size hole big enough? Pressure. Goes up and down, I see. Well, that means don't flush toilets. I wish we could get rid of that mellow tone. Oh, yeah.

[01:05]

Water moved it, too. It's not to have any objection to pee and shit. It's that I don't like bad poetry. So we may not be able to fill the tank during Sashina if we don't have the water. We have to get on the fire department and borrow half a mile of fire hose. It might work. I've done that before. Not here. OK. This is the third day. You seem to be still alive. So you'll probably make it through this session. Oh, you're not so sure you'll be alive. That's very good.

[02:06]

Nothing alive, not dead. So, I'd like to try to give you some help in what to do in meditation. It doesn't practice. Of course, already being here and sitting, and you're all sitting pretty well, actually. I have a good feeling you're sitting. This posture and the situation itself is part of the teaching, and it teaches you. But still, many things come up, and what do you do?

[03:13]

And in our practice, we try not to give too much... We don't try to do too much in the practice. We're not trying to get rid of thoughts. That's the main thing. You're letting whatever comes, come. And I call this the realm of desire. Now, technically, in early Buddhism, the realm of desire and the realm of form and the realm of formlessness are kind of graded stages of teaching. And there's the four jhanas and concentration, which you have joy and still some thought and less thought. And you don't solidly pursue thought. And there's more joy. And there's various stages. And I'm not using it in that kind of way. I'm using it in a fairly simple way for us. So if I characterize the realm of desire, I would say it's the realm of, I don't know what word to use, maybe smear.

[04:23]

Everything is sort of smeared together. This comes up, it's related to this, and overlaps into that, connects with this, and so forth. And I said yesterday that Dharma practice is to experience things in units. I wish I could think of a nicer way to say it. And you could guess that in a teaching which says everything changes, that part of the practice is to find the realm of no change. some kind of form in the middle of change. And dharma, or dharma, actually means, I believe, to hold. So in a sense, you're holding things for a moment. Since there's, again in this practice, the worldview is that everything's impermanent and empty.

[05:29]

Then the other side of that worldview is you make things momentarily permanent. We make this realm, as I've been using as an example, momentarily as enda. You're pushing yourselves. So the practice of Then, in this world of change in which desire is confusion, delusion, and energy of change, how do you give form to your experience? How do you give more clarity to your experience? So when you observe your thoughts, you're giving form to your thoughts.

[06:45]

And your practice has a form. It's you giving form to your thoughts, or you observing your thoughts, or finding form in your thoughts. Randy, could you give me the chant? And maybe if there's some clappers there, clappers. It says, receiving this offering, we should consider whether our virtue of practice deserve it.

[07:53]

Innumerable labors brought us this food we start out with is the sense of compassion, interdependence. There's many Chinese poems which talk about don't remember how the Remember where the delicacies of the palace came from. Don't forget the farmer. But this sense of food, in particular, being somebody brought it to us. Somebody grew it. Somebody figured out which seed and so forth to use. And then receiving this offering, we should consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it. This is all the preparatory practice of defilements, of practicing virtue, of then desiring a natural order of mind.

[09:01]

Now this is more Zen. still has then be free from greed, hate, and delusion. Because as long as you have some greedy disturbance or hate or delusion, it disturbs your mind. So in order to have a natural mind, you have to be free from greed, hate, and delusion. That's not really true, but because greed, hate, and delusion are also natural in the mind if you understand it. More the Zen way of understanding these. Okay. But the natural order of mind, that's the translation that, this is something that I and Chino Sensei, Chino Roshi, Tsuki Roshi translated. The English is mostly mine. It's done a few hours one afternoon in about 1966. Tazarka, you need a meal chance. You have no meal chance. They sat down and they read to me the Japanese and told me, and I wrote that down.

[10:06]

And it's not, I don't think it's all bad, but I've never changed it. And once people start chanting it, it's very hard to change it. One thing, it's easy to change it on the page, but to change it when it's people's habit, it's quite hard. I wanted to change this taste like ambrosia to nectar. I couldn't get anybody to do it because ambrosia is more like honey or honeycomb or food. It's not a liquid. Nectar is the liquid. But everybody remembered peach nectar, apricot nectar. I think St. Grant was a child. It didn't sound glamorous enough. So we still have ambrosia. This water tip. Anyway, the natural order of mind It should probably be translated, in the point of view of Zen, as the unconstructed order of mind.

[11:07]

But that doesn't make much sense for us, but it's more accurate, because the trouble with the word natural is implies that the mind has a nature. That's the problem with the term Buddha nature, too. or the world has a nature, which again implies some ground of being or something outside the situation or some essence. When we talk about the nature of mind or essence of mind, we have to be, language suggests a substance or an inherent nature. And somehow then we have to always qualify it. So there's no substance, no inherent nature. So in the Zendo we use The sounds tend to be things like this. It used to be the nameplate, I believe, in my house in Japan. Cut it in half. But this is just an unconstructed sound. I mean, obviously, it's constructed.

[12:15]

I just hit it with a piece of wood and all that stuff. But you can see what I mean. It's not by an unconstructed sound. Does that make sense? just banging two pieces of wood together. And we hit the bell. And then we chant. We just really try to say it together. We don't do Gregorian chanting. There's nothing wrong with Gregorian chanting or doing something. Just in the Zendo and in Zen Buddhism in particular, you try to have sounds and chanting and forms that are unconstructed or have the flavor of being unconstructed. So what you're trying to do when you're practicing Zen

[13:17]

is sort of to unconstruct your mind. So you're not trying to get rid of thoughts, but you're trying to find, meet the thoughts with an unconstructed mind, state of mind. So you could concentrate, you can count your breath, which is quite good. There's various five or six breath practices for various kinds of concentration. But in general, We do those kind of like to get warmed up or to get started, but they're not a practice itself. They're more exercises. So how do you practice desiring the natural world of mind, desiring unconstructed mind? What do you do? Now, you don't have to... This practice doesn't depend on zazen again, but it's... It's not inseparable from zazen, but it's fairly dependent on zazen, shall we say.

[15:04]

And I always think of an image from a kid when I used to wash dishes. I mentioned it many times. I kept being fascinated by the way you could take a glass and look down under the suds and see the silverware. That's why I found it so interesting. I spent hours, I mean really, like an hour studying the silverware under the water. I could have studied it up above the water. I found it very fascinating. Whether I've used the glass or not, the silverware is still there. And the suds, et cetera. So Zazen gives you a kind of glass to look through the suds of your mind, desire, and see the form of your mind and your thoughts more clearly. Once you have that feeling, that practice isn't limited to just zazen. It's a practice you find all the time. How do you bridge from zazen to all the time is something else.

[16:11]

So when you're practicing, you're doing what you are doing, is you're letting whatever comes up, comes up. And to some extent, you're finding stability in that by your sitting. And at mealtime, you find stability in being served and everything. But your legs are hurting, and the food is coming. Other people aren't through eating yet, and so forth. Yet you just sit there. That ability to just sit there, find a stability in the midst of being and thoughts and so forth, is very important. It's a shortcut way to get a feel for something that would be very useful to you if you're ever very sick in a calamitous situation. But you get a feel for it.

[17:26]

And you sometimes don't get a feel for it unless you kind of have to do it like we do. So in a similar way, you get a feel for how your thoughts are arising and how you feel, whether you get caught up in your thoughts or not. It's really a process of becoming familiar with yourself and how you exist. As you begin to see your thoughts come up and not get quite so caught in your thoughts, and you see mind arising at the same time as your thoughts, and you can feel... Now, there's an important distinction here between mind and thoughts. Buddhism depends on, I think, two major... two major...

[18:29]

observation. One is that everything is changing, and the second is the distinction between mind and thoughts. Mind is not limited to the content of mind. If you don't accept those two, you have not had bliss. So you begin to be aware of mind and thoughts simultaneously. And when you begin to have that awareness on mind and feelings, feeling and mind, when you begin to have this awareness, you're practicing what I would call form, not desire. And you're practicing what's called the realm of two truths. Buddhism is called, it's not a truth. Buddhism doesn't present the truth. It presents two truths. The two truths are form and emptiness. experience, mind, existence, non-existence, and so forth.

[19:36]

Now again, as I said in the beginning, we don't emphasize all as one or oneness and so forth, but rather we emphasize one taste or one mark. One taste, to say one taste, everything has one taste, is one. a way to avoid, in a sense, that's one of its purposes, is to avoid saying oneness. Because if you say oneness, you then have a unity, you have a unity, then you have a God, and so forth. Or some all-pervading ground. Because the one taste occurs in you. The one mark occurs in you. So when you begin to see, when you see something, you see it as an appearance arising and mind simultaneously arising. This is called one marker, one taste.

[20:39]

So the first two, three days now, I said I was emphasizing the realm of desire or smear, whatever it is. attachment, maybe, the realm of attachment. So now we're emphasizing the realm of detachment, but not detachment by removing thoughts or emphasizing samadhi, but emphasizing detachment in that you see mind and appearance arise simultaneously. I don't know if that makes sense to you. You can hear the word. I don't know if it makes sense to you in your own practice. But if you can, when you're sitting, as things come up, you have the feeling of the appearance of thought arising and mind arising simultaneously with the thought, but not dependent on the thought.

[21:53]

And when it's not dependent on the thought, you have a kind of detachment, a true detachment, a mechanical detachment, or a separating detachment. And you can practice this by, you know, in simple ways, by reminding yourself that everything's changing. You see something and you remind yourself it's changing. Like seeing a tree and thinking of tree, turning everything into verbs. You see at your own existence and you remember non-existence. Remember, accept your own dying. You look at something there and not there. I told you the story of Piaget and object permanence.

[22:59]

I'll tell it quickly to some of you. Piaget saw a movie, which I believe some researchers in Oregon made or someplace like that, in which they had a blind child who put something down. And it took several days, but then one day where it put something the night before, the next morning it crawled right to it. It remembered that where it put something, It was there the next day. And when Piaget saw this film, I supposedly, according to the report, jumped up and down and said, Eureka! It confirms object permanence. The child, you know, when you put something there, it's there the next day. But if you were a Buddhist parent, just as the child was about to fall, you'd push it aside, and they'd have object impermanence. So we have to practice object permanence and object impermanence.

[24:02]

So this practice of one mark or one taste means sometimes you perceive object permanence. Sometimes you perceive impermanence. Sometimes you perceive the two simultaneously. And when you perceive the two simultaneously, this is called perceiving the world as one taste. or one mark. That's not that there's one truth, it's that you make this moment of one mark or one taste. So I, you know, this simple exercise, if you concentrate on that. And when you come to a sasin, you're attempting to make yourself one point. It's hardly anything sitting, waiting for the bell, except one little point. And you're concentrating on this. And then when you can really concentrate on this, by taking it away, you maintain your concentration.

[25:09]

And now you've shifted to concentrating on the field. Then you can put this back in. So this is very simple. But it's our practice of impermanence, Form, emptiness. But emptiness doesn't mean there's nothing there. The field of concentration is still emptiness. Now this form is perceived through emptiness. And when you perceive this form through emptiness, when you concentrate on this, it's shamatha. When you take this away and bring it back, it's vipassana. Because now when you bring it back, this is arising through the field of concentration, rather than this being the object of concentration. Now that's fairly easy to illustrate, fairly easy to hear.

[26:14]

But when you have a disturbing emotion, can you practice it? Can you find it empty? Can you view it from mind and emptiness? If you find mind arising on it, you find yourself establishing. So this attempting to become, to be at ease with this kind of practice and negotiate or sense or practice within this we could call the world of form. The world of form in practice form in this sense be concentration. To see everything from a concentrated state of mind. You're not trying to get rid of things, but you're seeing them from a concentrated state of mind. And this concentrated state of mind is a kind of form. Now people rightly object to the word meditate.

[27:21]

which in Greek times meant something like to think about something for the purpose of doing it better later. Meditate on it. But in Buddhism, meditation doesn't mean to think about something. So some people, some translators like to use the word contemplate. Contemplate is both better and worse. Contemplate generally means to think pensively on something or to think about something, or to observe something. But actually, the root means con is intensive, and temp means a space or openness. So it's the same root as temple. It's a place marked, an empty space marked off, which would be perfect for Shinto temple, which is really just four posts where the gods are supposed to come down and dance. So in that sense, contemplate creating an empty space may be a better translation of zazen, zen, than meditation.

[28:35]

At least in English, contemplation even has more of the sense, ordinary use of the word, more of a sense of thinking about something than meditation. So in any case, you're trying to create a temple of your mind, or a space of your... mind and body, which allows things to happen, allows whatever to happen, for you not to interfere with it or construct it, and unconstruct it. So it's as if... I can't say there's an... I wouldn't say there's an essence of mind or a nature of mind unless we defined it as removing all constructs, or as much as possible removing constructs, that state of mind and appearance we call essence of mind, or nature of mind. It's not nature arising from mind, but what's there when you take away the construct. So you don't want to construct meditation either.

[29:38]

Although to some extent, the posture is a construct. You're counting your breaths at the construct. So you're playing at the edge of using constructs to get as much as possible to an unconstructed statement. So I think you find when you're sitting that actually your state of mind is some sort of glue, a ball of glue that jumps around and attaches itself to this word or this human. If you take that away, the ball of glue looks real hard for something to go on onto. And yet you can observe that ball of glue and there's some kind of space between you and the ball of glue or the feeling.

[30:48]

Anyway, you begin to have a certain kind of skill at finding some ease and joy in letting this happen and interfering as little as possible. and yet staying still for it. Now, if you're not doing zazen, it's very hard to stay still for it. Once you really get the taste of staying still for it, you can stay still for it even in the midst of activity. Now, last night, the hot drink, I used some Zen-like phrases and then saying, partly to say something, what I felt like saying, partly to introduce to you these Zen phrases in a context which you might get more feeling.

[32:08]

So I said, dropping mind and body, iron maiden begins to dance or something. And the stone Buddha preaches the Dharma. Now stone Buddhas and iron maidens don't usually dance, but if you can actually drop body and mind, drop the constructs of body and mind, the way in which the world is turned upside down, or what teaches us what we find is not what we expect. So the stone Buddha preached at the time, and they came to answer. Then this expression, old Nanchuan, I think it was Nanchuan, held earth and sky steady and had a road to go out on himself. Now maybe you can, from what I said yesterday and today, you can have a better feeling for what this phrase must mean.

[33:15]

Held Earth and sky steady. Now in the Chinese way of thinking, and the Zen way of thinking, in China they don't make, in their literature, they don't make the kind of separation between you and the world and nature and so forth that we tend to make. And when you talk about a tree, you're talking about a person. It's just quite normal for them. Our own division of the world into mental events and phenomena is also a seems like fact to us, but also a cultural construct you can trace in the Western history of ideas. But in any case, when you study then, you have to remember that the Chinese just talk, they don't even think of it as a symbol or anything, they just talk.

[34:27]

So, the earth and sky would represent form and emptiness, or appearance and mind. So he held earth and sky steady. This is a direct description of this one marker, one taste. He was able to hold appearance and mind steady. That was his meditation. And then had a road to go out on himself. So when you can find yourself completely present in each thought as the arising of mind, in each appearance as simultaneously the arising of mind, you are holding the earth and sky steady. And you will find you have a road to go out on yourself. This practice is possible, not so difficult.

[35:40]

If you have a clear idea of what our practice is, and you practice, and you love our human being, including yourself, I don't think you'll have much trouble. They are incestuous.

[36:11]

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