So I'm always grateful to see you again. And especially it's nice in February to come back after having been away a while. Even though I have a little cold, being on the airplane, it seems to happen about half the time when I take long flights. And I like diving into a topic with you. Yes, to see if we can use a topic to pry things open a little. So now we have this big topic of studying consciousness.

[01:03]

Although I would like to dive in, I don't know exactly where to dive in. Is the water deep enough yet for me to dive in? So maybe we have to get the water deeper and then I can dive in. So I asked Gerald and others to give you a couple of things for tomorrow. Has that been done? No. Okay. I asked Gerald to give you a couple of things for tomorrow. One is a short statement of Dogen's. And one, no, no, from Suzuki Roshi, I'm sorry.

[02:24]

And the other is, what I'm told is a bad translation of Dogen's Genjo Koan. And I guess that's all we have as a bad translation. Unless one of you is doing a translation between now and tomorrow. But bad translations are quite educational. I mean, when I first started practicing with Sukhirashi, there was no translation of the Blue Cliff Records. So I actually had a German woman translating case by case from a German translation. And they were somewhat better than the translations by this fellow named R.D.M.

[03:30]

Shaw. Who has had some kind of very Western intellectual and Christian understanding of the case. So you could really see Western culture coming through the translation. So Tsukuyoshi's continually have to retranslate almost every line was quite educational. I don't think this translation of Dogen is that bad. So that will be given out tonight or tomorrow morning? Tomorrow morning. So I'd like you to just read it.

[04:35]

I kind of prefer you not to study it. Rather, kind of look at it. The other way you might, a storm. Feeling the rain and wind on your face. Or the way you might look at a garden. Just walking through the paths. Stopping before a tree or a flowering bush or something. Like that. That's maybe the best way to study Buddhism, at least right now, for this seminar this week.

[05:40]

Then it's good to read aloud, too. I mean, to yourself, maybe, but a kind of reading aloud. Dogen wrote at a time when people had one book, if they were lucky. So books were written in those days to be read over and over again. Like you might explore a complex mountainous landscape where you keep walking over it, always finding new things. It's an entirely different kind of writing. Where people didn't try to make complete sentences.

[06:41]

They tried to have a world in a sentence. Sie versuchten die Welt in einen Satz zu packen. And where the world in a sentence had paths going in all directions on the page. Und ja, die Welt hatte Wege auf der Seite, die in alle verschiedenen Richtungen gingen. So you have to read in a kind of a different way. It's actually a different kind of time. So by bringing Dogen into this seminar, I guess I'm trying to show you, teach you, share with you how to study Dogen.

[07:55]

Although I'm not particularly going to lecture on the Genjo Koan, I will use some of it. And that's what I'd like you to understand from some teaching of Dogen. How to use a teaching. how to work at teaching, how to make it work for yourself. Okay. So if we're going to study consciousness, to look at how we're conscious,

[09:02]

Look, right now, how are you conscious? What are you conscious of? How much is your body and your posture part of your consciousness? How much are other thoughts and thoughts about what I'm saying part of your consciousness? Something like that is studying consciousness. But how do you have a perspective on your own consciousness? And if we are going to study consciousness this week, I think we also have to study what's not consciousness. In particular, kinds of knowing which are not really conscious. Well, one of the little paragraphs I've given you, will give you, of Sukhirashi,

[10:36]

An excerpt from a Sashin lecture, I think, in 70, 60, I forget now. You'll find out. Yeah, the first sentence of this little excerpt is, the nature of thinking is to limit reality. To make reality easier to understand. Yeah, sure. So... Yeah, do you agree with that? I want you to decide whether you really agree with that or not. Do you have an experience of thinking not only opening up reality but also limiting reality?

[11:46]

And the more skilled you are at thinking, The more you have a feeling, thinking opens up the world to you. Probably the harder it will be for you to believe, see how thinking limits reality. desto schwerer wird es für euch wahrscheinlich sein, zu sehen, wie Denken auch die Realität beschränkt. So then we have to come... You know, I can't tell you this. We have to... Why don't you say that much? Und ich kann euch das nicht sagen. You have to... notice for yourself what the connection between thinking and consciousness is.

[12:47]

And so forth. This is really my being able to make any sense at all. It depends really on your paying a lot of attention to how you function. like if we had a car mechanic here and he started explaining the motor to you if you've never looked at a car engine you'd have no idea what he's talking about and some of you would know everything but But it's not so easy to study our mind since we're in the midst of our mind. Now the study of consciousness is probably really only possible.

[14:30]

Effectively possible. If you understand renunciation. Renunciation? Renunciation is like to renounce the world, to become a monk. What word would one use in German? Ja, wenn ihr euch der Welt entsagt. Yeah, but a lot of us lay folks don't like to hear about renunciation. Yeah, but some kind of, let's say, contemporary renunciation is necessary. Yeah. It's like Dogen says in the Genjo Koan, which you'll see tomorrow.

[15:36]

that you get in a boat and you go out into a lake. You may think that, as he says, using this as a metaphor, you may think that the shore is moving. But if you look closely, it's the boat that's moving. And the water. But if you want to study the boat, you have to separate it from the water and the shore. When you really observe the boat, And then we can study the water and the shore.

[16:44]

So he means a number of things by this image. But one is that we have to study the mind independent of the shore and the water. The study begins there. So how do you study your own mind? Your own mind and body. First of all, the idea of renunciation is you have to stop defining yourself through society. Through the delineations of contemporary society. And such a thoroughly outwardly directed society.

[17:48]

Which really externalizes and commercializes all our desires. So somehow you have to be willing to define yourself independent of society. That's renunciation. Sometimes Buddhism is taught in three stages. One is renunciation and transcendence. The second is compassion and enlightenment. And the third is something like the exact nature of reality. Which is also equated with emptiness.

[18:48]

But I don't want us to look at emptiness. It's hard to see anyway. But let's look at the exact nature of reality. And the more closely you look at this boat of reality, The exact nature of this boat of reality. You may on your own say, oh, now I understand why emptiness. Why emptiness makes sense when you're trying to understand the exact nature of reality.

[19:56]

So I just presented a small teaching. Now, if you want to work a teaching like this, Utilize a teaching. Actuate a teaching. I don't know what word to use, but I'm trying various words out. To work this teaching, you have to look at why is renunciation and transcendence linked? Why is compassion and enlightenment linked? Why does renunciation come right before compassion? I mean, renunciation can seem quite uncompassionate.

[21:07]

So that kind of question you need to ask yourself to work with the teaching. Now, What I mean by contemporary renunciation is to find ways, and we'll have to talk about it more if you want, to not define yourself through contemporary culture, society. This does not mean you have to go live in a cave. It doesn't mean that it would be good for some of you. It doesn't mean you have to become a monk. I notice which ones of you like when I say these things, and I think, oh, you should have the opposite.

[22:34]

So you don't have to become a monk. It doesn't mean you have to be celibate, etc., Probably makes it easier and more difficult. Because to be in the midst of society and yet not define yourself through society is difficult. I mean, something, it's like sitting back in your consciousness. I don't know if that makes sense. But you know, you can have the feeling of being at the back of your eyes and not at the front of your eyes. Kind of soft feeling in the eyes.

[23:35]

And you're just looking without Engaging on the surface of your eyes. So you can sort of sit back like that in your consciousness. Letting your consciousness function, because it's a function, consciousness. And just letting your consciousness function. Kind of watching it. But not entirely identifying with it. That would be a kind of getting the feeling for something we could call renunciation or non-attachment.

[24:36]

It's actually a kind of freedom. So maybe that's enough to say about that right now, this idea of contemporary renunciation. Yeah, I just wanted to bring it up as a way of kind of loosening the boat from the dock. Yeah, maybe we can float a little bit free during these six days. Now, how are you going to define yourself if you don't do it through society?

[25:43]

And you don't do it through other people. Actually, I don't mean that you don't do it through other people. Because the bodhisattva practice is to define yourself through other people. But how then is that different from defining yourself through society? This kind of question we need to ask ourselves. Now, the main way you can begin to know yourself, not through society, the most effective way is through still sitting.

[26:54]

Here we are. Dogen would say something like the authentication of still sitting. The authentication, the authentic seal of still sitting or something like that. And now you have to think about what is still sitting. What is stillness? What is silence? What is peace? Silence in Buddhism is a kind of listening.

[28:09]

If you only listen to sounds, and the absence of sounds is silence, that's not silence. That's practice. Let's not listen just to our voices. Listen to the wall as well. If you're outside, the leaves are blowing maybe. And your ears naturally go to the wall. the sound of the leaves. Yeah, but maybe bring your ears to the trunk of the tree. Or when the forest is very still, listen to the stillness of the leaves. Not the stillness in general, but the stillness of each particularity.

[29:25]

Now, such a fairly simple practice is a good example of how we study consciousness. We have to begin to reorganize our senses a bit. So we hear and smell and see a little differently. Dogen says something like fully seeing and fully hearing. is fully engaging mind and body. This is not seeing things in a mirror. We're seeing and hearing you feel so engaged. Yeah, that's enough.

[30:56]

David Beck, someone you know, is the head monk at Tassajara, at Crestone right now. And he gave a first talk as Shuso. Shuso means head monk or toilet cleaner, both. And he tried to speak about what led him to practice. And he had some surprisingly early memories. that he really experienced. And one was while he was still, could not walk, he was crawling across the floor.

[32:07]

He crawled up to a basket that was on the floor with fruit in it. And he remembers it was a tiger colored rug. And he picked up an apple. He took a sort of, whatever a kid that age can do, a kind of half-like bite of the apple and put it back with the bite part or mouth part down. And suddenly he heard his father laughing. And he looked up and he was very happy. to hear his father laughing.

[33:13]

He was standing watching what he was doing. So he was very happy to hear his father laughing. And yet until his father laughed, he was in a world with no outside. There was a rug and apple and crawling. That's all. And his father laughing suddenly broke that spell. Or broke that reality. And he had a sudden feeling of Somewhere in that kind of experience is renunciation.

[34:20]

Yeah. Or is beginning to recognize the realities we live in. The many simultaneous times we live in. This is part of studying consciousness. So I think that's probably enough to get started this evening. So I look forward to meeting with you again tomorrow. And I hope you all have a good night's sleep. Have your rooms and beds and everything.

[35:23]

The office has been working. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for translating. For giving me the opportunity.

[35:36]

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