In these lectures for this practice, these practice weeks, I'm, yeah, I'm, you know, trying to cram too much cram, push, push, squeeze, cram, squeeze, too many things into the lectures. But I can feel the dimensions of the practice that we're doing here, starting here. And I want to speak to it. Yeah, but I only have these, what, two or three lectures in each unit. And, you know, I find that in the last several years we've been doing this. That we have... Most people appreciate this practice time, these practice weeks together.

[01:28]

So maybe my lectures aren't necessary at all. We just have the daily life of practice. Yeah, but then I'll have nothing to do. So I guess you'll have to put up with me giving some lectures. Yeah, you see, I mean, we're in this funny territory. of lay monastic practice, which we don't really know how to traverse yet. There's a German expression, something like, please don't laugh, ich kann dich rief, I can smell him, I can smell him.

[02:49]

Rieschen. Rieschen, yeah. Yeah, so how do you say it in German? Oh, you said it. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, really I said it, yeah. Oh, sounds good. I mean, English is very different. In Germany, you have to kind of make your tongue do curly things, which you don't have to do in English. In German you're very intimate with the mouth. Anyway. So, you know, we get We have to get the smell or the feel of practice, of sangha, of each other. Zazen is one kind of thing.

[03:53]

In a seminar, we figured out how to do. We can develop something in a short period of time. But in essence a practice period is to change your daily life to get a perspective not only on yourself but on your culture. Ivan Ilyich says something, without the monastic life there could be no deep critique of culture. Ivan Ilyich said something like, without the monastery life, there could be no really deep criticism of the culture.

[05:00]

So there is a different pace. Sashin is to deeply engage with your own experience. And in Sashin you develop something like that. But a practice period or life in a monastic, Zen monastic setting, situation, is to change your life for a long enough time that you can see your life, find your life in a new way. So at Creston we can start and develop something slowly, whether it's practice period or just regular monastic life.

[06:03]

We can develop something slowly over months. Whether it's practice period or just regular life there. So I'm caught here wanting to develop something slowly and yet not having the opportunity to do it. Because we're not together long enough. Maybe if we were together six weeks it might work, but... Let's just take this statement again that I think you also discussed in the seminar. The continuous practice which actualizes itself Is your continuous practice just now?

[07:14]

Mm-hmm. Now, I said, and I think, again, you may have discussed in the seminar, and I hope you did, this is meant to be performed. Performed? Mm-hmm. Like, yeah? Oh, no. If that's the last word, I don't know. Performed is like an actor performs something. Okay. No, I lost the sentence. This is not information. Okay. This is meant to be performed. It's like a guidebook. I mean, a guidebook to, I don't know, Milan, Milano. You go down this street and turn left and then stand and look at, you know, Yeah, if you just read the guidebook, I mean, it doesn't make any sense unless you're there walking down the street in Milan.

[08:35]

So these teachings have to be performed. I know the word's hard to translate, but enacted. So maybe like an actor, you learn the lines. So it just stays present to you. The practice which actualizes itself Not the practice you actualize. But the practice which actualizes itself. And the continuous practice. What the heck is the continuous practice?

[09:37]

Moment after moment, how do you continue your practice? Without interruption. Yuan Wu says, without interruption. What is continuous practice? Which actualizes itself. This becomes both a statement and a question. And you have to see if you can perform it. And then what's the next sentence? And Dogen says, the now of this continuous practice. So he's trying to help us here. He's giving a little more directions.

[10:39]

Perhaps how to stand on the sidewalk in this city we're visiting. The now of this continuous practice is not originally possessed by the self. Is not originally possessed by the self. Yeah, now what Dogen's pointing out here is different domains of being. Non-intersecting domains of being. in which the language of one domain can't explain the language of the other domain.

[11:46]

Yeah, it's like we have quantum mechanics to explain the movement of microscopic particles. We have hydrodynamics to explain the movement of macroscopic liquids. And you can't reduce the liquid to just molecules. And you can't reduce us just to our genes or our molecules or something like that. Yeah, at a molecular level, we're continuous with the landscape.

[12:53]

At an atomic level, for sure. Otherwise, we couldn't breathe, digest food, and so forth. So at one level we're continuous with everything around us. And at another level we're a symphony of separate organs working in a harmonic complexity. Yeah, the organ of the blood system, our lungs, our digestive system. These have their own language, their own relational space, which is different than molecules.

[14:15]

What kind of space? It's different than molecular space. So there's different levels Yeah. Non-intersecting domains. Let's just go back to smell. I can smell him or her. Yeah, and you know, they did experiments with, you know, probably know all this, with mice and discovered that mice won't mate with other mice that smell like their mother or father. And they thought, you know, when they first noticed this, they thought, well, these mice have really sensitive nose, like dogs or something. We humans can't do that. But then they discovered the lab assistants could actually tell which mice would mate with which other mice.

[15:40]

Yeah, this one will like that one. So this is, you know, it must be true for us too. You may see a beautiful person from a distance, but when they get up close, you say, not so beautiful. In Hebraic culture, they called this something like ambling under the nose, ambling under God's nose and breath. Ambling, walking along. And the Christian says, walking in the sight of God.

[16:45]

Yeah, but it doesn't, I don't, I'm quite sure it doesn't mean that the, within the eyesight, it means walking. It means within the seeing, as if the seeing were your clothes. It doesn't mean that God is looking at you. There's a new popular song in America, God is looking at you. Kind of like Santa Claus. You better watch out, you better not pout. Santa Claus is coming. He knows when you've been sleeping. You don't have to translate this. He knows when you're awake.

[17:45]

He knows when you've been bad or good. That's not what it means. It means that I sight the seeing of God is your own clothes. Something more like that. It means something like I remember I... I remember. Last night I got up around 2.30 because I just woke up. I had to do some work. So I got up and I, you know, woke up, read the news and stuff like that. I got myself together, sort of, and then went and worked on my computer and made some phone calls to the United States.

[18:47]

And then I came down to Zazen. Why is that funny? Then I presented myself to the Buddha. And I presented myself to my teacher, Suzuki Roshi. Yeah, every morning I do it here. What a thing. I don't just wake up and present myself to the daily news or, you know, whatever... what's happening around the house, apartment. But I come down here and present something to the Buddha. And present myself, present not my... You know, you can't say, I can say myself, but I can't say my molecules.

[20:16]

My molecules, I think they belong to all of us. I don't know if my molecules... Anyway, it doesn't make sense to say, my atoms. So you can say, atoms, molecules. In Japan, that means you don't even say, my stomach, because there's just a stomach there. It's not yours. If the stomach hurts, you say stomach hurts and people don't think you're talking about somebody else's. At what point is the word my applied? At what point is the word my applied? What I present to Buddha and Suzuki Roshi is not myself, it's this lump.

[21:26]

A lump, do you know what lump is? A formless mass. Yeah, I don't know what it is. It's there. And sometimes I feel really the presence of Sukhiroshi. Yeah, I knew him as well as I can know any human being. And sometimes I clearly feel his presence. And sometimes I just feel this presence presenting itself. This is something like ambling under God's nose and breath.

[22:28]

You know, and I remember we used to laugh years ago when I started practicing about the word conspiracy. I mean, literally it means to breathe together. And conspirato, something like that, meant originally that communion between equals that is the basis of friendship. And the word conspirator originally meant the community of equals. Of equals, the friendship of equals.

[23:45]

The peace between equals is this breathing together or smelling together. So I'm just giving a little example here. We smell together and we also think together. And they're different levels. And actually the smelling is one of the things that led me to practice. Because I remember as a teenager, I found I knew things that would pop into my awareness that I didn't think my way to. And at some point I realized I smelled myself to these things.

[24:46]

understanding or noticing. So in our culture nowadays, we try to reduce, we try to make ourselves smell like something out of a bottle. And one of the joys of going to less Western cultures is the smells in the streets and the markets and so forth. So this is our thinking domain. And then let's say there's a sensorial domain. And even within sensorial domain there's an olfactory, olfactory means to smell, domain.

[26:04]

And the smelling or olfactory sense is directly part of the limbic system. The limbic system are deep brain structures that are concerned with emotion, motivation, behavior, and smelling. So the domain of smelling is deeply within the structure of the brain. In a different way than the other senses. Yeah.

[27:05]

Okay, so I'm just trying to get to this, slowly get to this now, not originally possessed by the self. Now he says, this now of continuous practice, this now of continuous practice. is not originally possessed by the self. So we might say there's probably a now of discursive thinking that is possessed by the self. So Dogen is saying we have two layers right in front of us. One is possessed by the self and one is not possessed by the self. And continuous practice is to dive, we could say maybe dive under the now possessed by the self.

[28:09]

To the now of perhaps the phrase just now is enough. Now we know there's a now where just now is not enough. We need this, we need that, etc. But there's also... there's an absolute truth to just now is enough. Because you have no alternative to, in fact, this now. You know it in a crisis situation where there's no alternative. You know this now is all you have.

[29:24]

But at each moment this now is all you have. And this now, which is all you have, is not originally possessed by the self. Now, Dogen tries to express this in the Genjo Koan in a number of ways. He says, the bird which swims in the sky Never has the free use of the sky and never reaches the end of it. And the fish that swims in the ocean has the full right

[30:27]

can never reach the end of the ocean and has the totality of its function. I didn't say the fish swims in the sky. I said a bird swims in the sky. I just put words around it. Call people by other names. So the bird in the sky, the fish in the ocean. So there's the self which swims in one now. And then there's the now where the self doesn't swim. Some other kind of being time swims.

[31:51]

Just as the world we smell is not the same as the world we think. These are these Domains generate each other. They may talk to each other. But each has its own language. And doesn't interfere with each other. So Dogen says things like the moon in the puddle, reflected in the puddle. The water of the puddle does not interfere with the moon in the sky. He's trying to point out how we live in non-interfering or non-intersecting simultaneous domains.

[33:01]

And in this case, he's pointing out the domain where not originally possessed by the self and the domain possessed by the self. And so I'm suggesting a continuous practice of noticing, of awakening a sensorial, let's call it that, relational space, which is a kind of gravity or magnetism. Again, they say that the... I'm just using a conceptual example. In the moments after the Big Bang... One of the things that gathered the galaxy was the gravity present in each particle.

[34:28]

And so if you practice with this noticing, it begins to gather a domain, a world, that's not originally possessed by self. So I think you've got the idea. So if you create a continuous practice habit, of opening into the noticing the sensorial space. It's like standing with somebody you care about and you can feel the presence.

[35:46]

Yeah, maybe, let me go back to the lump, the lumpen intellectual, the lumpen proletariat. The lump. The lump is clear, but proletarian? Proletariat. Oh, okay. Let me go back to the... Isn't there a German word, lumpenproletariat? Isn't that German? Lumpenproletariat. Oh, lumpenproletariat. What a nice rhythm it has. Maybe let's form a band.

[36:54]

The lumpen... Anyway. And there's also lumpen intellectuals, meaning dispossessed intellectuals who can't find a job in their field, etc. So imagine... I would like you to imagine when you're doing zazen. Zazen. That you're a lumpen lump. Lumpen lump. A dispossessed lump without form. Yeah, all you know, there's some kind of lump here. In this location where you're sitting. You try to just, there's a lump. You don't think of his body, neck, eyes, head, just a lump.

[37:55]

I think if you find if you can release the form, built-in form in your thinking of the body, There's just a lump sitting here. We don't even know what here is. There's a lump sitting now or here or something like that. I think you'll find this lump is bigger than your body. I think it's not the same as your body. But the lump feels differently in one part than another. So around here it feels different than around here.

[39:01]

So you notice the difference in the lump, but you don't think of face, eyes, stomach, et cetera. Yeah. You're using the word clump, huh? Yeah, because clump and lump, of course, they have the same root. Yeah. I think if you start out, if you can try now and then, just feeling in zazen that you're a lump. You may be able to find more entry into the simultaneous but different domains of being. Perhaps even the one that actualizes itself.

[40:21]

Perhaps even the one that's some kind of Buddha. Maybe even to the one who is something like a Buddha. Thanks.

[41:02]

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