Now I think I have sufficiently established the concept of a field as an essential aspect of Zen practice. essential aspect is not sufficient as a way to state it. The actualization of a field in your practice is the sense, the actualization, the sense, the feel of the experience of a field in practice is, there's almost no developed practice without it.

[01:02]

So, right now, we have established a field here. Coming in, all these various things, what we call fiddling, getting your robes ready, and bowing, and so on. It's all part of establishing a field. It can be done in lots of ways. It's just there anyway. And practice, mature practice is to get to know the field and be able to stay in or establish a field, the field, and also feel the shift from one's experience of one's own separateness and individuality, and then the shift to the field, and the field contracting into one's individuality and expanding into an all-at-onceness.

[02:15]

Now, if the concept of interdependence is going to be more than a concept but a dynamic of our functioning, then the actualization of the field is essential. There's no experience of interdependence except through the actualization of a field, the field of mind. So anyway, I think I've established this concept sufficiently, just in the last few lectures, but in the last many years, in fact. But now I'd like to articulate it more. Now, I've spoken often about pausing for the particular, but I've spoken about pausing for the particular as a way of generating a field.

[03:32]

So I've said, like, I've often spoke, like in Teisho, of going from the particular to the field and speaking within the field. Now, when... when... A essential dimension of practice, Zen practice, as I've been speaking about, is, I would use the phrase, speaking and meeting. But speaking within the field of meeting. And it's the ability to... to meet in the mutualness of a field is really one of the more accurate definitions we can give of Sangha.

[04:34]

It's not just those who practice together, though that's the most practical definition, and it's also, in that sense, all sentient beings, all sentients, but As a dynamic, we can say it's a meeting in mutualness, something like that. I'm trying to find English words. Okay, so then, a sangha is not simply those who practice together, but those who can meet together. in the field, let's say, of interdependence. So in that sense, it's easier to see how this sense of a field can be extended to every meeting with every person, whether they practice together or not. So it's not just a function of whether you practice together, but of whether you can meet in the sense of the field of interdependence.

[05:46]

Now, a bodhisattva, you could say, is one who can generate a field of interdependence in which other people find themselves within, even though they don't practice or don't even know what's going on. And that's related to how fully such a field is established in yourself. Now, this chair, I've never... I had a chair here during lecture, usually it's moved, but it's kind of great, but I sort of think it should be turned around and Dan should sit in it maybe. I'll put a little Buddha there I can talk to. But this chair is an object, a particular object. The field in which this object of the chair appears, it's hard to call it an object. It's too fleeting, it's too fluid.

[06:51]

It's like a speeding car going by. The car is an object, but the speeding, the experience of the speeding car is too momentary, too fleeting. You can say it's an objective part of the world, perhaps, but you can't say exactly, it's not very useful to say it's an object. So the field of interdependence is likewise fleeting, and unique. And yet it's where everything actually happens. The field of interdependence which is simultaneously where everything happens and emptiness. No, it's not graspable. But if interdependence is not just going to be an idea but a factor in your life, a functioning, a way of functioning in your life, then this field of, as I often say, of all-at-onceness, inclusive all-at-onceness.

[08:01]

And without a sense of this field of inclusive all-at-onceness, God, the idea of Viracana Buddha or Dharmakaya Buddha doesn't make sense. The Dharmakaya Buddha is most commonly defined as the Buddha as space. Space itself is the Dharmakaya Buddha. But it's an inclusive all-at-onceness, the space of interdependent, inclusive all-at-onceness, which is the Dharmakaya. Rather, you know, it's sort of like a parallel in other religions to a godhead or something like that. I know Herr Dr. Konze got to, during the Second World War and the Vietnam War, got people to, I think he testified occasionally, for people to get out of the war as pacifists because they...

[09:06]

While they didn't believe in God, they believed in a Godhead. And, of course, they testified that this was similar. Well, in that sense, it's parallel, a parallel concept, except now it's not just the idea of the imminence or pervasiveness of God in everything or something like that, but rather an actual experience of God. the field of interdependence, the pervasive, imminent field of inclusive all-at-onceness. Now these are concepts, these are ideas. Inclusive is a concept. Pervasive, all-at-onceness, these are concepts. But they're concepts, I hope, which will allow you to deepen your experience of... experience of an actualization of a field within your own experience.

[10:14]

Now, it's something that's not... that's probably to various degrees part of everyone's experience. But just that it's a part of everyone's experience For instance, like sunbathing or something like that, as I always say. Just because it's a part of everyone's experience, that's not the same as being able to settle yourself into it, to establish yourself into it, in it, within it. And to know the world through it as a field of, a way of knowing the world. So Vairāchāna, the concept of Vairāchāna Buddha, as an experience is the actualization of the space as a field of inclusive all-at-onceness. And when you're doing zazen and you feel the boundaries of your body disappear or merge

[11:24]

and the mind itself feels like it's located in the field and not only within the boundaries of the body, then this is another example, an experienceable example of the field that arises from our Sarzan experience and is conceptualized in Buddha as space. the Buddha that, as space, is so vast, there's no way you can offer incense to it. I don't get it. I'm speaking a lot these days about concepts as mental postures which do work, which have boundaries, which do work.

[12:30]

Mental postures, which in practice are usually either formative or intentional, not vows. Vows are mental concepts which are intentional, directional. But concepts, as I've said, don't necessarily belong to consciousness or even to language. Concepts can be prior to language, over there, far away or near. Well, I'm expressing them in language, but long before language, people had the sense of far away or near. But the word phrase or word, the word word itself is only possible within language as a concept.

[13:33]

But near and far are concepts. prior or independent of language. And so one of the skills, as I spoke to someone today about it, one of the skills of Zen practice is to have a feel for practice that is free of concepts and yet also have the skills to apply concepts in ways that lead sometimes to a freedom from concepts. So we have a concept of the body as space. But before we have that concept, and I'm not sure the concept of the body as space would lead to the experience, before we have that concept, we may experience, surprisingly in zazen, that the boundaries of the body disappear. And other unusual kind of not categorizable or not noticeable within language experiences occur in zazen.

[14:46]

And zazen is a territory that you want to discover how to be in zazen so your experiences are not languaged concepts. We can think of the experience of zazen as presence, in the field of presence. So whatever happens in zazen, you acknowledge or notice, or don't even acknowledge or notice, just release yourself into, it may be colors, it may be an image, images, it may be sound, it may be an overall bodily feeling. And you don't say, oh, I should concentrate my breath because this overall bodily feeling is not zazen. No, no, I don't know.

[15:47]

I mean, this is crazy if you start thinking that way, or at least quite limiting. You want to have yous concentrating on your breath and stuff like that as a way to enter zazen, finding your posture, etc., But as soon as you have established yourself through breath or posture in zazen, you want to be quite open to, for example, an overall bodily feeling, which might be very satisfying or disconcerting, but you find yourself staying within it Okay. So again, I speak in so many different ways.

[16:48]

The perceptual immediacy is a field of immediacy, a field of perception, spatial immediacy, field, spatial field. and you learn to establish yourself in a field and it's something like bringing attention to the breath but not attention as counting the breath or attention to the breath as if the breath is an object but bringing attention to the breath in a way that attention disappears into the breath and the breath disappears into the body And the body comes forward in the breath body. And there's no comparisons. There's no preferences. Sikhiro used to say, a number of times he spoke about how much salt we use, you know, which of course isn't too good for us.

[17:57]

But he also said you should, if possible, find the salt in the way you eat the food. And he wasn't just speaking about, you know, plain food as the approach to eating in a monastery, but rather it's a way to get used to no preferences. You know the story of when they buried, they have these pickles they didn't like, you know, because they were rotten. So they took them, I think you all know the story, but anyway, they took the pickles when I think Sri Krishna was about 14, I don't remember. They took the pickles and they didn't want to eat them, so they brought them out into the garden and buried them under a tree. And about two days later, Yogarjuna came in and said, look what I found under the tree. And somehow he noticed the dirt was disturbed, or he'd seen them do it, and he waited a couple of days, I don't know how, and found a dead fox.

[19:01]

No, that's another story. And he brought the pickles, and he said, cook them. So he took these pickles, and they cooked them. And then they served them. And Sukhya, she said, he sat there, and he looked at this thing in his chopsticks, and he didn't want to eat it. But he ate it. He said, it wasn't so bad, and it was my first enlightenment experience, just that there's no preferences. And so one of the secrets of entering this field is no preferences, because if you have preferences, you're immediately into particularities. So you need to find some kind of way to ritualize no preferences. You get used to it, and food is one of the ways. So there's this folding in, not only the breath into the body, the mind into the breath and the breath into the body, and the body coming forward as a field of experience or something like that.

[20:10]

It's the best way I can describe it. And the sensorium folds in. You know, it's one of the ways, as I've often said, you put your sense of seeing at the back of your eyes. but you're putting the whole sensorium, folding the whole sensorium into a kind of back of the eyes. No preferences, no comparisons. So now one of the first stages, Now, I'm trying to develop the sense of a field. We've established the concept of field. We're talking about the experience of the field. Now I want to articulate it somewhat further. And one is, as well as no comparisons, you can use another phrase, a conceptual phrase, all only equal, or something like that.

[21:16]

All only equal. So each thing is equal. There's nothing, one thing, there's nothing that's more important than something else or more real or more essential. Whatever's there is accepted as equally real, equally present or equally real. So equalness and sameness is one of the ways that we deepen this field. Now another way, and this may seem strange to you, another concept to use to lead you into a freedom from concepts is to use the concept that each thing you see is waiting. The chair is waiting for Dan to sit in it. The pillars here are waiting for the zendo to be organized around it.

[22:19]

So you look at the pillar and you feel the pillar is waiting. It's a trick. I mean, it's a kind of mental trick. The pillar's not waiting, but yeah, maybe the pillar is waiting. If it wasn't there, the whole building would fall down. It's waiting that maybe you could wait until birds sit on your shoulder. Or waiting till animals gather at your feet, waiting for a Dharma talk. Birds, foxes, deer. Just stand there waiting. So in a sense, you awaken this field of the, this dynamic of interdependence by using the word waiting. It's a concept which allows you to feel the imminence of interdependence. Each thing is waiting. Each thing you see is waiting.

[23:25]

You're waiting. So in this field of presence, this field of appearance, things appear. And they're waiting. And everything appears in equalness. And it's waiting. And we're not seeing things as invariant or entities, but rather the word waiting is to allow you to feel everything as kind of fluid. presence I mean what I'm saying are not words that exactly describe how the world it's not the way the words are meant it's not the etymology of the words I don't think or it's not the way the words are usually used but it's words we can misuse perhaps in the service of wisdom

[24:40]

in the service of noticing what usually isn't noticed or language doesn't notice. Now the more this field is established experientially, then you can begin to articulate it through the teachings. So, the teachings are most effectively applied within the field of eminence. For instance, the four Brahma-viharas. Unlimited friendliness, kindness, empathetic joy, compassion, and equanimity. Now these four, Brahma, the heart, unlimited fields of unlimitedness, divine states.

[25:51]

Basically, you're giving structure to the field of eminence. You're giving, you're deciding through practice that yes, now I've established this field of connection, of connectedness. And within that field of connectedness, I will give the structure of the four Brahma-viharas to the field of connectedness. Or the six paramitas can be understood as ways to articulate and give structure to the field of immanence. So now you can understand that interdependence becomes a field of experience which then you can articulate through the teachings. Now, perception is sometimes, you know, it's going to be a little bit like a camera.

[27:02]

A camera delimits the world. A camera only shows you what's within the field of the lens. And so you may feel, well, I don't care, you know, okay, it's sort of interesting that we have this field, and the field, of course, is rooted in immediacy, and immediacy has boundaries. Sort of has, we think, has boundaries. So then you start feeling lonely. Well, I'm willing to practice here at Creston for three months, but Really, I don't want to go through the world only with this little flashlight of the sensorium. Walking around with this flashlight or this little camera camera-like sensorial view of the world. So maybe in the background of your mind you have seen this is too limited or I feel lonely. But

[28:04]

But you know how Google Earth, I guess everybody knows these things now, you know, you can look at someone's house or someone's street or something in Google, then you can back up the map and suddenly you get the whole town and then you get the county and then you get the state and then you get the whole half the globe. Well, if interdependence Interdependence has no boundaries. So in a way, when you focus, the more you learn to live within this perceptual field, this immediacy of a perceptual field, it's a little bit, the more you incubate it, the more you move, the more it begins to, not in the usual sense of senses, connect.

[29:08]

And you begin to feel it. And the more subtle articulation becomes discovering one's path in this field of immediacy. It's almost like there's ley lines, you know, the concept of ley lines, the Stonehenge and all the lines of energy in the earth, and you can douse them and blah, blah, blah. There's a kind of dousing of immediacy which becomes your path. And that's the most subtle aspect of practice. You know, when Dungsan leaves his teacher, and he's told to go to see this other teacher, and Dungsan says, how do I find them? And the teacher says, follow the bending grass. Well, grass bends in all kinds of directions, but following the bending grass, grass is a kind of metaphor for dousing immediacy. and discovering your path in immediacy, the immediacy of inclusive all-at-onceness, the immediacy of the field of immanence, of interdependence, in which the teachings articulate the field.

[30:29]

Okay. Thanks. And our intention will be to penetrate every...

[30:52]

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