What I want to talk about this morning is more intellectual than usual, but what I'm talking about refers to a very palpable emotional state. Someone brought up one aspect of it to me today, the feeling of meaninglessness or not being able to feel anything. I'm not trying to describe any particular situation, but rather a situation that everybody in various forms goes through.

[01:23]

What will save you in practice, in every situation, is your questioning, your ability to keep questioning. And although I don't like such statements, a very commonly made statement in Zen Buddhism is, if there's great questioning, there'll be great enlightenment. If there's no questioning or mediocre questioning, there will be no enlightenment or just a mediocre understanding. I don't like such statements because it excludes those people who don't question or have a tendency to. Not complacency necessarily, but stability or trusting. Maybe some more paranoid, unsettled personality is more likely to question. But there is a direct, I have to say so,

[02:57]

direct relationship between questioning and realization. And questioning must necessarily be based on faith, because if you completely lose hope, you won't question. So in the midst of some very difficult time, or what's more difficult than a difficult time is some blah time in practice, generally blah. You can still question, what is this blah-ness? Pretty blah question. You can wonder, what is it? Still, you have that, what is it? Why should I feel this way?

[04:16]

And as you have noticed too, I'm not much for inspirational Zen. I think that wears out our football coach Zen. Get in there and do that session. Socket to the wall. Pretty soon you go, what am I doing here? It has to come from you. It may be the taste of some very clear perception or deep, deep, endless feeling may be a wonderful resource. But mostly, often it'll be just memory and you'll feel generally blah. No reason for doing anything.

[05:46]

As you may also recognize, Buddhism... Well, actually, you're out to get you. Buddhism isn't out to get you, but... Buddhism isn't trying to do you in, but trying to get you to do yourself in. Literally trying to get you to do yourself in. And this can be rather depressing and disconcerting. And the main way it does this is by always speaking about things ultimately in terms of dharmas. So what I'm talking about today is dharmas. And the idea of dharma is sometimes pretty difficult to understand, very difficult to act and act,

[07:21]

It's also pretty easy to understand. In fact, so simple you can hardly believe it. But again, it's one of those things that if you actually do it and can get through the desert of blindness, undifferentiated, desert, you'll find it's very far out. Dharma theory is very far out. People are sending me papers now about quantum logic, and a logic not based on space-time continuum. If Einstein or physics has shown that space and time are relative, what about a logic outside that relativity, or Bell's theorem? And the degree to which I understand those things now, it's just dharma theory, dharma

[08:46]

Naturally, the Dharma theory is based on no idea of self, which we started this session talking about. You wake up in the morning and your ribcage doesn't want to go to Zazen, or you have to make a decision who is decided, you know? Who possesses this ribcage? Anyway, first you find out that there's no possession. Nothing possesses something else. And subtly, in your practice, you begin to find out that you can't do zazen, treating your zazen as an object, as a possession. For instance, you can't say, Oh, now I'm sitting pretty well. Now I'll slow my breathing down into something imperceptible. This is treating your zazen as an object. This is not rightly transmitted dharma or rightly transmitted zazen meditation.

[10:19]

But that's very difficult not to do, not to treat your zazen as an object. Anyway, there's no self with identifiable properties. You can't fix it or pin it down. And there's no self as an observer. You find when you get so that you're more subtle in your practice, which all of you must be, you see very clearly that the observer is just an interference. As soon as you observe, you break up your experience. You diminish your experience.

[11:26]

Blake, again, Blake says that man, fallen man, is a man of shrunken senses who externalizes nature. He says literally, shrunken senses and the creatures will lead him. To me that's almost prophetic, to the degree to which the creatures have abandoned us in this age. So you'll notice as soon as you have an observer your experience shrinks. So dharma, the theory of dharma is a way to

[12:45]

get you to have something to do anyway, because if there's no subject or object, you don't have any method to practise. So anyway, the dharma theory is based on no self, and no self in what you perceive, either. Also, there's no self in the sense that self is something which unites experience. Okay, so a dharma is a, you know, momentary perception in which you don't average and which you don't distribute. I mean. Okay, you see a blue horse. Dharma is just blue, no perception of horse, just blue. So it's not distributed, you see, into a horse. Or you see

[14:17]

blue and hair and skin, and you may say, oh, that's a horse, but dharma is just blue or just hair. Now, when we thoroughly begin to perceive in this way, just this moment, and you don't Literally, you don't distribute it into a space-time continuum. We're not just talking about an absence of self, we're talking about an absence of a space-time continuum, which is also self. So if you are... You know, let me say again here that you don't have to understand all this. You don't have to... if you're not inclined to think in this way, it's not so important. And also, you know, I will do my best to not let you escape from perceiving this way, but I don't care whether you understand it or not.

[15:48]

And the many descriptions in Buddhist sutras, Nagarjuna, and in koans. Kyose is raindrops, the sound of raindrops. I've talked to you about that story. a story about the objectification of internal perception. But in these stories, sutras and koans, etc., it may not be exactly worked out, you know, mathematically, rigorously, though it could be, because it's really not important, because when you understand it, you'll understand it extremely exactly. when you practice it or realize it. The realization is extremely exact because it's exactly what you are. It doesn't work when it's off by a

[17:07]

So by your realisation you will understand it extremely, perfectly, exactly. But intellectually you don't have to understand it very much at all, except sometimes it's useful. But one thing will be sure. is that in this way of viewing things, in terms of skandhas and dharmas, none of your old emotional sets will work. None of your old feelings will work. There's no way to project. If you view things in terms of dharma, There's no way to project sensory satisfaction of any kind on it. There's no way to project your history on it, your karma on it, your fears or desires, affections, etc. So at some stage in practice,

[18:44]

And usually it's after a pretty thorough familiarity with yourself, so familiar that you've heard everything already, even some deep, deep feeling. You've been through that already and you see how it affects you, and it's rather distant from you. So then you have this blah period. You don't know why you're practicing and you don't know why you shouldn't practice or why do anything else. You're completely trapped. Really there's no place to go and nothing to do. You can't figure out any meaning.

[19:51]

William James and many people who have had this kind of experience talk about this period. So none of your emotional assets will be able to find expression in this dharmic world as you intuitively begin, or habitually maybe, is sometimes more accurate, begin to perceive this way, because you're here at Tassajara. Of course, this is one of the reasons that Buddhism emphasizes a period of monastic life, because it allows this disorienting, blah, thing to happen.

[21:25]

Everything seems false. Everything you do is false, unnecessary. And yet it's very difficult to get down to what's irreducible. But related to this blue of the horse, You just see blue. It may be blue from this reflection from the sky. It may be blue because of your state of mind, or whatever. It may be imaginary. But for you, you just see it. And extremely important in this is As Blake again says, the eye that beholds it, you know, there is no blue without your seeing it. And this is... when you externalize the world, you brush this fact aside, but by your close examination there's always a receptacle.

[22:54]

And that receptacle creates a closed system. So we can ask, what's outside that closed system? So if you don't distribute blue into the horse, then blue Now, like I said, again, you say goodbye. Everything you greet you say goodbye, but at the same time you're saying greeting all. So in a sense you distribute blue into all. Now, when you do this you'll see the many connections. blue has, with things other than the horse, which when you just perceived blue as part of the horse, you felt separate, you divide the world into hard rocks and hard stuff that's threatening. So by this dharma, you know,

[24:29]

this ability, you know, right dharma, rightly transmitted. Right dharma. We're talking about something, not just a phrase. Right dharma, rightly transmitted. The identity of the perception of blue. The dharma is the blue itself. It's not an attribute of the blue. It's like falling of the apple. Is the dharma, or there isn't some, as I've often said, some law called gravity making the apple fall. The apple itself is gravity. You take away the apple and there's no gravity. The apple itself is the rule or law or... That's why dharma is called a law. The apple itself is the law. So there's no attribute or anything outside. You know, there's no deeper behind it. So again, what characterizes dharma is no origins, no causes, no suffering.

[25:59]

There's suffering and there's a cause of suffering. There's no suffering and there's no cause of suffering. This is the path. This is the stopping of suffering. So again, for a while, you'll lose all hope. Why save all sentient beings? As the Diamond Sutra says, there are no sentient beings to be perceived. This is Dharma theory of perception. quite accurately. So where does compassion come in? How do you do, how do you act on anything? First of all, you need the enormous strength of our practice to sustain this observation, this dharma observation. not losing hope or not getting discouraged. At some point,

[27:35]

When you get so that you can just let blue, without any attributes, without any connectives, without any unity, just blue, you know, and your consciousness is not making connectives any more, just blue, and next moment something else. Again blue, but different, slightly different blue. Next moment, again blue, slightly different blue. Each thing is unique, not repeatable. You take your rest in this kind of space. So you'll go through a kind of what maybe I should call non-affective period, rather disenchanted, detached, neutral. And we are so used to verifying ourself by feeling. You know, you know how corruptible your feelings are and how untrustworthy your feelings are and how many times you've been led astray

[29:03]

by your feelings, liking or disliking. The ultimate path, as you know, is easy as long as you don't discriminate. But even though you get rid of this corruptible feeling, feelings that you can't depend on. Still, we practise by a feeling. I feel like doing it in a wider scale, or I feel beyond this particular moment to save all sentient beings or to recognise all sentient beings.

[30:05]

But in this, the way I'm speaking now, if you can sincerely question and not stray from your questioning and have the courage to accept whatever comes out of your questioning, not hanging on to... If you want to hang on to your old life and actually kind of work that out while practising Buddhism, you know, nobody will hurt you for doing it. But of course you won't realize this practice at all. set for you to experience anything else. Even the feelings we take for verification, this feels good. Nothing set against anything else, but it feels good. So you go through a period of just some neutrality. You can't trust your feelings.

[31:48]

What can you trust, you don't know. You're not sure what is real. So just some neutral. Whatever it is, you'll do it. You, in a sense, go through the motions. You often feel like a robot, just going through the motions of being alive. Because of your vow, you're not going to kill yourself. or give up, but it looks like the rest of your life is just going through the motions. There's nothing anymore to make it cohere, to hang together. This is very fertile time, but also rather barren. It may last for many years. how tired of it we get, and yet not quite tired enough. Tired, tired, tired of it, and yet still we don't lose our decision to continue as long as there's something continuing.

[33:14]

At some point, this non-distributive, modulated perception, you know, Nagarjuna always is saying, not A and not A and not A, etc. In usual space-time, you can say A plus B equals B plus A or something like that. In this you can't say A equals A prime. And you can't say A equals not A prime. All you can say is A. And it's modulated, always changing. And not distributed in any pattern. This is the ultimate looseness I'm talking about. And it's in this state of mind that you will see the real connectedness. This is something far beyond ecology. But it means you have to, in this blindness, give up

[34:55]

the need to find meaning, the need to find connectedness, and the ability to, like a robot, just go on. At some point, if you're lucky, the simultaneity of the horse and the non-distributed perceptions will come together. The interplay between the way forms appear and the way no form, emptiness, formless realms, non-distributed realms exist. So dharma, which is for us,

[35:57]

has been said, this is not Buddhism but dharma. All schools of Buddhism stress dharma. What Buddha realised is dharma. Dharma preceded Buddha. So our religion is actually dharma. Our practice is actually dharma. So by this effort you make in a monastic setting like this just blue, just taste, just instant of non-differentiating light in your thought, says Rinzai. This ability to let it all not cohere, to not stray into definitions, is the sense, true sense of zazen, which you can carry into all of your activities.

[37:48]

you're a mix at any particular moment, you will find yourself a mix of the energy of sexuality, the energy of intellectual activity, the energy of idealism, the energy of emotional sets physical activity. And our middle way, our practice is not to give definition or act on any one of these, not discriminate any one of them. Just, this is, you accept this mix at each moment.

[39:44]

not criticising or anything, just accepting that mix. And you will need some relief from that occasionally, some break or some vacation is to give it definition. But more and more, if we're practising seriously, you don't give it definition. It's rather unhinging and uninteresting. Interest is in giving definitions. So we turn away from what's interesting to practice thoroughly. If you want to realize the truth the true way, you turn away from what's interesting

[41:04]

to this middle way. And questioning. Questioning, instead of definition, question. It keeps you. Questioning keeps returning you to this center. By your logic you can see truth is not in the definitions. And by your zazen experience you can see your loss when you define. So again, what did a joshu mean? Answering. The manifold dharmas return to one.

[42:43]

What does the one return to? And his saying. When I was in the province of Se, I bought or made a hempen shirt. It weighed exactly seven pounds. What kind of blah is he talking about? how easy it is when you can finally let this world magically appear outside any definition or meaning or cause in which you just hear a sound. You don't distribute it.

[44:18]

or average it. It's the only door, only gateway beyond subject and object where water will not wet it, cannot wet it. Wind cannot enter it. Tigers prowl. Dragons walk. Ghosts wail. Spirits howl. A man with a three-foot head. I wonder who it is. standing on one foot, answers without speaking.

[45:26]

Who knows, again, who knows the complete secret of this month? What attributes does it have? Through Dharma Gates, through Dharmas, through Dharma Gates you can re-enter the world. Dharma gates, I vow to enter them. That's what it means. Through the Dharma gate you enter the real world, we can call the real world, of no subject and object, of no externalization.

[47:31]

of which all the relationships are felt, of which saying goodbye and hello are identical. Realization is your continuous experience.

[48:25]

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