It's lovely to be in this Sashin, within the flower of the practice period. My dream is to have two practice periods a year here, but it seems we can't do it yet. Now, I'm at the edge of what I feel comfortable talking about, and when I left after the lecture yesterday I felt, you know, I was reminded of Tsukiyoshi saying, every now and then he'd say, you know, he kind of had this wonderful way of making a certain kind of face, and would say, I have the feeling I'm fooling you. Because when he began talking about practice, which people couldn't really get or didn't

[01:09]

make sense, they weren't there in their experience, it was a feeling he was fooling them. And at that time, I mean, basically, people's practice was nowhere near as developed as yours. I mean, in a group of fifty people there'd be one or two whose practice was anywhere as good as the least of yours. Partly the historical times, you know, it was just totally new, but it was a fresh power though. And partly it's just people just hadn't practiced as much, and they weren't in a culture anymore that supported practice at all, and now we at least have a kind of areas within our culture that supports practice, and that makes a difference. So again, I'm at the edge of what I feel comfortable speaking about, but I'm here

[02:16]

because you guys put me here somehow, I didn't plan to speak about this during this session. So if there's some kind of archaeological dig going on here into practice, it's because you're giving me the soil. And you know, I like to try to be as simple as possible and keep starting from the beginning and making the simple and really basic practices clear enough that you feel the depth of them and how they penetrate through the whole of Buddhism, actually. Now what I've been speaking about, yeah, I feel quite comfortable speaking with you,

[03:20]

one of you or others of you, in doksan, when I can feel precisely your experience of what I'm speaking about. And one of the conditions for this kind of practice is you have to 100% value experience over understanding. In fact, understanding, and the attempt to understand, usually interferes with experience. We say, Sakyur, she always uses the image of wave follows wave, wave leads wave. So your experience leads understanding, and understanding sometimes leads experience, but they've really got to be as close as two waves. If you get three or four waves ahead, you're drowning. So if you really want to do this practice, you really have to go as slow as your experience dictates.

[04:27]

Never, at any speed, relate it to understanding or how much you understand or something. All the thousands of roads and filaments, et cetera, [...] they're only there in experience, not there in understanding. So, also, I mean that when I am at the edge of what I feel comfortable speaking about, it produces too many questions and not enough feeling, okay, back to what I can experience and I'll go from there. If I ever get to the point that he's talking about, if it seems strange, yeah, I'll get there through the road of experience.

[05:33]

As I told you, my practice of reading sutras in the first years of my practice was to read one line or one paragraph or one unit and not even read the next paragraph until I had experienced that paragraph. I wouldn't even read the next page or the next line. So I proceeded experience by experience, and if I came to a paragraph which I really could not make sense of, couldn't find any way to experience it, I'd stay with it for a week or so. I'd say, this is not accessible to me yet. I'd kind of put it aside and say, okay, I'll see if I can come back to it after another paragraph or two. To do a sutra this way takes a couple of years. But this kind of 100% embeddedness in experience as the only condition of practice

[06:41]

that has any actuality, it's a kind of discipline, it's a kind of asceticism. I don't give a damn whether I ever understand this. I'm only going to experience it. If I only experience this much, that's all I will have. That's the career path, shall we say, of an adept. You really have to breathe into, live into each part of the practice. After all that, actually what I'm talking about is fairly simple and not anything so difficult or unusual. But you really have to see the practice and do it.

[07:56]

And here we are in this Dungshan lineage, which emphasizes abiding, what we could say, maybe, abiding mindfulness that is practiced through manifest details. Dungshan's lineage particularly emphasizes all these little details, like exactly how you do the incense, exactly how we do the oryoki, etc. The Rinzai-Linji line more emphasizes a continuity of energy. That's present in Dungshan's lineage too, and this attention to detail is also present in the Linji's lineage. Linji people make a little bit of fun of Dungshan people for their emphasis on details. And Dungshan people make fun of Linji folks

[09:03]

because they're always kind of, you know, you jump in the door. I showed people the other day how you come in the door, throw your arms down, spin around. It's a little too boy, boy, boy-based too. I don't think our lineage is girl-based, but that's all right. But that would be okay with me. I'm always trying to discover my feminine side. I think it's huge, you know, but nobody else thinks that way. So it's an attentive mindfulness that actually is rooted in a simultaneous perception of manifestation and non-manifestation. I'll try to explain what I mean by that.

[10:06]

So the details are like things surfacing on the surface of water. So we do them very specifically. They surface out of darkness. We do them very precisely, seeing that they're surfacing. And we try to do them in consonance with others. See if we can similarly find some kind of way to be attentive to a flow of mind through details. The details in which mind is manifest, along with others. This deeply opens up a sense of a shared mind, which then is a wider mind than we ourselves. Okay. So yesterday I spoke about in effect, a simultaneity of knowing,

[11:17]

a simultaneity of perception. And here we've got the kind of Yogacara way of practicing the Majamaka Two Truths, the Absolute and the Relative. But before we even try to practice the Absolute and the Relative, Yogacara looks at not just the Absolute and the Relative, but also the imaginary. The really unreal. So now, instead of jumping into the Absolute and the Relative, let's begin with the simultaneous perception of permanence and impermanence. Or permanence and relative. Hmm. What's the word? Interdependent.

[12:17]

The most basic things I can't remember. Sometimes I can't remember the Four Noble Truths. Interdependent and permanent or independent. Or something like that. So let's just say relative and permanent. Because that's where we're at, usually in the beginning, because we have a habit of permanence. Our whole society, our culture, our language. You know, as I point out all the time, when we say, it rains, our language is suggesting permanence. There's something out there doing everything. And we don't, in English, use gerunds, we don't say treeing, we say trees. If we said treeing, knowing trees were always doing their tree thing, then you'd have a language which didn't always imply permanence.

[13:19]

So we're stuck. You know, just to talk to somebody else, you have to talk about things in terms of permanence. I'll do this, I'll go meet you, so-and-so, etc. And it's just the way the mind works, as I've said, because we need, want, predictability, which is a version of permanence. Okay, so one of the first... Here I'm trying to talk about, today, I guess, the simultaneity of perception, or simultaneous knowing. I don't know what to call it. Coincident knowing. Coincidence may be more accurate than this. And so someone asked me also, you know, people give me... I always ask for suggestions, what I should talk about. And this machine, I've had less suggestions than usual. People say,

[14:21]

I thought of something yesterday, but I forgot it today, and things like that. So much for the impact I'm making, you know. Huh? But one of the suggestions was, could I talk about what's not noticed? Oh, okay. So I'm actually talking now about what's not noticed. Okay, when you have the simultaneous, coincident knowing of permanence and impermanence, that we have a habit of seeing as permanent, and we have to remind ourselves that it's impermanent, momentary, ephemeral, illusory, whatever you want, whatever words, no word quite catches it. But you...

[15:29]

yourself want it as permanent, or have a habit of thinking of it that way, and then your emotions gather in the need for it to be permanent. Your intellect says, oh, it's impermanent. But your emotions are saying, ah, I want it to be permanent, and it's not! But also with other people. When we're speaking to our friends and everything, there's this idea of... they have an idea of permanence, and it brings out, once you really have this simultaneous knowing, coincident knowing, it brings up a lot of compassion, because you see people really involved and their emotions gathered in the need for things to be permanent. You can see how illusory it is, or how it's easy to snap out of it, but they don't, and it really breaks your heart sometimes.

[16:30]

If I speak about this, I always remember an anecdote I've told you every now and then. But they take little... they took tape recorders and put them under the beds of child cancer patients, who were like five and six and seven. And around Halloween, the Halloween in Europe, it's about October, whatever it is, 25th or something. Is that what it is? 21st? 21st. 21st? Yeah. The family comes in to these kids and brings them Christmas presents and says, you know, Santa came early this year, he's got such a busy schedule, he started in October. And the kids say, oh, that's so sweet of Santa Claus, and blah, [...] blah. It's so nice, and na, na, na. And the parents leave, and then the kids start talking about it. I'll be dead by Christmas. But they go along with the permanence

[17:37]

their parents want them to talk about. And I've noticed that with people, close friends who've died, one voice is talking about next year and what I'll do in three years, and another voice is saying, I'm dying. And it's almost like they don't hear the two voices. You can have, one side of them is completely ready to die or knows they're going to die, and the other side, another side still needs to talk about as if they can't even think about tomorrow, if they can't think about three years from now. So this, so here they have a kind of simultaneous knowing of existence and non-existence. And when I said yesterday I noticed and practiced with the space of the tree

[18:41]

as well as the tree, and get in the habit of seeing the space of objects simultaneously with the substance of objects. It's a habit you develop, and this habit is the practice of the two truths. And you really, most of this you have to do for yourself. Most of Zen is self-training or self-practice, or self isn't the right word. Non-self-practice, no, nonsense. Your own, your own, your practice, you have to do most of it, figure out most of it. Even the transmission process, it doesn't really come from the teacher, the practitioner has to bring it to the teacher.

[19:42]

And you have to bring, mostly you find out. I mean, what I like is somebody who's got, found ten or a hundred or five ways of practicing something. But what I often find is people want me to make the same practice clear again or something, or maybe add one more. But you've got to, from your own creativity and innovativeness, find ways to practice these things. I can only sketch out some possibilities. So, let's just take some examples here.

[20:54]

Which I started with yesterday. Noticing the space of the tree, as well as the tree. Or the sound of the tree trunk, as well as the silence of the leaves. Or permanence and impermanence, or impermanence and emptiness. So you begin to... We have one way of talking about these things, it's access by principle and access by practice. And access by principle is this kind of face I spoke about. But you decide, okay, here we have already enlightened and sentient beings, so we have the space of the tree and the tree. So access by principle means that you would understand this conceptually,

[22:03]

not in any big way, just understand it conceptually as a practice, have faith in it as a practice, and then do it. So you really need a conceptual clarity about what I'm calling today the simultaneity of knowing, the fact of things are both manifest and non-manifest. As I said, the details appear out of the dark sea. Something, actuality, the mind. So you feel the pre-form and the form. Or something like that. So, okay, if you have the space of the tree

[23:07]

and the tangibility of the tree, and then you also, as I said yesterday, begin to feel that this space of the tree is both graspable, feelable, but not graspable. It's existent and non-existent. So from such a simultaneous perception you also begin to feel another kind of simultaneous perception or knowing of existing and not existing, or manifest and not manifest. And when you get the habit of this simultaneous knowing, when you feel... I mean, this is a funny example, but for a while I was scared to drive my car through space.

[24:12]

Buck Rogers! I meant like through a street corner, because I had such an... I experienced people... Now I'm really at the edge of it. I'm feeling ridiculous because of this. I experienced people as if they appeared out of space, because I didn't bring an Alaya memory bank to it. So I didn't think, well, they're going to appear, or I know they're down, I can hear them walking, here they come, so much as, whoops, there they were! Where did they come from? Whoops! Might have been an alien, you know. It might have been anything, you know. You look like a human being. Whoa! I had that feeling. So when I would drive my car, I would be going through an intersection, and I would think, what if a person just appeared? And actually, off and on for years, I was nuts. I would come to an intersection and think,

[25:17]

I've really got to make sure no one's in this space, because someone might just appear. And they do sometimes, on a bicycle or something. But I didn't have the sense of space as empty anymore. Space was full of potential, and it could be... So I'm driving through this space, which is full of potential. And finally I got... This went away. I think it came back occasionally. Every now and then I'd notice it. But this kind of feeling of... In other words, if you begin to... experience... manifestation and... non-manifestation as the background of manifestation, it really begins to make you perceive everything differently. An existence...

[26:20]

So you have manifest and not manifest. You have the space of the tree, and in the space the tree manifests. And it sort of merges back into the space, too. And that's very close, then, to existence and non-existence. The tree is existent and... there. Tree, you know, is the same root as truth, because usually trees are there when you go out next morning. So, it's... manifest or not manifest, existent or non-existent, and then you have birth and death. Then you feel... the presence of death... simultaneously with the presence of life. It becomes a kind of surprise to be alive,

[27:21]

because it's so easy to be dead. It makes you feel grateful, more often, when you're surprised to be alive. You're not so involved with being alive a certain way, you're just surprised to be alive at all. So I'm trying to get at... dig into this... unfold... this simultaneity of knowing, relative and absolute, even relative in our usual way of thinking. And when I also say... notice... that every object of perception

[28:25]

points to mind. But first of all, what it does, it often can point to history and future and past, but first of all it points to mind, because in mind it's appearing. So here's another simultaneity of knowing, or coincident knowing, is that I see something, whether it's this mat, or the pillow, or Dan, or Iris... It's also... I feel my own senses, I don't know if I own them, but senses and mind, as part of the knowing of Dan or Iris, or the... pillow. This is also Bodhidharma's wall gazing. Wall gazing means you look at the wall with as much attentiveness as you look at a person. So if I look at this pillar, and I look at David, I mean, I don't mean to offend David,

[29:26]

but I look at them the same way. But, I mean, I bring exactly the same feeling to the pillar as I bring to David. But the pillar gives me one kind of feedback, and David gives me another. So if something different happens, I'm not saying... But I come to each with exactly the same feeling. This is the... inner meaning of Bodhidharma's wall gazing. This is also very close to guarding the one, which also means guarding the thusness. Just to look at the pillar and to read or mark the same is thusness. Because what you're experiencing is the thusness of the mind prior to the object that appears in it. Now, what Buddhism has done here is taken something that's basically a kind of shamanic, really,

[30:29]

way of being, and trying to make it something, not just trying, actually making it something that in the context of ordinary life, city life, countryside, mountain, monastic or lay, that you can practice. Because this contemporary renunciation or solitude or asceticism is a kind of asceticism or renunciation of really really not being caught by the world. And one of the ways of not being caught by the world is this simultaneous knowing, coincident knowing. If I know

[31:37]

Ola, I also know my mind knowing Ola. They're coincident. I don't get caught, the practitioner ideally doesn't get caught by Ola independent of my knowing Ola. And this isn't associative thinking, it's not about I know Ola because I know a lot about Ola because I've known Ola for, I don't know, ten years or how long have I known you? A long time, a pretty long time. But rather at the immediate moment I not only know Ola but I have the experience of knowing Ola as an experience of mind.

[32:39]

Sensual, sensuous, tactile mind. But to know both at once without separation is what I mean by coincident knowing. So the practice of the two truths is the practice of coincident knowing. It's not philosophy. You have to bring it into your experience as always simultaneous coincident knowing. And one of the doors is attentive mindfulness or investigative mindfulness to really bring your attention to the details, what's in front of you or what appears. Three and three in front, three and three in back. To the attentiveness of what appears without much associative thinking about it.

[33:41]

Just something's there. What is it? And with a what is it which doesn't know what it is. And as some of you have pointed out to me when you begin to do that the immense complexity of the simplest thing which surpasses our own ability to conceive or grasp, hold in mind. And the complexity of this wall of the world, this blue mountain we're always facing opens up our own complexity or subtlety. So this practice of

[34:46]

simultaneous knowing which you can find everywhere in Buddhism. Simultaneous knowing, coincident knowing without contradiction. Without comparison. Just coincident knowing. I used to say when I experienced when I was beginning practitioner that you couldn't proceed in practice as long as I saw things as contradictory or comparatively. I had to be able to hold diverse realities or truths in my mind in order for my practice to develop. If I immediately said if that's true, how can that be true? Then I was stuck in this kind of surface. Alive and yet dead. Which is it?

[35:47]

There's a koan about that. Alive or dead. It's a message. Thanks. Thanks. And we have it here in this step. You know, again, I've shown you this stuff often. It's one of my favorites. Because here's the lotus embryo which you can eat in Japanese soups. You get a little lotus embryo. It's kind of cute. You feel like, ooh. Not sure you want to eat it, but it's beautiful. And it's in a little clear case. Like in 2001, the baby is in a kind of bubble. It's in a kind of bubble like that. And it's in soups.

[36:48]

Don't think you can get it in the States. And then this is the bud. And this is the seed bud. Where's the bloom? The bloom is what you don't notice in this case. You don't even notice the bloom wasn't on the staff. But the bloom is what you can't grasp. The bloom is us talking right now. The staff works, or it's a teaching staff, when there's a bloom that unfolds. That bloom is noticing what's not noticeable. What isn't in the realm of the senses, which actually cannot be noticed by the senses. And the more you practice this simultaneous or coincident knowing, you begin to allow yourself to edge into,

[37:49]

through access by principle and access by practice, edge into a knowing that's at the edge of reality as given to us by the senses. I'm not saying this is something special and you'll discover, you know, there's Martians right over there folded in a kind of secret space or something magical or wonderful. You just simply feel more complete. More deeply satisfied. That much. As I said last night, you know why Bodhidharma came to the West. Now, as you practice this

[39:01]

simultaneous knowing, which once you get the practice of any one of it, so that you begin to have the gift or capacity of simultaneous knowing without contradiction and without comparison, lots of things start opening up and you begin to be able to have coincident knowing in many ways. And what happens then is that leads into an abiding an experience of abiding mind. A mind that isn't caught by intellect, isn't caught in perception, isn't caught in consciousness. It's very hard, as we've talked about a lot, to bring your mind out of consciousness because we have a sense of continuity in our

[40:08]

thinking. It's very hard to bring a sense of continuity into our breath and it snaps back to our thinking because we need a sense of continuity. So you can keep trying to bring it back to your breath and eventually you can find this ribbon of continuity in your breath. But now I'm speaking about finding this ribbon of continuity in the mind itself, which is wider than and not caught in either intellect, perception or consciousness. It's a mind, a continuity of mind, which we can call thusness, which is also impervious to intellect and associative thinking and so forth. You can use intellect. I can't ask you to say, if you have a teacher, you want a teacher who

[41:10]

discriminates very well. That doesn't mean you also simultaneously don't find your own satisfaction in being non-being in this abiding mind. The word I'm using today is abiding mind. Now some people would suggest that instead of saying you see, feel, experience spaces as consciousness or awareness, but speak of space as ether instead. And ether is an interesting word at least, that when spelled with an A in English, it's the air the Olympian gods breathed. And ether became, I mean aside from ether,

[42:10]

if you have an operations, it became like in science in the 19th century, it was some kind of mysterious medium in space which electromagnetic waves were transmitted. And we have ethereal and etheric and so forth. But anyway, all of these words I think are an intuition that the subtle, the wisdom body breathed a different air and lived in a different space. Somehow the Olympians breathed a different air. One of the theories about ether is it's the heavens or it's what fills space above the moon. Well, we've been to the moon now. But still there's this intuition here that this

[43:11]

space that you inhabit through realization is a different space than ordinary space. The air that's breathed is a kind of different air. And you do have this kind of experience. That space or ether is alive in some way with manifestation and non-manifestation. And with a breath that has a continuity that pervades oneself and mind itself. And the mind and the world and space all become very similar experiences. In this sense, non-dual means everything seems like... So I'll keep walking around in some of the territory in which I think we're practicing. I'm not going to try to be entirely clear about

[44:12]

every point, each point. And of course I couldn't be, but I could be clearer, but more I'm just going to try to walk around in some of the places we're practicing. While taking some old stuff and looking at it again and I don't know, so forth. Now the... I got asked a couple of times to... probably all came from one person but anyway, I got asked a couple of times to speak about Yao Shan's Yakusan Igen ascending seat. And this is a koan that the Boulder group is starting, is that right? Yeah, that's number

[45:14]

seven in the Shoyu Roku. And since the Boulder group is one of the... Is it a group? I guess so. It's one of the engines of Crestone Mountain Zen Center. I should say maybe something about it. A practice place like this needs the practice of individuals and especially groups in Europe as well as America who bring their practice into the practice of the residents here. This is the most healthy way this place can be. So, I mean one of the questions that comes up, how is this... I'm not going to tell you the koan, I'm just going to say a few things in a way that for most of you I can speak about practice in general. If you look at the very seemingly similar koan, which is the first one in the Shoyu Roku,

[46:15]

where the world-honored one ascends the seat or whatever it's called, it's actually, you know, it's quite different. The first koan is really about the teaching and the teaching as in its modes as Buddha teaching and Bodhisattva teaching. And you can see that also in the first line of the commentary. Closing the door and sleeping are the best way to receive those of highest potential. So that's already a kind of challenge. Closing the door and sleeping is the best way to receive those of highest potential. Yeah, I should have come in here and just laid down and fell asleep because of your high potential. And the second one, the first line is

[47:18]

of the commentary. The second one's really about not the teaching, but the practice in the context of the practice. And the relationship of the teacher to the context of the practice. This one's rather different. And it starts out with eyes, ears, nose, tongue. Each has its own ability. Already you know you're in a particular world when it starts that way. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, each has its own ability. Then it just says the eyebrows are above. So that establishes the context with the case of this, you know, Shana sends the seed. Now, if I were going to,

[48:20]

if I were in the Boulder group, what I would do is consider acting it out. Not all the koans can be acted out. You can't act out the three among the three bodies, which one does not have any category, unless you could dissolve. But you could act it out maybe in three parts. You know, you first have perhaps Gary and Brian have a little discussion. The group sits there and Gary and Brian maybe go off in a corner and say, won't you give a lecture, Brian? And Gary says, Gary says to Brian, Brian says, oh well, just ring the bell. So then I mean actually sort of do that. And then ring a bell and then sit down and discuss that for a while. Then have the second part where maybe Tim gets up on the seat and looks around everybody

[49:20]

and gets back down. Then you have some discussion for a while. Then in the third part where it gets back down and the director since Katrin's not there, she'll have to Amy be the director. Then she could say, how come you didn't give a lecture, you know? Well, I'm a, there are teachers of treatises or precepts and commentaries and there's teachers of sutras but Tsukishi has some say but I'm a Zen master so leave me alone. So then you can have some discussion about that because these koans can't really, I mean, even if they can be understood you've made a mistake. Okay. So I come back to that point. What are we, what are we in the midst of practicing here? We have Asian views

[50:23]

and Western views. That's interesting. Yeah. And we have Buddhist views and Western views and Western religious views and Buddhist views. No? Oh, gee. And we have then views of sentient beings and views of Buddhists. All these are mixed up together. But right now we're speaking about the views of sentient beings or human beings. Human, you know, means earthling, literally earthly. Humus is the same root in every language, Persian, Greek, German, etc. Human is related to earth. So we have human beings and Buddha beings.

[51:23]

So we have the views that make us a human being, the views that make us a Buddha being and if we're going to understand the core of Zen, mature Zen practice, we have to deal with the fact that if there's the simultaneity, as I said yesterday, a Buddha being and earthling, human being, I don't mean a Buddha as an alien, how can they be simultaneous? How does this simultaneity work? If it's the case at all. And it still, as I said yesterday, it works if you have a faith that it's the case. So first of all we have to get to the point where you have the faith that it's the case and then the faith

[52:25]

that it's the case, the situation, a dynamic starts. And our practice assumes, our adept practice, our fundamental practice, assumes it's the case. So if you want to practice to the source of Zen, you need to also assume it's the case or see or approach that possibility, that potentiality. No, I don't mean you should start practicing right away because if you can't assume it's the case, because maybe you'll get around to it, but also there's other benefits of practicing. But that was the fine-tuning, what was going on between Matsu and Nanyue, and with Matsu and Nanyue we're at the very beginning of Chinese Zen, which is the very beginning of Zen

[53:26]

in the 6th and 7th centuries. And Nanyue was the disciple of the 6th patriarch. And then we have Matsu. So Matsu, I mean, don't think that in any way Nanyue is saying you shouldn't sit Zazen or practice in the way Matsu was. Obviously Matsu was already realized, already a great figure in Zen practice. So let's pay attention to the fact that he sat the way he did. But Nanyue felt the attitude he brought to practice didn't really penetrate deeply enough. So what are these attitudes? So again, going back to

[54:38]

working with a clone like Yaoshan, or Matsu and Nanyue, or Dengxiang, which body does not fall into any category, you really have to it's really a kind of mantra practice, a kind of acu-mantra, acupuncture mantra, acupuncture practice, acu-mantra, or mantra-puncture. Sounds like a flat tire. Right. Because you've got to get into the sediment of your views, your sedimented views. Sediment, you know the word sediment? Something that is the same in German? Oh, how lucky. It's so useful that English

[55:40]

is a dialect of German. I saw Christian today, he was digging on the roof. Preceding he wasn't digging dirt, he was actually digging up some kind of roof. And it's the layer that's above the membrane. And these chunks of it were coming up, you know. But we have views like that that are sedimented in us, concretized in us, fixed in us. So Zen practice, in assuming that a human being is so constituted, has developed a pedagogy of practices that is different from earlier ways of practicing Buddhism. And it's not

[56:41]

that the conception is not one that it's a gradual learning approach. It's more like archaeology. You don't learn much but then suddenly you're digging, you uncover this or that. But that's not maybe a good image because we're not uncovering, we're not uncovering something you already know. But we are digging up what you do know and replacing it with wisdom if you want to do this. So that's why it's a good thing to if a group like Boulder is working on a koan for each person to try to practice the koan, because the koan has no real vitality. A group can't really practice a koan. Each individual in the group can see if the koan speaks to them at a particular time and if it doesn't, then you just get

[57:44]

familiar with it. And getting familiar with them is useful. Because then they can start working in you. So if you acted out, as I suggested say the three main parts of the case main case you're trying to let it happen to you, like here I am, I'm coming up to give a lecture. I'm supposed to Mark comes and gets me. Sometimes I try not to come and he pulls me. And when I climb up here am I going to give a lecture or am I not going to give a lecture? And several people have said they've been waiting for me one day to just get up and get back down. Okay. Ino is one of the people, I mean she maybe likes short lectures or something. Ino is one of the people who said when are you just going to get up there and get back down? Smile. But it's a little too Zen for me. I'm not that Zen. What was he doing that's

[58:46]

Zen? I'm a Zen master, so you know. But you know it's happening all the time. What is the person who's a lecturer on treatises, as it says there, sometimes scriptures, precepts and sutras but someone who's lecturing on a text, on something known. I'm not lecturing on anything known. I have no text. I mean unless the text is something's happening here right now. And so I just give a lecture because it's scheduled. I don't give a lecture because I have something to say. And I really don't try to give a good lecture. I just try to say whatever happens to come up. And maybe sometimes they're good. Sometimes I think they're good and you don't. Sometimes I think, oh geez and everybody says, oh no it's not bad. So I don't know, I just, you know. So if I get up and give a

[59:49]

lecture, whichever it is, that's like not giving a lecture. In other words, if I get up and I just say anything, it's like I get up and left. Do you understand? In other words, if I get up and I give a bad lecture, let's say, that's better if I get up and left. But it's similar to getting, if I'm just, I don't know if you don't seem to get the point exactly. If I just get up and give any old lecture and it happens to be bad, right? That's the same as giving no lecture. Because I'm not making any particular effort to give a lecture. So I'm always getting up and not giving a lecture. This is a Zen way of thinking. Because I'm not trying to get up and give a lecture. Sometimes I think you really need a good lecture, so I do try.

[60:50]

A little bit I have to admit. But mostly I just do it. And this is interesting. Some of Sukhirishi's lectures, I think if they're printed out and people look at them, there's almost nothing there. I mean, they're not as bad as the Dalai Lama's lectures. Because he just gets up and says, we all want to be happy. Let's be happy. Everyone wants to be happy. And then that's it. But he makes everyone happy. Because something else is happening than just what he's saying. And Sukhirishi's lectures are like that. He'd get up and he'd say, I see some of the transcripts. But if you were there, it was so wonderful, he just gave a lecture, whatever it was. So, we should have that kind of spirit. Here we are practicing, that's all.

[61:51]

Some days it's sunny, some days it's not sunny. Some days... In the evening, David and I sit beside each other and some days he takes seconds on the hot drink and the next day I take seconds on the hot drink. I don't know. It's just like that. Matsu's head is white. It's a koan right before. Who's head is black? Somebody. Somebody's head is white, somebody's head is black. I forget. You guys just studied it, you're supposed to help me here. Okay. So this sedimented, sedimented views views. We're trying to actually

[62:51]

loosen those up, get a wedge in there and sediment a little wisdom instead. Now I can use my example that I use very often to point out that we usually think space separates. Altar's over there. Steve is there. Space separates us. But if you think about it, you know that space also connects us. The moon affects the tides and our reproductive rhythms and so forth. However you want to look at it, space connects but it's very difficult to perceive that space connects. And it's even more of a problem and I just want to

[63:54]

use this as a little example to talk about sedimenting. If we have the cultural view some cultures don't have it if we have the cultural view that space separates that view is sedimented prior to perception. That's really important to know. So when I look at you when I perceive with my eyes, ears, nose, etc. This view is reinforced. Oh yes, space separates. So our perceptions confirm the view. Our perceptions aren't true. Our perceptions are confirming a view. So that's what makes it so hard to deal with your views because your views are sedimented prior to perception and conception and perception and conception reinforce and make it seem true.

[64:55]

So what's Zen done? Zen is devised this kind of acumen mantra approach. I'm using a mantra like repetitive practice like just now is enough as you mentioned to kind of keep having an antidote to your views. So in these koans you don't want to look for understanding you want to look for a way to bring the koan the situation of the koan the phrases of it the image of it particularly one where you can act out like this one of Yao Sheng into your daily life so that when you get into a car you feel, oh, I'm getting up on the seat. Am I going to say anything? Am I going to give a lecture in the car today or just drive? You actually take every situation and you try to hold that before you

[66:02]

and see how it works. Why should Yao Sheng say anything? Yao Sheng is also one of the great Zen teachers. He was one of the most famous ones accomplished ones who went back and forth between the two great preceding teachers Matsu and Shido and Shido was his teacher but he was enlightened under Matsu but going back and forth between the two with deep probing questions. What's going on there? What's the Buddha? How does the Buddha appear? We're basically working on the very question I'm bringing up to us. How does a Buddha appear? Yao Sheng took it seriously. Buddhas can appear. It's no different than us. We can take it seriously too. You don't have to be back in the 7th century or 8th century to take it seriously. I mean this incense burner we have is only a thousand years older

[67:05]

than Yao Sheng. It's about 1700 I believe. Heck, it's sitting right there. And Yao Sheng was the teacher of Yun Yan, our sweeping monk, and Yun Yan was the teacher of Dong Sheng. So these cases are right at the core of the folks who put Buddhism together in a way that practiced, worked for Chinese folks, but not only that more fundamentally worked with this idea of original enlightenment. ... ... ...

[68:10]

... ... ... Now we tend to I mean what we do as our habit which Buddhism calls ignorance, is we perceive difference I mean it's intelligent to perceive difference but if that's all you perceive it's ignorance. In Buddhist terms. You perceive difference and you perceive and you want your conceptual apparatus, the way the mind works wants that perceived difference to be permanent. To be predictable. You know in the 60s a lot of people took LSD even after that outbreak leave some people took LSD. I think my daughter took LSD once or twice.

[69:10]

I never took LSD but I was an editor of the Psychedelic Review. ... ... I decided to put all my eggs in the Dharma basket. So I decided. But I organized the first and maybe only big LSD conference in the United States in the 60s. One of the most common experiences oh but I did take peyote and mescaline and things like that back in the 50s. I'm old. So ... but at some point once I started practicing I decided psychedelics I didn't want to I wanted to really see where Buddhism would go and if it didn't go everywhere that was good enough for me. Actually being right here is good enough for me. Wherever that was there is a will be. Yeah. So one of the most common experiences reported by people who take psychedelics is the walls aren't flat. They're wavy and they're bouncy

[70:12]

and we tend to look at walls and we see them as flat because you know they're supposed to be flat. But you can also if you have this in mind you can start looking at walls and floors and everything and not feeling them as flat. And you can play with like I said the other day in practice period listening to the sound of the trunks of the trees or listening to the silence of the trunks of the tree. Usually we listen to the leaves but we suspend listening when we see the trunk. Listen to the trunk. So I'm suggesting you

[71:15]

and these are little experiments to have or look at the space of a tree not the branches and leaves so much or the space of a person. And if you look at the space of a tree let's just say you take this little exercise which is common exercise for this practice. Well what's clear is that the space of the tree I mean the tree the space of the tree has a shape but it's the boundaries aren't distinct. Boundaries are you can't exactly say where the boundaries are. And it's like taking your hand you can count your fingers, we all count fingers with kids but not too many people count the spaces. If you teach your kid, oh there's one two, three, four five or six

[72:17]

or seven or it's five the same as six. I mean you can play with kids it's a real problem how many spaces are there? But if you begin to hold in mind Buddhism is really quite simple, you just do these things, you got a hand got trees you hold in mind the space of the tree. You get in the habit of say looking at the space of trees. This is very related to the four formless Dajanas. Neither perception nor non-perception of without form and so forth. Okay. If you begin to hold in mind let's just use this as an example, the space of the tree and you practice holding in mind in this Aka Mantra practice holding in mind the space of

[73:17]

whatever it is you happen to look at, feel notice, notice pretty soon that begins to affect your own consciousness consciousness awareness because consciousness takes the form of the object of perception it's a kind of rule the way the mind works. Consciousness takes the form of the object of perception so be very careful what you make an object of perception if you make space an object of perception which is part of the Dharmakaya practice and part of Zazen practice because one of the things you're doing in Zazen is moving, like I said the other day again if you feel some sense of boundaries, let them go that is making space an object

[74:18]

of your meditation practice if you make if you hold space as an object of consciousness let's say consciousness it begins to change consciousness and you begin to feel space, first one of the steps is you begin to start feeling all space as consciousness like I said the other day we convert reconstitute physical space as consciousness here's another way to get at the same thing seeing, constantly noticing the space of things which is a basic practice I mean I suppose it took, it's strange to say it solidified, it took me about less than two years to solidify it solidify it? space-ify it? anyway anyway so I saw the space

[75:20]

of everything, just as a habit and not the substance of it begins to change consciousness itself and consciousness itself then begins to take on the character, then let's go back space, physical space begins to almost always be perceived as consciousness space and you know I'm using consciousness in this category to mean a lot of things, awareness and so forth this happens through insight and repetition now insight and repetition and realization now, what's the difference here? okay, say you're in a bus there's also something in there, I'm riding a bus and I'm got to get to some place a warehouse where I worked or something and the bus is delayed and it was quite important

[76:21]

I remember breaking out into a sweat I'm not going to get there and the bus is stuck in traffic and blah blah blah and then it suddenly occurred to me as an insight well why get in this stress? because this bus isn't going to get there any faster so I better relax that's an insight it's a realization because I've had that insight before it was a realization when I never again almost ever felt stress about such situations it became a realization because you know I stopped anticipating anything if I get there, I get there, I don't, I don't and there's some problems, I mean sometimes you know, it causes a little frustration people I do things with but there's a difference between insight and realization

[77:22]

a realization is an insight that turns you around so you don't ever have to have that insight again because it's the way you function and so we're working with and you can feel in your own practice insights and sometimes the insights become realizations and we're talking about simple things here riding on the bus and recognizing there's no point in being stressed out everyone knows that but it's not, not everyone gets turned around so that that kind of stress never happens again and because we're doing something in practice like Christian digging up the roof we're digging up the roof, the ground, the floor, etc and some of you speak to me about the fact that you know

[78:22]

where do I, where do I put myself together now, how do I put myself together because you get the roof is dug up the floor is dug up, the walls are wavy and you know, where are you going to find your own sense of self and location some kind of locus of function but when you practice us this kind of you kind of loosen these layers and then insights more often turn into realizations and it's not in a conceptual framework there's no conceptual framework which is subtle enough for what happens so there's no teaching which can cover what happens there's no teaching

[79:25]

that's equivalent to everything all at once there's no teaching to equivalent to realization thorough realization the teaching can get you to dig loosen things up give you some antidotal views so if you again going back say that you do the practice the dharmakaya practice and the four foremost jnana practices of for example holding the shape of a tree the space of a tree in mind or as mind and you develop the habit of doing that

[80:26]

with everything you see streets, street corners traffic lights, individuals persons skies, clouds whatever it begins to affect again your own it begins to create a habit a permission to feel, view all space as consciousness okay, now let's go back to the tree again when you have the habit of looking at everything the tree, let's stick to the tree as the space of the tree actually you can't quite perceive the space of the tree I mean you somehow, you have a feeling for it, you can't say it happens in your eye, you can't say it happens

[81:27]

in your tongue or your eyes or your nose it's some other kind of way of perceiving in the eyebrows that's why the eyebrows are in that koan the eyebrows means not the one the one ability because the koan goes on to say something like the doctor, the lawyer, the warrior, the businessman each has his or her job and goes home to that job but the man of leisure, you know he doesn't even have to give a lecture that's why I chose this profession so what this koan immediately is talking about is the world the world limited to the senses is sedimented in your views so that's why they say this strange thing

[82:28]

there's another koan, koan 20 which has a very similar what is it called in the eyes it's called seeing in the ears it's called hearing and so forth, what is it called in the eyebrows what is it called in the eyebrows is the dharmakaya viddhi so again if you develop the habit now I'm kind of I'm repeating myself, but I'm kind of layer this so it gets in the layers of your own way of knowing things if you look at the tree the space of the tree which doesn't exactly have any boundaries you can say you can feel it has a shape it doesn't go on forever where are the boundaries in one sense the boundaries are quite wide the whole forest sometimes they're just, okay you can't say you perceive it and you can't say you don't perceive it

[83:29]

it's not in a category of perception or non-perception see, it's neither exactly perception nor is it non-perception because there's a knowing so there you have a way of entering into the four formless jhanas of which one of them I think the third is usually listed as neither perception nor non-perception okay so what does this do you begin to have the habit or feeling of neither perceiving nor not perceiving when you begin to have the feeling of neither not perceiving or perceiving maybe you're in the ma distance of of ma space David Schussel lectures he pointed out for us you begin to have another category of knowing

[84:31]

that you can call neither perceiving nor not perceiving but as consciousness is shaped by the object of perception if you're always perceiving objects your consciousness becomes objectified if you start perceiving formless realms or space itself your consciousness changes and it's not limited anymore to perception and conception in a way you're kind of training your consciousness into an in-between-ness you're now not in the category anymore of the the habit of wanting things to be permanent and predictable and to notice only differences you begin to notice continuities connectedness and things that don't have any differentiation

[85:31]

and not undifferentiated connectedness I don't know how to just say it which is neither perceivable nor is exactly not non-perceivable you begin to feel in a different world reconstitutes the way the brain works too because this whole process of the manas being the kind of editor between the sense vijnanas and the alaya vijnana shifts so the alaya vijnana is actively engaged in the immediacy of the world without the editing of the manas really in a very fundamental almost biological way change the way you function this is remarkable we human beings can do this and the ability to do it and the process

[86:33]

of doing it is called wisdom and the realization of wisdom how these guys discovered this realized what's left out in the habits of how we grow up and what can be brought in not through biology or genetics brought in through wisdom so we know how things actually exist thank you very much thank you

[87:19]

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