But I'm very happy that he's here. It's just really warm in my heart to welcome you here. From this day, this occasion of Thanksgiving to... I'm going to be a turkey tomorrow. So thank you for all of your numerous, numerous contributions to our dead center and all of We come from a couple of days of really peaceful meetings at the Green Gulch where Seiko Roshi and Tenshin Roshi and Sojin Roshi and Kwan Roshi and me... All Roshi that's quite a swarm is talking about dharma transmission in our communities. It was a very, actually a wonderful meeting. We learned from each other and shared a lot of lore and understanding. It was really insightful. So I thought it was great that we could manage to put together a quick tip down here. Unfortunately it's quick because Venerable Marie Therese

[01:31]

Marie-Louise. Marie-Louise. We're lucky to have you here for a short time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Sure. Well, it's wonderful to be here and I'm happy to be here. Can you hear okay? No? Okay. And it's wonderful to see how the practice is here after all these years. I haven't been here for 17 years or something like that. It doesn't look so different. It looks better. That's nice. So mostly, at least at some point, I'd like to have some discussion and anything you might want to speak about, but Norman suggested I start out saying something, so I will. And I guess what's struck me recently, again, is how hard Zazen, how hard it is to do meditation.

[02:59]

without certain kind of circumstances, I've teased Michael Murphy at Esalen recently, they built a zendo there. And I think probably people, I even helped a little with it, people speak, mention meditation there, poor Michael, I'm sorry to be saying this, but people mention meditation there probably more than any other place on the planet where there isn't a regular practice. And the building they've built is a monument to how difficult it is to practice because basically it's not used. And it's interesting, it's quite difficult. I mean, we do this kind of, I think you do this kind of life because it's very supportive. And in fact, I've chosen the kind of life I lead because I need a lot, I'm not very good at practice and I need a lot of help. So I arranged that every place I go, people like you remind me, a better practice. So, I was just thinking about Zazen. I mean, I think that, of course, the experience of it is what really makes it work, but also the concept you have, the understanding you have of Zazen, I think, helps a lot too.

[04:22]

You know, on the other hand, I mean, I was talking to Norman coming down here, Norman and Alan Lew, is that right? Who I knew years ago, practiced with him, is now a rabbi and bringing Zazen into Orthodox and Reform Jewish life. Conservative and Reform Jewish life. And there's a huge movement in, well, quite big movement actually, in Germany, particularly by one person, Father Billiges, to bring Zen practice into Catholicism. Many Catholic priests there. Not so much in Protestantism, either in Europe or America, that I can see anyway. And from the one hand, it's obvious to people, including to Catholics and Jews, that Meditation is a very useful practice, but in fact it's quite difficult to do, quite difficult to do it as a regular part of your life, like you wash your face, you go to sleep, or things like that. And recently I've met a number of people, usually I see people who practice a lot, so I don't think about it so much, but you're not amplifying, are you? I prefer not to be amplified. If you don't mind.

[05:52]

I'm not as bad as Ivan Illich, but Ivan Illich, since 1971, has refused to give a talk which requires an amplification. Because if he can't be somewhat face-to-face, he doesn't want to do it. And I sort of feel the same way. So if you can't hear me, I'll speak more loudly. So if you can't hear me, just do something. So people, as I say, I've seen quite a few people recently who know nothing about practice. And so I've been asked all these questions, like, why do you get up so early? And it's not an easy question to answer, why we get up so early. I think we're kind of nuts. But if you understand, I think if you understand Zazen, it's pretty clear why we get up so early, at least the way I understand it.

[07:03]

Which is, I would say that there's, to just say some very basic things, is that we're born with three minds, basically. Waking mind, dreaming mind, and non-dreaming deep sleep. And that's an understanding that goes way back in Indian culture, way before Buddhism. And those three minds we all are born with, but they don't communicate much with each other. And I think the challenge of what came up in India before Buddhism, which Buddhism tries to answer, is, is there a fourth mind? Is there a mind which unites these three, or is greater than, or other than, these three minds we're born with? And there's a quality of hiddenness to spiritual practice, to psychology too, and of course in the 60s I think one of the good things that came out of the psychedelics of the 60s is that it opened people up to the idea that there was more to life than the surface most of us live on.

[08:27]

And I would say that the Buddhist tradition is a tradition which decided to use yogic meditation instead of psychedelics to discover the hiddenness of our lives. So, if we imagine there's a fourth mind, one way to look at it, and one practice, I don't know if you do it, is to work with the four elements. solidity, and fluidity, in the simple sense for water, fire, and air, but you actually ... I thought of this because I walked to the Narrows today. You'll see why I thought of it in a minute. And motility, or heat, or movement, and face, or breath, or air. And I think it's actually quite useful if you're interested at some point. I mean, if you do Zen, you sit a lot of hours, a lot of flight time, and you've got to do something during that time. So one of the things you can do is kind of explore the four elements. And you can just feel your solidity. And you know, you can concentrate on your solidity for a practice period, or a week, or a day or two.

[09:59]

and really get a sense of the solidity of yourself. And when you do that, it's interesting, you begin to feel the solidity of the world, and the solidity of other people. You begin to find yourself present with another person in conjunction with their solidity. And likewise, when you work ... the same kind of thing happens when you work with your fluidity, softness, or wetness, or pliancy. One of the marks of mature meditation is the pliancy in the body, in the mind as well. And likewise, with heat and concentration, and so forth, and heat is what's different between this and this, is the heat, and heat and consciousness are closely connected. And then breath, and the space of the body, And as I always say, one of our cultural constructs is that faith separates us. Norm's over there and I'm here. When in fact, faith also connects. And that's something you begin to feel when you practice meditation, that faith does connect. And that's another thing you can work with a phrase, I think. I mean, one of the characteristics of Zen practice is

[11:27]

to use a phrase to interrupt the habits of mind, and to try to establish an accurately-assuming consciousness, or consciousness that ... not really consciousness, or awareness that is present before you proceed. Because a phrase ... I mean, a ... just go back to the simple idea of space. separate, the idea that space separates is a view, like the eightfold path starts with the right view, and that view is present before you start to proceed. So, all your perceptions confirm that space separates, and your conceptions confirm that space separates, so you're convinced that space separates, even though women's menstruation and the Moon, I mean, I don't know any strings that go up to the Moon. and men are affected as well. I mean, obviously we're affected by everything and it's all at once, but conceptually and culturally we assume we're separated. So it's part of Zen practice, and I think the brilliance of using phrases, is to interject antidotal phrases that

[12:55]

our antidotes to the views we already have, and part of the skills of practice is to discover what views you have that are obstructing your practice. And I think that for us Westerners, probably the biggest obstruction to practice is not distracted thinking or whatever, you know, but the views we have. So it's I think it's essential to work with the views that are present in you prior to perception. So what happens if you take a phrase like, �Faith connects,' or you could also use, �Already connected,' for instance. If I look at Norman and I feel already connected, instead of feeling already separated. something different happening already. I don't have to make the effort to establish connection, because we're already connected, so something else can play in the relationship. So you can use a phrase like, already connected, or space connects, or whatever works for you, to move in behind the views you already have that are there prior to perception and

[14:23]

conception. And when you do that, it's surprising. Then your perceptions begin to tell you that things are connected. You begin to feel the connection when you work with already connected. So it's, again, amazing that you can take a phrase and you can put it into the mix of language and views we have, and begin to alter the way we ... so I would call it a wisdom phrase, and then practice in koans work around wisdom phrases. So if you work with and try to stay with, and a useful way to do it is to take some way to say to yourself that allows you to emphasize in the stream of thinking, stream of noticing,

[15:24]

the solidity of it, or the fluidity, or motility, or phase. Now, in Zazen practice, my experience is that this is important, because when you do this, you begin, you could almost say that the thinking, the mind, the consciousness, where we usually find our identification Another little aside here, any one of us, any one of you, can bring your attention, anybody on the planet virtually, can bring their attention to their breath very easily. You can all bring your attention to your breath. For a minute. It's extremely easy to do, but extremely hard to do for 24 hours. extremely hard to do for even one period of time. So it's interesting, why is it so hard to do? And I think the basic reason is that we have an implicit belief in the permanence of the Self. I mean, you may think you know the Self is not permanent, but every time your attention goes back to your thinking, it goes back there, I think, because basically we have an implicit

[16:53]

that reality is in our thinking, and who we are is in our thinking, and we establish our continuity in our thinking. And how you establish your continuity is how you establish your reality, from moment to moment, who you are, moment after moment. One of the main functions itself is to establish continuity. So when you're practicing Zazen and you try to bring your attention to your four elements, validity, etc., you're actually, it's part of the process, like bringing your attention to your breath or your activity and mindfulness, all of these are practices which in an attempt to move your identification away from your thinking to your body, breath, and phenomena. So you find your continuity in the immediacy of body, breath, and phenomena. So what's interesting, and where I'm going with this, is that when you emphasize the four elements again, it's a little bit like consciousness and thinking sift into the sand of the body and disappear. And through practicing and learning to sit still and

[18:25]

don't scratch, etc. The mind begins to settle into the body and weave, cultivate this relationship of mind and body. And you begin to be a little bit like bedrock. You're just stuff, sort of this stuff sitting there. And, you know, I've been in The Sierra and the Rockies, now where I live, and of course here in the coastal range. And this stream is a very good example of, at various years, I think you're worried, I hear, that you may have a lot of water coming up because of the forest fire. There sure was a lot of water back in the forest fire. I don't know what year it was. Boy, it was exciting. It was worth it, but it was kind of air-raising to make sure there were no trash dams and things like that. But sometimes the stream here has disappeared completely, there's been no stream visible for a long period of time. But when you get to the narrows it's always water there, it comes up over the bedrock and the water appears and it's usually deep at the narrow. And I think something like that happened when we do Zazen. I think we could say there's a fundamental mind or original mind which when you sit still or when you can

[19:58]

bring your attention away from your thinking, and the more you can just be the four elements, let's put it that way, as a way of thinking about practice, a subtle fundamental mind begins to surface. You think, where's mind in this, you know? But still, you're sitting still in some sort of clear, purifying mind begins to appear. I don't think it's so good to think of it as you're uncovering it, unblocking it, that, you know, maybe there's some truth to it, but you're much more generating it. You're creating a situation where you notice a potentiality of mind, and then you begin to generate that potentiality of mind. We could call that a direct experience of fundamental mind or original mind. And one of the things we're trying to do, I think, by getting up early, and I think you can take an idea like this and understand the whole of monastic life as trying to ... you can understand all the details of monastic life as extrapolating from the experience of original or fundamental mind.

[21:18]

so that you create a life here which brings it into your daily life as much as possible. And the difficulty in most people's daily lives, I mean, there's not that much difference between living in a monastery and living a daily life. I mean, you eat, you walk around, you sleep, you wear clothes, you know. But one of the big differences is everybody here is practicing. When you're with people who don't practice, much more difficult for this fundamental mind to surface into your day. So I think one of the reasons, just to answer such a simple question, that's why we get up so early, one reason is we get up early enough before the dawn. I think we also get up not because the sun gets up, but because we get up. The sun gets up, it's got its own reason for getting up, we have our own reason for getting up. And that sense is a feeling of independence, we're each independent, we're not ... each moment has its own independence. So we get up, before the sun comes up usually, ideally, and that in itself mixes dreaming mind and waking mind. You begin to feel an overlap between waking mind and dreaming mind, and you begin to use this posture, which I would call the wisdom posture, because we're not born with this posture.

[22:47]

You know, I mean, maybe a baby sits this way, etc. But the idea of sitting still for long periods of time, like you do here, and Satchin is an idea, it's a cultural idea, that we've decided to add to our basic posture. And unless you really understand it, it's very hard to add this posture to your life in a regular way. Because you go back to just walking, standing, lying, etc. So it takes some wisdom to add a wisdom posture to your repertoire of postures. And when you add this posture, I think that this fundamental mind, let's call it that for this evening, begins to surface in your body, surface in your awareness, and flows then into your day. And if you practice mindfulness during the day or can come back to your breathing, you can actually keep sustaining this flow. which keeps mixing these minds and generating what I would call a fourth mind, which we take, and it's not so unusual. I mean, I think sunbathing, most people have some experience of this fourth mind. You're out there worshipping the great sun god, Otanme, and you forget about time and space, and pretty soon your sun burns. But there's some of you feel the seagulls and children's voices, you know, like that.

[24:12]

And I think being in love is similar. I would say you could understand Buddhism as a way to be in love, but not tied to a person, not giving yourself over only to another person, but being in love is a capacity of human beings. Like non-dreaming deep sleep is a capacity of human beings, but it doesn't surface in our life usually. or awareness, the kind of awareness that wakes you up at six in the morning without an alarm clock. You weren't conscious that something woke you up. I would call that awareness instead of consciousness. Awareness, consciousness, being in love, sunbathing. These are accessible minds we all have, but we don't mature them, stabilize them, et cetera. I think you can think of mind through practice as different kinds of liquids with different philosophies and so forth. And through yogic practice, and one of the truisms of yogic practice is all mental phenomena has a physical component, and all sentient physical experience has a mental component. So every state of mind has a feelable physical component, so you can begin to find in your body every state of mind. And when you, as part of yogic practice, develop that refinement, then once you know that state of mind in your body,

[25:40]

you don't have to come upon it just by chance or by concentration, immediately you can generate that feeling and that state of mind appears. So another funny one that is, you know, which I would call, well let me say first, which you're asleep or no, you're awake. And I think it's quite useful to study the process of going to sleep and waking up and noticing when consciousness takes over and you can't go back to your dream. Or when, by using an item from the dream or feeling the mind which dreams and in which images float, but conscious thinking, conceptual thinking, comparative thinking does not, you can go back in and the dream reappears. like moving between two liquids. So to really study those two liquids is important in practice and Zen and so forth too. So let's imagine you're sound asleep. Oh no, you're awake, you're in bed and you're awake. You're aware of what's going on in the room. This often happens to people who do sashim. All night long you can be aware of the room but you're asleep. Oh no, another example of it

[27:07]

You're sound, you're awake, aware of the room, and you hear a strange noise. And after a while you realize someone is snoring. And then you realize it's you. Now this is very strange. I mean it's really quite interesting and strange. How can you be awake and not know it's you snoring? So, but I would say this is a mind which I would call non-subjective awareness. There's awareness that you can generate that fills a room, but isn't located in yourself. And when you have that kind of awareness, you hear the snoring as if it was outside or someplace else, and you notice the birds, there's a stream or whatever, and then you notice, well, what is that other sound? Oh, someone's snoring. Oh, it must be me, nobody else is in the room. So you can actually work with, and I think in the end if you want to study siddhis or charisma, you work with the minds we have and see what they're like when you mature them, when you stabilize them, generate them, stabilize them, integrate them, and mature them. So anyway, getting up early in the morning we get up

[28:34]

from our own power, and we are mixing, creating a situation where we're mixing waking and dreaming, and finding through this posture of clarity that you're not asleep, but there's some similarities, and then sometimes this fundamental mind also surfaces, and it's more likely to come into your day through sitting every morning as a habit, and then continuing your practice through mindfulness and paying attention to your breath. And in a place like this, the schedule, and everybody you practice with, and bowing when you see people, and so forth, all of it keeps allowing this fundamental mind surface in your life more and more, and integrate with your life. I think that's enough. Anyway, why I think we get up so early in the morning. If anybody would like to speak about, see if I could share, talk about something. Yes?

[30:03]

It's a hard question to answer because, one, I don't know the answer, but also because it's not something that's easy to answer. I mean, obviously things are given. We're born and we have a physical body and so forth. But I think it's a mistake to think it's uncovered, or as I said, even unblocked. Though there's truth to the fact that you're uncovering, I would rather say you notice the potentiality, and you then try to unblock that potentiality. I think uncover is the worst, because uncover leads you to think, oh, infants have this mind. I don't think infants have this mind. Infants have some kind of capacity

[31:05]

and awareness that they lose as they get older. Lose particularly when they begin to speak, what I notice in little kids, not when they begin to speak, because often when they begin to speak they tell you unusual things. But as soon as they begin to have a time frame for their speaking, the past, present, and future, they begin to share our world, and they're not so connected with its more primordial world. So I don't think it's something we, I don't think it's useful to think of as uncovering, because it leads to a lot of problems, and it doesn't help you practice, because then you practice to uncover. And I think it's, I mean, though there are pedagogical approaches in Zen practice which view original mind as something that's uncovered, but I think it's not a fruitful approach. Unblocking's a little better, but I think generating is better. You notice a state of mind, and then, as you said, through circumstances, but circumstances are kind of choice, this is circumstance. but you create circumstances which help you, and you also create intention, but you have to be very careful with intention. I think in Zen practice, and I think Zen assumes the evolution of consciousness, or awareness. I don't think most Buddhism really so precisely assumes the evolution of consciousness, but I think most other Buddhism gives you maps. They give you very good maps, but they assume you're going somewhere, and they know where you're going.

[32:33]

And so, Suzuki Roshi's saying, each of us has his or her own enlightenment. Assume the evolution of consciousness, or awareness. While some Buddhist schools would say, everyone's enlightenment is the same. So you want to be careful, you practice in a way that you don't put a map, in Zen practice, you don't put a map on it. You've got to be very careful with volition. I think willingness is better than will. You can bring intention in, but you have to work constantly with letting things happen on their own, but you still are generating it. So I think, in the end, you stabilize a mind, you notice, in Zazen, for instance, just ordinary Zazen mind, you stabilize it, and the process of stabilizing it then become the process of being able to generate it and integrate it with yourself and maturing it. That's how I would look at it, but thank you for your question. Yes?

[34:03]

Well I think, I see the Eightfold Path as a path and a progression, in which you first start out with the practice of taking inventory of what your views are, as well as you can. And that's not so easy to do, but you know, we can try. And then you notice the views you have, also through what you intend to do, and to really look at the intentions you have. What I think you find out, what I found out, etc., is you see that there's some views you have, actually, that keep popping up, that you really don't want to intend, you don't like. So that begins to give you a clue of what kind of views you have. And so you go through the Eightfold Path, and then you see what how your views and intentions appear in your speech and behavior and mindfulness and so forth. But once you ... the more you do this and develop a meditation practice, you can bring this back, circle around through the Eightfold Path again, and begin to study your views from the point of view of concentration, mindfulness, Samadhi, and so forth. And through that process you can begin to identify your views.

[35:35]

because your views ... your views are the main thing that block the development of the potentiality of mind and awareness. That's my experience. Yes? And, uh, you know, I'll approach everything with this sort of attitude, uh, I can read Joe again, and, and, and sometimes I think about thinking and not thinking, and immediately be like, well, I should be not thinking, and when I'm thinking, just, uh, you know, sort of get upset about that, or, look at some of these rockers who are sort of obsessed about, they must be perfect, and I'm, I can't be that way here. It's true. It's true.

[36:36]

But could you just speak maybe a little bit about longing, you have this affection and this really sort of quick reaction, this is good. Well that's good advice you were given just you know go back to your practice and notice that you're doing it. Well I think there's a couple things going on what you said. One is we have a sort of pendulum mind that swings between alternatives. Good, bad, like, dislike. And you want to try to work with that pendulum effect. Equanimity is to find a mind like the banks of a river

[37:38]

are quite shallow. So if it's good or bad, it's quite shallow, the water. So you can work with like-dislike and neutrality, but neutrality is actually equanimity, it's where the water is deep, where you aren't either, you're just looking, you're just seeing. So you can work with that, that's helpful. But in perfection I think, Prince of Dogon says, if you aim at a target, what, let me say a hundred times, you hit it, miss it 99, all 99 hit it, something like that. And Wittgenstein, somewhere in his journals, he said that his ability to develop and study logical thinking increased dramatically, improved dramatically, when he saw that he should try to live rightly. There was a revolution in his thinking that when he saw the effect of trying to live rightly, but he didn't say living rightly, he said trying to live rightly. So I think we have the intention to try to live rightly. Another way to look at it is, excuse me for speaking such length about these things, but

[39:04]

is a constant dialogue. In your Zazen posture, for instance, when you're sitting, there's a dialogue going on between the ideal posture and your posture. And that dialogue is essential to practice. But you always accept your posture. Finally, it's your posture you accept. But the dialogue is going on with the ideal posture. And your posture wouldn't make any sense unless there was this dialogue. You can carry the same understanding of this dialogue to this idea of maximal greatness. In other words, you can work with the idea of Buddha. You can say, well, I was mindful today and it wasn't bad, my mindfulness, but I know Buddha's mindfulness is a little better. Now that's an idea, but you can work with it to always be lifting your practice. You can work with an idea of maximal greatness, not to put yourself down, but to lift your practice. if you keep accepting what you're actually feeling. So I think if you practice going back to acceptance always, but feel the dialogue with the potentiality, then it's a very fruitful thing. So I think many of these things, it's not a bad thing, it's a matter of how you tune it. So if you tune this interest in perfection so that it lifts your practice, while you accept what's actually going on, then it's quite good.

[40:34]

Okay? That's enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yes? Thank you very much for talking about wanting to do a program with me. I've been thinking a lot about that. It's related, and it has to do with the cold, and I've been reading all the time, you know, that you have to live in Texas, Texas, Texas is cold, and I'm closing. And I wonder how they practice this. And I feel like I'm in that situation. I was in California. So I guess my question is around what, you know, why, how, you know, all about this fiscal limitation. Fiscal? Fiscal. Well, we can afford the electricity, right? Well, I remember one day in lecture with Nukiroshi back in the early 60s,

[41:58]

61, 62, sometime like that, when I first started with him. The students would, we had this upstairs room in Sokoji, and the students would, in the old building, and the students would sometimes go and open the window, and then it'd be too cold, and they'd go close the window, and I heard him mutter, because I happened to be sitting in the front, and I heard him mutter, why don't they adjust their body heat? And that's quite a different concept, but these robes are something about that. you don't cut yourself off at the waist, and you wear pretty much the same robe summer and winter. And they say you open the window in the summer and close the window in the winter. And you're not supposed to wear turtlenecks and things like that. And you're not supposed to wear down. There's a wonderful poem by, I forget now, about somebody who tried putting down in underneath, and his teacher said, uh-uh. Because what happens if you put down in, you can't adjust your body heat. Your body's warm here, but your hands are freezing cold. But you can't balance it. So we're used to living in controlled temperature environments. And it's hard to shift, I know. So partly, it's just that we're not used to it. When I lived at Tazahara, I mean, all the years, we didn't have any heat. And I was telling Norman that I would once a year light the stove in my room just for the heck of it.

[43:24]

But the rest of the year, and it got cold here sometimes. I mean, I think the coldest I remember was eight degrees. But it was often 14, 18, 22, and the Zenda wasn't heated. And after a while, I don't know if you remember it, you get so you like it. It's nice. I know when I'd go up there. You just feel healthy and good. Your body changes. And then if I had to go to the city, I would drive out, I'd get into the Carmel Valley, and where there's heat, and my body would tingle. trying to adjust to the warmth. So there is an adjustment. Now, if you have a place where there's some heat and not, and some cold, it's hard to shift it. And we have the same problem in Crestone to some extent. We have a tile slate floor, and we have heat in it. So even though it gets very cold at Crestone, we have to have some heat because it can get, I mean, I say this, it's not so serious, but it can get in the valley below us 40 below zero. And up where we are, it's warmer up a little higher. We're at 8,600 feet. It can be, oh, it's sometimes 20 below, but usually it's five below, five above in the winter. Oh, it's sometimes 20 below, but usually it's five below, five above in the winter. But that's only at night. We have about 340 days of sunshine a year. The most sunshine of any place in the United States except San Diego, I believe, high desert.

[44:53]

So it's sunny, but it is cold at night, so you have to have some heat in the zendo. So we keep the zendo at about 61, I think. And it's a little warm for winter robes, so I usually wear summer robes. But then you go outside, and it's quite a different cold. It's very hard to develop the ability to stand the cold. So how to quite do it, I don't know. There's no clear answer, but there is also a kind of warrior side to Zen, maybe a little too much, where you learn to find whether it's hot or hot, as cold as cold, and you don't think about it. But some people have this problem with their hands where they turn, like Lou Richmond used to have this problem. Yeah. Yeah. Now that's a special problem, and you have to do something like wear something on your hands or something. Okay, sorry to go on about that for long. Yes. Yes, please. Could you hear what he said? So I asked, because he's been talking so much about self and mind,

[46:19]

Okay. Over years, it's something I've given some thought to, naturally enough. I think that Zen is badly taught in the West often, and the worst way it's taught is to say you should stop your thinking. Don't think so much. Most of the time, you're not thinking. Now, another is this idea of no self. Now, let me try to explain why I said Zen is badly taught when it's taught that way. Because we are not constructed the way Asians are constructed. And we have a self that's connected to our personal story and our personal history. And we need to mature ourselves. I believe anyway, and that's what I've seen over the years, I've seen a lot of people use Zen practice to hide, to improve things enough they don't really have to face themselves, and so forth, and to not really mature themselves. They practice for 10 years and they haven't matured much. So I think it's essential for us to teach Zen and practice Zen in a way where we mature our psyche. There's no psyche in

[47:48]

idea of psyche in yogic culture, but we are constructed from birth with the idea of a psyche, in other words, a personal story that evolves over time. I think we can develop and mature our story and still practice then. Okay, so I'm trying to give a somewhat complex picture of what I mean by self. One aspect of self ... well, let me One of the functions of mind is that it can have structure. And because it can have structure, it can observe itself. So every mind that we can generate, and I think there are minds you can generate that no one's ever generated before. I think they're all known. At some point we're practicing, we're just using our practice to practice our life and discovering what we are. whether Buddhism or any Tang Dynasty arhat had ever understood this before or something. So what happens, I think, is we choose one of the possibilities of witnessing or observing, and we attach a story to it. Now, I think we do have to mature that, and in our culture that's reinforced with other people and so forth.

[49:20]

I think that the best way to look at self is to look at the functions of self, and not self as an entity. I think self as an entity is a wrong view, or a delusive view. But self as function, okay, so what are the functions of self? The functions of self are to establish separation. There's three main functions of self, as I see it. To establish separation, you're immune system is a function of self. It says what belongs to you and what belongs to somebody else or what belongs to the environment and so forth. So that's a kind of function of self. And you have to be able to know that this is my voice and not Norman's or not Vicky's or Marie Louise's or someone else's. If you get that confused you may need some attention in a hospital. So we need to sort out with Norman speaking, or I'm speaking, or hearing voices in your own head, and so forth, we've got to be able to sort that out. So, one of the functions of a self is to establish separation. Another function of a self is to establish connectedness, and our society and culture so predominantly emphasizes separateness, and the visual

[50:49]

comparative vijnana, that all the rest of the vijnanas, we don't mostly develop. And sound, in Suram Gama Sutra, it says, sound, the Avalokiteshvara says, sound is the best vehicle, best sense through which we can realize enlightenment. And sound doesn't have separation, and when you hear sound out in the stream, or you hear your own hearing more easily, it's hard for me to see my own seeing. But I can hear my own hearing and realize what I'm hearing is my hearing of the bird, but it's much harder to realize what I'm seeing is my seeing of you. And so one practice you can develop is the practice to develop to whenever you see anything, you remind yourself that you're seeing your own mind see. You really get in the habit that there's no more depression usually, things like that. So, in a yogic culture, there's more emphasis on connectedness. Now that can develop into, I think, political ideas of group mind and group culture, which is a negative side of it. But we can develop, I think what we should develop, is more of a sense of connectedness, and not just being polite, often connectedness for us to be polite and to be nice and so forth.

[52:29]

That's not real connective. It's not the connective that a mother has with a baby. Or it's not the connective you'd feel if you were lost in the woods for two days and suddenly on the path somebody is there. You'd light up a sentient being. But in the middle of the night if you hear a motorcycle in San Francisco you don't light, wake up, turn over in your bed and say, ah, sentient being. But we can light up with sentience. and we light up with sentience, the more we experience connectedness, as if you could see anybody the way you might see somebody when you're lost for two days. That would be more the experience of connectedness rather than separation. And the third function itself is continuity. How do you establish your continuity? And so if you're in trouble and you're kind of stressed out, you say, Well, I'm such and such a kind of person and I can survive." Well, that's a way of establishing continuity. If you want to practice with the functions of self, you can start noticing every chance you get, how you establish separation, how you establish connectedness. One basic thing, traditional practice, is whenever, say, I look at you, I notice that I'm establishing a sense of self and other.

[53:54]

So I take that as an idea and I dissolve the sense of self and other. That immediately starts establishing a feeling of connectedness. So it's, again, this dialogue, like in your posture, between the ideal posture and accepting. So, to go back to self, so I would say no self is an experience. You can have an experience of no self. Non-self, I would make a distinction. Non-self is a way of functioning without the usual idea of self, but it's a way of functioning. Non-self is a kind of self. So that's a lot to say about these things, but I think we can work with this, I think the entry into it, what I've seen is the entry into it is to start seeing these three functions of self and noticing when you do them. And by noticing the functions of self and not having an idea of an entity of self as a permanent observer or bigger and bigger witness, you can begin to free yourself from the functions of self, or change the functions of self. When you bring your continuity into your breath, body, and phenomena, you're basically, Sukhirishi would say, self then covers everything.

[55:19]

as was a phrase he used often, self covers everything. But self doesn't cover everything when it's identified with your thinking. But it tends to, when your sense of continuity is in breath, body, and phenomena, you begin to have a feeling of self, but it's a self that functions through. It's like the world starts to practice you. Yes? And sometimes I feel like, I don't want dogma for me to be this sort of psychoanalytical process of looking at myself. I really just wanted to try not to be anything. I'm adding more for my mind to play with, and I'm really trying to get out of the realm of the mind. So, in two-part positive practice, I think of it, in my practice right now, as just letting the mind be its thing. It has to play for me, I'm going to play, it has to come out, you don't have to meddle with it. You can just suggest, and I hear a lot of people suggesting techniques,

[56:46]

How long have you been practicing? Oh, it's pretty long. Yeah, I think the basic posture of Zen practice what I would call uncorrected mind. You don't correct your mind. Or you profoundly leave, I would say another way to put it, you profoundly leave yourself alone. And in the deepest sense, this is called great functioning. You begin to function without the usual sense of self or discrimination. But it's also the case that not correcting is a kind of correcting. So you kind of have to deal with, it's a subtle negotiation that you begin to learn to leave yourself alone, etc. But I think if you just practice leaving yourself alone, and it's very good to do for, I'm not picking this because you said five years, for about five years or so, it's quite important to, as much as possible, develop the skill to leave yourself alone. And I would also say part of that skill is what I'd call a non-interfering observing consciousness.

[58:14]

For instance, if you have some experience of Samadhi and then you notice you have an experience of Samadhi and it goes away, you don't have much yogic skill yet, what you've done is the observing it interferes with it. But once you become more skillful you can take a Samadhi and almost like in a computer you can put the cursor on it and move it somewhere else, or you can think about a mind which has not In other words, it's almost like you can hold a liquid in place and think about that liquid and not lose the samadhi. That's a meditation skill. I think at some point you start noticing, particular when you go into ordinary life, that well you still have your habits of separating yourself from people. Then you may need some skills. So my sense, and maybe I'm being a little too For the first years that I had to start teaching, I tried to teach in a more traditional way, which is, for example, a statement like, I honor my teacher because he didn't reveal the teaching to me. But my experience is, over the years, I'm practicing with a lot of people, is that most people aren't getting it. So what I've tried to do is

[59:43]

try to find a way to be more articulate about practice. And I would suggest, like, using a phrase like, not knowing is nearest, which is a straight phrase out of a koan. Number 20, I believe, D. Jung's 20, koan 20, I think, in Shoryu Roku, not knowing is nearest, is a phrase, a wisdom phrase, like also, just now is enough, the wisdom phrase. And I think in the ordinary activity, you want to put something into your thinking that counteracts the usual habits of thinking. But, although I do give, and you know, people ask me this question a lot that you're implying, or something like what you're asking, because sometimes in a single lecture, I might give, I don't know, 10 or 15 or 20 different things somebody might try. Okay, but what I think is I'm trying to, because mostly your people aren't doing, here you're, if I were, if I was, let's say I was doing a practice period at Crestone, like you're doing, and I'm just about to start one, and from January 10th to April 15th, I might say what I, I might take only one part of this lecture, and

[61:12]

evolve it for the whole practice period. But what I do in a situation like this is I just throw out a lot of things, and what I would hope would happen, if any of them are useful to you, you wait till your own body tells you they're useful. So in other words, mostly you practice uncorrected mind, and if something comes up or there's some reason, then you have one of the provisions. You know, there's a provision or a resource there. But basically, I think we practice acceptance and non-correction, and in your daily life, a phrase like, not knowing is nearest. But then, there's other things. Maybe we've talked enough. Anything else? I don't know. I have no place to go till tomorrow afternoon. Yes? Good. Well, it's... I think you want something more specific, right? It's... On the one hand, it's extremely familiar to me. And not much has changed, actually. Improved the buildings and things, but basically very, very similar.

[62:43]

I mean I was here pretty much, except for the four years I was in Japan, half of every year, or at least half of every year here, from 1966 or 67 until 1983. So that's a big percentage of my life to be here, and so it's very familiar to me. But my experience of being here is I feel like I might be visiting a temple, somebody the stronger feeling I have is I'm visiting somebody else's temple, and so it's rather nice to be here and see what's going on. I learn you do the service a little differently and do your orioke a little differently. One of the biggest differences, you enter from the front of the... you enter facing the altar. And in every monastery I've ever seen, you enter behind the altar, as we used to here. Yeah, that's unusual to do it. When he was at it for a year, that was one of the first things he did to make the Buddha faith sufficient. Yeah, but you could still enter from the other side. Like at a heiji, you enter behind, you only enter the front when you're doing a service. But what Kagirishi was doing was going by

[64:10]

Japanese feng shui instead of Tibetan or other, because Japanese feng shui is always stuck with north-south. And like Tibetan feng shui goes by the mountain or something like that. So when I decided to put the altar the other way, I decided on the basis of this mountain. And at Crestone it was quite a difficult decision. We doused the land, I went with the mountains, and at Crestone I decided on north-south. But it was a decision I did by dousing and other methods to decide which way it should be. But, anyway. Could be, all right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway. But aside from where the altar is, the custom is, for zazen and service, everybody except the person leading the service, enters from the behind. And you come in behind, and then you just go around. It's not necessary, it's fine. But if you're doing a nenjo ceremony, for instance, which I told you is a joke from when I was here.

[65:37]

What has a hundred and twenty legs and flies? Some are Nenju. We all used to stand at the back and everybody was covered with flies and sweating. But anyway, on Nenju you come in from facing the altar. But for Zazen and things like that you come in. But anyway, there's some small differences like that. But basically it feels very similar. But the predominant feeling I have is I'm visiting somebody's temple and it's quite nice to be here. Okay, yeah, and you had something? Yeah, I wonder, you're talking about generating Floyd's mind, and I wonder what that's useful for and what the ultimate concern is and the kind of practice you're talking about. Well, when you do Zazen, you're already doing it.

[66:38]

In other words, if you do zazen, it's not exactly like waking mind, and so it's not already one of the three given minds. And you'll find, if you do zazen and you get, so you can really sit still and be open and let whatever happens, happen, you find, for a while, a lot of dream stuff comes up, and other things. In fact, I think one, going back I think, although I do not think there's such a thing as Buddhist psychology, and I think it's a mistake to say so, because it makes people think they can solve their psychological problems with Buddhism, which is often not the case. I mean, it can be the case, but Buddhism can't do everything. So, I think it's much better to see that Buddhism is a mindology, and not a psychology. And when you see that Buddhism is a mindology, in my opinion, see it's about how the mind functions then you can bring that together with psychology very well and it's a very healthy relationship I think between a mindology and a psychology. And then when you see that you can look and say yes there are many aspects of Buddhist practice which are actually psychological techniques and you can develop those practices as psychological techniques. And one I'm saying right now is

[68:01]

when you sit, and for the first some years even, a lot of psychological stories, stuff comes up, stuff you didn't remember, your whole alaya-vijnana is beginning to function differently, because the alaya-vijnana is not just connected anymore to a conceptual process, it's connected now to, and it begins to draw on memory resources through the immediacy of the present. And so you're really changing the way you function. So, in fact, you're developing a second, a fourth, I'm calling it a fourth mind, but it may be an underlying, you can understand it as an underlying mind, or a mind that generates it, but I don't think we want to think of it as something that's already there, as I've already said. It's something we generate. Everything is conditioned, but original mind and this generated mind come close to what we could call an unconditioned mind. But for instance, it's like understanding emptiness as some kind of absolute out there, independent of form. Form and emptiness are one thing. Through form we know emptiness, and so forth. So, how is this helping us to know ourselves? Yes, you're just studying yourself. You're developing the skills to study yourself.

[69:32]

to observe yourself. First you have to develop the skill to observe yourself. And you know, maybe I'll finish with saying this, Sukharshi talked a lot about the granting way and the grasping or gathering in way, and this is equated with Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara. That gathering in way is like when you do Zazen, you gather in and you make less and less distinctions, and less and less distinctions to move toward unconditioned mind. And that's identified with wisdom in Manjushri. And to go outward, granting way, so the Sukhya should just say, you're not Buddha, you're not Buddha, you're not Buddha, that's the gathering in way. No distinction. Say, you're Buddha, you're Buddha, you're Buddha, this is the granting way. and one's connected with Avalokiteshvara, and one's connected with Manjushri. And I think this is very fundamental, because actually we're always moving. There's always things happening. Everything is changing. So all the changes, as your practice matures, begin to come into these two movements, an inward movement and an outward movement. And now Samantabhadra is the third Bodhisattva. You could equate

[71:02]

And sometimes Samantabhadra is said to be that Bodhisattva who enters without taking a step. So then we have a third. We have this outgoing mind, inward turning mind, and that's a movement, you can feel it. When you learn to do Zazen and practice mindfulness, you can begin to feel this inward turning mind. And if you make decisions, for instance, say you have to make a big decision. Once you get a good zazen, you better bring that decision into zazen, because you may very likely make a different decision in zazen, because it's not waking mind, it's a different kind of mind. And so I would say the Genjo Koan means, the phrase Genjo Koan means, to complete what appears, understanding that the particular is universal. So Dogon, in a way, summed up his whole teaching, much of his teaching, in this simple phrase, Kenjo Koen. But that's a practice. Whatever appears, you accept whatever appears, and you complete it. And that's already an interesting feeling. How do you complete what appears? What does it mean to complete what appears? And to complete what appears, understanding that every particular has an all-at-once universality.

[72:26]

But you can just take this phrase, Gendokon, and it can be your practice. And so each moment, I'm looking at you folks, right? Seeing my own mind. Not too bad. I'm quite used to my own mind. And it's taking interesting forms, looking at you. And I can pull that in. And as I pull it in, all the memory resources, et cetera, association, because I can't see anything unless there's association. I wouldn't know your shirt is tomato colored or you have a, you know, down-jacked vest on, or something, unless I had associate thinking. So associations come in, form, and then are expressed, or become. So there's a kind of, and that's a kind of dharma. There's a coming in, and a opening out. There's an in-returning and an out-returning. And that's a practice which Dogen is talking about by saying, genjokon, to complete what appears, knowing each particular is also universal. It's nice to talk with you. It's nice to talk with so many people who are practicing so deeply and thoroughly. Thank you for letting me be here. Yes?

[74:00]

No, thanks. It's much better to react to this actual four elements here than to think... Yeah, thanks, yeah. Your four elements aren't so bad either. Anyway, thank you very much, and thank you, Norman, for making this possible.

[74:25]

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