Mike Boss had to leave us because his father had a stroke, technically. It looks like his father may deteriorate quickly, the hospital said, so he went back to see him. His father is 76, is that right? Seems young to me. I've just about finished Oksana's. I think two or three more people to see and four and then I can start I can just see anybody who wants to come if anybody wants to come a second time Maybe we need to do two sashins in a row one where you just sit by yourself and one where I do doksan for seven days

[01:15]

Now yesterday I stepped out of Sesshin Maid a little bit in order to speak about Sangha and Dharma friends. And the importance of a Buddhist way of life and Dharma friends in developing the practice. And how really the next step in Europe, now that teachers do come here, is up to you guys to take the next step in making practice develop here. And that's true in general, not just you, just in Europe in general, as I see the situation in Europe. But I must say I'm impressed with how many of you, one, are able to practice alone, or able to practice with a number of teachers, or a mixture of teachers, Buddhist, Sufi, Hindu, Christian,

[02:44]

And somehow you make it all work. Maybe America is called the melting pot, but maybe Europe is the spiritual melting pot. So anyway, I'm quite impressed with how well you do. Okay. All right, now I started all of this session talking about nest building and camping out on your meter square. And accepting and the practice of accepting accepting and reconciliation with the world In the sense that you can't really change your world out there.

[04:21]

You can make things better or worse, but you can't really resolve your world except by bringing your world into you. Man kann also Dinge verbessern oder verschlechtern, aber man kann wirklich die Welt sozusagen nicht lösen für sich, es sei denn, man bringt die Dinge in sich. And resolving it within you, within your own experience. Sorry, that's not easy to do. Usually we have the idea, but then we try to fix it outside. Me too. I do. And then you fix it outside and it doesn't get very fixed and you're hurt more. I don't mean the world can't be affected and fixed outside but basically you have to reconcile with your world within your own experience. Wow!

[05:30]

I couldn't have done that. And that brought us to how do you see your own experience? And then we talked about, you know, you can actually see the emperor or the kaiserette, no, it's not kaiserette, it's the kaiserine in the marketplace disguised. In America, Kaiser is a car.

[06:30]

Now, it no longer is made, but it was a car. To see the Buddha or the Kaiser in the marketplace requires being able to see in an instant. Okay, so this instant point awareness, we could call it. Okay. So this is partly why I said that Buddhism is not verifiable. because from generic awareness generic in other words an awareness that sees in generalities generic you mean generated no generic like like in Albuquerque Albuquerque is a generic American city

[07:36]

Surya's road is generic. It's a typical genus, G-E-N-U-S, maybe? Genus? How do you translate that? So ursprünglich für Albuquerque stimmt auch nicht. Typical of the species, or genus, I don't know. Typisch, ja. Um, I didn't realize that word would cause problems. Generic mind sees in generalities and generalizations. And from generic mind you can't understand the world that's seen through instant point awareness.

[08:40]

It's a different kind of perception. In which interior, exterior boundaries are different. in which actually space and time, you don't have categories of space and time. You have moments of instant point awareness which include space and time, they're not separated out. And time and space have a topography. They're not a big kind of clock wandering in space somewhere. So that when you, as I have often said, when you sit zazen and it feels like a few minutes or it feels like an hour, what it feels like is what it is, not what the clock says.

[09:54]

This discussion of how we see and of how we see brought us, how we see our own experience brought us to the practice of one-pointedness. Since we talked about so many things, I'm trying to make it a little clearer today. Now one-pointedness I spoke about and talked about at such length because it's actually both a very fundamental and basic practice in Zen Buddhism.

[11:01]

It's the fifth of the six paramitas. And the eighth of the Eightfold Path. So it's a culmination of Buddha's early teaching of the Eightfold Path. Effort, mindfulness, concentration, following right livelihoods, speech conduct and so forth. And this concentration is most aptly described by one-pointedness. But Zen emphasizes concentration as a field much more than one-pointedness.

[12:09]

Okay, are you all more or less with me at this point? Okay, so we get ourselves to field consciousness or field concentration. So in Zen, one-pointedness does not become the main form of concentration or the goal of concentration, but a technique or tool of concentration. So one-pointedness is confusing because one, as I said, it's fundamental and at the same time confusing.

[13:18]

Confusing because it tends to imply and is easily understood as meaning one-pointedness which excludes all other points. as a technique to produce samadhi, the most narrow definition of samadhi, as a technique of purification. to get rid of the thoughts you don't like. Maybe make more room for the thoughts you like. But Zen feels that doesn't work very well. In fact, this whole emphasis on the moon Well, let's let me run through the moon bit, okay?

[14:32]

Shandao is asked, what? When the moon is full, where does the crescent go? Now you understand this is a discussion about is everyone enlightened or not. Okay. When the moon is full, where does the crescent go? And Shandao says, when you see the crescent, the fullness of the moon is concealed. And when you see the full moon, the crescent disappears.

[15:33]

And Yunyan says, as in our lineage, in fact you chanted him this morning, Hi, Yunyan. How are you? He said, when you see the crescent, you can feel the fullness. And when you see the full moon, the crescent is there. And then Dawu, his Dharma brother and actual brother too, said, when you see the crescent, it's not the crescent. And when you see the full moon, it's not full. Now these are all actually practices and schools of Buddhism.

[16:38]

And none are to be neglected. And they're also in our lineage again. Dungshan's five ranks are really based on this way of thinking. And the five ranks are often presented in Rinzai as the teaching after the koan teaching. Now there's another possibility here which is in this kind of teaching is what's called, oh, what about the double moon or the second moon? It's like, that's based, I mean, one place this term, double moon, turns up is yin yang and dao wu, or sweeping, one of them is sweeping.

[17:39]

And the other one comes by and says, boy, you're busy. You should know there is one who is not busy. And so his brother says, oh, double moon. And so his brother says, oh, double moon. And his brother holds up the broom and says, is this a double moon? So, I'll leave you that. Go on. So, double moon means technically in Buddhist language Is there a fixed reality behind this reality? Is there a fixed moon somewhere that isn't the moon that is in phases?

[19:03]

Is there space and time that this universe happens within? Someone said, the universe is... a mask of the universe we put on the unknown universe. Okay. Okay. Okay, so basic, these are all Zen masters talking here and this Yunyan and Shandao and Dao. And what they're saying is that don't aim just at the full moon.

[20:05]

And an example of Buddhist psychology in this koan is one person says to aim at the full moon is to think you can turn your body back to your parents. So to be thinking in terms of the full moon or some perfect enlightenment is like wanting to go back into the womb again, they mean. So in this understanding the phases of the moon are the full moon. And this is the tantric side of Zen. So you're not trying to purify yourself of the phases of the moon. So you're not using one-pointedness to get rid of bad thoughts or something like that.

[21:29]

They're all phases of the moon. But how do you practice Buddhism if you feel shitty all the time? Technical Buddhist terms. Or you just... You have compulsive negative thoughts or something. I've had the problem myself So how do you get out of this? Now, one-pointedness sounds good but the Zen masters say uncorrected state of mind, oh shit Do you have any idea, Roshi, what my uncorrected state of mind is like?

[22:40]

I don't care, uncorrected state of mind So how do you practice? Mount Sunera. Oh yeah, you don't have to translate that. The vow to realize Buddhahood with each person you meet. The vow to realize whole being with each person you meet. How are you going to do that? This is to form your life through a single thought. How do you practice this? Part of it is one pointedness.

[23:47]

You hold this practice in place with one pointedness. Just like you can hold, some of you hold your hands, you can hold your hands just there for an hour. Or you can allow your body, without even holding it, you can allow your body to be still and the stillness holds itself. So you can hold the presence of this feeling of each person I meet is me. And the basic practice of the paramitas, generosity, is to keep giving this feeling to each person you meet.

[24:50]

It means also to see the best side of each person you meet. That doesn't mean not to see the worst side of people you meet. You also see the worst side. You don't use that as an excuse to point out the worst side all the time to everybody. That's called gossip or putting others down to put yourself up. But you see the worst side but you act on the best side. You give them the benefit of the doubt. You make a teacher a teacher by treating him or her like a teacher. You make a person a Buddha by treating him or her like a Buddha.

[26:02]

And you make yourself a Buddha by being able to treat someone else like a Buddha. Again, it doesn't mean you're blind to the world. It just means you've made this kind of decision, this vow to treat each person as much as you can like a Buddha. It means you try to see each person that you meet as a brother or sister or father, mother or friend or lover. Sometimes we practice with three people. And sometimes we practice with three people. You imagine in your zazen that your absolute worst enemy is sitting beside you. You're the most boring, dull person you can imagine.

[27:14]

Whenever they're around you, you can feel your skin peeling off when they're just around you. Then you also imagine the most delicious friend you know who you can hardly keep your hands off, who you want to have dinner with every night. And then you imagine a stranger And you try to see what the difference in feeling is. And so you can find the territory where you can feel equanimity and equal with each.

[28:16]

You keep bringing that feeling in or some version of that feeling into your practice with people. Into each encounter. And you don't reject your negative thoughts. You just see them in balance in a picture with this other effort. And it's really thought in Buddhism that the practice of friendliness and of joy is the alchemy that makes practice work. If you can't fertilize yourself with friendliness and joy you're always going to be tied up inside.

[29:17]

Now the practice of seeing the world as emptiness or seeing the world non-conceptually Because in a changing world, concepts don't hold the world. So technically, to see non-conceptually means suchness. So you see the suchness of everything. And the biggest word from Buddha means suchness, the Tathagata. So the Buddha exists in this in-betweenness. So you can't see the Buddha in another person or the whole being in another person unless you can see suchness.

[30:22]

Unless you can see non-conceptual. And this ability to see is also the profound form of generosity. To give this feeling to each person you meet, to be able to see non-conceptually, to see suchness. The second parameter is to see form, to give form. One is to see emptiness and the other is to give form. And this also is a bath of purification. To see emptiness, to see non-conceptually, to see suchness is a bath of purification. You're in a sense bathing in the phenomenal world as empty.

[31:25]

And you may feel that sometimes in sashing when you feel transparent as if everything is passing through you. Or as if you feel as everything's touching you and nothing's hurting you. Okay, these are methods of purification in Zen. Not one-pointedness which gets rid of thoughts. I over-made that point, didn't I? Okay. It's not so good to be sick in that room because the whole sender can hear you coughing.

[32:46]

Yeah. Do you suppose anybody listening to the tape will get sick? I wanted during this seminar, during this session, to talk about bubbles. I don't know if I'll have the opportunity, but I may try. It's a little far out, but it's friendly. But I know it's a feeling some of you already have. As I said last night, I really can see your bodies know a whole lot. But, what's the word in philosophy?

[33:49]

To unpack. But you haven't unpacked what your body knows yet. And it takes certain experiences in your life and certain understandings that are on the intellectual side sometimes to unpack what your body knows. To give yourself permission to know certain things. I mean, most of us in Dharma City, the wall hasn't come down yet. Or you've got the names of the streets wrong. So, right now we're on One Pointedness Strasse. Okay, let me go back to that. What do I mean when I say one-pointedness is a tool?

[35:01]

When you're practicing and you're in the midst of a flood of psychic events, or much sorrow or various kinds of disturbances, As I say, sometimes many things float in the sticky stuff of time around you. You can sit like Mount Samaria or hold yourself. This is one-pointedness. That means if you're going to not invite any thoughts to tea, but not exclude anybody from coming to tea, in the midst of that, that's one-pointedness. Now, Many times in zazen, or in your life, you may have lots of psychic events or information that doesn't fit consensual reality.

[36:30]

And you've got to have a way to hold your world in place. This is one-pointedness. In Buddhism, it says, Buddhism is based on the idea that everything changes. That's clear, right? But what is the name for Buddhism? Generally, Buddhists don't call Buddhism Buddhism. What do they call it? They call it the Dharma. What does the word Dharma mean? To hold. To hold, to uphold, even is the word throne or firmament. Firmament is what holds the stars in place. Space holds the stars in place.

[37:47]

Okay, so how do you enthrone each moment would be Dharma practice. Okay. Okay. Now, essential to this also, because once I start down one street of Dharma City, I have to talk about several other streets. Now, I'm trying to keep ourselves in one district of the city.

[38:50]

But one thing that characterizes streets of the city is each street leads into every other street. And even cul-de-sacs or dead ends, you can back out of and go down another street. Now dead ends are an important part of practice. The teacher does not want to prevent you from going down all dead ends. But the teacher does want to prevent you from going down only dead ends. Okay. So one idea that's important here is The sense of identity as location. Someone asked me in Doksan, is there an agent that does the practice?

[40:07]

Who decides about one-pointedness? Who does the practice? Who answers when your name is called? Actually, it's not always the same person. First of all, it's a very powerful idea to even conceive of a location It's equally or more powerful to identify that location and it's powerful also to be able to move that location. Now this is an elusive idea so I don't know how well I can explain it. And I tried to touch on it in earlier teishos.

[41:32]

See, I follow instructions very well. Let me say, a simple way to start talking about it is, where do most people think their feet are? Most people think their feet are down there But down there in relation to what? If you think your feet are down there it means you have a sense of location somewhere above your feet But can any of you tell me where that location is above your feet? Now most people one of the most common places is your face and we talked about that already and moving your sense of location into your chest not really into your heart but into your heart chakra into the middle of your chest and the heart chakra isn't just something that's there

[43:07]

Waiting to be opened. And you don't have the key. You also have to make the heart chakra in order to open it. So the practice of the subtle body is a body that arises through the power you accumulate in your practice. Okay. Now, you have whatever experiences you have in Sashin, not only because Sashin forces you into it, Or because it's possible to see things differently with a certain amount of clarity. But because the power you accumulate in Sashin allows you to see differently.

[44:16]

And you accumulate power by doing something like sitting through pain. Or sitting still in the middle of change. Or holding Dharma practice, holding in the midst of change. Now, what's going to happen when you leave Sashin, as I said the other night, is you'll lose most of the power you've accumulated in Sashin. And Sashin mind will disperse. Now, I said that the practice of Sashin is, technically, the word means to gather the mind. And what we've basically talked about in the Sashin is gathering the mind, turning it into a point or a jewel.

[45:29]

And that's the jewel that's often in the hands of the Buddha statues. And then being able to move that jewel around And that's one-pointedness too. Now, if you don't have the energy and power, you can't gather the mind or turn it into a jewel or do anything. How do you gather the mind? Through concentration. What's the primary form of concentration not the simple form of concentration? Mindfulness practice. So if you can practice mindfulness or breathfulness practice in your daily life you can begin to keep the fact of and the taste of the power you accumulated in session.

[46:41]

So I would advise you to find out ways to practice mindfulness in your daily activity. Because we could say to begin to bring your breath body alive in your daily life and a breath body that's continuous through all aspects of your life not turned off in some and turned on in others And the more it's turned on and present in all your activities, in deepened awareness open to whatever happens but stable you accumulate power when your energy body becomes to be alive which becomes more definitive than your physical body

[48:12]

And this is Zen Buddhist yogic tantric practice. Maybe I'm almost done. You want to go to midnight or something. 5.04. To stay within a koan practice. to stay with the whole atmosphere of a koan in each activity, to stay within a mantra or within chanting to hold the chanting, and bring your energy to the chanting, the

[49:21]

But the hose that brings your energy to the chanting, that hose is one-pointedness. Now, the combination of the practices of one-pointedness and following thoughts to their source the basic practice of following thoughts to their source and thoughts in this sense means feelings, moods, everything any mental formations so these practices Following the combination of these two practices allows instant point awareness and instant point awareness is basic dharma practice.

[50:43]

To see each moment in its entity. And this is also called maybe seed awareness. It means to be able to see each situation in its detailed interactions See the point at which it's held together. The self-organizing point of each situation. And be able to join yourself to that point. That's Dharma practice. That's instant point awareness. or seed awareness, where the seed or center of the mandala includes the whole mandala.

[51:48]

Now, to see in this kind of detail is a different mind than generic mind. When you see in generalities, you can't see the details which tie things together in mandala-like patterns. So sashin mind is a mind where you begin through the gathering of your mind And the energy of your mind, you begin to see the details of life, not the generalities. And you begin to be able to let those details into you. Like I said, letting the ox tail into you. You can begin to accept the world at an acceptable level.

[53:03]

Feeling the pace of the world. Feeling the world at an acceptable and tangible level. where you don't feel alienated and you can begin to resolve the world within your own experience. Yeah. you may have a particular sense of location. And you can move that sense of location into a particular situation. Now your eyes don't entirely belong to this world. That's why we look into people's eyes. When your eyes are full of thoughts and concepts, they belong to this world.

[54:19]

But sometimes in Zazen and Sashin particularly you'll see that your eyes stop belonging to this world. They start seeing things you hadn't imagined. One way to practice with this is practices I've given you in the past of direct perception. but a simple thing I can suggest to you now if you can move your sense of location into your ears so you can completely focus on a sound say birds or something like that And then look at something without thoughts.

[55:24]

But keep your sense of location or your sense of location of mind on the sound. Such little things allow you to begin to feel an awareness that isn't based on thoughts. You can in this way begin to feel intent in your life which is deeper than thoughts and feelings. Your innermost... Sukhriya used to talk about your innermost request. And this Oman is produce a single thought. that covers the world.

[56:38]

So this is the vow to realize whole being with each person you meet. But it's also to discover first your own innermost request not necessarily this vow. And then you can begin discovering your own inner intent, you can begin to deepen that intent. Now, when you can move that sense of location to this deeper intent, And then to cover everything without boundaries, we could say that's really the experience of selflessness or non-self.

[57:47]

So we can say there's no self in a sense. And in a sense that you can now move this location so there's no particular self. Now, this is one of the mysteries of our life. There's no permanent self. But there is a sense of self or agent or location that can be in various places. that can organize your existence, that can free your existence, and that can cover everything. I remember standing on the Tassara Bridge once to me. Once, Sukhiroshi said to me, he brought up a koan in

[58:49]

in a lecture and I met him at the bridge afterwards or maybe I was his shisha carrying the incense for him and standing on this bridge with a stream running underneath it I said to him is the meaning of that koan such and such? He looked at me and said, self covers everything. What did I say? It covers everything. Are we having a discussion about translation here?

[59:59]

What? Deck Dallas up. Deck Dallas up. It could be a new mantra, deck Dallas up. Deck Dallas up, deck Dallas up. Deck Dallas up. I like it. I like it. Well, don't you think that's enough for today and for this session and so forth? It's funny when I give lectures like this or do a session. I always think this is the best stuff I've ever talked about Then I think it's absolutely essential that everyone knows this Can't practice Buddhism without knowing these things And then a week later I can't remember what I said People say to me, that last sashin, well, I don't remember.

[61:18]

But this sashin, I say, oh, this is really good. What was the bubbles? Oh, the bubbles. Okay, I'll give a quick riff on that. In a sense, when you stop having one location that organizes everything, when you stop, like we Westerners do, organizing everything through the cognitive skandha, So we're always trying to put everything, dreams, everything through the cognitive skandha. And other cultures put it through another skandha, but most cultures have one territory they organize their lives through. When you release that through the subtlety of understanding something like know feelings through feelings or know the body through the body

[62:36]

the form skandha knows the form skandha without subject-object distinction when you begin to know in that way and so the sense of location is multiple then your experience from the feeling skandha is one bubble with an event horizon like in physics and from the form skanda is another bubble and secondary processes in psychology are another bubble and your primary process in the consensual world is another bubble Now mostly we tend to, out of the habit of a single self, look at one bubble and ignore the others and try to understand all the bubbles through the one bubble.

[64:10]

But when you start to practice and you do sushis and so forth you begin to find these various bubbles around you And each bubble has its own karma And there's feeling karma that can't get into the cognitive karma skandha. And there's dream consciousness and imaginal consciousness which some can get into the other bubbles but most of it sits in its own bubble. Now when you begin to have this kind of experience one very healthy thing to do is figure out which bubble most people share.

[65:18]

The consensual reality. Really be able to hold that one and know the taste of that one. Then you can go back to that one. That's one reason we sit 40 minute periods. Or 30 minute periods. Because even if you could sit 8 hours at a stretch unless you're extremely adept you shouldn't. Because the habit of sitting 40 minutes should always bring you back into the consensual bubble. So now in Sashin we try to stay sort of in several bubbles and let Kinyin not get us entirely out of it, but we still develop a rhythm going in and out of this consensual bubble.

[66:26]

Now, am I making sense or does it sound like I should be in the local hospital? I'll assume I'm making sense because I don't have any other choice. Okay, so now you can also, these bubbles are kind of, these bubbles are balloons, they're like balloons too. You've got the strings and you let go of them. But what happens when you can begin, again, one-pointedness, begin to stay with each bubble? You begin to see relationships between them. As Gerald and I spoke of the other day at Crestone, if you can stay aware during dreaming, You can see not only how you have memories stored in your body,

[67:44]

And appear in dreams. But you can see how your body can shape the bubble of a dream. So you can move your shoulder, say, and a whole lot of stuff will spin right out of your shoulder. So in this way the dream body bubble and the form body bubble of your physical body have an interrelationship but they're different languages. When you can bring those together in a common awareness called the Dharmakaya that's really called enlightenment. But that's not such a big deal as I'm making it. If you just visualize something and hear something and then bring those two things together you begin to create the territory where you can move among these bubbles, which now you perceive separately and interrelated.

[69:14]

And I think what you've experienced in Sashin is you start out with this consensual reality that you filled out forms and applied to the house distiller and did things that people are supposed to do, And then you found that several more people came to Sashin and sitting on your cushion than actually filled out the application. So different bubbles appeared. And you're finding through one-pointedness and the practice of following thoughts to their source Mount Sumer knowing the pace of things allowing everything allowing uncorrected state of mind

[70:21]

You're beginning to bring these things together. First to recognize them and then to bring them together in a larger sense of self until finally self covers everything. I'm sorry, that was a little too much, but you could use it. Thank you very much.

[71:04]

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