One practical reason I'd like to be here after Sashin is that I would like to get some feedback on how this schedule felt to you. At least on the third day, there seemed to be no walking dead. And usually, there's a, oh, you're a walking dead? Oh, okay. We'll put you on the zombie list. But usually people look, half the Sashin looks like they're on the casualty list. This time, not so many people. I would say in difficulty, the usual Sashin we do is a seven, and this is a five or six. I don't think Sashin's at difficulty ten, which is staying up all night every night, things like that, is necessary. At least it's exceptional, I think.

[01:03]

But as you know, I'm trying to find a schedule that works for non-monastics and people who are not in a practice period. And yet still has the likelihood of giving you an opportunity to get out of daily life consciousness and to, as I was speaking yesterday, establish a continuity of awareness. Today I'd like to speak about way-seeking mind, what Sukhyoshi always called way-seeking mind, because I, again, am trying to feel out what makes this practice work for people. Sometimes I think, well, it just takes years. But then I immediately recognize it can take months.

[02:10]

What do I mean by it can take? It implies there's some resolution. Yes, there's a point at which you actually enter the water. You're no longer in the surface. You're no longer in the wave where you've had such a drowning experience drenching or a vivid taste of the water that you'll never be wholly cut by the wave again and you'll begin to live on the surface with an ability to go back and forth between the water and the wave. Maybe it takes a long time and the person who does it in who gets this taste or this experience or this realization or whatever, maybe they take the same length of time, they just condense time by the way in which they concentrate.

[03:20]

And it's funny, it's a concentration that's actually a kind of relaxation that you don't really care But yet you care. And the kind of person that's, I would say that in our society, the kind of person who in traditional yogic societies would be yogis are, in our society, scientists probably. Scientists and maybe psychologists. Scientists are more on the side of trying to find out something called reality. Psychologists are more on the side of trying to end suffering. These are the two main kinds of persons who are attracted to Buddhism, plus the spiritual person.

[04:24]

I would say a psychologist is someone who listens to the soul, A spiritual person is someone who listens under the surface of things to spirit, or something in Western languages we call that. The Visuddhimagga starts with a really basic question for all Buddhists, and it's great. This, it says, this inner tangle, this outer tangle, this whole generation is entangled in a tangle. That's true right now. We've got the whole planet entangled in our personal precariousness and jeopardizing the planet. So, this inner tango, this outer tango, this whole generation is in a tango.

[05:34]

It's entangled in a tango, it says. Who can untangle this tango? What is a tango? It's a kind of dance. No, that's a tango. A tango is... This is a tango. Everything's tangled up. Everything's mixed up, tangled up. A knot? Yeah, like a... But a knot has some... A knot that was a tango wouldn't hold. Do you know the word? Anybody know the German word for tango? It takes more than two to tango. All right? What? She said, divorced him. Divorced him. All right. Christian, do you know the word? Yeah. Okay. I like it.

[06:38]

It takes more than two to tangle. Anyway. So, now do I have to start all over again? This inner tangle. This outer tangle. Our whole generation is entangled in a tangle. Who can untangle this tangle? And the Buddha answers, the person established in virtue who develops consciousness and understanding can untangle this tangle. succeeds in untangling this tangle. But the sense of it here is the person who actually sees and feels at such a depth how they are personally entangled and we all are and that there's no other project.

[07:46]

There's nothing else to do. Anything else to do is by comparison frivolous. Or perhaps necessary, but necessary from this point of view if it's part of untangling our inner and outer tangle. Another way to express this seed of way-seeking mind is the sense of mystery that surrounds us and is us and the willingness and the belief or feeling that this mystery can be plumbed or penetrated. In this koan I've been talking about the sound and form of raindrops, it talks about the reed shade.

[08:51]

The reed shade is what you use, a fisherman would use, to hold, to get a shadow so you can see down into the depths of a stream. So it talks about the probing pole and the reed shade. And the reed shade means to look into the depths of yourself. and another person and our phenomenal world. And it says in his koan, he does not spare the use of his eyebrows. I think I'm going to use a quote from the beginning of my book. The eyes and the ears, something. What do the eyebrows know? Something like that I forget right now. But the use of the eyebrows, he does not spare the use of the eyebrows, means the Sambhogakaya body, the subtle body.

[09:55]

It isn't expressed in an interpretive mode, like language. In other words, how do you exist or get out of our interpretive world? I think that's a better term than our rational world. Because the non-interpretive mind can be rational. It's not irrational. It's just non-interpretive. It doesn't interpret. Sometimes we can interpret. In other words, you don't have one mind that sometimes interprets and sometimes doesn't interpret. You have an interpretive mind which does one thing. But the interpretive mind can't be non-interpretive. another kind of mind arises that's non-interpretive. And when interpretive mind arises, it replaces non-interpretive mind. I'm telling you these things, you know, as usual, I don't know.

[10:57]

I think, I hope, because they'll answer questions you're not asking yet. Because my weakness as a teacher I don't want to list them all. Just list one. My weakness as a teacher is that I make practice sound too difficult or too intelligent or too something. It requires some kind of exceptional, demanding, you know, but you know, maybe you see me as the abbot, you know, and I don't appear all the time and I wear these robes and all, but I'm a pretty funky guy and I've, you know, and I, practice is something we stumble along in and I don't want to give the impression that it's, that it's anything but a kind of stumbling.

[12:02]

but a stumbling with a very deep intention behind it. That's the difference. And that deep intention in your stumbling actually will make you vivid and clear and intelligent too. Because we're not just talking about the kind of brain power you have, but rather the energy in your system and the intention in that system which we are. And the kind of questions you ask. And one of the reasons we practice together is because we get support in the kind of questions we ask. Because you can practice a very long time and practice sincerely and so forth, but if you don't know where the problems are.

[13:07]

Your practice won't go very far. So you have to have this intention and sincerity and so forth, but you also need to know where the problems are, to know what questions to ask. And you also, like a good scientist I imagine, you have to be willing to follow those questions to where they lead, which is sometimes to answers you didn't expect and, in fact, to questions you didn't know existed. So it's not just a matter of an intention, it's an open intention that doesn't falter, really because of your love for yourself and others. yourself as others. And someone brought up in the doksan the revelation which neutral feelings are.

[14:18]

And I speak about this every now and then. I mean, Buddhism categorizes feelings as likes, dislikes, and neutral. And I mean, we're taught that neutral is sort of blah. But neutral is really where it's at. Likes and dislikes really castrate or de-egg, I guess castrate covers both sexes, castrate the world, neutralize the world. I mean, it's likes and dislikes which neutralize, really, in the sense of making effective the world, because it imprisons you in personality, it imprisons you in either-or. And the world isn't in either-or categories. It's an in-betweenness, and that in-betweenness is much wider than either-or. So as long as you're an either-or, you're in a kind of prison, a consensual agreement about how the world exists. It makes us work hard and be nice.

[15:22]

But you want to get out of the parlor, man. It's okay to be there sometimes. So neutral is big space of neither likes nor dislikes. It's the drunk with love I was speaking about last night. Where is the intimacy of love? It's really not in likes and dislikes. It's when you can actually accept this as it is and act in it in those terms. And we're talking here too about in the way-seeking mind is you really need, unless you're just gonna wind down, you really need to be constantly nourished by each act.

[16:37]

And you can feel when you're on the path, as I've said before, everything nourishes you. You just look at the bark of a tree and you feel nourished. You look at a subway sign and you feel nourished. Weird. But, you know, when you start feeling that way, you know you are on the path or you've awakened, discovered way-seeking mind. Now, how are you nourished? By your environment and by your karma. And, of course, different environments call forth different memories. You create an environment. I mean, sashin calls forth some certain memories. You talk to your therapist, it calls forth other memories. And the therapist's job is to create an environment that calls forth certain memories.

[17:42]

You go back home, it calls forth certain memories. After a nap, maybe, some memories are called forth. But memories, on the whole, monitor us. They're kind of like disciplinarians. They keep a watch on us, and they describe our experience in good and bad terms, likes and dislikes. And the experience that comes up we're either ashamed of, or we've made a mistake, or we don't like, or we maybe feel somewhat good about it. That's OK. But memory is not very creative in that way. In that way, we're always trying to get through something, get over something, neutralize our memories, somehow make it all right. But you already are these memories. So what's important is that you're able to be in a transformative relationship to memory.

[18:50]

and make use of it, not try to get over it or get rid of it or get through it or something like that. That may be okay, but that's adjusting to the envelope of ordinary personality. That's still being in consensual identity. Which, you know, we have to do and have to get good at. That's part of our experience. But this way-seeking mind, way-seeking practice is somehow you are the kind of person who may be scientist-like psychologist-like, feel some belief that you can get to the bottom of things, that you can, you have the courage to open yourself to this mystery that we are, and you also have the courage and willingness to not succeed.

[19:51]

That's okay if you don't succeed, but the process is necessary. The way, not to find something, But just the process of way-seeking mind is enough. And it is a kind of love. It's a kind of engaging yourself with others in the way you want human beings or can see human beings in the most fundamental sense. I mean, you're willing to commit yourself to what you think we're capable of rather than what the society tries to get you to adjust to. And to be deep, that has to be formulated in your own intimacy, in your own terms, and not in terms of some particular thing that everybody says is a nice thing to do. That's good to do too. I keep wanting to say that, but somehow you want to come to your own inner vow of what to do or what you wish to do.

[21:03]

some human being could be like. If you wish some human being to be like that, why not you? That kind of courage. Why not you if you want somebody on the planet to be like that? Now to have the energy to utilize memory, karma and in the environment to be nourished by your activity, your mental and physical acts, really you need to, the secret of that or the real... don't know what word, but what's called great function in Buddhism, then, is to be on this, to realize this continuity of awareness.

[22:14]

Because the continuity of awareness is beyond a particular envelope or environment that calls forth this or that memory. Continuity of awareness is more one of its sidewalks, is neutral feelings. Neither likes nor dislikes. The deep part of the stream, as I say, not on the bank, the left bank of dislike and the right bank of likes or something. Where the water is quite deep, You need maybe a reed shade to see in. In the koan they talk about forgetting feelings or the mind source of the path. So here, in forgetting feelings, mind, source of the past, we're entering this... You know, as soon as you have likes and dislikes, there's no continuity of awareness.

[23:24]

So, again, you have likes and dislikes, but they float above, they move in a different kind of, they don't affect this continuity of awareness. And when I feel most deeply connected to a person, I'm most likely to treat them neutrally. They may not like that. So I have to make some concession and pretend I like them or I dislike them or I agree with them about something. But I don't want to reinforce the wave always, I want to reinforce the water. And so, you know, as much as possible I hope a person gives me the opportunity and doesn't try to draw me into likes and dislikes, gives me the opportunity to be rather neutral. Because then I have the deepest respect to see them as they are becoming all the time.

[24:29]

Because we're not really talking about being here as more we're talking about becoming. And this is an inner process that can go on in secret and I think at first you nurture it in secret. In your meditation, in your mindfulness, in your privacy with the stars. The stars aren't divided up. You get this portion and you get that portion. Each of us has all of them. And that's our deeper nature. So when you begin to discover in various ways, and each person will discover a little differently, and if you have a way-seeking mind or a roused way-seeking mind, little things

[25:45]

the unexpected will poke a finger right through the surface into the water. You'll say, hey. And if you've been staying with a question that functions in you in a deep way, it increases the possibility that your mindfulness of non-daily consciousness as well as daily consciousness will allow some little thing I mean, it's a very frail and yet extremely resilient agreement we have with everyone to see things a certain way. There's a kind of solidarity in it. And that even our alternatives are really involved with this same solidarity. And it's not a matter of having some big experience or some different world that competes with this world.

[26:49]

It's a sense of knowing things in a different way. I mean, excuse me for using such an obvious example, but a woman has no idea of how she makes a baby. I mean, she knows that She has a partner and she became pregnant, but the process of the baby growing, she just has to eat right food and not smoke too much and so forth. And this happens, right? She doesn't say, I think I'll make the nose today. I'm going to put on the fingernails this afternoon. You don't know what you're doing. But spiritual life is like that. Practice life is like that. You really let yourself become pregnant with non-daily consciousness or some kind of something you... And I really like this, don't make a likeness.

[27:53]

You know, again, it's a narrow path, there's no escape, and yet it's a bridge to the other shore. And you become infused with a sense of completeness all the time, of wholeness, of something working and... I don't know, I'm talking too much. My eyebrows are going to get very long. That's what they say in Zen, if you talk too much, your eyebrows get long. And I was born with long eyebrows. John L. Lewis. Nobody knows who John L. Lewis is. You do? He was the... Yeah, head of the coal workers. And he had huge eyebrows. But that was in the 40s.

[28:59]

When I used to see his picture as a kid, I was afraid I'd grow up to look like him. And I'd have to organize the coal miners. So when you begin to touch the surface of the water, the surface of the wave, which means you're not too caught up in the direction of the wave, the shape of the wave. Again, that's okay, but you now are just the surface of the wave. And the surface is nowhere and everywhere.

[30:13]

There's no particular form. It's that pivot point where form and emptiness turns. Enlightenment and delusion turn. And in that sense, when memories come up, they come up as seeds of the present. And these seeds of memory are shaped then by your intention, by your way-seeking mind. the whole way of working with memory and with karma, when you have a continuity of awareness is very different than when you're in the either-or situations of likes and dislikes. Because on the surface of the wave, in the continuity of awareness, you're just shaping the next moment, shaping the present moment. You're not

[31:16]

with the fullness of your being, like a woman making a baby, without thinking, you know, this is good or this is bad or something. And then the memories, bad and good, all of your experience has a richness that even the worst memories may be the very richest part of this process in the continuity of awareness. So, please, I think it would be good if you looked at what your vows are and found a vow, had the courage to find a vow, existential courage to find a vow in yourself that isn't fixed,

[32:26]

that's open and yet can, includes what includes your deepest feelings for us all together and for yourself. Instead of trying to be better or do better or accomplish something, just see if you can find the vow or the intention which you can really feel unambivalent about. Who can untangle this tangle?

[33:29]

And what is the tango? And this effort needs help from others to support us. We need support in this. Even though you make this decision, have to make it within your own intimacy, it helps to have the openness of others making the same decision. And together something more powerful happens.

[34:39]

And even the difficulty and the interference from another way seeker is beneficial in the way that interference or resistance or difficulty from a non-way seeker is not. So even the difficulties we have practicing together with each other helps us. At this point I'm getting a little schmaltzy so I have to stop. And I get schmaltzy I guess because I really don't know how to say what I feel. But I do know that everything I As much as I can know anything, I think it's good to be on this surface, this continuity of awareness.

[35:49]

It makes everything come together in a way that you finally feel that you're leading exactly the life you should be leading. in exactly the way you should be leading it. And whatever happens, happens with that feeling. And all we have to do really is keep transforming our mind and body into our breath, into our breath body and simply see, the easiest way is to simply see if you can find a continuity in your breath.

[36:55]

And from that you can realize the deeper and deeper continuity and everything that you shine your light on. Thank you very much.

[37:20]

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