and in your conception or your conception free of naming. So there's no way you're not participating in what arises. Now, how do you complete it? You complete it by bringing attention to it. you complete it primarily by seeing its momentariness. And the craft of seeing its momentariness is to really have internalized the process of the vijnana practice and skanda practice. The more you see its transiency, the more you're open to its non-dualism. the more you're into a kind of flow at this moment. Now, let me go back to awareness and consciousness.

[01:05]

These are not like... So with consciousness we're emphasizing that consciousness is that part of the mind which can have structure. And having a certain kind of, particular kind of structure, a structure that permits over there, here, conceptual thought and so forth. So let's emphasize the fact that consciousness is primarily determined by the contents of consciousness. And the relationship between the contents of consciousness. So consciousness is created by the contents of consciousness, like when you wake up, I'm sorry to keep going over these basic things again, but when you wake up, as soon as you start thinking about your day, as soon as you start hearing the birds and naming them birds, you can't go back to sleep anymore. You can't get back into the dream anymore.

[02:12]

Because the structure of hearing things, naming things, thinking about your day, changes the liquid of mind into a particular structure we call consciousness. Okay? That's just a fact. You experience it every... I mean, I think it's a fact. You experience it every morning. And sometimes mid-afternoon, depending, and sometimes in zazen. And once consciousness gets started, it tends to relate to other objects of consciousness, okay? It doesn't relate to the field of mind itself anymore. Now, what characterizes awareness is awareness also has a kind of knowing, but that knowing is always related to the field of mind. It's as if, if we use the water wave thing, in consciousness, the waves are always relating to each other. In awareness, the waves are always merging back into the water.

[03:14]

Does that make sense? And you can actually feel the difference. The more you're settled in awareness, things appear and disappear. And you feel a kind of rest in yourself. You feel... I mean, the more you are in consciousness all the time, which is like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 32 or whatever, and awareness is much more like... One, zero, two, zero, three, zero, but even more so, one, zero, one, zero, one, zero, and you feel rested all the time because you're in zero all the time. One appears and, oh yeah, look at that. So awareness can be present as a kind of, a note, we could call it consciousness, but Let's call it knowing. Awareness is aware and there's a knowing process, but let's not call it consciousness because we have to have some way to distinguish these things.

[04:15]

Now each of these things, I mean, I think each of these things I'm saying is quite simple and quite easy to understand. The problem is, if you have five of them at once, the mind kind of crumbles, particularly if you haven't heard them at once, because the implications of these things is quite extensive. So you can, if you get caught up in the implications of one or two of the things I'm saying, don't worry about the rest of the lecture, it's not important. And if you really follow the implications of any one of these things, all the rest of the lecture will appear. or whatever we call this thing I'm doing here. Okay. Okay, so once, in Dogen's language, once consciousness begins to develop the structure of consciousness, it obstructs itself.

[05:24]

And what he means by obstructs itself is something like an own organizing or self-organizing process. Dogen would say, the clouds obstruct the clouds, but they don't obstruct the sky. Dogen would say, the mountain obstructs itself. And it's very much like Heidegger saying, the world whirls. Dogen might say, the mountain mountains. Now what does he mean? Why does he say this? Because he's talking about the experience of Dharma position, which is central to Buddhism. Non-being practice, not well-being practice, but non-being practice. Okay, so let's imagine you've got bean soup.

[06:30]

And the bean soup is made up of water, which we'll call awareness, beans and bean juice. All right. Now, if we say that the water is awareness and the beans are the contents of consciousness, maybe they're just all mixed together, but then when they're mixed together, all you have is bean soup. You don't have consciousness or awareness. And I use food examples because food is important in a monastery. It might wake some of you up if I start talking about beans. Ice cream, Easter eggs. Okay. Okay. The more the water of the bean soup notices itself, it begins an own organizing process or obstructs itself and it begins to separate itself from the soup and purify itself.

[07:38]

And the bean soup and bean juice begin to separate itself so it's like consciousness no longer knows awareness. and no longer knows dream mind because it separates itself from awareness. Are you following me? So then what you have is the water suspended in the bean soup, but not mixed with the bean soup. It permeates the bean soup, but isn't mixed with the bean soup. But you can see that in consciousness you're not aware of the field of mind. You're aware of other contents of consciousness. Isn't that clear? But the field of mind is permeating consciousness, let's say awareness. So the more you practice with the vijnanas and the skandhas and develop the habit of seeing without naming, hearing without naming, you begin to allow awareness to permeate but not mix with consciousness.

[08:45]

This is a way I can describe what I think is a process in meditation practice. Okay, what's the use of my telling you this or saying this? Well, I think it'll help you if you want to read Dogen, but why do you want to read Dogen? Well, I don't know, because it's required reading in Zen practice. Zen 101A, or whatever you call it. I'm saying it because in my own practice... I mean, first of all, I'm saying it because of my own practice, which is, you know, osmotically or proprioceptively, proprioceptively is a word, as you know, which means how you establish your physical balance, but it's come to be used by Charles Olson and philosophers and others to mean...

[09:54]

how we know things through our body, which is different than knowing them conceptually or perceptually. So proprioceptively and osmotically, perhaps I could say, I picked up from Suzuki Roshi a way of knowing and functioning and practicing meditation. But I had to develop this practice on my own, most of the time. And I had to develop this practice with others, and I had to begin to try to sense, how am I going to talk about this or notice this? Because once you notice something and you're fairly clear about it, then it begins to develop. As I said to somebody recently, at first practice is a background practice. You're just absorbing stuff.

[10:59]

And mostly we're in this stage of background practice. In background practice you may have various foreground manifestations of practice, but I would say background practice is about the first ten years. And then at some point you begin to bring it into the foreground, but to bring it into the foreground you have to understand it, but when you start making it clear in your foreground, it begins to clarify the background. That's the second ten years. But I'm on my fourth decade and I'm still going back and forth between background and foreground. Okay. I remember Sukershi, I said to him once, we were driving in a car. Now that this book is out, Crooked Cucumber, I don't know what anecdotes are in the book and what are not in the book.

[12:03]

I've forgotten what David put in. But anyway, I was in the car with Sukershi and he was in the front seat and I was in the back and I said to him, do you suppose I could, a Westerner, meaning myself, a Westerner could realize this practice, understand this practice? And he looked back at me and said, yes, if you try. At that moment, I made the conviction to be here today, I suppose. But also, he said something like, maybe two years or so, and I think he winked. Two years and a wink. And 40 years have gone by in a wink. Yeah. Two years seem like a long time when you're in your mid-20s. Okay. Okay, so when you begin to feel, I think if you begin to feel in your practice this awareness or knowing which is separate from conceptual thought and naming, often we don't know how to notice it.

[13:45]

So I'm trying to give you permission to notice it and let it develop, because it does develop and purify itself. And in Dogen's language we could say obstructs itself. I love his phrase, I mention it often, arriving hinders arriving. The act of arriving hinders the act of arriving. Does that make sense? My being alive hinders my being alive. It's a little bit like, now to carry it a little further, it's like a wave is crashing in me. But it doesn't go anywhere, it just crashes in me. And that's being alive. Okay, let me throw something else out. Everything is interdependent. That's another truism of Buddhism and the fruit of seeing everything changing. But also everything is absolutely independent. And what is its independence?

[14:48]

Its independence, in Dogen's language, is its obstructing itself. The words make it sound more complicated than it is. It's funny to use the word obstruction, but I'm using Dogen's word, because you'll come across it if you read Dogen a lot. So at each moment... that arises. There's an inflowing and outflowing. You complete that. Now you complete it by seeing it as transient. If you tend to name it, you don't complete it. Because you prevent it, it's flowing. So by taking the names off things and basically seeing impermanence, and this is an aspect of enlightenment, is one of the problems with learning these skills of one-pointedness, non-interfering observing consciousness and so forth, is that they are released into fruition through insight.

[16:14]

They're quite easy to learn when you have certain insights. The more you have an insight, that what's going to be a proprioceptive insight, a cellular knowing of transiency, which also means one of the fruits of really knowing transiency is you don't care about dying. Because you're dying every moment. What's the difference if that's an… And as I say, dying is real brief. It's shorter than the flu. The flu goes on and on. So the more you let this inflowing and outflowing occur, there's the freedom, the singularity of this moment, the unique non-repeatability of this moment, the novelty of each moment.

[17:26]

So Dogen's trying to get you to be in the world with this practice conception, practice philosophy, and experience of how we exist. So Dogen... would say, the mountain walks. Let's go back to that. And he said, it's no different from your walking. What does he mean? He means that in your walking, yes, you're going somewhere, but the real movement is coming into your dharma position. And he calls that an up and down movement, not a horizontal movement in time. Because, and Heidegger says the same thing, there are no perdurable, perdurable means real permanent, there are no perdurable static passive objects. You don't live in a static passive world.

[18:33]

At each moment, as I say, like, again, the rubber glove, the dishwashing rubber glove on two hands. As I say, a lousy way to wash the dishes. But when you pull your hands apart, that's space. Like the Big Bang generates space. As it expands, it doesn't happen in space. Right now, we're creating space. That's what Dogen would say and I would say. We're not in some kind of fixed envelope, container. We're right now generating the actual space we live in. And that process is finding the Dharma position. So when you walk, at each moment, you're returning to this Dharma position. Does that make sense? The mountain's doing the same thing. The mountain just is doing it in one place all the time. Because the mountain is constantly appearing and disappearing.

[19:41]

In fact, how long is this moment? Where is the past? Where is the future? The mountain is appearing and disappearing. So it's finding its dharma position each moment. It's exactly like you're walking. You're walking is finding your dharma position in each moment. You're moving into your own unique impermanence, which is in a fantastic stability and freedom because you have an absolute independence at each moment. It's great. So at each moment you bring your clarity, your attention, your energy, and most fundamentally, your

[20:44]

experience of the impermanence, transiency, ephemeral... Ephraim? I wouldn't know how to say it. Of each moment. When we're sitting zazen, and this practice of sitting still over a long period of time, like we are doing this week, I think you sometimes have the experience of reaching into yourself, moment after moment, to survive. And if you don't do that, we haven't made the schedule difficult enough.

[21:50]

So if all of you say, you haven't had this experience, wait till you see the schedule in the next session. Because you have to sit there, you think, oh shit. It's at least 10 minutes until David's going to ring that Buddha damn bell. and my back hurts, my legs hurt, and I have no energy, and I'm tired, and blah, blah, blah. So you kind of reach into yourself, and you find some way to... Dogon calls that the total exertion of each moment. But you're learning the total exertion of each moment, because each moment is... You reach into yourself. Do you see that's like a wave crashing inside yourself? You're not going anywhere. You're reaching inside yourself and trying to just stay in place, to come into a dharma position. Each moment, in sesshin, each moment is unique.

[22:56]

Particularly five minutes before the bell, there's about 10,000 unique moments. Okay. I could do without some unique moments. Ring the bell. We could say, we could advertise the sheens. Lots of unique moments that are shoved down your throat. There we go. The Easter Bunny out there is having a whole series of unique moments. Okay, so what... So now I've talked about what constitutes a unique moment.

[24:01]

And this total exertion And Duryodhana thinks of being alive as the total exertion of each moment, not just kind of, oh yeah, it's great to be here and grooving along, and viewing the world as hip, passive, and so forth. But this presence that's not possible with ordinary conceptual consciousness, but possible with awareness of the meeting... arriving in each moment. And in this sense, we have something not like interdependence. We have something like the dharmas are crashing against each other. Dogen has this idea that each dharma is independent and kind of crashes against each other. And one of the words he uses, it's like a fish leaping. Each dharma is like a fish leaping out of a pond and you either catch it or you don't.

[25:06]

Each moment leaps There's a leaping into presence of each moment. So you may think that's harmony and everything. No. Everything is quite separate. And each moment is impermanent not only because it is in fact, and you can experience it as, but the next moment immediately crashes into it and pushes it out of the way. Because each moment is crashing into the... I mean, Darwin has a real dynamic sense of the present. It's kind of great, don't you think? Each moment crashing, each crashing into the... Okay. But these moments are appearing with ingredients. What are the ingredients? The ingredients are your karma. your perception, your state of mind, that's the second ingredient.

[26:08]

The third ingredient is all-at-onceness, which is sometimes called heaven. All-at-onceness is like the rain that waters the trees, etc. All-at-onceness, everything all-at-once comes together to make this moment, movement, moment, movement, moment. And that all-at-onceness is present. So your karma's present, your your mentation is present – let's call it that – all-at-onceness is present, and the possibilities of the moment are present – Buddha. At each moment, the dynamic working of that moment really understood is Buddha. So each moment, from Dogen's point of view, everything's changing, is a moment filled with the realization of this flowing in of all-at-onceness, of karma, of your perception, mentation, and the possibility to realize this as Buddha.

[27:17]

Let's go back to my aunt in New York. Okay, so I... I... I... taking a taxi, go past 12th Street. My aunt was very important to me, and I used to visit her in New York a lot when I was young, hang out in her apartment, go to museums and stuff like that. So I experienced suddenly her absence. Now imagine again if I went out and walked around the streets, bundled up my coat, imagining it was winter. and passing the Presbyterian, quite beautiful Presbyterian church, 12th Street, so forth. I might be able to use the experience of her absence to cultivate her presence in me. Does that make sense? I could begin to embody the feeling so her absence would awaken in me the presence of her.

[28:30]

So yesterday I said that when we do zazen, it's a posture big enough for two. How does Rhonda know she's Rhonda? Because she has the experience of being Rhonda and not a nuclear power plant. Atomic Rhonda, I call her now. Remember that, did I, I told that story during Sashim? You told it at dinner. At dinner. Before Sashim. Before Sashim. Well, anyway, no time, whoa, no time for, no time for stories about Atomic Rhonda now. Okay, so Rhonda knows herself as Rhonda because she has the experience of being Rhonda. personal history, habits, etc. Say she starts to have experiences that are new to her, particularly experiences that are unique to this dharma position, based on the all-at-onceness, etc., shaping this clay on the potter's wheel of the present.

[29:54]

That doesn't arise from her personal history. It arises from the meditation posture. It arises from mindfulness. It arises from working with wisdom phrases which help generate an accurately assuming consciousness and transforming present consciousness. Those experiences we can call the experience of being a Buddha. And that's what the Sambhogakaya body is. It's those experiences that don't arise out of your history but are Buddha's experience. Buddha has no meaning unless you experience Buddha. I mean, Rhonda has no meaning unless she experiences Rhonda. But Rhonda has within her the absence of Buddha. Oh, I'm sorry, the presence of Buddha. The absence of Buddha. Absence and presence. So Rhonda has within her the presence of Buddha, the absence of Buddha, because she feels it. At this dharma moment, this dharma moment has the capacity of

[30:56]

Buddhahood. And in fact, the more you're in this dharma moment with a limpid transparency, this is the experience of the Sammukakaya body manifest then, if it's brought into your actions, we call it nirmanakaya. This is actual fact. This is not things in sutras. But you've got to notice it and develop it until it has its own Buddha obstructs Buddha. So right now, Rhonda's obstructing Rhonda. But Buddha's trying to obstruct Rhonda too. And when she sits, she may feel the absence in her posture. She feels her own posture. She accepts her own posture. She feels this clarity, this precision. She begins to feel some... You begin through the absence of Buddha to feel the presence of Buddha. And the presence of Buddha is in the dharma moment, the dharma position, not in the clay itself, but the shaping of the clay by the present moment, the dynamic workings of the present moment, we could call Buddha-niji.

[32:14]

So Dogen looks in a mountain and he sees the mountain walking, because he sees the mountain constantly moving. totally exerting itself to be a moment, a mountain in the next moment, because he doesn't see it as static. And when he feels himself walking, yes, he's walking somewhere, but he feels himself trying to come into the posture of this moment, it's absolutely no different for him than the mountain. So he says, with a lot of depth to it, the mountain walks and the river sits. And then Dungsan, first ancestor in our lineage, not the really, but the first named ancestor in this lineage, had an experience walking over a bridge where he saw the bridge flow and the river stay still.

[33:19]

Well, that's quite common. I mean, you can be somewhere and you can see the clouds are too trained, you know, you can see the clouds stay still and the tree moving. It's commonplace. It's not commonplace if you've developed the habit of seeing through the skandhas and the vijnanas. into the utter transiency of the world, suddenly you see a simple thing like the bridge flows and the river stays still, and it awakens you into this dharma position that we can call Buddha nature. So practice makes you more open to these ordinary insights which suddenly reach through you, through others, into the all-at-onceness.

[34:23]

Thank you very much.

[34:31]

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