I think almost anything can be overworked, and I tend to try to bring teaching in in some moderation for a while and then withdraw it for six months or a couple of years or something. A phrase which we've been speaking about and I believe my impression is that Christian gave a lecture on pausing for the particular. And it's, I don't know if it's as inexhaustible as Gute's one finger, which has always said the resources of Gute's one finger are inexhaustible, but it's quite similar.

[01:10]

And the question is, As I put it sometimes, the fabric of the world is always unfolding at each moment. How do we enter it? That's the question. We have, you know, Ram Dass, sometimes I am annoyed by the phrase, be here now, and sometimes I feel Ram Dass to Calvert's, mostly I think it's his phrase, be here now, pretty obvious, but it caught the attention of the new age in the 60s. But in a way we're continuing his work. What is be? What is here? And what is now? To pause for the particular is a way of entering into this phrase. Because it's too easy to say, you know, be here now.

[02:18]

It's because the words have their usual connotations and it's sort of, you know, like sitting in a... Well, I'm sitting in the car seat now. Where are we going to go? without realizing something like the car's never going to go anywhere. So sometimes I say, you know, just to kind of use the resources of this phrase, sometimes I say, reside or abide in the particular. Reside in the particular. And the whole world rests in the particular. I mean, from the point of view of science, everything rests in the particular. So we have, I think, one of Dan's favorite poems, One Atom Samadhi.

[03:21]

The world rests in the particular. Can our mind rest in the particular? In particular, it's, you know, I don't know what you know, because I have no idea what works in German. I found out the other day, did I tell you that, that cats in Germany have seven lives, did I tell you that? You do. Yeah, and cats in English have nine lives. Isn't that true? Don't you have a phrase, cats have seven lives? What? What? I don't know, really know this, but... Could you say cats have seven lives? How do you say it in German? Well, come on, someone can say it in German. Jesus. What? Katzen haben sieben Leben. Katzen haben sieben Leben. Yeah. Katzen haben sieben Leben. Well, this is very interesting that cats have seven lives, but cats have nine lives in English.

[04:30]

Why? Because Siebenleben sounds good and nine lives sounds good. So you have to find the words that stick together through alliteration. I'm sorry for cats in Germany. Well, they entered Nirvana earlier. Earlier. Now there's a good European point of view. Buddhist point of view. Anyway. So, but in English we have participation, particular, part, impart. All parts. So we could say pause for the part. If we say pause for the part, that brings us closer to the feeling of all we had is parts And to part is to open up, you know, to part the waters.

[05:38]

To open up, to part your hair, to make a part. To make a part is a pun. To make a part and to make a part. Now, I don't know how, again, how this works in German and, you know, we're We're practicing here at least through my speaking in English. But practice is something like you, through practice you get familiar with awareness. You begin to kind of feel non-discursive consciousness, or you begin to feel awareness. And then you, you know, you bring awareness more, you kind of settle in awareness.

[06:44]

In a way, awareness becomes your initial mode of mind. And then after a while, awareness begins to be a partner, partner of awareness. consciousness. And so let's try to look at the pause for the particular as a pause for a prama or a pramana, but now prama. Prama, just prama means, as I said the other day, knowledge event. So for a knowledge event, Pramana, to add the ana at the end, again is to the instrumentality of the knowledge of it. Okay. And sometimes I think of it as at each moment we're weaving the basket of the present, as I've said.

[07:58]

And you feel the weaving of the basket of the present. Primarily in consciousness, but how do we get a participation in consciousness sufficient that we can feel the parts weaving? And then to see between the weave, the space in which the weaving occurs, and the space through the weave. This is what the adept, adept. the adept practitioners trying to do. I asked the other day, why would you bother to do this? It's such a nuisance, isn't it? It's just nicer to go along living and looking at things, you know, trying to be happy. But if you do zazen, and you do it enough, and you do it with some abandonment, yeah, you come to a kind of freedom. You feel a freedom from your acculturated and accumulated identity.

[09:04]

Yeah, and it can be rather intoxicating, opening. It really is like a sense of another world. Can be. You intimate it, you feel like it. And it's strange, like, in the particular is hidden another world. There's a hiddenness that's not hidden to the world. And it's hidden in the particular. If you can bring your attention to the particular, take something out of the flow of events, out of the flow of mind, and you hold it for a moment. So the held particular. This is really dharma, as I say, dharmic surgery, dharma surgery. Or dharma acupuncture. Aku is a cue to needle or to bring to a point.

[10:09]

So we'd have aku culture or something like that. We could have to bring culture to a point, to bring your views to a point through the particulate. So for a moment, the held particular is taken out of the stream of, you know, thinking, mind, etc. Held for a moment and then released back into a flow of certainty. Well, now, how did I get there? Let me try to say... Okay, what's a pramana? What's a prama, a knowledge event? A prama is a knowledge event, going back to the beginning of the first colon in the Blue Cliff Records. A knowledge event is a percept or an inference. So, an inferred particular or a percept particular. A perceptual particular or an inferential particular?

[11:15]

An inferential part. A perceptual part. Now if you bring that attitude to the... When you pause for the particular, there's a lot of possibilities there. You're not just pausing and then going on, taking a little break. Now that you've got the habit of it, if you develop the habit of pausing for the particular, then you can decide what to do with the particular or what the particular is going to do with you. This is the basic engagement. Sometimes I think it's called point-instant engagement. Now we're at the center, when we're talking about this, we're at the center of what we could call real practice or something like that. So again, zazen gives you some freedom and in addition, sense of, wider sense or different sense of identity, and it gives you a courage, a kind of basis.

[12:19]

And then if you're a certain kind of intelligent person, You want to live in the world as it actually exists. You want to live in the world, you want to, you're not, you can't be honest with yourself and sort of gloss over things and just do what's good enough. I mean, some people can do what's good enough and some people, you know, mostly we do what's good enough, but some people, you want to be, how do we actually exist? So that's the second. You want to live in a world that fully makes sense. As sensible as it can be. As rational as it can be. And yet there's still this, without taking away the mystery, the unaccountable, what your senses can't reach. But what is in the senses, at least let's reach there. And that's the second reason I'd say. And the third is... You see the benefits of it.

[13:23]

You see that in the end, not just you, but the world ought to know how the world exists. And so you say, well, I don't know if I can do this for everyone, but someone ought to do it. Someone ought to do it. The price you may pay for someone ought to do it may be an odd life. But someone still ought to do it. So without this sense, you know, your way-seeking mind won't not be deep. Okay. So again, we haven't We have this central doctrine or teaching of prama or pramana. Prama, a knowledge event. And what's a knowledge event? It's a percept part.

[14:26]

Let's call it a percept or an inference. But now let's make it percept part or inferred part. Okay. Okay. When you take a particular out of the stream and hold it for a moment, where is it held? It's held in your perceptions. It's a percept, a particular percept, eye consciousness or ear consciousness, the ear field or eye field, ayatana, etc. It's held in the senses. It's held as a perception. or is held as an inference. In fact, the particular is already a pramana, a prana, a knowledge event. So you arrest on it as true.

[15:33]

Well, this isn't the kind of philosophy to say, you know, what's really true in the world and how can we establish something or others true? You know, it can be used that way. But this is about your experience of truth or what is true or trueness. And how do you get to that point and what happens when you do? Okay, so now what I'm saying is, when you pause for the particular, you recognize that each particular is held for a moment as a percept or as an inference, and that's as true as anything will ever get. Your senses can be fooled and so forth, but in general, that's as true as anything gets. So what happens is if each particular is noted as a knowledge event, as a percept or an inference, the flow of the particular becomes a flow of certainty.

[16:47]

And you can more and more simply rest in the particular as a flow of certainty. So strangely enough, you take it out of the flow of mind, hold it for a minute, and put it back catalytically into the flow, and it transforms the flow into a flow of certainty. Instead of, well, I don't know what I think about this, I don't know how I feel, you more and more have what I would call a flow of certainty. which you can feel like you can rest in. Now, what does this also do? It's strangely, I don't know what words to say, in the situational field, in the mental field, it creates a little... spots of certainty, spots of clarity.

[17:54]

And I've often said that one of the fruits of practice is you begin to find the world clear and precise. It's not different. It's the same as everybody. Everything kind of shines and everything has a particularity. And that particularity is because you're already practicing pramas. Just the fact that you let yourself into particularities and let particularities flow toward you is because you're in this flow of certainty. What happens when you create these little flows of these moments of certainty? Awareness surfaces through them. It makes consciousness permeable and awareness comes into consciousness. It is amazing what a little phrase like this, wisdom acupuncture, poking a little hole in the fabric of our usual way of thinking, awareness flows through it.

[19:16]

In addition, it's a particular, it's a particular percept. It's an ear percept, as I said, or an eye, nose, etc. So what you're also doing when you articulate the particular, articulate the part, you're defining the six regions, the five regions. The regions of the five senses and the region of mind. So you're beginning to experience now what makes up the parts of consciousness. Because consciousness is created through the skandhas, etc., each percept. So now you've not only, you're not just seeing consciousness as the accumulation and then the overall effect of the senses, but you're, by pausing for the part, You're discovering and enhancing the ayatana, the eye field or the ear field, etc.

[20:24]

So you're beginning to enter into the parts of consciousness. And then an eye percept, again, you don't just flow out toward the eye percept. The eye percept flows toward you, flows into you. The ear percept flows into you. through this little point, this little opening you made by pausing for the part or the particular, or for the participation in where the world rests. You know, and you're creating a location where you can abide in the particular.

[21:28]

Normally there's no location there because it's, we don't, everything's just leading us from one moment to the next. So we need this point instant engagement. And doing it, even though it's not there, but doing it creates a place where you can actually reside in the particular. You know your thoughts, you're worried about this or that, or something is making you anxious. And you can bring attention back to any particular, and the world flows widely into that particular, and the world flows widely through that particular place. Because in a way you've generated it as a place in which you can reside. You can also use, I think sometimes I use the phrase, I say change changes.

[22:31]

Sometimes I say even change changes, absolutely everything changes, etc. But I just use the phrase change changes and what have you got there? You've got a noun verb. Change. is a noun. A change, it's a change. And changes, I'm using it as a verb. So you're sort of tricking permanence. Because permanence wants everything to be an entity. Nouns lead us into permanence. It always interests me that German has more verbs than English, and English has way more nouns than German. But, so, to use change as a noun, so everything I look at, I say change, change, change. Well, I'm calling it a noun, change, but I'm denying it's an entity by calling it a noun.

[23:38]

That change called change. And then I say it changes. So in a way, change changes is a kind of noun verb engagement in which noun is already a wedge or acupuncture like wisdom needle. If I call every noun change, I've already said a great deal. So I say change changes. You know, I've always thought of myself as a changeling. I don't know if you know the word in German, what it is, but a changeling is a baby that was substituted at birth for another baby, like in a basket or something. So you don't know what baby, you're not the child of your parents necessarily, is what a changeling is. And I've always felt that practice somehow makes you a changeling.

[24:41]

In the end, your roots are not based in your particular psychology, in your particular history, your particular culture. They somehow get pulled out of the mud of your culture and stuck in this other water, you know, and then they... And the Dharma practice, etc., is what makes... People practice a lot more like each other, I say, than the culture they came from. It's a kind of difficult period, because for a while your roots are in the air, and you don't know if they're going to take root, and it feels bad, and everybody's mad at you. What are you doing with your roots in the air? And then they begin to take hold. And then a little kind of lotus blooms. And there's... By practicing this kind of sense of a flow of certainty of the particular, things well up.

[25:45]

There's a word, you know, an artesian well, as I said the other day, I think, flows by its own pressure. So... with this sense of the world held in the particular, where the world rests and you rest, there's a flow into each moment and into each situation. Now, many practices can be brought to the particular. Now, there you've got, you finally feel you're inhabiting your new habits. You've got the, you can hold the particular for a moment, not just as a pause, but as a chance to practice, to bring a certain attitude to it, to notice it as a eye perceptor, ear perceptor, something. But also you can bring a teaching to it.

[26:47]

like the four Brahma-viharas, the four immeasurables, or the four divine sublime states of being. So on each particular, when you get clearer about this, you can feel, is this particular characterized by loving-kindness? Am I ashamed of this particular or can I live with this particular? Am I capable or is it a moment of empathetic joy? The ability to take pleasure in other people's life, success, etc. This is a huge transition from selfness to less selfness by radiating the key word in the practice of the Brahma Viharas is to radiate, to use the particular to radiate loving kindness, or radiate empathetic joy, to radiate compassion, to radiate equanimity.

[28:07]

Equanimity is to see, not to see anyone as foe or enemy. To just to, or gain or loss. To have a mind that rests, does not rest in comparisons. And if you feel this on each particular, it radiates to others. So in this way, The pramana becomes pramana because the pramana is now instrumental in that it's used to radiate each of the four immeasurables, each of the pramaviharas. But can you be present in the particular like this? In the basket weave of the present. Strangely, this, it will take a while to use up this phrase.

[29:09]

Pause for the part or the particular. Or to use variations on it like really change, changes. Or some way to say only parts. Sometimes I say parts, parts. Parts, yeah, but parts of the six regions, etc. Somehow we're bringing attention, we get the skill to bring attention to the breath, the skill of one-pointedness, and now the skill of letting attention rest in each particular, out of the flow and release it into the flow. And by holding it out of the flow and releasing it into the flow, you transform the flow. I think that's enough for this morning.

[30:13]

Thank you very much.

[30:17]

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