Dogen calls practice period the supreme way of practice and enlightenment. And he also says only those who find their ease in the 90-day practice period are Dharma heirs of the Buddha's and Buddha ancestors. And it's laughable someone who thinks they are an heir of the Buddha or descendant of the Buddha who has not done practice periods. Well these are pretty big statements. What about those of you who haven't done practice periods, or probably can't, or won't?

[01:07]

Yeah, it's a big question. And Dogen's teacher, as you know, Chanda Rujing says, it's in the 90 days of practice period that you establish the true structure of practice. What the heck does that mean? What's the true structure of practice? I mean, we really have to look at these things carefully and take them seriously. These guys meant what they said. And he says, you form this true structure of practice and you carve a cave in emptiness. Sounds good, or maybe. Maybe. Okay, now in this practice period, as some of you might have noticed, I'm getting old. I mean, no, no. But my knees aren't working so well, and it's hard for me to stand up when I bow.

[02:11]

My legs are okay, but my knees are not strong. And it turns out I have some sort of heart condition, which makes me feel weak when my heartbeat is irregular. But I plan to last it through the practice period. Who knows? Anyway, I'm not looking for sympathy. But it does affect and makes me think about how I continue doing practice periods. Because I suppose ten years from now it might be better or worse or something. But also, and I'm trying to describe my own practice in this practice period, my allergies to the to Crestum which aren't as bad this year as last year so far um you know after 25 years now I'm finally I think in the final stages of finishing this book so I'm going to establish a practice

[03:33]

which is in a continuous relationship to the writing of the text, which means that probably I'll leave after the first period or some length of time like that, so that I can just continue from zazen into writing. But still, it's wonderful for me to also develop the text, not through writing only, but through speaking with you. And I think this practice, two or three practice periods ago, we passed out text, which was very helpful to me, but I won't do it this practice period. But I will pass out one short section called Meeting and Speaking, because what we're doing here is meeting and speaking. I mean, that's what we're meeting and speaking. And even the word speaking comes from the idea of speaking before an assembly.

[04:40]

Like a speaker is somebody you hire or who speaks to an assembly. So the word initially meant speaking to an assembly. And I, because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make right in a way that the writing becomes for the reader practicing. Maybe a pipe dream. You know that expression. Pipe dream. But it's my dream, my intention. So I thought it might be useful for you. For a while I thought maybe I shouldn't do it because it'll make you try to understand Taisho the way I've written about it, but we'll see.

[05:54]

Because the process of... of meeting and speaking, which is what we're doing, is the most ancient way of practicing and the most characteristic way, along with working with phrases, of Zen practice. So how can I bring this meeting and speaking into writing? That's the question. So I'm not going to give you the meeting and reading part. I want to give you the meeting and speaking part. You'll have to find out the latter part later. Okay. So let's go back to Dogen saying this is the supreme way of practice. What can this be? Us just being here for 90 days is some supreme way of practice? This is just rhetoric in the negative sense.

[07:04]

Well, I mean, when I look at what happens when, you know, I started practicing the Sukhya Rishi and pretty soon we were doing Sushins and then pretty soon we were doing practice periods and so forth, and I have seen the difference it makes. It's not rhetoric to me. Sesshin practice makes a difference. Johanneshoff makes a difference. Crestone Mountain Zen Center makes a difference. Practice periods make a difference. What is the difference? Now, Christian said to me this morning that... For many people, as we're primarily lay practitioners, and for many of us, it's a rather touchy subject that somehow monastic practice is better than lay practice. Well, it produces different results, and probably it's easier than lay practice.

[08:12]

But let's concentrate on what the differences are and why Dogen would say it's the supreme way of practice. Why? Now, what's 90 days? And why does Dogen say 90 days functions in unlimited time? Now, if we can understand this, what he means, what Ru Jing means. I think we can make a fuller use of the practice period, and I think I can also develop the practice more, if we understand it. Because it's just this.

[09:15]

What is it about this that makes practice period different from other times? What are the opportunities it gives us? How can we find in these 90 days unlimited time? Now, maybe for those of you who are only doing part of the practice period, we can think of it, maybe we're speaking about not practice period as hours, days, months. Maybe we're speaking about the mind of practice period. If that's the case, what would be, what is the mind of practice period? Now, as we... You know, I've been doing some, I don't know, two or three hundred practice periods. No, that's not right. Two or three hundred sesshins in my life and lots of practice periods.

[10:16]

And you see the result. Oh dear. I shouldn't have said that. I'm trying to develop a continuous practice in relationship to the text of the book. What we need to do in practice period is try to develop a continuous uninterrupted practice period. Uninterrupted practice. An uninterrupted mind of practice period. Now I know, having been a layman for a lay person for years before we founded Tassajara, I really made an effort as a lay person and fairly successfully to have an uninterrupted, continuous mind of practice. It's possible to do.

[11:26]

This practice period is structured, is set up to help you do that. And for us to help each other do that. Now, of course you will fail. But if your intention is to do it, you won't fail. The intention itself becomes a continuous mind of practice. And the intention is something you have to develop. How do we develop continuous mind of practice? That's what practice period's asking us to do or giving us the opportunity to do. You have three months. This little chunk of time, this little chunk of unlimited time in your life. And for those of you who, I mean, usually we only let people come to practice period

[12:30]

who've done quite a few practice periods, like Dennis and Russell. But we're experimenting. We're trying to find out, I'm trying to find out with you, what is it about practice period that we can also bring into our lay life? As Dogen says, you know, once you've really done practice period, stretching out your legs, sleeping, eating. These are all become practice through practice period. Well, maybe we can find some way to make all our activities, in this particular emphasis right now, a continuous mind of practice. Okay, so that's one aspect of practice period. And everyone, Yuan Wu, Dogen, everyone says, the key is an uninterrupted mind of practice.

[13:39]

Because this is a kind of shamanism. This is a kind of, this is a transformational practice. This isn't social service or something like that. And you either have the guts or interest or existential need to do it, or you don't. Now, we know there's no outside. There's nothing outside this. I mean, you know, there's India, where Craig is, and so forth. He was in Europe. But really, whether you're in India or Europe or here, there's really no other place. No heaven. There's no place to go to that's If there's no other place... You know, Sandokai ends with... If you can't see the path as it meets your eyes... If you can't see the path as it meets your eyes... That doesn't mean under some special place, India or Europe.

[14:59]

It means right now... if whatever is meeting your eyes right now, if that is not the path, how can you walk the path? If you can't see the path that meets your eyes, that's no other place. That's just the path that meets your eyes. So he says, if you can't see the path, the Sandokai says, if you cannot see the path as it meets your eyes, how can you walk the path? Humbly, he says, I ask you Those who practice the mystery don't waste time. What mystery? What does he mean? Those of you who practice... Are we practicing the mystery of mystery? What mystery?

[16:00]

Those of you who practice the mystery Don't waste time. I humbly ask you, I humbly ask you, don't waste time. Don't waste this unlimited time. For what? If there's no other place, how can we call this place a mystery? Or if there's no other place, this place must be the mystery. Okay, so what's practice period trying to do? It's trying to give you, us, you, me, the opportunity to develop a continuous mind of practice. It's trying to give us, use repetition to show us there's no such thing as repetition. A non-repetitious repetition.

[17:04]

So another aspect of practice period is there's a lot of repetition. What are you going to do about all that repetition? When is repetition no longer repetition? Yeah. And then another aspect of practice period is incubation. Yuan Wu talks about the 90 days practice, nurturing your practice, and I think it's more useful in English to use incubation. Now, again, you've heard me speak about this a lot. Incubation in contrast to understanding. Incubation is a process of embodiment. An incubation which is a process of, let's say, becoming more right-bodied than left-bodied.

[18:09]

You know, in Japan they have a, they use the abacus, they call it the sorabunt. And since the pocket calculator and desk calculator and so forth have come in, they've kind of dropped the use of the Sorbonne, and some smart people in Japan have noticed that it has transformed, diminished the Japanese educational process. Why would that be? Well, because you know what an abacus is, right? Well, when you use an abacus, a Sorbonne, you, you know, add subtract with it, right? It's like a calculator. But there's also called an Anzan abacus, or Anzan Soroban, A-N-Z-A-N, Anzan Soroban, and that is when you can visualize it. And one of the standard, there's only a few thousand, some thousands of people now in Japan who could do it.

[19:19]

It used to be, you know, like hundreds of thousands could do it, And you visualize the abacus in your mind. And they can teach even kindergarten and first and second and third graders to do it. But what they've discovered is if you measure the brain activity, and this is quite interesting but obvious too, if you measure the brain activity of someone who uses an abacus, it's left brain activity. if you measure the brain activity of someone who uses the visualized, internally visualized abacus, it's right brain activity. So being able to visualize the abacus shifts you into a right brain and right brained body. And they've noticed that that changes the way a person learns and understands this.

[20:20]

If you've noticed chanting, when you're chanting and you're chanting from memory or body, you can even think about other things, you know, so stupidly, but think about other things while you're chanting. Usually your chanting isn't quite as good when you do that. But anyway, that's the right brain chanting. But if you don't know the chant very well and you shift to reading, you have to shift to left brain Yeah, and there's a little jolt and you have to kind of let go to go back to just letting it happen. So service is a lot about, the repetition of service is a lot about seeing if you can develop a right brain body in service. So we do it. We do repetition. We do it the same way every morning because for the right brain, there's no repetition.

[21:27]

So if you get bored during service, you can say, humbly, I recognize I'm still a left brain dummy. So the repetition, the incubation, is incubating after, I mean I can say, a Sambhogakaya body, but maybe it's easier for us to get a sense that the Sambhogakaya body might be something initially related to a right brain body. So if we can be here, In this practice period, discovering a repetition which is always uniqueness, always no longer repetition, we can develop a mind of continuous practice, and we can incubate the teachings instead of understanding them, and we can discover a right brain body, discover a sambhogakaya body,

[22:43]

hey, then these 90 days are unlimited times. And it's the Sambhogakaya body which stretches out its feet, which eats, and so forth, sleeps. Now there's a Greek poet who I like, contemporary Greek poet, named Harris Blavianos. Harris Blavianos. And here's a little poem from him. Carefully watch the objects around you. Carefully watch the objects around you. Flowers, books, pictures.

[23:48]

Watch them as they sluggishly swing. Sluggishly is slowly. No, objects are slowly swinging. Books, pictures. Watch them as they sluggishly swing in metaphysical innocence. You are not certain they exist. Watch them as they sluggishly swing in metaphysical innocence. You are not certain they exist. But you must go on watching them. You know, that's something like, we can understand that as something metaphysical innocence. It's a good way to talk about emptiness. which he confirms by saying, you're not certain they exist.

[24:53]

But you go on watching them, do we have any choice? There's mystery, there's only this place with no outside, there's this place with no other, the path that meets the eyes. Then he says, when does a familiar place When does a familiar place, we're living in familiar places all the time. When does a familiar place become realization? When does a familiar place become realization? Then he says, when does an intimate sound become a strange melody? When does an intimate sound become a strange melody? Then he says, the daisies you hold in your hands are not the daisies your hands are holding.

[26:06]

The daisies you hold in your hands are not the daisies your hands are holding. So, you know, I always say pause for the particular object. Maybe I should say now, pause for the objects, or pause for the mind of the objects. Maybe one way to develop this mind of continuous practice is to pause for the mind of each object. the mind of each appearance not appearance in general the particular mind of each appearance or to pause for the to get developed the habit of seeing spaces of learning to see developing the ability to see spaces rather than objects this is also an entry into the mind of continuous practice

[27:14]

When does a familiar place become realization? When are the daisies in your hands not the daisies which are in your hands? Humbly I ask you, those who practice the mystery, don't waste time. Thank you. Thank you.

[27:55]

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