Well, let's see where we can go today. Of course, at the same time, I don't want you to go anywhere. As much as possible, I'd like you to use the unlimited time of these three months to really go nowhere. I mean, we have this, I don't know, the luck of this beautiful the mountains. It's a little harsh, a little wild, and isolated. And I want you to be here for no reason, no purpose, no result, just other than to be here. If you can take this attitude and notice this attitude or feel the value, the alchemical value of this attitude, you will also notice the definitions of yourself which don't want to be here.

[01:18]

The definitions of yourself which want to make use of this for some future something or other. Who's that? Who is that in the future you want to... make useful or better or something. I mean, whoever that will be in the future will be a heck of a lot better, probably, if you're so fully here that there's no other purpose. That will become possible in the future then, to be so fully here Where else? You have to start with here. You know, I hate the word here. It's so cliche, but what else can I say? Now, you can't study Buddhism, Zen, yogic practice effectively unless you also study yourself.

[02:20]

They go hand in hand, body in body, mind in mind. Anyway, the exploration of your self, of your own experience of your lived life is inseparable from effective use. Effective? I didn't told you not to be effective. No, in this case it's okay. To be effective in incubating this practice. So notice small things and I want to start with really small things like knowing the keyhole in the dark. You just put the key and you know exactly somehow your body knows exactly where the keyhole is and whether the key is turned this way or that way. And you also can notice

[03:27]

When you don't, when you kind of miss the keyhole, or it takes two or three tries to get into the keyhole, or find the light switch in the dark room, or the toilet in the new hotel room. These are small things. We all have this experience. But to really observe it, study it, You know, we can feel the difference. We can anticipate the difference when you're going to miss the keyhole. Sometimes without thinking, the key, as if it was lined with mercury, goes straight into the keyhole. Other times... What's the difference? What's the difference in the feel of the mind when you know the keyhole, or it just happens, and when you don't?

[04:33]

Now this is everyone's experience. But to develop it or notice it or really feel, this is actually quite a big difference. And not just sort of pass it off. What is the difference? Because, you know, these things are just us. We can study them. I don't know. I mean, you noticed probably that when we start service, I'm the doshi. Doshi means the one who's head of the service. So when I'm the doshi, I wait for... there's a point at which I start. Lean forward and we all lean forward and the service starts. I mean, that's one of many similar examples. And I suspect you've noticed that I wait till the room is silent.

[05:38]

Hmm, but actually, yes, I do wait till the room is silent, but that's not, not exactly what I wait for. I wait until there's a feeling of soft space. Yes, silence, and silence often goes with soft space, but soft space, how can space be soft? Is space soft right now? How can space be soft? Separative space, how can separative space, well of course, I'm using that word, separative space is not soft. Connective space, let's say, let's use that word, is soft. Almost feels sometimes like a mattress. We're all on a mattress, all the objects are on a mattress. And a zendo, the design of a zendo is to create or make more possible soft space.

[06:53]

It folds in from the outside, it's these lower lines, and then opens up in the inside. It's also designed to work for chanting, which is related, ideally, the space. but it's also soft space. Ideally it's soft space, or it helps you discover soft space. And as the zendo has a folding in, we have these two bodhisattvas, the most prominent bodhisattvas, Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara, or Kannon, and as most of you know, we're supposed to have, traditionally, in the Zenda, you only have Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, because wisdom, or the Bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri represents folded in space.

[08:06]

Okay, here, now we've got soft space, we've got connective space, we've got space you can fold in. Yes, but this isn't really different from really noticing what happens when you miss the lock with the key or hit the lock with the key. If you study your lived life, your actualized sometimes life, So it's interesting that the folded in space, and I can fold out space and it's harsh or crisp, separating, or I can fold out soft space. I mean, this is my experience at least.

[09:10]

So it's come, the two bodhisattvas, Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara, represent these two potentialities of folding out space and folding in space. Now when you do, I speak about, you know, because I try to put this these teachings on an accessible physiological basis. So I use saccadic as this useful word for the process of turning the no time of the present into a durative present, into an experienced present. And that happens through scanning. Simplest way to think about it. you scan a bunch of stuff and put it together, and it makes a present which has a certain spatial dimension and duration, okay?

[10:26]

And it's, I think, important to know this and notice it. And what you're doing, of course, is you're not just gathering information about the outside, where the tree is, but you're also creating the space for the tree within yourself. The scanning is a process which not only gathers information from the environment, but articulates our ability to really know and see the tree, feel the tree, not in its generalization as tree, But more and more, the fully articulated tree, each leaf and under each leaf and around the twigs and so forth. And this just doesn't happen naturally because of the senses. This is part of opening the senses.

[11:31]

Okay. Now there's a certain, of course, let's say bodily knowledge. Now again, you know, here we're just starting practice period and I'm talking about all these dumb things, obvious things. But trying to take the obvious things that you know well from your experience in everyday life and look at them in a fresh way in the context of practice, here where there's, as I say, no place to go, nothing to do except follow the schedule, make lunch, et cetera. This does. And this topography of personalities and psychologies and habits and issues and so on, within this particular, this is it.

[12:36]

There might be better ones. This is the one we got. I don't think there's a better one. I don't want to make any such comparison. This is what we got. So now you didn't just put the key in the door the first time. You had to figure out that the key goes upside down and right side up, which is where it's at. But after a while, through experience, you have a bodily knowledge. Let's call it bodily knowledge. Maybe we can contrast bodily knowledge to conceptual mental knowledge, mental conceptual knowledge. Okay. So just in this key, you can feel the difference between bodily knowledge and conceptual knowledge. And bodily knowledge is predictive.

[13:39]

But it gets feedback faster than mental knowledge, which is also predictive. In other words, someone's changed the lock, you know it right away. Damn key doesn't fit in. You've got the wrong key. What's going on? Instant feedback. But mental knowledge, worldviews, I mean, the worldview can be changed completely and you won't notice it at all. Your worldview can be wrong and your mind, mental knowledge, won't get feedback. So bodily knowledge is predictive, habit-based, experience-based, but it gets feedback right away. Hmm, this is useful. So you can notice again the difference between the mind, which just automatically puts the key in after you've done it enough times.

[14:51]

It's unlikely to happen the first time, but after a while, no problem. And then when there is a problem, you notice it's a little different mind. It's like you'd got up on the wrong side of the bed and that kind of stuff. That's interesting, the wrong side of the bed. The left brain mind, the right brain mind. Which side of the bed is the right brain mind on? Etc. Okay, so what we can say, now I've brought in two more things. You know, I really have resisted for years. This right brain, left brain stuff. And I was a friend of the guy who wrote most of the books about it years ago in the 60s. Too simplistic. But I like it a little better if I can say right brain body and left brain body. So as I brought up in the last and first tissue, the previous and first tissue,

[15:56]

So let's say that the right brain body is the one that knows how to put the key in the lock. And the left brain body doesn't. Or when it thinks about it, it kind of has to try several times. Okay. So the right brain body... Maybe it's present when the key just flows into the lock. You can tell people, what was Taisho like today? I hope you don't tell anybody. Well, we talked about unlocking doors, et cetera. It goes right into the lock. So ritualized behavior repetitious ritualized behavior tends to introduce you into right-brained body as you learn to put the key in.

[17:12]

And this is why the process of coming into the zendo, coming to your cushion and sitting on your cushion is ritualized. Ritualized in the Han, seven hits, five hits, three hits, coming in at a particular time, sitting down. If you can just let yourself go into this ritualized behavior, it's not really something you're forcing on yourself, it's not something conforming, it's a door to the right-brained mind, to the sambhogakaya body. Now again, to go back to Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara, these two bodhisattvas are used as representations and their qualities are aspects of the difference between right-brained body and left-brained body, if I use these terms.

[18:36]

Okay. Now, We have these three divisions typical of Yogacara, which you can see appearing right here. The conventional world, the world of wisdom, and the world of the nirmanakaya, or the actualized world, but actualized through the sambhogakaya body. This teaching runs all the way through the various Buddhist schools, particularly in the various Zen schools. Okay. So the conventional world, let's call that the left brain world, when you get really used to the, oh, I'm sorry to use these terms, it makes me, anyway, when you get used to the right brain world,

[19:40]

More and more, let's call it maybe the inclusive somatic field of permutations. Is that better? The inclusive somatic field of permutations. It's the difference between a world of possibilities and a world of potentialities. Now what seems to be the case, if a person is one who has the capacity to fold the world into him, him or herself, and develops the ability to fold. Now, you have to make space, just as saccadic scanning makes space for the tree in all its affluence. So, sitting zazen, practicing mindfulness, begins to develop, first initiate, initiate, initialize, actualize, articulate, evolve, and develop.

[20:45]

Folded in space so that the world has more and more room to be folded in. You know, sometimes I think, you know, I talk about monastic and lay, et cetera, et cetera. And sometimes I use the example, you don't want a medical doctor who didn't go to medical school. Well, usually you don't. Around Crestone, that's something else. But you want that training and professional knowledge. You're just not born with it. Now, that's harder to apply to we want a monastic who... or an adept who knows practice the way of medical... Well, no. But... But it does take time. It does take practice, and it takes practice in a place like this, or in some way in which you create, when you develop the capacity to fold in the world so there's no temptations from the outfolded world.

[22:08]

The folded world doesn't stay folded at all as long as you're engaged with self-referential thinking and so forth and so forth. It folds right back out. You fold it in. It's nice out there. It's exciting. It's interesting. Ego satisfying, etc. So if you can really be here with no purpose, you have a chance. to fold the world in. The folded in world is called wisdom. And the outfolded world is called compassion. But the outfolded world is no longer simply the conventional world. It's the conventional world folded into the world of wisdom and then folded out as compassion, Connective space and not separative space.

[23:14]

A soft space. Now Basho, the haiku poet, really created the tradition of haiku poems. Haiku poems are poems in, we could say poems in soft space. Basho says, something like, if you don't see a flower when you look at anything or shine into the moon when you think of anything, You're one of those savages of civilization.

[24:17]

Isn't that great? A savage of civilization. When you look at anything, you see a flower. You find a flower. You find something that happens. It blooms in you. When you think of anything, it shines out like the moon. So this is someone who's speaking about this, well, what can I say, the somatic field, an inclusive somatic field of permutations. If we use the possible, I mean, just to take two words, possible and potential. Possible means, in English, that which is able to be done.

[25:22]

And potential has more the meaning of the power. It's more the power. It's not in the world, what's possible in the world. It's the power in yourself of the not yet done. koans are the most classic literate dimension of Zen practice you want to be able to take all the ingredients all the permutation of the ingredients in the kind of somatic field inclusive somatic field and let them connect by themselves Koans don't, they're not riddles. They're just meant to be understood through awareness or through right-bodied brain or through the somatic field, inclusive somatic field, in which the permutations can float in their potentialities, not so much in their possibilities.

[26:33]

Yeah, so what you're doing, coming to Zazen, repetitiously, following the schedule. You're seeing if you can discover the feel of the field, of the somatic field. and discovering the feel of it and then allowing it to incubate, develop, evolve. And more and more you know the difference when the key will fit in the door and when it won't. Or when you can bring a basic problem of your life or a koan into this somatic field of potentialities. and allow another kind of knowledge.

[27:40]

You know, I'm typing. Recently, the last couple days, I've been typing a variety of letters for whether we can create the physical basis in the practical world for practice periods in Europe. And I was typing the word teach, but my fingers typed teachers. I kind of gave my fingers a little slap to behave myself. I said teach. Now what's interesting is why did my fingers know teachers better than it knew teach? Well, I mean obviously it's been used to, but I got feedback right away that it was the wrong word. But this is quite interesting. that the fingers are more used to typing teachers. So once TEA got them, fingers just did what they wanted.

[28:42]

So again, this juncture, not exactly unity, but juncture of bodily knowledge and mental conceptual knowledge and how bodily knowledge with its more immediate feedback and bodily knowledge which triggers awareness and helps you more and more stay in and evolve the inclusive somatic field. And at the same time move freely back and forth between mental associable knowledge, mental conceptual knowledge, and bodily knowledge.

[29:48]

Now, some of these distinctions I made will take some time to sort out. Maybe I'll try to sort them out in future Tayshos. But it's enough to give you a sense that much of what I'm saying now arises from simply studying your lived life. And zazen and mindfulness practices give you the ability, the resources, the tools to study or observe and transform your lived life. for those of us who study the mystery. Thank you.

[30:33]

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