Life is such an interesting event, you never know what happens next. I thought I'd be listening to a Dharma talk today, but I'm giving one. One day you're healthy, the next day you're sick. We've been talking about appearance, so that fits right in. After the seminar when we talked about appearance, Nicole and I got a chance to chat with Baker Oshie in the office and what came up is that he defines appearance often as like, you know, I'm looking over there and Dorothea appears and I'm looking over here and Nicole appears and Dorothea's gone. And how hard it is to get practitioners to really get a feel for that when I look over here and Nicole appears, Dorothea is really gone. Because really, we feel, well, she's still there.

[01:05]

Is she really gone? Or is she still there? That that's a dynamic of viewing things as appearance. If she's not there, then the world is not a container that has things, but it's really appearance. It's this, and then it's this, and it's gone. To get it, you know, I renewed my sense for that and I'm calling it, while I was bowing I was calling it in my mind because I was sort of practicing with that feeling. The cliff of the moment. Bring in some cliches and metaphor. But can you get that feeling of an edge, of a cliff in each moment? So we've been talking about the different sense fields or I made a point that is really important to me when we talk about appearance that appearance feels different in each of the sense fields and that you could experiment with that.

[02:21]

What is that cliff like in the field of sound? What is it like in the visual field? Looking here and then over there. What's the silence in relationship to the sound? And I've also suggested that when we listen to someone else talking, how we assemble meaning, this sequence of peering, holding, releasing, how in order for the meaning to assemble, you have to hold You have to create a space where that meaning can assemble into something that you can understand. But at the same time can there be this continuous releasing where the meaning comes together and at the same time there are alternatives to the meaning. There's that which isn't said. There's all that that could be said.

[03:26]

the world becomes such a complex event when assembling the meaning and releasing the meaning at the same time are happening. It's like, I don't know, you're at this abyss. It's a groundlessness of what could happen, what does happen. Maybe that's just something that occasionally we have to walk to the cliff and feel it a little bit. You can just go about your day again where everything just appears normally, regularly, as expected, and then sometimes you just go to the cliff again. You know, these aspects of the field, that which could have been said, or the meaning that didn't come together, or the alternative meaning, these, I think, are all aspects of the field that we could call emptiness.

[05:05]

And what is emptiness? I mean, conceptually you could say it's interdependence and impermanence. But do we experience that? This is so common wording in Buddhism that, I don't know, it almost feels like you can't. So how do you interpret? Inner dependence is this weaving together of each moment. And the change that happens from the weaving, and that each change folds back into the weaving and makes another change, and the complexity of that, which is not graspable. So we appear together. You know, like I said last time when I sat here talking, that you appear. Can you get, can you be comfortable with the fact of emerging from this groundless complexity and coming into the world like this without any protection?

[06:24]

With others. And everything you do is the change that folds into other people's lives, weaves with their lives and changes them and vice versa, recursively, continuously like that, influencing everything. And I think, I don't know if you'd agree, but I think if I feel into that for myself, the tendency for us human beings is that we want to have ourselves. That we want to have, know who we are, so that we could deliberately move through situations in the right way. so that we do the right thing.

[07:32]

We know ourselves, we know the situation, and then we can move deliberately in the right way. But we can't have ourselves in this interweaving, recursively changing field. But we also don't want to lose ourselves, I feel. Maybe because we don't want to lose ourselves, we want to have ourselves. So how can you, and the question that arises for me, how can you hold yourself without having yourself or losing yourself? I'm using this word holding that I'm taking from this Practice instruction that we got and that we talked about in the seminar yesterday appearing holding releasing and I'm taking this holding as sandwiched between Appearing and releasing This moment where you make a moment That you can experience

[08:57]

the way you can experience yourself. Okay, maybe, I think it came up in the seminar, so maybe instead of holding, I want to say express it. How do you express yourself without having yourself, which would be kind of a holding on, or losing yourself, which would be... Well, I think that's enough to say. How do you express yourself in this field? It's already happening.

[10:15]

And the question is, can the mind penetrate this moment of holding and expressing? Can it fully penetrate that moment so that you're fully there? When the mind penetrates this moment of expression, I would, I'm trying today, I would call that posture. So it's like, it's almost like, can we move from posture to posture? And I'm, like I tried to say yesterday, my feeling is when the, hmm, When the mind penetrates this moment of expression fully, it senses the limitations of the expression.

[11:21]

It's just this that gets expressed. And it also feels what's not expressed, what's not yet expressed, and what's inexpressible. Because here I am, you know, talking about expression, And it's just this, it's just this, another Zen cliché metaphor, this skin bag talking. Is that satisfying? You know, feeling this cliff of the moment, one could start to doubt the expression, you know. Am I good enough this way? This expression that includes what's not yet expressed and what's inexpressible is...

[12:33]

is a way to be just yourself and feeling connected with the whole field that folds into this expression, that comes together to make this expression happen. And it's almost like at this cliff of the moment, we always have to search for how the next moment can be expressed most fully. So this moment gets expressed and then what's coming next? How do you move How do you move in this, how do you move without doubt or with, said more positively, with faith that each moment you'll find that expression?

[13:51]

And we're trying to move from moment to moment, finding an adequate and appropriate expression that expresses our independence and interdependence, both being yourself and being with others, being Buddhas. The Buddha of yesterday is not good for today. So it doesn't work to settle on something that worked yesterday and think that it will work tomorrow. It has to be this continuous presence at the at the cliff of the moment for letting the field assemble into a new expression that meets the moment.

[15:04]

This is nothing new, right? But it's, I wonder if we can, what it takes to cultivate this kind of preciseness, cultivate the The clarity that we want each moment to be penetrated by mind so that mind can feel the form that's expressed and its limitation and what is not expressed and the mystery of the inexpressible. I did something, I took a nap this, in the lunch break. And Sophie came back from her studio and she took a nap too.

[16:06]

She came and lay on the other side of the bed. And what often happens is that when the house gets quiet, our cat comes and hops onto the bed. And it's funny, because for about half a year we would strictly keep her out of the bedroom. but we can't do it because she is so rambunctious. She bangs the door, you know, and she wants to come in and you can't ignore it. You have to let her in. There's no way. It's so annoying. It's unbelievable. So we decided, okay, well, I guess we have to let her into the bedroom. So now I got so used for the cat to hop onto the bed when it's almost like what Becker Roshi described as soft space, you know.

[17:07]

When the space gets soft, she will come from the living room and hop onto the bed. And it's a very satisfying feeling. It's like, oh, now we have the company of the cat. So today she wasn't coming, and we whistled for her, you know. as if she was a dog. And when she's outside and you whistle for her, she actually comes to the door, usually. But when I'm lying in bed and I'm whistling for her, she usually doesn't come and hop onto the bed because she needs that soft moment to hop onto the bed. If you whistle, that's not the right thing to do. So Sophie came and woke me up, and then I whistled for the cat. And then she said, she will not come. And then I said, which I thought was very funny, this is what I'm telling you. I said, firewood doesn't turn into ash.

[18:12]

And she said, huh? And then I explored, excuse me, this is a very personal anecdote. And then I explored what the whistling is. Is the whistling... in relationship to the cat hopping under the bed? Or is the whistling just the whistling? That's why I said firewood doesn't turn into ash. Because I felt at the moment of the whistling that it's this wonderful intimacy to whistle for the cat And even if she doesn't, even though I know that she won't come, my whistling is like she, it's as if she's hopping onto the bed. It's that same, it's the same feeling. You following me? So you whistle even though nothing will happen from it.

[19:17]

Just because the whistling implies the soft space that you enjoy. I do the same thing with my deceased father. Sometimes I have a feeling and I offer incense at my little altar where part of his ashes are. And I have this, I have, and then I offer incense. And then within the absence, within his absence, I can feel the presence. Or I'm also, that reminded me of these kind of useless things that we do in Oriyopi, you know, wiping, Venkateshvara has pointed out, wiping the left side of the wrapping cloth where there's nothing to wipe off.

[20:25]

You just wipe it. I think it's a similar feeling. You sort of take care, because just wiping where it's wet is incomplete. You also wipe it where it's not wet. Because that's taking care of the whole table. These lacquer tables that the monk bowls have. Or at three and eight days, we clean the zendo, even though there's nothing to clean. I mean, space looks perfectly clean, and then we clean it anyway. For me, these are moments of... Moments of expression that invite the field. Also, I noticed today I walked into the bathroom that Sophie and I have down there.

[21:56]

It's fairly new still. And I still haven't gotten quite used to the fact that I actually have a bathroom because I lived without a bathroom for so long. It's still like I'm walking in and it's like, hmm, this is... pretty convenient to have the bathroom and I'm kind of shocked that it's there. And also I'm walking in and I'm noticing these strange objects, you know, toilet, heater, and how they assemble into a bathroom because I saw it assemble into a bathroom. It's actually quite strange. And the strangeness, which is also the groundlessness in the cliff, is that it could really be, could have been assembled really differently. Could have peaked. It could be other tiles, different toilet. It would be quite a different bathroom. Not only that, I'm also reminded that, and I still, I can't go get over the fact that we have electric heaters in that house.

[23:08]

And I feel bad about it because I spend a lot of time thinking with Michael, who's going to do the piping in our house, about how the house could be heated with solar energy and what it would take. And I could go into the details of that, which I won. And it would have been just too expensive. We just couldn't afford it. Because another thing that I find absolutely stunning is that my parents-in-law donated all this money to make this addition happen that now gives us this convenient bathroom. I really didn't expect it. And I find it's a wonderful expression of trust that they express in this gesture of making such a large donation. But it wasn't... It was a certain amount of money, and it made what it made, but it couldn't make, you know, an expensive, up-to-date... solar heating system.

[24:12]

I don't know, this is actually, because this is actually something that's quite important to me, the fact that I have electric baseboard here is in there because we couldn't afford anything else, constantly reminds me that each moment happens under these constraints. Maybe there's some vision, and maybe there's movement toward the vision, but there's only so much possible. And everything's like that. I'm like that. I find that the idea of self-improvement in practice is such a big obstacle.

[25:36]

Try to become a better person. This is also good. That's the vision. But then there's these constraints, right? It's not happening. It's not happening like... something you can design on a computer, a better person, a better life. Because there's this complexity of the weaving, and so there's only so much possible at any given moment, and you kind of have to move into this moment with, into the next moment with acceptance. As the Sukhiroshi says, the way to practice is to limit your activity.

[27:06]

When your mind wanders about, you can't express yourself. But when you limit your activity and you do what can be done in just this moment, then you can fully express your true nature. The way to practice is to limit your activity. When your mind wanders about, you can't express yourself. But when you limit your activity, then When you limit your activity and you do what can be done in just this moment, then you can express your true nature fully. This limiting of the activity I find interesting. And I'm relating it to how you can

[28:13]

how you have to take a posture so that the mind can penetrate the moment so that you can feel what's getting expressed and what's not yet expressed, the potential that is in the mystery of the world, which is activated so that it can be expressed some other time. And I'm wondering how you move from moment to moment staying open to the unexpected so that the transformative journey that this practice is is not some kind of planned activity of wanting to be a better person but that there is an openness for other things that are not yet expressed and unexpected that they are invited to make a difference that really makes a difference. And when your mind is there in that moment

[29:21]

of holding, of expression, when your mind is here, you can actually pick up on the difference that makes a difference, so that it can make a difference. This sounds very abstract, but I'm bringing the example that I brought yesterday in the, maybe abstract, it's not abstract to me, but the example that I brought in the seminar yesterday when I found that I didn't have to fix the software that wasn't working right away, but that I could leave it to itself or Nicole. That was a true moment of a difference that made a difference. I just walked away from it. You may not believe this, and Nicole can be my witness in the next days. This made such an impression on me that it will happen again. I will leave it to Nicole.

[30:25]

Or to itself. I think that's kinder. She walked away from it too. She followed the example, which, by the way, teaches me some other thing. When you are present in the moment, mind penetrating the moment, open to unexpected differences that make a difference, others can be the teachers for... new expressions. Because what others do in this field that is unexpected can make such an impression that you just say, I'm going to do that too. So you can use the field too. People do outrageous things, they walk away, and you're like, whoa, that's cool, I'll do that too. So we can... So... the situations become teachers, not that person is a teacher or that person is a teacher, I make this person my teacher, that the situation can be a teacher because it is something that's really different.

[31:37]

And when I'm there with a mind that can notice the... the actualized potential that which wasn't yet expressed is now expressed, you can take it in almost as if there's no boundary. It's just, it penetrates immediately. You don't need a plan to be a different person because the difference jumps, what, it jumps into you. Yeah. Guess I have to be satisfied with the expression.

[33:01]

This is also an edge, my practice. I have to find a way to talk about it. This cliff of the moment, this edge, is an invitation to the field to give you something you don't know yet. I don't know what to talk about. I have to let the field give it to me. I don't know what to do. I have to invite the field to give it to me.

[34:09]

That's what we're practicing, always interrupting the stream of thoughts and habits that expect the world to be, to continue the way it is. And we can create these moments of stillness and openness to invite the unexpected and that which is not yet expressed. Thank you.

[34:55]

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