So let me say something to begin with and then I'm of course primarily interested in what you will bring into the discussion. Because in a way what we see in Dogen and what we see in in general Dogen in Japan of the 13th century, in Christian era terms. You mean the way he was understood in the 13th century? Yeah. Well, what he was doing in the 13th century. We may understand better what he was doing in the 13th century than they did in the 13th century.

[01:01]

We could say that he was shifting recontextualizing Buddhism with an emphasis on lay practice. At least in the first part of his teaching he emphasized lay practice. In the latter part he emphasized at some point almost exclusively monastic practice. In any case, he rethought what Buddhism could be. And And tried to make practice in its fullness and depth accessible to everyone, to anyone.

[02:39]

And he began his study, as I said yesterday, his practice on on Hieizan with the Tendai or Tendai school of Buddhism. And one of the emphases or teachings of Tendai, Tendai, is in Japanese it's T-E-N-D-A-I and in as it's romanized in Chinese as T-apostrophe-I-E-N-T-A-I. Not that you need to translate that. That's why I sometimes say, I have no control over what I say. I seem to have learned a word a year or so.

[03:47]

If I only learned a word every time I was translated, I'd be quite fluent right now. Okay, one of the concepts in Tendai Buddhism which I mentioned for the first time in the Winterbranches seminar, which is the concept of the 3,000 coherences. Now I'm bringing this up not only because I think it can be useful, I'm bringing it up also because to illustrate how small changes, what seem to be small changes, like a new term, can be a big shift in the understanding of the world and Buddhism and so forth.

[05:32]

Of course we don't, you know, it may be more of a shift It may be more of an apparent shift, but not so much a real shift, because so much is just carried in the way people do things. Because what we study as Buddhism is just what's surfaced from people's practices surfaced in language and anecdotes. And I think of it that way also because I see it in my own life and our practice here in America and Europe.

[06:53]

which I have a certain practice from Suzuki Roshi. And practices I developed and continued within the context that Suzuki Roshi established. And then I've noticed how over now, I've said 55 years, various aspects of that practice have surfaced into consciousness and into language. And because I feel a huge responsibility to Suzuki Roshi who made such a lifetime effort to bring Buddhism into the West. To leave within our Sangha, developing from his Sangha,

[08:21]

as much of the essentials and subtleties as I can. Hoping that you can and others can over time make sense of these things. So in this statement of mine, in this case, through our conversations here in this seminar, I decided to change the second sentence or second part of the statement from for the 10,000 things to come forward to say for the 10,000 dharmas to come forward. So the first half of it says for the 10,000 things and the second half of it says for the 10,000 dharmas.

[10:12]

Okay. I sometimes feel I'm channeling Dogen. Channeling? We say channeling, yeah. In the sense that, not that I think he's, you know, floating up above the, licked him somewhere. But I'm still there. I'm still there. But that I've been in the midst of Dogen's teachings through Sudokirishi and through my own life, so much that I've caught a certain configuration that I feel represents what he would say in English.

[11:22]

And I'm not stating that thanks for the cushion. No thanks for the cushion. I'm not stating this as a fact but just as a feeling I have sometimes. I wonder sometimes why I think it should be 10,000 dharmas instead of 10,000 things. Okay. So let's go back to the 3,000 coherences. It's just a number, right? It could be any number.

[12:24]

32 or 784, we've got 3,000. And the idea is that each moment is constituted from, comprised of 3,000 coherences. Okay. Now this is a mental posture. When you are effecting and affecting appearances, Effecting and affecting. Effecting is to make happen and affecting is to change, to affect them. You're doing that with... mentation with mental postures.

[13:46]

You're by shaping your five physical senses to notice appearances as dharmas. And in this case, to notice appearances as not just things, but as dharmas, because you release them, you empty them. This may happen naturally. But if it does happen naturally, it happens intermittently naturally. Only now and then.

[14:47]

So... But when you make a decision that you're going to do this most of the time, this requires a mental posture. And the decision to do it is an act of wisdom. And the decision to do this is an act of wisdom. Like the Genghis Khan says at the end. The wind, the air may be everywhere. In other words, enlightenment might be everywhere. But to make it work, you have to fan yourself. You make your own wind. So you make your own wisdom.

[15:48]

Wisdom. And that decision to do it may I say it may arise naturally. Now, what is the case is that practice shows itself. In other words, as part of what this Ganyu koan is about, is your life situations are also koans.

[16:57]

You don't have to go to Matsu. to find a teacher. So when Sukhirashi in the 60s taught the Genjo Komen, He spoke about it as the koan of everyday life. But he also said, it's usually thought of that way, but it is also, etc., And one of the things that distinguishes Dogen's Soto approach is there aren't a hundred koans or three thousand koans or something like that. there's an unlimited number of koans.

[18:15]

Because a koan then arises through your ability to look at your experience in a way that you can resolve it through the kind of practice which is koan practice. So if you practice and you realize certain, you find yourself in certain modalities of aliveness, in a sashin or after a sashin or after a couple of periods of zazen or something like that. And you notice your experience is different when you're emptying each appearance.

[19:20]

And it's different than when you accept each appearance. And then when you start seeing that, you fool around with accepting and settling into and see if that's different from accepting and emptying. And if you have understood this, then you start to play around with it and to look, to try it out, for example, to accept and to let yourself down and to see if it is something different than just accepting. Through this alertness, and Suzuki Roshi has always said to us, I want us all to be more alert. So from that point of view, we begin to teach ourselves subtle differences. And as you know, subtle differences, repeated, become huge differences after time. Okay.

[20:36]

So generally I think our habit constructed in our durative present Even if we do develop the attentional skills to notice the mix of the cosmos as individual appearances, Yeah. And we're establishing the idea of the cosmos as an established order, and we're always establishing local order in the midst of global incoherence.

[21:37]

We have to order our environment in order to function. Okay, and that is already a structure of noticing. Now, again, when I say all this, I think, I've almost said nothing so far, and it's all been preparation to say something which I'm not going to get to until next year, etc., and I wonder if you're patient, and I don't know, okay. Very elegant today. But I think if I share with you my own process of trying to present this informationally to myself through language, you will maybe understand it better yourself.

[22:53]

Okay. So at each moment we are structuring because there are mental postures in noticing appearances. And usually we're temporalizing appearances. By temporalizing, It's lucky I don't have to say some of those German words. I can barely say the English one. I'm bringing the momentum of time into my perception of appearances.

[24:15]

Indem wir verzeitlichen, bringe ich... into my experience of an appearance. I assume it's arrived from a cause. I assume it's arisen from a momentum from the past. And I assume it's going to be carried off by a momentum of the future calling us to it. And that is somewhat true. But it locates you in consciousness. But if you imagine that each moment is not simply causally and temporally framed, But instead, you're noticing the 3,000 cohenices.

[25:29]

So the 3,000 coherences, again, as I said yesterday, I'm sitting on the platform and the cushion and the newly stuffed cushion and the floor and the ground and this property which has been taken care of for generations, and so they are all simultaneous coherences. Das bedeutet, dieses 3000 Kohärenzen, das bedeutet so etwas, wie ich gestern schon gesagt habe, ich sitze hier auf diesem Kissen, auf dem neu gestopften Kissen, auf dem Podest, auf dem Boden, auf diesem Anwesen, an das man sich seit Generationen schon kümmert. All das sind Kohärenzen. And we usually take the coherences for granted as somehow the present that's out there, the world out there. But if you have a world that's conceived of without an exclusive center, A non-exclusive center.

[26:59]

Non-exclusive, okay. This is also a test. I just center myself non-exclusively. Is there a different adjective other than exclusive that you could use? Well, generally a center, there's a center and a periphery. But in the Tendai way of thinking, which is also what Dogen studied, everything becomes a center.

[28:01]

As soon as you think of centers and sources, you're basically ending up thinking in a theological way. Yeah. The words are right there. I see you read them. You've gotten full of text for it. This is clever of you. You've got invisible notes. Okay. So I say non-exclusive center meaning there is an experience of center but it's not a center which excludes anything. What I'm trying to emphasize here and develop here is the way in which small changes make a big change. And it's built into a simple view of Dogen's that there are unlimited comons.

[29:17]

It's a real big shift. There was a huge shift away from the Buddha and the Indian Buddha Dharma ancestors to the Chinese exemplary ancestors. And with Dogen to a ship that the teaching is everywhere and Buddha is everywhere. Now, how is that manifest? How does the craft of the moment articulate this?

[30:18]

How does the craft of the moment articulate this? I always find a little problem with handwork. Because I just mean craft and I don't mean you have to do it with your hands. I know craft is handwork, but I hear hand. Well, I mean, I'm not really complaining. I just hear handwork and I think, hmm. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[31:28]

So if you bring, if you're developing as a practitioner, as a mature practitioner, you're developing the habit that you inhabit of noticing the... mix of ingredients as separate appearances. Okay. And in that noticing you're taking away the sense that these are things or entities. And you're seeing them as activities. And also say to yourself, functions. Activities may be just activities, but they also may have a function.

[32:34]

And often they have a function or we give them a function. Now, if we see them as a function, an activity, their activity, as long as they're active, so they have no substantial physical reality. So you notice every appearance, and in the noticing it, you release it as emptiness, not into emptiness, that's just a receptacle somewhere, but you release it as also emptiness. And as activities you notice them and then you let them go as emptiness.

[33:54]

You don't let them go into the emptiness as if the emptiness was somehow such a condition in which you can let something go, but you let them go as emptiness. Now, as part of that releasing, you're not just removing self-interest or something like that. That becomes too simplistic a problem. You're removing the assumed structure of temporal momentum. The things are arriving from the past and going into the future. And one way to do that is now have a mental posture of the 3000 or innumerable coherences. If you do begin to have the mental posture, which Tendai is suggesting would develop, of the 3,000 innumerable coherences,

[35:09]

That recontextualizes your experience. If you're still following me, by re-contextualizing your experience, you're changing your relationship to time. Your change in your what? Your relationship to time. So you're no longer seeing yourself in a timeframe of arriving and going on. So again, the radical statement of the Dhamma Sutra, the Bodhisattva has no concept of a lifespan.

[36:28]

That's far out. Just think about it. Now how do you surgically remove the idea of a lifespan? Well, it's a kind of surgery. You're cutting out the momentum of time from your experience of... You're lessening the momentum of time in your experience of appearances. And you're... Yeah, and you're and you're locating appearances really now as arising from a multiplicity of coherences And that then locates and affects you as you feel yourself in a multiplicity of coherences.

[37:45]

And that also then becomes a merging of foreground and background. Foreground and background disappear because it's all a mixture of coherence. And now you're creating the outcome chemistry and dynamic of a field.

[38:25]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.93