So, your laughing makes me think you can see me now, finally. Is that correct? Okay. Ah, so we're on, I guess? Okay. Good morning. Good afternoon, I mean, of course. I learned so much trying to share this practice with you. And in the process, of course, as I keep saying, I keep realizing there's things that aren't explicable. How do we make it clear?

[01:02]

Again, as I said on the Tuesday Tuesday, last week it was Wednesday, but usually Tuesday it will be English only lecture, talk. What which I gave in a more formal, part of the monastic practice here, way. I tried to say something about the hua dou, no, not hua dou, hua yen, a practice of interfusion or interpenetration. which is really about the practice of all-at-onceness.

[02:23]

And dropping the distinction between subject and object and sentient and insentient, and looking at how we are in this world. And Buddhism is a kind of, you know, something like physics in some ways. And it requires study and education and an examination of the basis of our experience. and an examination of how we enter into experience.

[03:35]

But we also, people, we need some way, some simpler way to simply enter practice into our activity, our daily life. And we can have faith in the practice, of course, a certain confidence in the practice, but we don't have the opportunity to just have faith and believe. So how can we enter our life in a simpler way than a direct and simple way? No, we can have faith in the sense of confidence in practice, but we don't really have the opportunity to have faith in the sense of just believing in it.

[04:52]

So how can we simply enter into our life in a way that opens up how we actually exist? And Kant has, Immanuel Kant has some concept of something like the principle of expedience, meaning teaching doesn't have actuality for us unless we can apply it to our life. Expedience means simply it's applicable.

[06:32]

If it's not applicable, it's just metaphysics or something. So in Buddhism, we would ask, how can it be applicable and realisational or actualisable at the same time? And in the first century before Christ, BCE, a practice called Nyanfu began, was introduced. Yeah, and Nyanfu is translated in Japanese as Nembutsu.

[07:42]

And those of you who know something about Japanese practice and also the practice which many people, American musicians, soldiers and others brought back from Japan after the war. chanting Namo Amida Butsu or Namo Ho Renge Kyo. Yeah, sounds good enough. Namo Ho Renge Kyo, Namo Ho Renge Kyo. And it really is a version for us Zen practitioners, a version of the

[08:52]

Wado path. Yeah. So when we, as I've been speaking about last week and other times, if we chant or repeat to ourselves a wado, a phrase like just this, We're doing it to enter the intentional content feel of the words, two words, just this, into our daily activity.

[09:56]

saying something like this begins to cooperate with or conjoin with immediacy, the contents of immediacy, the activity of immediacy. Yeah, and the most, let's say, the most common is Namu Amida Butsu. Amida is the name for a Buddha, and Butsu is Buddha. And Namu is to call forth, to call forth the name of Buddha. Yeah, so this practice which started in India and then became maybe the main practice of most people in Japan is calling forth Amida Buddha and calling Amida Buddha into oneself.

[11:33]

And it's calling forth the possibility of a Buddha or the possibility of awakening. So what's happening when you do this? Well, I don't know. I have to kind of find ways to say these things. Most of us spend a great deal of time, maybe all our time, in a self-referencing consciousness. And self-referencing consciousness is a location. a real location in the sense that it's where you locate your identity, your experience, your concerns.

[13:02]

So let's just accept for now, if you can, we can, that self-referencing consciousness is a location. And it's a location through incorporating your experience, your memory and experience and accumulated experience from the past. And it incorporates your desires and concerns and wishes and wants of the present. incorporate literally means embody, incorporate.

[14:31]

It embodies also then the anticipations of the future. So it's a location, self-referencing thinking is a location which makes use of the past, makes use of the present, and makes use of the future. And I, for shorthand, for short, I call it a self-time tube.

[15:41]

When I'm in a hurry or for some reason or other and go from my tower office room where I live down to the main office or across to the next door building, I'm often in a self-time tube. And when I'm in this self-time tube, I'm hardly in the present. I go outside to another building, but still I'm in the self-time tube. Let's call it that. So the challenge of Buddhism from the very beginning is how to get ourselves out of the self-time tube.

[17:00]

And the self-time tube can be very convincing because our whole life can be defined through this past, present, and future of the self-time tube. So how do we circumvent this self-time tube? How do we rewire or re-circuit our experience? Yeah, as I said, from the first century BC, one of the ways Buddhism has tried to do this is to shift you away from the self-time tube

[18:40]

to, you know, the open highway of, yeah, something like that. Well, if you want to, you can add that. Oh, I'm sorry, as well as a verb, huh? Yeah, okay. So if you repeat to yourself something like Namo Amida Butsu, and I did this for about a year myself, trying to look at

[19:59]

other forms of practice, and it's also a practice which can be part of Zen Buddhism. Yeah, and so, you know, Buddhist practice is rooted in, Zen Buddhist practice is rooted in developing and acknowledging and noticing way-seeking mind. And way-seeking mind is a necessary dynamic of noticing the way when it appears in your activity.

[21:05]

The potentialities of the way, the way, a realisational way, when it appears in your activity. So our life is led not through belief, but through a way-seeking attentionality. We could say being is a becoming, which is a process with an intent. And it's a way-seeking mind and an intent to stay alive.

[22:13]

It's just built into us. And it's then an intent that opens us into, awakens us into, our inner resonance with the world. And how do we open ourselves, then the question is, how do we open ourselves into this inner resonance with the world or with immediacy as it appears? So when I began to practice

[23:18]

repeating to myself, Namo Amida Butsu, I was, when you say just this too, you're also creating a path, a path-awakening mind. the decision to stay alive moment after moment, that decision as a process to stay alive moment after moment is a path. It's a location and a path. So to be the path, to be the person you really want to be at each moment is a path, a location.

[24:42]

So when Suzuki Roshi would speak about discovering your innermost request, this is part of way-seeking mind and his way of saying, notice, have a feeling for, discover the kind of person you really want to be. So all of the phrases and koans and et cetera are versions of the path of being the person you really want to be. And not only being the person you really want to be, but also the person that is in an inner resonance with others.

[26:15]

And in an inner resonance with the world. So when the Hoa Do teaching of interfusion, etc., emphasizes that grasses and trees are also teaching us the Dharma, And when Dogen, Zenji, says the earth and grasses and trees and walls and fences and pebbles and tiles are teachers, He means when you can drop the dualism of sentient and insentient and subjective and objective, and when you can find yourself in an inner resonance with the fullness and allness of immediacy, whatever appears,

[28:08]

this we could call the path-opening mind. So again, using Namo Amida Butsu was an exercise in trying to explore the use of phrases, the phrasal path, as a path-opening, path-awakening mind. And this path opening mind is not located through the self-time tube. So one dynamic of Buddhism, Zen, is to really discover and locate the activity of the self-time tube and get yourself out of it.

[29:42]

And understanding how to do that is a big part of Zen practice. But one way to approach it simultaneously and somewhat more simply is simply to replace the self-time tube with the path-awakening mind. So these early practitioners of Nyanfu or Nenbutsu from India and through China and Japan, Korea, were really developing, creating, developing, evolving this path

[31:10]

And you can put various things into the path. And developing the path takes a while until it just is a habit that's moving in you outside of consciousness. And then you can put in it, as I've said, just this or not knowing is nearest. Or with Namo Mitabhutsu you can put into the path calling forth a the Buddha in yourself.

[32:32]

And it was also used not just for Amida Buddha, it was used for Maitreya Buddha. And Maitreya, the word Maitreya etymologically is from the word friend. So it's the friend of Buddha. And the Bodhisattva of the future, of course, now is not a Buddha, he's just a Bodhisattva. So if your intent is to call forth the Buddha of the future, you're calling forth the Bodhisattva that might be present now as your friend or as yourself. So in the chemistry of your life, you're putting into the test tube, shaking it, you're replacing self with the Buddha who might be present right now as your friend or yourself.

[34:17]

So you're working with the path of the intent to stay alive. And then you're changing that intent, developing that intent to stay alive in the intent to stay alive in a way that awakens the world and yourself and others. you're developing the intent, the path of the intent, built-in path of the intent to stay alive into the intent to stay alive in a certain way. So Shinran, for instance, who was one of the main developers, along with Honen, one of the main developers of this practice in Japan, didn't just say Amida Buddha.

[36:12]

They sometimes said, calling forth inconceivable light. or Shinrin's disciple practiced calling forth unobstructed light that penetrates everything all at once. These words are all kinds of approximations. I mean, Yen thinking is about not everything being just interrelated, but interpenetrating. So interconnected is one...

[37:30]

approximation. Interpenetrating is another approximation. Yeah, and unobstructed is another way to say the same. Everything is not obstructing itself is another approximation. Not interfering maybe is easier than unobstructing? Okay. I'm finding out while speaking too. And I think there's a phrase from physics, the universal wave function.

[38:44]

Yeah, which was somebody ever, somebody ever mentioned it in his PhD thesis and it became a term, universal wave function. because it's become for me a phrase which is an approximation of the experience I have of the interfusion or unobstructedness of everything all at once. So at this practice, going back again to the time before Christ in India, of establishing a path of intent within the context of momentary immediacy,

[40:07]

which replaced self-referencing mind or consciousness, and replaced it with something like this inner resonance with things as they actually exist. Like unobstructed light which pervades everything all at once. Or the Buddha of the future who may be right here being realized. Or Shinran's, the inconceivable light.

[41:30]

We can't conceive of it, but we feel something that we... Inconceivable light is an approximation of something we feel that there's no grammar or words for. And in the morning service, we say, all Buddhas, ten directions, three times. Yeah, we just say it. You know, it's just something you say, or the Doan says. But it's an incomparable conception.

[42:33]

It's a mental posture, or a hua dou, or a nian fu, that there's a simultaneity of all Buddha's ten directions, which is a mental posture, all Buddha's ten directions, three times, all folded into one approximation of the universal wave function. It was an approximation of inconceivable light or unobstructed light which pervades all at onceness. So in this sense, maybe Buddhism overlaps with some Christian mysticism and so forth because it becomes a kind of belief in what can't be conceived.

[44:15]

But physicists have the same problem. their experiments and their math tells them that there's something going on which is inconceivable in any language and experience we have of the world. So developing this path is also then part of developing a attentionality which just gives attention to everything. Everything is an appearance and a pause. So chanting or repeating Namu Amida Butsu is taught that you can do it slowly.

[45:58]

So you say Namu Amida Butsu, and then you stop, you let zero appear, you empty your mind, and once your mind feels empty, you say Namu Amida Butsu again. So it's a way of opening your mind to zero or opening your mind, emptying your mind to the inconceivable as then being part of your lived life. So Maitreya being a friend and calling forth Amida Buddha of course made me think of James Taylor, You've Got a Friend.

[47:23]

Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call. you've got a friend. I never found out if James Taylor was influenced by, but of course at that time everyone was kind of interested in Buddhism, when the song was written, if he was influenced by Namo Amida Butsu, calling, whenever you need me, just call me. A few years ago I was in a Japanese restaurant with my daughter Sophia, who was a little tiny girl at the time, and I think Elizabeth, my middle daughter.

[48:43]

And actually sitting at the counter, James Taylor was sitting beside me. And I knew the song, but I didn't know that was James Taylor. And he began to get the Japanese cook, chef, who was very good at cutting vegetables into little shapes, to do some special things for Sophia. Yeah, and I noticed there was a certain glow in the people around me, but I didn't know what was going on, but it was sort of nice. And then he got up to leave, and everybody said, that was James Taylor. I said, you've got a friend. Yeah.

[50:09]

So let's all practice together. You've got a friend. And thank you, Nicole, for giving me such a friendly translation. Yeah. And I guess there will be a discussion now in a while, right? Okay. I did a few minutes better. I think two minutes better. Yeah, because when I did the English only talk, it was just 40 minutes. and people said that my English was different, but I don't know. Okay.

[51:37]

Okay, bye-bye. Thanks again. And thank you for being here too, all of you, each of you.

[51:47]

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