brought to Japan from China by the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen, and brought to America by Suzuki Roshi, who founded San Francisco Zen Center, and actually a number of other teachers in that lineage. And I'm aware that in this group, actually one of the wonderful things about this group is that there are many of you doing different kinds of meditation in different Buddhist traditions, which is really very appropriate and wonderful because there are so many different teachings in the Buddhist tradition and meditation techniques and ways of approaching meditation. And that's as it should be because we all have different kinds of ways of approaching spiritual awareness and we all have different kinds of suffering and each of us at different times has different kinds. So there are many different kinds of meditation. And so what I have to say again is aimed at Zazen.

[01:03]

And some of it may be appropriate for the kind of meditation you're doing, and some of it may not be. So please feel free to ignore everything I say. But whatever might be helpful, please feel free to use. So I want to talk about Zazen as an art form, or Zazen as a mode of creative expression. So in this tradition, meditation is not, and Buddhist practice and meditation practice is not about gaining some higher consciousness. It's not about achieving some new state of being or attaining some particular way of being or level of consciousness or anything like that.

[02:05]

In fact, it's about just being yourself. So, in some sense, this... Suzuki Roshi talks about non-gaining attitude and going way back to the 8th century, teachers in this lineage have talked about not attaining and not knowing as the essence of the Buddhadharma. And this is based on the assumption that actually you already are who you are. That actually you already have experience of being present in this body and mind. So it's not about becoming some other person, it's about seeing this reality. this suchness, this raw awareness and attention, which is actually already part of our experience. And all of you have it, or else you wouldn't be here tonight.

[03:07]

So congratulations. So now what? So I would suggest that given that we all have this, to some extent or other, we have some taste, we have some glimmer, we have some experience of actually just being here. Given that, I would suggest that Zazen is simply our way to exploring and expressing how to engage our life. and finding the most deeply pleasing way to do that. So what I want to talk about is the aesthetic dimension of meditation, the inner aesthetics of meditation. And I'll try and not take too long so we can have some discussion too.

[04:11]

So even though we talk about not gaining anything, it's not that there's no purpose to our meditation. It's not that it's meaningless activity. So the basic idea in Mahayana Buddhism anyway is that Buddhas appear because they are suffering beings. And the point of all of this practice is just to help everyone enter into the way towards awakening. Everyone to enter into the way towards awakening. Everyone to enter into the way to helping others enter into the way to awakening. Everyone to enter into the way. So we just practice expressing ourselves for the sake of all beings. And, of course, that includes all the beings within us as well as all the beings we imagine outside us. So, in Sotusen, we emphasize a posture and sitting uprightly.

[05:17]

Whether you're sitting on cross-legged or kneeling on the floor or sitting in a chair, the posture is about finding our own physical balance, finding center. And of course we sometimes lean forward or backward or a little bit left or right. But our practice is about coming back to balance, about alignment and finding inner balance and harmony. And so there's a kind of process that's happening all the time in our meditation of returning to that center, returning to that balance and finding that. And it's not our idea of uprightness. It's not our idea of balance. So actually reality is constantly happening. And it doesn't happen according to what we think it is.

[06:20]

And it doesn't happen according to our expectations So whatever you expected when you set out to come here tonight is not this. And I certainly didn't expect this exactly as it is. And I'm not sure what I'm going to say next, but we're going to find out. I do have notes. So, the point is that we express something as we're sitting. We express some relationship to that space of balance and harmony. Whether we're leaning left or right, there's some balance and we're always expressing it. And actually, all of you, as you were sitting for 40 minutes this evening, were expressing something. And, you know, I wouldn't defile it by giving it a name, but if I looked at each of you sitting during meditation, there was something being expressed.

[07:27]

And in fact, it's happening now, too. So this is happening all the time. The point is, in our meditation, how do we take this on? How do we find a way of engaging this creative opportunity for expressing our deepest awareness? So one way to talk about this balance is that there's left and right and front and back, but there's also a kind of dynamic tension that's fundamental to our spiritual practice. So one side is seeing into the emptiness of all distinctions, seeing into our total interconnectedness. with the whole universe, seeing how we are all interrelated, seeing how all of the ideas and viewpoints we have about who we are and what the world is, that these are just ideas and viewpoints.

[08:28]

And that actually in this, what is sometimes called Prajna, our wisdom, there is a great freedom and great openness. And we actually get some sense of that and taste that in our experience of sitting. The other side of that is that we do care. We do see the particulars. We do notice the differences, and we actually take care of the world around us. So I'm very happy that you have, as part of the mandala of all the things that are going on here, and all the wonderful announcements that there are people doing engaged Buddhism. Of course, all Buddhism is engaged Buddhism, but particularly paying attention to and caring for the situation of our world. So that's the other side. So you might call them wisdom and compassion. And if you ask Linda about her Dharma name, she has this dynamic tension built into her name.

[09:33]

So there's this balance that's actually happening in our practice all the time anyway. So the craft of Zazen, the art of Zazen is how do we express this? How do we allow this to be present? in our body and mind as we sit. And of course, it's not just when we do meditation, because as we become practiced in this, it does affect everything else. And it's not that, you know, it's not that we're trying to develop some wonderful, creative zazen. It's actually... If you've been, the zazen of someone who's been sitting for 30 years is not better than the first time you ever sat zazen, okay? It's not that there's, you know, there's good zazen and bad zazen. Of course, we think that, you know, we often think that, oh, that was a really good period of meditation, or gosh, I was so distracted that time, or, you know, we do make those judgments, but that's just judgments, you know?

[10:38]

And if you find yourself making judgments, it's okay, don't make judgments about that. But actually, when we sit present in this body and mind, that uprightness expresses something very deep. And it's expressed, you know, the first time you ever sat sasan, the first time you ever meditated, and it's expressed if you keep doing this for 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, it's still expressed the same way. I'd say though that there is maybe some And the difference is just a matter of craft or experience. So somebody who practices, let's see, someone who practices some healing art, you know, or someone who practices the violin, or someone who practices all kinds of creative activities, you know, the practice does develop a kind of experience in it.

[11:45]

So it is good to talk to somebody who is more experienced in the meditation you're doing. But it's not that their experience is, in any particular period of meditation, is better or more or whatever value you want to put on it than the first time you ever meditated. But as we learn to express ourselves in just being present and uprightly in this body and mind, we do have some tuning that happens. So there's a kind of craft to sitting. And yet it's not, again, it's not about creating some better painting or poem or it's just about more and more having more fully experienced what it tastes like to just be yourself. So I would suggest a number of ways of thinking about this.

[12:49]

In some ways meditation is kind of play. Now, again, depending on what, if you're using some particular technique, you may be focused on that in a particular way. But the basic practice in Soto Zen, of just sitting and being aware of whatever comes up, allows us to allow our body and mind to just be present and to feel what it's like to be here right now. And I would encourage you to, as you sit on your cushions, to be wild. And that doesn't mean shaking or screaming or singing. You know, you can be sitting just the way you were sitting this evening. And yet allow your body and mind to express itself. So please enjoy yourself in your meditation. Allow that creative awareness to come forth. And again, you don't have to do anything about it. Just sit there.

[13:50]

and allow our experience of our experience to be present. This is the craft and the art of Zazen. And I'd say it's also a kind of ceremony. So I don't know if any of you, I haven't witnessed the ceremonies that go on in the Buddha Hall here at Koyasan. But I know a little bit about Gingon Ceremony. And actually, Gingon Ceremony very much affected Soto Zen Ceremony. So if any of you go and look at the ceremonies that Reverend Asahi does here, and look at the ceremonies that happen at Green Culture, Tassahara Zen Center, you might see some relationship. But in a way, our meditation practice is also just a ceremony, you know. It may be a very kind of simple ceremony. We sit down and adjust and find our sitting posture. And a bell rings. And we inhale. And we exhale. And eventually another bell rings and we might bow and stand up.

[14:55]

But there's a way in which we're enacting a ceremonial form of play, a ceremonial form of connecting with what is it like to be this person right here in this body, in this mind, right now, tonight. So again, I'm just offering these as suggestions of ways you might think about your meditation. And if they're helpful, great. If not, please forget them. I would also say that meditation is a kind of performance art. So all kinds of things happen beyond our control. I didn't ask this fly to come here tonight. And yet it's part of the performance of us being present together right now. And maybe it's easier to see giving Dharma talks as performance art. But actually, all of you, while you're sitting,

[15:59]

and the air conditioning is coming on, or it's shutting down, or you're wondering when the bell's gonna ring, or maybe a fly comes to join you. It's kind of a performance art. Now, it may seem very stark, you know, it's maybe not a thriller or an action film, but... So I don't know if any of you remember Andy Warhol's films. He once filmed the Statue of Liberty for 12 hours. It was just a still camera just sitting there. And actually, I used to be a filmmaker before I became a full-time Zen student. And when I first started sitting, I thought about how to make, you know, and there are people who've made very good films. movies about meditation and about the Dharma. But I finally, for me, I finally decided the only thing I could do was have a picture of a blank wall and make sure, and tell the audience to cross their legs and have a couple of bells here and there in the middle of it.

[17:00]

So I didn't do that actually. But there's a way in which as we sit, and as our thoughts come up, and as our feelings come up, and as we inhale, and hopefully exhale, and hopefully inhale again, you know, there's a kind of performance, a kind of celebration, a kind of ceremony going on. And part of what happens in that is that we touch this very, we have access to this kind of deep source of creativity. So I wanted to read a couple of short dharma talks by Dogen to his monks at Eheji. These are very short talks to the monks he was training from a very long work that I'm in the middle of translating. So Dogen said, entering the water without avoiding deep sea dragons is the courage of a fisherman.

[18:03]

Traveling the earth without avoiding tigers is the courage of a hunter. Facing the drawn sword before you and seeing death as just like life is the courage of a general. What is the courage of a Buddhist practitioner? After a pause, Dogen said, spread out your bedding and sleep. Set out your bowls and eat rice. Exhale through your nostrils. Radiate light from your eyes. Do you know there is something that goes beyond? With vitality, eat lots of rice and then use the toilet. Transcend your personal prediction of future Buddhahood from Gautama. So the courage of, he says, patra monk, but we could say Buddhist practitioners, is just to do the everyday things.

[19:05]

So when we come and do this formal ceremony, this performance art of meditating, we have experience of connecting to just being present in this immediate situation. And as we do that, and as we become more practiced in that practice, in that play of meditation, We have access to this space throughout our everyday activity, and the point of this practice is not to reach some great meditative state, but how to bring this into the world for the sake of all beings, and for the sake of ourselves, and for the sake of just spreading out our bedding and sleep, just sitting on our balls and eating rice or whatever. So just to take care of our ordinary activity in this way, our meditation performance art supports this. And that without our necessarily trying to arrange it, we do have this space of greater awareness that's available to us from doing this craft of meditation.

[20:20]

So he says, transcend your personal prediction of future Buddhahood from Gautama. So the Buddha did predict that in the future, this monk, Gary, will be a name, be a Buddha named such and such. You're Terry, that's Gary. I keep getting you mixed up. So Terry will be a Buddha in the future. In a future Buddha land in a certain number of kalpas from now, you will be a Buddha named such and such. And actually, in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha says that if you just hear a line of the sutra, all of you will become Buddhas in the future. So congratulations again. But actually, what Dogen is saying is, get over it. Transcend your personal prediction. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about being a Buddha in the future. Just right now, can you be present in this body and mind? Can you perform the art of meditation?

[21:26]

Can you enjoy the craft of living your life? So this is so simple and very subtle. And he talks about this in terms of the courage of fishermen with meeting dragons in the deep sea or hunters and warriors. I also think of it in terms of art, you know. So you might think of what is the art of a poet or what is the art of a musician or what is the art of a sculptor. And then, what is the art of a Buddhist practitioner? And I would say it's the same answer. Spread out your bedding and sleep. Set out your bowls and eat rice. Exhale through your nostrils. Radiate light from your eyes. Do you know there is something that goes beyond? With vitality, eat lots of rice and then use the toilet. Transcend your personal prediction of future Buddhahood. So just to bring our life to our life, through our life,

[22:27]

is this celebration, this ceremony of performing the art of Buddha. So I could talk about that in various ways. When we have this experience of just being present in our body and mind, we have a certain kind of relationship to our body and mind. And of course, you may spend 40 minutes with all kinds of laundry lists going through your head, or tapes, or popular songs, or worrying about what somebody said earlier in the day, or thinking about all the things you have to do tomorrow. Of course, that's going on. And yet, you also have the tremendous power to just be present and still and upright, right in the middle of that. This is a wonderful, powerful ceremony, to just be present in the middle of all of that. And then, you know, without trying to get rid of them, without trying to destroy your thinking and feeling and senses and so forth, there might be some spaces in the middle of that, too, where something new can come up.

[23:38]

So, this kind of space, to not react to all of your impulses and conditioning, but just be present right in the middle of it. To see it, to witness it, to bring your attention to what's happening right now. To keep breathing. That space then becomes something that's part of your body and mind and that actually is available to you in various ways as you go through the day. As you drive through the freeway and some blankety-blank cuts you off or, you know, you don't have to race after them and make some gesture or anything. You can just let them go. So in various ways we have this space where we can observe the world and ourselves and this body and mind and just be present right in the middle of it. And then when there is something to do that's helpful, respond. So this is this kind of this upright art form is, and it's not passive, it's kind of

[24:45]

It's kind of attentive and ready and willing to respond when there's an appropriate time. And your readiness and willingness is the result of this, the product of this art form. So, you know, for painters or sculptors, there's a sculpture or a painting. For poets, there may be a bunch of words. For musicians, you know, if they tape it, there's a, there's a, piece of music. For Dharma lecturers, there's a tape of their talks. But when you just sit, the art, the product of this meditation is just you, your body and mind. And the ability of your body and mind to be present in this body and mind. So this is a wonderful and subtle thing. And it does have an effect on the world. And it does allow you to help others to enter into this kind of awareness. But you know, maybe you might feel sad that you don't have anything to show.

[25:52]

You don't have a painting or a poem. But actually, you know, when you are willing to engage your life in this way, there's a tremendous creative power. So those of you who do have some creative activity that you do in the rest of your life, painting or sculpting or it could be something, you know, it could be running or it could be something athletic. It could be how you, you know, wake up your children in the morning. It could be all kinds of things. Those creative forms, cooking, gardening, all of those creative activities that you do are informed by the creativity that your body and mind are when you have this practice as part of the practice of being you. So this is something that is very subtle and you may not have heard of before.

[26:58]

And you may or may not have a sense of recognizing it. But that's just because it's so close. So I want to read another one of these. In a lot of these little talks, Dogen refers to old koans, to all teaching stories of the old Chinese masters. And this is one case. Dogen says, I can remember. Yunmen asks Xiaoshan, why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy? Xiaoshan said, just because it is greatly intimate, we do not know it is there. I'll read that again. Yunmen asks Xiaoshan, who's in the Chinese Soto lineage, why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy? Sao Chan said, just because it is greatly intimate, we do not know it is there. So as we are willing to perform this ceremony of meditation, we are more and more deeply connected with this place of great intimacy.

[28:03]

But we don't know it's there. You can't see it, you can't know it, you can't... You can talk about it, you know, you can recognize that you have some experience of it, but we can't really get a hold of it. It's like trying to see your own eyeballs. But it's there, and we all have some taste of that. So Dogen comments, suppose this were Ehe when someone asked me, why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy? I would just hit his face with my whisk and ask him, is this knowing or not knowing? If he tried to answer, I would hit him again with a whisk. So when we do this art of zazen, this art of meditation, we have some relationship, some very deep relationship with this place of great intimacy.

[29:05]

We can't get a hold of it. So maybe this is the part of Buddhism that has to do with faith, you know. We recognize something. So, you know, all of these great Dharma writings are not to teach you something you don't already know. Please don't read books about Buddhism so you can learn what Buddhism is. All of these teachings are just something that will help you recognize yourself. So when you hear some Buddhist teaching and something is familiar in some odd way, like it's familiar from a dream or from some other lifetime or something, this is the Dharma working in you. So there is this place of great intimacy and yet we know it and yet we don't know it. We don't know it and yet we kind of heard it, kind of background music, you know, somewhere.

[30:10]

So once we connect with this kind of creative energy of reality, It informs us. So, as I said, if you have other modes of being creative, they will be informed by your being able to just sit and keep breathing. So, to mix metaphors, I could also talk about this meditation as a kind of information technology. So when you sit, you are informed by this creative source. And sometimes when you're meditating, when you're sitting, you may have some great idea, like you might be worrying about something you have to do, or what you're going to say to so-and-so, or whatever. And you may get some wonderful idea, and you may be tempted to write that down.

[31:16]

And I guess that's OK, unless you're sitting in a meditation hall, and then it might be rude. But actually, once you have some awareness, you are informed with it. It is in the formation of your body and mind. So we do this. This practice includes our mind and our body. And of course, the tensions and sensations of our body are also connected to our mind. So when you have some wonderful idea in Zazen, you don't have to really worry about remembering it because it'll be there when you need it. So you may not believe that, but if you've had the experience of it, you'll see that you are informed by what is going on in your body and mind. And most of the time in our culture, you know, which is so driven by greed, hate and delusion, we don't have time to stop and just really be present and really see what is this

[32:22]

and really listen to the colors and taste the sounds and really be present in our experience. But in this kind of meditation, we can do that. We have this opportunity for 40 minutes or whatever, however long you do this, to just be present in your life. And that does inform your body and mind. So I could keep babbling, but I'd rather hear what you have to say. So, questions, comments? Speaking of the aesthetic dimension, it seems to me that, well, I believe that the goal of any artist, anybody in any creative field, artist, writer, musician, is to express themselves as clearly and purely and spontaneously as possible in whatever area they're working in. It seems to me that where this ties in with meditation is relaxing and allowing nature, the universal effort, to express itself through view as clearly and purely and spontaneously as possible, without trying to push it in any direction.

[33:40]

Does that make sense? Yes. Did you all hear him? Yeah, so when we, so I don't know if I would generalize, but I think a lot of art, I think, you know, he said that the point of art is to express something clearly and purely. The most direct and clear mode of your own self-expression. Right. And in this kind of practice, we learn, we try to, at least maybe while we're sitting, to express that just by sitting. And my own experience is that I was most moved to come to this practice by seeing people who were doing it and seeing how they looked and their body and mind and just something about their presence. So maybe some of you have had that kind of experience.

[34:43]

So there is something that is expressed and that is conveyed. But paradoxically, it's expressed and conveyed by not trying to express or convey it. Just letting it happen. Yeah, so again, it's not something we can control or manipulate. Most of our experience in the world, the way the karmic world is, is that we are trying to manipulate the world to get what we want, or to get rid of what we don't want, or to arrange things so that we have things arranged nicely for us. You know, this is what the world is. This is how the world is. This is other than that. This is remaining open to what the world brings us. This is allowing ourselves to be part of the world that is constantly expressing itself rather than trying to use the world as a resource to exploit. So we're open to accident and actually it's very important to make mistakes.

[35:47]

This is how we learn. So it's not about getting it right. Please don't think that they're, well, if you do, you will. But anyway, to me, it's not about doing the right kind of meditation in the right way right now. There's not one right way for you to be yourself right now. I think this is a delusion that's really deeply ingrained we Western people, and I don't know if it comes from Western religion or some misunderstanding of that, but I think we have this deep idea that there's some right way to be who I am right now. And maybe even that somebody up there knows it. And if they would just tell us, or if we could just figure it out, then we could really be performing this ceremony of being ourselves correctly.

[36:50]

But there are a million ways to be you right now. Please enjoy them all. Yes? Where does the concentration come in? Good, good question. Where does the concentration come in, in getting this information technology? So the point of the meditation is just to be present. But actually it's not passively being present. It's not like you're watching a television screen and you just have to absorb it. It's actually bringing our being there. So our concentration, our attention is to Well, there are many different meditation techniques, and they can all help in finding the space. So, concentration on a mantra, concentration on a koan, or on some visualization are all part of the range of Buddhist meditation techniques, or concentration on the breath in various ways. I would say the point, though, is just that we are bringing our attention forward to, and in just sitting, it's bringing our attention to whatever appears, whatever sensation.

[38:03]

the draft of the, the cool draft of the air conditioning, the sounds around us, the sensation in my knee, all of it, the colors in front of me. So we bring our attention, and that's important, that's an important part of it, so thank you. Part of our performance of this ceremony is that we do bring our attention to if there's a particular technique or to just what's here. And that activity allows us to be present and then we are more able to be present and to express this body and mind when we get up from the cushion too. Yes. and I can get an A, so when I meditate, I definitely want to get an A. And so for me, when you talk about Cohen and where's that intimacy, things like, if I meditated on that, I would never get it right.

[39:10]

And what's beautiful about it is that I'm finally learning that this contemplative thing that you were talking about, if I do that, I realize or actualize the effect. And that's all I need to do. I don't need to even remember what I was contemplating. That's right. So, you get an A. But actually, you know, there's no way to get an A. There's no way to do this right. If you think that there's a right way to do this right, that's not it. There's also no way to do it wrong. So I also teach academically sometimes and I always start with all my students having A's and they have to work at it for their grades to go down.

[40:12]

But just to be there is the point and to bring your attention forward and to pay attention. And then also there's intention, which is that we're not trying to get something out of it. We're trying to actually allow this expression to take form in our body and mind, and in our interactions with everyone, and in how we share that with the world. And to be helpful, and to care about the suffering of ourselves and others, and try to be helpful. But to consider it from the point of view of all beings. Uchiyama Roshi, whose commentary is in the Wholehearted Way book I translated, says that gain is a delusion, loss is enlightenment. Sorry. That may be bad news for those of you who are A-types. But that's okay.

[41:17]

It's okay to be that too. When you talked about our sitting and forming artistic expressions, as a person who has had a view of himself as not being creative, the thing that came up for me is I started thinking, well, what is not creative? I mean, what isn't creative? Every word, every gesture, every... every moment, every, you know, and that just kind of arose out of what you were saying. And I think that's kind of how I like to, or I appreciate that thought because that informs everything that I do and I don't have to make distinctions between things that I maybe once called creative and called not creative. So did you have an art teacher early on that told you you weren't very good? Must have. Someone told me I wasn't very good. But I'm not sure whether it was an art teacher or not. But I have to say I've seen you meditating and you are a performance artist.

[42:18]

Hi. Hi, can you say some more about wildness? So as you're sitting, you know, I mean, we have to, you know, we are wild, actually. We may be working really hard to hold that in and to contain it. And we do need to contain it, because if I just kind of started hitting you all with whisks or something, that would, you know, you might call the police or something, who knows. Actually, if you have some form, some ceremony, some structure, to enact it, to take it on, to perform it fully is very wild. And when you're just sitting very still, upright, and breathing, All kinds of things are going on, you know. So Uchiyama Roshi also says as you're sitting naturally your stomach continues to secrete digestive juices and in the same way your brain continues to secrete thoughts.

[43:40]

So you can just sit there and watch all of that tremendous dynamic activity going on. and allow it to be as wild as you want. And if you have this stability of just being present in the middle of that, you can witness that. And yet, you don't have to react. You don't have to act it out. You can decide when there is something to act out. So there are times when people start in the middle of long meditations. Some of you may have heard people starting to cry or starting to laugh or even howling or yelling in the middle of meditations can happen. But this happens in the context of this ceremony. So trying to control your body and mind and make it into something you think it should be

[44:42]

is not, can't really be ultimately successful. But to, as Tsukiroshi says, to give the cow a wide pasture, to see the thoughts and feelings, and to allow them to be there, and then to become friends with yourself, actually. To find this place of great intimacy that allows you to be friends with others, too. All of that involves wildness. Do you have some thoughts about wildness? Well, I thought when you said something about all the beings that we are, I don't know if there's some distinction about being caught up in illusions or maybe I would be a river or some other kind of being in the meditation. Great. She's a river. Yeah, sure. Because if you hear the birds singing, You know, you can, maybe you can be the bird or remember that they're just evolved dinosaurs.

[45:50]

Suzuki Roshi said the point of this practice is just so that you can hear the birds singing. There's also a book that some of you might like called The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder. This is not far from here. And he talks about it in terms of language, how language is a wilderness system. So there are patterns that linguists can discover about language. And we think most of our thoughts, most of our delusions are based on language. And we have a particular pattern. There are many different languages. Is there anybody here who is not a native English speaker? Everyone here is. Okay. Well, then there's slight differences if you have some other language. But all languages have a particular structure and yet they're not logical. The gentleman in the back who was talking about logical analysis, we don't make up a language based on some logic.

[46:55]

Actually, children at some point, pretty early on, start to use language. How do they get that? Where does that come from? It's not because they figure it out. So the ways, all of the patterns of our delusion... main delusions I think we all suffer from is that some of our experience is delusion and maybe there's some reality somewhere else. So all of those illusions are reality. All of our delusions are reality. There's no reality outside of our delusions. This combination of delusions that we all are is the reality of what's happening here tonight. So Dogen also says that all Buddhist ancestors express a dream within a dream.

[47:55]

So we have time for one more dream utterance. Well, good. Let's see. Well, we were talking a little about the wildness idea spurred some interesting thoughts. It seems funny that we all come and we sit, and nobody moves. And somehow it's been understood that the idea, or at least the sitting style, the performance art has this manner characteristic of people don't move. And yet, I came in here tonight thinking, boy, I don't feel like sitting tonight. I think I'm going to just go in the back and kind of walk back and forth a little bit. And then I got tired and didn't do it. uh... the thought was what would be the problem for uh... and i know there isn't any but it seems like why couldn't you just if you felt you're sitting for a while and then you felt like getting up and just keeping your attention on what you were doing and you know moving one arm up one arm down whatever you wanted to do as long as you could keep your attention focused on what that was would be you know a continuation of that meditation and that if you

[49:11]

if it helped you to stay focused, that that would be a perfectly good thing to do. Does that sound right to you? That's more difficult, you know. There are forms of meditative movement, like Tai Chi, for example, that can be used in that way. But basically, in Buddhist meditation, and there's also walking meditation, which many of you know. So there are modes of extending it, but I think we basically learn it in just sitting still. And partly that's because we do have that impulse to want to move. But to see that impulse without actually acting it out shows us more about how our muscles are actually put together, to really witness that. Now, in my own meditation groups that I lead, I say to people, if you need to, please don't sit in excruciating pain, and if you need to change your leg position, please do so. There are schools of...

[50:15]

Zen where they say, where they strongly emphasize not moving. In fact, one of my first sessions was actually with a Rinzai Zen teacher back east and he was sitting on the other side of the divider and I kind of squirmed a little bit and he said, don't move. So there are, you know, kinds of particular setups where you, that really emphasize that. But I don't, I don't know. I don't think we have to be fascist about it, you know. But sitting still actually allows you to see the movement more clearly when you have some impulse to move. to just sit still in the middle of that and watch that and feel the movement that your conditioning is calling out to you. See, my sense is that that's not true, that it would be easier to see the movement, feel it, like I know when I've done walking meditation, I seem to be able to get more concentrated than I do when I sit.

[51:18]

Well, use the walking meditation to learn about your sitting. Yeah. I was told I should stop at 845. I'm happy to stay and talk with people, but I wanted to allow people who have to go to do that. So anybody who has further comments or questions or discussion, please stay. And if you have to go, please do so.

[51:42]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_90.56