So this is the 18th, I think, for me, at least, and last tesho of this practice period. Maybe that's the goodbye, hello again lecture, or something, some schmaltzy cliche. Because obviously, at least some of you are leaving, and But I find and feel, at least in how we continue our practice, in some way we'll be saying hello to each other. Maybe I can also think of this as accepting the given and living the given and transforming the given. What is the given?

[01:02]

What are we given? Yeah. No, for me, I feel this has been a pretty good practice period. I feel each of us has accomplished something in our personal lives and accomplished something in our practice lives. And I think articulated perhaps in... deeper way or another understanding of our relationship with another. And I've been speaking about this sense of a special presence or a bodily presence that's larger than the body. And maybe today I should say something about what I would call spatial time.

[02:04]

I don't know what word to call it. But the time we, yeah, the kind of time we may experience any time, but often in zazen, in which it's almost like we are visiting three cities at once. It's a time, or three or four or one, or I don't know, it's a time in which many things can happen, many events happen. memories and so forth can happen all at once. And if we were dreaming, if you were in dreaming mind, probably dreaming mind would kind of force those things, conflate those things, put them together in some kind of mix of events from various parts of our lives. But the same kind of... Yes, spatial time occurs in our zazen, but instead of dreaming conflating the events, it tends to separate them out.

[03:06]

We can be more present in them. So, in a way, you could say that dreaming mind surfaces in So I was in mind, or we could say more precisely, dreaming mind surfaces in emergent non-dual awareness. And in that awareness, we can feel out what appears in this simultaneity, simultaneous time. Now the words, I mentioned some Japanese words the other day, yesterday or last Teisho. Well, before I get to that, we're going to have the day after tomorrow, on the 14th, what we call the Shosan ceremony.

[04:09]

And that's a question and answer, but not really question and answer, question and response, or not even question. It's more... You know, much of this practice is, particularly Zen style and monastic practice, is really to articulate our... Yeah, as Hoshio Roshi said, I've been pointing out, to articulate the field in which we live with others and what are the potentialities of that field. And one way in monastic practice that's articulated is the shiso ceremony and the shosan ceremony. And the shosan ceremony is where each of you will, I hope, present me with some

[05:14]

not really a question, something at the center of your practice. So you're not asking a question for information or asking a question about practice. You're presenting your practice and then in a way asking, does this make sense? Do you have any comments about this? So whether it's a question or a statement or presenting your practice, it should come from the center of your practice. particularly in this practice period, but in your life, if you can find that center of your practice, whatever it is, not like, again, just whatever it is, and find some way to present the center of your practice, this also is beneficial for everyone. So we do it together. Now these words, Rokugen, for example, means six dusts, or six dusts.

[06:19]

And six dusts means the five senses and mind. So it means that what your senses bring you can obscure you, can mix you up, can confuse you, can distract you, etc. So the six senses from this point of view are called six dusts. Roku-jin. And jin-jin, you can have things like this. Jin-jin means dirt-dirt or dust-dust. But it's a Buddhist term meaning each and every percept. Each and every percept can be illuminating or can be dust. But dust is used rather than dirt because dust has this sense of a a particle, a moment, which has the possibility of not being done.

[07:23]

And a word I like is gin-gin wacko. This sounds very funny, because in English, you know, wacky, somebody does something wacky means something incongruous, it doesn't make sense, or you've got a wacky outfit on, you know, you've got a a beret on with a... with a kilt. But a wacko is somebody who's wacky all the time. I mean, or you're really wacko if you're... I mean, it's stronger than wacky. So it's hard to use this word, gin-gin wacko. Here's a doujin, if you call him doujin wacko. and wako sattva because jin-jin wako in Japanese means to obscure the light of the dust of the world basically it means to hide the sambhogakaya body or it means in my the three things I mentioned the other day rapport contact and

[08:45]

presence of manifestation. So rapport is to establish rapport in the dust of the world. The other phrase often in the koans is to enter the weeds. Now we could use this to say, you know, I don't have to practice. I'm always in the weeds. You expect me to look like I practice? I'm just in the weeds. This would be a good excuse. But anyway, the idea is That is you find rapport with the world by mingling with the world. And you know, one of the importance of this for our practice is you will find when you go back, you know, those of you who go back to the that immediately all kinds of things make you mingle with the world. I mean, you want to. It's a way to join people, to be with your family and friends.

[09:47]

But if you feel it's mingling with the world, already this is some possibility, transformative possibility. You can feel yourself mingle and you can feel yourself allowing the light to be hidden or feeling the light Like means, you know, practice, awareness, etc. Yeah, and it's a little like a cook. Let's see if cooking is an example. If a cook was cooking a meal, and he had to eat whatever ingredients he has, and he stopped, kind of centered himself, just was present, and then went back to the ingredients and it transformed the meal. That would be like obscuring the light or manifesting the light in the ingredients.

[10:52]

Now how do you manifest practice in the ingredients with which you mingle? This is living the given and transforming the given. So I can't use in a usual sense as a Buddhist term in Japanese, jin-jin wako. But I think you can understand the idea. Jin-jin comes to me each and every percent. And wako means to hide the light. Now in mature zazen, or at least one way to practice zazen, is not to focus on your sattva. You might do that. To get started, you might focus on your breath or something like that.

[11:55]

But another way to look at it is, to get started, you might do that. But another way to look at practice is once you've assembled your postures, start dissembling the mind, once you've assembled or constructed your posture, once you've settled in your posture, then whatever mind appears, whatever scene appears, whatever appears, you accept as a given. So the attitude is not, well now I'm doing zazen, now I'm going to add Buddhist techniques to my zazen, counting my breaths or whatever. No, all I'm going to do, the Buddhism stops, I mean, in a sense, the posture is something related to Buddhism, but this posture is not contained by Buddhism. So once you've found your posture, whatever appears, you allow it to appear.

[13:01]

whatever state of mind, mode of mind appears, you allow it to appear. And then, it may go this way or that way, but immediately or incrementally, you bring non-graspable awareness into the scene. Now you may do this by bringing attention to the breath in a way in which awareness arises. Or you may do it by knowing the bodily index for awareness and through that bodily index generating non-dual awareness, non-grasping awareness. And that awareness then kind of like opens up the seed.

[14:04]

and takes it out of the context of just your personal life, because your personal life is a rather thin slice within consciousness and within awareness. And you can feel the difference. You get involved with this and that and what happened and what might happen and so forth, and you can feel it's something like this. You can drop that. The ingredients are the same, but the spatial time and the spatial presence within the ingredients, they begin to have a different dynamic in the history of your life. Certainly a different dynamic, a new dynamic in your Zazenbren. So here, you're not really adding Buddhism to what you're doing, you're using Buddhism to open up the noticing to deepen, widen, I don't know what words to you, adjectives to you, the noticing.

[15:09]

And you allow... It's like giving your cow, giving your ox a big field. If we give our life a little field, we end up with a little life. Now it's too easy to say that, but something like that. So practically we all have different talents, abilities, etc. But through practice we give that bigger feel. Again, maybe it's something like the cook who stops, has the same ingredients, but stops and brings non-graspable awareness into the cooking, so now the meal ends up tasting better. Now, this sense of bringing

[16:14]

into whatever appears in your zazen. Not trying to transform, I mean, not trying to change, but to allow a kind of transformation to occur through bringing this non-graspable awareness or spatial awareness or even spatial time into your zazen, and then letting that flow as it does. leading what, in some way, through the field of awareness rather than through your personal history or consciousness. Now this is closely related to the idea of Jinjin Wakko, or obscuring the light and showing the light through the dust of the world. Because if you find out, if you get a feeling for, and you've all done zazen enough now to have a feeling for it, if you can have a bodily index of a feeling for this presence of non-dual, non-grasping awareness, in the midst of your circumstances with people, this is the practice, the nirmanakaya practice.

[17:33]

at being with others in the world. Thank you.

[17:48]

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