Well, this is the last day, and I'm always a little sorry to finish. It's good to finish too, but I'm always a little sorry to finish because I feel, as Steve did this morning, that we leave the forest and go back into our settled habitats, and we lose the ability to hear the story. or to feel the imminent Buddha nature, or to feel the presence of the world and of each person. I thought that was quite a good way to put it through this anecdote about the Bushmen, yes? not able to hear the story when they settled in the villages.

[01:07]

And it makes me think of this Kogi tape that some of you have seen where they somehow lived in a way they could still hear the story. And for us in practice it's I think maybe we do sashin in the end so that we can hear our own story and feel the presence of Buddha and the Buddha nature. Now, when I find what I'm speaking about in the Sashinam, I rarely have any idea in the beginning, except that it flows from what I'm practicing with at the time. Still, I then try to bring it out so that it gives you a fairly full picture of Zen practice.

[02:11]

Sometimes I feel, well, this is all you need to know about Zen practice. This is the whole ball of wane, ball of wax. But then next to sheen is another ball of wax. Anyway, so in that I'm trying to present many ways of practice to you. They're not really so different, but Each little difference makes a difference and different levels or different approaches to practice catch people in different ways. And I also like to put what I'm presenting in, to some extent, a historical context because When Zen is presented too simply, often as a kind of faith school, what's really going on is lost.

[03:24]

And funny, the beginning practices are often more complicated than the more advanced practices, more developed practices. But the beginning practices are, even though more complex or even complicated, they're easier to do because you can see what they're about. While the more developed practices, often you can't see what they're about, you just have to do them. So by putting the two together I try to give you a fuller picture so that we can establish our own practice in your personal life and in the life of our society. So I remember when I first started practicing the word samadhi, which you began to hear about, you know, you're supposed to achieve samadhi or something like that. You didn't know. I mean, I knew sort of what was said about it, but what is samadhi?

[04:29]

Am I achieving samadhi? Will I ever achieve samadhi? I'm just distracted all the time. I'm never going to, I don't know, to act with samadhi. So I just kept practicing anyway. Though I stuck that word in the meal chant, it says... We choose something to samadhi and to something, what's it say? Precepts. What? Precepts. Yeah. Yeah, and the third is for the... Yeah, yeah, that's right. I put that in there. It actually says good and evil in the original. So I change it to precepts and samadhi. Sri Krishna thought it was okay, so that's the way it is. By the way, if someone wants to take the precepts without, if you don't have some intention of sowing araksu and you'd like to take the precepts, you think sometime, I don't know if this is a good time to do it, but it's possible, I don't know, you can talk to me about it.

[05:43]

Since we're doing a precept ceremony on Sunday, Tuesday I mean, and we're putting on Buddhist clothing and I've been, or putting on Buddhist mind and way of being. So then I've been talking about that as this sort of under text of what I, of these lectures. Okay, so this word samadhi, which means, again, used to confuse me. Partly it's confusing because it's got a historical development in it. It means different things at different periods. And the word samadhi, I believe etymologically means to put together or to bring together. And it's very similar to... at least the English translation of sashin, which means to gather the mind, to bring the mind together, but actually it means to bring the heart-mind together, to bring the heart and mind and experience that as one entity, which we tend to think of them as two, and to bring that together with all the things that appear.

[07:04]

Okay. Now, samadhi, as a term in Hinduism, or at least Hindu yoga and pre-Buddhist India, meant, I think, I haven't studied this thoroughly, but I think usually it meant, or almost always meant, an experience of oneness by eliminating the parts. But later Buddhism... emphasizes samadhi means bringing the parts together, and etymologically that's what it means, to bring together. So this is a, in kind of philosophical terms, this is a contrast between an enstatic and ecstatic approach to meditation. And an end-static approach, which is characteristic of early Buddhism, is an approach in which you try to create oneness through the elimination of distractions, through the cutting out and cutting down of sensory input.

[08:20]

And this is where the vow of to save all sentient beings to desires are inexhaustible, I vow to cut them down. This comes from that period. of a more emphasis on an end static to create a stasis, to create a state without distraction by eliminating sensory input. And there's a kind of tension between the end static and X static in Buddhism. A development that employs both of these. The X static won out. Now, X static isn't quite right. Ecstatic literally means out of place. Ec, ecstatic, out of place. So you're in ecstasy. And I would say that our cathedrals, European cathedrals, American cathedrals, are ecstatic. They're really out there.

[09:22]

You know, wow. They're fantastic. And Rick and I being in the Soviet Union, it's... There's a funny contrast in the churches there that I experienced, and I think Ulrike experienced too, is that, you know, like 50% of the, or something like that, there was some disagreement about it, but most people who knew a lot told me it was true that 50% of the priests were KGB. And even the priests who weren't had to report regularly on what parishioners said because there were microphones in the confessional booths. So if you didn't report, then they would say, hey, why didn't you tell me about so-and-so? But what I was told is this isn't new, is that the church in Russia was always connected with the establishment, with the czar, with...

[10:27]

It was institutionally pretty corrupt. Now, to what degree that's true, it's certainly true to some degree. But the churches seem quite independent of that. They are really fantastic. They're about as ecstatic as churches get. I mean, they're just incredible. Beautiful, spiritual places. That's interesting. You can separate the two. You can have this corrupt institution that builds these In any case, I'm bringing this up mainly because I want to emphasize that there is a resonance that I haven't tried to describe between the ecstatic in Western religion and the later kind of ecstatic in Buddhism. Now, but the ecstatic the elimination of distractions and so forth, is still a basic part of the flavor of Zen.

[11:34]

Now, ecstatic in this sense, in Buddhism, isn't out of place or some kind of trance experience, but more absorption and enhancement of, enhancement of, I mean, things aren't rejected. They are discovered to be Buddha nature. So instead of excluding to create a samadhi, you include and discover what you include is Buddha. Now, that's just a kind of general picture, and I'll try to make it a little clearer. So, samadhi where there is a clearing of the mind in Buddhism is considered to be a low-level samadhi. It's kind of hard to get to, but it's considered a low-level samadhi. What are you doing?

[12:39]

I'm splashing around. Low-level samadhi. I love it. Yeah. But more developed samadhi means you are bringing body and mind together. And then you're bringing thought and non-thought together. And finally you're bringing your mind and the world together. So it's a movement in which there's more and more inclusiveness and yet calmness and awareness. So it's in this widening of samadhi to a point where Suzuki or she can say, self covers everything, reaches to the mountain. The dynamic of samadhi, or in this sense now zen as

[13:45]

jhana or absorption. Zen covers everything. Samadhi covers everything. The dynamic of that is the developing of an equilibrium of prajna and samadhi, wisdom and samadhi. And when wisdom and samadhi are brought together in an equilibrium, we can say samadhi covers everything or wisdom covers everything because samadhi is the essence of wisdom and wisdom is the expression of samadhi. Now, is that a general picture? I mean, I don't know if you can hold all that in place, but that's the general picture. Now, samadhi also means, and is developed to mean, being able to hold the mind in one place without shifting. That's a little different.

[14:50]

That's different than clearing the mind, being able to hold the mind in one place. That is also described as one-pointedness and so forth. But the practices I gave you yesterday, in which whatever appears to you is your object of concentration, is a somatic practice. If whatever appears to you is your object of concentration, then, I mean, if I stop and I look at the altar, that's my object of concentration. As I'm speaking, my voice is the object of concentration. As I feel my voice, this voice, present with you and feel you, that's my object of concentration. So that object of concentration is shifting very rapidly. But if I'm not distracted, there's no speed involved.

[15:55]

And in fact, also this is described when activity and stillness disappear. Now stillness is experience. Of course, you're always, your heart's beating and blah, blah, blah. So even if you're most still, as long as you're alive, there's some activity. So stillness is always a relative term. And stillness is experienced in contrast to activity. But the practice of one taste is also characterized by there no longer feels like a contrast between stillness and activity. You don't feel any contrast. Now this I discovered this partly myself through this practice which I arrived at sort of, I don't know how, of there's no place to go and nothing to do. It's the repetition of this and the keeping entering, which is basically also a Wado mantra-like practice, brought me to a point where I began to experience activity and stillness disappearing.

[17:05]

Now this is also called entering the unconditioned. What's that brochure I did years ago? The Unconditioned... An Unconditioned Mind in a Conditioned World, or something like that, when I was trying to raise money for Tassara. But it's called, it's entering the unconditioned. So again, I'm trying to give you a flavor of this special vocabulary of Zen Buddhism, which you find in all the koans. and which has a contextual meaning that isn't apparent in the English words. So I'm trying to create the context for unconditioned as the... You're no longer conditioned by activity or stillness. And you may feel that sometimes in your zazen. If you have periods in zazen where you feel very clear, even if thoughts appear,

[18:09]

or you hear things, there's, you know, it's like they weren't there. Now, this characterizes our practice, you know, much often Hindu yoga tries to do their meditation in, you know, totally silent places with thick walls and so forth. And Zen practice emphasizes being completely open to sensory input and not interfering with sensory input at all. The ecstatic and static practice tries to eliminate... And you can do... They've done brainwave, you know, EEG stuff with Hindu and Buddhist yogis, and it's very clear. The Hindu and Buddhist yogis suppress input. And the... Buddhist yogis don't react to input. But they allow all the input to come through.

[19:13]

And so meditation isn't just meditation. Meditation is also the attitude you bring to it. And you'll have different meditation experiences if you bring a different attitude to it. If you let in sensory impulses, you're going to have a different kind of meditation and realization than if you cut out sensory input. Okay? So, now, if you got a sense of what I was speaking about in the sense of these, of prajna, and samadhi as fluids. I think you can feel in your zazen that somehow it's not just you sitting straight or your body sitting straight, the body sitting straight or not straight, but somehow the body almost seems to have like a light bulb in it or

[20:38]

Or you can feel this attitude of alertness or awareness filling your body. So it's an attitude and it's also physiological. And you can feel this calmness or ease or equanimity filling your body. You can feel a sense of ease penetrating your body. And our posture is primarily defined by this alertness and lifting quality and the ease and relaxing quality. These two motions go together to make zazen posture. Now, again, if you want to, since you're practicing Zen, a kind of rule you can take to studying sutras and so forth, is that everything in the way Zen looks at the sutras, everything can be practiced.

[21:44]

And everything has a physical basis. Emptiness has a physical basis and so forth. As long as you're alive, it's a physical basis. So samadhi and prajna will have a physical basis and can be practiced. Now, if you, sitting, have a feeling of this awareness penetrating your body, and you have a feeling of this ease penetrating your body, you can then begin to see, I think you'll feel, other elements, thirds, not just those two, but thirds or others, your personality, certain kinds of feelings, distractions. It makes very clear, if you can get a feeling of these two fluids, of awareness and ease penetrating your body, you can begin to see very clearly, feel very clearly, the elements of personality, identity, history, concerns, desires, loves, and so forth.

[23:03]

It's a kind of technology, religious technology, spiritual technology of understanding, awareness, enlightenment. Now, beginning to bring ease together with awareness, you... You begin to sense the presence of both. You just don't have awareness, you also have ease. You don't just have ease, you also have awareness. Or alertness. Sri Krishna used to say all the time, you must be more alert. The main thing he often said in the early practice, be more alert. And of course, L and R are different in Japanese, so I kept saying you must be more R-heart. You must be more of an R-heart. That was hard, too, but it sounded like early Buddhism. I thought I was supposed to be Bodhisattva, not an Arhat. Please be more Arhat.

[24:13]

All right. That was six months before I realized you were saying alert. I got it wrong, but it was all right. So... you are in jazen practice, beginning and end your daily practice, and the real trick of it, the real secret of this practice, the only way really that I know to make it work, is to try to bring attention and ease equally to every situation, which is this practice then of making whatever's before you the object of Meditation, the object of identity. You're letting go of your own identity and making whatever appears the object of identity. Now, dharma practice is the same. When I say to you, do each thing completely, I pick this up, that's one unit.

[25:14]

Another unit, I straighten my back, that's another unit. Each of those is a dharma. When you sense any activity in a moment of completeness, that's a dharma. When you do that, you're also practicing samadhi. That's also, in later Buddhism, understood as samadhi because that unit is your object of meditation and you don't shift your mind from it. You understand? Yes? Dogen says when you're practicing one dharma, you're experiencing one dharma. Same thing. Now, I gave you in the beginning of the session these practices of everything appears with three marks, and then I added the fourth, that everything is a cognitive construct, a mental construct.

[26:17]

And the three marks are impermanence, suffering, and non-personality. Now, when you have the shift in the development towards Zen and then into Zen, you have these emphasis on the three marks being sort of absorbed into everything's a mental construct. And we talked in the last session, and I talked quite a bit in Europe near the end of my time there, about the practice of the real difference when I see Randy or you or you or you as something I'm constructing. Because you're there, but what I see is myself seeing you. And the habit of developing that is a kind of yogacara, tathagatagarbha, development from the three marks. But behind that are the three marks.

[27:19]

seeing the Four Noble Truths on everything that appears. Now, I hope I'm not making this too complicated. Yes? I'm presenting this so that you'll get a feeling for it. Even if you only get part of the picture, I think you'll eventually be able to walk around in this picture. Because I want to get to a certain point and I can't get to the point without giving you the basement and the first floor and the garden. Okay. So what happens is when you are practicing, Now, awareness, when I use the word awareness in the way I've developed the use of this word in my Buddhist vocabulary, I use awareness to mean the combination of samadhi and prajna, not just prajna.

[28:36]

But I'm using it both ways now. when I say awareness and ease. Now, ease, it's really hard to say. I mean, really, this ease, we don't have a word for it in English. Serenity sounds a bit laid back. Equanimity is a little technical. But we mean something like non-conceptual equanimity, attunement and stability, a non-conceptual equanimity and stability. That's what I mean by ease. So you begin to feel a ease that's very stable and doesn't have preferences. Okay.

[29:50]

So when you are practicing and you begin to allow each appearance to be the object of contemplation, you then begin to study your own mind in the arising of each phenomena or each dharma. So as each dharma arises, you're studying not only the three marks, but you're also studying the mind that appears when something arises. Now, that appearance is a kind of radiance. You feel it as a kind of radiance. So what happens is in later Buddhism you have suffering replaced by radiance. So each appearance that comes up appears with non-personal impermanence but then more appears as emptiness and radiance.

[31:02]

And this is where like the golden wind comes in, or this is the practice of ungan, union, of the one who is not busy. The one who is not busy or the golden wind refers to original mind or original face or this ease and equilibrium. So now there's a practice that comes up here which is called, you know, we have the practice of tracing a thought back to its source, but that also becomes tracing each, tracing back to the radiance. That's what it's called. So you trace each thought or each appearance back to the radiance of mind or original mind. Now, That original mind … I feel I'm going a little too fast for you, but I … for me too.

[32:13]

But I want to continue, because this is the last day. So get on the train. Choo-choo, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I mean, I think I can. No, I non-think I can't. I non-think I can't. So when this kind of practice begins to develop the sense that this radiance has always been there or is present in everyone. And this is where the idea that everyone's always enlightened, already enlightened, which is basically a Chinese formulation, comes up. And... The difference is this radiance or Buddha nature is present equally in everyone, but not everyone has equal opportunities to realize it or equal practice, so forth.

[33:42]

But it changes, it develops Buddhism as a religion, not an elite practitioner's or of adepts. So this shift moves Buddhism into in a much fuller sense of a religion in which everyone is already this Buddha nature. Now, when you feel that or you are in a very supportive context, one way to practice that is just to have faith in it. So you just have faith in it and you bring this attitude that everything is Buddha nature. you begin to see things that way, through faith. But the background of this is this practice of working with each appearance as the object of meditation. Now this Tathagatagarbha, which means womb or embryo thusness, which is understood as

[34:53]

placing yourself through practice, so the mind becomes dharma, so that every context is a womb or an embryo of the Buddha. Now, this, when we say in the meal chant, now we open the tathagata's eating bowls. This is not the tathagata garbha, but the tathagata, the thusness, as a person. So you get in the later development of Buddhism in China, you get the tathagata as a person where your own qualities, all your thoughts arise from this deeper person that you also are, which is the tathagata or thusness. But it's thusness as a person. It's almost like you had an inner companion that is with you all the time. And in many ways the practice of the koans is meant to bring you into the presence of the lineage so you have an inner companion.

[36:05]

And the koans are also meant to take this meditation practice of the intrinsic awareness of mind or the intrinsic illuminating radiance of mind and bring it together with the teaching, the doctrine. So the koans are all built around taking the practice of taking words back to their source. Wado means to return a word to its source, which is the turning word of any koan. To take a word and turn it back to its source to reveal the radiance of mind through a particular aspect of the teaching. So that's how we get to the point where Zen is often presented as a kind of faith. One minute of Zazen is one minute of Buddha. Or just do one koan, or the practice of koans. All these are brought together, but the background of it is taking each appearance as your object of meditation,

[37:16]

until the inherent radiance of the mind appears. And that is what's meant by the golden breeze. So here you have the enstatic and ecstatic combined in this one koan where you have when the tree withers and the leaves fall. This is the nirvanic side, the enstatic side. Body exposed in the golden wind. This golden wind is the inherent radiance of mind or Buddha nature. nor ungan jnana jnana. One who is not busy is this companion that's always with you, the tathagata, who is non-conceptual, in equanimity, and neither active nor still. So you begin to touch into that presence within you.

[38:25]

Now again, I'm presenting this for two reasons. One is to give you a picture of the development of Zen Buddhism and to give you an understanding of how these different practices appear. Or like from Sukhya she says, secret practice is not really secret. It's not able to be grasped by anyone. So what he means is when you begin to practice in a way that's not graspable through an attitude or faith that is so subtle that you feel on each moment the arising of the radiance of mind, Buddha holding up the one flower. You can feel that in your friend or the person you meet. People felt it in Issa. I think then, I mean, as I said, I'm doing this to give you a picture of practice, and also so when these phrases come up in koans or in various things people say about Zen, you have a sense of where they're coming from.

[39:40]

But also because I think if you... is that if you have this... sense of the development and aspects of Zen practice, it'll actually deepen your own particular practice. And you should stay with the particular practice you come to. It might be a movement, it might be an activity, it might be a certain kind of thought, but it's considered deepest practice when it's a non-graspable attitude, non-graspable intention. an inner request at the level of non-graspable feeling. And this is secret practice. It can't be grasped. And this is, again, exposing yourself in the golden wind, bringing together prajna, awareness, and a deep ease.

[40:47]

on each moment. Not by forcing it, but finding it in how things appear and how your body and mind is at rest and alert. So you can take hold of this practice at any point. Just take any one aspect leads to all the other aspects. So wherever you feel like taking hold of it. I tend to take hold of very beginning practices. My tendency is to take the beginning practices and work with them. I don't take the advanced practices. My tendency is that the way I am, I find that working with beginning practices is where I can feel my way more thoroughly. But for some of you, you may have more developed capacity than I do.

[41:58]

And so you can start with direct faith in Buddha nature or in the presence of a living way of being in you that we can call Buddha. Now, I don't actually, you know, although I've presented this historically and I've come to understand it historically, although intuitively I had some feeling about it in the beginning, but mostly I've come to accept it and understand it through, you know, sort of foundational practices and the study of the development of Zen through all of Buddhism. Still, I've come not to see it as just a sociological device, a device for producing enlightenment, or a teaching that's developed through stages.

[43:00]

Now I really feel, for me, my experience that this is the way it is. It's that when you, through your practice, really see a flower or a mountain, a bird, this great valley, you see a presence that is also you from which everything arises and is always taking form. And seeing that, we call realizing your Buddha nature. And the more you live with that, this is living in enlightenment. And because this is the essential quality of every perception, all appearances, and every aspect of you, yourself, good or bad, this is a practice which each of you can realize.

[44:15]

You have to have the intuition to find your own gate in deepening your own intention through compassion and acceptance. through awareness and ease in each moment. Thank you very much.

[44:55]

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