Oh, thanks for letting me come. And as you know, we've been taking up Suzuki Oshii's lectures as they're presented in this book through seven chapters, I think, at this point. And I think the seven hours have been quite lively and good, and it's just how lucky we are. So I think that... if we can come up with some questions that relate to the material and or lectures or whatever is on your mind now at this point in the practice period. Well, you know, from appearing on kitchen occasion like when you were in seminar, you've been discussing these things rather thoroughly.

[01:03]

And I'm not sure I can contribute much because I haven't been involved in discussion with you, but I'm happy to see if I can say something about any questions you have or comments you have. So, we always have to start with Mark, right? I'd be glad to see her. Well, I find these seminars, I mean, especially with you, but all of them sort of anxiety-producing. As far as you're with me, oh, I'm sorry. No, but also, I find them very enlivening. Because there's some energy that certainly comes up in me that I feel more alive and more clarity somehow. So my question is what is the relationship between strict practice that Suzuki Hiroshi talks about and also accepting things as they is.

[02:25]

In the book he talks about strict practice as having just this moment, this lifetime, to do this practice and to understand ourselves. And he also talks about accepting things as they is. So I'm wondering about the idea, I seem to be coming back to this feeling of effort that's involved in practice. Because there is this strict practice side that, for me, sometimes I can bring up, or I feel a bearing down of a lot of effort. And other times, it seems like no matter how much effort I put into practice, I'm just sort of scattered.

[03:33]

And I can bring myself back to my breath or rephrase what I'm working with. five seconds later it goes, and then I can bring it back, you know, in a certain way. Five seconds later, that's good. Yeah, but it's not carried on for five seconds. It's five seconds. Sometimes it's five hours. But, you know, I can also say that I can sort of say that accepting things as they are, I don't know if I believe that. So I would appreciate it. understanding you have in that arena? Well, what you first said is... It answers your own question. You said, Sukhara, she talks about strict practice and then accepting things as they are or is.

[04:37]

But strict practice is accepting things as they are. So that answers that question. But the question is, how is they? How are they? And when you're, what Sukharsini means, is when you're caught up in your thinking, you're not accepting things as they are. You're not noticing things as they are, which is in this, as I've been talking about simultaneously, let's use the language I used yesterday, both constructed and unconstructed. That's how they is. You're not accepting things as they is when you're thinking about things. Now, it's another sense of it when you say to yourself, how can I...

[05:41]

you know, I'm not paying attention to my breath, can I accept the fact that I'm not paying attention to my breath, right? Yes. But that's after the fact, right? I mean, you're not paying attention to your breath, and then you say, oh, I have to accept I'm not paying attention to my breath, and that was the last five hours. Yeah. But at that moment, if you say, oh, I haven't been paying attention to my breath, that's practice. It doesn't mean you exactly accept the last five hours. That's okay too. But at this moment, when you say, oh, I haven't been paying attention to my breath, already that's different than not paying attention to your breath. So it's a kind of muscular lentation.

[06:48]

It's a kind of muscular activity, but not just physical. In other words, when you bring attention to your immediate situation, there's some power in that. Even if you're bringing attention to, I'm not paying attention, there's some power in that. Can you bring too much attention or power to the situation? I don't think you can. Okay. No, I'm just teasing. What do you mean by too much power? Well, I'm thinking sometimes I feel... Burn the soup or something? No, I'm feeling... I sort of... I sort of contract, feeling myself trying to focus on my breaths. And it feels okay, as long as I can do that.

[07:51]

But it also feels tight, too. Contracting. Relax. Yeah, but then I don't feel like bearing down. Okay. Okay, next, okay. Why don't we go this way? Well, it seems to me... Yes, we all have a question. I don't know what... Well, it's been wonderful to take up the Sandokan, Suzuki Roshi's talks on Sandokan as practice spirit. I quite appreciate it. What I've been thinking about lately is in terms of right views. And in studying the Sandokai, the Sandokai seems to ask that we look at the world differently, that we practice non-duality or seeing the world in a different way.

[08:54]

And my question is, how do we really make that effective in terms of our daily life? in terms of pervading every aspect of our daily activity and not just some sense of what is practice. I mean, it's like we can fall into thinking this is practice and this isn't practice, and we can hold on to certain views because we're invested in them in some way, but other views we're willing to be more flexible about because we feel like they're, I don't know, more Buddhist or something, or it's more practice-related. So how do we... If Buddhism is a practice that deconstructs us or allows us to deconstruct ourselves so that we can reconstruct ourselves in a different way, how do we do that so it penetrates every

[10:01]

aspect of our lives? If you do it on each moment, or you have some effort on each moment, that's penetrating every aspect of your life. at that moment. So I wouldn't think in terms of how do I do it in some sort of thing. All you can do is each, all you can do is continue to practice. Whether by the time you're 50 it's penetrated every aspect of your life, that's some other question. And of course We have some, I think, have some feeling, if you are practicing seriously, that we all have a feeling we started too late or we'll never, you know, realize this practice in this lifetime.

[11:08]

But that's a good feeling because it makes us make more effort. And also, I think, because we can't, because I'm practicing with you, One reason is because I can't realize this in my lifetime. So I'm adding lifetimes. So that's also penetrating. Even if I don't penetrate this lifetime, my life, so-called my lifetime, maybe my practice can reach your lifetime. But to penetrate just means, in the most exact sense, just to do it at this moment. As soon as you have some other idea, then you're not penetrating.

[12:08]

Does that make sense? If you want to think in this big scale, how to penetrate everything, then you have to have disciples. My question is, when you have the intention not to harm anybody, Can you then actually harm anyone? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Of course. I mean, if I have no intention to, say, kill a spider, but I move my cactuses around to turn them into sun and I kill a spider,

[13:22]

I had no intention to kill this body, but I did. But the karma is different. If you had no intention to hurt someone, but you do, that's quite a different kind of karma, because karma is essentially your motivation. There's a big difference between... You have more karma in intending in intending to hurt somebody and not hurting them, then you almost do that not intending to, but hurting someone. Depends what scale. If you didn't intend to hurt somebody, but you were drunk driving, you know, or even not drunk still. But of course we are always hurting. Even if you're a vegetarian, You know, the fire that does the field, it kills many things.

[14:25]

And when you look at cause and effect, and so when you look at the effect, can you tell us something about the cause then, from there? Do you know the cause? You have to give me an example. Once I had an argument with my brother and I said something and he got really upset. Then I said, well, I didn't mean to make you feel upset. And before you were upset, I didn't know I was upsetting you or something like that. And so, like that.

[15:34]

I mean, and you caused him to be angry. Or upset. That's what he said, yeah. So can you understand what you did to make him upset from his getting upset? Well, he might be able to understand, but you might not be able to understand. Well, I did understand when he said, when he told me he was upset and I could see why. So in this case you could tell, yes. But I don't think we always know Of course, what we've done that causes some suffering or upset, and you can practice in such a way that you can examine, try to understand the patterns in yourself, but even then you can only understand partially. Because there's so many multiple causes of everything.

[16:39]

So all you can do is try to take responsibility at a particular moment for what you're doing. We don't, please don't feel you have to limit, we don't have to limit our discussion to the Tando Kai, so. Yes? Somehow everything I can know is by perceptions. So what I do know are six world objects. So I can try to deconstruct and then probably I deconstruct the sixth sense like the mind. But then what I don't quite get is if you say you reconceive your life, then it sounds like, on one hand, to me, my not understanding, that I create a new construct, which could be anything or an embodiment or something, a kind of a pedagogy of surviving somehow.

[17:54]

But on the other hand, I have this... I am or have access to this specific being which is broader than the six-fold objects I can have from my own being somehow. So I'm wondering if just the deconstruction as such is already the kind of open whiteness or something, how you can know and And this is reconciling or, I don't know, quite get that point. You're speaking about what I spoke about in Boulder, the six kinds of objects as a meditation. Because did you speak in the group about the six-fold object? No. It's in one part. It's in the Sanukai too. But you can also explain it from a recording where sameness is still not enlightenment.

[19:01]

So it's like at what point am I there where I can be without constructing or do I construct something? Yeah, I suppose I brought up the idea of reconceive, so I have to take responsibility for this. When I've said in lectures to reconceive yourself, or we have to be open to that, I don't know exactly how I expressed it, but...

[20:08]

I just mean, in the simplest sense, we have to be open to understanding ourselves in a new way. Now, the Sandokai lectures are, he's giving these lectures to people who don't actually know very much about booze. So, they're he's partly spending time speaking to a person's particular points of view and he's partly spending time trying to introduce certain ideas about practice to the people who are coming to the lectures. But he's not able

[21:16]

to give people the practices that are rooted in the various sections of the Sandokai. He's rather talking about the views. So, when I spoke in one of the early lectures about The simultaneity of noticing both one and many, I remember, is what he means by intimacy. That there's an intimacy in being neither in one or many, but being there simultaneously. That's intimacy. You can't grasp either. That's a kind of meditation practice to feel that. And he's not really giving you the meditation practice, or he's not presenting it as a way to practice with it. He's just putting out some ideas, sando, kai, many more, etc. And likewise, when he speaks about each of the senses have their own objects, he's also talking about independent and interdependent

[22:33]

And Buddhism primarily emphasizes interdependence, but Zen practice and meditation practice emphasizes the absolute independence of each thing. So this Sandokai is particularly emphasizing the absolute independence of each thing and how that independence is also connected. Okay. So when you have these two ideas, interdependence and independence, and sometimes I say inter-independence, If you're going to proceed with the Sandokai as a practice, you need to take for a while, and it means intentionally for some weeks, and then more just as part of...

[23:41]

of a general awareness of the views in practice. In other words, Sukershi says, and somewhere in there, unfortunately, he says you can't practice without intellectual understanding. And so does Vasubandhu said the same thing. You can practice, you can do zazen, you can practice mindfulness, but unless that mindfulness and zazen is informed by wisdom views, the practice won't be fruitful. And, okay, so to practice means to develop, first of all, certain skills. and the skills develop along with the views. So, Mark is speaking about, you know, he has the intention to practice, but his skills in practice are present sometimes, and sometimes he's not able to, the skills aren't there to stay present in what you're doing.

[24:54]

So, one of the things you're doing when you're practicing is simply developing skills. Okay, those skills, you can't do it like weightlifting or something like that, you know, or jogging. You've got to, those skills develop in accord with your trying also to bring views, wisdom views, into your practice. But those skills also develop through your intention to develop the skills. And so it actually takes, I say, to have your mind in your breath, to have your attention in your breath continuously, but actually to really probably do that naturally. And as I say often, don't use will, use willingness. It's much more important to have a willingness than will.

[25:57]

And willingness means you let your practice happen. And practice and what the branching streams flow in darkness, one of the many things it alludes to is letting your practice practice itself because you can't do it. You know, Ji and Ri and this. So you can only do a certain amount. But practice has to develop a life of its own I don't know if I'm using words that are so good, but anyway. So if your intention is to practice, It doesn't help to think, oh, I'm not doing it so well, I should do it better, I should try harder.

[27:02]

To some extent, naturally, we think that way, but it's more important just to make the effort, to make the effort more clear, to absorb other intentions into that effort, but at the same time, just to trust that somehow, something, the practice is bigger than our intention even. So, this requires simultaneously a trust in practice and a patience. So, it might be some years before suddenly you find, oh, in fact, I am coincident with my Intention, my state of mind and breathing are coincident at all times. They feel coincident. It's just one day you notice that that's the case. It might have actually been the case for six months, but you don't actually notice that, oh yes, this is different.

[28:06]

I feel at one piece all the time. I always feel at one piece. Well, that's not so easy to always all feel at one piece. And that's also when they use the phrase in Zen to be master of yourself and things like that. It means that you've come to feel all of one piece. Okay, so there's various practices involved here that you put together. I mean, you do each one separately. And again, I said that there's this sense of... multiple causes. I don't know if we spoke about this. But in the beginning, I think, of the Abhidharma Kosha, the sense of it is that there isn't one cause from which everything emanates.

[29:08]

But rather, there's multiple causes that are unrelated that come together at this moment. So the oneness isn't back there somewhere. The oneness is in your activity. So the idea of multiple causes or absolute independence or a kind of absolute differentiation, are you following me? Is a very different view than the Western view. In the Western view, we think somehow even the Big Bang and all, it all has this kind of, from Buddhism's point of view, a theological cast in which there's a creator or a single source. Buddhism says there's multiple sources all flowing along, and how do we know they're even related? This is the whole idea of multiple world systems, penetrating, interpenetrating. There's no one world system where things are.

[30:12]

So we're in a situation of multiple world systems coming together for us at this moment through our activity. That's a very different conception of how we exist than we kind of implicitly feel from our own culture. Am I making any sense here? So, likewise, we practice this way. Somehow these things come together. It's all appearing here. It's not explainable how it's all appearing. You can stay with... That was the German philosopher who said, it's amazing that there's anything at all. What? What? That also is a very basic idea in Buddhism. It's amazing that there's anything at all.

[31:13]

So just as somehow this all comes together, there's that similar kind of trust that we're sitting on this floor, we're all falling in space at the same speed, you know, so feel it that way, we're all falling in space at the same speed, the floor is falling in space at the same speed, the roof is likely falling in space at the same speed as the floor, you know, or we'd be in trouble. So you can actually feel, you know, if you want to come into accepting things as they is, you can feel we're all here falling together in the same space, at the same time, like Those parachuters, you know, get in a pattern. We're sort of like that right now, you know. We just don't see the parachutes. The parachutes are the flowing of darkness. Okay. So then there's these various practices. So we have the practice which is in the present, in the first part of it, of one and many.

[32:17]

Of the intimacy of order and disorder, one and many, etc. Okay. Now, what Marie Louise brought up is where Suzuki Roshi speaks about that for each sense there's an object. And he says various things about it. But this is also a practice in which you see every object, and I've spoken about this, as six-fold. that any object is each of the senses, right? Didn't we speak about that? And if the sense is not there, like you don't smell it, it's there because you don't smell it. All right? Okay. So every object is six-fold in that sense. But we can also think of them as six kinds of objects, not six objects folded together, but rather six.

[33:19]

We can unfold them. Okay, so then you can practice with imagining sound as its own object. Now we're applying independence and interdependence. Okay, let me go back to those two words. Okay, so we have the practice of one and many, the intimacy of one and many. Okay. So that's something you can spend some time with over, as I said, some weeks to months and then it begins to be something you come back to periodically or notice periodically or it's implied in what you do. Then you take two words like independence and interdependence and you notice and you intentionally notice, consciously notice the interdependence of things.

[34:20]

So I can, Mark's there, I can see Mark sitting, the books are there, he's sitting on the floor, and he's a person who's, you know, having met his parents, there's some feeling of his parents there, and he grew up in New Mexico, and he has friendships with people here, and he's been here a long time, and many of the things here at Crestone, you know, the water and the spring and a lot of the things we benefit from here, our sewer system, etc., Mark helped to build and things. So I can feel the interdependence of that and Mark coming together through many things. I can feel that and I can remind myself of that. I can also emphasize Mark's absolute independence. And I can feel Mark as unrelated to anything else. Or unrelated but including everything else in an independence.

[35:28]

How do you say these things? Anyway, so you can play with these two words, independence and interdependence. And when you feel the independence of things, this is not an intellectual idea, you actually find yourself in a different state of mind. So to practice with the word independence, you suddenly find yourself locked in a different kind of space in mind. And comparisons and distinctions disappear. There's a feeling of timelessness. Something like that. All these words are inadequate, but there's something different happens when you emphasize the absolute independence or when you emphasize the interdependence. So to become familiar with those, now this Sandokai is assuming you're going through this very slowly, not just studying it and getting familiar with it, but actually practicing with, over time, independence and interdependence.

[36:40]

Okay, now what Marie-Louise brought up is you can practice, and you can try it in Zazen, which is the easiest place, I think, to do it, is to notice... And as I've said, stabilize each of the five skandhas. In this case, you're stabilizing each of the vijnanas, each of the senses, as a separate object. Unrelated to... So you established the hearing of the birds or whatever last night. There were quite a few this morning, quite a few coyotes. Did you hear the coyotes this morning? What time was that? Quarter to four. So I get up to go to Hotel Juan, 3.30 or so, and there were a lot of coyotes, so I mentioned to Marie-Louise, and she heard them too. So say that you're sitting zazen, and you can hear the coyotes or the birds or this airplane, and you stabilize that as an object.

[37:48]

I can also see this rug and I stabilize that as an object unrelated to the sound of the airplane. And I feel myself sitting here in a proprioceptive physical sense, not a visual sense, and that I stabilize as an object that's independent. When you do that, there's something that happens when you do that. So rather than describing what happens, I'll just say that's a practice to do. So we just have three practices now that are embedded in the Sandokai. One is the experience of intimacy through neither grasping at either side of a duality, one or many.

[38:52]

Then you have the practice of working with interdependent and independent. And then now you have the practice of the six kinds of objects. six-fold object, six kinds of objects. So then once you, one of the additional practices you can do with this is after you've separated this and kind of stabilized yourself from these different six objects, which as a koan I like very much, you know, number 21, I think it is in the Sandokai, emphasizes the great gaps between these six senses. They don't actually make a single world. You put it together as a single world, but there's big gaps out there. Okay, so you begin, we could almost say it's a seven-fold object because the gaps are there. Rishi, you said 21 of the Samyukai. Do you mean the Book of Serenity? I mean the Book of Serenity, the Shoyuroku.

[39:56]

Yeah, there's not 21 much in here. Yeah. Well, in my version there are, but... This is actually the 21st lecture. So, if you... Responding to Marie Louise, if you practice something like this, the six kinds of objects, and you feel yourself, what happens when you fold them together and make one world, and when you unfold them and feel them as six separate kinds of things, and there's a mystery there, and in that mystery is this flows in darkness. Okay, so if you practice those things, you recognize them as practices, You recognize their potential as practices and you practice them.

[41:00]

Each of these three practices I just mentioned just now come together in a way that you can't control or explain. And that is a process of allowing a reconceiving of yourself in, we would say, Buddha's realm rather than your own realm. So it's kind of more living in the gap or it comes by itself. It's not an active thing that you reconceive. Yes, that's right. You allow a reconception in Buddha's realm to occur. We could call this Buddha's realm. Don't think of it as Buddha or God or something. This is what we mean by Buddha's realm. Does that make sense? Okay. Thank you. Yes. Sorry, that was rather long. What do you understand by intellectual understanding?

[42:05]

My experience is that when Suzuki Roshi says you need an intellectual understanding, It's for me quite an unclear definition or expression. On some level I make the experience that when I'm for instance reading a book or yeah, let's say reading a book and a phrase or something that it doesn't enter the same way or sometimes not at all in comparison to some input through a lecture, for instance, or a contact with another person. So when it is related directly to, for instance, a human being or a physical part,

[43:06]

then it enters for me much more into the realm of practice so that I can use it or that I can somehow make experiences out of it. And this doesn't function or it doesn't happen when I go by the so-called intellectual understanding. I can make some intellectual understanding, but only after I had my experiences, or any experiences. So for me it's rather unclear what is meant by you need an intellectual understanding. What is this? What is meant by this? Can you understand? Well, I personally try not to use the word intellectual. And you have to understand, Suzuki Oshiro is not a native speaker, of course, so he's trying to... I mean, he doesn't have... He doesn't really know what to say, so he says intellectual.

[44:17]

He doesn't have the resources to figure out some other word or to apologize for using the word intellectual. which is almost really a French political word having to do with the intellectuals against the revolution and so forth. So there's a history of intellectuals and leftist politics and so forth. So I think intellectual, and I define intellectual as somebody who believes in their own thoughts. And that's not what he means. But We need, let's say then, some conceptual understanding. And, I don't know if that's, that's somewhat better, I think, than intellectual. We need, it's impossible to separate views from your actions. In other words, at Boulder, some woman said to me, who's practiced practice quite a bit and seems to have a good practice, she said something in a way related to what Mark said.

[45:24]

She said, how do I... She implied if she takes some view, like... already connected, right? Take that as a view, already connected. Isn't that disturbing because she's adding that to trying to just accept things as they are? So, didn't she say something like that? Okay, so she thinks that if she adds the view, already connected, It interferes with her accepting things as they are, which she implies is not a view, but accepting things as they are is a view. When you sit and you say, I'm accepting this as a view, you're being informed by a view. You're not just in some pure sense accepting things as they are. That's also a view. So you can't separate

[46:27]

any practice from a view. So because you can't separate them, the views should be wisdom views or be very clear or they interfere with your practice. There's no pure practice that's independent of views. It's not possible. And that's also since there's no such thing as natural. In Buddhism there's no sense that it's natural. If I shave my head, that's not natural. If I let my hair grow and get it all matted, that's not natural. That's a style. There's nothing I can do that doesn't have some kind of decision in it or some kind of intention. Okay, so then the second part of what you brought up is what's the difference between reading something. try to present it so it's not understandable intellectually or simply conceptually.

[47:34]

It's only understandable when you kind of jolt it into experiencing. So you can... The effort of a Buddhist writer is to write in such a way that it forces you to experience it in a way that's similar to the teacher being there. Hmm. But the teacher is also, in speaking, is trying to create that situation too, so the teacher doesn't want to say it, so it's too easy to understand. And in fact, one of the criticisms that could be made of the way I teach is I try too hard to make things clear. I apologize. Because the problem is it harms the smart people. As Sukershi said, he was dull, so he had to study real hard and read the books over and over again.

[48:34]

But the problem is if I teach in a way that I try to make it clear, smart people understand it conceptually very quickly, and then they think they've understood it, and they almost always haven't. And the person who struggled more actually get it better. So it's a fine line between trying to make it clear. If I don't try to make it clear, nobody gets it. If I try to make it clear, then the dumb people get it. So this is very compassionate to support the dumb people more than the smart people. But if I don't do that, neither the smart nor the dumb people get it. So luckily I've got a group of dumb people around me. You're very nice. You're very nice. So your practice is advancing rapidly. That's Dan. I've been looking at and examining a phrase you used in lecture.

[49:40]

There's no object without mentation, if I have that correct. And I'm sensing that as object with, since it's not separate from meditation, as the operating from the fourth, fifth skandha, or all the skandhas. What I'm... wanted to ask about her in Zemniko, is this realm of practice in the first skandha. And I'm sensing there is... Going through consciousness or form? No, the form. Of what might be sent, if I may say, some realm of pure sensation or prior to thoughts about it, prior to feelings about it, prior to any knowingness about it. And then I'm trying to find a way to articulate or to understand this sense in the Sandokai about the darkness, the absolute, and how you've been using that the unconstructed is simultaneously in this experience at this moment.

[50:58]

So in some sense, and also trying to weave into that, that colon phrase, not knowing is nearest. So when you say, or when you raise for us to examine, there's no object without meditation, can I presume that that is coming from the point of view of consciousness, which is not different from, but the darkness is not brought out? In other words, It's like, to say it, we use words and we already have the distinction, but in other words, how do we articulate it? It seems like we can't, but I need to make that effort. I feel something here, she's making that effort. How do we talk about or sense or feel that not knowing? And how to be clear about that knowing?

[52:01]

I think there's a not knowing that's vague and spaced out. but there's also a sense in the practice of this first karma, the form's karma, there's a not knowing what is both with intention and beyond intention. Is this... Somebody's just... Oh, a visitor? And the guest manager went. Perfect. What you said sounded all right to me. I was trying to make a question. Okay, can you pull a question out of that? Well, let me see if I can make it.

[53:08]

The reason is the differentiation between there's not knowing... where I'm just sort of unaware, and I'm kind of unconscious, or just unaware. But there's, it seems to me, there is this realm, what I'm calling, I'm presuming, the first practice of the first khandha, where there's just this complete involvement in the present moment, prior to naming, How can I, how can we be clear about the not knowing? How can we trust not knowing? I recognize in myself a not knowing that's sort of unconscious, unaware. And I'm working with this practice of not knowing in the sense of the first khandha, which is this intentional or being open to present situation of not knowing anything about it, but being totally involved in it.

[54:09]

So, there seems to be that I should be clear about when I'm asleep, as it were, awake but asleep, and this intentional putting myself in harm's way of the first condescendant. So, we're clear that not knowing is not ignorance. Okay. Yes. So, not knowing is an activity inseparable from knowing. When not knowing is an activity inseparable from knowing, then you have to trust a kind of bigger self, or a self which covers everything. That's all. And you really don't have any choice because you can try to trust knowing itself and you end up in trouble or mixed up or confused.

[55:21]

So you can trust the activity of not knowing that's inseparable from knowing. And it's a kind of a face or a leap And the only thing that can give you confidence, other than the confidence of practice itself and somehow we exist in this way, is the experience of trying to trust just knowing and seeing how complicated that gets. That's limitations. Yeah. We're empty. Okay. There's a phrase you use in Boulder, I think from Nagarjuna, establishing the relative. Okay, I'd like to work around that.

[56:24]

The sense I get, the feeling I get from the Sandokai is establishing this situation, this present immediate situation, and establishing it in different ways by taking it apart or by looking closely at it. Basically by showing or establishing, I'd say, presenting the dualism, the sort of fundamental dualism of light and dark. In establishing and separating light and dark, we begin to establish or investigate

[57:35]

how this situation comes to be, our part in it. So, in all the, in looking at all the ways that we, I mean, what we know is the relative, let's say. What we know is this and that and the struggles that arise constantly from this versus that, and the separation and division, attentive. This process that we are engaged in, that we are somehow responsible for, this is the relative, this is where we function, this is what we know. Okay. there is the momentum of how we are establishing the situation or the inertia that is... it's very hard to do anything else.

[58:54]

Even in practice or whatever we do, but let's say we come to practice and what we do is we continue to find ourselves in and be subject to relative conditions, the myriad streams, the clash and conflict of light and dark. So there is the impulse, there is the desire and even the intention to somehow resolve this through practice. And we find ourselves constantly drawn into the same activity of, I'll say, establishing the relative in its separation and conflict. So I think it's... And looking for something beyond, outside of it.

[60:05]

And of course, I don't think anyone comes into spiritual practice without some notion of something outside or beyond this situation. And yet, the, as Sukhreshi said somewhere, in Buddhism, the arrow always points to you. And for me, the sattva kaya is is the arrows pointing to our experience and to establish more clearly how the relative is relative by looking at the elemental qualities of experience, by establishing or stabilizing experience in each of the six ways, the five senses and mind.

[61:09]

And yet there is the Well, frustration of always slipping off onto one side or the other. So what does it mean when you say dissolving dualism? How can, and what is meant by establishing the Garsha in a sense, establishing the relative and establishing the relative or stabilizing oneself in the relative so firmly and confidently with trust that the merging of difference and unity is an experience.

[62:15]

Not in that view. Well, just as an exercise, can you sum that up into a single phrase? Okay. What does it mean by establishing the relative? And how is establishing the relative The opening of the Absolute, or the discovery or the establishing of the Absolute. Well, you can look at the history of how this idea became so, and practice became so precise in Buddhism, and more precise over some period of time as a practice.

[64:13]

And that may be also important to look at it in ourselves, because I think when we first start to practice the idea of establishing the Relative doesn't make any sense because we're already in the relative and we don't even know it's relative. When you don't know the relative is relative, that's called the imaginary. So, the Yogacara, because it emphasizes practice, establishes a third category, the absolute relative and the imaginary. And there's a dynamic in these, of how these three relate to each other. Because once you've recognized that things are relative, then you recognize that you've already, by implication, established or recognized the Absolute.

[65:16]

That make sense? Yeah. So, but in ourselves, in our own practice, We don't have, at first we don't have a sense of this absolute and relative in any distinct way. We have a vague idea of emptiness and we don't know what that means and so forth. So when, but if you continue to practice, you do, and if you pay attention to what you're doing, you notice, you begin to notice that there's a difference between

[66:24]

what we could call the absolute and the relative. You notice there's a difference between giving reality to your thoughts and when you don't give reality to your thoughts, where you experience some sort of field of mind in which thoughts are arising. Once you begin to have some experience, like a field of mind in which thoughts are arising, you already have an experience of absolute and relative in this Buddhist terminology. Do you understand that? Okay. And this is Dogen's phrase that thoughts, mind is not limited to thoughts. different from mind. Yeah, mind, just if you look at securation state and don't invite your thoughts to tea, we all have the experience of not inviting our thoughts to tea, but that implies that mind is bigger than thoughts.

[67:34]

Otherwise you wouldn't have any opportunity to not invite your thoughts to tea. Okay. So, once you say that you're working with in practice not inviting your thoughts to tea, and you begin to find that when you don't invite your thoughts to tea, there's some bigger activity. Sometimes I call that awareness, you can call that your subtle body, you can call that big mind or something like that. There's various ways to practice or designate this experience of being that's bigger than our thoughts, bigger than our perceptions, or other or wider than our perceptions. Okay.

[68:38]

So, once you have practiced enough to see that, then there's a tendency to emphasize emptiness. But what this Sandokai and the teaching I've been talking about in lectures is that, in fact, form and emptiness are two aspects of the same thing. that there's no... and that you can't know emptiness without form. So at this point, this is emphasizing that there's a kind of dynamic or pulse of... Well, Hongji says something like... identify the mind with space, merge activity with myriad forms.

[69:45]

So there's a simultaneous activity of identifying the mind with space and merging activity with myriad forms. But when you merge activity with myriad forms, you're emphasizing We could say compassion or the light in this thing. When you merge mind with space, you're emphasizing darkness. But they can't be independent of each other. There can be a kind of movement, but one is completely dependent on the other. So that's the best I can say right now that you... that you don't ignore, let's say, let's not ignore form in favor of emptiness. I don't know, that's a, I don't feel too adequate a way of talking about it, but good enough for now, for me.

[70:50]

Okay, Katrin? One of the interests is that Consciousness is loaded awareness, or awareness is unloaded consciousness. Could you explain that a little bit further? Like, consciousness is loaded with what? And how might it be unloaded? Okay, consciousness is loaded with, in the teaching of the five skandhas, Consciousness is loaded with feeling, with perceptions, with associations, and with successive moments of feelings, perceptions and associations which generate consciousness. So your consciousness is constructed, let's just go back, when you wake up in the morning, your consciousness is constructed by consistent sensory input.

[71:58]

You have sensory input while you're asleep. Maybe the coyotes are here or something like that. But you don't put it together as an external world. But when you wake up and you say, oh, the coyotes are outside, the sun is coming up, your consciousness makes a consistent picture of sensory input. It's one of the definitions of consciousness. So in that sense, consciousness is loaded with and structured through sensory input. And then there's associations. Oh, I like coyotes. I wish I could hear coyotes more often. Et cetera. Or they've just eaten one of our cats. Which we seem to have lost cats probably.

[73:00]

Moji's too big, don't worry. And she's very smart. She knows when she's food. She does, huh? She's too old. She's too old to be food. But when I was going to lecture the other day, she... I bowed to her, and she looked at me as if she wanted to take my teaching staff. I refused to feel it for her. I'm sure she would have brought it back, but I'm dying to decide. I think she's playing a game of I Can Still Smell You. because once you touch the stick, I'm sure she finds it by smell. So there's associations like that, kairis, muji, etc.

[74:07]

Okay. So, Buddhism as a wisdom practice and not something that's exactly intuitive. It says, all right, Okay, so we can see that consciousness is constructed. That's obvious, isn't it? No matter what I, as I said this yesterday, I look at you and it's actually a construction. So we can see that not only do my constructing, consciousness is a habit-bound construction. Because not only is it construction, it's constructed along certain patterns over again the same way. And those patterns you can call karma. So the field of constructed consciousness is a field in which allows our karma to operate, allows associations to come into it.

[75:19]

For instance, the associations I have that come up with coyotes or something wouldn't come into Martinez. So my associations would not flow into, in the same way, into Martinez consciousness if we could somehow... What's that movie? Inside John Malkovich? Being John Malthus. I haven't seen the movie, but it's supposed to be good. But anyway, if I could being Martina, my associations just aren't your karma, right? So the way my mind is structured is open to my associations and my karma. Okay, so it means that the structure, that the consciousness that we create is not only a construct, it's constructed from patterns from time immemorial, and it's also constructed in patterns which activate our own karma.

[76:31]

Is that understandable? Okay, so one of the questions that Buddha asks itself is, is what is the field in which our karma operates? What causes us to suffer? One of the things that causes us to suffer is our consciousness. Because our consciousness is designed to receive, activate and amplify and make us suffer through our karma. So it's been discovered through practice That if you deconstruct your consciousness, as I would say in trying to create some language we can share, unload. So awareness is unloaded consciousness. When you begin to unload or generate a mind in which you withdraw associations, you don't let associations come in.

[77:34]

Freedom of mind is kind of impervious to associations. Associations commonly bounce against the wall. No tea. There's no tea there. And you say, shucks, I'll go to Dan's head. There's tea there and poison eggs and all kinds of stuff. Okay. So... So you withdraw a consistent perceptual world. So when I hear the airplane, I don't identify as an airplane. It's the music of the spheres. It's some kind of wonderful vibration of air. You simply withdraw identification. And perception in this case is naming it as an airplane. Associations is thinking about the airplane. So you can actually withdraw those things. When you and people have discovered then, and I think that a great deal of this teaching that we're practicing has simply been discovered by people meditating.

[78:48]

There's basic understandings, there's a basic framework, there's basic insights, but the way those insights have been developed is through generations of people extending this practice to all aspects of their lives through generations of people begin to see more and more clearly certain things. It may take generations to see something clearly and then to say, okay, we can make that a practice. So one of the things that has been noticed and Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu and other people made it very clear and then made it clear enough that it can become a practice, is that if you unload your consciousness but maintain an awareness which is not sleep, your karma actually begins to be cooked differently. Your karma actually begins to affect you differently.

[79:52]

And you create what I'm calling a karma fluid zone. When it's possible to, and you begin to be a rather different person. You begin to be put together differently. and your actual habits, the habits you have, when they keep coming into a mind merged with space, rather than a mind merged with thoughts, you begin to change, and that change which people noticed, I mean, I'm sure that it's a simple thing, like you put a cactus in the sun and you notice that if you don't turn it regularly, it starts going this way all the time, you know, there's no window. Well... Beating to the sun. Yeah, beating to the sun. So people noticed that people who did Zazen a lot and seemed to be able to free themselves from conceptual thinking and identifying with conceptual thought, looked healthier.

[80:53]

They looked younger. They lived longer. They were more generous to people. So what's going on? So why is that person who's repraxing different than other people? Or why is he or she different than the way they were before? Well, their karma is affecting them differently. So small things like noticing that consciousness is actually constructed, and noticing that you can unconstruct the construction, and the people who do that actually have different kinds of lives. Does that sort of answer your question? Yes? So the question about consciousness... concerning Catherine's question or what you just said, the first three scandals, are they within the karma fluid zone? So if I only have the first three, form, feeling and perception, are they karma fluid or karma free?

[81:59]

Well, form and feeling definitely are. Perception, pure perception with no associated thinking is, you could also say, is in a karma fluid zone. Without naming, you mean? Without... Well, if you... It depends what you mean by perception. Again, this is not a tight philosophical system. And as I often say, again, it's good not to try to map these different... I think when the Abhidharma, for instance, tries to map all these different teachings onto a single system, it loses reality. And you start calling the second skanda emotion instead of feeling. And sometimes some books say it's really about, you know, likes, dislikes, and neutrals. And I don't think that's—if you practice with it, that just does not make sense. So it's much better to practice the jnanas, or practice the skandhas, or practice the elements—I keep coming back to those three, it's what we know—but practice them each independently, don't try to map them on each other.

[83:13]

That make sense? If you try to map them on each other, you turn it into an intellectual system which doesn't have vitality. You allow them to come together in your practicing each one separately. Okay, so the reason I'm saying that is, this is something you practice with. So perception, you can say, is naming, or perception, you can say, is just noticing. You can also say form is just to notice the signal. So exactly where it's a perception, if you're noticing that it's an airplane, well, okay, you notice it's an airplane, depends the kind of energy you put into it as an airplane. If you notice it further and say, oh, it's a plane probably going to Albuquerque, now you have an association. So your draw is going to airplane. You notice an airplane, you barely notice. Sometimes we use to merely notice or barely notice. Because there's a difference between noticing and barely noticing.

[84:17]

But they both fall into the category of perception. But to barely notice is more of a skilled practitioner. If it flows into a clear perception, then you're up into the third and fourth skandha. Because as soon as the clear perceptions associations come in. So we're talking about a direction, a direction toward consciousness or a direction toward awareness. And you use the skandhas to make that direction. And part of making that direction is being able to hold or establish each skanda. But really what you're doing is making a direction. And if you say, always form completely not a perception, then that you're making it too philosophical. Form is also perception. Form is also feeling. Form is also association. But if the direction is toward form and away from associations and consciousness, then you're working with the five skandhas as a tool.

[85:22]

Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's too much thinking involved when I say, this is form and this is feeling and this is perception. Too much. Then you're not practicing whether you're turning it into an intellectual system. Okay. Yes? I would like to be more clear about the expression, because we use them quite often, about intuition. For me it's a 50-50 business, because projection gets in. I mean, it can be right, 50%, but it... What is a 50-50 business? The expression, the intuition, about intuition. Why is intuition a 50-50 business? Because... You're playing the stock market? No, it can be... If I am in a situation and my projection gets in, then it can be right, it can be also wrong.

[86:26]

I mention it because you said one evening... in the kitchen, I don't trust my feelings, I trust my intuition. I'm a bit puzzled about this expression, I want to be clear... Puzzled by his expression? It's good to discuss Martin and not Dogen. Particularly wise at dinner time. The only bearded man here. You said you don't trust your feelings, but you trust your intuition. So I would like to be more clear about this expression. Can't we... speak as well about instinctive truths?

[87:30]

Okay, we have feeling, instinct and intuition here. What do you mean by instinct? I think it is something what we realize more when we sit. rather than in our daily life. Because in our daily life we overhear it or we can't hear it because we are talking too much and we are talking too loud. Okay. Well, I myself would use instinct in a more biological sense, like touch fire and you... Pull your hand away. That's, I would say, instinctual. Well, yes, intuition sounds more sophisticated. And we need fire, or we wouldn't be able to learn to take our hand away.

[88:35]

So fire is quite good in that sense. And that's why we need bad, because otherwise we wouldn't learn good. The good is only, it's like fire, you know. So there's a certain instinctual quality, a kind of genetic instinctual dimension to the, you know, we don't drink gasoline, we usually drink tea. So there's, I know, there's a story in the newspaper about a guy who came home very drunk and without knowing drank kerosene and then lit a cigarette and fire came out. He survived, but he was so drunk he drank gasoline. I think it was not kerosene. Okay, so there's a certain ground of, we can say, instinctual

[89:37]

Right. Okay. Now, the word intuition I actually don't like. And I think it's a deceptive word in practice. I think that for most of us, to various degrees, we can trust our intuition. And it comes up when things like it's similar to saying, you know, there was no choice. I did such and such, there was no choice. That's kind of like intuition. You didn't know what to do and then you did something. You took that job. decided to move out of New York, I just had no choice. So there's various things we say which imply something deeper than thinking is making the choice for us. And one of those things is intuition. And some people feel they have good intuition and some people feel they can't trust their intuition and so forth.

[90:48]

But I think intuition is a word for usually not being conscious. In other words, we're not really conscious and sometimes something pushes through our usual consciousness and we trust that more. But all we see is these occasional pushes up, while mostly we don't. I would say Buddhism is trying to bring you into a state where you have a flow of insights which you don't grasp as knowledge, and a flow of insights that you don't necessarily try to put into a coherent picture. As soon as you try to put it into a coherent picture, it goes into consciousness. So you allow a flow of insights and you allow yourself—and this is what you brought up—there's a trust in allowing a flow of insights which you put together by living them, not by kind of making them into a system.

[91:52]

Again, I'm speaking in a rather clumsy way. I would say, as I said in one of the first lectures I gave, I said I prefer, if we want to use a word like intuition, I would prefer to use dowsing. Because when you douse, you clearly have to suspend ordinary thinking. It's quite a complex thing, dowsing, because you have to have intention that I'm looking for... or you have an intention of looking for the telephone line, or you have an intention to look for the electric line, which is not the telephone line. And you can make such distinctions. And you can actually feel the kind of field that's up here above the ground and so forth. And you have to have some intention of what you're looking for, but you can't think it. You have to intend it, but you can't think it.

[92:54]

If you think it, you can't feel anything. So you have to create a state of mind which doesn't grasp at information, and that's why you use a stick or something, because if it's just in your body, it's lost in so much information you can't distinguish it. So in general, for some people, it does without a stick or wires or something. But if you have something you hold in your hands, with both hands, I think you couldn't do it with one hand so easily, with both hands, something happens where it's kind of monitored in the stick. So I think, to me, I would rather use a word, if you want to say something like that, is to come into a mind where you douse the world rather than think about the world. And to douse the world would be, I would say, what most people mean by intuition.

[93:54]

Because in their consciousness something, dousing information pops through and they call it intuition. But the problem with calling it intuition is you don't really realize you've got to deconstruct consciousness so that this intuition is the natural way of functioning. You begin to trust The experience of intuition, which is only a little tiny island sticking up in the surface of... So I actually do not like the idea of intuition myself. Plus it's mostly something only women can do. That's the problem with it. And I don't like being left alone. Although, the experience of practice is, I heard some, you were saying there's so many chosons and meetings and things like that, and some people don't go.

[94:56]

Practice is to be willing to be excluded. And we should have meetings that exclude some people just so you get used to being excluded. Because really, if you can't get used to being excluded, you can't practice. Because you're always excluded. The more wide your awareness gets, the more clear you're excluded. So if you need to be included, you're in trouble. And smart people don't want to go to meetings anyway. You already said we were dumb. Yeah. Sorry. Thanks for inviting me. But also, we create these meetings so that you have to stay here longer until you get permission to come. And we have to create some sort of, also meetings that you can't have a discussion, you can only have, only so many people can hold a discussion.

[96:01]

Is that dumbing down? Is that dumbing down? What, the meeting is dumbing down? Yes, the more advanced meetings. Oh yeah, the more advanced meetings are definitely an experience of dumbing down, yeah. Definitely. Absolutely. Yes, okay. In different ways you answered already my question, but I tried. Suzuki Roshi, this is the merging of difference and unity and for a long time that's all I knew about the Sandokai because we chanted it.

[96:38]

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