what we just chanted. I actually believe, and that's why I'm here with you. And it's funny, walking over here, well, you know, let me say something about form. It's one of the big things in the West, the objection to form, because it somehow identified with empty ritual and identified with the religious services often one didn't like as a child or a young person. But form is forming.

[01:11]

Forming is always forming. And I experienced that very directly with this arm, which is, you know, Certainly it was an unexpected accident, but when I look carefully at the experience, it's a very useful experience. And, for example, simple things like two or three weeks ago, the distance between the tower and the zendo was quite far. But today it wasn't so far. I mean, it actually... feels like a very different distance and it's a lot of it is because the space I'm in is shaped is the space I'm in is the space I can move in the space I

[02:28]

a haptic-haptic touching, a haptic-proprioceptive balance, a haptic-proprioceptive relationship to. So, I mean, being, of course, exacerbated by my being such a right-handed person, not ambidextrous, And as I say somewhat jokingly, but seriously, this is only a facsimile of a hand. It can't do anything a hand could do without the help of this hand. So my haptic, proprioceptive, experientially articulated space, does that make sense as a sentence, is quite present here on the left side, but it's not present on the right side. And it's sort of like a dark spot. So when I'm walking over here, or even thought of walking over here, two or three weeks ago, a month or more ago, I mean, I was walking in half, would be walking in half a dark space.

[03:42]

And that dark space was so susceptible to falling in again. And falling in again would be, I mean, much worse. much more complicated situation than I am now. So the experiential difference was changed simply by the proprioceptive darkness, haptic darkness on my right side. And I've been sitting up at the I turned, turned, you know, I really, I always, my whole life is moving forward or in some direction anyway. And so I wanted to go forward with my usual way of being or seeming to be.

[04:45]

So I sort of turned the, bedroom up there, which has a bathroom on the same floor, into a version of the Hotuan and a version of the tower. And I didn't want to get you guys to carry, you probably had to unassemble, disassemble the treadmill in Otawan, so I found one for half price. A much smaller one. But everyone's always been telling me the last 10 years you should exercise more. And I'm the person you put me down on the spot. If something doesn't happen, I have to stay there. I'm not even inclined to get up. I've acquiesced to people wanting me to exercise more, so the treadmill is sort of interesting, and I can study a lecture while I'm working on this treadmill.

[05:57]

So anyway, I set up that room. But at first, I couldn't sit Seza. And Seza, you know, your legs behind you. And that's the only way I could sit. And I couldn't lift my leg with my arm. And it was okay to sit safe. But it's interesting what a difference it makes, at least for a person like myself, to be able to cross my legs. Because really, once you cross your legs, you're in a... left brain, right brain unity, it actually does shift you out of usual consciousness. I mean, once you're really sensitive to the way, I mean, partly you just are better supported if you can sit cross-legged, but it also makes a difference in how your neurological system works.

[07:10]

So the last few days I've been able to sit cross-legged and quite happily. Now, Zenki Roshi and I have been working for some years on the chants, whether we should, you know, establish a chanting the English chants, the wording of the English chants, in a way that's the same in Yanisov, or the same in Boulder and here. Now, when I first went to Europe, since nobody had robes, really nobody at first even had roxas, It seemed funny to have people chant. Now I open Buddha's robe in the morning.

[08:18]

So I changed it. I didn't change it, actually. I substituted the word mind for robe. So now I think in Europe they always chant, now I open Buddha's mind. But what they chant in Japanese is the same, the Buddhist robe. So I've never changed the chant. But now Zenki Roshi and I are considering changing the chant itself in Japanese and English. No, I'm speaking about this not just to inform you about changing chance, but it's quite exceptional and important, significant, etc., that we start the day, I mean, that's the sense of it, is you start the day with this intention, with this statement.

[09:27]

Now I open... Buddha's robe, a field far beyond form and emptiness, the Tathagata's teaching for all people. Now, you could say when you examine these words, And it is what I just chanted is or said is the translation Suzuki Roshi made in about 1959 or 60 or something like that. And first of all, just the concept of starting the day with such an intention, in a way, makes you a Buddhist.

[10:36]

Someone I know pretty well, I've known him since he was a kid, since he was a kid, and part of the reason, I suppose, influenced that he became a Buddhist, that he's written, Evan Thompson, he's written a book recently, or a podcast or something, I'm told, Why I'm Not a Buddhist. And I remember when he was in his 20s, he was a little annoyed with his father, Bill Thompson, who actually founded this place as Linda's Farm, annoyed with his father because he thought his father should be a Buddhist because his thinking was so Buddhist but now his son has decided to write a book on why I'm not a Buddhist so then I thought maybe I should write a book why I am a Buddhist but anyway I could talk with you about it

[11:41]

I mean, for me, that I decide fully with a full recognition of what it means to start the day with an intention. Now I open Buddha's robe to start the day. If you really, the point is in Buddhism that starting is always starting. that moment after moment is a starting. Like my walking from the tower to here, I'm making time and space as I'm proceeding here. Proceeding here. Now, rooted in all Buddhist practices is a philosophical background, which is also articulated in a way in Buddhism so the background in which we're functioning is the bases of enlightenment.

[12:53]

Hey, I can put my hand up there. Thank you. I couldn't do that even two days ago. Still can't brush my teeth, you know. There was a guy at the, when they brought me to the, in the ambulance, to the emergency room. The emergency room doctor had a similar accident five months earlier. And he said, it's been five months and I still can't raise my arm above my shoulder. And somehow you can function it. But this won't let me raise my arm yet. Maybe next. Christian asked me, Zinke asked me to give six lectures, six teishos.

[13:57]

So maybe by the next one I'll be able to. Anyway. Starting is always starting. Starting is always restarting, but it's not even a restart because it's forgotten. The fact is it's starting started. Or it remembers, but not thoroughly. Anyway, sorry over the not changing the chant until now, if we're going to. The morning chant. When I say morning chant, I also spell it M-U-R-N-I-N-G because I'm mourning the loss of the night and the loss of the previous day. Anyway, so I go back and forth between mind and robe.

[15:04]

And for many years when I sat by myself in Atuan or wherever, I would often chant, now I open Buddha's robe and mind and body, fields beyond form and emptiness. And that's a quite quite fun. When I say that, when I open Buddha's body, mind, and robe, I feel the body as I'm chanting. I mean, it's, you know, it's like an email can arrive from your moments. It doesn't take more than a nanosecond to actually be in the midst of an experience. So, particularly when it becomes familiar.

[16:09]

Now I open Buddha's body, mind, and robe. But I've settled in recent two or three years, I guess, sitting by myself. When I sit by myself, am I really by myself? I'm nearby myself, anyway. I chant almost always now. Even the Buddhist admonition, you know, I've often told people the story that when Suzuki Roshi, I mean, I'm sorry to tell you again a thousand, or not a thousand, but quite a lot of times, that when Suzuki Roshi was asked years ago, in the early 60s,

[17:26]

What he noticed about being in America, he said that you all do things with one hand. And the practice of doing things with two hands, which looks like a formality or a ritual, is like crossing your legs. It's a different experience to bring my hands together and also feel this is here. And as I, again, often pointed out, you can tell first and second generation Japanese because in a restaurant they'll hold the teacup here, they'll drink here, and they'll hold it here, as if there's little chakra shells. But by the fourth generation, third generation, they don't have that bodily space anymore. They just pick up the teacup and drink it. But if you always are centering your body on the chakras, It's a kind of code.

[18:29]

I mean, Zen style is to not call it chakras, not say it's chakras, but you invisibly discover the difference when you're holding a glass like this, you're holding it here. And the Oryoki practice is all about that. So, When I do that, I'm having the same effect on my neurological identity as when I cross my legs. So for me, this practice, it's inseparable from having a glass of water. So now, as I said, when I'm sitting near myself, identity, within our identity, when I'm sitting within our identity by myself, I say, now I open Buddha's

[19:54]

robe and mind. The Tathagat is teaching for all beings the fields of beyond form and emptiness. If you're chanting this, I mean, these are not, you, First you have to learn the chant, and then you, and basically it becomes, it's more than memorized, it's in your body. And then you can slow down into a nano space where each word has tremendous power. And even, I mean, and our English words do too. Every word is a treasure to be unpacked. So just the word to start the day, to startle the day, to start the morning.

[21:10]

Start is a word which the etymology of start is to leap, or to fling, to jump, or to fling something. And when you fling something or jump, leap, you don't know what's going to happen next. Like when I fell, I was walking along. You don't always know what's going to happen next. And so just the word start... Its etymology is you're beginning what you don't know how to end. Or you're beginning what you don't know yet. You're flung into it. You leap and where will you land? Well, you hope you land where you're aiming. I didn't, but... So to start... Yeah.

[22:14]

Yeah. And so the word start, the assumption of the word start, to start the day, as I said, is starting is always starting, assumes, maybe this is a little bit of a jump, assumes basically successional identity. And successional identity is one of the base structures, underlying structures, backgrounding of our activity, which are bases for enlightenment. Now, a Zen teacher, ideally, is presenting practice always with the implicit and sometimes explicit presence of these bases of enlightenment or transformation, realization.

[23:36]

Now, the teacher is presenting them because he or she knows, is sure, that this transformation is possible. And it needs, as I've often said again, that you as a practitioner know this transformation is possible because there's a kind of alchemy, a chemistry between your knowing it and my knowing it, which makes it way more likely. Now the basis of enlightenment, one is that you know you're making time and space all the time. You have to, you know, teach yourself that, remind yourself that, convince yourself of that. And notice it as you're going along. I mean the stars, we see all these nice stars and Sukhya, she said, I know stars are burning helium and air, etc. He said, but really they're cozy beings.

[24:43]

But they're actually the past. That's all the past you're seeing up there. And that's, you know, it doesn't affect us and my drinking the water and stuff, but in actual fact we're in the midst of a disappearing past. We're making time and space Again, as they say, the big bang. That it didn't happen in space, it made the space in which it happened. That's true for us too. We're the big start, which is always starting, which presumes successional identity. identity, a successional identity. And we start the tesha with a drum.

[25:48]

It's a shamanic drum. It's boom, boom, boom. It presumes Successional identity. And that's how shamans trick you into successional identity, where you're suddenly open to things in a way you're not when you're in continuity identity. So it's the same drum. We call it the Dharma drum, shamanic drum. Boom. So when I say, in nano-space, now I, we, open. Buddhists, what is Buddha? Why do I say Buddha?

[26:49]

What does Buddha mean? Buddha means you're presuming enlightenment is possible. You're awakening is possible. So now I, we, open, releasing, Buddhist, this is possible transformation. Robe. And robe, what does robe mean to me? Robe means physicality. It means these things. It means trees. means the whole spectrum of objectness, which we are inseparable from. It means this dharma hall, this zendo, all these facilities we have here, kitchen, so forth.

[27:58]

These are all basically form, robe. And mind, I'm in the nano-space of mind, feelings, intentions. And this physicality as a robe and mind as intention and feeling are all actually even. more or less in that they don't fall into any category. Beyond, feels beyond form and emptiness. Now, if you're going to practice this, and you can practice this, you don't have to just in the morning or any other time, you can see if you can Walk somewhere or take a little walk around here and not fall into any categories beyond form and emptiness.

[29:10]

Beyond form and emptiness, which means can you practice believing it's possible not to fall into any categories? As I said to some of you the other day at Doksan, if you were born in China, of Caucasian parents or whatever, culturally, mind and body, you'd be Chinese now. What's that mean? It's an obvious fact. We all know it. If a Chinese person is born here, they end up to be basically Western. I remember I was in the Baptist hospital in Kyoto once. I don't know, doing what, but something. And there was clearly a Japanese man standing in front of me. I mean, quite a far, as far as Bryant is from me.

[30:18]

And I walked up to him, and I could see him from the back. And I walked up to him, and I spoke English to him. and he turned out to be a Canadian. I knew he wasn't Japanese inside. His outside body was Japanese, but inside he was clearly somebody who would speak English, American English, I thought, but it turned out to be Canadian English. He was no longer Japanese. What's that mean? That simple fact. It means your culture, your mind, your consciousness is simply a stage. It's a stage for being Chinese or a stage for being Japanese or a stage for being a Westerner or a stage for being a Buddha. Actually. That's what Buddhism is all about. That's what wisdom is all about. Knowing consciousness is just a staging. There's no I-dentity, there's my, no, there's our-dentity or all-ness-dentity.

[31:27]

That doesn't happen, the chemistry doesn't happen unless you deepen yourself into these bases of realization. The three I'll mention today are successional identity, that you're always creating time and space, and somatic patience. and zazen and sashins and so forth, all are designed, first of all, as I pointed out, to develop somatic patience, that no matter what happens, you can just be somewhere without needing anything. It's okay to have things, but underneath, the foundation is you don't need anything.

[32:36]

So we have to face the coronavirus. What's going to happen? Interesting. And many things we have to face. But you face them ultimately, basically, imperturbably with somatic patients, kshanti. So you start your day within the wisdom, unpacking the wisdom of the words and the underlying conception of the world built into, now I open Buddha's robe. Now I open, we open Buddha's robe. mind feels, feels far beyond any category, far beyond form and emptiness.

[33:54]

The Tathagata's teaching for all, what does Tathagata mean? Tathagata is the biggest word for the name of Buddha and it means the one who comes and goes within each moment being womb and embryo. The tathagata, the one who comes and goes, starts, starts, and disappears. So I hope you enjoy chanting the robe chant every morning. Thank you very much. Make our intention legally penetrate every...

[34:47]

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