I feel I'm trying to show you something that isn't there, or show you something, show you a non-there-ness which makes there-ness possible. You know, and sometimes I feel it's something like, what's that famous climber, Alex Honhold? You know, he developed all the skills, but he had to find the handholds and what he could do with his body to reach that one and then reach that one and so forth. And... So he honed his skills, but he had to discover on his own how to climb the face of the mountain there in Yellowstone.

[01:08]

No, Yosemite. What's it called, the face? El Capitan. El Colonel. No, El Capitan. Yeah, so I'm trying to give us some handhold. Well, no, the skills to find the handholds in this, you know, this big mystery. All these things exist and we have no idea of Really. You know, as I said the other day, you can take the objects out of space, but if you try to take the space and time out of... It's not... What that tells us is we can't think there. So practice has something to do.

[02:11]

I mean, what is the Buddha? What is our practice? The Buddha represents all kinds of things, but in the context that I'm speaking now, the Buddha represents a knowing, a functioning in what can't be known. So like I've been speaking the last two or three times about this first construction site, that your senses are constructing. And it's just a fact that your senses are constructing the world that you experience as outside you. There is stuff outside you, but what it is in our experience is constructed by our senses.

[03:17]

Okay, that's simply a fact. Okay, so it's interesting to know that fact, but if you start to live that fact, and now I'm starting to talk about something, how do you live that fact? Well, first you get very, very familiar with the fact, and then you have to maybe create some kind of way of Imagining it so today my imaginary my imagination is the five senses or five little elves not quite selves yet, but they're little elves and Each elf one elf is the seeing elf and the seeing elf is out ahead of you everywhere you go the seeing elf is out constructing the visual world and The hearing elf is out, you know constructing a sound world and No, is it the same world, the sound?

[04:21]

Well, yeah, there's a lot of interrelationship, but, you know, the sound world is a little different than the hearing world. And as I said the other day, it brings forth a little different body, the hearing world, than the seeing world. And then you have an elf making everything that can be touched. And you have an elf making the flowers. smell and even bloom. And then you have an elf who lets us decide whether something is edible or not edible and actually not just discovers what is edible but also is part of discovering a taste of the world itself.

[05:26]

As we know, as I've said, how your mouth is dry or not dry or so forth reflects your mood and your feeling of the way you're in the world. We can notice these things with more detail Okay. So we have these five elves, not quite selves yet. They're making the world around you and in front of you and behind you while you're doing things. And it's a pretty, and the brain makes it a pretty complete picture. Seamlessly fit together. microscopes, telescopes tell us other things, and our ability to analyze the situation tells us other things, but it creates a pretty seamless world. What you want to know is it's a world, an exterior world, which is actually an interior world projected as an outside world.

[06:46]

That's kind of hard. You know, I'm going to walk up there to the bowing mat and stuff. I'm walking along this slate floor, four-million-year-old Vermont slate, I think. I'm walking on this slate floor, longer, older than any civilization, this slate floor. I'm walking along on it, and it's, yeah, but actually I'm walking along on an interiority and I can only, I know that, but my brain doesn't allow me to feel that. I'm walking along within an interiority that I'm establishing or that my sense or my five elves are establishing. Now it takes a while to get a feel for that.

[07:57]

I mean the brain is so convincingly telling you it's an outside and you function in it as an outside to get the feel of it as an interiority which is a fact. As an interiority So here I am again. I'm trying to show you something that can't be seen, because that's not the way our seeing works. But we can know it. Now, wisdom is knowing. Wisdom is such a thorough examination of the sensorial world with the five elves, that you begin to recognize and you begin to experience at some point that you're actually within an interiority.

[09:06]

And what happens when you recognize you're within an interiority that's projected as an exteriority? You begin to feel it starts letting you, because each of you, two, four, six, eight, are also in your own projected interiority. And that means the connection between us isn't simply where each of you is sitting in an outside that's really outside. We're each sitting within an interiority, an interiority that we experience as an exteriority, but what's actually happening is a shared interiority. And the more you know that, and you know that in your body and how you're functioning, Yeah, yeah, something, some kind of, you know, it's almost a flavor, a fragrance, a fragrance of this shared interiority.

[10:17]

And all I can tell you, it's there. It's a fact. And whether you're going to use the yogic skills one develops by... working, experiencing each sense, bringing the senses together, feeling how you bring them together, and then how the keyboard of the world is playing on your senses. And how, again, it is an innerness. You begin to develop really explore the five senses with the help of the five elves, you begin to feel an innerness. It makes the world safe somehow. It makes the world familiar.

[11:17]

Because it is familiar. You're making it. This is the construction zone. You've just made, you've constructed something you can't see. You've constructed an innerness which you can't see from the senses which are showing you an outerness. Oh dear, maybe we better stop practicing Buddhism because it's just too confusing. What I'm speaking about are facts, and these facts are what realis- what realisational practice is rooted in. It's not just the Buddha is a good guy, or a good gal, or a gender-free potentiality, I mean nowadays. What the Buddha represents is somehow actually being in the world as it actually exists, as close as we can come to it. So now the second construction site was consciousness, or the brain, or the mind.

[12:33]

So now that we've got the five elves working for us, let's look at how the heck are we going to, Notice, locate the construction site of the mind, of consciousness. This larger field that integrates the five elves, the work of the five elves, and has enough hints that something else is going on. Something, yeah, not else, something in addition to what we can usually notice. Hmm. Yeah. So let's start with naming. If there's any construction that the mind is giving us, consciousness is generating, it's naming.

[13:42]

And the named world Language establishes a named world. And then that named world becomes a story, it becomes mythology, it becomes Amaterasu, the female goddess of a sort that created Japan and so forth. Or our religions. So, but first of all, until you start pointing out things, hey, look at that, look at this, before you start, before you have the story, you have to start pointing out things. And then you say, hey, over there, there's, you know, Brian. And over there, there's a bell and a tiger, maybe, and some kind of either birds or something.

[14:50]

suggesting there's some sort of danger for an animal. So we begin to signal each other. And pretty soon this becomes, once we have the skills, we tie all these names together into myth and story. context and identity and so forth. But let's, the basic construction, the basic unit of construction is not two by fours or nails. It's, yeah, naming. So let's start with naming. Let's take the, almost as much as possible, take the stories and sentences and we just have, you know, as the Lankavatara Sutra, there's the syllable body, the phrase body, the name body, or the syllable body, the name body, the phrase body.

[15:51]

This is the Lankavatara Sutra, you know. This is the sutra that is most associated with Zen practice, supposedly brought to China by Bodhidharma, supposedly. It's worth studying, and D.T. Suzuki's translation is quite good, and I think Red Pine has translated it, too. I haven't studied his translation. Yeah, he's talking about naming, but he says, when you're naming, hear the syllables. Syllables. Syllables. Don't just hear it put together as the word syllable. Hear syllable. And once you start hearing syllable, you kind of get good at the lowest form of humor, punning.

[16:56]

So you begin to puncture language with punning. When you start listening to syllables, you start hearing language. Like that wonderful young woman, 22, who read with real power her poem at the inauguration of Biden, you could tell she was hearing the syllables in the language because the syllables were leading to the next phrase. Even as the next phrase said something different, the syllables were flowing from one sentence to the next, tying things together where the words were quite, the names were quite independent. But underneath, language was speaking through the syllables. So language starts to speak to you when you feel the syllable body as well as the word body.

[18:00]

And then there's words linked together as phrases, and the phrases start functioning like words. They're units that aren't the same as the words that put them together. As I said the other day, the early bird catches the worm is a phrase that's been around a long time, but it doesn't have much to do with birds even. Or early. Yeah. So now I'm trying to introduce us to the construction site we're calling consciousness or mind, and looking at what the materials are which mind uses to create our world, and its sounds. First of all, sounds.

[19:08]

Language is rooted in sounds, and those sounds have presence in language independent of how their words, independent of how their phrases. So if you really are a person, the Lankavatara Sutra says, If you're practicing Zen, you should be in the syllable. You're not just hearing the syllables. You're hearing the body. You're feeling the body which hears the syllables. David Schneider, an old friend of mine and a student, years ago in San Francisco Zen Center, and now more or less, I guess, the head of the Shambhala European Center, just sent me the syllable.

[20:20]

He's a calligrapher. And in fact, underneath the Arhats is the entire Diamond Sutra, because the Diamond Sutra is a kind of relic of the Buddha. I mean, the Buddha never said the Diamond Sutra, but it was constructed within the flow of his teachings. And David Schneider studied at Reed College with, I can't think of his name right now, who taught Gary Schneider calligraphy. What? Yeah, Lloyd Reynolds, who taught Philip Whelan, who taught Gary Schneider, and who taught David Schneider. David Schneider and Gary Schneider. And so he calligraphed the entire Diamond Sutra.

[21:26]

And then it's in that box underneath. Most of you didn't even know that probably. It's in that box under the Arhats, the 18 Arhats. And on the altar in San Francisco Zen Center, Sukershi had a accordion-like folded together Prajnaparamita Sutra, because the Sutra is also a Buddha. So you put it on the altar along with the Buddha. So we have it there under the Arhats, the 18 Arhats, 16 in Japan. It really started out as two and it became 18 and then Japan kept an earlier version, 16. And I've always liked the Arhats. They're funny guys like most of the people I know who practice. Well, not everyone, but many. And we have the same by some magical serve. You know, they packed it so poorly

[22:30]

that when it arrived, the 18 R hearts, which were made all of bone, not of ivory, but of bone, they were all broken to pieces. I mean, many, hundreds of pieces. 18 R hearts became hundreds of pieces. And so I complained. I said, you told me you were going to pack this very well. So they said, oh, by chance, we have another one. They found one because they wanted me to pay for this one. So I I said, okay, if you can find another one. I was amazed. I saw it in a shop in New York. Near, right sort of behind my best friend's house in New York. Earl's house. On the west side. And so they sent it to me. And then I paid them. But then somebody just, I guess in Europe, repaired them. He just said, I'll repair them.

[23:32]

I don't know if this is, I forget whether this is the repaired one or the one in Europe is the repaired one. Anyway, somebody repaired them and they're identical, basically. The statues are in all different places on the other one. But under the 18 Arhats, representing ordinary, more ordinary folks even than Bodhisattvas, So somewhere in between us and there's the Arhats, and then the Arhats, and there's the Bodhisattvas, and then there's the Buddha and Buddhas. That was one of the first things that, you know, struck me, how there are lots of Buddhas. You know, there's only one God in some religions, but there are a lot of Buddhas. So there's a lot of us too. Don't forget that. Yeah, so there on our altar, across from the Cambodian Shakyamuni Buddha, with his right hand touching the earth instead of his left hand, attesting, hey, everything is speaking for us.

[24:55]

So the 18-hour heart, sir. Shakyamuni, 18 hours, underneath the 18 hours is the teaching which can produce, that's how it's understood, Buddhas and realization and awakening. The Diamond Sutra is probably more famous than any other sutra for creating the conditions for realization. And it's sitting there in that box. And David Schneider, so he sent me a calligraphed things, the kind of gold printed on I'm sure he made it on black paper and it's quite beautiful and he just sent it to me it just arrived in the mail I guess it arrived in Europe and then you brought it from Europe and so probably it was sent to me for New Year's or something but it's this name for Vajrapani

[26:02]

in Tibetan, a protector. And it's also has a Chinese name, and it has a Japanese name. In Japanese, it's a protector of the temples, protector of the practice centers. And it's pronounced sah, S-A-H, sah. And Mel Weitzman just died recently. a few weeks ago, who was one of Sukershi's disciples and head of the Berkeley Zendo, and known as Mel Weitzman, Sojum, I think, Roshi. I knew him very well and for a long time, and so did Paul Rosenblum. And Paul wrote me a little notice and said, Mel just died.

[27:05]

And then he wrote, Sav, S-A-H. No reference to Vajrapani, but the same sound. Sav. Mel's died. Mel died. And Mel was three, four years older than me. I don't remember that. A bit older than me. So we're naming. Now what happens here? So I'm looking at this construction site, looking at the materials with which the brain and the consciousness establish a world as exterior to us and a world in which we can function and grow food and eat and build buildings that keep the rain off us and so forth. Yeah.

[28:08]

And the Lankavatara Sutra says, hear the words themselves as construction sites. Syllables, words, phrases, sentences. Because you're, in a way, I can't resist, you're sentenced. Sentences sentence you to your culture. And you begin to take the sentences apart and you, There's a certain freedom when there's just phrases. And we can begin to use the phrases and one of the main differences between Rinzai and Soto-shu is Soto-shu seems to emphasize the skill sitting which is beyond ordinary stillness. And Rinzai-shu Oh, I'm running out of time and I've barely started.

[29:12]

And Rinzai Xu emphasizes the critical phrase. Wados. And we're using the critical phrases too. Just now is enough is a critical phrase. The early birds got better things to do. Well, it could be a critical phrase, maybe. Just this critical phrase. You know, if I say sentences, they're too long. They tie you into the culture. They tie you into the story. It's hard to, be hard to use a sentence, but a phrase you can use, or a word you can use, like this or thus. So here what I'm suggesting for this construction site of mind consciousness is let's take the main unit of construction, the word, and let's start with naming.

[30:30]

And that's a very basic early Buddhist practice, naming. Microphone. Teaching staff. Okay, so. A version of what his robe saw. A version of his robe sewn together pieces of cloth. The tile floor. Naming. Tile. Platform. Russell. Hi, Russell. If I start naming, what happens? I'm using the basic construct of language, the basic construct with which all of our cultures are put together, and naming begins to eliminate discursive thought.

[31:38]

Alter. candle, incense. If I just start naming, [...] out, turning them into sentences, the brain sort of says, what are you doing to me? I want to make sentences. No, no, no, no, no, just name. So sentences begin to disintegrate. Discursive thought begins to kind of, I've got no place to go. He's just naming things. What's wrong with this guy? So maybe I should leave you there because we've run out of time. I've already gone over. I've gone over and I've overgone. Not beyond yet. So we'll start next time with what happens when you start using naming as a critical phrase.

[32:48]

Right now we're using naming to take sentences out of their cultural prism to begin to take discursive thought away from how we are in the world. So I'm going to suggest that those of you who aren't here but are here through this lovely camera, camera, light, Noguchi lamps, or just lamps, mulberry paper, columns, teaching staff, So practice naming for the next couple of days or three days or until the next tesha. And then let's see what happens when we use naming in the way of Rinzai and Soto creating critical paths.

[33:58]

These are hand holes to find your way into what can't be named or grasped.

[34:05]

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