Is that an important point in that Dogen represents this lineage? We're here practicing in this lineage. What is essential about him as a person, as a historical figure? What can we take from Dogen the person that is useful? Or should we just in that same vein, how can we make use of the teachings that he presents while granting him the freedom to be however he wants? Okay. Then we took up your question, can fixed sitting be a form of investigation? Okay. I think we wanted all to say, yes, of course, otherwise what are we doing? Then we stepped back and admitted that we didn't know what fixed sitting was.

[01:12]

It's a good start. But we were pretty confident that going into the zendo and sitting down as we each of us are doing it every day is certainly an investigation because we are learning we are seeing we are discovering we are coming to know ourselves the self looking into the self or whatever it may be so the sitting that we are doing is a form of investigation of a searching inquiry into the facts. What fixed sitting may be, we don't know. So we looked at the words. Fixed, a sense of unmoving, stable. I think one sense of the word that we liked was order.

[02:19]

Sitting down, taking your place, Body, breath, physicality. There is a sense of stability or fixedness in simply doing that. And in that sense, sitting or taking your place brings up Dogen's phrase, the place discovering or coming to the place or the place where practice occurs. at the inevitable polarities and tension centuries old and today between what is static, what is dynamic, what is passive, what is active, how, what is effort, looking at what we're doing as process rather than delivering ourselves into a place of

[03:24]

And the strange sense of fixed sitting investigating you, which has a different feeling. So I think we are disbanded at that point. And please, anybody in the group, if there's nothing else to add, please do. Okay, next. Mary has the question. Okay. Well, we firmly and immediately concluded that fixing is a form of investigation. But then we had to stop and consider what is investigation and

[04:31]

Someone suggested that the result of an investigation may be about opening rather than about being something conclusive, which is good because mostly we ended up with questions, not conclusions. can just looking the investigation. And if to the extent that one of the tools of the investigation is analysis and the disassembly of things, if We found a kind of a contradiction in that investigation leads to insight into emptiness and non-fixedness. But we were talking about fixed sitting.

[05:44]

We also asked, what is it about sitting exactly itself? And what about sitting in a rocking chair? And what is it about the posture? And that led us to the earlier question of the afternoon about why do we sit together? and also the question that Roshi offered with it about why doesn't Zen have guided meditation and wouldn't it be easier if we were given tasks to do. But then we talked about the work that we do when we're just looking and what work is that and how is that investigation. we talked about the line of the practice of a Buddha that does not seek to make a Buddha.

[07:01]

And in that context, then, what are we doing when we're either just looking or analyzing? And if it doesn't tie together, it's because we didn't very well tie it together. We just raised questions. And I'd be happy if anybody else wanted to say something. I remember a couple of comments that one form that the question took was, can fix sitting be a radical form of investigation and so we cut off the word radical and that was actually quite fruitful I thought and led us to the idea of root investigation investigation what it is to be alive and the other thing about the

[08:06]

The point of the practice of the Buddha, which is not making the Buddha, was that there's a kind of inherent trust or confidence that we have in the process of seeing. And that precedes analysis or just to bear attention or whatever particular. a thing might arise instead. Wayne will try to summarize what we discussed here. OK. Well, starting off with your question that you asked us to look at. But right away, the question was raised about another of your closing comments, and that was that the line that goes, skin, flesh, bones, and marrow thinking, skin, flesh, bones, and marrow not thinking, as not being metaphorical statement.

[09:25]

So, since it's not to be taken as metaphor, then the question was, well, what in the world could this actually mean if it isn't the metaphor? So we discussed this actually at some length and ranged through the possibility of both thinking and not thinking having a corporeal reality of some sort that is embedded in your physical body while meditating. And then some of us were more philosophical and tried to turn it into what I fancy as a Yogacara kind of interpretation, where thinking and not thinking are posited as extremes of a particular continuity. Another person suggested that thinking and not thinking might be analogues of meditative techniques.

[10:29]

And Dogen is talking about old meditative techniques and his newer approach. And I don't know whether we ever did resolve this issue completely. As far as investigation, Again, we have this counterpoint between the notion of verification and the notion of investigation. I think we were all sort of trapped in the circularity of these two notions. But again, this is very amenable to what I fancy as a Yogyacharya analysis because this becomes sort of the nadir or the two points in the circular path. What am I leaving out there?

[11:33]

Well, I think we did spend some time investigating, investigating, and considering rhetorical possibility, is it possible not to investigate by doing fixed sitting? And that led into the reference to perhaps this, what we refer to the older style, older reference of meditation of not thinking, being, perhaps this deionic state of no thought seems to be to cutting off from the world. Anyway, we just re-explored and meandered through, raising many questions, looking at the words, many of the words in the particular text. We also tried to, or at least introduced the idea of getting a more thorough understanding

[12:37]

more information out there about the phrase dot-su-dot-su-chi, the translated as fixed seating, and Katrin is, I think, willing to give us a more etymological rendering of that, and Dan says that he's thought about this a lot too, so I'm hoping that maybe tomorrow we'll be able to... Yeah, we could call up Kaz too or something like that and ask him to tell us what the kanji mean in... I'd really like to have more information. We've got Simple Nelson's definition of the kanji, but I'm sure there's much broader than that. When I was in your room, you were also talking about that things could be, everything could be conceptualized or something like that. Well, this is my hobby horse. You know, every time somebody gets close to anything faint and mystical, I want to deconstruct that whole thing and drag people kicking and screaming away fast. Just hint at doing that.

[13:39]

You know, the path is an artifact. It's a human artifact. And only after exhaustive investigation am I going to concede that any part of it is beyond... communication and conceptualization. So, that's basically what that was about. Oh, okay. Somewhere I hear the sound of kicking and screaming. Yeah. Does this bring up... does that bring up anything you'd like to discuss, hearing the other group's comments? I'd like to know the expanded definition that you found in Nelson. I haven't found it. I only promised to check the Nelson and see what Nelson has to offer. Sorry. Yeah, I'd like to know from each group who knew what textual was, what it is.

[14:42]

We just assumed it was Zazen. We pretty much said, okay, it's Zazen, where do we go from here? We didn't really investigate it too deeply. That's right, we didn't. As I recall, from my sense of the Chinese character, the word gozu, and it's just repeated twice, is made up of three brushstrokes, or three strokes. Two of them go in this manner, and a horizontal line across the top. And part of the etymology of that is a tabletop or flattop mountain. And so the implications of it is that it is, of course, mountain-like. And another associative word is towering. And so the fact that it's repeated, again, there's a whole sense in Chinese and Japanese when they take a character and repeat it for emphasis, my sense of it is just this intensification of this mountain-like immovable with an associative sense of towering.

[15:53]

And that's quite astounding. I wish we had a few months. Well, we have our lifetimes. What I like going by, walking past the rooms and overhearing, underhearing, and sitting in your groups for a brief time, is that I liked hearing your observations and your thoughts, and it was clear to me most of you would never have had those thoughts if you didn't think, if you didn't sit. In other words, those were thoughts that didn't arise from thinking. Those were thoughts that arose from sitting. Most of them were thoughts that arose from sitting. This is a form of investigation from sitting fixedly.

[17:03]

In other words, it's like Dogen said, Dogen said, Sukhya Rishi said, and Dogen said, I believe, that joyful mind is the volitional mind of satsang mind. Do you follow that? Joyful mind is the volitional mind of satsang mind. Zazen mind, which we can call, let's call for now, contentless. But when you express that contentless mind, it comes out as joy. And what's the volitional dimension? You have a choice about it. It's volitional in that through zazen mind there's a the rising, as we know, of non-referential joy, gratitude, and so forth. So that if you rest in Zen mind, let's call it that, then when you express yourself, if you express yourself, if emotions come up, those emotions come up as kindness or compassion.

[18:25]

If you are just expressing yourself, it tends to come out as joy. I like one of the things that Grisha said, is one of the reasons we practice is so we enjoy our old age. Meaning a lot of the fruits don't appear until you're old. Some of us really appreciate it. More and more. I think you said earlier something about somebody said, well, what if I have to practice for 30 years and find out it's not Christ? Oh, no, no. You still practice 30 years. That's a wonderful way to waste your life. Yeah. Time well wasted. Roshi, I couldn't help it. It's a wonderful expression. But the volitional part between the zazen mind and the expression of jivanate It makes me think of that, once again, because I got so caught up with that second nature and whether or not original nature was the same.

[19:38]

See, I got caught way back there. But if greed, anger, and hatred are our primary determinants that we can let go of, Then the new factors that we can use to build on would be these positive emotions that the volitional aspect could use to create this second nature. Am I making sense? Yes. And I thought how exciting that maybe original nature is not something that's uncovered, but is something that's created. So, anyway, that's my thought. I think that's right, definitely. If we take the fact that there's no... If we take seriously that there's no inherent nature or permanent nature, then all our natures are generated.

[20:41]

They're generated from certain seeds or tendencies. But for instance, the pure nature of a baby, if we imagine such a thing, it's not the same as the pure nature of an adult or a Buddha or something. I don't know if you hear that responding to what you said. I actually... What can I say? I don't think this is so hard to understand. The problem is that we all are the proud possessors of paradigmatic thinking, or usually we are. In other words, we think within paradigms, and something that falls out of the paradigm we have a very hard time imagining.

[21:47]

What's the working definition of paradigm? Well, for example, if you simply... The way you look at the world doesn't allow there to be ghosts. You won't see them. You won't see them. Because your paradigm is so constructed that ghosts are not possible. Or UFOs or, you know, all kinds of things. And I think that what happens while we're practicing, and what right fuse means, or I say coming to an accurately assuming consciousness, is that there's a slow nudging, notching out of our paradigm. We keep widening our paradigm, making it more inclusive of things we couldn't have imagined at one time, and eventually freeing ourselves from our paradigm.

[22:50]

But our paradigm is also a form of continuity, it's a form of security, because it keeps whatever we see reporting back to us and reinforcing our paradigm. So it's quite difficult to, even if you're not going to see UFOs or ghosts, I don't care, this is just too obvious an example, but to be free of paradigmatic thinking is to be free of a kind of thought shield. And no matter whether anything unusual, we're not talking about something unusual, but just it's a different kind of being in the world. Now, I think that Indian people, from India, Tibetan people, and Westerners, all have fairly similar problems with Chinese derived Zen. And Dogen, as we've already pointed out, was a very intelligent person.

[24:06]

Why didn't he choose? And I'm bringing up these questions because much of our own investigation through sitting fixedly and through analysis is fueled by the questions we ask. The better the questions we ask, the more deep our practice will be. So just the habit of asking questions is useful of yourself. So we can ask. You ask not just what something is, but what is left out. Why was it left out? So, as I said, Dogen was a smart person.

[25:10]

Why didn't he do what... Why didn't he work out a systematized method of practice like the Tibetans have? And it's not that he was far from Tibet, because Kogodashi was a contemporary of Padmasambhava, And the same teachings were coming into Japan at the same time as they were going into Tibet. So all the stuff is available to Dogen. Why did he decide not to do it? Yes? You mentioned the system of Tibetan tradition. Would that be a difference between guided and non-guided? Yes, that's one of the differences, yes. Right. Yes. In this vein, is not the Tendai tradition much closer to the Tibetan, in the sense that they have... Yes, yes. It overlaps. Dogen, if I understand quickly, was his early training was in that tradition, and he left.

[26:14]

That's right. He's originally a Tendai practitioner. There's quite an interlacing of Tendai practitioners... And also I think an important factor was this sense of natural wisdom. There was a... The term Zenji, like Dogen Zenji, also means somebody who almost was kind of like a village shaman. He was often not educated, didn't know the Chinese characters. And Zen people in those days, Buddhist people in those days, were expected to be able to not only read the sutras in Chinese, but they were expected to be able to compose poems in Chinese, write in Chinese, think in Chinese. That's what most of us can do. So it was quite a skill. These folks had expensive educations, which were only available to people who had resources and leisure and so forth. Most of these guys who were interested in meditation and practice couldn't afford a trip to China.

[27:20]

And you can look at the difference between those who went to China and those who stayed in Japan. And one of the interesting... I haven't looked at this thoroughly enough to really speak too clearly about it, but one of the interesting differences is the ones who went to China were able to establish lineages. And the ones who stayed in Japan didn't seem to be able to. And so what they seem to have learned in China is things like temple architecture, procedures, how you establish a lineage, not just an understanding. And that you can't pick up through natural wisdom. That they had to get in China. Am I making sense? And Dogen, one of the things Dogen did do is accept into his own lineage this natural wisdom. But he was real tough on this one guy, I can't remember his name, who stuck to the Daruma views.

[28:21]

And Dogen not only expelled him, he cut away the Tan where the guy sat. It was chocolate. It was cranky. It was cranky. It came, I saw it. Roshi, is it appropriate to give a little bit of a brief background on that dog? Oh, sure, go ahead. Okay, what I remember about it, in reference to what Roshi said a little bit earlier, the teacher, who was a Japanese man, his name was Dainichi Bononen. who somehow was a self-acclaimed Zen teacher, who didn't really have a teacher, so he didn't receive this, what Doga refers to as the face-to-face transmission. And so he was, you know, a very smart, brilliant guy, but he set himself up as a teacher, and he had many followers.

[29:25]

And at some point when he saw that this lineage, the authority of the lineage, correct me, having the formal sanction of the lineage, rather than going to China himself, he sent a disciple with a poem that he wrote to a certain Zen teacher in China, and the Zen teacher then acknowledged him. In other words, so there was, in his case, this non-face-to-face, this non-encountering event. But he seemed to be quite popular in Japan in Dogen's time. He might have died just before Dogen. I'm not sure about the overlapping, but anyway, so many of his disciples, Dainichi Bonomi's disciples, when he died, came to study with Dug. So this is part of the kind of the interesting and strange mix of the people who were drawn to Dug. Eijo and Gikai, they were all... So he kind of absorbed the Daruma shu, shu means school, into his Dungsan Sotoshu lineage.

[30:30]

And the Daruma Shu was a kind of, not exactly the natural wisdom folks, but it had some of that in it. But even the natural wisdom folks, let's call it something like that, they wouldn't have been doing what they're doing if Zen... And Buddhism wasn't in the air, in the way Freud is in the air here. I mean, you don't have to study Freud to be thinking like Freud. I mean, we all say things like, we have libido. That's an idea that Freud constructed. Do we have libido? Can you really say you have libido right here? And Freud, this is something Harold Bloom points out, Freud also almost had this death wish called destructo or something like that. And then if he proposed that, we'd all go around and say, well, I've got this destructo over here and libido. I mean, you can think about libido without studying Freud, right?

[31:35]

So likewise, Buddhism was in the air. So you can't say that it's really just natural wisdom, but it was an approach of, we could call it more Tathagatazin. And we can look, one of the questions we should ask ourselves is, what's the relationship between Tathagatazin and ancestral Zen in Dogen's way? Can you clarify what you mean by that? By the two terms? Yeah, well, especially the... Tathagata. [...] Tathagata Zen emphasizes... Tathagata means coming and going. And... Tathagata Garbha...

[32:37]

means the womb to conceit. All right, we call this a world, right? Which is a very, or a universe, and we call it a world, which is a very, it's not a neutral thing to say. It's a very determinative thing to say. Say that we call this a womb. Oh, I see you're walking around in the womb. You start to think differently. And Buddhism basically says this is a womb-embryo. There's an embryonic-womb relationship going on here all the time. That's a very different world when you think of it in a generative sense like that. Is that you following what I'm saying? So Tathagata... Tathagata... It's a... It's a little complicated. It takes a little time to say anything useful about a term like this.

[33:40]

Tathagata means basically coming and going. But coming and going is, as Randy said earlier, in a state of thusness. So sometimes we say it's called thus coming, thus going. But also what it points out is change is fundamentally a pulse of movement. And that's understood in practice as there's always an inward movement and an outward movement. And that's what Manjushri and Aflokiteshvara represent, outward movement and inward movement. So we could say that practice is when you have all of your restlessness, all of the natural movement that just happens because we're alive, becomes this pulse of an inward movement and an outward movement.

[34:48]

And the main conceptual pedagogical tool in the koans is this term granting way and grasping or gathering in way. So sometimes you're expressing the granting way, sometimes you're expressing the gathering-in way. Gathering-in is in toward emptiness. And granting is, oh yes, you're Buddha, you're Buddha. Sukhya should say, you're Buddha, you're Buddha. This is the granting way. The gathering-in is, no, you're not Buddha, you're not Buddha. So these are two ways we express ourselves. And, you know, if you're jogging or something and you don't want to be interrupted and somebody stops to ask you a question, you know, because you're concentrated, that's a kind of gathering in. In zazen we can gather in. Now, the idea of gathering in and thus coming and going and thusness is that this movement, implicit in this idea, is some kind of Chinese version of self-organizing.

[35:57]

activity or unorganizing activity. That this movement itself is a kind of intelligence. It's not just... It has a... There's always an implicit order-disorder relationship going on. Okay. So, Tathagata Zen emphasizes that... taking the correct posture or finding the correct mind, I'm using Dogen's term here, correct, that itself generates understanding and illumination. So if you just did meditation with very little contact with the teacher or the teaching, we would call that Tathagata Zen. The more you have contact with a teacher in a Sangha, we call that Lineage Zen or Ancestral Zen Something like that. It used to be called patriarchal then, but now we can't do that anymore, not because it's no longer politically correct, but because women are and will take such a central role, I think, in Buddhism in the present future.

[37:12]

Um... It's generally, all Zen is a combination of Tathagata Zen and Ancestor Zen. But different schools and different lineages have a different mix, a different approach, how much they emphasize one or the other, how they're brought together, etc. And it's thought, generally the view is, within Zen, is that Tathagata Zen itself can almost not be transmitted. And it's not deep enough, the understanding isn't deep enough to be able to teach. So that really to do transmissions then, it has to be face-to-face, Dogi Tathasis, on face-to-face transmission. So, it doesn't just happen from this own organizing process, but a larger own organizing process that includes other people and in specific one other person. Is that enough of an explanation? Can I leave something out?

[38:21]

Would Shakyamuni Buddha's artist would have been Tathagata? Yes, yes. What about... I mean, there was no lineage involved there. Well, that's why they created seven Buddhas before Buddha. I mean, really, it's a concoction just to establish this. But we don't know... What do we know about it? All we know is that he was an actual historical person. What kind of teachers he had. But certainly, I'm quite sure, in fact, that there was a teaching process going on with others. And how you put that together is, you know, somebody you meet on a tram can be your teacher. It depends on what happens in this wider sense of being. Yeah. So, I'm talking too much, I'm sorry.

[39:21]

So I think we're at this point of... What can I say? We're at this... This non-thinking, not thinking thing is... Central, as Carl points out, to all Dogen's teaching and description of the method of Zazen. Carl makes it a little more mysterious than I think it has to be. And... But let me try to... I don't know.

[41:01]

At this point, I don't know whether we should continue discussion or I should try to say a few things to try to make this non-sitting discussion a bit more precise, if I can. I brought up the idea of a thought shield. So maybe I could say, you know, if I do this, or you do this, as kids do, and then you tell a person to move a finger. So, move this. It's difficult to do. Why is it difficult to do? Because you're not relating to your body, you're relating to a mental image of the body. And the mental image of the body, if you just do this, if you do it once, it's not confusing.

[42:05]

But if you do it twice, so the right is now on the right, but looks reversed. It throws your mental image off. So implicit in Dogen's teaching and in the koan and in Chinese Zen is a good part of practice. One of the main reasons we're doing sashin is to free ourselves from the body, a mental body image or a body shield. Do you understand? Do you have the idea? Now my old saw, will come again. As I point out very often, that we have a view that Amy's over there and I'm here.

[43:16]

And that view is constantly reinforced or depends on a prior view that we're separated. So we can say that we have a view in us, we're already separated. I look at you, and before I say anything, we're separated. Okay. Are we separate? I mean, just to take some clumsy examples, the moon affects our reproductive cycles. I've never seen any electric cords or ropes from here to the moon. So some things, in some fundamental way, we're connected.

[44:20]

And there's just innumerable examples of that. I mean, Rupert Sheldrake's work with dogs, although it's a common experience, is outside of our paradigm. Do you know anything? No? Okay, for instance, he set up cameras. I used to watch it with Mike Murphy and Delcy's dog. But he set up cameras at somebody's house, and this woman leaves, and the dog is there. and the woman goes shopping with part of his crew. And the woman is shopping, she's in town, she does things, she's about 20 miles away, pretty far away, somewhere in England, I can't remember. And they're doing things, and the dog is sitting around the house with, I think she lives with her mother, father, this young woman, and the dog is around the house. And they have clocks set up by the cameras. And so at some point, the woman says, I've chopped enough and we've walked through the park.

[45:25]

Let's go home. At that moment, like that, the dog gets up and goes to the door. You may not believe this, it's outside our paradigm, but yet something like this happens. And then when they finally are within about five miles of the house, the dog is up at the thing wagging its tail. And I used to watch this when I've told somebody the story of Mike and Dulcy's dog. Mike and I used to sit and talk a lot in his living room when he lived in a different house. Mike and Dulcy are separated, but then the dog is dead. So, just to say that separation also exists. Okay, but Mike and I would sit there and, I can't remember the dog's name now, the dog would get up at some point and go over and sit by the door. And Mike would say, Delcy's at the Golden Gate Bridge.

[46:29]

And I saw that several times. And she'll be here in about 20 minutes. About 20 minutes later, the dog would stand up, and Mike would say, oh, she's down at the bottom of the stairs. There were about 70 or 80 stairs. You had to go down Mill Valley to this road way below and carry groceries. It was quite a job to carry groceries up. So we'd go out and help carry the groceries down. The dog's standing up. We'd go down and get them. So we're connected. I mean, whatever examples you want. And the strange thing is, if you put electrodes or some kind of measuring device on the arm and in the brain, the arm registers a movement that's about to happen before it moves and before the brain recognizes it. So is our body telling our mind that it's going to move? We think, oh, now I'm going to move my arm, but actually the body knows. So... And the more you practice, whether these examples are exactly right or not, I'm not trying to create science here, but more and more some kind of something like this you feel.

[47:46]

The more you let this occur, because you can't conceptualize it, but you let it occur. I like Dogen's, not Dogen, the phrase... I don't hear the teaching of insentient beings. Although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. And that, when you don't hinder it, is called, technically in Zen, great function. And this is a particularly Chinese Buddhist idea. That there's a functioning that occurs that's beyond conceptualization, but in fact we're part of. And you can be more part of it or less part of it. So, okay, so then there's a koan, I think it's 21, which deals with the senses and that funny little story about the eyes, ears, nose. Eyebrows. Eyebrows. There's a koan where the mouth... Yeah, in the Shoya Roku, yeah.

[48:48]

I have a question to that. Is this great functioning beyond our conceptualization because it's outside of our paradigm? No. It's simply beyond... It's outside of conceptualization. It's outside of the way the mind works. It's not outside the mind, it's outside the way the mind works. It depends what we mean. We can conceive of great function. Functioning of the mind can be a gate to great functioning. Am I making sense? Now this is very different than Tibetan. Tibetans want to control or affect or make things happen. Dogen saying, for instance, in the Genjo Koan, and one of the reasons Dan asked why am I bringing these other things up, other aspects of Dogen, and we've got quite a lot to do here, because I think we should do this seminar not just to understand this, but to understand our own practice, and from that point of view we need to understand...

[50:13]

Dogen as a whole. And I think if we're going to talk about sitting fixedly and seated Buddha, we have to look at Dogen's definition of the true human body. How does the true human body sit fixedly? The true human body, as I defined it last night, liked Dogen's statement. So what body is sitting fixedly? This is the question. If you think this body is sitting fixedly, you don't understand what Dogen means. Now, if I look at you, I see you, of course, and I don't see connectedness, I only see separation.

[51:17]

Perhaps if I could shut down my seeing, we do dim the lights and things like that for a reason, if I could shut down my seeing so I did de-emphasize the our mentation, which is formed through sensory information that primarily is understood through, let's use the word paradigm again, a visual paradigm. Did you follow that? In other words, our visual sense dominates how we understand all the senses. If perhaps you were a cat or a dog and you could smell everything, smell into things, you might begin to feel a different world. Now, we can ask ourselves the question, dogs smell extremely.

[52:24]

Dogs smell not only the outside of things, they smell the inside of things. Otherwise they wouldn't be used by the customs officers when you come through. So imagine if you could smell, as we do, but we don't know how to notice it so much, smell into other people's moods, emotions, thinking processes. I, in fact, think we do. We just don't have the training to notice it. But we can ask ourselves, does a dog smell three-dimensionally? For four-dimensional, we see three-dimensionally. With two eyes, we see things three-dimensionally. Do bats hear? Obviously, bats hear three-dimensionally as do dolphins and things. Otherwise, they couldn't function around and out. So they hear multi-dimensionally or three-dimensionally or four-dimensionally. So this is the reason why in that colon it says, yeah, in the eyes it's called seeing, in the ears it's called hearing.

[53:31]

What is it called in the eyebrows? What is it called in the eyebrows is the way of asking this question. What is it called in the senses which don't function in this usual conceptual way that hearing and seeing do? Now, dolphins, there's a kind of dolphin, I thought something about this a while ago, called spinner dolphins. Do you know what spinner dolphins are? They spin when they come out. They just don't leap. They spin, and it seems to be a kind of athletic. They seem to be having fun. Of course, you know, my belief is that animals are unlike us in the bliss body most of the time. Mm-hmm. If it weren't the case, who'd want to be an animal?

[54:33]

This is what makes being an animal possible. A non-human animal. Because being alive, just being alive, and what you find through... Yes, Janie, I'm sorry. Just being alive is a form of bliss. I mean, that's the teaching of Buddhism, that just being alive is a form of bliss. Though we don't. It's hard to come to that. Sometimes we call that less suffering. Yeah, often we do. And emotions, as I always say, emotions, at the root of all emotions is caring. Is caring. I mean, you don't get angry unless you care. So practice is to bring your emotions back to the root and then be able to know a thinking that is emotions rather than thought processes where the emotions aren't in the service of self.

[55:35]

As soon as emotions are in the service of self, you have greed, hate, delusion, etc. So the spinner dolphins, one of the things that's interesting is they do, is the males have what looks like a kind of football game, and they all gather in a kind of drill formation as a group, and they swim very precisely, like these airplanes, acrobatic airplanes, they swim very precisely, all exactly together. And then suddenly they break into two groups and attack each other and try to break up the other's formation. And the team that wins is the one who breaks up the other formation. They keep trying to stay together. And you can watch this. I saw a film of it. And they surmise that I think it's just a sport.

[56:39]

But they surmise it's a way to protect themselves from sharks. Because sharks can kill dolphins quite easily, but dolphins as a group, and they're clearly more intelligent than sharks, you know. So they use their brains to develop what we could call a sangha body. And when they can work together, they can drive sharks away. So this game may also have a purpose of having the skill to work as a group and drive one or more sharks away. Anyway, what the dolphins do, I don't know how the hell we know these things, but what the dolphins seem to do, what they said is, they particularly like volcanic islands to go in very shallow water where the sand is clear, except where humans are polluting it, because then they can see the approach of a predator. Because they turn off their oral system.

[57:43]

And what we do is we turn off our visual system when we do Zazen. They are mainly oral, A-U-R-A-L, beings. And so it's very relaxing for them to just rest in their visual system. And they turn off their oral system. And when they turn off their oral system, it's a kind of sleep. And they spend four or five hours a day in this kind of very tight formation where they develop a kind of entrainment. You know the word entrainment? With each other. And they rest, but they have to have... Visually, most of their brain... Again, I don't know how they know this, but they say most of their brain is turned off and only the visual part of their brain is functioning to watch the predators reflected as shadows on the white sand. Interesting. It makes sense to me. I don't know if it's true or not. So I think what we could call... We could call what we do here a Buddha body learning center.

[58:51]

Or we could say that we are practicing turning off our visual processes to begin to sense the world as connectedness, which is also what compassion means. But I actually think we're, if you try to understand Dogen from our paradigm, you can't understand. You have to understand Dogen from a radical, from imagining a radically different way of being, a second nature or other nature. And I don't think that we can say truly that it's original or something quintessentially human, but rather we have a Buddhist canon, which we're being shot out of, we have a Buddhist canon which says this is one of the ways of being, and it's not a way of being that's Asian or American or anything.

[59:59]

It's a group of people created this way of being. And we're participating in it and we're also creating it. And it's not something you can't move to Thailand or something and be a Buddhist. It's a created form of being even in Thailand or China or Japan as well. It's very interesting to me to see, for instance, Sukhiroshi, Momonroshi, Thich Nhat Hanh, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, etc. They are so much more alike each other than they're like other Japanese, other Vietnamese, or other Tibetans. Does that make sense? I feel I'm in the presence of a very similar person. So our senses, dominated by three-dimensional conceptuality, cannot see connectedness.

[61:08]

We know connectedness is there, here, but we can't see it. So do we ignore it, or do we discover a way to participate in it and act in it even though we can't conceptualize it? That's really the challenge of Chinese Zen, I would say. Yes? Roshi, there's those pictures that are simultaneously positive and negative, oftentimes in black and white, that if you look at them one way, we tend to fix on it and that's all we see. And it takes some kind of just simple visual trick shift and then you can see the other. Is that a crude paradigm for what you're talking about? In other words, to be able to comprehend them both simultaneously or it will back and forth? Yeah. And that's partly what we're trying to do here. And sometimes we can say, well, it's Western thinking versus we're shifting into Asian thinking, but we're really not shifting into Asian thinking, we're shifting into a yogic thinking, which happens to have been developed primarily in various parts of Asia, which are quite different from each other.

[62:18]

but they share this yogic. And I think there are many lineages, if you study, I've said this before, if you study your own lineage, what brought you to Zen, it's not just a Buddhist lineage. It's various, as I say, popular songs, poets, Western philosophers, William James. If you read William James, Heidegger, Foucault, Schopenhauer, I see Jack Kerouac, Rambo, you see a lineage which has been broken because they don't have yogic provisions, resources to continue. So there's a lot in the West which has come up to the point of wanting yogic teachings to be continued. And I think we're the continuation. And I think we're as much, if not more, operating out of a Western lineage than out of an Asian lineage.

[63:21]

I have a question. Yes. I must be misunderstanding you because from what I'm getting is that what you're saying is that Buddhism is simply just a paradigm shift. I mean, the practice of Buddhism is really just changing your paradigm. That's a big part of it, yes. And that's what sudden enlightenment means. for some reason it seems to deflate the idea of it being a spiritual tradition maybe I'm just romanticizing what spiritual tradition is but if it's simply just a paradigm shift then I don't really see the spirituality it's a maturing of a human being from a new paradigm within a new paradigm. I mean, the Eightfold Path starts with right views. This view of already separated is there before thought occurs.

[64:24]

And it's there before perception occurs. And if already separated is there, all your perceptions will reinforce separation. Because that view is there prior to your thinking. If that view is there, you can mature all kinds of spirit traditions, but it won't be the same as Buddhism. So the first task in a way of Buddhism and what koans are trying to do is trying to intercede in your paradigmatic thinking so that you have a paradigm shift. This is oversimplifying it, but it's useful to think of it this way. Paradigm shift, which then lets you mature as a spiritual life, another kind of being based on another Okay, yes? So you mentioned the day it falls apart, and... Before we see something... How did you phrase that?

[65:27]

I forgot how you phrased it. Before thought arises, before perception arises, before conception and perception arise, your views condition both. Now, what do you think? Is that the way we're born, or is that an educated thing? I wrote it up before, it's just, you know, like, in kids' education, you know, when you deal with kids, should you expose kids really quick, soon, to Buddhism, then, to... Are we covered? Is this with layers? Or is this just... Is this really just human nature, and we should develop this second nature to, you know... No, no, I understand. First of all, this kind of thinking you should do in practice. Exactly what you're thinking about, you should think about.

[66:28]

And you shouldn't have me answer it. It's okay if I answer it or respond, but you should think about it because you have to resolve this for yourself. But I'll say from a Buddhist point of view, in my own experience, that there's no human nature, really. It's all human nurture. And something gets started, and once it gets started, it's... If two people do it or a million people do it, it's the same thing. Except if a million people do it, it's so much more reinforced. And you say, oh, that's the way human beings are. So I think there's probably extraordinary possibilities of where we can be. We only know a few. And Buddhism is one of them, but Asian approach is one of them. Western approach is another. Certain Eskimos, Laplanders have another approach.

[67:29]

And I think you can start with children and and introduce them to Buddhist thinking. If you think in a Buddhist way, it will influence your child. Certainly I think it's influenced my two children, though I never tried to teach them Buddhism. Yes? We'll be competing hands. Okay. Okay, I have to address a couple of things. When you just said that there's no human nature, but there's human nurture, that moments ago you spoke of the sort of core of all emotions being caring. Is that core then the result of human nurture alone, or is that something that's at a deeper level? Because certainly the world is... fraught with uncaring. And so, you know what I mean, that can't be merely the result of millions of people, you know what I mean, developing a core of caring as the root of all of their emotions, although parenting could have something to do with that.

[68:35]

And I think echoing what Robert was saying, I see how Buddhism as a path requires a paradigm shift when you're actually practicing methodology or addressing philosophy or something like that, but if it's, um, merely another way of being, um, and also pulling in when you said that you thought, you know, when she, when Fran asked, was, could, was original nature something that was possible to be created? And you said, because there's no permanent nature, um, Yes, there's not this thing, this permanent, looming thing that's waiting in its own innate form. But that seems to echo so much, or to disagree with so much Buddhist teaching about that the thusness can't be conceptualized, it can't be created, it's unborn. There's all these different ways of trying to suggest the

[69:39]

the vast ineffability of it-ness, all these different ways that we have of, you know, naming the thing that can't be named. And I have to have some sense that that's more like what it really is, because then otherwise... Buddhism is no better than anything else, or nothing else, if it's not accessing something beyond itself. And to me that's the great call of Buddhism, is that it has within itself the ability to transcend itself. Cross the river, get rid of the boat. And that's the key for me. But I haven't heard that quite so much in the way the conversation has been flying. Well, I guess, let me say, I'm speaking about these things because I feel a little guilty of not proceeding with the discussion because it's more interesting for me to be engaged in a discussion than it is because I know what I'm saying.

[71:00]

This is not so interesting to me. But I also want our own practice to be nurtured, and I want our own practice to proceed in this short time we have. So I'm trying to bring at least some views from my experience into the discussion at this point. I think this corner's concern is interesting. Something about sitting in this corner, I think. We're one group of Spare Dolls. Formation hasn't been broken up yet, as you say.

[72:05]

And with what you wanted to say fit in, should we hear that? I have one last quick question. If what you say is true, why don't we all just follow the Rinzai lineage? I mean, that's the quickest, supposedly the quickest way to paradigm shift of all the lineages. Why are we bothering with this slow, sitting Shikantaza? Slow? Not so slow. Is it talent? Well, let's just say it's a proportionate mix. And there are lineages within Rinzai which are much more like Sōtō and vice versa. I think what we really should look at is the lineage. And I think the paradigm in Soto-shu and Dongshan's lineage is actually somewhat different than in Linji's lineage.

[73:23]

Though all of these folks studied with each other and knew each other. And maybe I could say something about what I've said before, but not everyone's been present, about the genius of Tang in some dynasty, Buddhism, why I think it's so extraordinary. But, yeah, well, go ahead. I don't think it's, I have made a choice, not just because I met Suzuki Roshi, but also considered choice of this way. Although in Japan I mostly studied in Rinzai Monastery. Yes? I thought this aspect of the paradigm shift, I'll use that word one more time, is interesting and I think that we all actually have made in our everyday life experiences of a different mind.

[74:28]

the examples that you brought of the dog, I mean, we have these kind of abilities too. I mean, just simple examples, like I wrote, you know, after six months not hearing from a certain person, I write him a postcard. On the same day in the morning, he sends me an email, so the same day, there's a communication after breakfast this month, or I had once a serious accident, and that morning, like a few minutes before it happened, I had the clear sensation I should not drive the car. And, of course, the logical mind really said, no, it's bullshit, it's code, it's a counter-product. It happened within, like, now I'm just pulling out the driveway. So that is already available. But the question is, it's interesting to see how do we link into that or how do we open that up more? Because I think our usual paradigmatic thinking is what closes that and shuts it out from what's actually available. Yeah, the American Indians called that the long body. that when you pick up the phone, you just say, oh, I was just picking up the phone to call you.

[75:33]

We've all had that experience, but we kind of discount it. Sometimes the phone doesn't even ring. And it's not something we can control exactly, but it's something we can participate in. And we can participate in it more and more. The Buddhism says, don't look for signs in nature, because then you can get into a kind of crazy dependence on this. That's a good question. Kind of off of what Robert and Chris were saying, which is returning to your idea earlier of the difference between prescriptive and gestational approach to Buddhism. And what is it that... that we are gestating. This is especially, I think, about the idea of spirituality that you brought up.

[76:37]

What can be said about what is gestating for an individual and for us as a group, as a Sanghalaya? Okay. Maybe we should go whole piglet. Can I interject? Yeah. It's 20 to 7. We're going to stop at 6.30. I'd hate to stop right now, but should we be kind of— Then why are you bringing it up? Just to affirm that we're not going to stop, and let's just keep going until it runs out. Well, that's why I said let's go whole piglet. Okay. Because maybe with this then we can bring this into a... Usually the expression is whole hog.

[77:38]

I have a small point only. As we can bring this into our discussion tomorrow... As I said, when we made the schedule, I said I want the evening schedule free to be flexible. Because, you know, as I always say, this is absolutely unique. Every moment is absolutely unique. And again, if you are unable to perceive this moment as absolutely unique, in fact, you're functioning as if the world is permanent. And so this moment is unique. We can't reproduce it again. It won't be... And sometimes we should just let what's pouring into this moment happen. Buddhism views paradigms as a prison.

[78:53]

Prison? Prison. And a prison. You see the world prismatically and you're imprisoned in that prismatic scene. Yeah. So, the first order of business of adept practice, non-being practice and not well-being practice. Well-being practice doesn't try to change your paradigm. Non-being practice means you're trying to change your paradigm. So the first order of business of a depth practice and what Kensho, Satori are really about paradigm shifts. Paradigm shifts which then allow you freedom from the prison of a paradigm and allow you to mature your human life in a different way. But if you only emphasize or you overemphasize the paradigm shift, then you have kind of stereotypical Rinzai.

[79:57]

And this is a nonsense. I mean, I think this is, you know, this unfortunate little girl who had a big enlightenment experience and she wrote a book about it and was killed in an accident. It's interesting, but if you take it seriously that she was enlightened, you're nuts. She was an immature little girl who had a big experience, understood more than her teachers, but her experience wasn't mature at all. And the idea of authorizing her as a teacher is just totally nuts. I mean, because that's some kind of theological belief, that you have some big experience and then suddenly you're able to teach and do everything and all knowing this is nonsense. And if you believe that, you have a very mistaken idea of what Buddhism is about, as I understand Buddhism at least. The paradigm shift is important. And it's not just a paradigm shift. It's much more complex than that. And there's many varieties. But we could say it falls into a category of a kind of paradigm shift.

[80:59]

Now... Is it all generated or etc.? This is more philosophical. And this is one of the reasons why Buddhism proposes many worlds and worlds within worlds and worlds within this world. And we could say worlds of antimatter. What's an antimatter being and so forth. Yes, given this world system, there's a kind of water. Water seeks the lowest place in this world system. Because water is... Each thing has its own particularity. I think you run into a kind of linguistic danger when you say water has its nature. Water has a pattern. Water has a behavioral pattern, we could say, or something like that. And we human beings do, too. I think it's like thinking is rooted in thanking. Thank and think are the same etymological... have the same etymology.

[82:07]

And I think that there's wisdom in that, as there often is in these words, because to think about something is a kind of gratitude that things appear. So I feel that thinking is rooted in appreciation. You don't notice something unless you care about it. But that's a little bit like water finding its own course. My feeling is that if I look at you, I look at you because I enjoy it. But let's not knock enjoyment. Enjoyment is something extremely deep and we can trust it. And it may be that we practice Buddhism just because we enjoy it more than something else. Why do we enjoy it more? The word enthusiasm is nice because it means to be caught up in God. To be enthused. And I think we have to look at the world as if it was a God being.

[83:10]

I mean, what Christianity has is these wonderful paintings you see in cathedrals in Europe and so forth. And if you're a Christian, it must be wonderful to see the kind of glorified world. But Buddhism doesn't make sense unless you see this as a uniquely glorified world. Now let me just say, I give Zaza instructions, and going back to this educating, with introducing our body to the Buddha body, and I'm trying to speak now to Dogen's distinction here, where he says something like, if you're sitting still, it's you sitting still, not Buddha sitting still. So what's the difference between still sitting and seated Buddha? That's the crux of this.

[84:14]

Or the lotus. Very commonly I give Zazen instruction and I say that Zazen is a dialogue between an ideal posture and your posture. Okay. All the statues of Buddha, virtually, or not, but all the statues of Buddha, bodhisattvas, Buddha beings, are usually in the seated posture. And particularly if we put them at the center of an altar. There's wonderful Theravadan figures of the walking Buddha and stuff, but you don't see those at the center. It's always a seated Buddha. Why is it always a seated Buddha? Why is it always in this seated posture? Now you can question and say, how can a posture... Look, do you question sleeping? You accept sleeping as a particular kind of posture. You don't try to sleep standing up.

[85:20]

You don't say... I don't believe in sleeping lying down. I'm in a sleep thing. Well, you can sleep standing up and you can have enlightenment experience or whatever you want walking around. But this posture is as real as sleeping is a kind of horizontal posture. There's something about this posture. And again, don't knock posture. Oh, posture, this is not important. What's important is mind. Well, then you're not in the Yogacara world because we can't make those distinctions so easily. And I notice, you know, when I'm typing often, I'm thinking about, I'm typing and I'm conscious and I'm consciously typing something. And then I look and I go on and I look back and I've typed what I was thinking about in the third line later on. In other words, my hands began to type a word that I didn't even know I was thinking yet, but later on, in the next sentence, I wrote that word, and I look back, I'd written it before.

[86:34]

So my body is doing some kind of thinking. And it's not coordinated exactly with my consciousness always. Okay, so I'm sitting here. In this posture, I've learned You know, lots of people could do this posture, kids do it, etc. But to hold it, to stay in it, is a teaching. Not many people would just sit this way. Now, Gary Schneider and others have ideas that hunters discovered this because they had to sit still for a long period of time to wake them in and let them by. Yeah, maybe so. But still, it's a teaching. So the dynamic or the dialogue, and I think it's related to this outward movement, inward movement as well, there's this pulse, kind of pulse, this dialogue of I am accepting my posture as it is, but my posture as it is is also informed by the ideal posture.

[87:45]

Do you see that? This is just my posture, and it's different than yours. Both of our postures are informed by a Buddhist posture. That make sense? Now, which is my posture and which is Buddhist posture? Is this part my posture, or this part, or is this part Buddhist? You can't separate them. The ideal posture and my posture are the same, and yet... I can have a mental attitude. Yes, I'm making an effort to this ideal posture. I can feel my back. I'm beginning to open up my backbone, you know, and so forth. There's a kind of clarity. She talks about magnanimous mind. Magnanimous mind as the... Now, magnanimous mind, kind mind, and compassionate mind are versions, Zen versions of the four immeasurables. the traditional four measurables of unlimited kindness, empathetic joy, etc.

[88:48]

Equanimity. Magnanimous mind, as Dogen teaches it in Sukhya Rishi, magnanimous mind combines equanimity and a kind of thinking based on equanimity. Magnanimous mind is close to what we could say is this still sitting that is a form of investigation. Magnanimous mind is, they describe, as big as an ocean, maybe like this kanji for still sitting. So, gotcha. So, there's... Magnetism is big, wide, boundless, and depends on dropping the body shield. When you're sitting Zazen and you feel, where are my thumbs? You've actually dropped the body shield. when you start feeling where... and you're experiencing the Dharmakaya.

[89:55]

You haven't matured the Dharmakaya. You haven't settled it. You don't know how to locate the Dharmakaya in your own body. But you're experiencing the Dharmakaya through still sitting. Now we could say that the act... we could describe thinking non-thinking as, let's say you have a bulldozer, a vehicle, and you stop the engine, but the engine is holding the thing in place. We could think of non-thinking as the engine of thinking, not thinking. Now, does that make sense? Thinking as an activity holds non-thinking. Thinking as an activity, like a vehicle that you put in neutral, but the engine's still going. So the engine of thinking is not thinking. Now, if you think that's an arrived state, then you don't understand Dogen.

[91:00]

What Dogen is saying is this is the process, the lancet. And I think the idea of lancet is good, as all of you discussed it, because it's both... It's... It's Manjushri's sword of wisdom made into a tiny little knife that is... that makes very precise punctures and cuts, cutting away delusion. And also I think somebody's idea that it's an acupuncture needle is very good too, because it reaches a spot where things turn. And so when you come to this, and this goes beyond paradigm shift, when you come to this point where the engine of thinking is holding you in non-thinking... something unfolds that can't be described. So Buddhism is not the truth.

[92:03]

Zen particularly emphasizes that Buddhism is not the truth. Buddhism is only a pedagogical way to come to know the truth in yourself, to open yourself to the truth. And Zen in particular does not want to tell you what the truth is. Buddhism only wants to tell you how to study the truth. So just this simple Zazen instruction is rooted, is also the teaching of the seated Buddha. So when you're accepting your own posture, that emphasis, that's still sitting, that's you sitting. The more you're informed by the Zazen posture, Buddha's posture, that's more the seated Buddha. Now, sometimes this posture, this is a stick, all of the, that's a posture, all of the atoms, molecules, etc., are arranged in this fixed order.

[93:14]

What does German say? This truth, this truth, this truth, this truth, Can't quite get the wording. I'll come back to it. Okay, so you can say this is a... But this posture makes this possible, right? Janie's posture, form, makes Janie possible. If you had that form, you'd be a dog. Dog. Okay. Okay. So we take this posture and sometimes in your sitting the Buddha posture takes over. You suddenly find your ordinary posture in the grip of Buddha's posture.

[94:19]

Does that make sense? And then you're sitting fixedly. Everything stops and it's not that you're sitting fixedly and some of these things I don't want to cut. I don't want to speak about it because it's on tape. But when you're sitting fixedly, you have entered a timeless realm. And a timeless realm, not a sequential realm, where you feel everything is stopped and you're emphasizing a spatial dimension, this is another way of being. So sometimes your sitting posture, and that's kind of why this is the short route, this sitting posture, faster than any other way, walking around thinking, having enlightenment experience, this sitting posture can take hold of you and teach you things, show you things.

[95:23]

And it will begin once the more this sitting posture, let's call it sitting as seated Buddha, Where you all were, where is he? Matsu is Matsu. Basu is Basu. Nanyue is Nanyue. Tayo is a Tayo. Ju is a Ju.

[95:43]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_86.35