Does anybody have something he'd like to say before I try to see if I can make sense of this? Yes. Yes. all at once-ness? It doesn't make sense in my experience. It just doesn't fit. And the appearance that I have, and probably John Super Craig said, an appearance of the Buddha, like I have it, I find it, in a situation, which is often seen as unmoving,

[01:17]

and the situation would start somewhat unpleasant, awkward, weird. It sorts itself out in a way that I think that for me time changes that way. My sense of time changes in a way that I find time is coming to me, towards me. And my question is, is this what I feel or sense, does that fit with the category of Dhammakaya?

[02:21]

Well, you had this experience, so that's a fact. Why bother whether you call it a dharmakaya or not? I would like to understand the concept of dharmakaya. I can't disagree with that reason. And we want to understand the concept of the Dhammakaya from our own experience. Well, I mean... We have a couple choices. You can accept it in terms of your experience as something like the dharmakaya.

[03:39]

We can accept it in terms of our lineage, how we understand the dharmakaya. But the dharmakaya in Buddhism has many different uses and different schools. We have several things to choose from. You can accept it in terms of your own experience as Dharmakaya. We can take it in connection with our teaching line, our tradition line as Dharmakaya. But on the other hand, Dharmakaya has different, in different schools, in different realms of Buddhism, also different names. So there are different names. Okay. So I said I wasn't going to talk about the tree kaya, but now you've got me stuck. Okay. The Dharmakaya is an idea in Mahayana and later Buddhism to shift the location of the historical Buddha To the present.

[04:50]

To our present. Again, in a simple sense, since everything is interrelated, everything that relates to something else, that interrelationship is the Buddha. and uh... And if one achieves, realizes enlightenment, it's also everywhere present. It's the whole situation which makes it possible. So the fact of existence itself in its entirety is the basis of enlightenment. The fact of existence in its entirety So the fact of existence in its entirety then is Buddha.

[06:09]

It's just a kind of philosophy. Now, if the entirety of everything as it is, is the Buddha, how do we enter into this? Okay. The main way, the emphasis in Dharmakaya, as a practice and a teaching, is to emphasize the space of the entirety as it is. The base. The space. So the Dharmakaya is called the body of space or space, something like that. the space, and it's not empty space, it's space which is also form.

[07:15]

It's the space which makes form possible. Okay. Now, we don't want to think of that space as a thing out there, a big room in which objects are. We want to avoid any container thinking. Not because it's... It's an inadequate idea philosophically, which it is, but also because it's not a good way to practice. Okay. So how can you practice with or relate to space in its huge extent? How can you practice with space if it's the universe?

[08:29]

And if you think of it that way, then you've gotten some kind of object. So the way we experience it, Or our part of it is its all-at-onceness. And this is also the shift from interdependence in early Buddhism to interpenetration in later Buddhism. So at each moment, everything all at once makes this possible. So, I don't say that all at once-ness is the Dharmakaya. This I've never said. Or if I did, I was careless.

[09:29]

I didn't say that Dharmakaya is the Buddha. I didn't equate them. No, no. I didn't equate them. So, in order to avoid treating space as a container, I speak about it in its all-at-once, experienceable all-at-onceness. And this is a... Term I created reluctantly, I don't know, in the 60s probably. And used it sparingly because I thought it was my own experience and not really applicable. And why do it? But sometimes, I would guess in the late 70s, I decided to use it as a term.

[10:45]

And there's no exact equivalent that I know of in Sanskrit and Pali. But in my study of Buddhism since then, I find it more and more a useful term in many ways. And I find it often more adequate than... you know, paragraphs of terms trying to say the same thing, which you can say with all at once. Right. Well, that's good enough, yeah, why not?

[12:02]

I've never been able to achieve that, but I try. Okay, now that's to the turn, now to your experience. Give me one sort of press release or some one phrase that describes your experience. Well, I would say that when one has this experience of everything in its place So this does represent the experience of a spatially defined experience rather than temporally defined experience.

[13:15]

And that's certainly related to the concept of the Dhammakaya. But I would say, without having talked to you more personally, I would say that simply not being able to locate, as I said, locate your thumbs. They feel like they're miles apart. I didn't say kilometer, but that's okay. It's a translation. I know. Kilometers and kilometers. Anyway, when you have that feeling, and you've lost your sense of... the body's boundaries.

[14:18]

That is a direct experience, in a rather narrow, small sense, but a direct experience of the Dharmakaya. Now, if in addition, when you have that feeling, everything feels in its place, then you'd say that That feeling of everything being as a place arises from the dharmakaya body. And such distinctions are really not so important for practitioners, but they're important if you have to teach. But the process of practice of teaching is part of developing one's practice. The process of teaching is how you develop your practice. Because it's the way you put, then you have to put your own experience together in a mutual way with others. So practicing with others is an involvement

[15:25]

of one's own practice. That doesn't mean you should be a teacher, but it means you should be in a situation of practicing with others where a Sangha body is developed. Those of you who know Crestone and Boulder will know who I'm speaking about. But one person who's been practicing a long time with many people and Many different teachings have now been practicing with us for some years. That really wants to take, needs to take a next step in his practice. But the next step in his practice really ought to be maybe living in Crestone or something, which he can't do, but finding some way to practice with others.

[16:49]

So he's a surgeon in a hospital, and so he kept it a little bit cool, and he was just practicing Buddhist, you know. Especially since he has long hair tied back in a braid. That's getting far enough out. But what he did is he got the hospital to put aside a room where he now meditates with any of the doctors who happen to show up. So he's taken this next step, somehow doing it, and sometimes people join him in practice.

[17:51]

So then, this is, anyway, I'm just saying, the stage... Putting your practice together with others. So, I mean, there's an earlier stage, which is very similar. Which is that you practice for some years, and then at some point... You just start sacrificing your own practice so you can support other people to practice. You may not have to sacrifice it, but the feeling is you're willing to sacrifice it, and then a new kind of practice develops.

[18:52]

That's a prior and similar step. Okay, all right. Yeah. Micro moment, Herman. Oh, really, already? Oh, shucks. I was looking forward to hearing your voice. Where do I start? I think the question which several of you raised, Gerhard raised, is really, and I think all of you in various ways have raised, why do we Um,

[20:06]

bring these conscious articulations into our practice. The conscious articulation of practice. Okay, so practice... Where do we bring them to? Bring them into consciousness. Okay. Buddhism is not a philosophy. I wonder if I'll say that at... I'm supposed to give a lecture called, Is Buddhism a Philosophy or Not? I don't know what I'll say yet. Right now, I'll say Buddhism is not a philosophy.

[21:11]

And it's not a religion. But we could say it's a practice philosophy. In other words, a kind of philosophy arises from practice. I mean, as someone said at the Winter Branches meeting, yeah, they practice mindfulness, just simple mindfulness, and they find it starts to unfold in the details of their life as the Eightfold Path. Because they go to work and they do various things. They have a family. And it was articulated in each part of their life, and it turns into the Eightfold Path.

[22:12]

And they didn't know anything about the Eightfold Path. And they were debating whether you can even practice Buddhism or not. And as this person said, then he found himself just put on the path, sort of against his will. As the practice led him there. So he felt he was on the path in a way when his practice turned into the Eightfold Path. So in that sense, you can see that if we call the Eightfold Path a kind of philosophy or psychology, it unfolded from practice itself. And that's really the wide basis of Buddhism.

[23:27]

The practice which unfolds into a way of looking at the world So now what happened with the Abhidharma? That's been our topic recently. Some centuries after the historical Buddha died, People said, what was the Buddha talking about afterwards? Oh, yeah, look, it looks like the eight-bone path. But they said, as the Eightfold Path articulates practice, let's look at everything the Buddha said that we know about and make it clear so we can practice it.

[24:32]

So then... they discovered that not only does the articulation of practice help you know when you're on the path or to stay on the path, But the articulation becomes a tool of practice itself. Okay, so again in a simple way, we count our breaths. Counting your breath is a tool of practice. Okay, now, as I suggested in the eightfold past piece that some of you have, when you, instead of counting your breaths, you introduce to awareness, to non-consciousness,

[26:06]

you get introduced to non-conscious knowing the eightfold path. Instead of counting your breaths, you know what you do now and then, it helps weave body and mind together. Without a sense count, you know, go bring into Zazen mind the Eightfold Path. Now, yeah, so now instead of practice folding out in the Eightfold Path.

[27:15]

You're folding the Eightfold Path not through consciousness but through awareness into your imprinting it, in a sense, and you're inscribing it in the mind-body. Now you do not want to do this in the early stages of practice. Because if you do this when consciousness still dominates your activity, you'll be a dead Buddhist. Living but dead. So there's a big emphasis on physically preventing anybody from studying for the first several years. And that's the problem I have with practicing.

[28:22]

Most of you read, study too much, so I have to kind of get under that or take it away from you. And that's the problem I have with you, that you have read too much and studied, and I have to... The problem with smart people is when they understand something, they think they understand it. They don't understand it at all. They just understand it consciously, but they really don't get it. They have the experience of, I understand it. I've got that quickly. But you can't play the instrument. So... Okay. So now you're... After your practice, your meditation mindfulness is quite developed for several years,

[29:42]

You know how they prevent you from studying? They give you a schedule which has no time for study. The only time you can squeeze and study is in the toilet. And there's no light in the toilet. And it's an open toilet with a bunch of... Beep! ...underneath you. You know, it's not a flush toilet. And the hole is actually rather large. And so you've got to... squat there. It's not a sit toilet. You've got to squat. And you've got to light a match.

[30:45]

And you've got to hold your text. And really people drop it down in the shit. And then they have to fish it out. Just, I mean, that's when I practiced at Daitoku-ji at Rinzai Monastery for two and a half years. It was just like that. I'd go in the toilet and there was all these magic one after another, you know. So, I mean, it's serious. They really try to stop you from studying. Until you really have a foundation, in meditation and mindfulness.

[31:49]

Okay, so now, first practice falls out into a kind of philosophy. And then at some point, you begin to take the teachings of philosophy and fold them first into zazen mind or awareness. And remember, zazen, well, awareness doesn't sleep. Mr. Wolf told us that in a sashin he could be present during the night While he's asleep. Or, as someone else said, you can wake up at some hour that you decide to. While you are asleep.

[32:59]

So one thing we know about awareness, it doesn't have to sleep. So you put the teaching into awareness, not into consciousness. And awareness, as the etymology of it works pretty well, because it means to watch. And the root of consciousness is useful, too, because it's got scissors in the middle of it. S-C-I. And that means to cut. So when you install a teaching in awareness, it's present all the time. And it's noticing in the infinitely, it's continuously present in the infinitely complex micro, tapestry of micro moments.

[34:01]

Okay. And then, okay, what happens then? Now, embodying a teaching in awareness, assuming it's the right teaching and blah, blah, blah, it begins to notice at a much more subtle level than even usual Zazen mind and mindfulness can do. You increase the subtleness with which you can notice. And know. Oh, good. Like crystal clear.

[35:21]

Crystal clear is in America only used in black neighborhoods as part of the black dialect. It's crystal clear. Nobody says it, but in Germany everyone says it. It isn't great. You just got here. Bye-bye. Oh, Sunday afternoon. Okay. So now what we've done is, in effect, we are educating, let's call it the middle stage of practice, you're educating awareness. Educating it in wisdom. Okay. Now,

[36:21]

Consciousness is feeling abandoned. You're not paying any attention to me. You think I'm not wise. So now you want to give consciousness some attention. In effect, we, consciousness, educate consciousness and what awareness knows and bring them together. So now you begin entering in more of an acupuncture-like way teachings into injecting inserting certain kinds of teachings into consciousness. And that's where the cons are at. The cons are creating little conscious inserts that worm their way down into awareness.

[37:50]

You can insert them into consciousness. And they sort of sound like they belong in consciousness, but they don't really. So they fall down into awareness. But then, you see, you're not supposed to start koan practice until you're ready to work this way. If you start koan practice and read them and try to understand them consciously, you block the practice of the actual practice Koans are intended for. Is that what I said? Pretty good? I was laughing. What did you just say?

[39:14]

No, we can point to something else. No, we've snuck up. On the Trikaya. We what? Snuck up. What's that? It's like you sneak up on something. Ah, we snuck up. That's in the past. We snuck up. Because when you have two parallel mind streams, And one is the conscious mind stream. And one is the non-conscious knowing mind stream. Okay, so there's a conscious mind stream and there's a non-conceptual mind stream.

[40:16]

Would you bring those together? That's the Nirmanakaya Buddha. That's the Buddha. There's the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya, and the Nirmanakaya is the Buddha in the world. And the... Sambhogakaya is born from the Dharmakaya and Nirmanakaya is born from Sambhogakaya. So the Sambhogakaya is born from the Dharmakaya and the Nirmanakaya is born from the Sambhogakaya. So I did talk about... So I won't put it on the tape. This is good enough. Okay. Okay. Now, there's lots of things that are kind of wandering in the chaos of not yet being crystal clear.

[41:34]

Okay. Yeah. So let's speak about Dogen's phrase, acupuncture-like phrase, to complete that which appears. Or prescriptive phrase. How do you complete that? Yeah, to complete that which appears. But what are you completing? Now, here's where I use the term all at once sometimes.

[42:36]

What about the term all at once? This is an instance where I would use the term all at once. Because the genjū koan is subtly translated as to complete that which appears knowing that everything is simultaneously particular and universal. But universal is an entity translation. The original means something like universal, but it doesn't mean what we mean by universal. But what it means is things are particular and simultaneously universal. interpenetrated with everything else.

[43:41]

So I would translate that as things are particular and all at once. So let's just stay with to complete. What are you completing? Now, in all these practices that I'm suggesting, at least this one and many others, You try them out slowly. Sort of like learning dance steps. Finally you get it, and then it starts going quickly. Okay, so first you... whatever appears.

[44:44]

Now, you have to already, this presumes quite a developed practice. You've got to already perceive everything in a particularity. Like Jascha Heifetz hearing each note absolutely separately, but yet in the middle and carrying the whole piece. So if you don't have that thing system, you don't hardly know when anything appears. I mean, as an example I often use is you have the headache. You notice you have a headache long after the headache appeared.

[45:49]

But if you get to notice the trigger of the now, you can feel a little change when you're going to have a headache. Well, you're going to get the flu or something. Not yet, but tomorrow it will be or later today it will be. So at that moment, you shift the blood in your head. and you don't have any. But that's the fruit of mindfulness. Being present in the actual present, not later after the effects are so great consciousness noticed them. Because awareness notices a headache before consciousness does.

[46:50]

Okay, so you've got a... Your mindful attention is developed enough that you notice when things appear. Nicole appears differently at each moment. To us and even sometimes to herself. Okay. You notice something appears. Then you let it settle. It takes a kind of immeasurable duration. There's a perceptual duration when the appearance kind of flushes out, opens up.

[48:12]

Then you let the associations gather. The associations which can lead to naming the perception. But even prior to naming, there's this gathering of association. So there's a pre-naming moment. And you let the associations gather. And you let the associations sort of stick to the appearance. And it becomes whatever object it is, color, blah, blah, blah.

[49:15]

Associations place it in the mind stream. And then you let Ideally, you're still in a non-conceptual space. You haven't named this. And you... feel the object from its own side, which you can only do in non-conceptual space. As soon as you have a concept, you're only knowing it from your side. So you just practice this now. And I suggest the easy way to do it is with airplanes in Saarland or something like that.

[50:29]

You hear a noise and you peel the name off and it's just sound. Or maybe when you're half asleep. And you hear the curtain at the window or something. Is somebody climbing in the window? Is that the curtain? Is it raining out? You make use of this space. You try not to think of it as the curtain and not think of it as a burglar coming in. Or a door. Just, it's something. See, you allow that space to, you feel that. When you feel the various associations come.

[51:39]

Now this is the background of an image used in Buddhism a lot. You see a piece of rope on the road. Is it a snake or a piece of rope on your path in the dark? The point is not that you mistake the rope for a snake. From the point of view of practice, the point is you can be in a space where it's neither rope nor snake. Okay, so you're in that space and you You enter then into the space of what it might be from its own side. You don't know. And mostly this is an experience of not finding. Now, the experience of not finding is one of the entries into the direct experience of emptiness.

[52:47]

Okay, so that's enough for that example. I don't want to overwork it. If you're interested and if your mindful attention, your mindfulness is developed enough, and you're curious to adventure into inner space, You have lots of opportunities like that. Okay. The poetry of everyday life. Okay. Okay. Okay, another example.

[54:02]

Let's say a chair. You practice with the chair. You look at the chair and you go through this slowly. You remind yourself that it's a construct. Take it apart. That's in the teichu's cart. You take the spokes out and the wheels out and the axle out. What have you got? So it's a construct. That's true. Then you notice that it's interdependent. Well, that's not so different from saying it's a construct, but it's good to notice it in a slightly different dimension.

[55:06]

And how do you remember all of the teaching of interdependence? By looking at a chair. But what I do is I notice it's sitting on the floor, resting on the floor. And it clearly needs the floor to be there. So seeing it resting on the floor reminds me of interdependence. Seeing as a construct, I've indexed to remind me of impermanence. And then... I see it as something that you can move around and sit in it and turn it upside down and so forth.

[56:17]

Its usefulness is its focus of activity. So then I notice that it's an activity. This reminds me that everything is an activity. As I said, the tree's location is an activity. Always reestablishing itself. And reminding myself that it's an activity reminds me that it's not an entity. As entitylessness is virtually a synonym for emptiness. When you really see that everything, nothing's an entity, everything's activity, you're seeing emptiness.

[57:27]

And fourth, I see that it's a perception. It's my mind. For me, it's something I'm perceiving. In that sense it's also an activity, but now the activity is my perceiving it. So I go through those, I've gone in the past through those four steps, until whenever I look at anything, I feel the presence of all four of those teachings. Now, doing this little exercise, what does it do? Well, it reminds you in consciousness of the teaching.

[58:39]

And it makes you start to see the stillness. And that's also a practice you can develop, is to always see the space of an object. You train yourself to see the space first and then the object second. So you see the space of the tree which materializes into the branches. So in that way, right now, I would feel the space of Neil and I, rather than Neil and I. And if I feel the space of Neil and I, that's a kind of mutual body. Or if I feel the space of you and I. There's something happening there that's different than what's happening here.

[59:49]

And that's easily extended into feeling the space of this seminar. And though I'm speaking to each of you individually from the beginning of the seminar, and that's why I find with people Sunday afternoon after leave, I find that dialogue with that person, which was actually for me going on, is now interrupted. Because I'm not speaking to you as a group. I'm very distinctly speaking to each of you as separate notes, as separate individuals, and I feel each one of you separately when I'm speaking. to each and every one of you.

[60:57]

And I feel each and every one of you very clearly and without a doubt when I speak here. But I said I'm not speaking to you as a group. But I am speaking to you as a mutual body, which is not the same as a group. And really, only when I do that, when it's like that, do I have a feeling for what to say. I'm giving away all my secrets. You know, if I'd done this for so long, I'd do something to myself. I can't. So if you go through something like these four reminders for every percept object, this is also another way to talk about practicing to complete that which appeared.

[62:13]

Okay. You, in this process of reminding yourself of the teachings, and this is the central dynamic of the Abhidhamma list, is When you remind yourself of these teachings, you also, in a sense, take the object part into something impermanent and spatial and mind only. Now, Yogacara has been translated by Western... Buddhist Western scholars as mind only, like the British philosopher Barclay. And it should be translated as projection only. More like that.

[63:30]

Mind only. When you go through these four reminders, you generate a non-conceptual mind space, something like that. You generate a Buddha mind. Buddha jhana, it's called. A Buddha mind or a wisdom mind. It's a mind not imbued with your personal history.

[64:44]

It's not completely empty of your Buddha for your personal history. Not completely empty. But it's an overall effect definition, experience or territory is non-personal. And we understand this to be exactly Buddha's mind. This would have been or is in the mind Buddha's head. That's what the teachings are meant to do to introduce you to Buddha's mind. Yeah, and so that's... How would it appear? Now, I think maybe we should stop.

[65:52]

I'm just getting tired of hearing my own voice. A couple of teachings I wanted to say, but I probably had enough. One thing, I'll just very short, I'll say that There's two ways to look at non-self. One is the self is not permanent. But if there is self-referencing thinking in the mind stream, even self-referencing thinking of an impermanent self, This is also a problem. You know the self is impermanent, but it's still doing self-referencing thinking, which it has to do sometimes.

[66:56]

But that also can be removed from the mind. The problem is that even if the self-reliant thinking about non-self-reliant thinking after it thinks, it is still within the stream of the self-reliant thinking in the mind. And I've forgotten the other teachings. Because you're making me forget. Okay, so let's sit for a moment. These reminders are repeated.

[69:01]

These reminders are repeated. Like this is a construct, this is an activity. But these are repetitions which don't add up, don't add. but they are repetitions which take away. Repetitions which take away our way to practice emptiness. Non-conceptual knowing, this knowing through taking away, isn't just empty, it's a power. It's a power of clarity and knowing things as they are. Thank you very much.

[71:04]

Thank you for translating. Does it feel different than seminars in Boulder? It's about the same. Does the translation make a difference? Translating are very good. He's good, yeah. He's been training me for 20 years to say things that he can understand. That's true. Thanks for pointing it out. And by the way, I didn't mention yesterday when I talked about Mianosov, et cetera, the biggest problem Mianosov has is I'm not there enough. But I can't be there more, so that's the way it is. But if the practice were more developed, it would allow me to be there more in a different way. But to think I'm the problem is the same problem as thinking I'm the solution.

[72:27]

In the end, the sangha has to solve the problem, not me. And I brought that up because several people have talked to me about it. I say that because different people have talked to me about it.

[72:46]

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