I want to speak about, or I feel like speaking about, something that's quite simple, something I think most of us notice, but when you try to make sense of it, understand it, it's surprisingly complex. And I suppose some of the complexity is just in my saying, I want to speak about, and then changing it to, I feel like speaking about. Because if I say in English, at least I want to speak about, it has the feeling of a, yeah, some kind of persona that's making decision in relationship to you. But if I say I feel like speaking about it, well, then I feel it's something more happening that I'm maybe almost a medium for.

[01:08]

But that doesn't mean it's less related to or less mutually generated. But there's a different feeling when I say. I feel like speaking about it. What would that be? A woodpecker? That's one big woodpecker. I'm scared if the woodpeckers are that big. You might think I have a wooden head. It's all right. It's great. And I'm also speaking to our topic, implied topic of the last weeks of thinking non-thinking, Dogen's phrase, thinking non-thinking.

[02:10]

And I'm also trying to speak to Chandrakirti and Dharmakirti and other assumption when they talk about practice. that there's a yogic knowing, a yogic perception that's part and parcel of wisdom, inseparable from wisdom, in contrast to our usual thinking. Okay. So, if we want to speak about thinking non-thinking, which I think part of the problem is two words, in English at least, the two thinkings involved, two different kinds of thinking. Maybe we should call it something else.

[03:13]

But in any case, it's been, I don't yet see any scholar who actually, to my satisfaction, understands it. And I think what Dogen meant is really pretty simple. but its simplicity evolves into the whole of Buddhism. Okay. Now, first I have to start with, yeah, what is the thinking of Zazen? Maybe my, if there was going to be a topic for today's whatever is said, it would be the peculiar power of sitting meditation, the peculiar power of Zazen mind. Okay. First of all, most of us notice that there's some difference in us, in our thinking, acting, and often deciding when we sit and when we don't sit.

[04:17]

Again, that was an observation I make quite often. And when people don't notice that or don't have that experience, they usually don't continue to sit. Sitting affects us. It gives us a sense of well-being often. But often it also, you find, you make, it's like you're, you know, first it seems like a slightly different person who sits than the one who doesn't sit. And then later it's a quite different person. And then finally there's an integrated person, which would be kind of a dharmic maturity or something like that. But you notice that this slightly different person, it seems slight at first, and perhaps is, in zazen you make a different decision about something important in your life than you would to buy a car, to go to college, to change your job.

[05:18]

Somehow the thinking is more holistic or relevant or integrated or something like that. Or it just has the quality of an intuition which carries, intuitions always carry the feeling, sometimes wrongly, but carry the feeling of being true. So the thinking that arises through meditation often has this quality of an intuition that it feels true and often it is true. But I don't think we can guarantee it's true, but it often is. true or feels true, and closer to the truth. Okay. So this, we can call this a yogic difference. The difference a yogic sitting, yogic posture makes. Yogic mind makes mental postures and physical postures, because that's what we're talking about when we practice. And that difference is assumed all the way through.

[06:24]

It's in the two truths of Nagarjuna, Yeah, okay. But we're sinning, so we're in the midst of those two truths. We're in the midst of that different knowing or thinking. And now if I state it like this, again, it becomes a concept. And it becomes a concept, then you can use the concept, if you recognize and accept the concept... to not be a generalization or a kind of truth, but rather to be a concept which allows you to notice instantiations, instances. Instantiation means an instance which proves the truth of something. So you notice things that instantiate this difference. Yeah, that's a bit different than understanding. Understanding is more general. Instantiation is more specific by specific by specific.

[07:28]

Yeah, now this already suggests a person who can notice differences, register differences, and make a difference in their life through these, through what they notice. Now, but on the surface of it, if you talk to your uncle or your aunt or, you know, the generic uncle or aunt, what? You mean the posture you sit in makes a difference in who you are or what you think? It sounds like nonsense to most people, and they want to make it sound like nonsense. Of course, it's true that if you're running for a bus, it's hard to do a, solve a calculus problem. So really, if you're sitting quietly at a desk or somewhere, you know, standing still at least, solving a calculus problem is a little easier than when you're running for a bus.

[08:37]

So obviously, at that kind of crude level, posture makes a difference. But what is the difference? What is the difference? Let's assume we accept there's a difference. What's the difference? Well, first of all, there's posture. And what is posture? What is your posture? Why is this posture? What is the characteristics of meditation posture? I would say there's two main characteristics. One is the... suppression of gesture. And the second is the merging of intention with physical stillness. Okay, now what do I mean by that? Let's stay with the merging of intention. Now, I think we have already spoken about, and I won't try to establish now, but

[09:43]

Intentional mind is different than discursive mind. And intentional mind, in a sense, if we want to think metaphorically, which helps, is intentional mind. Intentions function in a different liquid of mind, medium of mind, than discursive mind does. And intentions can be present all the time, while discursive thoughts... Present even when you're not conscious, an intention can be present. Your life, the intention, the simple intention to stay alive is present. You're not thinking about staying alive, but boy, if a tree starts falling on you, you, you know, you jump. So that intention to stay alive is there even when you're not thinking about it, and that's a different mind than discursive mind. Okay. So you have an intention to sit for a certain length of time. This is an extremely important part of zazen. You don't sit as long as you feel like it. Then you put your zazen under the control of ego, of self, of personal interest, etc.

[10:49]

So one of the crucial things about meditation, particularly in the early years, is you sit 20 minutes or 40 minutes or 50, whatever the decision is, you stick to the intention to sit a particular length of time. This merges difference, I mean merges, yeah, difference too. And that's a good example of what I want to say next. Merges intention and the mind of intention with physical stillness. This begins the process of developing mental stillness. So this is, you know, the basic initial dynamics of sitting. And why, without sitting, wisdom in the fullest sense, yogic wisdom in the fullest sense is barely possible.

[11:59]

That's why, excuse me, I'm not, I really, I depend on scholars for all I work, but that's why Scholars' first priority is rarely sitting. Their first priority is understanding. And they understand much more easily than most of us. That's why they're scholars. But they believe in that understanding and they let that understanding lead to further understanding. That's their job, their career, etc. And they don't challenge it with sitting or take, throw all their their mental eggs in the basket of sitting. And the adept, the yogi, may also be a scholar. But his first priority is sitting. A yogic practice. And not just a little bit of it. enough so it is the first priority it means that the thinking of the yogic thinking is the first priority not the discursive thinking yogic thinking has to be nurtured and it's surprising and requires patience okay

[13:29]

So the merging of intentional mind with still sitting, sitting still, is the first difference I notice. You know, there's got about five or six differences I want to point out here, and we're already almost through the lecture. I'm on the first half of the first one. Okay. That gives us something to do the rest of the practice. Okay. So the second I said, what did I say? I said, there's a merging of difference, I said, when I meant to say, I thought I meant to say, the merging of intention. Okay. So what, but I actually, in a deeper sense, meant the merging of difference. And this is what I mean by the suppression of gestures. If you study gesture, if you watch people carefully, or just... No, you can't watch them carefully. That sounds like there's a watcher.

[14:32]

When there's a watcher, you don't watch very well. Just to be aware, present with. Maybe present with would be the right language. Gestures... carry what was just said, anticipate what's going to be said, and often carry, in linguistic terms, deep structures of meaning. And the gestures will be different. I mean, the gesture, as I say, if I say something, if I allow gesture to occur... Now, I might say, if I allow gesture to occur tomorrow, then I might use a different gesture. It doesn't mean, but when they've studied gestures all over the world, when somebody's trying to relate the same story, all over the world people tend to use the same gestures.

[15:37]

You know, very simple things, he hit the wall. So there's a universality to gesture more than language, but yet gesture is interrelated with language and carries aspects of communication that can't be carried in language. If you try writing, and if you try to get yourself in an open, non-linear state of mind, if you're typing or handwriting, you'll often write a word that you didn't intend discursively. But when you look carefully, it's what you really intended, or in a deeper sense, could have intended. So gesture carries, the body carries the mind, and gesture is an aspect of an embodied mind.

[16:56]

And as I said, gesture A gesture will be influenced by what was just said, and a gesture will often anticipate what you're going to say. And plas carry the fine filaments of resonance, the resonant filaments of language that connect to other things. Surprisingly, it's more carried in the physicality of language than in the mental dimension aspects. dimensions of language. Okay. Now we do Kenyan here and I have my way of doing Kenyan. Dan has his way of doing Kenyan. Mark has his way of doing Kenyan. But no matter what you do, whatever Kenyan you do in this building, you can only do the Kenyan that this building allows.

[18:05]

I'm sorry to say something so obvious. But it's so obvious we don't really notice it. We just come in here. When you walk in the door, you walk in the door because the building allows you to walk in the door. Now if the door is not properly placed, and in bad architecture it's often not properly placed, you feel a little uneasy that you don't feel good. Well, there's some computational process going on. Again, like somebody throws you a ball, you put your hand up and catch it. That's non-thinking. But a calculation has been made, you catch the ball. Okay, so when we do kin in here, there's no way you can ignore the room. You can think you're ignoring the world, but that just shows the room.

[19:11]

It just shows you're inattentive. But your inattentiveness is still in the context of the room. So we can say the room is a concept. Okay. So when we do kin-hin, you're confirming the shape of the room. And that's very important to do. Because, you know, in Japan, you never leave a house empty. I mean... I can't say never. It can't always be. But unbelievably so, a house always has someone in it. I mean, even for the afternoon, you don't lock up the house. There's someone in a house. They arrange their life so that there's always somebody around and in a house because that's the way a house is alive. So when we, you know, I designed this building. It was real simple. I just took the length of a tatami, the longest one we could get, long enough to sleep on.

[20:12]

And when I was an agey, I slept on them and I had to open the bottom and put my feet in because I'm a little long. And in the morning, before the wake-up bell, somebody comes with a... Maybe we should do it. It might be fun. We have enough people to do these things. Somebody comes with a wooden board with a wet cloth on it and goes... cleans the eating board while you're asleep. So before the wake-up bell, you hear this... my little cool wind, you know, it's kind of nice. And being, since I'm considerably larger than Japanese, sometimes my head would, you know, they don't care, they just zoom down. There goes that Gaijin's, that Westerner's head, pooh! You know, like that. See the gesture? Anyway, so I had to open the bottom trough there and stick my feet in it and... then I didn't get hit in the morning before the wake-up bell. But I always liked that little cool breeze.

[21:16]

It's also a nice feeling that somebody's up. Even before the wake-up bell, there are people up getting things ready. Okay. Monastic fun, you know. So I just took the measurements and the size of the ton, and then I multiplied by, I don't know what, eight, the size. So the room has, is a rectangle physically, geometrically, but a square in terms of the number of people, because there's the same number of people on the four sides. And it's got six ceilings. So in different parts you have a different ceiling, and it has six ceilings. six pillars inside, and it's got an altar. So, yeah, so I designed it, and my friend, and another architect helped me, and then cut no slack, the contractor built it.

[22:25]

A lot of work went into making this, and when we walk around, confirming its rectangular shape. So one of the things King Him does is to confirm the concept of the building. And we're also circumambulating in masonry, you square the lodge, which means when they have a new initiate or they go into a meeting, they walk through the building new initiate goes to the one corner and the other somebody goes to another corner and stuff like that. And in Zen, I mean, in the koans you'll see, when people walked, and the whole idea of circumambulate means to walk around, the whole idea of the path

[23:28]

is tied to the idea of walking. You walk it. You don't think it. That's called a path. And the Tao, in the earlier Chansa and Lao Tzu, I think it says, even when the mind is most empty, there's the feeling of something. Now, you can see how ideas come in right away because the Taoists say that feeling of something is the original void, the source that's always there. And Buddhism would say, no, no. The feeling of the void is also form. Implicit in emptiness, implicit emptiness is form, implicit form is emptiness. I shouldn't say implicit in emptiness because then that makes it a container. Implicit emptiness is form. Implicit form is emptiness. So we wouldn't say that's an original source something.

[24:30]

Might be right. I don't know. But that's the way the Taoists look at it. It's a big difference between Taoism and Buddhism. Buddhism looks at it as if it's also generated, also impermanent, momentary, etc. But there is a feeling of something. That feeling of something is also close to what is meant by non-thinking. When Taoists circumambulate, Hasidic and Sephardi Jews, they circumambulate cemeteries seven times before they bury someone. And almost everywhere in the world you circumambulate with the right hand toward the center. And when we sit, we sit. The Rinzai sit with the right hand on top, usually.

[25:32]

Soto sit with the left hand on top. So our lineage emphasizes the dominance of the right brain. Right brain, the left side of the body. So, you know, I really don't like the right brain, left brain. distinction because it's too easy as an explanatory principle is too easy but clearly one of the differences between zazen mind and posture is a shift to right brain dominance from left brain dominance from holistic from more linear more thinking from parts to more thinking from holistically So that's in posture and in the still sitting. Okay, so what I said about repression of gesture.

[26:35]

When, if thinking is embodied, the mind is embodied, which George Lakoff and others have made the major idea in linguistics since Chomsky, but it's what yogic practice is. If thinking is embodied, then the physical aspects of thinking are present. And what is one of the basic Most basic Zazen instructions, you sit for a length of time and you don't scratch. Don't scratch suppresses gesture. Suppressed gesture means the gesture which would usually, the embodiment which would usually come out has to go into the, become more of an embodied. See, by suppressing gesture, you embody the mind.

[27:41]

Already we're thinking non-thinking. Suppressed gesture, which embodies the mind, starts weaving mind and body together, the process, with also the merging of intentional mind, you're creating a different kind of being. Okay, let's go back to the concept of the zendo, doing kinyin. So we have an outside... And circumambulation is connected with community and ownership. In the old days, when you wanted to sell a farm or something, you circumambulated the farm. You walked around the farm. And people would say, that guy's rich. It took him four days to walk around his farm. And there's a funny joke, you know, about Texas, but it's really not. This guy in Texas, it took him a week to drive around his ranch. And the other guy says, I had a car like that once too.

[28:47]

So circumambulation is also how you establish community. and ownership. So we establish a kind of community here by circumambulating. But Kinyon has lots of reasons. This is one of its reasons and why it's a circumambulation. So we confirm the shape of the building this way. And we do it in here. And then also we can look more deeply into the concept of the building, which includes the altar, the pillars, and we can start going other ways. But they are always confirming the concept, opening up the concept, or denying the concept. And one can play with that in Kenan. I mean, you don't do it every day, but you can fool around. Why not? You have to do something to be amused here. But we can also... When you go against the keeping the right, because the right disappears into the center, and the center gets tighter and tighter, and the right keeps disappearing into the center.

[30:01]

When you go against that, against the... Then there's some kind of uneasy feeling. You're sort of undoing. One has to be careful. And there's reverse swastikas. Swastika has kind of been ruined by Nazi Germany, which tried to get mystic symbols from the East, Far East. But the two swastikas in Buddhism, which represent the turning inward of Manjushri and the turning outward of Avalokiteshvara, these two are important ways we feel embodiment. And that's also in our community. Okay, my point is, sort of, when we do these things, we are actualizing and complexifying the concept of this endo, this space.

[31:16]

But also, the embodied mind, as George Lakoff says, can only think the thoughts that the embodied mind permits. Just like we can only do kinin in here, in a certain way, you can only think certain thoughts. You only think thoughts that the embodied mind permits. You can only think certain thoughts that the non-embodied mind thinks. So if you embody the mind, more clearly embody the mind, you change the mind, you change the thinking, you change the person. And then when you accept the embodied mind, and you change the embodiment of that embodied mind, then you have teaching, wisdom, practice.

[32:21]

Just keep going around in circles on my wrist. Calm down. Yeah, I'd like to go into the how Zazen drives a wedge. Is that a good metaphor? Drives a wedge between our world views. There's a kind of dissonance. Friction between our worldviews through sitting zazen. Okay, thanks.

[33:18]

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