So Tathagata's words, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Now, of course, Tathagata is a word for Buddha. I'm not Buddha. But in some sense, the word Tathagata also means the thusness of one who comes and goes. And supposedly the Buddha actually used it as a word for, instead of saying I or my, he'd basically say, well, the one who comes and goes is doing this and that. So from that sense, I'm the one who comes and goes. Even sitting here in that sense, coming and going. And I find that what we've been speaking about and basically the practice of interdependence... Oh, it's nice that we interdependently have Craig here today and Carmen too.

[01:21]

Somehow I find it actually quite exciting to try to speak about interdependence as a practice. But as is often the case, I am not sure I have the words or the increments of the incremental concepts in which to introduce it or approach it. At least I can approach it. So I'm sitting here and there's stuff here. I mean, a lot of stuff here. you in the room and what do we call this well let's call it for the sake of lack of another word let's call it the world and then let's riff a moment again on a Buddhist look at Wittgenstein's the world is all that is the case

[02:32]

world and all limit each other. His statement and Buddhist reading of it is that anything that you can imagine out of this world is not all, is not the case. So basically it's a statement that there's no transcendence because there's nothing to transcend to because all there is is all. Okay. Okay. So we can call this the world, and we can call it allness, maybe allness. Now the world, again, as a word, it's not so approachable. But allness, yeah, maybe we can experience allness. So that's also the question, how do you experience, enact, interdependence. Because interdependence is another word for allness.

[03:39]

So I'm trying to find ways in which we can experience, because as I've often said now, Zen is a craft and the material of the craft is direct experience. Okay, so this world or this allness that's present just now, including me and you, I can divide up in various ways. Normally I divide it up by the clock. I'm here roughly around 2.30 and we'll have dinner tonight and I divide it up by I'm hungry, so I'd like to eat later, you know, like that. And I divide it up in terms of knowing each of you, my preferences, self-referential thinking, of course, I divide it up that way, what belongs to me and doesn't, what I like and don't like.

[04:50]

But maybe we can divide it, try dividing it another way. Okay. So let's now call this world and allness, let's call it pre-appearance. Well, there's no such word really, but pretty clear. Pre-appearance. Prior to appearance. Now, if I was a mosquito biting an iron bull, like our shoe sale was yesterday, the allness of this world, I mean, mosquito is as much a part of all of this as I am and you are, but the mosquito has not too much, I imagine, doesn't have too much imagination of the allness of it or something like that. So for mosquito, it's one thing. For me, I can call it pre-appearance.

[05:54]

It's a potentiality of configurations. There's a lot of configurations here. An infinite number, in fact. One kind of a finite infinity. Finite in that it's limited to this room for now, but it's a finite infinity. So there's an infinity of configurations here. Which one am I going to choose? How do I choose? Do I just do it by habit? Or can I introduce wisdom by simply calling it pre-appearance is also the introduction of wisdom. Okay. Now, if I bring attention to it, to this stuff, the world stuff, if I bring attention to it and presence, I start a process of entering into this manifestation.

[07:06]

So if I bring attention to it, then with attention I can turn this pre-appearance into appearance. Now what's going to appear? Now, what we're speaking about here, too, is a basis in the four jhanas, a basis in the rupa dhatu that allows you to not be thinking in terms of self-referential thinking and so forth, but allows you to be here in this world as pre-appearance, which is actually appearing. And it appears through your attention. And let me say also, it appears through your presence. Attention is a kind of spotlight or a brush. Sometimes in people who try to study these things, they call it the spotlight of attention.

[08:15]

I actually prefer the brush of attention. More visceral, palpable, etc., Okay, so I bring attention to appearance. I bring attention to pre-appearance and what happens is appearance. And I bring presence to it. Like you might say, I felt the presence of something, I don't know what it is. You felt the presence of somebody in a room or... Maybe later you realize you felt something. You didn't know quite what it was, but you felt the presence, okay? So presence is a kind of bodily attention which isn't conscious attention, something like that. So I can bring bodily attention, presence, and I can bring the spotlight or brush of attention. Okay. Okay. Now if I keep bringing attention to appearance, to this world as, to this pre-appearance as appearance, then I can, the center of Zen practice is to, is the impermanence and imminence of appearance.

[09:38]

The momentariness of appearance. The momentariness of appearance. So right now, we're taking this field of pre-appearance, bringing attention to it, and now it's appearing through our practice, through our wisdom, as momentary appearance. Okay. So you have to develop a kind of attentional skill to, it's not just kind of crude appearance, crude attention, an attentional skill that notices this pre-appearance as momentary appearance. And as I've said several times now recently, impermanence is not so easy to practice, but we can practice

[10:42]

momentariness and appearance. So you start the process of noticing momentariness and noticing appearance. And if you notice that mind appears on everything, and that every object is an object of perception, again, you begin to notice sameness. And sameness starts giving you a kind of unity of experience. Now you can practice that, I would suggest, using the brush of attention. Everything you notice You bring the word, I'm suggesting, you know, language you want, mind to it.

[11:46]

So I notice this, and when I notice this, I don't think stick. I just say mind, mind, mind, mind. I just use this word. something similar, to brush each object of attention, each object of perception, with the word mind. If you do, and you do it with a pace you can discover, I think you'll feel mind on each object. So you just get used to it. Just do it for a while every afternoon. I don't care when. Mind, mind, mind, mind, mind. Now calling forth, what you're doing is calling forth a kind of unity of the world because there's, again, a relational consistency.

[12:58]

if everything I see has the quality of mind, I'm beginning to see a kind of unity in the world, feel a kind of unity in the world, and that actually calls forth, it has a psychological and emotional dimension, and it calls forth an inward or inner unity of memory, associations, and so forth. So it actually begins to affect how you audit your experience. How your experience is called forth in a world where you're noticing sameness is different than how your experience, memory, associations are called forth when there's difference. Yeah, but now we want to practice with difference as well. And here we have this, you know, we like things to be, we have this, I've got a garb, a garb, by the way, Has a lot of meanings, as you know, womb and embryo.

[14:05]

Tathagata has coming and going. Tathagata. And Garba also has the sense of where things happen. Dharma means it's an attractor or something like that. It attracts, it creates situations. You're an attractor. And attractive. But an attractor. Because you are where things happen. What's your relationship to this where things happen? You could define yourself. Instead of thinking of yourself as this person or that person, think of yourself as aware things happen. And what are you going to do about being aware things happen? Hmm. Now Sukhirashi made a very interesting point in the lecture, the same lecture where he talks about being in the area of Buddha.

[15:16]

He speaks about pure being. Now let me try to give you a feeling of what he means. The establishment of pure being is to accept yourself utterly. Just as you are. With no thought that anything needs to be added. No thought that anything's missing. you could be a creep but a creep can experience pure being you know so you're not thinking i'm a creep you're thinking i accept my creepiness utterly i accept whatever's here And the dynamic of it is, without changing anything, without needing anything, it's, you know, really just now is enough.

[16:23]

Absolutely just now is enough. And there's no other choice because just now, you know, etc., etc. So this is the pure experience of pure being that it can arise from just now is enough. So you accept yourself just as you are, without any feeling there's something missing or that you need anything. Okay. Then you extend that feeling to everything around you. Everything around you, you accept just as it is. Now Sukershi says, all activity should start from the point of view of pure being. The starting point of all activity ought to be, from the point of view of wisdom, pure being. So it's not an experience of purity, it's an experience of being and nothing else.

[17:33]

So, just imagine or practice with, see if you can get a feeling for this starting point of pure being. Nothing needs to be changed. You don't need to be changed. The world around you doesn't need to be changed. Now, we let things appear. And they appear as sameness, And they appear then as a kind of unity. Some kind of unity appears. But also if you're practicing momentariness, uniqueness appears. So momentariness is when you experience it in its most precise, full sense, it's uniqueness. Because no moment is repeated.

[18:43]

Okay. Now if you, this world here, now, this pre-appearance is now appearing as sameness and appearing as difference, simultaneously. Wound, embryo, difference, sameness. It appears, and you can handle it. You can't think, oh, I can't experience sameness and difference at the same time. Sameness is difference, difference is sameness, form is emptiness, etc. You're not that simple. At each moment there's difference and sameness. And you're bringing the continuum of a non-subject, let's call it a non-subjective continuum. Mosquitoes, iron bulls, mountains. Of course, you're born with. Dogen says, we're all born with mountains, rivers, and the whole earth. Well, the mountains and rivers you're born with are not the same as somebody else is born with.

[19:54]

You have a different experience of mountains and rivers. So they're born with you. The mountains you know are not the same as the mountains the mountains I know are not the same as the mountains Dan knows. Oh, he knows mountains. But also, in another sense, everything, even though mountains and rivers precede us in life and succeed us in death, still, we're all born from the same predictive conditions. Mountains predict humans, humans predict rivers. There's not mountains without rivers and so forth. In some sense, the non-subjective continuum is somehow also us, but let's call it a non-subjective continuum. And then there's a subjective continuum of your perceptions, and you're bringing the non-subjective continuum,

[20:56]

external world together with your subjective continuum of perception. So you're bringing a non-subjective continuum together with a subjective continuum which we're calling appearance. And now we're calling it appearance as momentariness and uniqueness and appearance as sameness and unity. Now, if you practice these things separately, they begin to just simply come together in a non-contradictory way. So now instead of bringing the brush of mind to each object of perception, Let's bring the brush of difference. So every time you see something, you say, difference, [...] difference.

[22:09]

And strangely, it calls forth a different you on each moment. I mean, if we do have appearance as inter-emergence, Because what we do have, we have two ideas here. Interdependence and interpenetration. So I can create a word, inter-emergence. At each moment things are, A is inside, as I say, A is beside B, and A is inside B, and B is inside C, and C is inside A and B. That's sort of the way the world is. Floating inside itself. And you're floating inside it. This is interdependence. Interpenetration. Something new is always emerging in this allness. You can't say it's oneness. Allness is not oneness.

[23:11]

Something new is emerging. Interemergence. Interpenetrating emergence. And maybe we can experience this. Maybe we can enact it. Well, one of the ways, I've given you two or three words, mainly momentariness and appearance, to try to practice impermanence. Now we're trying to practice interdependence. Because this is also interdependence, but interdependence is quite hidden. Impermanence is not so hidden. And we can see impermanence when we divide impermanence up into momentariness and appearance. But interdependence is a little harder to... It's hidden. Interdependence is hidden in the manifest world. But how can we sort it out, bring it into an experiential dimension?

[24:15]

Well, one way is to see it relatedness. The microphone is on the floor. This platform is on the floor. I'm on the platform. So relatedness is something close to causal interdependence. So you can begin to kind of get a proprioceptive sense, visceral gut sense of interrelatedness. And you can begin to act within interrelatedness. I mean, we're doing it all the time. You take a walk, you're walking within interrelatedness, but let's bring it to the forefront of attention. I mean, an athlete playing tennis or something like that is doing nothing but acting within interrelatedness. The ball's coming, the net is there, and so forth.

[25:18]

Now, that's probably why people... Must be one reason people like sports. But let's act, let's make it in the forefront of consciousness that we're acting within interrelatedness. We're interrelated, everything is interrelated, and we're acting within interrelatedness. And at a pace at which you can feel the interrelatedness, you know, just like walking along and thinking about something else, at each moment you're acting within interrelatedness. That's one reason in Japan at temples they make the stone steps going to the temple not the same pace. So that you approach it through interrelations and often the path does not go directly to the temple door. It goes this way and it goes that way and then it goes over there and then it goes. You'd think you want to make a shortcut. But the idea is to make you approach it spatially.

[26:19]

And then they'll put stairs where you don't need them, just so the stairs change your pace as you go up. That's articulating a practice of interrelatedness, to make you interrelate, instead of trying to make it as easy as possible, as flat sidewalks as possible, and so forth. Wouldn't it be fun if in big cities we had sidewalks suddenly bumps in the middle and little holes and stuff like that? It would make it much more interesting to walk past a building. And a sculpture would do that. If we thought of the city as a sculpture, you'd sculpt the sidewalks. And the temple and Buddhists are saying we can sculpt our grounds. Which is really what I want to do. I hope I live long enough to sculpt our grounds. One of my dreams is to sculpt this ground. I love people who say, I don't want to go practice Buddhism there, but I want to go walk around on the garden sculpture. And then we get them to sit.

[27:24]

If they want it. So you can begin trying to practice, enact, bring to the forefront of attention interrelatedness. Our stones out here are kind of a mess and they force a certain kind of interrelatedness. And the mud and so forth. If you begin to practice interrelatedness, you come to the edge of allness. And allness cannot be approached with attention except a field attention or a presence. And allness requires a kind of acquiescence. Acquiescence means to give up, but it actually means to enter quietness. You hear the word quiet in acquiescence. So the acquiesce is to enter a kind of quietness in relationship to things.

[28:31]

To enter a kind of quietness in relationships. And it requires a kind of immersion, as if you were almost plunging into the situation, not knowing exactly what you're plunging into. Really what this is about is allness requires a non-conceptual intimacy. Non-dual, non-conceptual. Intimacy. And when your own boundaries are transgressed, maybe, abandoned, the boundarylessness of the world, Dogen says, he's very clear about this, the true human body is the entire universe.

[29:35]

Well, what's the true human body for a mosquito? I don't know. But the true human body for us is what in this world that appears, that appears through our being where things happen. The appearance of uniqueness, kind of unity, and then all of this. And within this territory, which I am asking you to explore, is the enactment of, the practice of, and the experienceable entire universe as a true human body. And what happens through that?

[30:43]

What incubation occurs through that? It's for you to find out. I think that's enough for just now. Thank you very much. and equally penetrate every...

[31:12]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.75