Well, we see how frail we are, how frail our health is, as we did this service at lunchtime. And we see how the strong feelings of a few people can put the whole world in a kind of purgatory right now. And, you know, we might be better off than during the Cold War when we, I think, 16 times, 20 times came very close to blowing the world up. I don't think we're in that bad a place now, but we're in a pretty bad place.

[01:02]

And it's clear that, to me anyway, I think it must be to most people, that we can't, the world which is so much in touch with all parts are in touch with each other, you can't have such a different way of living one part of the world than another part of the world. Because people's feelings and anger and so forth is, as we can see, extremely potent. And yet we're extremely redundant, persistent entities, beings, and even our health can take tremendous assaults, you know, over-drinking, over-eating, and somehow still we stay alive, most of us.

[02:14]

just saying something here, and I'm thinking of it in terms of what I've been calling recently Apache talk because I read somewhere that Apache Indians, maybe I mentioned it the other day, Apache Indians thought of a conversation as a sharing of images, as a sharing of images, which weren't expected to be concluded during the conversation, but rather to work in each person and then at various periods they'd come back and see how those images had worked in the persons. And eventually I think some kind of, through that process, some common image or decision or direction was And perhaps that wouldn't work in many circumstances, but it is characteristic of, I think, the deeper workings of how we think and conclude things.

[03:33]

And it's definitely the way that koans work. In koans there's a series of usually several images which are meant to not be understood but work in you. And so a koan also can work in you differently at different times or differently at the same time. And we come back to it, and we come back to it together. Zen, Buddhism, and Buddhism, Zen especially, but Buddhism in general, is a multi-generational working with images. And you know, I get myself in trouble.

[04:38]

I say something, I don't know, a week or two ago. I first came back about, you know, the wake-up bell. You know, this is the topic of this session, really, the wake-up bell. Do we understand the wake-up bell in the absolute or relative? And what does it mean to say our practices are rooted in the absolute? Well, I said that, you know, and I think I know what I mean. And to me it's the logic of, it's the If you don't understand it, you would have a hard time continuing this teaching, this practice, because you would soon differentiate in ways which have no inner logic, and that inner logic is rooted in the Absolute. But if I say that, now I'm in trouble. How do I say what the Absolute is? What we mean by the Absolute. And is it important to you, to us now doing Sushim,

[05:40]

Well, you know, I don't know. I'm letting Sashin be important to you, in whatever way it is to be here stewing in your own juices, you know, stuck in your own self-images. But still, you know, I take our practice seriously, and I keep trying to touch our way of doing things with practice, at least as I understand it, and try to practice it. Now, in Europe, you know, I said yesterday, I guess it was, that, you know, for some reason, a sangha developed in... the German language and there's a certain kind of friendliness among German people and care of each other that's present today in Germany that really let Asanga develop.

[06:57]

And I think also a kind of probably the dynamic of of having their past kind of wiped out and wanting to look for new ways of being in the world. you know, and America's not very old either, so I think there's some kind of similarity in the way the Dharma is being practiced in Germany and German-speaking countries and the United States. But in any case, that happens to be what is happening with our Dharma Sangha, our larger Dharma Sangha. Okay. So, this Sangha developed And at some point there was, as I said, more and more interest in doing sashins, which I said no to. And so I know the Sangha pre-Sashin Sangha.

[08:07]

That's rather interesting because here there were Sashins from the beginning. And there's always some people do Sashins and some people haven't, etc. But in Europe and the people I practiced with, which was quite a large number of people actually, most of them hadn't done any Sashins until we started doing them. So there was the pre-Sashin Sangha, and then there was the Sangha after Sashins, and it was definitely different. It was almost like people's blood was different. Something was running in their lives that was different. And of course some people left. Some people didn't like the shift. They liked the way it was. A large percentage continued and new people came doing sashins and so forth. And then we started Yohanasov. And there was a definite shift.

[09:10]

And then there were some key people who left then, too. They liked it the way it was, didn't like to change. And one of the losses, actually, is because we did sashins, but we had to do pick-up sashins, sort of like... We had to arrive, because I won't do a sashin unless we eat orioke meals and so forth. Because a sashin is an institution, it is not just more sitting. So somehow in this place, the house distiller, we had to create a sashin. So we really moved into this place. I don't know if any of you know it, but... We insisted that we cook the meals. We wouldn't let them cook for us. We're the only group that... Lots of blues groups use this place. Which didn't do the cooking. We didn't let them do the cooking.

[10:10]

They were professional cooks. Nice people. And... I can't think of his name right now. And so we did the cooking, so we had to arrive with a whole, pretty soon they allowed us to store. We stored all the pots that we carried and everything, because we did big sashimi, pretty big sashimi there. The room would, we could squeeze 64 people into the room or something. And so we usually had 60, 65 people selling the sashimi. So we had to have all the cooking, all the bowls and all the everything in, and And bells, they had different bells, so we had bells. They didn't have enough refrigeration, so we had to buy them a refrigerator. So we really made this place a place we could arrive. We spent three weeks a year there. One practice week and two sessions a year. And...

[11:14]

One of the good things about that is lots of people got a chance to train as don'ts. So we had a lot of people become don'ts. You'd have to agree to be tenzo for three years in a row to be tenzo. Or three sashins in a row, I guess it was. And you'd have to, the eno. But a lot of people got a chance to be eno and they didn't know anything about it. They weren't ordained or anything. That was a nice aspect of it. Once we got Yohannesov, The pros took over, you know. You go to Yohannesov and it's very hard to bring somebody in who's never been tenzo before and say, okay, you're tenzo now. You know, it doesn't work. So you have a professional ino and a professional tenzo. I mean, I'm joking, but the residential staff runs the sessions. And a lot of people miss that. They like the idea that, hey, maybe I'll be ino next time. Maybe I'll be tenzo next time or something like that. But I can't figure it out. I can't see how we can, you know, how we can train.

[12:22]

It's too bad to limit some of this practice experience to those who decide to devote their life to it or be residents for several years. But anyway, it's the way it is. I can't solve all the problems. But after Yohannesov, The Sangha definitely changed. And what's interesting is there's almost a kind of morphogenetic field that... I don't care what's his name, the English guy... Rupert Sheldrake, quite a good friend of mine. Anyway, he has this idea of morphogenetic fields, that when you create a field, others in it learn much more rapidly in the field. Not many scientists agree with him, but there seems to be, at least in our practice, a lot of truth to it. So, once a field is created of practice, the new people get the hang of it much, feel of it much quicker.

[13:33]

So now I'm actually quite impressed. And it's very different than the Sangha that Dan and I grew up in in San Francisco in the 60s and 70s, because it was all young people and all new people. And now the Sangha in Europe is all ages, lots of people, some even older than me, quite a few older than me. And they have a tremendous amount of experience. Some have experience with Deshi Maharoshi, some have experience with this other person or that person or yoga or something. But there's a lot of yogic experience in the group now. And even if they haven't practiced with some other teacher or something, Ayya Khema or someone, it's in the atmosphere.

[14:36]

As I said, like Freudianism is in the atmosphere. Certain kind of understanding of meditation and Buddhism and so forth. And then we have quite a lot of people, mostly as laypeople, I've been practicing a long time. Now, I'm not really talking to you about the Dharma Saga Europe. I'm talking to you about a process of practice in our society, which I happen to be able to see in Europe in a very clear stages, in fairly clear stages, on a fairly big scale. A bigger scale than here, because we're quite small. And I am really impressed because there's a large, I do a seminar or a session or something, say 50 people, a seminar might be more, 80 or something. A very large percentage of them are really conversant with practice and really have actualized much of practice in their lives, even as lay people.

[15:48]

With all the problems, it's harder to do it as a lay person. I'm, you know, sometimes I think people understand this, but mostly I'm amazed that people not only do understand, but have actually brought it into their lives. Okay. So what I'm proposing here, or thinking about here, is what is the meme to use Dawkins' term, that kind of societal cultural gene, what is the meme of Buddhism going to do in our culture? I mean, you're the meme. You're the memes. And I would say that the India-China relationship produced a Buddhism you can practice, not just a Buddhism you can understand.

[16:57]

Something like that. And I would say that the Chinese-Japanese relationship ended up producing in Japan a Buddhist culture. which has a funny universal quality. All of us, people all over the world appreciate Japanese objects, Japanese theater, etc. People all over the world don't produce, don't appreciate Chinese opera. I mean, you can't make sense of Chinese opera, but you don't have to be anybody and you can make sense of a Japanese no play. Certain sense. So somehow, Buddhist culture in Japan produced a culture which has a universal quality. So what is the meme of the Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Western relationship going to produce in our culture?

[18:09]

And I don't think we're going to go backwards to some kind of Asian, other Asian, some Asian version of Buddhism. Because there's going to be an evolution of Buddhism in the West. This I'm sure of. I don't say that it's good or bad, it's just I'm sure it's going to be the case. So when we try to sort out something, you know, you and I, us together, try to sort out something like, what the heck does it mean, the absolute? Our practice is rooted in the absolute and not the relative Western culture or relative itself as things in a comparative framework. Whatever the comparative framework. Well, we don't know, and I don't even know if I can say too much that's clear about it, but I think we can get a sense of it together and continue it in this kind of Apache practice of letting these practices, teachings, images,

[19:37]

views, insights, work in us. So I would hope, and what a Sushin for me is, partly, you know, each of us is immersed in our own personal history in Sushin. But also, you're immersed in the memes, images of Buddhist practice. You kind of dive into it here and swim out of it back into your own life and some of it is continues with So I, then I got myself in trouble talking about Jibo and the hermit adept and Mark got me in trouble by bringing up, you know, Bai Jiang and so forth.

[20:44]

So, okay. So I said, it's like a gesture or a greeting. So let's imagine, let's just think of it as a greeting and imagine that we greeted each other implicitly, not necessarily explicitly. But every time you saw somebody, you thought to yourself, what is this extraordinary affair? When you said hi, what is this extraordinary affair? And maybe you're body you're feeling with something different than just saying, hi, how are you? You know, in the monastery, in the heiji, for example, they don't say hello, they say persist. It used to drive me nuts, you know. They say, gambate, and you meet another monk. Gambate. I don't want to persist. They don't say hello, good morning, get anything. Persist.

[21:47]

Yeah. I've had enough of persistence. And I'm a pretty persistent person. So you can have various kinds of greetings. Kampate. And they also say, ohayo gozaimasu. You know? So you meet, I've practiced, both of us practiced in daityogaji, and they don't say, good morning, they say, ush, oh, oh, oh, ohayo gozaimasu, ush, yes, they say, ush, oh, good morning, ush, yeah. Anyway, so we can try various things. I greet, um, um, Sophia, when Louise puts her on the phone, I go, she knows, oh, that's my dad. So the greeting gets her attention. and lets her put other things aside, who is it, what is it, and she beams right in.

[22:54]

And I can also feel in her all these intricate little invisible architecture, invisible spaces that exist between Sophia and myself, and somewhat different ones and much more complex that exist between Marie-Louise and Sophia. And I can see when she greets, her aunt was here, from England was here, for a week or so, just left for Sashin. I can see the aunt has made friends with her, but all these little intricate spaces, small spaces. Facial gestures, this side of the lip is different from this side of the lip, and this is different from the two parts of the upper lip, the nose and I mean, there's all kinds of little things that we do, and we do them more with people who we're intimate with or familiar with. So you could start greeting people in this way, like you could say to yourself, are you settled?

[24:08]

Are you settled? Hello, what your feeling is. Are you settled? Probably better not to say, are you settled or not? Because the not already is a kind of like a little dig. Just are you settled? Are you settled? Are you at ease in yourself? Or even deeper, are you... Hmm? Rooted in the Absolute. I don't want to say resting in the Absolute. Rooted in the Absolute. That would be a little presumptuous. Hey, how are you today? You rooted in the Absolute? You know, that's as bad as persist. But in fact, when we meet people, they're always in a process of a kind of integration-disintegration process. They're kind of a little bit falling apart or they're coming together. And if you think you're not part of the process, then you believe the world is permanent.

[25:17]

You believe objects are permanent. If you know that there's nothing but intersubjectivity, by definition, by fact, then you are part of the process of whether they're integrating or disintegrating. And it's a direction. They're not going to fall apart in front of you. They might, but usually they don't. Usually he or she doesn't. And you can feel it. You can feel it in your own body, mind. So whether you like it or not, we are part of a subtle direction toward integration, direction toward disintegration. And you can feel it in your own sitting. When you're sitting, you can feel whether you're sometimes disintegrating, sometimes you're integrating. And it has a lot to do with our posture too. Feeling of clarity in our body and so forth. So I think some kind of dialogue, it's not a dialectic, is going on every time you see someone.

[26:26]

And the more you're just thinking in categories, you don't notice it. When you're there feeling each situation, each person, before you think about it, then you can become more present to that. So, you know, some of the phrases we worked with, just now is enough. you could have the feeling. I mean, I think I would say I have the feeling whenever I meet anyone, I have the feeling, first of all, my feeling is just now enough. Because that's the kind of baseline for me, I immediately see the degree to which just now is not enough in the person. So some sort of habit of greeting someone of recognizing, you know, when you say, when you say good morning, what are you doing?

[27:29]

You're putting the person in a bigger context. The morning, the day, the sun's rising, what's the weather today? This is, you know, sounds in, you know, it's usually inane, inanities, social inanities, perhaps. But actually, there you are, and we say, hey, today, That's changing the context. So, if you say implicitly, I have some feeling, it's just now enough. That's not so different conceptually than saying good morning. Because you're changing the frame. But you're just changing the frame with a kind of wisdom input. Something a little different. So we see that in these dialogues.

[28:46]

It's made very explicit in these dialogues. And there are key points when you first meet somebody, like someone might come to practice or might ask me to do sashin. And I might, and I often do, ask them something which is a normal greeting, but there's another side to it which is more like, is just now enough? Or, how's the one who's not busy? Or, are you always close to this? And I would hide it in the ordinary greeting, but a more alert person would return an ordinary greeting and would at the same time answer the undertext. And that's it, you know. Maybe we all do that to some degree, naturally enough, but

[29:50]

Zen has a tradition of making it more conscious, and these stories are often about transitional points in two people's relationship or in a person's life. So what are some of the gates of the entries or accessible examples, experiential examples of the absolute? Now, absolute and relative are phrases used. Absolute is not, you could say the absolute means emptiness.

[30:52]

Relative means form. That's not quite true, though, because the way you use them is different. And to say relative is a different way of looking at form than to just say form. So Zen, rather than talk about emptiness in experiential terms so much, speaks about this phasal quality, a phase, a pulse of absolute and relative. an experiential phasal quality. So here she says in the section which begins, the way to control your cow is to give her a big pasture. This is a reference to uncorrected Zazen mind. It's interesting why a white ox or a cow is used as

[31:56]

a description of our practice self. But that's another tissue. Then he says, to live in the realm of Buddha nature is to die moment after moment as a small being. It's one of the most Well, far-reaching sentences in the whole book. To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being moment after moment. Okay. When I say just now is enough to myself, I'm dying as a small being. Because the experience of just now is enough is an experience of the absolute.

[33:01]

It's fairly easy to understand relative and absolute. Relative is like, 12 o'clock is relative to 11.15, 11.30. There's no absolute 12 o'clock. And relative means not the conditioned world, but the comparative world. Things measured through, understood through comparison. Whenever you don't do that, you're in the direction of the absolute. Now let's also understand these things. They're not room one, room absolute, room relative, but rather they're direction, the direction toward the absolute or the direction toward the relative. When your direction is toward the absolute, we say that's the absolute. Because we're alive, we're not, you know, we're She also said, everything changing means everything's falling out of balance in the same fascicle.

[34:05]

And to see that everything's falling out of balance and that we are falling out of balance against a background, he says, of perfect harmony, I'd say a background of profound interconnectedness. Everything's changing, everything's falling out of balance against a profound background of profound interconnectedness. That's also to die as a small being, moment after moment, when you feel this background of profound complexity. It's also an experience of awe, an experience of incomprehensibility.

[35:13]

Sometimes I say mystery, but maybe incomprehensibility is better. When you really are outside the frame and things can't really be predicted or determined, and you feel the incomprehensibility of a simple moment, this is also an experience of the absolute. So it's quite clear that absolute is experienced through knowing the relative, and relative is experienced through knowing the absolute. You experience the relative as relative, not as permanent, through knowing the absolute. These are the so-called three natures of Yogacara. So it's a

[36:14]

So, for Suzuki Roshi to say to die as a small being moment after moment means we need the small being in order that the small being can die so that we can know the Absolute. It's not like getting rid of the small being. The small being, as form is exactly emptiness, the small being is exactly experientially the gate. Knowing its relative is the gate of the Absolute. So when you greet someone, good morning, you greet someone, just now is enough. You are, the small being of yourself is dying at that moment and it helps move the other person in that direction. I think so anyway. This is bodhisattva practice as well. What it means, what bodhisattva practice means. To feel that moment after moment, dying as a small being, appearing as a great being, or whatever you want to say, feeling that in your own activity and with others is bodhisattva practice.

[37:32]

So we can take some of the phrases we worked with. I'm always close to this. This is also... We could say practicing that is in the direction of the absolute. To know that all you know of an object is your knowing of the object is to be in the realm of the absolute. So I said, Sophia, there's this, how do you like doing? In the realm of the relative and the absolute. You're welcome to move, because I talk too much. I said, Sophia, I can see in Sophia this tanha, this thirst, hunger, for not less than everything. But the not less than everything are things that she...

[38:39]

It's consciousness. So consciousness is this flow of consciousness and this evolution of consciousness. Consciousness constructs consciousness. So she's constructing selves and she's constructing objects in the phenomenal world. and she creates a structure, a particular kind of structured consciousness that would be typical of her parents and you, all of you, and her way of thinking, her way of leaning down toward her, or picking her up, all is a process of constructing consciousness. Now, if we can get her to realize that all these new things, you know, she likes her toys, they're okay. They're a little more amusing than a plastic milk bottle. But the plastic milk bottle, the first time she sees it, is more amusing than 50 toys.

[39:44]

So, plastic milk bottle is new. She thinks it's the greatest thing in the world. Now, if we can somehow get her to feel that Yes, she's now shaping her consciousness through all these new objects, but also she doesn't just know the object, she knows her knowing of the object. That would be the bifurcation, or the turn in the road toward Buddhism. If she knows her knowing of the object, So another example of the absolute is to simply be conscious that you're conscious without any thought or interaction. You know, somebody might call it daydreaming, I don't know. But to be conscious that you're conscious.

[40:48]

Consciousness of consciousness. You can rest in a consciousness of consciousness. That also is the absolute. So there's many little entries to this that you get familiar with these surfaces. Consciousness of consciousness just now is enough. Good morning. Incomprehensibility. Now, if in the process of trying to give Sophia, and I'm not treating Sophia as an experiment, I'm just loving her, but I still have to relate to her in terms of my own experience. So if I tend to emphasize what I'm calling a reciprocate self or proportionate self, which doesn't necessarily have to go in the direction of a group self or collective self, collective consciousness,

[41:54]

but can go toward, let's say, a proportionate consciousness, because a proportionate self, I think, is one of the keys to this profound interconnectedness. Now, that's a meme. When we start, in our Western culture, recognizing the evolution of selves toward the Elida-Visniala, Amala-Visniala, and so forth, that's the ninth one that Paramahansa, the ninth vision, that we're introducing something new into our culture. If you have children who have a different, slightly different way of gathering personal history in the docket of whatever self they carry as continuity, You're evolving your own society.

[42:58]

You're evolving yourself. You're not different than Sophia. If you practice, you put yourself in a fluid state, somewhat fluid state, and the pain in your knees and the bell ever ringing and so forth is a kind of fluid state in which your own structures of consciousness, you become aware of them. They kind of break down. Something more that functions better for you has to be put together. You can see when you suffer less or when you suffer more or when more and more of your karma pours in and when less of your karma pours in. And this way of talking, I'm talking now, Yogicara school, assumes that all acts are not retributed. That all acts don't end up shaping you.

[44:08]

And that you can find a way, through the Absolute, to be free of prior conditioning. That's the point of this practice. And the self is not such a bad thing because, you know, we, when you're conscious, consciousness, the secret is consciousness can be conscious of itself. And that can be a kind of knowledge. And so consciousness which constructs our worlds, our phenomena and selves, can be reconstructed through a kind of knowing which is part of the self. But it's a part of the self which knows the limitations of consciousness as well, and the functionality of self, not the permanence of self. Somehow that's enough.

[45:27]

Thank you very much.

[45:33]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.36