I missed, I'm sorry, I missed Corral's talk yesterday. But if David, do we have the tape? Okay. Thank you. I'll listen to it. Everything's beginning to happen very quickly. Soon Sashin will start. Practice period will be over. So, before that we have Shuso ceremony and Shosan ceremony and Sashin. I guess two or three people are coming to the Sashin, are they? Five. Geez, I've never had a practice period Sashin with people come to it. I'm either losing my way or becoming undefinably compassionate.

[01:08]

I don't know. Maybe neither, both. I'm thinking of, I don't know, of having two schedules. One schedule for the people in the practice period and one schedule for the people outside the practice. I don't know how it would work, though. They could follow our schedule, but no, no. Maybe they could sit in a separate room. We could make the other zendo and rebuild the old zendo. I told you it would smell like a barn in here as soon as we got these tatamis in. And they make the jump up to your cushion so much harder. I think maybe we need a thinner cushion. Such a height.

[02:10]

If you hide the world in the world, no one will find it. doesn't this koan say something like that and this koan is again a koan of Samantabhadra's realm and quite useful I think for us though when I read it last night for the first time in a long time I was put off a little by the Zen jargon and a powerful man always does this and What about a weak woman? Or even a weak man? And so I have to allow a certain... make allowance for the time and the period and the context and everything. And also this is a late koan in the book, so it's got more jargon in it as they go along.

[03:21]

I mean, it's good to be powerful, but its emphasis should be on finding your own power. And that power is really a kind of subtlety. Is subtlety a kind of subtlety? So, if you hide the world in the world, hiding the world in the world, no one will find it. Entering Samantabhadra's door, it's not necessary to take a step. Now, Swamsa, quite famous Zen master, and actually, The Fayan school was originally called the Xuansha school because Xuansha is the grandfather of Fayan.

[04:30]

And Fayan is also a latecomer to Zen. He's, at least the anecdotes about him, he's liked fishing. Sukhiroshi liked to fish for eels for some reason. When his father was away from the temple as a little boy, he'd go fish for eels in the stream. But I don't remember if he got caught or he felt that he would get... I can't remember the story right now, what he told me. Anyway, he stopped. That used to be a problem for the kids, because I would... When they'd go fishing, they didn't want me to go with them, because I was always throwing the fish back in. What would I do now? Have sushi. I don't know what I would do now. It's still hard to see a fish sort of dying on the dock, you know. Anyway, he liked fishing, and he hung out with fisher folk, is the way the traditional bios tell it, as you've probably read some of them.

[05:38]

And he was 30 when he finally decided to enter practice, so he was rather late at it. And then he practiced pretty hard and he was called, I think it says in the koan, I don't remember, Ascetic Bey. Because he just would sit all day long. Even not in the zendo, he just, he sort of like, you put him somewhere and he'd just stay there. You know, he'd lift a crane up. Let's set Schwanch over there. And three or four days later he'd come, he'd still be sitting there all night. Anyway, he was that kind of person. So here you can see there's quite a contrast with the previous koan and this question of Bodhidharma coming to the West because Swanshya didn't do anything, just stayed there and he went out again.

[06:41]

Probably telling you things you know, but this is, you know, things we should emphasize in the koan or see in the koan. He went out for a walk. I know he went out for a pilgrimage to visit other teachers. And he got not very far and he stumbled and hit his toe. And I guess it hurt. And it's quoted there in the koan. This pain, this body's not exist. Where did this pain come from? It's a good question, you know, when you're sitting. Sashin, you can ask that the third day. Where does this pain come from? I don't care where it comes from, you know. So he said, Bodhidharma didn't come from China, from India. And the second patriarch didn't go to India or whatever it is. I have a scroll made by Swakikoto Roshidat. The nun, Zhou Shanshan, gave me with a staff like this, painted.

[07:46]

And it says, Bodhidharma didn't come to China and the second patriarch didn't go to India. If you enter by Samantabhadra's door, you don't need to take a single step. And Xuanzhe went to this party, for a nine-day party, and I guess Sarah was cooking and everybody was having a great time listening to Chinese music. It's the only music they had. Next day he says, where did all the festivities go? Where did all the commotion go? So, you know, this is a story of, he went somewhere, he didn't go to India, but went to a party.

[08:55]

And when you're in Japan, they throw these parties for the, you go out begging, and it's pretty tough, and then you end up at some parishioner's house who plies you with sake and whiskey and feeds you and it's a big thing for them to feed the monks, at least when I went begging it was. And it's a feast or fry. No, what's the expression? Feast or famine. This was, I didn't even like that. And then it's got the traditional box, you know, kind of, again, jargon I said, box and lid fit together. Arrow points meet. This is something quite interesting with a net loosely, a loose net, but arrow points meeting inside. Now the practice here, and it's very similar to

[10:03]

Dzogchen practice as far as I know, as far as I can tell. When I read Dzogchen practice, I feel I'm in the same world as Zen. I don't know it from the inside. But this practice is... First of all, how do you recognize the Dharmakaya in yourself already? Dhammakaya is just, I mean, you know, I don't mean to present practice as something like if you practice this way or you have some kind of experience or something, suddenly the world is different. You perceive it differently. Yeah, maybe some, but mostly it's just exactly the same. Everything's exactly the same. People look the same.

[11:05]

The world looks the same. But there's nothing hanging off it. Nothing goes anywhere. It definitely feels different. So part of the practice emphasized in this Enter Samantabhadra's Door Without a Step is, first of all, faith that enlightenment is right here. The dharmakaya is right here. Realization is right here. If you don't have that faith, I'm afraid your practice will always be in the realm of thinking and hoping and so forth. Because the world is hidden in the world and it's not seeable except through Faith, a kind of faith. And it's useful to study transitions.

[12:11]

Waking to sleeping. Sleeping, dreaming. Feeling of sense, the knowledge of being born, the knowledge of dying. the transitions in waking consciousness itself, from what you are doing to tesha, from whatever your mind is, and bringing your mind into your concentration. Because if the dharmakaya, that's what they're talking about in this koan, is right here, It's some kind of transition that you have to make. If you don't believe it's possible, that's what I call faith, you won't make the transition. If you believe it's possible and you keep facing it, you know, you can see the transition when you look at a dog, a tree, a baby, some transition occurs.

[13:28]

Now sometimes this is called, you know, Vyrochana is called like primordial Buddha. And primordial means first weaving. Primus and ordeal is weaving, first weaving. But maybe we need a pre-ordeal, before the first weaving. Like in that earlier koan, hold to the moment before thought arises and then throw that away. Hold to the moment before thought arises and throw that away. So box and lid has one meaning of, simple meaning of, of course interdependence of phenomena. But more subtly it means realizing continuity of mind and difference, and the unity of the two.

[14:32]

So it's the boxes right here enclosing everything. And arrow points is the mind that doesn't need duration to know something. Arrow points are always meeting, but we don't notice it. But if you notice it, you find out something. Now there's a kind of karmic engagement here, which is dharmic engagement. Engage yourself in each situation. I mean, if you don't have karmic engagement, you can't have dharmic engagement. So I'm talking about an engaged mindfulness.

[15:35]

I don't know. I mean, actually, I'm trying to find some language here for this. Now, as I've often told you, you know, this... long stretch of practice for me in the early days, my practice. There are many things, you know, but this one I find easy to talk about. And since it stretched almost a year and a half, it was a pretty long time in those first few years. As I practiced, as some of you have taken the practice too, no place to go and nothing to do. And that practice is Samantabhadra's practice, is entering Samantabhadra's door without taking a step. Because no place to go and nothing to do in the midst of going puts you on the threshold of the dharmakaya.

[16:43]

Now, for me, I just intuitively took these phrases. You know, it was a pretty primitive practice for me at the time, though. Changed my life, but still pretty primitive. But strange, you know, one thing you do is, one thing it did for me is over the year or so, establish continuity of mind. I finally could keep a phrase continuously present with me night and day. Took a year if I remember, and a quarter actually. And establishing continuity of mind is establishing the, the, one description of or the first phase of realizing sameness. And you're trying in a practice period to keep like putting your settling your mind in each moment.

[17:50]

Even more subtly the moment before thought arises. Now, I've been talking about calm abiding, but maybe I should say something like profound abiding. Again, I'm trying to find language for this, because one aspect of our practice, I mean, that I'm, again, describing here in English, not following technical terms in Buddhist languages, It's clearly what we're doing is establishing physical stability. You don't scratch, sit there. And that physical ability is the ability to sit through anything is probably the single greatest strength any of us can get. So establishing physical stability leads to an inner seeing, a way of seeing through that stability that's different than when you see jumping around and distracted.

[18:59]

Now, what practice period emphasizes, Zazen and Sashin emphasizes physical stability. Practice period emphasizes mental stabilization, which results in a profound abiding. I'm saying, instead of calm about it. You simply, you can, there's a mental stabilization which allows you to abide in each situation. And you can feel it physically though, of course. And here you bring mental stabilization and physical stabilization together. And what you need to do is find some phrase And as a traditional Zen way to do it is to find some phrase from a koan or a dronuk here, make it up, that leads you, that helps you bring mental, establish mental stabilization and bring mental and physical stabilization together.

[20:06]

When you do this, you're changing your context, you're changing your threshold. You're changing the framework. The koan says, duckweed makes its own pattern. It's a floating plant that makes patterns as it floats without doing anything. So establishing mental stabilization, strangely enough, allows you to to make a transition without going to China, coming to India, going to India, coming to China, without taking a single step, you discover a transition into a timeless, spacious feeling which you already know.

[21:09]

You'll discover you already know it. And part of practice, this practice is to notice the ways in which you already know it. So anyway, this koan emphasizes the threshold of the Dharmakaya, emphasizes going to China, going to India, going to Crestone without taking a step. And you can practice with that feeling. So they give you examples. Another example of Swansha stubbing his toe, turning back and staying in this temple. And his teacher even asked him, why don't you travel? He said again a version of Bodhidharma.

[22:10]

Was it Baoshou in the koan? He's famous for heading to go to a monastery and from across the river, it says he didn't cross the river. Well, that story is he saw a temple with its flag, prayer flag or something, blowing in the wind. And at that moment he felt he'd arrived at the monastery. or been at the monastery, and he turned around and went. He didn't cross the river to the monastery. So this practice is, wherever you are, in whatever circumstances you are, in this practice period, in Crestone and the new Tatamis and everything, it's just to give you some aid in finding this threshold. over which you don't even need to take a single step.

[23:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_86.07