And let me talk a little bit about the difficulties of teaching, because they relate to the difficulties in understanding and practicing. I don't have anything planned to say about this exactly, but just what occurs to me having just done this is, for example, Some of you know, since you've come here from Europe, I've been teaching the last three or four years in Europe quite a bit. And I don't do, we don't chant at the beginning of the lecture. And for a while, some years ago in San Francisco, I dropped chanting. at the beginning of the lecture. And I found people, the audience, the people I was speaking with, their minds were still stuck outside where they'd been.

[01:09]

Chanting helps something. Makes you just say these things you don't know what they mean. Mostly, just sounds. So what I find in Europe, It's actually I do something equivalent to chanting, but it's not chanting. I come in the room and do certain things. I find I'm feeling out how to get people's minds able to listen to Buddhist... And we have usually in those circumstances... Sometimes they're just lectures, but usually for a weekend, there's time to do something. And then in October, we did a session here, which is mostly just the residents, and we had discussion and a lecture and a study period.

[02:21]

We worked on a particular koan during it. And it, I think, went pretty well, better than when we did something similar last October, a year ago, a year and some ago. By the way, I haven't asked, but for those of you who recently come from Germany, Ruth and Gabby, Neil, is my English okay? I mean, there's words that you can't, aren't familiar with, you can just ask me. I don't know where my vocabulary overlaps with most people's vocabulary. So in that sashin, in October, the contemplation of the sashin, the subject of the sashin, was more directed by me.

[03:22]

In this sashin, it's more directed by you. I'm having a smaller participation in it, and I have to more feel what you're giving me rather than what I'm giving you. And also, as I said in the beginning of this session, I'm trying to write this book, and writing the book, I found I have to talk about meditations. But it struck me today, talking to someone, that trying to write about meditation may be similar to trying to write a computer manual for the Macintosh. I'll tell you what I mean by that. The background of that is that

[04:24]

Zen, as I said again in the beginning, we're a new kind of person, not exactly a lay person and not a monk. And Zen has been almost exclusively developed in a masculine, monastic, ordained tradition. That's why there's almost no lay lineages, why there's almost no women lineages. And there's no distinction in Zen, maybe, in understanding between men and women, or lay person and monk. Dogen makes a big distinction later in his life. He starts out with a kind of universal sense of the universality of Buddhism and practice. But late in life, he says, the mind of a lay person can't compare to the mind of a monk. There's no way a lay person can understand Buddhism and Buddhism. And he may have been responding, because he didn't know you lay people.

[05:27]

He knew you. He wouldn't have said that, of course. He was a 12th century medieval Japanese. But he was also in the midst of a great lay movement in Japan. Japanese Buddhism, the development of pure land schools and so forth, and an urban village movement, which greatly simplified the teaching. And it may be that what he saw as lay practice wasn't close enough to what he considered the true teaching. So he left Kyoto. And partly also, he was kind of one-upped by another person from Japan, came back after studying in China, where the great, the largest zendo in Japan, a monastery was built south of Kyoto, right near where Dogen's monastery was.

[06:34]

When that was built, Dogen went to the mountains, Fukui in the north, more or less north, the west coast of Japan. It's a pretty place, not a very nice place to practice. It's very cold in the winter. The winds come right out of Siberia. And it's very damp and freezing, wet, cold, lots of mosquitoes that are very skillful at finding every crease in your robe and going right through your robes, biting you, while you're supposed to be sitting still. In any case, he went there, established a monastery, and then said, many people can't really practice, only monks. In any case, my point is that the Zen tradition has developed, the lineage teaching have developed as monastic lineage teachings

[07:43]

requiring a lot of time, a lot of apprentice-like contact. And a lot of it, as I've said, built into the situation in the life. Now, if I do try, and it's an oral tradition, in that apprentice situation. Now, if I do try to write out the details meditation practice more than just like in Dogon's meditation instructions which aren't much different than the 5th century from the 5th to the 12th century basically everybody just gave the same instructions and the original ones are in a Tendai Chinese Tendai school Dogon's aren't much different they even keep the phrases so forth Dogen tells you, he tells you how to sit, keep your back straight, but he tells you almost nothing of the mental craft.

[08:52]

Almost all the real craft of Zazen is not told. There are lots of reasons for it. I'm discussing some of them. One of them, of course, is the monastic tradition, it's an oral tradition, and so forth. Another is, in relating to why I brought up the Macintosh manual, because I'm using a Macintosh here in Santa Fe, have been for some years, and there are just many, many, many things about the Macintosh that aren't in the manual. I think if you wrote everything you could do, you'd have a manual about this thing. No one could read it. And most of them you come upon yourself. I mean, I almost never read the manuals myself, even the simple instructions, because the machine more or less teaches you.

[09:59]

And you can kind of figure out from the way it works probably if you want to solve a problem how it works. Well, there's a lot about meditation like that. If you do it and you're sincerely committed to it, you begin to find out things. So meditation itself becomes a teacher, plus to really begin to talk about the many ways of practice that would fit. I mean, just talking about the many ways of practice that work between one student, maybe many things that were years for 17 students. I couldn't write it all down. So I have to think about what to talk to you about. And since most of you are not going to be here in a few days, what to talk to you about that you can retain and use later. Or if you're

[11:02]

lay practice is going to be valid. It can't be just simple, but it also has to be something you can do, know enough to do outside of a context like this. Now, it's also true that at the time, that clarity begins to arise in your mind, there's an instinctive desire to renounce worldly distraction. And one of the signs of clarity arising in your mind is you actually want to move to a place like this. You say, I need something like this for a while. So I think that places like this, even if we emphasize lay practice, places like Crestone here, will continue because at a certain stage you want to renounce. It's a sign of the development of your practice and your recognition of mind, capital M, that you long for a practice like this.

[12:15]

And then the ability to act on that, to make a decision to do something like this, is another sign of the arising way or path. But at the same time, we have to be able to continue our way and path wherever we are. One of the Strayings. One of the problems with practice is when you think that your present is not sufficient and you're looking for a result in the future, this is a straying from the path. That's a temporary straying, the straying from the path. Or when you think, or when you have some distraction or problem or painful thing arises, and you don't know how to turn that into the path, that's also straying from the path. Or when you think, oh, my meditation is getting better.

[13:35]

I'm more mindful now. I'm more settled now than I was a week ago. This is called a straying toward generalizations. These are subtle points. Because when you stray toward generalizing, you immediately lose contact with your present mind. Or when you are practicing and you are not satisfied with your ordinary wakeful state of mind. And yet you want some magnificent concentration or something. That's also called the straying from the path. To not be satisfied with your ordinary wakeful mind. Just now. So last night I presented you with the story of

[14:41]

Shui Fung and Chang Ching. Were you able to hear it there with your head stuck on the meal boards? I've never told such a long story. I don't know what possessed me. While you guys have your head in the soup. I always feel a little funny talking to you, but it's actually quite nice at the same time, don't you think? Instead of something different. Anyway, where he says... Within the 10,000 forms, within the 10,000 forms, that obviously means the phenomenal world, all perception. Within the 10,000 forms, a single naked body. Now, it must be fairly clear that's the same as I was talking about yesterday.

[15:47]

To see unconstructed mind. to see one taste or one mark arise. And here again, you have the sense of the Chinese Buddhist, Chinese and Zen sense of using words quite interchangeably. He says one naked body, but he means original mind. But you can use body for mind. You can use mind for body. That's just a common thing to be used to. Now first, I suppose first of all, when you practice, in practice, that makes practice work or stabilizes you in possibility of practice, is a sense of gratitude for this body and this mind and this life.

[17:00]

Or at least a willingness to say, I'm stuck in it and I'll do the best I can. Something. So to have faith or confidence that there is a path. Now you may be practicing thinking, maybe there's a path, maybe this is going to help me, maybe it's not, I'll try it out. That's not the confidence there's a path. When you have the confidence that there's a path, just as you're as confident that there's something called or experienced as existence, or there's your body, mind. So perhaps that's the first job of someone practicing, is to explore, sense, confirm that there is a path, and come to believe it, faith it.

[18:09]

Probably next would be to have a sense of mind. I don't know how I write these things, but to have a kind of physical feeling for, tangible feeling for mind. Now, I said yesterday that I talked about this one mark or one taste or can also be called co-emergent insight or concurrent insight. Concurrent insight means you perceive form and interest at the same time as a concurrent insight or co-emergent. They emerge at the same time inside, all the emptiness, impermanence, permanence, so forth. Mind and appearance. Okay. That sounds, if I said yes to you, maybe very good or very vague.

[19:29]

I don't know what it sounds like to you. And I think it's important, and I think it's important I try to say it to you. But I don't think I initially get a feeling for it. As this poem of Jiang Qing says, within the 10,000 forms, single naked body. Only when you affirm it for yourself Can you be intimate? Only when you affirm it for yourself can you be intimate. So how do you affirm it for yourself? Then you can be intimate. Yesterday I only pursued it halfway. Until yesterday I only pursued it halfway. Now I clearly see ice within the fire. Okay, how do you see mind arising?

[20:37]

It's part of what I'm going to talk about today. Okay, there are, in your practice, one of the things you're trying to do in... Some of the things you're trying to do in sitting in sesshin is come to three unmoving states. One unmoving state is the unmoving body. You can just sit there. With a loud noise, your body is just there. If it's painful, your body is just there. And the pain in zazen, I would like to tell you, it's a nuisance and it goes away. But actually, being able to sit through pain is one of the shortcuts as long as you're not damaging yourself. Because if you can't sit through pain, you don't know this real stillness.

[21:40]

Next, so there's physical still, the ability to be physically still, an unmoving state. The freedom to move and the freedom to be still. Usually we only have the freedom to move, but also the freedom to be still. And next, an unmoving state of your sense faculty. So we emphasize in practice, don't move your eyes. Just keep them down. Don't look around the room. Don't jump if you hear something. So you see if your sense perception, eyes, taste, feeling, touch, hearing, can be still. And allow things to happen and not respond. now um this has actually been tested by you know wires and eeg and things like that if you uh hook up wires to a yogi hindu yogi and you give them a perception like him on the head or ring a bell or something their brain waves go and then they fade then you do it the second time and they go and they fade and the third time they're smaller they fade and they

[23:04]

And by the seventh or eighth time, there's no response. They shut out the sensory input. If you do it to a deaf Zen person, you hit him or ring the bell or whatever in their brain, it goes straight up, straight down, and then goes back to the line and just continues. There's no fade. It just goes up and down. You do it the tenth time, it goes up and down. You do it the hundredth time, it just goes up and down. And it goes like this. Because the kind of training, Zen, is you completely hear it, but there's no reaction. It's characteristic. Yeah, correct. You're not shutting it out, you just don't react. If you need to react, you react. For instance, if... I don't know why I thought of this. If an army missile goes astray and lands out here with a huge explosion, only Gural would get up.

[24:06]

The rest of you would just keep sitting here. Blue flame... But we're all to go out and see what happens. And third is unmoving mind. And again, unmoving mind doesn't mean you are getting rid of thoughts. I keep emphasizing that, but it's a very basic distinction in Zen compared to earlier forms. But you're embracing each thought with mindfulness. The kind of almost spatial feeling. Whatever it is, bad, good, or... And you're not reacting to it, you're just embracing it. I don't know what language to use to give you a feeling. Embrace, but don't move.

[25:08]

Now, if you can come to these three unmoving states, you are more likely to see mind arising. Now, what do I mean by mind arising? Again, maybe when you're practicing zazen, sitting zazen, and the bell is about to ring, you hear Angelique starting to turn around and hit the bell. And suddenly a wonderful, blissful feeling comes over you. And not because the bell's about to ring, but because you don't want the Zazen period to end. And you didn't feel it until you knew the Zazen period was about to end. Kind of blissful feeling. You'd rather just sit there. But you didn't notice it until there was a contrast and you knew you had to get up. Simple. That blissful feeling is a sign that mind is aroused, mind of the beginning.

[26:20]

Or when you feel a kind of pliancy, softness, flexibility throughout your body, this is mind aroused. When your skin feels soft and transparent, I'm sitting, this is mind aroused. When you feel a kind of, when you have a space-like feeling in your thousand, which isn't limited to your body. It's not space, like light isn't space, but light is space-like. There's a space-like feeling, mind, or where the boundaries of your body seem to disappear. This is mind around you. Now practice makes, you know, this kind of experience happens to people like sometimes when people go to sleep they feel they're floating, something like that.

[27:34]

This is also mind arriving. But we don't notice it as being something important. So in zazen practice, if you can reach these, or come closer to, as you come closer to these three unmoving states, or have a feeling for it sometimes, or taste it sometimes, you then begin to have more clear sense of the arising of mind. It's not just something that happens occasionally, but it's something you can affirm. And when you can affirm, you can be more intimate with it. When you can be more intimate with it, it means it's more part of your life.

[28:37]

When you're doing things or talking to somebody, whatever, you can feel mind arising as you're talking, doing something. You can feel this pliancy. Sometimes heat. Heat and consciousness are very connected in Buddhism. So when you're doing meditation, I mentioned earlier about socks and things like that, your whole body is, the heat and consciousness and aliveness and beingness begin to function in a different way. And your thinking and your states of mind are related to the heat in your hand, the warmth of your hands and feet and stuff. And you want to have your body able to heat your body without you closing off the end. If you close off your feet and hands and things, you may have to if it's cold in here and you're sitting not cross-legged. But in general, consciousness will penetrate your body as heat will penetrate your body and they're very closely related.

[29:43]

Do you see what I'm talking about? How hard it would be to write all this in a book? I mean, if you don't have some experience of it, it sounds like you're nuts. Only read this book, The Third Day of Sashim. And then you present it to people and then they try to seek it. They try to produce heat or they try to get some special feeling or something. That's not good either. You just have to treat these things like gifts which you don't chase. So when you have more of a sense of one taste, when whatever happens to you or whatever thought arises, or phenomena or appearance, There's a feeling. You see the distinctions, but there's a feeling of one taste. This is mind realizing. So this is a stage of practice.

[31:00]

And in this you're affirming or confirming that there's this difference between mind Small and mind begin. Big mind, as Sukharshi said. I don't know if he coined the phrase or not. Mike Murphy, who's writing this voluminous book on meditation, psychic, this and that, serving the whole literature in English, thinks that Sukharshi coined the phrase big mind. I saw it. But these phrases are, you know, I've talked with people like Carl Sagan. He does this television program. The host, he denies there's something like big mind. He says, mind and thoughts are the same. There's no mind separate from the mind. Well, he's right. All of Buddhism is out.

[32:03]

Millions of people have been doing it wrong. But you have to confirm for yourself that you are not limited to your thoughts. Then you begin to see the incursions of personality and anxieties and thoughts into mind. Does that make sense? That what you usually identify as mind, your thoughts, your personality, what you're thinking about are really incursions into mind. So when you begin to make the distinction between mind and mind and awareness and consciousness. Now my basic distinction, my basic definition of the difference between awareness and consciousness is I'm using two words. Most of you have heard before, and I get tired of using the same thing, but I can't think of another way to say it, so I'll tell you, which is that awareness is what keeps you from wetting your bed at night.

[33:16]

Consciousness doesn't keep you from wetting your bed, but awareness does. And again, we don't, in our culture, use awareness for much other than toilet training. Though I think pure mathematicians and some other people use awareness, though they may not be aware they're using awareness, they use another level of thinking than consciousness. Buddhism emphasizes awareness as a wide field in which consciousness is a subset. So sometimes we talk about consciousness in Buddhism, but really it's probably better to talk about awareness, so that there are practices involving the clarity of consciousness which is different than awareness. And when you begin to see, make this distinction between mind and big mind, and awareness and consciousness, then that begins to

[34:22]

eliminate or make less meaningful the distinction between mind and body and self and phenomena. Did you follow? The distinction between self and phenomena and mind and body is really experienced as very vague once you begin to make the other distinction between mind and mind and awareness and consciousness. Now again, I'm trying to put this out there so you can get a feeling for the territory of practice. So when you're practicing, you're beginning to let go of consciousness. and move, shift your sense of continuity out of your continuum of self, out of consciousness into awareness.

[35:29]

And the ability to make that shift is one of the crafts of practice. And one of the stages of that, I think the second or third jhana, would be the same as being able to identify mind and breath, as Isan's always talking about, abiding in breath mind. Abiding in breath-mind, I think, is, as I said, the second or third concentration, the ability to maintain mind and breath as one awareness. That in itself will change your life if you can go through the day doing it.

[36:32]

Dogen says in his fascicle, only a Buddha can. only a Buddha and a Buddha, only a Buddha, something like that. How does one recognize a Buddha? How does one see the traces of a Buddha? And I think he said, you have to be that kind of person. That when you meet a person, you have to have that kind of mind or be that kind of person. But when you meet a person on the street, you don't immediately think what kind of person that is. If you think what kind of person that is, you'll never see the traces of a Buddha. So it means a state of mind. You may think what kind of person this is, but you're also able to not have any idea what kind of person this is. It means a mind that simultaneously accepts and doesn't grasp. You can accept whatever you see without wanting to change it.

[37:42]

And at the same time, you don't want to hold it fast or keep it from changing. So if you see a flower, you don't want two flowers, a better flower than one. Now, this kind of ability in Zen is called a yogi. So while Buddhism is the combination of Indian yoga and Buddhist teachings, the word yoga comes to mean mental postures that you can hold as well as physical postures. So if you can have a mind which neither grasps, which accepts and doesn't grasp, that's a yoga. Got me? Do you mind that this one taste is a yoga? Concurrent insight is a yoga. So when you do that, you're beginning to think like a Buddha, or think like a Bodhisattva, or feel like a Buddha or Bodhisattva.

[38:56]

And your personality, your perceptions are beginning to be reorganized in a way that's what would be a buddha being instead where i said what the other day being in love maybe this is being through love or being through buddha or being through compassion or being through big mind being in the big mind So for most of us, realization of this is, you know, you're nourishing a kind of baby Buddha in you. You feel it during zazen, you feel it sometimes, and you can nourish this baby Buddha.

[39:58]

And it exists. Sometimes your usual personality exists. Sometimes your usual personality reflects and manifests the qualities of a Buddha. And sometimes the baby Buddha is practically aborted. There should be a law against it. So again, I want to give you the feeling that what you're actually experiencing, the taste you sometimes have in zazen, is not just, you know, you're just beginners. You're tasting the baby Buddha that you are. You're getting a feel for the baby boy that you are.

[41:03]

The question is now, can you affirm it? Can you confirm it? Can you make it real for yourself? Can you make the sense of the past real for yourself? And if you can, you're on your way. And it is way. May our intention...

[41:35]

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