I spoke yesterday about the dharmakaya and sambhogakaya. So I suppose that means I should speak about the nirmanakaya, the third of the three bodies embedded in the path of realization. And I think, you know, I feel good about this, Sashim. It seems to me each one of you has actually set your boat on the waters of practice. I think sometimes choppy waters of practice. And I think that's and maybe it's somewhat exacerbated by the fact that most of us have this constant conflict and communication between what our regular life requires from us and what practice asks of us.

[01:20]

And I think also for those of you who have dedicated your life to practice to this way, you also sometimes feel, geez, I've done this so many years and this is my life. And yet still sometimes you feel outside of practice or what is the inside of practice? When will I feel completely in self-joyous samadhi, as Dogen puts it. When will I feel like I'm just reveling and enjoying the path? Why not? But you know, again, this is multi-generational practice. No way what I'm talking about isn't dependent on Sukhiroshi and Gilgit and so on.

[02:39]

These photographs, Butsumon, Taiyoshon, that we chant. Oh, I chant. You don't chant, these guys. I chant. I have their pictures up in the Dharma, the ancestor holy, leading to Dzogchen. So the more we enter into the path with commitment and intention, bringing our life into practice, as I said in Boulder, not just bringing practice into your life, but bringing your life into practice, I think we come to know this self-joyous samadhi of being really, truly immersed and on the path. Now, but last night I talked about Yaoshan, who we chant as Yakusan Iken Daiyosho Ngan Donjo Daiyosho Tozan Ryokai Daiyosho, and those guys.

[03:54]

Yaoshan was the teacher of Ungan, you know, who swept and knew the one who was not busy. And Yaoshan, what's that funny story I told you last night, you know? What are you doing? I'm not doing anything. Well, then you're idling. No, no, if I were idling, I'd be doing something. So what is this not doing that you're not doing or doing? Even the sages don't know. Okay, so here I'm in this lineage and you're in this lineage. You're the flowers of this lineage, the bloom. You know, I always loved this staff because, as you know, here's the The lotus embryo.

[04:59]

Lotuses have little sort of embryos. And the bud and the seed bud. And the bloom isn't there, except you're the bloom. Well, here we are. Blooming, in fact, the bloom of this lineage of realized or realizing compassion. And here's the practice Yaoshan, one of our ancestors, saying, even the sages don't know, even the ancients don't know. So what is this don't know? What's important for, I mean, it's crucial for our practice as lineage holders or as lay adepts, because it goes beyond the teacher and the teachings. And whether you're a layperson or a monk practitioner, a monk-like practitioner, still, our practice must go beyond the teaching and the teachers.

[06:21]

So how did we get to this point? We started out with The first day we started out with stabilizing ourself. That's what we'd like to do, right? Yeah, but you don't want to stabilize yourself in delusion. You want to stabilize yourself in the truth. Sounds good. Then we have to ask, what is stabilizing? What would be stability? What is the truth? So somehow this has led us to the three bodies of Buddha. Now ideas are simple. But the practice of ideas, the living of ideas is not complicated, but complex, is multi-petaled. So I don't, you know, I'm not a

[07:26]

a professional scholar and philosopher, so I don't know exactly, but from what I've read, it looks like in the ferment of ideas, pre-Buddhist India and Greek, Greece about the same time, there was just an outpouring, outflowing of philosophical systems, ideas, etc. But even in that milieu, Buddhism was radical. And I guess its radicalness was in its understanding of causation as being always new. Because I guess, and again, I'd have to study more to say if this is really consistent with the facts, but it seems that most folks look at, here's this stuff around us. It was there when we were born. So there's a tendency to think it always exists.

[08:28]

or that it was created. And so many of the Indian, most Indian ideas, pre-Buddhist Indian ideas, had the idea that causes were always existent and that there was some kind of potential in a cause for the result. But it actually doesn't make much sense because if the potential is in the You don't hardly need the cause if there's always existent the potentials in the cause and the result is potentially in the, etc. So Buddhism came along and said and emphasized that things weren't always existent. Everything, a cause is new and the result is not only new, knows its existence, the cause, but it also is actualized through multiple causes, multiple conditions.

[09:32]

Okay, so that's just all, we could say all of Buddhism comes from this simple idea. I mean, again, we take a very simple idea, one thing leads to another, there's a cause. But how you understand that one thing that leads to another, and what that leading is, very simple ideas, but the way you practice them and live them makes a big difference. So what you have with Buddhism, if I try to make it simple, is you have the initial causes arises from many causes. So you have sort of cause-cause. not just exactly cause and result. And so we can understand that initial cause as interdependence.

[10:41]

So the initial cause is interdependent on many things. So it's new. It's not existing before. So what Buddhism did is say this, and it said there's no prior cause, no big cause that causes everything. The causes are always in the immediate situation. So Buddhism took the idea of causation radically, which then eliminated a creator god. So then Buddhism has some interesting problem, because we have some experience like a creator god. How do you explain it? We have some experience like some kind of larger intelligence. So Buddhism, which is very scientific, took didn't eliminate this and say, oh, it's just, you know, like consciousness is explained from brain cells and stuff like that. It tried to come into a very sophisticated, in effect, understanding of how we exist, but still staying with what was then radical, that everything is new, everything is unique.

[11:55]

Now I won't get into in what ways monotheistic religions can be part of Buddhism or they can work together. That's another subject. Let me just stick with what I'm speaking about. Okay, so you have maybe an idea here of interdependence, but at each moment there are simultaneous causes. And so we have convergence. So at each moment you have a cause, and at the moment it's actualized, there's a convergence of causes actualizing it. Maybe this is easy to understand, but maybe it sounds boring or something. But again, there's this simple idea of a prior cause and present cause.

[13:05]

That's all there is. Prior cause and the present condition. And we take this as common sense. I think everyone agrees with it. But when you try to live it in your life, you end up with the three bodies of Buddha. and you end up with not knowing. Now see if I can try to make this jump. At this moment, not only is everything converging at this moment, Everything is also co-extensive, or all at once, or simultaneous. That there's a simultaneity that functions right now. All of this is glued together somehow.

[14:06]

It just doesn't arrive from the past. At this moment, it's glued together somehow. What's that glue? We're the living glue. Maybe that's sticky. Maybe. I think some of you feel your hair is so greasy. If you get near a candle, you really will be, your heads will practice as if your heads were on fire. Oh, tonight I'll do Doksans again. And someone told me, someone told actually Marie Louise, that Eric Griesler, I don't know if this is true, I never heard it until now, and Eric Griesler certainly didn't tell me. He was the Eno or something like that. at a house distiller, says she, and people kept going to Doug-san and kept getting later and later. And finally he announced, if anyone else goes to Doug-san, I will kill him. Was anybody at that sashin?

[15:13]

Is that true? Yes. You couldn't hear it, you have been in... I was in there, yeah. There was an ongoing Dursan film set half an hour, five minutes, half an hour, five minutes, something like this, and then it was time to stop. The Eno drew the line. Maybe this has been transmitted, mind to mind, to our present Eno. We don't know what will happen tonight. How come I'm not told these things? I have to find out years later that the Eno threatened to kill someone. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I don't know, this interests me, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make it too clear to you.

[16:19]

Maybe we should stop, but I'll continue. So what is body in Buddhism? I mean, basically, for us practicing, body is more important than mind, probably, as an idea and as a way of looking at the world. But body in Buddhism is mind. Body not distinguished from mind. It's not body in contrast to mind. Or it's body and mind. Body inseparable from mind. It's what makes us alive. As I always say, a corpse is not a body. In Buddhism, a corpse is just stuff. If the corpse suddenly came alive, we'd say, oh, that's a body then. So a body is a structure of experience. A body is what accumulates experience. Now at this moment there's a co-extensiveness.

[17:30]

Now co-extensiveness you can understand extensive, It means it extends and co-extensive. I'm saying this because maybe it's not so easy for those of you who are not native English speakers to be familiar with these words. So it's extensive and it's co-extensive. It's extensive together. It's like you and I are in some way co-extensive. In sashin, we develop a kind of co-extensiveness through simple things like eating together. And I would like to actually do a sashin sometime, if we'd see who signs up for it, where we all sleep in the zendo. And I think we'd have to arrange curtains or something here to go between these pillars and have women on one side and men on the other. Because we'd have to dress, unless we build Marie Louise's building with a shuryo where you dress and study. We have to dress in, you know, the heiji where you sleep in the zendo, you kind of don't get naked, but you do dress as a bunch of men.

[18:39]

Men are supposed to be able to do that, I suppose women too. But even European women, sometimes they're a little shy to undress in front of men. European women are less shy than American women. Anyway, so we could have curtains that we pull between these and we'd have a men's side and a women's side. It might be because it does develop, although you have to really be able to tolerate snoring. Particularly from the men's side. The ruin of many a marriage. Okay. Okay. But we do develop in this way a co-extensive subtle body. In fact, we do. And as you know, I believe, you can actually measure metabolism and heartbeat and so forth in it very quickly. Everybody in a sesshin, people who meditate, come into very similar metabolic rhythms.

[19:44]

So simultaneous causation, or all-at-once causation, becomes an important part of Buddhist thinking. So let's call it co-extensiveness, which is a companion idea to interdependence. But interdependence has a sense of duration, time. Because the time passes and things are interdependent. But co-extensive is simultaneity. So you have interdependence and simultaneity or coextensive causation or something like that. I don't have a language for it. Now let me look at our experience in another way. We have an experience, but we can see a structure of experience in that Let's say first there's presentation. I'm here. There's a presentation. Something is presented. Next step is there's a feeling of immediacy, of connectedness, of uniqueness, of simultaneity.

[21:02]

We could say there's a third step of absorption. So in every moment there's a presentation. a sense of immediacy, of simultaneity, and the sense of absorption, the living event of yourself, the sense of absorption. Now that absorption can have two factors. It can be associative or dissolving. It can be at that moment that you absorb, all the associations can come in. Or at that moment you can dissolve the constituents. Do you understand? There's the presentation, the immediacy, and as you absorb, you dissolve and let it disappear. Now this is quite interesting.

[22:03]

Here we have the experience, and yet, if we start talking about causation, you start looking at the structure of experience and the path. We can say the path is when the embedded structure of being, the embedded structure of experience begins to surface and we begin to live how we actually exist. And this embedded structure of experience is usually revealed through a teacher. Not that the teacher... is something special, but the teacher is a representative of a multi-generational practice and understanding. And you're single-generational until you come into the path. When you come into the path, you're multi-generational. Do you understand? So the teacher's job is not he's better or worse or something good or bad. It's just that he or she has committed him or herself to a multi-generational practice and to bring others who wish to into this multi-generational practice.

[23:17]

But once you're into this multi-generational practice, you're on your own. And profoundly on your own. The teacher can give you A sense is the zap, a feeling of mergence. I call mergence not emergence. Now, maybe I should explain that, but I will. The teacher can give you an experience of mergence, hopefully, and can show you the doors or gates to this hidden structures of experience. but it's your own analysis at a present moment and your own emergence in it, immersion in it, that teaches you. Because the moment is so fully all-at-onceness, there's no way it can be understood except by you yourself.

[24:20]

And that's what this Yaoshan's not knowing means. To enter in both to an analysis and a not knowing emergence. Emerge means to appear. The opposite of emerge is to disappear. So I'm taking the word, there is such a thing, merge, to come together, emergence. Emergence means to be, I'm using emergence to mean to be absorbed in the situation without the dualism of knowing. As soon as you know, or grasp knowing, you're no longer merged. Now, what I'm talking about is, you know, this is fairly, I mean, I think it's pretty simple, but it's still fairly advanced practice.

[25:25]

And I'm able to speak about it because your practice is actually quite advanced through your own intention and commitment and sufficient practice to not only hear what I'm saying but to feel what I'm saying, I hope, and to also enter into the silent discourse before speech, which is again a form of this not knowing. to merge yourself in a situation without needing to know, but to allow the situation to unfold in you. So we call that not knowing. And if what I'm saying is the truth, in other words, if we're actually stabilizing ourself in the truth, and you're immersing yourself in the truth, then the truth has to teach you, and that truth is the wisdom is related to by trusting what you could call the wisdom of the body, or the wisdom of practice itself, or the wisdom of the body immersed in practice.

[26:46]

And to trust this wisdom of the body immersed in practice is also something, how do the ancients know, or the sages? They can point to the door, but this is something no one can know but yourself. And that even isn't knowing, but an immersion in, or mergence with everything all at once. With this convergence of everything all at once, or this coextensive convergence. So the Dharmakaya, I won't go back to that from yesterday, we can define as mysteriously hidden co-extensiveness. Sorry to take these funny words. I feel like I've put them on scotch tape. Now, tape them up on the air. Mysteriously hidden co-extensiveness. But look, we do know this is all glued together somehow, right?

[27:50]

At this moment, it's all converging and what we call the present. What's the glue? We can't see it. There's just air and planets and stars. Wasn't it beautiful last night, the sky? Or even today, the valley and the wind and all. Yeah, I actually think I live in paradise. I wake up, I go to bed, oh, I'm so happy. Well, you know, maybe I'd be so happy in another place, too. But it helps to have such a nice place to be. So it's mysterious. You know, what can we say more than it's mysteriously hidden? But we can see, feel the effects of it. We can know it. And these cutting through phrases, where you say something that cuts through, like the other day I said, even awareness is a prison. So phrases that cut through, so if you had a, but it doesn't cut through to an existent emptiness.

[29:02]

In other words, If you cut through anger, you have the mind of anger cut through. That's not the same as the mind of restlessness cut through. You cut through, but the cutting through doesn't lead to a single ground of being. I think you can understand this. But it took a long time for us human beings to get to how you can even talk about or imagine a groundless ground of being. Nagarjuna and others established how to talk about it, because if you can't establish how to talk about it or think about it, or at least imagine or approach it, it doesn't exist in society, because society... evolves through things that can be grasped. So there's a big difference of saying you cut through to emptiness.

[30:08]

No, you cut through to whatever you cut through. There's a difference between anger and cut through anger, or mind and cut through mind. So this is the dialectic of Nagarjuna and of emptiness. And in this Madhyamaka is clearer than Yogacara. For those of you interested, Madhyamaka is clearer about the emptiness of emptiness than is Yogacara. Although our practice is basically Yogacara. Am I going on too long? It's one of those days I had nothing to say. But I told you I'd go on. And I have instructions from our work leader and our Eno to just speak about what comes up. So this is what's coming down. Are you sitting on your head?

[31:12]

Are you riding on a buffalo backwards? Okay, so the Dharmakaya is mysteriously hidden co-extensiveness. But why call it a body? Because in some way it accumulates experience. Because in some way it's a structure of experience or it wouldn't be simultaneous causation. So it's not just emptiness or space, it's some mysteriously hidden simultaneous structure or causation. which is full of experience. The present is full of experience. So this idea of interdependent causation, interdependence, and convergence and co-extensiveness, which we actually experience, it's not just a philosophical idea, we call that the Dharmakaya.

[32:21]

Now, I could stay with this for another hour or so, but let's go to the Sambhogakaya now. The Sambhogakaya is this abundance brought home. The joy of this abundance brought home. Does that make sense? this coextensive convergence, mysteriously hidden, realized in yourself, outside your normal body. What? No. Not in the container of your normal body, but in the structures of experience we can call the sambhogakaya, or the body which is open to and absorbs, merges in this coextensive, mysteriously hidden simultaneity that is always converging on you as the present.

[33:36]

This is not exactly thinkable. I can talk at it, but in fact it's how we exist. What kind of mind allows this to happen? That kind of mind body that allows this to happen is called the sambhogakaya and it can't grasp it knowing. So it means you have to be able to sit in zazen and go through the boredom barrier, go through the loss of excitement barrier, and just be able to sit there. Nothing bloody happens in this. As I say, you know, In San Francisco, the bus system is called the muni, the municipal, metropolitan something, called muni, right? So I always thought it's the shakya muni. And you're waiting for the shakya muni that never comes. So each of your cushions is a bus stop where Buddha never comes to.

[34:43]

So we all know the non-arriving Buddha. Sounds good, actually. Okay. So you really have to be able just to sit there because you've got to somehow come into the subtlety of a mind not based on excitement. And so much of our restlessness is actually a desire for excitement. And we get addicted to some kind of excitement, doing something, the radio, something, that we can't actually find the real subtlety of mind itself. And that's also, what are you doing, sitting idly? If I were doing something, if I were sitting idly, I'd be doing something. So it's not sitting idly. What is... Not sitting idly doing nothing. That's the great secret of Zen practice.

[35:51]

And what makes Zen practice so hard, actually. Yeah, so we have to create these sashins which are mildly interesting in a beautiful place. And then we have to entice you to sit there We have carrots swinging in front of each place. Every time you look at it, it dissolves. Okay. Okay. So the sambhogakaya is allowing this abundance to light you up.

[36:55]

It's the best language I can find right now. And what is the nirmanakaya then? The dharmakaya body, the sambhogakaya, the bliss body of the bliss of mutual abundance. The nirmanakaya, now you don't walk around and you can say he's a living Buddha or he or she is a nirmanakaya Buddha, but really you don't walk around being a nirmanakaya Buddha. It's an activity, it's a bodhisattva activity. I would describe the nirmanakaya Buddha Buddha as the one, is the one, is the blowing out of the candle of nirvana. You know, nirvana is supposedly like the two candles past the flame, but nirvana is to blow out the candle.

[38:08]

And it's this dissolution rather than associative absorption. And the Nirmanakaya is not, you know, can't be a Nirmanakaya Buddha all by him or herself. The Nirmanakaya Buddha can only be a Nirmanakaya Buddha in relationship to another person where this abundance is drawn in and flows out and mutually two people blow the candle out together. The best I can say. And this is called mind-to-mind transmission.

[38:51]

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