Good afternoon. Now, Matsu, who I spoke about yesterday, said the whole world is our body. If it were not so, what kind of body could there be? whole world is our body if it were not so what kind of body would there be now this is an intriguing statement and it's got the depth to it that I think can give us a chance to feel perhaps what Matsu meant however it goes against our common sense and our common experiences So what is Matsu talking about?

[01:05]

Because I don't think we can think of this as something magical or, I don't know, ridiculous or religious or something like that. So all I can do is try to give you a feel for what I understand Matsu means. If I'm walking along and I see one of you on the path and I say, who are you? It's some kind of break. Or if I'm walking along and I say, what are you? Again, it's some sort of separation. But if I'm walking along and I do the more common thing to do, not just because it's more common, but perhaps because it causes less of a break, and I just say, how are you?

[02:11]

It's quite different. If I look at a stone and I say, what are you? Well, it's mineral, you know. I've got some minerals. Or if I say to a stone, who are you? This is rather silly. The stone is not sentient. But if I say to the stone, how are you, stone? Well, it's something meaningful. Because how a stone is, you know, is something to do with how we are. A stone, as I said, the Buddhist looks at order. We don't say in the beginning was the word again, we say in the beginning there was order. And we notice order. And the stone and I, and you, live within the same order.

[03:20]

If I look at Janie and I say, what are you Janie? He doesn't know how to answer. Sometimes she has a good howl about it, though. And if I say, who are you? She'd be, she doesn't know that either. But if I say, how are you, Janie? Janie and I are, maybe share some similar howl-ness. That's what, I learned that from American movies where the Indians are always saying howl. One tribe says how, the other says are. It's the third tribe that says you. How? Now, this is a big difference. If you, and I don't know if I can really make clear to you how strongly I see this and believe this and feel this,

[04:26]

If the operative condition in your thinking is who you are, you'll always experience separation and you'll be mostly joined to what happened to you in the past. That's, of course, an aspect of our life. We can't deny that. But if it's the operative condition that we're always thinking about who we are and not how we are, and not even how we are in the sense of am I sick or well or something, but how we exist at this moment, it frees up things. There's more fluidity. Now, I realize when I'm making kind of a straw man, when I say this in the beginning was the word, blah, blah, blah, because I don't know, although I have had some discussions about it at times, but really I don't know much about what the word was in Greek and how it's been understood in different centuries and so forth.

[05:33]

I'm just making a simple kind of emphasis, but there are simple emphases in a whole civilization. And there's likewise simple or overriding emphases in Asian yogic civilization. And we have the advantage of trying to learn something because we do need to come from our own history and find the treasures and resources and provisions of our own history. But we have the advantage of also looking from another perspective. I think so anyway. So Matsu is, I would say, when he says the whole world is our body what kind if it were not so what kind of person could there be he's looking at he's emphasizing what he sees is the shared order and he also said when opportunity arises join things

[07:01]

Now, this is learned behavior. The first is a view that all things are our body. It's a view, we can say. But to say, when opportunity arises, join things, this is learned behavior, as I was speaking about yesterday, and you can practice this. Whenever any occasion occurs, the first reaction is to join things. This is Matsu's advice from 1260 years ago. Before this comet was around, I guess when it came around, it was quite a bit after his time. Now I've often said that everything in Buddhism can be discussed virtually from the point of view of the word intimacy.

[08:25]

So I'm speaking about this intimacy now. Now if I speak about, if I said yesterday, on the day before last time, that there's right now in my mind, this mind, you all are appearing as my mind, as the capacity of my mind to perceive, etc. This is one kind of joining things, to notice that kind of... on every perception to notice that it's your mind itself in which things arise. And that quality, although it may feel a little cold, but it's the more wisdom or manjushri quality. Now, non-duality, duality is a separation.

[09:29]

when we speak about duality, and we can practice with it in various ways. You can hold a view, for instance, if you feel sometimes separated from things or you have a habit of separating yourself, you can imagine a glass wall between you and things and imagine confronting it, imagine dissolving it. And in fact, non-duality isn't just a philosophical concept, but an experience of dissolving. So it doesn't just mean subject and object become one, or are one, but rather from how you open yourself to things, subject and object not only feel joined, but it's like the object comes back into the subject, you, and dissolves. And this is a feeling of intimacy. And that feeling of everything dissolving into an intimacy, into a want or connectedness is the compassionate or avlokiteshvara or khanan aspect.

[10:43]

Now the other day, yesterday, I guess, a fellow from... Hungary, who knows Lenny's work and Walter's work, who built the Otoan, came to see the building. He sounded like a nice fellow. I didn't speak to him on the phone, but Randy did, and through the way Randy spoke of him, he sounded like a nice fellow, so I said, oh, he can come by during Sushi. He's driving across the country. And when he was here, and he He's a furniture maker. And when he was here, I found out he was from Budapest. And so I introduced him to Khatun. Now, of course, they immediately began speaking some foreign tongue.

[11:56]

And this is some bond they had immediately. And maybe there are other bonds, like maybe your families know each other, or you're both interested in carpentry and architecture and so forth, or maybe you're planning to get married. I don't know. But some kinds of bonds happen. But those bonds can also be interferences. In other words, this is very particular because you both share Hungarian and Budapest. There's some connection. What about the people you don't share Budapest with, Hungarian with, and so forth? The narrative of a Bodhisattva, the narrative of a Bodhisattva's story includes everyone. One of the differences is between a bodhisattva's narrative and a personal narrative is the bodhisattva's narrative includes every person.

[13:06]

And also these very similarities, there could be differences too. He was an ardent communist and you weren't or something, I don't know. So we could say that There's the most connectedness when actually there's no differences and no common things. Then there's no interference. Do you understand that? So then we can see that the Heart Sutra is a teaching of this fluidity. No Hungarian, No common interest in carpentry, no communist background, no zendo, no eyes, no ears, no nose. Jeez, it's a wide open, fluid situation. No marks, the samadhi of one mark or no marks.

[14:17]

So the narrative of a bodhisattva story is based on signless mind or mirror wisdom mind and not on personal histories. In other words, your narrative arises through the experience of mind itself, mind rooted in mind itself. not in outward consciousness. And thus this also is how we are governing the governance of our meditation. Now the activity of our meditation, as I said yesterday, is that the entry should be easy, that we practice some unlimited object of meditation, whatever it can be, and the object is usually mind itself or uncorrected mind.

[15:44]

uncorrected mind is a way of saying any object's okay and mind itself uncorrected mind is the bridge between mind itself as an object and any object so that's the activity of zazen this is quite fluid and open this is coming into an intimacy with mind itself so we can say that the activity of zazen is to come into an intimacy with mind itself. And to maintain this intimacy, the governance, the shape, the control, I don't know, of meditation is discovered in posture. You slightly correct your posture. You settle your posture. And by focusing on your posture, and not rigidly, but just subtly adjusting, finding the nuances of posture in relationship to your feeling and mind, this actually is governing your meditative state.

[17:05]

And likewise, another way we govern meditation is through energy. we begin to feel our energy and through practice our energy becomes more subtle and we open up a more subtle way in which our energy works. This also shapes or governs our zazen, but we're not doing it through aims or something. Now you can have one governance and intention, for example, to on every opportunity, join things. That's an intention. Or a view. All things are my body, our body. This is a view. Such a view, again, allows this intimacy or merging to happen.

[18:12]

So you can ask yourself the same question Matsu asked, how do I merge with formless absorption? This is a view, and a dynamic view, which asks something of you. There's an assumption there's formless absorption and you're asking and directing yourself. So you're bringing an intention into a view. How do I merge with formless absorption? And this can, such a view and intention can govern your meditations. You don't do anything with it. You don't try to affect it exactly. You just hold yourself in this view. How do I merge with formless absorption? Until it generates a feeling, which you then stay in that feeling, which was generated by how do I merge with formless absorption.

[19:16]

No, it's, you know, they say that married people, it's a usual measure of intimacy, married people, married people live ten years longer, married men live ten years longer than single men. I guess cancer reduces men's life expectancy by about seven years, but being single reduces your life expectancy by ten years. So it's better to be married than have cancer. And with women, it's being single. Women don't need men as much as men need women. Single women have a four-year less life expectancy, supposedly, and three years less from cancer.

[20:26]

So for women, too, it's better to be married than have cancer. But these kind of statistics assume this is the only kind of intimacy. And they're not, I think, probably assuming that there is nothing but intimacy. Or there will be more so as you move into this bodhisattva mode of being, where mind is rooted in mind itself. So the usual Buddhist way, as you're coming to realize, is to divide and join.

[21:53]

We're always dividing things up into categories that can be joined. So it's interesting, the word harmony in the calligraphy Kanji for harmony is mouth, but not mouth and food. It's mouth and growing grain. Not quinoa, but probably it could be quinoa. By the way, which reminds me that Graub Gieslick called just before Sashin, who, with Rebecca's help, introduced us to Quinoa, wished us well in the Sashin and said that sitting was the feeling of being here with us. So it's growing grain and mouth, which is quite a more complex idea than our idea of harmony as some kind of musical, mathematical underpinning.

[23:03]

Because growing grain itself is a form of harmony. What the weather's like when you plant, the moons and so forth. And all that related to, way down the line, eating grain, cooking it, etc. So harmony is a wide idea of interrelationship in this Buddhist culture. So you can emphasize now, or you can practice with this sense of body, speech and mind. Now, speech means that which body and mind together produce. Speech is only possible through body and mind. So speech represents what happens when body and mind come together. It can be thinking, it can be activity. And speech and activity also affect body and mind.

[24:06]

But the practice, this practice of the mystery of body, speech and mind is again to find the intimacy of speech and thinking with the mind. And also find the intimacy of speech and thinking with the body and the breath. And to begin to feel the intimacy of these three with each other. And this is called a mystery because there's some alchemy to this. Even when you're sitting here, there's an intimacy with your cushion and the floor and your legs. Standing up, you can practice with a sense of an immediate intimacy with the floor. with bowing, with looking at someone else, fluidity and intimacy and dissolving.

[25:22]

And this arises, this kind of experience arises more and more when mind is rooted in mind, you discover how to hold and be present in a signless state of mind, in the background of mind. And we do so much zazen to over and over give you a chance to discover this intimacy with yourself, an intimacy of body, speech and mind, and this intimacy of non-duality. which opens you to the world and others in a way we call the bodhisattva life.

[26:35]

Thank you very much.

[26:42]

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