Here we are sitting down in the middle of our practice together again with my obligation and practice to say something. And someone asked me yesterday, Or do I think origins are important, or are origins important, or what about origins, etc. Some various questions built into the question. And today I brought, as yesterday, this stick. And the other day I showed you the same kind of stick with the backbone, blah, blah, blah. And said it was the stick that Sukershi gave me.

[01:03]

And this is one that Sukershi's son, Hoichi, made for me. So it's kind of nice. Sukershi gave me one. And Hoichi made this for me. Gave it to me. And... And it was important for me when Sukershi gave me that staff. I remember when he did in a car in Japan. And I just got a little burned mark on it from something, I don't know, incense or something. But in any case, there was another staff he had, which I don't have, and was given to his He has three disciples, myself and his son and his Dharma brother's son. And this was given to his Dharma brother, I believe.

[02:10]

Anyway, but I went to, for many years, his home. lectures in San Francisco twice a week, and he always carried a teaching staff like that. And I would see it in front of me all the time, because he'd be talking, he'd hold it, and he was still, but the staff would move around. So when I have the staff, it's not only that he gave it to me, but it also actually calls forth from me all those lectures for years, which I sat usually in the first row, right in front of him, he would sometimes ask me to read. I mean, very often he'd ask me, he'd be talking about the Blue Cliff Records and he'd hand me the book and ask me to read it for everyone. So I sat in the middle where he could hand me the book. Yeah, but anyway, so that's a kind of beginning, not only a beginning

[03:17]

that he gave me the staff, but also beginning before he gave it to me, that I saw it all the time. It was like, you know, part of his lectures, and it calls forth his lectures. And then that his son gives me one, it's kind of, well, are these beginnings? They're sort of beginnings. They function as starting points, et cetera. And, yeah. Now when I say, as I've told you before, I ask from the very times Sophia was born, when she was an infant, I would sometimes say, you know, just in the middle of breakfast or something, you know, they're our first obligation, you know, is to stay alive. And, yeah. And of course, instinctually,

[04:24]

she's going to try to stay alive. She would cry when she was hungry and cry when she was hurt and had a fear of falling if you put her near the edge of a table and she didn't like it. So that's a biological decision or instinctual decision, built-in decision to stay alive. But if I say to her, We make, in addition to the instinctual instinct to stay alive, we have the concept to stay alive. This is actually quite different. Because concepts flow from that concept. It's a kind of beginning concept. And what flows from it are concepts like, well, why stay alive? Or, how am I going to stay alive? In what way will I stay alive?

[05:27]

And what is aliveness? So, what is aliveness does not arise from the biological instinct to stay alive. I mean, you are, there's no distance between you and aliveness, but the question of what is aliveness, or how to stay alive, for all sentience? No, these questions come out of the vow or intention to stay alive. And the intention to stay alive, as I've often said, well, makes a big difference in how we are alive biologically and psychologically. So you can see that there's a, that the There's the biological beginning, you know, and there's this conceptual, intentional beginning, which has a different... I mean, the biological, instinctual staying alive leads to babies.

[06:36]

But the conceptual, the concept of staying alive leads to wisdom and compassion, other conceptions. Yeah. I mean, just various examples float to mind. And one is I mentioned often, because it really struck me, how the painter Manet was the first I know of painter, as I've said often, to paint the paint, to make the paint a pictorial element of the picture, not just what it was depicting, but the paint itself was depicted, the process of painting and stuff of the paint, which leads to abstract expressionism and blah, blah, blah.

[07:45]

So that's a beginning. to the extent that that's true, I'm not an art historian, but to the extent that that's true, things like that are beginnings. It changed art. Manet was one of the ones who changed art prior to and along with Cézanne and others. Okay. So, you know, in fact, we... We are interested in origins, you know. Who are your parents? We ask questions like that. When did you two first fall in love? Well, I don't know if I want to talk about it, but yeah, I mean, we ask questions like that all the time. When did you first meet? Or people ask me, when did you start, how did you first start practicing Buddhism? I have about 200 prepared answers.

[08:47]

They're all different. And I make them up as I go along. So we are interested, in fact, in origins. But do they have any power, validity? Well, what's one of our beginnings? We sit down. That's what we're doing here all week, sitting down. Maybe we should have a word under sit instead of understand, because our stance is sitting. And if you're going to run for a... You know, we sit. We don't run or dance. I mean, we also run and dance.

[09:49]

I mean, you know. And Zen parties have a reputation of being among the better non-alcohol dancing. Okay, so we sit. And if you're going to run for a... a bus, say, it's more difficult to solve an algebra problem running for a bus than it is just sitting down. Okay. So sitting, yeah, it's easier to do a lot of things sitting than it is running or dancing. Okay. But is sitting a beginning? Well, if it's a way of solving algebra problems, we can't say it's a beginning. But if sitting is a way that you find yourself experiencing, introduced to the fundamental stillness of mind, or the nature of mind, or the quality of mind, or what is the mind that solves the algebra problem, then you've got a beginning.

[11:08]

And we sit down in the beginning of the passive mind. And shamatha, shamatha vipassana, shamatha is a teaching. The main parts, it's fused with vipassana in Zen practice, but it's... It's the practice of sitting still as an origin. Now Kukai, and I've mentioned this before too, because it's in the territory that I've been thinking about, Kukai, who was the founder of, or the bringer of tantric Buddhism, which is called Shingon, true word, in Japanese, to Japan. prior to Dogen.

[12:13]

And Kukai, one word that's in his teaching that he uses is kekai. Kukai, kekai. Kekai is K-E-K-A-I. K-E-K-A-I. And kekai means to fix a beginning or to fix the world. And as I explained for him, it means like when you first offer incense in the morning. You do something, you take something, and you make it your daily beginning. It might be a cup of coffee or tea or something like that too. But it could also be offering incense or breathing four times without distraction or something like that. Now here we have an idea of what we could call originary instead of original origins, because if there's no beginning, right, there's no real origins either.

[13:27]

So we're always, as I say, in the middle. We're always entering middles. And in middles there's no beginning, but you can take some of the middles and make them beginnings. Our practice does it all the time. You come to your cushion, bow to the cushion, you turn around and bow to the room. Each one, each of those bows are different, each feeling is different. And then you sit, and you sit in the origins of mind, and mind is a path. And origins then... There's something passive about the idea of origins that started there and because it started there, blah, blah, blah. But originary is a decision. You make a decision. Kekkai is a decision to make this a beginning. And when you have a decision to create a beginning, it's a beginning that can bring you into the unknown.

[14:37]

But it's also a knowing to which you can return. So if you really come into sitting as the experience of mind itself, it's a beginning because you can always return to it and you can start. It's a knowing you can return to and it's a knowing from which you can Explore truth what's true to you? Anyway Now this is is Just fooling around, you know, this is our wish fulfilling staff Wish fulfilling jewel another origin. So I brought another origin just for the heck of it. You know, why not? I Maybe I should be in the circus.

[15:42]

In this sleeve, I have a rabbit. The hair in the moon is very clear in these four tonight, which reminds me, I guess we're gonna do the retro facades tonight. I mean, all of you know that everybody but Europe sees a hare, a rabbit in the moon and not a man. And it's very clear that years go by like this. In Japan they say he's pounding mochi, the rabbit. Anyway, it's very clear that there's more of a rabbit than a man in the moon. And if you know that, then you understand lots of allusions to rabbits and things like that in Asian poetry. But this is another staff I have. And this one is, you know, what's this? It's a mushroom. And it's soma, psychedelic mushroom, because there's an ancient tradition, Alice in Wonderland, and a rabbit will appear.

[16:46]

I have to hurry up, it's time, I have to hurry up. Wait till I bite this and I'll go down the rabbit hole with you. Do you read, is Alice in Wonderland read in Europe? Oh yeah. She's the cousin of P.P. Longstocking, isn't she? Okay. Yeah, for you at least. Okay. And I organized the first LSD conference in the United States. I never took LSD because I wanted to put all my eggs in the Zen basket. But I did take the mushroom in college. Anyway, but it's not much part of my history, but except... not my practice history. But anyway, so here we have, and this is the flowering staff at the same time. It's got two images here. The stick which flowers in the springtime and the psychedelic mushroom representing transcendental experience.

[17:53]

Yeah, I have some other staff too, but you know, I didn't bring them all here. Now this is a way, I mean, we can look, if we use this idea, someone gave me yesterday, I want to talk about origins, is the Eightfold Path is a complex practice of origins. And the five skandhas is a practice of origins because, you know, phenomenology, which is so close, contemporary phenomenology, which is so close to Yogacara Buddhism starts with the sensorium. The source is the sensorium. Not God, not beliefs, etc. And the skandhas are like that. And the skandhas start with form. And from form, because the skandhas are about the origin of consciousness.

[18:58]

Consciousness, we're just usually in consciousness. We don't see its origins. So you slow down the experience of your experience of consciousness forming. So you're in the middle of the experience of consciousness forming and you feel it. You see something form. You feel something about it. And then the feeling turns into a perception here. And then perception leads to associations. And then you're in consciousness. But you don't usually see the ingredients unless you have that teaching like the five skandhas that shows you actually four sources for consciousness. Form itself, the initial source, the feeling you have. Yeah. perceptions that then form from the feeling. And you find you can stay at each one of these.

[20:02]

You can be, just stay at the feeling. And to stay at the feeling is the Ratnasambhava teaching of the five Jnani Buddhas, to stay at the feeling and allow consciousness to be primarily rooted in feeling. So each of the five skandhas is a source, including consciousness. And you can, as I said, rest in percept-only mind, or you can rest in associative-only mind, which is, Freud pointed this out, and changed the world's thinking from the fourth skandha. So in another way, more complex way, that eightfold path, we could say that the source of the path, let's see if I can make sense of this, the source of the path is right views or wisdom.

[21:24]

problem is all of us human beings are born in particular cultures to particular parents so we have inherited views which are often always often based on myths delusions etc selfishness blah blah blah so what are we going to do we need a corrective For initially your views are not right views, they're cultural views. How do you transform cultural views into wisdom? Wisdom views. Well, then you need a mind. The mind of thusness can be used, but the mind of the latter three of the Eightfold Path, effort, and concentration and mindfulness, effort, mindfulness, concentration.

[22:26]

That's the mind. So that's the sitting, the shamatha, the sitting. We just sit and we discover mind. And the discovery of mind as the path, mind as the path, starts in the Eightfold Path with practicing mindfulness, concentration, And what's the third? Effort. Effort. And all three are samadhis. There's the samadhi of effort, the samadhi of mindfulness, and the samadhi of meditation. Okay. Now, if you practice those, They allow you, it's a kind of trust. You trust the mind that arises through the samadhi of effort, of concentration and mindfulness.

[23:36]

You trust it to kind of not go along with delusions, not go along with cultural views that don't make sense, not go along with mythologic myths So through mining, mind, and then, well, the middle three, conduct and livelihood and speech, and since speech is first, speech, conduct, livelihood, are the refinery. So the refinery of what you mine In the latter three, in the middle three, you refine through your speech and conduct and your livelihood. And that then leads you to develop your views as wisdom.

[24:45]

and your intentions as expressions of wisdom. And then the first two, wisdom and intentions, become the source of the path. So the Eightfold Path makes use of origins, things you can return to, develop, mine, etc. But the Eightfold Path says, The origins of the path of wisdom aren't there until you mine and refine your views through meditation and the expressions that arise from and through meditation. So that's enough for today, isn't it? I also have something else in my sleeve here. And then, no, no, I've had this for a few days because I was going to read it to you because my very old friend from the 60s, who Dan knows too, Brother David Steindl-Rust, we have an active friendship, particularly my birthdays.

[25:59]

Europeans are much more involved with birthdays than Americans. And I'm very, I don't even know my birthday most of the time, but Brother David, for many years, especially when I was single, called me every morning of my birthday. And I often didn't know it was my birthday at all. You know, I said, Brother Dave, what the... Oh, it must be my birthday. Oh, he's a sweet person. Anyway, he wants me to visit him. He's arranging a visit for me when I'm in Austria at a... Europa monastery or something like that in Austria fairly new monastery 20 years old or so I think that he likes very much and he wants me to meet the abbot and be there and hang out and dialogue and blah blah blah so he wrote and he said I'm working on our schedule together and he said but in the meantime I'll show you I'll send you a photograph of snowdrops my favorite flower

[27:02]

which reminded me that Sukhyoshi at the end of his book it ends with I helped decide that this would be the end nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. That's also the mind of thusness. Peering. Receiving. Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. percept only mind, or the specifics, the engaged specifics, the momentarily engaged specifics.

[28:16]

Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow, we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the east, he means the east coast, we made a trip to the east coast together. In the East, I saw rhubarb. Already. In Japan, in the spring, we eat cucumbers. Okay. Thank you very much. They are in tension deeply, and they have repeat.

[29:05]

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