Fraud translator, how are you this morning? I'm good. Good. Fraud translator. Fraud director, I thought. There's so many things I'd like to speak with you about. Yeah. But I feel like an hourglass in which there's a very small opening in which to let this, what I would like to speak to you about, pass. I could just transmit it. It should be good. It would be fun, except it would be instantaneous, see?

[01:01]

And now, but with an hourglass, we have an hour of time together. And it's not in words, but it has to find the words to slip through this hole. The hole says... Nothing but words, please. So I woke up this morning to a peony staring me in the face. A peony? Peony, a flower, a peony. Oh. What's it called in German? Peony. Yeah, peony.

[02:17]

It had been put on my desk. It didn't have room in my desk, so I put it on my desk. side table, side of the bed, and I woke up and... I guess it's a late spring, still mid-mature bloomings, mostly white, slightly pink. So it's not just a flower for me looking at it. It was flower in its activity, sort of open. And because I have this practice, which I'm recommending to you all and have been, that you train yourself to see everything as an activity.

[03:25]

It's interesting that part of what I'd like to speak about refers to what is valid knowledge. And in early Buddhism, valid knowledge was determined by perception, logical inference, and authoritative scripture. And in early Buddhism, valid knowledge was determined by the perception, valid or valid conclusion, and reference to the scriptures.

[04:44]

Corroborating means it establishes the truth of something, it cooperates the truth of something. Okay, so in early Buddhism, it was assumed that truth was established by scripture, by logical inference, and by perception. In early Buddhism, it was said that truth is created, that truth is determined by reference to the scriptures, by logical conclusions, and by awareness. And Vasubandhu, who was one of, and his brother, half-brother of Sangha, one of the, established our Yogacara practice. And Vasubandhu's disciple was Dignaga.

[05:46]

And who was one of the creators of Indian and Buddhist logic. I mentioned these details, not that they're important exactly for you to know, but I'm establishing I'm trying to illustrate how this is a lineage which has been created by one individual after another and one sangha and generational sangha practicing together. And I don't mention these details because I think it's important that you know them, but rather to show how much this is a guideline that was established by one individual after another and by one sangha after another, generationally.

[07:01]

But Dignaga came along and said, yeah, but the various schools of Buddhism, they use different scriptures to corroborate different, you know, et cetera. So he said, yeah, we don't need scripture. We don't need the corroboration of some teaching, revealed or presented teaching. We don't need to establish the truth of something by saying it's also in the sutras. No, this was a big change. I remember I used to stay with Brother David Stein to Rust.

[08:23]

I'd stayed in Catholic monasteries a number of times, driving across the United States. And they would chant in the morning, and I'd go to the morning service. And they would chant, God smote, smote, smote, smote his enemies. Okay, yeah, okay. And afterwards they'd say to me, we don't like saying this, but it's the scripture. And in some of these songs they talked about, I think, God's enemies and so on. And later after the service they told me that they actually didn't like to talk about it like that, but it's only in the scriptures. And I'd say, well, if you don't like it, why don't you stop chanting it?

[09:26]

Just change it. And Buddhism, we just change it if we don't like it. I mean, yes. As I said yesterday, the four conditions for a Buddhist teaching are conducive to enlightenment. Does it lead to freedom from mental and emotional suffering? Is it beneficial, is it a beneficial practice for oneself and others? And is it in accord with how all things exist?

[10:31]

Und ist sie im Einklang damit, wie alle Dinge existieren. This has nothing to do with scripture. Das hat nichts mit Schriften zu tun. It's just these four conditions establish whether it's a Buddhist teaching. Es ist einfach nur, dass diese vier Bedingungen die Basis dafür sind, ob etwas eine buddhistische Lehre ist. And this is important for us to know. Und es ist wichtig für uns, dass wir das wissen. I think if I were to write a book, and who knows what I'm writing might turn into a book. I'm enjoying writing, though. But I'm limiting my sense of any kind of goal to the enjoyment of writing. I have no idea of thinking of it becoming a book. So Hiroshi and I would sometimes go to museums with New York abstract painting, and I was sort of part of that world in the 60s.

[11:40]

So he looked at these paintings and said, hmm, it's an accumulation of sincere drops. Because we were looking at a Pollock or something like that. So I'm hoping my writing is an accumulation of sincere sentences. We'll see. Anyway. So whatever I write, maybe I should start it out with the first wisdoms of Buddhism are But these four conditions or four criteria you should know.

[13:11]

Because not only are they a transformation of the concept of society and individuation, all the teachings have been designed to create, to lead to these four establish these four conditions. Yeah, so that if you haven't internalized these as possibilities, the chemistry, the alchemistry of the teachings won't work in you. They won't find the right soil, prepared soil. If you don't take these four as possibilities within you, then the alchemy of the teachings won't be able to work within you.

[14:33]

It's as if the teachings don't have the right fertile ground to work within you. The beginning practice is how to prepare the soil for the teachings which meet these four criteria. So that these four criteria are fulfilled. So I can imagine a psychological school in the West which develops from Freud and Jung and others. And Arnie Mandel. Which met these four conditions, and you'd have to say this is a Buddhist psychological approach. Okay. So, after Dignaga, who lived from, what, 540?

[16:13]

No, 480 to 540. Not very long. I've been twice that long and I haven't accomplished anything. So, after Dignaga, people dropped the idea of, or some, and Zen in particular, dropped the idea of corroboration through the scriptures. And the kind of rubric was Buddhism is valid truth is rooted in perception and inference. Rubric is logic. A rubric is an icon.

[17:23]

We talked about that a few weeks ago, what a rubric is. Oh, we did. That's right. What did we say? Well, you know, you want an honest translator. Okay. The iconic way to say something like how valid truth is established is through perception and inference. to determine how truth can be validated, how truth can be explained as valid, was, after Dignaber, through perception and conclusion. Okay, now, but you have to look carefully at these kind of things, and you can't just say, oh, perception and inference, okay, fine.

[18:31]

But you have to look at it thoroughly, carefully. You can't just say, oh, sure, good, so perception and conclusion. No. Did my tone of voice sound like... That's my version of you. Anyway, perception is described as non-conceptual perception. Und da wird die Wahrnehmung beschrieben als eine nicht-konzeptuelle Wahrnehmung. So it's not the perception of particulars as named, it's the perception of particulars before they're named. It's like the five dharmas. It's appearance, and then there's naming, and then there's discrimination. Then wisdom and suchness.

[19:40]

And that little teaching from the Lankavatarasukha, is to show you that it's possible to catch perception before it turns into name. And then you can stop it at naming and name only, name only, name only, which tends to move it back toward the non-conceptual. But naming often turns easily into discrimination. And then discrimination turns into consciousness. But even at that point, you can intercept it, interject it with wisdom and turn it into suchness.

[21:13]

Thusness, just things appearing and disappearing. So really such a little formula essentializes practice. And if you really get it, you don't think about learning this. You say, I'll spend a year on the five dharmas. And until I actually can catch perception before it turns into naming, or at naming I can stop it before it becomes discrimination, I won't try any other practice.

[22:13]

This kind of rigor has to be there. There you don't need to learn all that on the one hand and all the other stuff, but you can just say, I'm going to spend a full year just with the five Danas until I'm really able to keep the process of naming in. As the Diamond Sutra says, on the path there's no concept of a lifespan. If you practice the concept of a lifespan, how many years do I have, etc., you're not on the path. Now, we're talking here about not the teaching of Buddhism, but the transformative dynamics of Buddhism.

[23:17]

So these points are really interesting, that perception is non-conceptual knowing of particulars. And logic is rooted in images and linguistics. Or inference. Yeah, Einstein used images as a form of logic. So images and language are the medium of logic, of influence. Bilder und Sprache sind das Medium der Schlussfolgerung.

[24:46]

Okay. So let's go back to her peony. Now look up and stare me in the face. And it was... in a kind of nimbus aura of deeply lobed compound leaves. Deeply lobed? That means that the way is divided. Okay. And the earlobes... And it was almost bowing to me. We talked about bowing yesterday as the gestural articulation of the creation of space.

[26:09]

Sometimes that little hourglass thing gets very narrow, and sometimes it won't. So And it was a little straighter on my desk, and being on my bedside table, it could bend something, but it really felt like it was bowing to me. And it was bowing to me. It was making space, and I was making space in return. And knowing, now I don't know if this kind of little riff makes any sense, but it's my experience.

[27:23]

Ich weiß nicht, ob diese kleine Umspielung, dieser Einspiel, wirklich Sinn ergibt, aber ich spreche jetzt davon. Here's this flower as an object and an activity, which is of a complexity. There's no way I could make anything like this. But since I don't see myself as a person or see the flower as a person, I see both of us as an activity. As the first case of the Shoyuroku, the book of Equanimity says, it says, try yourself on, if you're going to name yourself, as the unique breeze of reality. I don't like the word reality.

[28:34]

Actuality is a little better. But reality works well with the R's in breeze. So if I'm the unique, if I feel myself as the unique breeze, a unique movement of reality, then the flower and I share. We're both unique breezes of reality. Now, in current reality, the current genetics, studying DNA and so forth.

[29:50]

Now we know enough about genetics that maybe we could grow a hand from a cell. But nature didn't just grow a hand from nature, I don't know, heaven or something. It didn't just grow a hand from a cell. The womb embryo thusness, grew the hand out of infinite possibilities, not six fingers, not four fingers. It determined five fingers and five, you know, five as a way, it occurs all the way in many biological forms.

[30:56]

To select out of all the possibilities and determine five is the best way to go takes the incubation of millenniums of allness. Does that make any sense? Oh, God! I swear! I understand a few things. The incubation of millenniums of allness.

[32:05]

Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah. I don't want to say universes or... Because I don't want to turn it into a thing. I can just say allness. Allness. Now, I use these words, like trying to say all this instead of the universe or the world. I try to avoid using ordinary sentences and in describing things to myself, any words that have too much unavoidable... delusional or cultural baggage.

[33:14]

So the process that produced the hand The selective process that produced the hand also produced this flower, this being. So, in the waking up, I feel this the profound activity of everything working to make me and this flower possible at this moment.

[34:19]

And you might have noticed Yamada Mumon Roshi, who was my teacher while I was in Japan, who was a Rinzai practitioner, said for the Zen practitioner, the single most important thing to know and to feel, is that everything is working to make this moment possible for you. Again, he would say, if you lose this feeling, moment after moment, you lose the context in which practice takes hold.

[35:29]

And he also said, if you lose this feeling, then you lose the connection in which the practice works. I think you've been sitting long enough. And I guess we should take a break. But I'm bathing just now in the field you've all created, and my bath isn't over. But if someone would give me a towel, I would try to take a break. Yeah. Thank you for being here.

[36:28]

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