These robes are designed to require a fairly high degree of bodily awareness. And also then to teach a high degree of bodily awareness. And I used to when I was younger. Oh, that's all. Could just sit down and all my robes came in place and my legs came at the right place and the kimono was in the right place, et cetera. You have several layers you have to kind of proprioceptively let happen. And now, when I sit down there, everything is all tangled up.

[01:28]

My right leg is where my left leg should be and so forth. So anyway, and five minutes ago I got a cold. I felt the change. My nose became runny. But that happened when I was younger, too. I can't blame everything on the infirmities of age. Okay. And last night I had an image, kind of a dream image, that I was shooting skeets. Skeets are little clay things.

[02:30]

They propel into the air and people try to shoot. I've done it, I think, once or twice in my life when I was 11. And some local people asked the local kids in New England if they wanted to go out shooting on the early morning ice. Well, how could I refuse? And I thought to myself, where, what's the use of this image? Yeah, yeah, and investigating it, I then remembered that someone told me yesterday that the lecture yesterday was way over their heads. And the person who told me said, but it was right in the middle of my head, it wasn't over my head.

[03:33]

And they didn't say it exactly that way. This person said it wasn't over their heads, particularly was accessible. So anyway, you know, but then, you know, maybe no one said that. But it kind of worries me. I shouldn't give lectures that are over people's heads. So clearly in this image I wanted to shoot down the parts of the lecture that were over people's heads.

[04:36]

And then I wanted to collect the pieces of clay and reassemble them so it's not over our heads. But before I do that, let me put it even higher over our heads. And quote from Dogen. Prepared. Those, I already gave you part of this, it's from Shinjin Gakudo. Which is translated, body and mind study the way. And it's a very good fascicle of Dogen's to practice and study in relationship to this Koan 7.

[05:59]

In relationship to this Koan 7. Okay. The first part I've said already. Those who've rolled up this matter into wide open eyeballs are two or three bushels. Those who've tampered with it using karmic consciousness are thousands and millions of pieces. When you study the way in this manner, you will secretly borrow the nostrils. of the Buddha ancestors and have them exhale.

[07:25]

That Dogen, you can't keep him down. When you study the way in this manner, You will secretly borrow the nostrils of the Buddha ancestors and have them exhale. Okay. Mountains, rivers, earth and sun. The moon. Der Mond. Die direkt vor dir erscheinen. What's he mean? Was meint er? He means the present, which appears directly before you. Er meint die Gegenwart, die direkt vor dir erscheint. The sun, the moon, the earth, etc. The garden. Die Sonne.

[08:27]

Each of us. Flüsse. Der Garten. Jeder von uns. Our mind, he says, at just this moment, what is it that appears directly in front of you? I call it the actuating present. I tried out durative present, which it also is. Originating present. And right now I feel the best term that we can use is actuating present. To actuate in English means, it's pretty obvious, it means to make happen.

[09:47]

And the present is making itself happen and you are making it happen. So he says mountains, rivers, etc. are mine. At this moment, just this moment, what is it that appears directly in front of you? When we say mountains, rivers, and earth, it is not merely the mountains, rivers, and earth where you are standing. He's upping the stakes a little here. Upping the stakes? It's like in poker where you raise the bid, or whatever you call it.

[10:47]

I've never played poker. It's not merely the mountains, rivers and earth where you are standing. There are various kinds of mountains. A billion worlds and innumerable lands can be found in a mountain. A billion worlds... and innumerable lands can be found in a mountain. Is Ingrid here? There you are, Ingrid. Mountain girl. Okay. Bergmädchen. Yeah, there she is. She knows if you live under, within, around...

[11:50]

this Crestone Mountain. Which is about 4,500 meters. It's another world up there. Stuff is happening. Storms and plumes of snow. You know, excuse me. Plumes of snow. And there's the mountain I see and feel and live in its presence. Those are different mountains. And there's the mountain of the six objects. Or six senses.

[12:53]

And there's the mountain that Ingrid sees, feels. And then there's the mountain that Bill Elsley films, photographs every day. And he took the two photographs on the stairs going up right there of Creston Mountain Zen Center in the snow. So innumerable lands, insects, animals, etc., can be found in these mountains. Then he starts speaking about the categories of mind. Dann fängt er an, über die Kategorien des Mind zu sprechen.

[13:54]

Basically the Arupadhatu, the Rupadhatu and the Arupadhatu. The Rupadhatu and the Arupadhatu. And he says, there are mountains suspended in form. Da sind Berge, die in Form aufgehängt sind. There are mountains suspended in emptiness. Da sind Berge, die in Leerheit aufgehängt sind. Coming and going, the Tathagata. The Tathagata is an epithet, a name for the Buddha. But it means the one that comes and goes in thusness. Okay. Okay. Now why in Buddhism do we call the biggest name of the Buddha is Tathagata?

[14:56]

biggest name in Buddhism, is this word Tathagata. Yeah, and so it's defining the Buddha as an activity. The activity of coming and going in thusness. Anyone could do that. It's the biggest name for Buddha, but it's the accessible activity we can live. Secretly, or publicly, well, secretly, borrowing the nostrils of the Buddha ancestors. So this is what Yao Shan really wants his monastics to do.

[16:16]

You know, he says to the superintendent, I think we need a superintendent around here. We have a director, we have an Eno. Leo, would you be the superintendent? So he says to the temple leader, and I think we also need a temple leader. We have a director, we have an Ino. Leo, would you be the temple leader? Yeah, I know, there he is, raising the Buddha. Oh, don't be embarrassed. You secretly borrowed the nostrils. Okay. What did he say? Yashan says, I'm not a teacher of sutras, scriptures. And if he was a teacher of sutras, what would he be teaching? He'd be teaching the continuity of the teachings. The well-known scriptures which tell us what the teaching is.

[17:42]

He says, I don't do this. So he teaches the treatises. I'm not a teacher of treatises. And what are the treatises? They're called the shastras. And what are the shastras? They're commentaries that are consistent with the sutras. So I don't teach a world of consistency. We have here the reference to the Tathagata, coming and going, being like the Tathagata. Is to fly in and fly out. So it's not just coming and going, it's flying in and flying out. With the entire world of ten directions.

[18:43]

So, you see I'm not making all this up. Yao Shan and Dogen are all trying to help me. Now, that was so wonderful. Of course I should stop now. I can't begin to fly in and out with that. But now let's try to bring it down, collect the pieces of clay. You all know that we have a kitchen. And what do we do in the kitchen? We collect the ingredients.

[19:56]

And then what do we do with the ingredients? We cook them. As Peter and Evelyn did wonderfully for us yesterday. And... What I'm talking about is no simpler, no more difficult than that. What is the present? Well, what's the kitchen of the present? In this case, it's the mind as senses. Okay. Well, basically it's conceptually the same. Grundlegend ist es vom Konzept her dasselbe. Die Küche ist dir gegeben. Es hat eine lange Zeit gedauert. But in this case, you have to create your own kitchen.

[21:10]

And that kitchen is to know the mind as six senses. And that is... Yeah. Okay. That means to know the mind as appearance. The mountain in all its forms appearing in the six senses. Okay. And then you have the ingredients of the appearance. So you have to practice this, allowing things to appear.

[22:18]

At some point in this koan he says something about speaking in the mind of sleep. What happens, what is characteristic of the mind of sleep? Dreams. Do you think up dreams? No, dreams just appear. You try to think up some dreams, but basically the content of dreams just appear. Now we try to make this world as predictable as possible. But through wisdom we know the present is an encounter. And he speaks about this in the koan.

[23:30]

I'm saying the whole koan is our lineage speaking. They speak, he speaks about this. They, she, we speak about this. With these wonderful remarks. If the ocean was filled, the hundred rivers would run backwards. Gertrude Stein, you know who that is? She lived in Paris and she was a writer and she was from San Francisco, I think. And anyway, Oakland. I think she was from Oakland, yeah. She said about Oakland, there's no there there. She also is known for saying a rose is a rose is a rose. She was one smart lady. She studied with... William James at Harvard.

[24:45]

And studied philosophy with him. And he wrote... One of the questions, the question on the test was, why? And she got up and walked out. And got an A. Why? She almost did a yaoshan. Because she'd written one word on her paper, because. Okay. She lived in Paris with another woman. What was her name?

[25:46]

Alice B. Toklas. Yeah. Anyway, they wrote a cookbook. I don't know why I'm talking about this to you. I'm trying to get this down to the level of kitchen cooking and stuff. Or up to the level. Okay, so she said anyway, that if no one would die, there would not be any room for any of us. If no one were to die, there would be no room for the rest of us to live. And she says, human nature doesn't know this. Human nature thinks it would be great if we didn't die. The present will just fill up. The hundred rivers would run backwards.

[27:03]

But human nature can't know this. It's like the guy on the airplane giving a note to my friend's brother. His human nature couldn't know that the plane was going to crash. Yeah. But the mind can know it. Okay. But this guy was all human nature, no mind, as the plane was crashing. Okay. So if we don't release the past from the present, The present will fill up with associations, you know, desires, anxieties, etc. If you're going to encounter the present, The ocean has to be empty.

[28:24]

Then the rivers can flow into it. Then the present's an encounter. And cooking can begin. So there's the mind as senses. There's the actuating present. The ingredients. And then there's the convergence. The practice, which we've talked about many times, of receiving, holding, releasing. Yeah. And then there's the field of mind. Which is the continuity. Okay. Already? Okay. Yeah. You get up in the morning.

[29:48]

I've suggested the other day. You put your feet on the floor. And at that moment, lift attentional awareness through the body. And into the whole body breathing. Okay. What have you just done when you did that? You've practiced wisdom. You've practiced Rupadhatu. The realm of form. Okay. This is, I think, an obvious and extremely subtle point. Because if you're up in the garret where I live, a garret is a room under the roof.

[30:52]

The room Wolfram made. Off the room, there's this little thing up there, which if it's a farmhouse, the hay would have been brought in. That's where my bed is, and you can't stand up in it, but it's good enough to sleep in. And from this little loft, there's about two meter steps down. There's a meter down with a couple steps. Okay. So I get up. In this case I sit up.

[32:09]

So, what mountains, rivers, earth are in front of me? Welche Berge, Flüsse, Erde sind vor mir? They're concepts. Das sind Konzepte. Yeah, okay. What's in front of me is a floor. Was vor mir ist, ist ein Boden. Yeah, and then there's the step, and I have to be rather careful to step down and hold the railing. Sind da die beiden Stufen und ich muss vorsichtig sein und mich am Geländer festhalten? Ja. So I can bring another concept into this. There's a lot of concepts right there. The day the concepts of consciousness, the contents of consciousness are beginning to come into my attention. There's those and then there's the floor and the stairs and so forth. But there's also the present situation.

[33:35]

What is the present situation? That makes all that possible. The immediacy of the situation and mind. And unless I use wisdom, my body forgets about those things. Okay, so the present situation is getting up, sitting on the edge of the bed, etc. The actual situation. Not what I'm supposed to do, not kamadhatu. Karmadhatu is the realm of attachments, associations, angst, desires.

[34:36]

Yeah, they're there. They come into dreams. They come here and there. They come in dreams. to anticipations of the future. But the immediacy of the actual situation I might not even notice. What is the immediacy of the actual situation? My posture. I can just bring attention to this posture. And mind. So I bring attention to the field of mind. I'm just making sure all the ingredients are... are noticed.

[35:45]

And then I get up. And I brought the ingredient of awareness into my day along with consciousness. This is the basic dynamic of the contrast between kamadhatu and rupadhatu. Which is to bring the ingredients of the present, the forms, into the actuating present. And what else have I done? By entering the form of the present situation, the immediacy of the present situation,

[36:48]

within the field of mind, this is the practice of form. In contrast to having the present swamped by the rivers of the Kamadhatu. In contrast to having Instead of having it swamped by the rivers of kamadhatu, the present. And the present is not an encounter then. The present is accumulated experiences. The sutras and shastras of my personal life. Yeah, and my anticipations and so forth.

[38:10]

But when I use the wisdom of form, mind and immediacy the real ingredients of the situation This is the practice of form. And what is form? The door to emptiness. I think you've heard that form is emptiness. The brilliance of this emphasis on form. And Gerhard didn't do anything different, at least occasionally. When he had described that he went into this meeting, which was going to be something of an encounter or something maybe.

[39:13]

He used the threshold, the door, Yeah, to locate, I would say, to locate self as location. So I would guess his experience was about 90% location and 10% associations, karma, datu, and so forth. Very often, for most of us, it's about 90% associations and 10% location. So if you have the yogic skill to transform self into location and then he accepted the immediacy of the present as encounter

[40:28]

The originating present. It was happening. Whatever was going to happen was happening, was going to happen. It was going to originate. And this ideally, and I think it was, known in the field of mind. Yeah, that's cooking in the kitchen. I mean, we can all understand what Gerhard said. We've done things like that. It's practical. And we're forced into this kind of practicality often when there's some kind of threat or crisis or an obvious encounter.

[41:56]

But the adept practitioner doesn't wait for a crisis. The present is an encounter. It's an interruption of consistency. So Yashan wanted this to be the Zen practice, this Tathagata practice, the life in his monastery. Once he was caught by a monk, observed by a monk, reading a sutra. And he said, you know, Yao Shan, oh, good master, you always tell us not to read the sutras.

[43:10]

What are you doing? He said, I'm just resting my eyes somewhere. The monk said, can I use that excuse too? And Yashan said, you'd get in trouble. Thank you very much.

[43:33]

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