You're beginning to be... Now, this is interesting because the word individual in English, as I've mentioned before, means no longer dividable. That self which is no longer dividable in the not divided individual. But that's at a social level. Individual means you at a level which you can no longer be divided further in social terms. But in Zen practice, in the spiritual practice, you are dividing yourself so that your individuality is lost. Your many, many parts that you put together as an individual and you can let go. So in other words, you've slipped underneath being an individual and through the security and presence of your physical and mental practice of Zazen, you're able to let go of your individuality And again, you're maturing yourself in the golden breezeness when the leaves fall and the tree withers. And when you come out of zazen, you're bringing yourself back together into the tree and the leaves come out.

[01:08]

Now, so we have uncorrected state of mind as a background practice. It should be present in all the practices you take on, like appearance arising with three marks or appearance arising through the Four Noble Truths. The larger background of that is uncorrected state of mind. In a sashin, you attempt to, or you may find as your sashin and zazen practice develops, you can stay in a state of uncorrected state of mind for some time, supported by the sashin. Now, one of the fruits of monastic practice, or, say, being by yourself in a cave or something, The first monastic practice for the beginner is acquainting you with the practices, putting on Buddha's clothing, and being in a situation that supports these practices.

[03:02]

Now, for a more experienced practitioner, you've matured most of the things I've been talking about the last two or three days, then you enter a state in which for several days or even a few weeks or months you live in a completely non-discriminatory state, as much as possible. This is hard to do as a lay person. Should I go to work? Should I not go to work? You know? So, of course, this non-discriminatory state can exist underneath while you're discriminating. That's very basic practice, and that's bodhisattva practice in existence. But it's very helpful to have a period of time, hours, days, maybe some weeks or months, depending on you, where you are actually in a situation that supports you enough that you don't have to fiddle with your mind at all.

[04:10]

Everything that comes up, you accept. And you make no discriminations about it. And that period of time also is maturing you in the golden wind. The tree's gone, the leaf's gone, etc. Now, this ideal state, which some people will need and find a way to do, all of you won't, but it's good to know about it and to know that it's good to have a time in your life where you emphasize this, or have a feeling for this, or a time, you know, underneath what you're doing. And that is a kind of very developed practice of uncorrected mind, where you really don't correct anything. But this is not you'll get yourself in a muddle, if you're really in a distracted sort of state all the time, this kind of practice of uncorrected mind can only be realized when you've begun to see appearance and emptiness joined on every horizon.

[05:26]

When you've come to that point, then you can really practice in a very external way, not just an underneath way, uncorrected mind. Okay, I didn't think I'd get through that to give you the various ways in which this practice of uncorrected mind is understood and practiced in the fullest sense of maturing an individual as a Buddha. And if you understand this possibility that the maturation of arising of the mind as dharma, of the person as Buddha, is possible for human beings, It makes this practice possible for you. Whatever your life is, in the many... This isn't a fantasy. It's possible. It makes it possible for you in the many small details of your life in which actually time is stopped. And then moves on.

[06:31]

I enjoyed our discussion, conversation yesterday about religion and spirit. And I wondered if anyone had anything else you'd like to say about where we are so far in the Sesshin, or where you are, or what we've been talking about, anything. I remembered an anecdote about Boris Yeltsin and spirituality. Boris Yeltsin? Boris Yeltsin. Yeah, okay. Russian. My feeling about those two words is pretty much that... I think I prefer... I mostly would use the word religion. And what I hear in the use of the word spirituality... in the United States, is that if people are connected with some practice, say Indian practice or whatever, they will see this word in a profound, maybe it's been more profound than religion.

[07:54]

Whereas in the wider society, there's a tremendous vagueness about the word, and it can mean whatever you want it to mean, pretty much. And this, I thought, came out in this example. When Yeltsin was in the United States, I think it was about a year ago, it was before the coup, he gave a talk at the Commonwealth Club. And someone asked him a question about his spiritual life. And he pretty much defined the question that didn't seem to have any real definition for it. And he sort of defined the discussion by answering in two or three fairly obvious ways. He didn't know whether there was a car, he didn't know if there was a church. Just as a matter of insurance, he was very glad that his grandchildren had been recently baptized.

[08:55]

But then he said, but if you're asking me about my wife, And then he just kind of summed up his relationship with his wife. He said, it'll be my 25 years, I'll get along pretty well. That kind of stuff. And... The conclusion we draw is, the feminine is the spiritual. You laid down yesterday, I think, the three areas in which spirituality... or religion, it has to do with our relationship to community. And so he was touching on that, I think. Okay. There's definitely a sense in Buddhism of developing the feminine is to develop your spiritual side.

[10:02]

But since the practice has been mostly defined for males, it may be part of the reason. If so much of the practice hadn't been done, at least in numbers of people, by men, maybe the women wouldn't say that. Maybe women have to develop the feminine too. Anybody else want to say anything? Anything? when you said religion is a spirit larger than one person or one body. I remember meeting a man in a bookstore, and we looked into each other's eyes and saw something that was familiar, and we started discussing what it was that we had in common, and ran through places and people. And the only thing that we could find that we had in common was this illusion.

[11:04]

And I thought it was interesting enough to bring us to a halt in the aisle, 15 minutes figuring it out. Yeah, I've had that experience a number of times. I'd like to just relate an anecdote that my father told about Christianity. He said that What made the difference between the Old Testament and the New was compassion, was that before then there were prophets. and they somehow lived in capes and they studied alone and there was very little of this kind of compassionate side. Then there was a later development of compassion through Jesus Christ and his teaching.

[12:07]

Then I was thinking about what is perhaps the way the idea of the arhat, the ideal changed into the bodhisattva, and then perhaps the change from spiritual then to being kind of an religious idea in a very similar process? I think there's a parallel, yes. That's right. I wanted somebody to say something that I'm paraphrasing, but it had to do with the fact that spirituality was addressing the mystery directly, and religion was addressing the mystery through something else. Yes, some religion is like that.

[13:09]

Now, is there anything I've talked about that is perplexing to you or you'd like me to go further in? It all makes complete sense and there's no problem about it at all. Yeah? You mentioned the other day the distinction between awareness and consciousness. And I guess that's based on the consciousness part. Well, if you spaced out on the consciousness part, that's good. You're closer to awareness. Oh, I don't know. I don't... I've talked about that so often. Oh, then never mind. And it's... I don't want to go into it, but you can ask me and Doug's going to understand. The second day you spoke about discontinuity of the mind, and I don't remember you speaking about that. Could you say a little bit more about that? What I meant was that generally we are trying to see continuities and by that we only see the world at a certain altitude.

[14:20]

It's like if you try to look at a landscape in terms of continuity, you'd miss things. You'd try to see it like that. So if you see discontinuities, you begin to see the topography in more detail. And also discontinuity, which is what allows us to experience self or change our mind. So discontinuity is also essential. Although our effort in consciousness is to create continuity, in fact, if there was continuity, we could never change our mind. Yeah. You mentioned in your lecture yesterday, Roshi, about the golden land, about appearances, about the ensuring process. What is the first act to grasp that process? How does one begin that? I'm not sure... You spoke of appearances, and as these appearances manifest themselves, to...

[15:28]

embark upon this process, what is the first act? I don't understand how I would go about it. First... Well, to ask the question as you just did is the first act. And to have that kind of question arise in you and to take it seriously Everything else proceeds from that. That's why they say the first thought of practice is actually the experience of enlightenment. When you unpack that experience, when you actually, if you really see the point of practice, that's initial enlightenment. And you may not know it, and it may not spread throughout you. but it's like a maybe time capsule pill or something, if you actually pay attention to it, that begins to permeate you and you realize it was enlightenment. An enlightenment experience that's not yet really experienced.

[16:35]

Well, let me... Let me try to explore some of these things with you. I'd like to continue our exploration together. You know, I'm... I'm sorry that I'm not teaching a Buddhism that feels good enough for you or developed enough for you. And not too much I can do about that, except I depend on you to develop Buddhism further. And You know, I've been doing this a long time, a pretty long time, for a white man. So you may think, well, geez, that I know quite a bit about Buddhism or something like that.

[17:41]

You know, and that you don't know so much. But maybe some of you have that thought, maybe some of you don't. But I guess I would fit the category of a pioneer, sort of Daniel Boone Satsu or something like that. Satsu. And so I've covered a lot of territory. But to develop the real kindness, loving kindness of practice and develop the depth of practice and the everydayness, the ordinariness of practice, I think that's really going to be up to you. You know, it comes up when I think about the religious side of our practice, because some people feel what we're doing here is too religious.

[18:51]

Remember that in the last Sashin, the guy from France, who's Belgian, he came to the Belgian seminar. And he came all the way here, and he got here, and on the first day he heard the bell and the chanting, and he packed his bags and left. He wouldn't even talk about it, you know. And he'd heard in Europe and coming to the seminar. Somebody had sent him to the seminar and then some Buddhist teacher and said, you should study with Rekharoshi because he's making Buddhism more Western than most people or something like that. And it doesn't have all the religious paraphernalia from Japan. So he got here. boom, [...] boom. I mean, he was, he's the fastest exit we've ever had. Except for one guy who escaped in the middle of the night. This last Sashin in Europe. He left before dawn.

[19:54]

Two people leave before dawn in Sashins in Europe. Hmm. And then other people, I feel that the religious side of this practice, the good religious side, is not developed enough. And I think the problem where it either looks too religious or not religious enough is really my inability to find out how to really... bring this practice to fruition in terms that don't distort or dilute the practice, but that make emotional feeling sense to us. And also, although some of you are beginners in the practice, you are also much better than the practice

[20:55]

And so we need to make the practice. So it's a funny thing. I mean, I'm quite serious, is that we are such complex, amazing individuals. If you wouldn't keep putting yourself down and thinking comparative terms, you'd recognize what a brilliant, unique, glow, luminous event each of you is. Mm-hmm. Stop interfering with yourselves. So, in some ways you have to bring practice up to your level. That's one thing you're doing in practice. You're improving practice by practicing. And the other thing is, you're bringing yourself up to the level of practice. They're both... accurate ways of looking at practice and... Because practice is always less than you.

[22:02]

Sometimes to know that, you have to practice. So... I think one thing that we made... pretty clear yesterday, was that the dimension of mind is the same territory as what we mean by spirit in Western languages. But there's a And the dimension of religion, of religious impulse, is what's meant in Buddhism by the vow to save all sentient beings, by the vow to realize enlightenment with each person you meet.

[23:17]

This larger sense of identity is the territory that's equivalent to religion. And then, of course, there gets to be a mix-up because monasteries, Zen monasteries in particular, are places to support spiritual practice and training. But they also become religious institutions. And the temples particularly become religious institutions. And inevitably, if you wear Buddha's robe, or you're a person who has a sense of the sacred and the spiritual dimension of life, then people come to you and ask you to bury them or or at least bury their friend. Well, Alan Watts asked me to bury him.

[24:22]

I was driving with Alan Watts, and he said, will you do my funeral? I said, are you planning to die? He said, well, you know. And I think it was a few months later he died. But anyway, so you get yourself in the, religious business if you're not careful just because you practice. Some teachers, like Sawaki Kota Roshi in Japan, who was Tashima Roshi's original teacher, and what's his name, who wrote Refining Your Kitchen Practice? Uchirama. Uchirama Roshi is his main disciple. He found a temple where he could not have members and parishioners, so they could just practice as. Because the temples in Japan get taken over with doing memorial services and everything, you know, endlessly. And they didn't want to have anything to do with being parish priests.

[25:26]

So they created a temple, one of the few in Japan, where it had no members. But Tsukiroshi used to get me to go to funeral ceremonies. He had to do funerals. Most of the Japanese congregation were old. They'd come back from being incarcerated in the camps during the Second World War, and someone had paid the taxes on the Sokoji building, and they... were quite old, and they would die once a week or once a month or something. They would die quite often, actually. It doesn't hurt to leave quite often to do a funeral. He always wanted me to go to the funerals. And he'd wear a big hat and a whisk and all that stuff. And he was quite insistent that I understand this side of the practice. And I...

[26:29]

I guess I'm willing to enter this side of the practice. I don't know if I understand it very well. Okay, so... By the way, yesterday when I said I had this moral problem with dogs, you know, I don't know, I think when Janie was speaking to Randy about wanting in, she was also saying, we heard you. Because when I went upstairs, I got upstairs, all three dogs were at the door immediately after lecture. So I thought about it for a while and said, thought they obviously heard the lecture, so I gave them each a bone, each a dog biscuit. They're all pleased.

[27:37]

I wish I was as easy to satisfy. Great. Hmm. Okay, so, now one thing that has been, is almost universally, I think, how can I finish this sentence? There's almost a universal confusion in the West, I would say, of enlightenment and conversion. And we tend to identify conversion and enlightenment with conversion in the sense that you become enlightened and all the teaching is there and all the practice is there and everything's there at once.

[28:54]

It's just simply not true. And when you're converted, then you need God's grace or God's help. You don't have to do anything, I guess. You're converted and you're now a believer with a direct experience or something like that. But enlightenment is only one part of Buddhism in the sense, like you brought up, of maturing your practice. It is essential. And after enlightenment, It's you who take care of yourself. You live within your own grace. Sometimes when I'm under a lot of pressure, I'll wake up in the night and I'll just sort of... reflex motion being a westerner I say oh please god help me how am I ever going to solve all these problems and I think hey I'm a buddhist so then I say Richard please help me and Richard says hey I don't know

[30:15]

Now, this koan that we've started in the seminar, I believe it's 70, isn't the one we started? Yeah. And we haven't gone to 71 yet, right? Okay. 70 I just looked at yesterday, by chance. And it's exactly what I've been talking about today, and yesterday, or yesterday and the day before. And it'd be nice if... I'd like to, shortly after Sashin, to... start the seminars again and look at that koan, start with 70, before we go to 71, look at 70 again in more detail. Because it's a really interesting and subtle way to present the stage of non-meditation, which I was talking about yesterday, the stage of non-meditation, or no meditative practice to investigate, it says in there. No path of meditation to investigate. No, right now what I'm doing here is just bringing these things up to share with you a discussion which I think continues on your cushion after we stop talking.

[31:45]

But the koan, I believe, starts, I think it goes, clearly knowing the unborn nature of life, Why are we stayed by life? Now, this is a turn on a question attributed to Manjushri, who five forms of him are up there in the altar above Achala and Shakyamuni. Manjushri, who asked, clearly knowing the unborn nature of life, who is it that is stayed by, interfered with, by life? So, the koan, anyways, clearly knowing shresana, that's jinshan, clearly knowing the unborn nature of life. of reality.

[32:51]

Why are we stayed by life? And Chin Shan said, I think, bamboo shoots are... Something like bamboo shoots, when they're green, aren't strong enough to make rope. But when they're... So, can you use them when they're still green? Isn't that something like that? And then the next line is... You will be And you'll be enlightened on your own later on, Jin Shan says, Shui Shan.

[33:56]

And Shui Shan says, I am just like this. This is just how I am. And Jin Shan said, this is the superintendent's quarters. That is the cook's quarters. and Shui Shan bows. Anyway, that's the story. And I don't think it's so easy, if I'm just saying this, for you to follow it, so I won't go into it. But the question here is, knowing the unborn nature of reality, in other words, knowing emptiness, and knowing how things arise, why are we still interfered with? What? Why does life interfere with us? And Sri San's answer about the bamboo is saying two things at once.

[35:05]

It's saying, my enlightenment is not ripe yet. Both are Zen masters, these two guys. My enlightenment is not ripe yet. Ah. And he's also saying, in order to act in this world, you need to have some strength or power. You need to be matured in your enlightenment. And so Jinshan says, you will be enlightened later on. Which is also kind of a put-down. And so he says, well, I'm just like this, you know. So he says, this is the superintendent's quarters and that is the cook's quarters. Now when he says, I am just this, I'm just like this, what he's doing is saying, and when he says his own enlightenment is...

[36:06]

and not yet mature, and then he says, I'm just like this, he's both taking the view, he's taking the view of non-meditation. Okay, so, I just wanted to present that poem because to look at it really and to look at Jianjian's poem, where he says, standing alone on earth, Standing alone on the planet, there is no beaten path. That's very much like I said last night. In the whole, there's nothing hidden in the universe. From ancient times until now, it's all obvious. That, if you can understand that in relationship, standing alone on earth, there is no beaten path. You know beaten path? No path laid down before you. The mind, fluid and clear , knows neither right nor wrong, empty and serene, unimpeded, and so forth.

[37:24]

This is all the stage of non-meditation or no meditative path to investigate. So, if we have time, when we do the seminar, we can go into this more clearly. But for now, let me just say, going back to what you brought up, the practice that emphasizes mind is primarily realized through yogic practice, through jhanic practice. Now in a way there is almost two schools, some which emphasize compassion and analytic investigation of perception.

[38:25]

And in fact one of the major teachers in America these days, really doesn't emphasize the yogic side of practice. It's emphasizing the direct, we can say, to realize the vision of reality, to realize how things are through investigating perception and through compassion. Okay, so one way to mature yourself is that you keep investigating how things exist, how things arise, how the world arises. And this effort, which you do in every way you can, definitely confirms you in this vision of how things are, or a vision of reality, or right views and so forth.

[39:38]

And this process matures you. Through yogic practice and through the fusion of these two practices, in sâshin, you are not studying... You may study perception or how things arise, seeing and experiencing how things arise, but you're more... I don't know how to put it, inside the workings of your... You're seeing how mind itself exists. You're studying mind, consciousness and awareness itself, not the activity of mind. Now, the yogic path, the jhanic path, is considered the more rapid, but also it's different. And we can say we arrive at the same point, or nearly the same point, but the way in which you will...

[40:50]

I don't want to say more. I don't know quite how to make the distinction, but in any case, the direct experience of emptiness and the direct experience of mind is the yogic path. And that's enough. Maybe I can make it clearer. Well, I'd like to say one more thing, is that the stage of non-meditation is the stage of someone who has realized the yogic path and through one-pointedness and so forth can hold this vision of reality or emptiness without losing it.

[42:11]

And then you practice an unaltered state of mind. And again, this is what this koan 70 is about, practicing an unaltered state of mind and what power or strength you need to do that. And the power and strength that is needed to do that arises from yogic practice, not from analytic or compassionate practice. So in Zen, when they talk about carrying water and firewood and everything just as it is, they're really speaking in the realized sense of the last stage of the development of yogic practice after you've gone through yogic practice and then analytical practice and then unaltered. And then everything is just as it is. However, the way Zen works it, just to complete this general picture, is just as it is practiced as a yogic practice, like a koan,

[43:18]

becomes a way to realize the state of non-meditation through meditation. Does that make sense? In other words, the state of non-meditation means you really don't meditate. You actually take everything just as it is without any discrimination. That's not so easy to do. But you can have that attitude built in your zazen practice which is the level of awareness you can keep saying, just now is enough, just as it is. But just now is enough is only enough at the level of the undivided world. At the level of the divided world, just now is not enough. Isn't that true? At the level of the divided world, we have to go shopping, things like that. And we have to sometimes say, I better not say that. Things like that. Okay, anyway, I wasn't very clear today, but, you know, it's the best I can do today.

[44:30]

Somehow I want to tell you about being in my grandmother's house. To end the day. I went east, my daughter, and she'd said to me several times, are you ashamed of your family, Dad? How come I never meet any of them? Well, they're 3,000 miles away and they're ancient. So, I, um, and, uh, Her mother's family is nearer and so forth. So we went and we stopped at my grandmother's house and I walked around it and knocked on the doors and it was raining. My grandmother's been dead quite a while. But anyway, I know that my great aunt lives there. And finally she looked out and she couldn't, this rain hat on, and she couldn't recognize who the heck was just knocking on her doors. But I took my hat off, said who I was.

[45:31]

So we went in, sat down. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't so different than when my grandmother lived there. She's living there now. One part of it. And I picked up, I just looked at everything. And there's a funny quality, I don't know if you're going to understand what I mean by this, but just from my own experience, there's a funny quality to old cloth, you know, in your grandmother's house. It's just there. It's been there long before you were around. It's probably going to be there after you're gone. I think of Suzuki Roshi's dictionary. He had this old dictionary. It got left to me, and the back of it's written... This old dictionary is falling apart, but I bet it's going to be around after I'm gone. He wrote in the back. And sure enough, it is around, and he's gone. Except you're here. Your faces. So there's a funny quality to what I'm calling grandmother's cloth.

[46:34]

which is that it's very much, my feeling is, what I'm feeling by saying this, is it's very much, what can I say, present in my life, in a way a cloth in a store is not, say. But it's not present in my life because in no way does it belong to me. The cloth here, I've got to sew it or get a new robe or It belongs to me in the present. It has to do with my identity and so forth. And I have feelings about it. It's nice or not nice. But the class of my grandmother, it's just there, more real than I am. Then at the same time, it's profoundly ordinary, completely ordinary, thoroughly ordinary. And yet it has, for me, a kind of identity that's more... It almost makes me feel like a guest on earth.

[47:44]

I'm a visitor on earth. Miss Cloth is there. I'm a visitor. Hi, Cloth, how are you? See you later. And many times in practice I feel the same way. I feel I'm a kind of visitor, a guest on earth. And I feel very ordinary and very grateful to be here at the same time as you are. You are all great examples of old cloth. Somehow you're present, present here. If you're counting, one more day, right? Just count? I hope. I doubt it, but I hope some of you aren't counting.

[48:48]

Or not counting and counting. Now, yesterday I tried to throw the ball into your park. Or to... Make it clear that this practice is up to you, that you're sitting or standing or living, walking alone, and there are no beaten paths. And you get to makes me think of some of these Andy Warhol-type movies where you sit there and you don't know why you're in the seat, but you're certainly not involved in the movie, and you're just sitting there in the seat, you know. I remember in one of those movies, Tarzan and the Reseda, it went on for hours with Taylor Meade swinging from the Watts Towers.

[49:58]

And if you don't know these references, it's okay. And finally, some people got up behind me and said, they started passing, and I stood up and looked them by, and I said, giving up, huh? And this Chinese woman looked at me and said, Philistine, the lobby's more interesting. Yeah. So that was good, I thought. Mm-hmm. Like the sounds of the plumbing. After you listen to John Cage for a while, the pipes in the bathroom start sounding good. So, that's what I'm saying to you, Philistine. Your own sitting is more interesting than anything I might say. And... But if you can really know that, one, you help me practice a lot if you do that, but also if you really know that, then I can try to give you some teachings without fearing you'll grasp them too much.

[51:17]

You've got to find out how these make sense in your own daily living. That's the only way your daily life and practice will become one. And I really want you to practice as well as possible for you, but also, you know, as I just implied, for me. I mean, I started out practicing with others just because I was so grateful for the practice. And it's very clear now that your practice is... My practice and my ability to continue practicing is inseparable from practicing with you. You're always leading me and correcting me.

[52:20]

You may not know you are, but I feel that. I can feel it. Now, Suzuki Roshi said in One of the first sashins, one of the rohatsu sashin in 67, when he first started Tazara. Steve, speaking about Sukhya Rishi this morning, made me think about Sukhya Rishi. He said, because of your practice, the mountain is high. Because of your practice, the ocean is deep. Because of your practice, birds fly. Because of your practice, fish swim. Now, you could say almost the same thing in any religious context. Because of God or because of grace or because of something, the mountain is high.

[53:27]

And out of context, I think this sounds very little, it's a nice thing to say, but, you know, the mountain out there is high whether you're Braxing or not. So what did Sukhiroshi mean and why would he in the evening of the first day of Sashin, 67, December, say this? Now said by an enlightened master in a context of practicing deep in the mountains, deep And said by Suikyoshi, this can move your practice very deeply.

[54:35]

But I'd like to ... try to make clearer for us dumb Americans and Europeans, I mean dumb Americans and smart Europeans, the... say that... make a little clearer what Sukershi meant and what his presence conveyed in saying this. The saying was kind of the surface, and what he meant was felt. I can't recreate that exactly, but I can try to give you some understanding, I hope, of it. So I'd like to speak about it at the same time by speaking through or about three major Buddhist terms, morality, samadhi, and prajna, conduct, clarity of conduct, honesty of conduct.

[56:14]

samadhi, calmness or mental clarity, and prajna wisdom or understanding, alertness, so forth. What I want to do in speaking about this is to take some major terms of Buddhism, these three, and get you acquainted with these major terms. Because, you know, I hope you study Buddhism along with practicing. And practice in Zen always is first, and practice leads your study. But you can have real insight and openings through study if your practice is aroused, if your practice is alert and ready to be precipitated by something you're reading.

[57:28]

Reading is okay, but you read really in the context of an aroused practice. But if you read, you're going to come across wisdom and samadhi and blah, blah, blah. And these are used differently in different schools, different periods. And you ought to have some kind of functional understanding of these things, I think. And these relate to what I've been talking about, shamatha and vipassana, where shamatha means more samadhi, jnana, concentration, absorption, and vipassana means more insight, wisdom, and so forth. Now, the word chan, as you well know, or zen rather, is a derivative from

[58:34]

the word jhana, meaning absorption, concentration, etc. But in Zen, when the word is Zen or Chan, it means actually, although it comes from the word jhana, it actually means, in the shamatha side, it actually means the fusion of shamatha and vipassana, or of wisdom and samadhi. Now, these terms and this vocabulary is ancient. And the use of this vocabulary is embodied in the lineage teachings and in the precepts and the practices. And, you know, you have to really look at this with a fresh eye and I think a gratefulness for the work so many people did.

[59:47]

I mean, when you woke up in the morning as a baby and saw your pillow, you didn't think, ah, somebody... Or wisdom. You just thought, well, it's a nice piece of cloth and there's something out there. You know, you heard something. The step from opening your eyes and seeing your pillow to a practice, embodied practice like wisdom and prajna is a huge step. And it's taken thousands of people over hundreds and hundreds of years. So these are very powerful gifts if you want them to be. Okay. So what I want to do is give you a sense of the relative or sort of initial understandings of samadhi and

[60:55]

wisdom, samadhi and prajna. Now, I'm going to talk about these things in terms of the last few days I've been talking about the more Theravadan approach to Buddhism with its extension in Zen. And Zen is among the Mahayana schools, like Tibetan schools, grounds its practice in the earlier Buddhism, in Theravadan's type of Buddhism, but understood somewhat differently. And also the way I'm speaking, what I want to speak about is also more in the kind of gradual approach to practice, and also the pre-Zen syncretism which put these things all together.

[62:07]

So when you have Sukhiroshi saying, through your practice the mountain is high, That's way out there, the end of the development of Buddhism. But if you don't, I think, if we don't, as Western Buddhists, know the ingredients that got us to that point, you don't know how to do the practices real powerfully. So I think you need to know the foundation and the ingredients that led to the direct practices of Zen. Okay. Okay, so after all that introduction, what I'm saying is really quite simple. Again, this is a yogic practice, and so all of these terms really are, their conceptual meaning is very slim or interesting, but not where the action is.

[63:20]

The action is how these terms physically and mentally function. Okay? Now, when you are practicing, wisdom is, we could say wisdom or prajna, is to bring your attention equally to each thing you do. So, when you're eating, you bring all your attention equally to each detail of the orioke. When you're chanting, you bring your attention equally to each syllable. Your effort, attention goes into chanting,

[64:21]

equally with sitting, equally with eating, equally with whatever you're doing. Your object of meditation becomes whatever you happen to be doing. And you don't say, well, this is less important, I won't pay as much attention. Very important that you don't say that for a number of reasons. When you do that, that's not wisdom. That's discrimination, ordinary, that's yourself saying, this is not important, that's important. From the point of view of wisdom, the manifestations of this world are all equally important, equally valuable, equally magical. So the practice which matures you in this golden wind, matures you through emptiness, is to bring your attention equally without discrimination to each thing, Now, let me say at this point, because some of you brought up, isn't it a little dangerous to practice non-discrimination?

[65:26]

I don't know how to, because the world's a mess and we've got to discriminate. I don't know how to say this often enough, but the practice of non-discrimination has nothing to do with not discriminating. Otherwise you'd bump into trees and you'd keep bumping into it and you'd keep bumping into it. And you'd say, hey, I'd better discriminate. The path is over there, you know. If you walk through a door, you're discriminating. And if somebody puts acid in your soup, you say, it just tastes like shit. You know. I used the S word. Almost. Um... But it's at a different viscosity of mind where you're resting, where you're not discriminating.

[66:29]

If you have to discriminate, discriminate. When it's not necessary, you don't discriminate. You're not thinking, this is good, bad, I like this, people like me, blah. You're starting to deconstruct your life and started a very simple thing. Okay. So you're bringing your attention, and in practice you're bringing your attention equally to each thing you do. a kind of alertness and energy. Okay, now that alertness and energy is a relative or initial manifestation of wisdom. It's kind of the tangible surface of wisdom.

[67:31]

It doesn't mean you're thinking great thoughts and you're real smart or anything like that. It just means you're able to bring your energy equally to each thing. That's the relative prajna. Now, relative or initial samadhi is on each moment you find a calmness or ease. Now calmness or ease doesn't exist Unless you have, I mean, real calmness and ease doesn't exist unless you have some experience through yogic practice of absorption, finding having everything just drains out of your mind and can be bright and clear and empty.

[68:34]

So from that experience and you begin to have a kind of calmness arises in each thing. It also means that you're able to start sort of, how can I say it any other way, start each moment with a clean slate. There's less and less carryover from the previous moment. I mean, if you think about something, there's carryover. But there's less and less carryover. You can just look at what's in front of you or feel what's in front of you with, as if you'd seen it for the first time. Now, that practice comes about through the yogic practice of sadhana. And when you do zazen, you really shouldn't be just doing zazen. You do it once a day. You do it as part of the schedule. Something you do like a meal or chanting or something like that.

[69:43]

It's just something you do when it's time to do it, and you try to do it every day. That's good if you... I mean, that's pretty good if you do it that way. But what you really want to do is pour yourself into zazen. Disappear into zazen. Sukhya, she says, the fish doesn't know where it is. You don't know where you are. You're in the air and you're breathing, but actually you don't know where you are. In terms of comparative thinking, you know, but really we don't know what this universe is and where we are, what it is, how we're in it. So, you're existing on the level of, you know, I'm here, I'm in the zendo, and I've got to follow the schedule. But that's just until you get to your cushion. Or until you have to pick up the spoon.

[70:46]

But in between picking up the spoon, or after you sit on your cushion, you drop into somewhere you don't know where you are. Maybe you'll never reappear. You don't care. Hmm? the big vacation abyss. Something like that. Club meditation. On the cushion. Okay. Okay. So, when you are on each occasion where you bring your... This is also one practice, samadhi, etc., Zen and Tendai practice.

[71:53]

On each occasion you bring your attention to whatever you're doing as the object of meditation. So just what arises is the object of meditation. Now, when you study that object of meditation, as I've been speaking about, in Zen practice, in Buddhist practice, in developed Buddhist practice, you study that object of meditation in terms of the three Theravadan distinctions, the three marks, sometimes a fourth of purity, the three marks of impermanence, suffering, and non-personality. And really fourth, that encompasses all of those from the Yogacara, Tathagatagarbha teaching, you see all as cognitive constructs, all as mental constructs.

[72:56]

Now, in teaching in Europe this year, I talked a lot about the practice of seeing everything as arising as a mental construct, and in fact, arising in the fields of the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas. So not only does it arise, you begin to understand the technology of this kind of practice, you begin to see that it arises through the five... in the fields of the five skandhas, which then begin to be five fields which then relate, not just, you know, not just one... not just one... kind of simple thing, you know. And you begin to see how the five skandhas are interpenetrated by and with the eight vijnanas, the six vijnanas and the seventh and the eighth. So it gives you something to do when, again, when you're bored, waiting for buses, you transform the street into this field of

[74:02]

So you can see how it arises, see it in these terms, and also let it come together on its own. Now, that's the practice of looking at form. But that practice from the side of prajna and samadhi On each arising, you experience your alertness equally. Now, it's just simple. Like in Sashin, you practice four or seven days trying to bring your attention, energy, equally to each thing without any sloughing off at any point. To going to sleep, to waking up, to washing in the morning, to working in the kitchen, to doing outdoor, keeping in the rug, and so forth. At the same time in that attention, that fluid of prajna, the fluid of wisdom that you can feel in your bringing your attention, ability to bring your attention to something.

[75:15]

Then there's the other fluid, ease and calmness. So you're bringing attention and energy, but at the same time there's a relaxation, a deep relaxation, no effort, no anxiety, kind of ease and calmness. Now, why distinguish? Why not just say, bring your attention to it? Why am I distinguishing between the fluid of prajna and the fluid of samadhi? Because there's a greater subtlety in making this distinction that bears fruit later on. And it also gives you a way to notice, because if you just bring energy, you may get caught. Just bring calmness, you may get caught. So it's this beginning to have the ability to bring energy and attention, alertness, simultaneously with ease and calm and relaxation.

[76:18]

to bear on each object of perception, which is whatever is the moment is. Now, this is experiencing things just as they are. This is also being in the present, not just being in the present, but rather through the fluid of prajna, through the fluid of samadhi, you are in the present, maturing in the present, and transforming the present. Now, where does morality come in? Thought I'd forgotten. No, didn't think I'd forgotten, okay. I almost forgot, actually. Is when you can't bring your attention equally to something, when you can't bring the fluidity of prajna and the fluidity of samadhi

[77:23]

to something, there's usually an obf, something contaminated or impediment or obfuscated something. So you begin to see there are things that you can't bring this to, that suddenly when you think about a certain person, a certain thing happens or you remember something or some aspects of the day, you can't do it. Some activities you can't do it. Suddenly it throws you into stuff and thoughts, anxieties and so forth. So, this ability to bring the fluid... It's okay, I'm using the word fluid? The fluid, fluid, fluidness of And your body begins to feel fluid and your mind begins to feel fluid.

[78:25]

There's a line in that poem in Chendang in the 70th koan I read to you, or said to you yesterday, the clear fluidity of mind. So when you can't bring this fluidity to something, you suddenly are confronted with an impediment or some contaminant or some mixed-up situation in your life. So you can begin to surround that with these fluids of prajna and wisdom. Clarity, energy, alertness, calmness, ease. And you're doing this in your body too.

[79:28]

In other words, when you're sitting, you feel something's dark in this shoulder. When you get a little pain here for some reason, you begin to see those things very clearly because they're seen with contrast. against this foreground background of prajna and samadhi as experiential realities. Now, this is a kind of gradual practice, because little by little you're transforming your body with these fluids of prajna and samadhi on each moment. as the object of meditation. Now, you're trying to get the hang of this in zazen, the feel of it in zazen, and in sashin. And then from that feel of it, you're bringing it to your daily life.

[80:33]

So with this kind of practice, you can also begin to see when something, some feeling you have, starts to sour. You're going, oh, and suddenly this fluid, these fluids, rajna and samadhi, you can't, something caught up in thinking and... It's okay in our practice because that very point you then use as a pivot of transformation by infusing that, whatever it is, with prajna and experiential prajna and wisdom. So you begin to feel a kind of, not a kind of, in fact, an awareness and a liquidity of awareness and calmness, of alertness and calmness, energy and ease, in your body, in the tips of your fingers, in your knees, in the tip of your shoulder, in your muscles.

[82:27]

This isn't just some philosophy. And in your thoughts as they arise, you can see them arise with ease, calmness, characterized by calmness. And you can see them arise with alertness and presence. And you can see them arise with darkness and clarity and so forth. And that ability to be present like that in the arising of appearances is again the fruit of having poured yourself repetitively into practicing each moment, into practicing when you chant, into practicing when you eat, through pouring yourself into zazen many, many times. And Zazen, part of Zazen is just a simple physical security to let go.

[83:37]

Part of the pain of Zazen is the ability to know you can sit through things. So you have confidence that you kind of trust that you can go through things. Plus you begin to be at ease and not frightened by, not distressed by, letting go of the boundaries of self and the world and slipping into the realms of discontinuity and myriad appearances without losing your bearings. Now, more absolute sense of prajna, more absolute sense of samadhi, is when this samadhi becomes the clarity and emptiness from which everything arises.

[84:54]

It's not just calmness anymore. It's deeper than, I don't know, deeper, higher, lower, bigger, smaller, anyway. It's a little different. And you feel everything arising from a kind of clarity and luminance. And you feel everything arising from an unperturbed emptiness. Now, you feel that in yourself, and then you begin to feel that on each thing, that it's the nature of each thing. And that experience, and this Buddhism then is rather different from how Theravada Buddhism understands it, this experience is Buddha nature. It's called Buddha nature. because everything seems to arise with this intrinsic emptiness and purity.

[86:04]

Then, when you can be at the moment of that arising, samadhi and prajna are one, and that's called Buddha nature. Now, when you do the more advanced or developed practices of wado practice or koan practice, you're actually bringing the statement to that point. It unites the arising of samadhi and prajna. a recognition of yourself and the world.

[87:10]

So this gives you a way to practice in your daily life. And it's an advanced and developed practice, but it's also a beginner's practice. Because every time you do zazen, and you kind of let go of where you are. Every time you bring your effort equally to each object of perception, which any beginner can try to do, you are developing prajna and wisdom, or prajna, wisdom, and samadhi, deep ease and calmness. Now, this is expressed by Suzuki Roshi in saying, because of your practice, the mountain is high.

[88:30]

And what he means is, you feel the height of the mountain as your own height. When you look into the ocean, see the ocean, you don't feel, oh, that's the ocean out there. You feel it as your own depth. You don't feel separated from it. And that's the fruit of this practice of bringing energy and ease throughout your body, throughout the topography of your body, inside and out, and through each mental perception, each arising, Then when you see a bird, you feel all covered with feathers. You feel what it's like to be supported by the air. Because it's not something you have to think about. Oh, birds are like that, and I could be like that, or I wish I could fly.

[89:36]

No. Whatever the bird is doing is conveyed directly to you, and you feel it. So because of your practice, the bird flies. You feel you're helping the bird. Because of your practice the mountain is high. You are high. Because of your practice the ocean is deep. You are deep. Because of your practice the fish swim and birds fly. All myriad things appear as your own. Sri Yukeshi said, you know, you have to be careful about having an aim in what you do, because if the aim becomes the subject of your attention, you're not then involved in the direct activity of... immediate activity.

[90:49]

So, yes, you have some aim, but the aim is like when you come to zazen, but then you slip into the immediate activity and a subtleness arises in the immediate activity. So, we have an aim, but are these fluids of prajna Samadhi, this attention to each moment, is in the activity itself, in the subtlety of the activity itself, without any idea that it's going anywhere. And the more that's the case, the more your feeling extends to the mountain or the ocean or the bird or the fish. It extends to your own immediate, absolute, unique existence.

[91:55]

Standing alone. No beaten path. Nothing is hidden. Everything is obvious and immediately present. We are in danger.

[92:19]

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