Now, I'm only interested in this as it affects our practice. And in Dogen. And we're all in a Dogen stream, we could say. I'm only going to talk a couple minutes here. Dan and Fran, for instance, made the decision quite a long time ago to practice, and they continued doing it. And mostly, although Dan started out in a different school, mostly coming into the Dogen stream. And Randy, for example, started a pretty long time ago too, but in different ways, and then coming into this stream. So whether we like it or not, all of us in practicing together are in a, we could call it Dogen's dream.

[01:08]

So now we're looking at Dogen and we say, hey, but we don't agree with him. Or are we really in this dream? Or what is it, you know? And so I think we have to ask, and it's interesting, we're kind of returning to the source here. How can we be of Dogen's stream and yet perhaps find we don't agree with it? So I think the first questions we can ask is, what do we think we're doing in our own practice? What vision or idea or procedure do you have in your own practice? And then can we learn something from now studying Dogon? And third, or really maybe a fourfold, one question with four parts.

[02:18]

Third is, I would say, is, you know, do you agree with Dogen? And I know that I disagree sometimes and agree sometimes. And different parts of Dogen are the same thing. Sometimes I agree with it and sometimes I disagree. And if we disagree, on what basis do we disagree? I mean, it doesn't make any sense to disagree unless we have some basis on which we think practice is different than that. So I think it would be nice if we could sit in some way so we faced each other. So maybe this half of the room turns, and I'll sit here somewhere. I'll move my couch. But I think if we can talk to each other, now you're all talking to me. So maybe, Dan, could you start and read that first section up to the word verifying?

[03:24]

Lancet of Seated Meditation. Once, when Great Master Wangdao Yishan was sitting in meditation, the monk asked him, What are you thinking, sitting there so fixedly? The master answered, I'm thinking of not thinking. The monk asked, how do you think of not thinking? The master answered, non-thinking. Does anybody think this could mean? What is non-thinking? I mean, does this play any role in your own sitting?

[04:43]

For me, it could be anything which isn't thinking. So it's a lot of other possibilities. It could be smelling. So smelling is not thinking. Non-thinking. Non-thinking. Something to try. Okay. Let's all throw our two cents into the pot here. Non-thinking is... Oh, that's sort of the broom you use when you say, oops, I'm sitting here thinking. It's a broom you use. To sweep away thoughts.

[05:49]

Not thinking? Well, try to think of not thinking as opposed to thinking of what you're thinking about. Okay. This is a meditative... state of mind. I can't quite... Your meditative state of mind of what? This is pertaining to meditation. Yeah. And I don't think that... I don't think that Dobin is talking about anything transcendental at all. These kinds of... He makes these points. So I think he's talking about... profoundly human phenomenon. And my guess is, based loosely on my own experience, is that it has to do with a perfect receptivity of mind and maybe a perfect suppleness

[07:06]

It seems that non-thinking is beyond the dualism of either thinking and of not thinking, which I think is often what happens in meditation. I mean, either you have all these thoughts or, you know, another approach is to kind of empty your mind completely and kind of force all the thoughts out. So non-thinking to me seems to be a state where your state of mind is just very intimate with what is present, whatever that is, without falling into the dualism of doing either this or that. I think of non-effort as in just letting the thoughts come and go as they please without forcing yourself to think or not forcing yourself not to think just to just sit there yeah

[08:19]

But do you really mean effort? Because doesn't it take an effort, just a kind of effort to sit there and not think? Or to just let your thinking come and go? It's effort and it's not effort. It's not effort. Your posture requires a certain effort. It's the same koan. It's not effort, it's not effort. Non-thinking is a term I feel that could be equated with any of his several boundless terms. It clearly is not opposed to thinking.

[09:26]

It does not fall into thinking or not thinking. I think the term could be... The term is all-embracing in terms of language and ungraspable in terms of experience. I think that any specificity will fall out of non-thinking or will fall into thinking or not thinking. So, thinking of non-thinking is suchness is the fundamental point, actualizing the fundamental point perhaps.

[10:35]

In my own sitting, when I'm thinking, The thought of non-thinking has a medicinal, I think of it as a kind of medicinal effect. It creates a pause, a kind of spaciousness. And then thoughts arise again. So then, non-thinking. So I actually tend to use it in another literal way. Someone said that we can understand Zen as a history of metaphors, not always well understood, but a history of phrases or maxims or aphorisms that, like jumping from mountain to mountain, sometimes we don't know what's under the mountain, but we're on the jump from top to top. And we use a phrase like non-thinking, or various phrases, and they keep coming up for us, but we don't know where they came from, what their origin was, or what the originator really meant by them.

[11:59]

And I think also we often... What we're trying to do is put into words right now something about our own understanding and practice. But I think that... often our practice is much more developed than our words. And it's very hard to attach our words to what we're actually doing sometimes. So we describe what we think we're doing, but probably we're often doing something else. And if our practice is working, we're probably doing what Dogen... I assume that if our practice is working, we're probably doing what Dogen is recommending. but we may not be able to describe what we're doing so it coincides with what Dogen says. Does that make sense? But it's very important to be able to describe your practice. Especially, of course, if you're going to have to help anybody else practice.

[13:05]

and understand someone else's practice, but also because if you make your own practice, what you're doing, clear, it feeds back into your practice. Move your own practice another notch if you can describe to yourself what you're doing accurately. Anyway, so that was just a little interruption. One thing we might do is It would be useful if, you know, like you say something, I say, can you repeat what she said? Because we hear these things and they kind of slip past us. But if we're going to look at what Dogen says very carefully, we should also look at what we say very carefully. Anyway, so that was an interruption. Anybody else want to go on about... Can I proceed with the interruption?

[14:09]

I recognize, compacted in these few lines, my 30-odd years of sitting, and that I didn't know about... I didn't know what thinking was when I began. But when I began, and I don't remember the specifics of the distraction, but it was rather... And what I noticed more than anything was the overwhelming flood of thoughts that were ceaseless. And do what I could, somehow I was pursuing the track of to not think. So I began to really, first thing I noticed was thinking. And then I made some effort, misguided perhaps, to stop the thinking. and examined everything I could about how to not think. And it seemed to varying degrees of success.

[15:13]

There were moments or there were sort of periods with great effort I could not think, but it didn't seem to hit the mark. Something seemed funny about that. I was always suspect of what I was doing in trying to not think. So for me, in a sense, I felt it wasn't anyone in great moment, but to me this is all separating, this non-thinking. And I echo something that Susanna said and perhaps others. And what Robert suggested is that state of being in sitting, when you're neither preoccupied or compelled or driven or... at the mercy of your thoughts, good or bad or neutral or whatever they may be, nor are you endeavoring to cut them off or to only seek out some solace in the seemingly fleeting commons of not thinking. But there is... Something about this realm of non-thinking, I also respond to what Randy was saying.

[16:20]

It feels to me that, given other words of Dogen, that he's not suggesting that we go into this place of stop thinking, not thinking. That's not, in my sense of dogma, that's not what this instinct of Buddhist practice, enlightenment, that he's pointing to. Again, I agree with Roshi that I'm hard-pressed at saying what it is, but something about this non-thinking, and I would use the word... struck by something about how this particular phrase, word, and so much of Doga is inextricably intertwined, is of the same cloth of the Heart Sutra, the Prajnaparamita. That there's something, and I don't know how to say it, but something in that non-thinking is

[17:23]

It's not something you have to make happen. You can't make it happen. It's the nature of it. The nature of our mind, the nature of reality, the nature of something that is ungraspable. You can't... Anyway. When you say ungraspable... Do you mean that if it's—in one sense, if it's ungraspable, then we may as well sort of stop thinking or talking about it and just go on about our business as best we can? Or do you mean you haven't yet found a vehicle that is sufficient to contain it? I don't want to find that vehicle to continue it. Well, you know, I'm trying to find an alternative to... I mean, if something is ineffable, then we can't F it anyway, so... To F or not to F?

[18:35]

I mean, I have a little bit of a, maybe a... I just want to maybe strive for some precision in language to some degree, and if you say something is not graspable, then what exactly are you talking about? If you say something is not dualistic or is dualistic, what are you talking about? What could be that isn't dualistic? Are you grasping at that? Yeah, okay, Dan, I'm grasping at it. Can you help me out? Well, I think we're grasping together. We're grasping at the ground. I thought a graspable meant something like don't expect to be able to grasp it. As opposed to being some sort of actual property.

[19:36]

Hmm. I think I would interject just to say a little bit off this graspable, non-graspable aspect that I would see non-thinking perhaps as more active than has just been expressed. rather not as a synthesis of thinking and not thinking, or the elimination of either, but rather a different active wisdom that is different from discriminative thinking or discriminative not thinking, not thinking. perhaps to use a highfalutin term, prajna.

[20:42]

Because definitely there is something, some way that we discriminate in a non-discriminatory mode. Some way that we... are able to make sense in that manner. And that's how I would see non-thinking. From what I understand, he's definitely talking about thinking. The question is, what kind of thinking is he talking about? He's eliminating not thinking. I think that's off the board. The question is, what sort of thinking is he talking about?

[21:49]

And it might be what you just mentioned just now, I don't know, but he defines his kind of thinking as non-thinking, which is different from not thinking. So, and the way I understand non-thinking is a form of thinking that has, I mean, it I understand it, I think, similarly as Dan does, as a form of effort, but it's not forcing the effort. I don't know how to put it beyond that. One, the type of discrimination that you can do that's not necessarily of this discrimination of boundaries. When we talk in language, I think this may be what Roshi has said before as being thinking in terms of boundaries instead of thinking in terms of centers.

[23:01]

So a metaphor that I'm coming up with for a way that we can discriminate in this non-thinking sort of way is kind of like the way we can discriminate between different colors. And we may take different colors and add a little bit of yellow and come up with yet another color, but we're not necessarily dealing with boundaries. We're dealing with things that are... kind of have centers move and can be in different places, and we can tell when they're in different places. So in that sense, we can discriminate, but it's not a hard discrimination of boundaries like the lines in the painting. It's more like a discrimination of the shades of the colors. For me, it seems like there's something, and that there are two questions here.

[24:07]

One of them is, what are you thinking? And one is, how? And there's some quality of, what are you thinking so fixedly? And then Master answering, I'm thinking of not thinking, using thinking. And then how are you thinking of not thinking? Master answered non-thinking, and I think there's something here about those two, the relationship of those two questions. I'm not sure what it is, but that quality in sitting where there may not be answers to this, an answer that might be what's the non-graspable feeling, but that there are those two questions of what and how there's something about that that seems relevant that you employ thinking but yet you're there's no thinking I have a difficulty with thinking and listening to everyone's

[25:27]

suggestions. When I think of thinking, for me especially, sitting fixedly, thinking seems to narrow down to a sort of narrative or discursive directional description of something. maybe with the emphasis on direction, as if this is going somewhere. And I tie that to the thoughts for tea comment that we're all familiar with. If non-thinking is what's going on, that pull that direction has is not there. To me that's more a sense of presence, what I would hesitatingly call a full emptiness there, rather than going somewhere, getting something, grasping, trying to grasp, trying to accept that you can't grasp,

[26:54]

all those sorts of things. I don't know if anyone else... Robert was talking about, maybe fresh from graduate school, his ideas about thinking are pretty clear. I'm hopelessly modeled, aren't I? I don't know, but I don't talk to very many people about what even thinking is, let alone something. You non-talk about non-thinking. You don't want to talk about that. I don't want to break it up. Look at this garbage for a while. I sort of want to hear what you'll have to say about thinking. Am I being too narrow in my idea of what thinking is? It's what I call the grocery list. What I have to do, what I did wrong, what I should do. That sort of lecturing myself or convincing myself Thinking about thinking, Talisa, there was a period of time, I remember years ago, perhaps during a specific session someplace, when I said, okay, let's end the Tori thinking.

[28:13]

What are we talking about here? And so I sort of, in my crude mind's eye, I did this list, and it was a long list of the different varieties, flavors, and modalities that I could come up with of thinking. And it was, I don't know, a long, long list. So, I mean, but I attribute a lot of... I mean, I don't know if it means anything, perhaps worthless data, but I also think simultaneously this type of story or helps us articulate to ourselves so that that stuff is not unconscious. And I don't know if that's the purpose of what this is ultimately getting at, but for me it was useful, or it feels helpful, to be able to distinguish a wide, like Brian was saying about colors, And like if we scan with our eyes across the room, there are zillions of, you know, a million shades of colors come to us.

[29:22]

But can we name them or associate them or feel them? And so part of what I... correctly or incorrectly did was became aware of the different kinds of thinking and there's just myriad shades and again I think there's something that you pointed out which is I also found there's thinking like that I'm thinking I'm pursuing this or this thinking is happening to me like horrible old tapes and thoughts and so forth but there's something in the realm of non-thinking is to be fully present and it's I'm neither a passive recipient of them nor am I actively pursuing them, but there's this holistic dynamic of the thought process that is not disassociated from my knees or the sound of a bell or the context of the world. I really like how Dogen starts the whole chapter here.

[30:25]

by using this little phrase. And it's great how the Zen master sits there in a kind of a provocative way that this monk gets hooked, at least to ask him what he's doing. And he hooks him and he traps him by saying, I'm thinking of not thinking. So he has to go ahead and guide and answer to this new word, new creation is non-thinking. And I look at my situation, I got a little bit in touch with Zen because I expected something new, you know. I think I had an idea of thinking and I guess that's what I used to do throughout the day and make plans and be smart or so. And not thinking still feels like being asleep or so. And yet, that's what it feels to me if I feed into these words.

[31:32]

And non-thinking feels like having the opportunity of creating this state of non-thinking by entering a zendo. And I really like how he hooks us here and opens the whole chapter by using these phrases and then he goes on. I guess from what I've heard, the idea of using this medicinally. Earlier in the summer we were talking a little bit about this and if the lancet is an acupuncture needle that works quite well. Sometimes I find myself going all the way to the end of this koan with the fish being a fish and the hawk being a hawk

[32:43]

It's a way of just dissolving and coming back into my body and using the study of this koan in that way on the cushion. It's interesting that I'm being mentioned by several people of medicinal application. So I had not, in almost all the time I've been involved with this practice, thought of it that way until recently. what I'm going to call the problem of sitting, which I discussed somewhat, if you're not in a, if you're not in a zendo, if you're not supported by a community that's structured into sitting, then what is sitting outside of here?

[34:01]

And the word that came to my mind, and it made me nervous just to think of it, was antidote. And it was curious that I came to that, and now I'm even more curious because we're starting to use those terms, medicinal, and lancet to me is a surgical knife. I don't know if that's, but it's something that cuts as far as I know. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that one. It cuts two ways. It cuts two ways? Both edges are sharp? Two-bladed. Right. Scalpel. Okay. That's what it does. But when I came to the idea of antidote, for some reason it was cautionary to me. Because the phrase was antidote to life as I experienced it, and I was worried by that for some reason.

[35:03]

Although in practice to sit, especially after a period of not sitting, And I mean by period a stretch of time, not just 40 minutes. There is a rediscovery or antidotal reassuring quality to it for me. Not the creation of something that's not there by non-thinking, but re-entry into something, or recognition, even though I hesitate to use that word specifically. Something that is always there, but that my thinking is the sort of static that keeps me from knowing that fully, and what I presume Rosie meant by the true body.

[36:10]

I guess kind of playing off of the whole medicinal track of thoughts here, I see not thinking as kind of a fear of your own thoughts, something you want to repress. And I see non-thinking as kind of a creative opening of thoughts. In that sense, I think it is medicinal. Um, it's kind of like your friend in LA that you were telling about how she was afraid to go out at night. Um, she just wanted to block everything out. I see that as not thinking and how you wanted to go and say, well, let's go see what's going on. That's, you know, you were, you were open to, to what was happening. You had no idea what was going to happen. You just were just curious. And so you just, you're trying to, get her to go out, but she wouldn't. So, I don't know, this is kind of a silly metaphor, but you were non-thinking and she was not thinking. Let me point out that we have thinking here and non-thinking and not thinking and we have sitting fixedly.

[37:36]

And so if we look precisely at what Dogen's doing here, it's in the context of sitting fixedly. This is not a kind of general statement about Buddhism in general or some kind of overall truth. It's part of a process of sitting. and I think some of you have alluded to that more than others, but what is this as a part of sitting, not as a general truth, but what is it as a part of sitting? Sometimes you sort of stumble on a state of mind that feels right in an instinctual way. This happened to me in my 20-odd years, maybe for half of a second once upon a time.

[38:41]

Are you trying to discourage everyone? I give up. But I remember this happening at Green Gulch one time, and it was a thought process, clearly, so it was devoid of content. And then when I read this little poem at some point later, I kind of recognized or thought I recognized, or it gave me a name, or it gave me some kind of peg as a kind of an assist to practice. So that's another way that this kind of... I mean, this might be extremely simple. Buddhist practice, to my mind, is very, very simple business. In ten minutes you can learn everything you ever need to know to do it. And this might be just as simple as, you know, there is such a thing as a thought with no content, and if you wait long enough, it'll come up, and when it does, this is what it's called.

[39:50]

And it's good. And it's called non-thinking? Yeah, and it's a good thing. There must have been some other satisfactions along the way. He doesn't expect a lot. So can you clarify what you meant by, it was a process of thinking, this moment in which you had no content, thinking content? I think of it as an essential human activity, maybe a uniquely human activity, a cognitive process, a cerebral process of some sort. And so it's not like, you know, that ceased. There was no cessation. There was no neurota involved. There was not that kind of concentrated trance. It was clearly an aware, an alert cognitive process. cerebral thing of some sort that had no contact, had no focus, had no location.

[40:55]

And so when I hear him saying, think, not think, and especially since Suzuki Roshi was so keen on that phrase too, I think I recognize what that means just from that little brief flash. But I don't think it's got anything to do with enlightenment, because God knows I know that's not true of me. I think it's relatively prosaic stuff, really. I think... When I hear your description of that state, I think the one thing that would be helpful, because you did make the distinction that it's not a neurota or a cessation state, but rather it has great clarity. Even though it has no content, the awareness has the essence of clarity.

[41:58]

I don't know if you find that to be part of your description or not. If I remember correctly. Yes. You know, one thing that seems to be present in the room is a constant comparison of what we say to some mythical ideal state. Well, this isn't very good, but this is... I mean, we've been doing this a long time. This is what our experience is. We don't have to always say, well, this isn't so good. This isn't... This is what our experience is. It's very detrimental to your own well-being to always put down what you say. Better just say it. What it is is what it is. You know, Roshi, in this practice, that's one of the criticisms that I've had, or I've found over looking at my practice, is that we have not been explicit about our...

[43:01]

practice with our teachers or with ourselves. And so there has been, we've grown to have a sort of self-derogatory or self-deprecating aspect, which is really... It may be a good place to start, but it's not a place we should continue. It's not a creative stance to our practice, but it has kind of, by default, come up with us. Well, maybe this is a good time to kind of correct it. I mean, Yamada Mumen Roshi, who was my teacher while I was in Japan, said somewhere, practice begins when you trust that you're here at this moment and that everything is cooperating to make you here at this moment.

[44:06]

And there's something profoundly right about that. If you don't have that feeling, then you're in some kind of separation from, you can't enter into anything. So the kind of real basic trust, okay, this is right now, not some future thing. At this instant, this is what is. And you have to trust that. And if there isn't a trust in that, we're always starting behind about ten eight balls. So in these small things, like what we're just talking about now and what you brought up, practice turns on these very small things, you know, shifting slightly in how you trust. It makes, you know, and that's why, I mean, I think that's,

[45:10]

Dogen wrote a great deal, said a great deal, but all of his words and what he's trying to say are in this realm of a very slow recognition of something, of a statement. Not just, oh, I mean, if you think it and then go on to the next thing, you're practicing thinking even if you're talking about non-thinking. We're trying to really stop ourselves and look, what did this person, what does the next sentence say of this thing? Maybe you could read it, Russell, the next sentence after where Dan stopped. Verifying that such are the words of the great master, you should study and participate in the correct transmission of fixed sitting. This is the investigation of fixed sitting. And so verifying that such are the words, we're verifying, are these Dogen's words? Are these Dogen's words? What do they mean to us?

[46:12]

And not just... Well, I... I notice that it's easy to notice that thoughts arise and that they cease. They come up and they go. It's harder for me to notice, but I do notice that thinking also has this property, that it arises and that it can cease. But of course thoughts take place inside that field, and so I don't see it as clearly. And I think if the roof collapsed in the kitchen or something, we would all have a moment where we would not be thinking. We would get up and we would be doing things. And for me, the question that I have, so that could be an experience of not thinking,

[47:25]

something else would be going on, we'd just be running in some direction. We'd start thinking right away again, but what should we do, let me do this beam, whatever. But there'd be a moment where the thinking would stop. And then, so my question is something like, is there a seamless process that isn't arising and isn't ceasing in between these two? Is this something called non-thinking? Or is also the experience of non-thinking a little bit kind of like, as Wayne, implicit for me in what Wayne described, something that also arises and ceases, something that has an intermittence, same as thoughts, same as thinking, same as non-thinking. So that's the question that comes up for me. I think that there's a part of you, when I hear you saying that sometimes when you're sitting you are not thinking and sometimes when you're sitting you are thinking.

[48:38]

So somehow there's a part of you that knows when you're thinking and knows when you're not thinking. And that part is what I see as something that's seamless between those two. A part that's always present, always observing, and allows you to know the difference between thinking and not thinking.

[49:04]

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