You just vowed to know the truth or something like that of the tathagata's words. Well, I'm not speaking the tathagata's words, but in some way could they be the tathagata's words? How can we make them the tathagata's words if the tathagata The one coming and going thus has words. I vow to taste the truth, etc. I vow to taste the truth. Now yesterday I pointed out, and pointed out in a new way for me too to reflect upon, that the uncorrected mind, the method of no method and so forth, is based on trust, some kind of trust in something.

[01:02]

You can't have no method unless you have trust in something. What do we have trust in? Well, in, I don't know, Wynne and some kind of review of Western philosophy, When I was in high school or college, I don't remember, you know, you have St. Augustine who thinks humans are... I should go back and... I love St. Augustine. I read Confessions very carefully years ago, but I should go back before I say this is a press release about St. Augustine. But for now, let me say, St. Augustine, I guess, presumed, assumed... that we're inherently evil. Well, if we think that, we've got something to do then. We've got to correct that or change that. John Locke thought it was a tabula rasa, an empty slate, a blank slate, an empty blackboard.

[02:16]

We always said blackboard when I was a kid, so I'll use the word blackboard. And John Stuart Mill, I guess he felt we were, he trusted us with freedom. We weren't inherently evil, so you could trust people and give them freedom, etc., Then we have, I think, I mean, Freud's done great things in our world, but one of the pernicious things he's done is assume that we're all born selfish. And it permeates sociological thinking and psychological thought and philosophy. We're all born selfish. Ultimately, it's selfish. Why a bird has particular... kinds of eyes is because it helped them selfishly mutate and so forth.

[03:24]

Anyway. And then you have, you know, the Tea Party. Oh dear, I shouldn't mention it. But anyway, the Tea Party who thinks you can trust selfishness. If you trust selfishness, the world will be okay. Anyway, what do we trust? Well, we trust carving a cave in emptiness. Ru Jing, Dogen's teacher, said, During the 90-day practice period, which you all know this statement, I comment on it often. During the 90-day practice period, you participants are creating the true structure of practice.

[04:28]

What's that mean? And carving a cave in emptiness. Now, for those in the practice period, earlier I spoke about, you know, our... our orioke meals are carving a cave in emptiness. There's a particular way of doing things. And... That way of doing things is carving a cave in emptiness, which we then share the space. Okay. Now... A cave, an emptiness, or emptiness is not a tabula rasa. It's not a neutral space where you want to write something on. I mean, if you have a neutral space, blackboard or something, you want to write something on it. Well, what are you going to write on it? What's the source of the writing that you write on? You have a problem immediately. Now, I don't think that we all think philosophically like this.

[05:33]

There's a problem if you have to, what are you going to write in the black? But on some level, I think we do think philosophically. Our awareness mind is computing. Does it make sense? Does it make sense? And at some fundamental level, when it doesn't make sense, we kind of gloss it over or we feel uneasy or something. How are we going to really make sense of our life to the extent that there is something we can trust and really trust? Yeah. Now, in general, I would say, if we want to look at the level of press releases for Buddhism, what we trust in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism, is original mind, or maybe better, originary mind. Or we trust, as we say, the mind before your parents were born. What's the mind before your parents were born? We have to have a beginning point.

[06:35]

If we're going to have a source, a beginning point, if we're going to trust something, we have to have a beginning point. Now, if... If the blackboard is actually emptiness, utter darkness, or the lacquered pot, as we say sometimes in Zen, the black lacquered pot, it's so black you can't see the bottom. And you're not going to write anything on it. then I don't know if I'm going to be able to make sense of what I'm making sense of, or for myself at least.

[07:39]

All you can do is engage the blackboard, or engage the black lacquer pot, or engage the emptiness. So what do you, if I just leave it as maybe I can find a better way to speak about this in some more linked together way. But if I just say, if there's nothing written on the blackboard, and the blackboard itself is emptiness, or we understand it as emptiness, then all we can do is engage. I say, my daughter, I've often said, with my three children, I've taught them first, taught them, I don't know, kind of hinted, suggested, or it's obvious, and they instinctually do want to stay alive.

[08:47]

But as I often say, many of us have not made really the decision to stay alive. Many of us make a decision We'll stay alive if this works out or if my self-narrative self is blah, blah, blah. But there's no ifs and buts about the vow to stay alive. And on a physiological level, usually we have it at least, if not a psychological level. And then I say the second vow is to maybe to... stay alive in a field of sentience, in a mutual field of sentience. And Igor and Minka and Fuzz and each of you are all teaching her, as I said, what it means to be alive and what is the field of aliveness. Because there's no being that stands alone. The feral child brought up by wolves doesn't exist.

[09:51]

I mean, if it does exist, it's... And I think there are a couple instances, unable to socialize. After a certain point, unable to socialize. Such a feral child. So I'm saying to Sophia and us, we live in a Field of mutual sentience, of mutual aliveness. Now, I just simply don't agree with the superficial Freudian thing. The field of aliveness is all. The invisible or visible structure is selfishness. I mean, if it's going to be anything, it's much more about cooperation as some contemporary thinkers emphasize. Okay. Okay. Now, we've created... Oh, let me see. If there's no ground of being, there's no blackboard, and we're not thinking about tabula rasa or we're born inherently evil or inherently good or something like that, what are we going to trust?

[11:10]

What are we going to assume? All we can assume is, from the point of view of Buddhism's rigor, is we engage the world with our senses and with our mind as the so-called sixth sense. Now what have we created here? We've created an attentional space, Crestone Mountains Zen Center, Dharma practice, Sashin is an attentional space And this attentional space we're in has been created Refined developed it's still being refined and developed right now by us, but it's also been created over some thousand or so years So In this cave of emptiness we've carved an attentional space and

[12:12]

Space we can engage called Zen monasticism or something like that. Okay. The space before your, the mind before your parents were born or the world before your parents were born is the same as saying carve a cave in emptiness. Okay, so we have an attentional space. So what I'd like to do is, you know, I don't think I can glue this all together, but I just will give some episodic examples, perhaps. This attentional space is interdependent. is unique and so forth.

[13:16]

And if again we look at something that, and Dan last night in the hot drink, as I understand, implicitly said, you know, what we can trust is the wind. the wind of the calm abiding mind, the golden wind in which we expose ourselves, the wind of samsara and so forth. Okay, wind represents for Buddhism something like mind, breath, thusness. So if there's any... thing pointed out by Buddhism as a whole, and by Zen in particular, that we can trust. It's thusness. Thusness isn't the tabula rasa. Thusness isn't inherently good or evil.

[14:20]

There's only so many alternatives, you know. neutral or bad or good, and now we have none of the below or above. We have thusness. So let's define thusness for the sake of this discussion right now. Thusness is the receiving and receding of appearance. Now, or to put it more in a more personal, the receiving and releasing. Because appearance receives, but you actually, as an actor, participant in it, you release appearances. They'll receive even if you don't release them. As a practitioner, one of the... What is practice? I can answer again.

[15:23]

Our Shusos question, the releasing of appearance. That would have been a good answer, actually. The releasing, because it's not, only the receiving, the receiving of appearance is the physical world. But the releasing of appearance is dharma. So, okay, can we trust in thusness? Oh, I don't know. I think this is a question you have to satisfy for yourself or get rid of. Thusness. If we, let's just kind of explore that within, you know, not trying to come to any answers here, but just, first of all, you know, Note that Dharma practice, serious Dharma practice, adept practice, is about experiencing the world as appearances. If you don't experience the world as appearances, you better start all over, or you better start again.

[16:33]

Because there's no real practice until you experience the world as appearances. I mean, you know, there's kind of pastry and cakes and frostings and being a good person and stuff, but An enlightened person, a realized person, continuously experiences the world as appearances. Receive and release. Okay, so if we trust in thusness, let's imagine, can we define ourselves? Can you imagine that if the central experience, if thusness is the word we found that's been translated into English, I don't know how it's translated into German, what do you say in Dutch, Deutsch? So what? [...] And it's used that way. Or do you use thusness?

[17:34]

I think it's... I don't know what you're asking, but it's only used in Buddhism. Yeah, so... Okay. So... If at the center of Buddhist practice, the most descriptive word in all of Buddhism for what exists is thusness. And the word tathagata means... the one that thus comes and goes, or thusness. Coming and going is thusness, and the one who realizes the coming and going of thusness is called Thargata, which is the biggest word for the Buddha. It's interesting, it's the biggest word for the Buddha, but it's also the most experientially enterable word for the Buddha. because you can enter the experience of thusness. So every moment you have a chance. There's no moment when there isn't a chance to enter the tathāgata.

[18:41]

Now we open the tathāgata's eating bowls. And we have, if you have the regular monk's bowls, First of all is the monk's Buddhist skull. We understand his Buddhist skull, so we constantly have a chance, as I've said, to relate to, to bow to, Buddha's skull in the midst of eating. Well, that's an intentional space. We've created an intentional space in which Buddha's skull is part of. And creating an intentional space is very, is inseparable. is a result of and a cause of experiencing the world as thusness. So, again, this means that if the world is nothing else, if we engage the blackboard as emptiness or we engage evil or good or whatever, what you engage is things appear and recede.

[19:55]

are received and received, released. Can you define yourself? Can this be the primary way you define yourself? This is like, you know, another way of saying it. I suggest a non-abiding, not abiding in appearances. To not abide in appearances is to experience thusness. To not abide in appearances or to experience thusness is to define yourself in a way that wisdom is possible. You're not defined as evil or neutral, good, etc. It's just this engagement. But can we trust this engagement? Can you trust this engagement So, I mean, I think the four focuses of attention, if we're talking about an attentional space, an engagement is necessarily an attentional activity.

[21:11]

The main focuses for our practice are the breath. Breath is always, I mean, it's great. It integrates the mind and body and its spirit and its... etc. But it also comes and goes. You can't grasp. If you try to grasp any one breath for very long, you're going to either expire or gasp at least. I've got that breath. My daughter tries it through every tunnel. You know, as kids do, driving. I've got that breath through the length of this tunnel. But, you know, Life's longer than that. So each breath appears and recedes. So you're educating yourself. You're educating attention itself when you really do find attention on breath appearing and receding.

[22:15]

Your whole body receives the breath. Blood, all your organs, mind, Receives and releases. And you're, again, not just breathing, you're using breath to educate attention. To receive and release. And educating and developing an attentional space in which there's a pace and movement and wind, as Dojin Dan said. Now, this attentional space is also... Once you're engaged with attentional space in which things are appearing and receding, there's only uniqueness there.

[23:18]

At each moment, there's no repetition, there's no... It may look like repetition, but it's actually different. No, we chant every morning, every afternoon, evening. Then we repeat the same thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we repeat the same thing to give you a chance to experience uniqueness. If we chanted something different every day, and we chanted some difference to see, like a tube board, but we could just, you know, stand around and go, om, om, om, om. You know, we'd sound like a pig panting or something. I don't know. So we make some difference, but basically we chant the same thing over and over again. And at some point, if you develop the mind, dharma mind of receiving and releasing appearance, and you're in that attentional space,

[24:27]

We have this attentional space and within this attentional space is each of your attentional space Then suddenly each word we're saying Maybe it won't be all the words, but many of the words will stand out uniquely. Oh, that's what I'm saying Won't be just repetition you actually find yourself experiencing the word you repeated every morning. And each morning it will be, even the same word will be different. And you feel what we're chanting. If it's in the language you understand at least. But there's some feeling even when it's this Sino-Japanese, Then you know, maybe I can say you know, or you discover you're beginning to be now in a space you can trust because somehow the uniqueness, the engagement with the attentional space, the engagement with the uniqueness of attentional space is something you can trust.

[25:52]

I didn't bring my watch. Are we running out of time here? What time is it? Quarter to five. Quarter to five. I think if I know what I might say, this is going to be till quarter to six. So, since I'm kinder than that, I will stop soon. Kinder. Is that like being like a child? To be kinder? Anyway. So let me just maybe finish with the four objects of attention. One object of attention can be your breath. Another can be thusness, as I've described it. Another can be mind.

[26:58]

So I would say... As objects of attention, you can take from this teisho, yes, I can bring... If the key, if the secret of all of this is the engagement through attentional space. Now, what about when you're asleep, etc., etc.? We can come to those nuances of attentional space, I don't know, maybe later in the week. But if the engagement with thusness as a attentional space, which is at the center of how things actually exist, one entry is thusness, this experience of appearance, receiving, receding. One is breath itself. Another is mind. Always be aware that your minding mind And mining mind, but that's gone, 93.

[28:09]

I'll show you a book. And M-I-N-E-I-N-G here, M-I-N-I-N-G. And the fourth is this field of aliveness, this... mutual being Mutual attentional space when I walk through the zendo and I go up to the altar I've Experienced myself walking through each of your attentional space I don't really feel myself going from point A to point B or up to the altar I'm going through this kind of like Presence and here partly I'm also talking about as from the beginning the presence of the present Because the presence of the present is also this attentional space, which is being formed by all of us. So I walk up through these little bumps.

[29:12]

I walk through the presence of each one of you. And then the presence of the altar, I mean, you know, no small matter, the altar. and how it's organized and how the points from the different objects come together at various points and how you walk into a space created by the geometry of the altar, which is somewhat felt through. And then there's the Buddha, which is a perfect triangle given to us by Lawrence Rockefeller and which has centuries of aesthetic experience and craft has gone into it. And thought about what it does to the room. I mean, both the Dalai Lama and Lawrence Rockefeller, when they saw we had the Buddha, the Vairochana Buddha, Dainichi Buddha, I have in

[30:19]

The Doksan building out on was what we had here and it's quite a lot smaller. And both Lawrence Rockefeller and Dalai Lama said, you need another, you need something else there. You need something that holds the room. So he gave us this statue and it does, it holds the room, it holds this attentional space. So the practice of, you know, I mean, maybe the simplest example is the server comes, carving a cave in emptiness, stands in front of two people and serves. One person and then the other person. And then there's a moment when all three bow together. And sometimes we forget and we bow because we're supposed to bow or it's the time to bow.

[31:23]

But that's not practice. practice is to create this attentional space, but now a mutual attentional space. And I would say that that's what monastic practice and sashin practice is all about and gives us a chance to do in a much more focused and fundamental way than ordinary lay life does. But you can do it in lay life too with the druggist or the pharmacist, I mean, or the clerk or the store or the bus driver or whoever. The chance is always there. to practice the paramitas, to hold the precepts, which is the practice of generating mutual attentional space. So we have a very specific chance in every meal to wait until all three are ready to bow. And it's only a moment.

[32:25]

It only exists for a moment. It appears. And the three people bow, holding the bowls or whatever, and then it's gone. But so often we miss that chance. We bow because we're going to go to the next person, and that's not practice space. But you're in your own space, some narrative space of what you're supposed to do. What you're supposed to do disappears, and there's just a chance for three people to bow together. Thank you very much.

[33:09]

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