I've been saying this chant for many years, many years with Dan especially. Same old chant. What's interesting about it to me is that, you know, if I didn't, wasn't part of this tradition, if I was just giving you a lecture from my experience, I mean I'm giving you lectures from my experience, but yet it's within a tradition and if I didn't If I was just giving a lecture of my experience, I wouldn't chant this stuff. I wouldn't have the chutzpah to say, let's all chant, unsurpassed, penetrate. I mean, this is... But yet, speaking in this context, which I couldn't think up myself, And yeah, sometimes it's better just to have some kind of informal conversation. But then an informal conversation or, you know, like I enjoyed seeing Christian doing the question and answer ESD for these kids, young adults.

[01:05]

But when we do it less formally or completely informally, it's still now in relationship to when it's formal. For yourself, think about it. Does it bring something to the situation to have this way of starting out, offering incense, blah, blah, blah? Is that somehow different than just a casual, doing it more casually? No, this is a real question, because how do we continue this tradition? What parts do we continue? And if you conclude it doesn't have any value at all, then we wouldn't continue it. But it's kind of, what value could it have? Now today I'd like to review a little what I have been speaking about, and in particular this phrase, unitary experience.

[02:18]

I want to embed that phrase in your own experience. And our experience is not our experience unless it's experienced experience. That sounds kind of like a bunch of words, but it's our experienced experience which is our experience. How do we experience our experience? It's our experience, but is it experienced experienced? Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. And I, you know, coming of, you know, it seems just a phrase, unitary experience, using the word unitary instead of unit, but somehow it allows me to feel I can speak about something that I've been, that I want to, in a way I've wanted to speak about for years.

[03:22]

I haven't quite found the way to focus on this part. I mean, there are lots of things I want to speak about, but this particular phrase allows me to focus in a way that I haven't found possible before in the area that this focus allows. Now, let's also consider a couple of comments of Sophia. One of my inadvertent Dharma teachers, I guess, or at least presence in my life for sure. Guess we'll have a little early birthday party with her tomorrow, is that right? That should be fun. She would like it. Anyway, she said to Marie-Louise last night, You know, she can be quite, as you know, quite obstreperous, difficult, resisting. When she does her music lesson with Jack, sometimes she kicks him.

[04:35]

Has she kicked you yet? Almost. I haven't kicked her either. Yeah, good. You have to be tough with that kid. Anyway, when you're tough with yourself, it's better. But then she gets, when she goes to bed, usually very lovey-dovey. And last night she said to me, Louise, I love you so much, Mama, and all the rules, all the good rules you rule around me. It's a kind of imaginative use of English. All the good rules you rule around me. I mean, I guess playing with the idea of ruler, too. All the good rules you rule around me. And I guess it's a moment of clarity of a sort, because usually she hates the rules, you know, or most of the rules. But there's another part of her, I think, and we can look at. In one's lifetime, a person plays many parts.

[05:37]

Shakespeare. Here she's just playing another part. Suddenly she feels and appreciates the rules. I think she genuinely appreciates the rules. That you rule around me. Okay, and then she also said, yesterday sometime, Oh, she said, the Buddhas, they're not real people. They don't do anything. They just sit or stand. Well, this is quite a good criticism of Buddhism, and I remember when I was first starting to practice. That people say, oh, what are you doing? You know, you're just staring at your navel. People don't say that anymore, I don't think. But I was accused of staring at my navel, which I have actually never done. I had to get a little mirror.

[06:43]

Oh, yeah, this is a good practice. Andy Warhol could film it. Eight hours of staring at your neighbor. But it's interesting because she doesn't say her dolls don't do anything. Obviously a statue, you can't make a statue that does something unless you put a little electric motor in it, you know. And there's all these jokes about statues coming to life, and the first thing they say is, I hate pigeons. So because she says that they're not real people, it means that somehow she feels they are people, because she knows statues can't do anything. So she's kind of playing with, what do they do, since we have them all over the place? My first daughter, Sally...

[07:46]

We have, you know, I always have, you know, I'm not very religious, but I put little statues here and there. There's one on my sink, you know, and there's one here and there's one there. And my daughter would go around the house and turn them all facing the wall. And I said to Sally, well, you want them all to do Zazen? And she said, no, I want them to stop looking at me. Okay. Okay. Now, Heidegger, you know, he was a brilliant man, brilliant person, morally reprehensible, I think, person during the Nazi era. But anyway, a brilliant Westerner who supposedly once said that when he encountered Zen teaching, this is what I've wanted to say all along. But even if it is what he wanted to say in some way all along, still he's a person embedded himself in Western culture, Greek classic philosophy, and German language, really embedded in the German language.

[09:02]

And he has these categories. So let's, as Buddhists, as yogic practitioners, Let's not start with Buddhism. Let's start with these three categories of high digger, which I found translated as, and recently I've seen them other times, as surrounding world, with world, and self-world. How are they in German? Do you remember? Selbstwelt, Mitwelt, und Umwelt. And umwelt is with world? Surrounding. Surrounding. Mit is with. With. So he uses the welt part. Yeah. And then he just modifies the... Yeah. So mitwelt, with world is a good translation of mitwelt? Well, I think it's direct and... Simple enough. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's imagine, because one thing that is similar in Heidegger...

[10:07]

is he tries to divide our experience up into territories, realms, domains, units that we can experience, that we can notice our experience. So if we take that and try to notice our experiences of the surrounding world, the with world and the self world, and he says something like that the self world structures and appropriates the other two. Now, that is our ordinary experience. I think if you look, if you try to, through mindful attention, inventory your experience and notice when it's about the surrounding world, the world of perception, phenomena, etc., when it's interconnected with especially people and governments and non-governmental agents, etc., NGOs, And when it's about your own personal history, etc., I think you'll notice in that inventory that usually the self-world appropriates and structures the other two, the surrounding, the phenomenal world and the interconnected world.

[11:24]

But let's imagine as yogic practitioners that we can somehow interrupt or disrupt the appropriation of the surrounding world and the with-world by the self. Perhaps the activity, let's not eliminate the self-world category, but let's say that this maybe can be a non-self category. So I'm just saying, let's take some brilliant Western philosopher and look at how we would look differently, even at a philosopher who says what he's saying is somehow Zen. Okay. Now, what does Dogen say? Good old Dogen. There when we need him. Not always, but often. He says a phrase I've used continuously, or very often rather, and that I think it's very helpful to go into particular phrases thoroughly.

[12:45]

Continuous practice which actualizes itself is no other than your practice right now. Okay. Now that's a challenge. Continuous practice, which actualizes itself, is none other, no other than your continuous practice right now. Now you have to ask yourself if you're going to take Dogen seriously and our practice seriously. Is this true and is this your experience? continuous practice which actualized itself is no other than your continuous practice right now. So you have to take each word and see if it's true. And you particularly, I think, will say, well, right now, what is this now?

[13:52]

And then if you look at Dogen's statement, you can see he now is going to, the pivot in that sentence is, what is now? What is the now that actualizes continuous practice? Of course, what is continuous practice? Most of us don't have any ability to have continuous attention to our breath, etc., etc. But you know, and I always point out, you actually have pretty much continuous attention to your posture. Already you have established, from infancy, a continuous attention to your posture. I watch it in Sophia. Sophia knows when she's on the edge of something. She knows when there's rocks or holes in the mud and so forth. And even when you're sleeping, you know. If I come in and say goodnight to her after she's gone to sleep, she's asleep, but she kind of moves her hand to me.

[14:57]

She's obviously present in some way. Sometimes last night she even gave me a little air kiss while she was asleep. I don't know. She knows how to win me over, I'm sure. Even when she's asleep. Okay. So, we do teach our children, we teach ourselves, to bring pretty much a continuous attention to the posture. Now can we, physical posture, but now can we extend that to our breath? So instead of saying, I want to bring attention to my breath, say, hmm, can I extend that continuous attention I already know how to do to my breath? That's a whole different approach and actually quite effective. And when we sit, I'm speaking, I mean, what I'd like for us to do this practice period, you know, is not just do this practice period, not just be here in this practice period, but also, as I'm saying, construct a posture.

[16:16]

And I would say construct a world posture. Construct a posture in the surrounding world. Construct a posture in phenomena. Now, one thing I liked about what Sophia said about, I thank you for the rules you rule around me, the good rules you rule around me, is, you know, being in practice period seems to be about rules, but it's, I would say it's about structure. First of all, the structure of the schedule. And within the structure of schedule, it's about details. and how fully we can enter into those details. This is an education of mindful attention. And it's all about this original dictum that everything changes.

[17:22]

I mean, I still am always amazed you know, just a phrase like everything changes, there's no end of trying to understand that phrase. Well, first of all, today what we're speaking about is how everything changes is our experience. Because if everything changes, our experience changes, but how do we experience our changing? How do we contradict the habit of consciousness to make our experience predictable and kind of get under consciousness into the unpredictability of our experience and that's about unitary experience. The details, how to bring mindful attention in the details. Now we all say, why do we have three categories every morning? The first portion is for the precepts. The second is for the practice of samadhi. I did this, I translated this with Sukhirishi, so I'm very familiar with it.

[18:25]

Plus I said it a lot, say it a lot. The third portion is for the benefit, I don't like to say it all, but I should change it to the benefit of all beings. So the first portion is for the precepts. The first portion. Well, the first portion is actually, the first portion is lifting the bowl. And the first portion is mutually lifting the bowl with each other. So the first portion is for the precepts, but that means how we structure our experience. The precepts are kind of ways we can structure our experience. The good rules that Sophia is ruled around with. So, the first portion is for the precepts, which is, to gloss it, how we structure our experience.

[19:27]

And yet, how we structure our experience is that we're lifting the bowl, Buddha's skull, and we're lifting it with each person we're eating with. So how we structure our experience The first portion then is for lifting the bowl and chanting together and lifting the bowl and chant together. So that's all in the first portion. The second portion is for the practice of samadhi. This is to free oneself from the structure of experience. The second portion is to free oneself from how we structure our experience. And the third is to share this, present this for the benefit of all people, each person you meet.

[20:30]

You have a feeling of the first part of this experience with this person, is precepts, structuring our experience. The second is freedom from the structure. This again is a version of the six paramitas. So here's three categories from our meal chant. Yeah, not so different than Heidegger's three categories. Again, how do we put our, how do we experience our experience? So, let's go back to Dogen. Continuous practice, which is actualized, continuous practice, which is actualized each moment. Is that how it goes? I'm in another mind right now. Is your continuous practice right now? Okay. Then he says, the now

[21:35]

of this continuous practice is not originally possessed by the self. That's yogic practice. That's Buddhism. The now of this continuous practice and appropriated by the self-world. It doesn't have to be structured and appropriated by the self-world. At least it's not originally structured and appropriated by the self-world. So the continuous practice which actualizes itself is none other than your practice right now. Your practice. The continuous practice which actualizes itself is none other than your practice right now. What is it? What would be this continuity which actualizes itself? Well, it's the practice in which you know the world which is not originally possessed by the self.

[22:46]

Now, there's another challenge. Can you get there? Can you take an inventory of how each moment is appropriated and structured by the self? I mean, we can just stay with this phrase the rest of our life. You don't have to know a lot. The word now, he then says, Dogen says, the word now only exists in this continuous practice. The word now only exists through continuous practice. In other words, what we call now, what we call the present, isn't the experienced present. The experienced present is only known through continuous practice. Then he says, the actualized The actualized moment is the seed of all Buddhas.

[23:53]

Yeah, this is a fact. I mean, it's a fact. He's presenting as a fact. I'm presenting as a fact. The actualized moment, if you don't know the actualized moment, there's no enlightenment. There are no Buddhas standing or sitting doing nothing. The actualized moment is the seed of all Buddhas and is the practice of all Buddhas. Your... Through your practice just now is the... How did he say the last thing? Thank you. And it is your practice just now through which all Buddhas arise. Okay.

[24:59]

Now, the actualized moment is also what I would say Dogon means by to complete that which appears. When you complete that which appears, this is also what I would call unitary experience, or the actualized moment. How do you bring your attention into the details of appearance? When we see a bird fly, the birds finally discovered that bird feeder yesterday, and maybe the day before. I had 25 or 30 birds all at once, no cats. and a blue jay kind of harassing the birds. And they kept bumping into my windows and, you know, quite an event. We changed the seat. They wouldn't, first we had big pump.

[26:02]

Sunflower. Sunflower season. These little tiny, what are they? Hatches. Nut hatches. Nut hatches. See, I know all these names for the things of the world. These nut hatchers. Hatches. Hatches. Some people might call this monster a nut hatch. Anyway, these little seeds, they can eat. So they are. But if you watch the birds... Their flight, at first glance, seems smooth and continuous, but for the bird itself, of course, it's not smooth and continuous. It's flapping wings, air currents, you know, a blue jade bugging you. There was all kinds of... And, of course, when I look at, and I look past the smoothness of the flight... feel the Unitary nest the units of the birds flight and my own units in perception because all the studies of perception show that we're scanning all the time There's questions about whether it's sequential scanning or simultaneous scanning If we see two things at once and scan the scanning or one thing at a time, but in any case our perception is actually lots of moments lots of units and

[27:25]

When you get so that you feel this unitary experience, this is continuous practice, this flow of unitary experience, the flow of unitary experience, you feel the birds differently. Somehow you come into a mutual unitary experience. I mean, it's almost like the birds are flying in your own somatic field, metabolism. Yeah, now we're penetrating the with-world in a yogic way. Because the with-world is really with us. Now, I should stop now or soon. So let me just say that now we're looking at this. No, say that you do so. Well, I mean, you do Zazen.

[28:29]

What am I talking about? When you're doing Zazen, you decide to count your breath. Well, there's various ways. You can just say, you know, the usual way is, I'm supposed to, it's a good thing to do, it feels good, it's a good way to start, and you bring your attention to your breath. Well, that's what we do. But there's another feeling in counting, if you like, that these are units of Zazen or something like that, You know, if you're up on a mountain up here and you get stuck in the snow, as happens to people, there's sudden showers up there, sudden lightning storms up on the mountains I hear that arise quickly and sometimes kill people. Let's say you're up there and you can't get back down to Crestone Mountain Zen Center. So you wonder if you've got enough food to last the night. So you say, I've got three apples and we've got only four carrots, etc.

[29:32]

They were good. And you count, you almost worship the carrots and the apples. Three apples? That'll get me through to tomorrow sometime. You count and the counting counts. Well, I mean, you would count differently if you just had a pipe from the heavens and a flow of apples was falling at your feet, you know. Why count them tomorrow? There'd be another flow of apples falling at my feet. But if you look at your breath that way, it's, oh, the breath is just going on and on, and I can count it maybe, but it's there when I'm not counting it. If you think that way, of course it's partly true, but if that is the way you define the world, you're in a container world. If you count your breaths as if there's only one left or three left, you count them as a little kind of worshipping of the breath. You count your breaths differently.

[30:37]

Oh, there's one. Okay, now let's go back to the midst of this unitary experience, which is experiencing Everything changing. Now that unitary experience can be the bird, can be each of us lifting our bowl. First portion is for the precepts. It can be the room. We can extend it to the room, to everything. We can extend it to the field of mind, as Sukershi says, that covers everything. So the unit can be a feeling of the mind that covers everything, or it can be drawn down into a single breath. Now, when it's drawn down, drawn into a single breath, it's not exactly a single breath, because it's a single breath which includes the field.

[31:49]

Now this is, again, basic yogic territory. You feel this unitary experience includes everything, and expands to everything and can be reduced to emptiness. And so when the Buddhas are standing or sitting, they're also in ideally in meditative equipoise and meditative equipoise means the term we can use from traditional Buddhism to mean when the reference point is so fully nowhere else, there's no reference point except meditative equipoise, then you can experience emptiness. Spatial, no reference point, emptiness. And that's the standing and sitting of the Buddhas. But that is also Entering into the unitary experience, which can be drawn into a single seed, the seed of all the Buddhas, or expanded into the field.

[33:01]

When it's drawn into the seed, you don't feel, oh, I'm here just with my little breath. It's a breath which includes everything. The actualized moment. And now we can call this also the Sambhogakaya Bodhi. This is also the basis action to Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri. Thank you very much.

[33:33]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_89.6