In order to speak about the Dharma, it requires some intimacy, and I'm in such a large room with so many people and amplified. I don't know if it's possible, but I don't want to waste your time, so I'll try. We have this title, Contemporary Ancient Wisdom. And of course, some wisdoms are lost in the periods in which they were relevant. But I think Buddhism, at least certainly for us, can be an ancient wisdom that is also contemporary. Partly that's because Zen, especially, is based on understanding and experience of what

[01:08]

we can call original mind. And original mind is not a mind prior to our existence, so much as a mind we can generate that's free from acculturation and our habits of thinking. Or certainly, greatly in the direction of being free from acculturation and our habits. And also, because Buddhism is rooted in the practice of meditation and the practice of mindfulness, and it returns and proves itself through the practice of meditation. Now I don't expect all of you to, naturally enough, we have complex and busy lives, be able to spend a lot of time meditating, doing zazen, but even a small amount of time makes a really

[02:16]

big difference. In fact, luckily for us, practice works in homeopathic doses. A small amount of practice really does reach profoundly into our life, especially when it's accompanied by mindfulness practice and accompanied by wisdom teaching. I mean, cooking is contemporary, but we can't imagine cooking without its history. And language is contemporary, and yet we can't imagine language without, I mean, the more you get into language, an infant can learn language, but the profundity, the wisdom in language is extraordinary. And yet even today a poet or a writer can rearrange words and find

[03:19]

some way to say things that have never been said before. It's something rooted in the uniqueness, the absolute uniqueness of each moment. And there's a grammarian who wrote a grammar in the Sui dynasty, after working on Buddhist translation projects, and he called the grammar sculpting the sacred dragon in the midst of language. I like it, sculpting the sacred dragon in the midst of language, but using language to reach into a way of saying things through the development of language. And I think that in our practice, and I would like to talk to you about practice

[04:24]

in a way that uses the ingredients we know, not what we live with, the ordinary ingredients of our life. I mean, I think to start with basics is the best way for us to start with the basics of our life and how we live, and perhaps we could say sculpting ancient wisdom in the midst of our life. So we could ask a question, a simple question like, where are we? When are we? Or what time are we in? I mean, if wisdom has any meaning, we ought to be able to ask a basic, simple question like, where are we? Of course we are in these surroundings,

[05:29]

but we know those surroundings from comparison, from memory. But what about, can we find out where we are from inside? And if, to the extent that all those things that Norman said are true, they were true because a lot of people had a vision of practice and found their practice, an authenticity through themselves in such simple things as breathing. So if we look at our surroundings, if each of you are sitting there, of course, in fact this is a non-repeatable moment, it's absolutely unique, it will never happen again,

[06:37]

and yet our mind creates a sense of duration. But you can't say past, future, there's some kind of absolute uniqueness all the time that actually our consciousness can't appreciate, our consciousness is too slow, and yet this is actually how we're living. And our senses, among other things, gives us a sense of duration, and so we can look around us and have some feeling of the world through our senses. But the Eightfold Path in Buddhism starts with right views, and the reason that's the first teaching for Noble Truths, there's suffering and there's freedom from suffering, because there's a cause of suffering, and there's a path. And if you want to practice this,

[07:39]

you have to actually come into some kind of appreciation and understanding that a freedom from suffering is possible, or something very close to a freedom from suffering, or suffering so transformed in such deep satisfaction that you say, it's a kind of freedom from suffering. But that freedom, that understanding that cause, it turns on right views. Now the simplest example I can give you of a view is, I'm sitting here on this platform, and you're sitting there, not so far away, but commonly we would say, oh, I see John there. John and I are separated by space, and we take that for granted.

[08:40]

But it's also the case that John and I are connected by space. I mean, the moon, the moon's up there somewhere, been nearly full recently, but the moon is also in our reproductive rhythms, it's also reflected in puddles, it's in our oceans, it's in the water of our body right now. So we can't really say, is the moon really far away? Is the fragrance of a flower, the dimensions of a flower? Is the blossom the dimension? Is the bud the dimensions? Is the seed the dimensions? Is the spring, sky that brings forth the seed the dimensions? If we're going to really look at things carefully, we do have to look and feel their interdependence

[09:47]

and interpenetration, and these aren't just philosophical ideas, you have to find a way and practice, and what practice means is to come into some kind of continuity with a feeling of interdependence and interpenetration. Early Buddhism emphasizes interdependence, later Buddhism emphasizes interpenetration. And it means to discover a certain kind of mind, then that can feel, can be present to the sense of our connectedness, our interdependence and interpenetration. And my suggestion to you to practice this is to find a mind that nourishes you. In other words, if you take a walk, say, let's use an example,

[10:53]

walking to work, taking a walk after this talk, and walk along at some pace that you feel nourished. And discover that mode of mind, that state of mind in which you feel nourished. And you can discover it, you can notice there's a certain pace where everything seems to move with you, and actually you start feeling nourished. It's actually quite a good feeling. And one of the truisms of Buddhism, a yogic culture, is that all mental phenomena have a physical component, and all physical sentient phenomena have a mental component. So it means that all states of mind have a physical component.

[11:58]

And practice, and mindfulness practice, allows you to slow down a lot. Now if you don't practice, can't practice zazen, meditation so much, you can practice mindfulness easily, anytime, every time. At first you do it in your breaks, walking upstairs when no one's around, you know, you have to just go between two floors. Am I speaking loudly enough in the back? No? Okay, I'm not used to amplification, so I'd probably do better without it. You want it higher? Okay. All right. So walking upstairs, something like that, you can practice this sense of nourishment, or bringing your attention to your breathing, and so forth. And the other thing I think it's useful to do, which actually brings you into, I would say,

[13:10]

what is a dharma. If you were going to, dharma is maybe the smallest unit of experience. In Buddhism, it's trying to move toward, kashana is one thirty-fifth or something of a finger snap. Much too quick for consciousness, but it's within our finger snap. And mindfulness allows us to come more intimately into each moment. And if you find this mind of nourishment, you can begin to find, locate it in your, physically in your body, and you can begin to sustain it. The other suggestion of coming into a dharma, a small unit of experience, would be to do each thing with a sense of completeness. So if I, I mean maybe like a painter knows when to stop painting, and not over-paint,

[14:14]

there's a certain feeling when something's complete, like if I put my hand on this cup, I move my hand to the cup, I can let it rest a moment, and feel the coolness of the cup. Then I can bring my hand here, and drink some water. And did you notice where my cup is? It's at a chakra. And it's, you know, when Sukhirishi first came to America, someone asked him, what do you notice about America? He said, well, you do things with one hand. You pass the salt to somebody, etc. And I remembered that, and I noticed he tended to do things with two hands, and when he passed me a cup, I felt he was passing himself to me

[15:20]

through the cup. And of course, in China and Japan, they don't put handles on cups. I mean, maybe they never thought of it. But they have handles on their teapots, so I don't know. But it forces you to use two hands. So there's a yogic quality to simply having cups with no handles. And if you watch in a restaurant, the Asian people who are still connected with Asia, they will hold their cups here, and drink, and then hold it here. And it actually activates our chakras. We're in relationship to our body through such simple things. The eating bowls practice in Zen monasteries is a version of what I just said. So if you find this mind in which you feel nourished, or in which you feel complete,

[16:28]

and if you do practice these simple things, if everything you do you feel you do with some completeness, you're going to feel more complete at the end of the year. It's, you know, simple, like that. If you do everything kind of incompletely, you're going to feel not so complete. And if you start doing things with a sense of completeness, your mind begins to act, and it changes. Okay, so we notice through this kind of simple practice, I've just given you a wisdom phrase, maybe, to notice that when you do things with nourishment, or notice when you do things with completeness, and to bring a phrase, to hold a phrase in your mind like this, is to sort of think with mindfulness. Or if you hold a teaching before you,

[17:33]

you let the world think through you. You let the world think with you through the teaching. Like, let's take completeness. If you hold the possibility of completeness in each little action, in each breath, and so forth, the world begins without thinking about it. You just hold the possibility, the potentiality, the idea in front of you, or with you, or in your consciousness, in your background mind, and the world begins to tell you how it's possible. You don't think discursively about it, you just allow the world to show you its possibility. Because in each moment, again, there are all these possibilities that are present to us when we make it possible. Okay. I would go back to this example. John's over there, I'm here.

[18:42]

Space separates us, but space also connects us. And you can take that as a phrase, and if you can walk around with the feeling that space connects, you just say it to yourself. You're taking language out of the usual context, and you're using a phrase to kind of mix, turn the way information comes to you. And I think if you do it, and you do it with some religiousness, do it with some mantra-like repetition, at some point this connectedness will simply appear to you. It's almost like you're living in a fluid. You can feel the fluid. Now, going back to right views. If I think John and I, or Brian, any one of you, is already separated from me,

[19:52]

the way views work, they're prior to perception and conception. So every perception I have will reinforce that John and I are separated, or that Blanche and I are separated. Because the senses will reinforce the view, and the conceptions I make then, based on those perceptions, will continue to reify my sense that I'm living in a world of a lot of separateness, and I'll actually feel separateness, separate and estranged, and feel the effort to try to make some connection with the world. But if you just work with a view, let's say already connected, you can take it as space connects, you can take it as already connected. So you take a phrase that is an antidote to the assumption that's in most of us already,

[20:54]

that we're already separated, you take that view, replace it with, in a mantra-like way, already connected. Every time you look at somebody, I look at Michael, and I feel already connected. Or I look at his son, who I've been connected with a long time. But I emphasize that, and I say to myself, already connected. I don't have to make an effort to be friendly anymore, because we're already connected. It actually changes social behavior. If every time I meet somebody I feel, oh, already connected, I mean, there may be other things, but the view I work from is already connected, then if there's disconnection, well, that's part of the situation, but the basic view is connected, not separate. And again, I think if you just take a phrase like already connected,

[21:55]

and when you're in a situation with somebody, talking to someone, say to yourself, in a tiny little Buddha voice, underneath what's going on, already connected. Already connected. And I think things change, surprisingly. It's a simple way to bring this wisdom of connectedness, of interpenetration and interdependence, into our activity. Now, we also need to weave our mind and body together, and weave ourselves together with the world. So you can have the view of connectedness, but we also need to find this in our experience, and the simplest, best way to do it, as far as I know,

[23:04]

is to bring your attention to your breath. Have an intention to bring your attention to your breath. And see if you can do it throughout the 24, and it's possible. Anyone can do it, you don't have to practice Zazen. I mean, if you want to, great, this is sort of condensed mindfulness. But just make a resolution, New Year's resolution, every day is a new day, so a new day resolution, to bring your attention to your breath. Intention and attention are mind, and so you bring your attention to your breath, you're bringing mind to your breath. Now, mind and body are obviously connected, and they can be functioned through separately, as we well know,

[24:10]

but they're a field to be cultivated. So you can bring your attention to your breath, and that begins to weave mind and body together. So when you bring your attention to your breath, one of the things you're doing is weaving your mind and body together. You're cultivating the relationship of mind and body. And it happens, and eventually breathing breathes itself. Attention isn't required anymore. But still, there's the presence of, right now speaking, presence of these words are in my breath, our breath. Now, it's the easiest thing in the world to do, to bring your attention to your breath.

[25:18]

All of you can do it for one minute, or five breaths, but most of you can't do it for an hour, or even ten minutes. I think that's quite interesting. Why is something so easy to do for a short period of time so hard to do for any length of time? Well, I think the reason is, is because we find our continuity, and we have to have continuity. You kind of go crazy if you can't find continuity in the world. It's one of the functions of self, not self as an entity, but self as a function, is to establish continuity. So we establish our continuity, almost all of us do, in our thinking. It's a subtle form of permanence. We're seeking some kind of

[26:19]

permanence or continuity in our thinking. Our thinking isn't a very good vehicle for continuity or permanence, but we do it. So what happens is, because continuity is so necessary, it's like a prior view, prior to your perceptions and conceptions, after a few moments or minutes of having your attention with your breath, you go right back to your thinking, because that's where your continuity is. Not because your thinking is so interesting, maybe it is, but because it's where you find continuity. But if you keep persisting, bringing your attention to your breath, bringing your attention to your breath, when you're walking, bringing your attention to your situation, at some point, it stops going back to your thinking. And what happens is, you establish

[27:22]

a continuity in your breath and your body and phenomena. And as soon as you have actually established continuity in breath, body and phenomena, again, you're actually in a different world. Things happen to you differently, you react to things differently, and so forth. So what we've done is, like a cook, we've taken the ingredients that a cook inherits from the past and from the kitchen, and we've rearranged them. And here, I always say, you either cook your karma or get cooked by it. So here, we're trying to cook our karma, or see how we can take the ingredients of our living—breath, continuity, attention—and rearrange them so that we come into a wisdom mind. Now, of course, it's not just a simple matter. Even though, if you practice

[28:33]

already connected, as the first view, as the first recognition, it's also true that we're separated. And it's just as this is momentary, it's also true there's duration. So what I'm getting at here is, there's an in-betweenness, typical of the Buddhist dialectic of form and simultaneously emptiness, of the Buddha being the one—early Buddhism, the one who is awake, and later Buddhism, the Buddha is the one—of coming and going, of simultaneous movement, which seems contradictory, coming and going. Tathagatagarbha is a name for this, instead of calling the universe, we call it Tathagatagarbha, which means simultaneously womb and embryo.

[29:35]

So if we are simultaneously connected and simultaneously separate, that simultaneity is intimacy, that simultaneity is a kind of in-betweenness. So now we're not talking not about a mind of connectedness or a mind of separation, but a mind that's simultaneously both and neither, and is a kind of in-betweenness. It's the best word I can come up with for it. This isn't hard to do, actually it's not hard to do. You have to see the possibility of it, and you have to develop a certain amount of mindfulness. And mindfulness is like a muscle, you exercise it, and it develops in density, and it gets so—you know, if you see an insect fly through the air, you can't see its path,

[30:39]

but if the insect touches the water, you can see its path. And as your mindfulness matures, you begin to feel the passage of things. I mean, if you look at— a group of flowers, you begin to see the space of the flowers, the in-betweenness within the petals, within the blooms, within the whole arrangement. Just like looking at you, I can feel a certain all-at-onceness of all of you, or each of you individually, or a kind of in-betweenness that all of you are creating. This is simply a way of getting to know—I mean, it helps to know the possibility, then it helps to practice mindfulness. But it just begins to happen if you do these things, and they begin to

[31:42]

mature the many ways we've had enlightenment experiences in the past. There have been many small recognitions that I think we have to call enlightenment experiences, little bubbles. They're encapsulated. Recognitions we've had, and we wrapped them up in everything separated. We wrapped them up in certain kinds of ideas. But they're around us, and I think people are drawn to practice. If you look at people who decide to practice, they've got a lot of these encapsulated bubbles around them. But when they start to practice, they start to open up. Mindfulness itself brings a kind of clarity into situations. It makes me think of the way if a stream runs into a kind of lake that's full of algae and stuff, where the stream runs into, fish will congregate in the clearer water. And if you practice mindfulness, somehow the mindfulness rooted in body, breath, and phenomena,

[32:53]

in the continuity of body, breath, and phenomena, sounds moral, but wholesome qualities begin to swim in the clarity of mindfulness, and we begin to find things more precise and at ease. So again, a simple practice like bringing your mind, your attention to your breath, weaves mind and body together, and creates the possibility of the major shift from finding your continuity in thinking, finding your continuity in your breath, and in your body and phenomena. And then being able to let yourself into this intimacy of in-betweenness,

[33:55]

where you give form to the in-betweenness and receive form. This is also the coming and going. We give this each moment, we give form to it, we receive form from it, and we let it dissolve. We give form to it, we receive. I mean, as I pointed out, think of how many handy phone calls are floating in this room. How many television channels? I mean, a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, if you told people the room is full of telephone calls. So what else is out there, or in there, that we don't have the chip for?

[34:59]

I mean, that's, I deviate slightly, Sukhyesha used to talk about the six-sided object, or the six dimensions of an object, which you bring your senses to it, smelling, etc., tasting, hearing. But those six, and the reason it's called six, is that it doesn't fully explain the object. It only tells you what your senses know. In between your senses, what's there? In between our senses, right here, we just heard that phone call arrive. So, also, we want to open ourselves to some mystery, some mystery that is more possible

[36:04]

through this in-betweenness. And Zen, in particular, within Buddhism, emphasizes the evolution of consciousness, assumes the evolution of consciousness. And so, in Zen practice, we try not to give you maps. We give you doors, suggest some paths, we suggest a way of functioning from coherence to coherence as way-seeking mind, but we don't give you maps. And Sukhyesha even would say, each of you will have, or has, his or her own enlightenment. So, this is an assumption that consciousness evolves, that awareness evolves, that we evolve as human beings, and we're just at the very beginning of the possibilities,

[37:05]

and so how can we have a practice, an ancient practice, which also opens us up to the unknown territory of this life? Now, you might ask, then, why in the past are the ancients, in our lineage, in our various Buddhist lineages, so extraordinary? If consciousness evolves, we should be, you know, at least as good as they are. And I think we do have to take seriously the possibility, the reality, of enlightenment working within us and its realization, and that a Buddha is possible at this time, in this period, in this country, at any place. If you can't feel that's really possible,

[38:06]

you can't really practice Buddhism seriously. And they're not just back there in the past, but yet, if I do read the koans, the Zen teaching stories, I'm astonished at the wisdom, the brilliance, the subtlety of those stories, made in the Tang and Song dynasties. China. China had a very modern period, and that's why China's poetry of that period is modern for us. There was something modern, urbanized, densely populated, that's similar to us. So their poetry speaks to us. But I would say the difference is not that they were more extraordinary than you are, but rather that they had Sangha. They had distributive wisdom.

[39:08]

They found a way to bring practices, wisdom practices, wisdom teachings, into a way of working and thinking together that had an extraordinary genius to it. So I think that's the main difference, and as far as I can probe it out, the main difference is a difference not in who you are as human beings or your practice, because many people in the West now are practicing as seriously and sometimes more thoroughly than most people in Asian countries do, but we still are coming into, or have the possibility of coming into, deep meaning of Sangha as a way rooted, at least first of all, in knowing we're already connected

[40:11]

and being in this world in a way that we know we're already connected. Dogen said the entire universe is the true human body. I think he probably meant something more like the totality is the true human body. The universe has some kind of out-there feeling. The totality of everything all at once is the true human body. But let's stick with the idea of universe. The universe is the true human body. But what's that? This is a wonderful church. I've been in many times since 1961, 1960, when I came to California.

[41:13]

And there's the car sounds, bus sounds, the night air. We call that the universe of the world. Dogen says, rename it. I mean, he's really saying, rename it. This is very practical. Call it the true human body. When you think about the world, the building, the city, feel, ah, this is the true human body. This is a way of speaking about interconnectedness, interdependent, interpenetration. Dogen means for you to practice with renaming everything you see as the true human body. And then Dogen says, when the true human body appears, beings are liberated.

[42:20]

So now we've got, entire universe is the true human body. And when the true human body appears, beings are liberated. So it means when you, through your renaming of everything you see as the true human body, really feel that, it begins to liberate other people. Now, Dogen really didn't mean the universe. He meant the totality of all at once-ness. And the totality of all at once-ness is manifested in each particular. We can understand each particular. I look at you, it's a particularity. My senses, my eyes, my body proprioceptively feels you. That's a particular, that's a dharma. So from the totality of many things, I bring that,

[43:28]

or something brings that, into the particular of my looking at you all at once. So the totality is drawn into a particularity, but then I look over here and it's released. I'm in the middle of drawing totality into particularity and release it, and that's also dharma practice. The four marks are to feel the appearance of something, the birth of something, to feel its duration, to feel its dissolution, and disappear. And there's a kind of profound relaxation where it's disappearing. And then something appears. Dogen calls this, we can call it Tathagatagarbha, he calls it the true human body, and when the true human body appears, beings are liberated. And this is also Sangha.

[44:30]

You more and more are making Sangha real with others, through such a practice as noticing everything all at once is the true human body. I mean, maybe it's not true, try it out. You just work with this wisdom. What's the vision of Zen? I suppose it's something like, each one of our minds is transformable and perfectible. They're not givens, it's not something stagnant. But the more you feel the intimacy and uniqueness of each moment, and the in-betweenness of connected and yet separated, you start feeling actually how your own mind, its topography, its presence,

[45:35]

is transformable and perfectible. That would be one part of what I'd call the vision of Zen. Another would be that we mature our minds most fully through others. So the more you engage in Sangha, in practicing with others, in being present with others as just being present to each other now, you are maturing your own mind. I won't try to define mind, but a wide sense of mind. And when you mature your own mind through others, you most fully also mature others. So this is the, when the true human body appears, beings are liberated. So if we were going to have a, maybe I could say, a realizational society, here we've got a campaign coming on, Democrats and Republicans and so forth,

[46:39]

but within governance, within culture and society, I think we can find the possibility of Sangha or of a realizational society which assumes the possibility of practice, which assumes the possibility of wisdom, which supports the study of mind, the observation of mind, not just psychology, but also mindology, how the mind functions, and assumes also that society will mysteriously evolve in unexpected ways, but coherent ways, through, at the center of each of us, and at the center of society, there's people who understand the possibility of realization, and try to make realization possible for others, and possible for themselves,

[47:40]

and I think society will mysteriously evolve in new and deep way. Somebody reminded me, or gave me a version of a short poem of Rumi's the other day, which was, for many years I've knocked at that ancient door, when at long last it opened, I found I was knocking from inside. It's such an apt metaphor that Rumi is able to come up with so often, so, for many years I knocked at that ancient door, when at long last it opened, I found I was knocking from inside. That's the means practice, the practice of meditation, the practice of mindfulness,

[48:46]

the internalization of wisdom teaches, makes, if we're all connected, this is all inside, there's no outside, this is all inside. So this ancient wisdom is contemporary when we understand we're knocking from inside. I think that's enough for this evening. And I would like everyone, they said I should stay and have some questions, but I think people need a break, maybe you'd like to leave. So why don't we take a break of a few minutes, or stand up, or whatever, and anybody who wants to leave or has their car parked illegally, or has a cellular phone call waiting,

[49:53]

or has heard enough, don't come back. But if you want to stay, we'll have some questions in a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone have a question? You all waited here to hear someone else ask a question?

[50:59]

Yes. Maybe stand up and speak. To do what practice? A brave man. Well, if that's what you need, then please. He said it requires, he thinks it requires bravery to do this practice. Maybe to... In relation to the people around you. Yeah. Well, they don't really... And I don't think you can hear what he's saying. So he said in relationship to the people around you and so forth. But I think the... Most people don't notice what you're doing when you're bringing your attention to your breath.

[52:05]

And actually they start feeling good, because they don't know why, but they start feeling good when you do it. So that doesn't require so much bravery. It requires a kind of intention to do it. But what does require bravery is facing the changes that result from bringing your attention to your breath. Or the changes that result from finding continuity in breath, body and phenomena instead of your thinking. So that requires a certain kind of courage. And that's one reason why it helps to sit. Because sitting gives us a kind of stability, a sense of anything can happen. And in fact, one of the things that happens when you sit, and a simple, simple instruction like don't scratch, you know. When you sit, there's often ants or something. And if you don't scratch, if you just sit there, what you actually do is you break the adhesive connection between thought and action.

[53:10]

And as soon as you've broken the adhesive connection between thought and action, that usually when we think something we're afraid we might act on it. But when you can think anything and know you have the freedom not to act on it, which is one of the powers of learning to sit still, then you have a kind of stability which the changes that ensue from practice still require courage, but they're not so fearful, not so threatening. Excuse me for the long answer. Something else? Yes. The possibility of taking action as part of the process of action, you were saying, as a whole, you feel like consciousness evolves for all of us every time. Yeah, I'll try to, if you couldn't hear his question, though you have a good voice,

[54:20]

I'll try to just include it, what you said. I think that the dimensions of consciousness, the dimensions of awareness, I would make a distinction between consciousness and awareness, actually have a spatial quality and are contagious. And our presence and our mind influences others, and you can't fully separate your consciousness and awareness from others. So if your awareness and consciousness evolves, others evolve. You can't really separate. But I think that I can't answer. If I knew the map, then consciousness wouldn't evolve, or awareness wouldn't evolve, or our mind wouldn't evolve. I think that we can practice with a sense of mystery and openness that allows evolution to occur, and a certain courage in facing that.

[55:28]

But the nature of it is I don't know what it is, and I like not knowing. Something else? Yeah. You talked in the beginning about, in a sense, it's slowing down the pace at which you can nurture thought, experience. Or speeding up. It depends. Yeah. Let me make a distinction between, then, consciousness and awareness. So, consciousness has in it the SCI, the root of the word, which means to cut, to separate. And the nature of consciousness, I think you can think of minds

[56:30]

as different kinds of liquid. And consciousness... Oh dear. Okay, let's go to sleeping and waking. Okay. When you're sleeping and dreaming, we could say that dreaming mind is a liquid that supports images, intentions, various kinds of feelings. But it doesn't support consecutive thought, and it doesn't support consistent sensory input. When you wake up, and a good thing to do, you don't have to practice meditation, is study and observe the transition between sleeping and waking, and waking and sleeping. And you can see that when you wake up, and as soon as you begin to think about the day, and as soon as you begin to have consistent sensory input,

[57:33]

the alarm clock, the day, whatever the noises are, it's very hard to go back to sleep, and very hard to go back into dreaming mind. The images of dreaming mind sink in consciousness, and consecutive thought floats to the surface. It's a different kind of liquid, a different kind of viscosity. But they can interpenetrate each other. And I could say what we're doing when we practice meditation is, I'm sorry, but I've got to create a kind of vocabulary to answer simple questions. What we're doing when we practice meditation is, in a way we're given at birth the minds of waking, dreaming, and non-dreaming deep sleep. Not really given, but they're there as genetic potentialities that our culture brings forth, your mother and father talking to you, etc.

[58:36]

Generate consciousness. If you don't have affection and touching and loving parents and so forth, you develop a different kind of consciousness, or you have a really enfeebled or undeveloped or damaged brain, as well as consciousness. So even ordinary waking and dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep are not fully just given, they're also generated. We can say they're given. Most of us live in these minds. We live in the postures of walking, reclining, etc. But our culture doesn't have wisdom postures. You didn't grow up, most of us, thinking, oh, if you take a certain kind of posture where you can sit very still, it's a posture not for just sitting and reading, it's a posture in which you can study yourself.

[59:40]

So what's coming into the West, I would say, is the recognition that there's a, maybe we could say, a fourth mind. A mind that's not dreaming or waking or non-dreaming deep sleep, but a fourth mind that we generate through, most directly, through this posture, which includes and overlaps waking, dreaming, and non-dreaming deep sleep, and in fact mixes them, and then finds a clarity in that mix. Okay. So that was just to establish the sense of different kinds of minds as having different physical components, and we can maybe think of them metaphorically as liquids. Okay. Now, consciousness is a mind that divides, separates, and has consistent sensory impressions. That's what we mean to be conscious. Okay.

[60:44]

Now, if you go to sleep at night, and you set your mind, but not your alarm clock, to wake up at, say, 6.02, and you wake up at 6.02, what did that? It wasn't consciousness. I think we can call that awareness. I call it awareness. In that sense, awareness allows intention to go through your sleeping and wake you up. Very precisely. Many people can do this. Very precisely. But if you're carrying a bunch of packages, say, at Christmas time, from the store, and you slip on the ice, as has happened to me, and you fall, and you've got some glasses in the book, but somehow you fall and catch yourself without breaking the packages, or, you know, skinned elbow, maybe, and a sprained ankle. But basically, you do it. What saved you? Consciousness is too slow.

[61:46]

Awareness did it. So awareness is very fast, and it's always present, but it's often not present until, like, you fall or something, and then awareness is there and figures out exactly how you should fall. Or awareness, very slow and connected. So I don't think the words fast and slow can be applied exactly, because awareness is also extremely fast. Now, how do you bring awareness into your daily life? That is the practice of mindfulness and meditation. And we could say the first step is non-dreaming deep sleep, which is a kind of bliss. And I think non-dreaming deep sleep is the closest we can come to a definition of zazen, or meditation, zazen mind. So what happens when you do zazen, this posture, or practice mindfulness, is in a way you let non-dreaming deep sleep surface into your daily life.

[62:49]

And even if you meditate a lot and do it all the time, if you stop meditating for a few days, if you've been doing it for years, not much, no difference. But if you don't sit for a couple weeks, non-dreaming deep sleep starts to be deep down in your life, and it doesn't surface into your daily life. So it's almost like when you sit this way, or practice mindfulness, you open yourself to come some kind of deep mind that surfaces in you. Okay, one of the manifestations of that is what I would call background mind. Now, background mind is sometimes maybe like the mind of a woman who's pregnant, who knows she's pregnant, but she does her daily stuff and everything, but she's always aware this baby is growing. And I think we need to be pregnant with practice. And if you do have that kind of background mind,

[63:52]

then in the midst of activity or busyness, you can be as busy as you want, and there's still a kind of stillness. I mean, there's a famous koan on it, which is again a wisdom phrase, I'll give it to you, what the heck, you know, here we are, we have a chance to tell stories. Dao Wu and Yun Yan were Dharma brothers, and real brothers. Dao Wu was the older brother and a little smarter or quicker or something than Yun Yan, my lineage goes through Yun Yan. And Yun Yan was sweeping. And Dao Wu said, too busy. Yun Yan said, you should know there is one who is not busy. And this is a famous phrase, you can practice with it. A Thich Nhat Hanh told me once he'd practiced it, the one who is not busy. And you just begin to feel in the midst of activity, the one who is not busy,

[64:56]

the one who has nowhere to go, nothing to do. This is realizable. And strangely, it's realizable through using a phrase. Then his brother says to him, aha, then there's a double moon, just to finish the story. And there's a double moon, or you've created some kind of dualism. And many of these stories are really about these guys trying to catch each other in a dualism. So Dao Wu tries to catch Yun Yan in a dualism and says, aha, a double moon. You know, the moon we see, the moon in the pond, the full moon is only the half moon, and so forth. Half of the moon. And he pulls up the broom handle. Is this a double moon? So again, he drew the totality down into the particular, which includes everything at that moment.

[65:57]

So when you, if you do practice with a phrase like the one who is not busy, you do find you can be very busy and not busy. It's true. Okay, what else? Yes? Pardon me? Well, the fact is we just need it. It doesn't really matter what its source is. But we know we feel pretty funny if we don't have it. So instead of trying to get free of the idea of continuity, it's better to remove a elusive kind of continuity with a more functional kind of continuity. We do have to, we can say that the functions of self, again, not the entity of self, the functions of self are to establish separation. You have to know this is my voice and not her voice.

[67:01]

My immune system is a kind of self. It knows what belongs to me and what doesn't belong to me or belongs to you. So that's a kind of self. And self also has to establish connectedness. And self also has to establish continuity. Now, when you think of self in terms of its functions, rather than in terms of an entity to get gotten rid of, the way to practice with that is to find new ways to establish separation, continuity, and connectedness. And that's basically what's underlying what I was talking about today. So I suppose you could say that we need to have a sense of duration. If really things are kashanic moments, then we'd be lost. We have to have some way to act. So we establish, first of all, a momentary duration. And in seeking permanence, we extend that to a sense of permanence or continuity. So it's wise to bring that sense of continuity

[68:04]

into something which is closer to how we actually exist and function. Yes. How would I, as a Buddhist, explain a monotheistic god? I'm sorry, you have to... Interesting. Well, I think that, you know, Buddhism is not theological.

[69:05]

But at the same time, I appreciate and can feel what people, often what people say to me when they experience the presence of Jesus. I have a friend who really feels the presence of Jesus. I can feel what he feels. I would... For me, the experience might be named somewhat differently. But I have no problem with things like this. Yes. Yes, way back there. Now, wait a minute. You have to speak slowly because I'm hearing four or five echoes. Yes. Oh, yes. There are almost an infinite number of minds. Yes.

[70:22]

Well, I can analyze, if you want, minds in terms of... First of all, a mind is something that has some kind of... What's the word? It's self-organizing and tends to continue whatever state it's in. And you can establish any kind of mind so that it has a sense of continuity and self-organizing quality. But it's not... I mean, there's no reason for me to do that here this evening. Just if you notice something that, like what you call remembering mind, enjoy it. And you don't have to categorize it or anything. Just whatever's there, you can be present to and see it. I mean, I find my posture... This is a pretty developed way to sit,

[71:27]

but I find every time I sit it's somewhat different. And the dialogue between the ideal posture and accepting my own posture is different. And every moment there's slightly different minds present that I've never noticed before. So, something else. Yes? Well, I know years ago I said, in the 60s, I said, Zen is too easy for college-educated type people. And it's going to be everywhere. And it's everywhere. And I don't know if I like it, actually. But I have no idea. And I have no interest, in a way.

[72:29]

I mean, in a way I kind of sensed that something was going to happen. But my life is just to pay attention to what I'm doing and if it has any result, I don't know. So, I'm not interested in thinking historically. Historically about it. I mean, somebody else who's smarter than me or has that interest might, but I don't. I think probably... Yes, go ahead. Well, the question of karma is hard to respond to because karma has become an English word and we all have ideas about karma. Yeah.

[73:34]

Yeah. I think there are what I would call samsara, samsaric situations which I would distinguish from karma. That are always conditioning us. That we inherit from our society and so forth. The main way to practice with those is through our views. Because it's our views which reinforce those, I think, or free us from them. And karma, I would speak about as... Karma is conditional and it reappears in each moment. That's what it means that it's conditional. And at that moment, you have the opportunity to dissolve it, to reinforce it and so forth. And I would say that you could describe this posture and mindfulness as a kind of karma fluid zone. Or even sometimes a karma free zone momentarily. And it feels good. And even as a karma fluid zone,

[74:36]

it allows you to be there with presence enough to see and transform and keep dissolving your karma. Because this whole practice of the four marks, it appears, it has duration, it dissolves and disappears, is your giving form to your karma, living your karma and releasing it. And that bathes you and bathes you. Okay, that's enough for tonight. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to sit here and talk with you.

[75:12]

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