Somehow these weeks start and then they end. I don't know how it happens. But we enter this activity space and we're carried forward, or carried anyway. Now, how can this activity space continue after the... this practice week. And we can carry this practice into our daily activity. Yeah, not carry it just identically to what we've been doing here. You are in some repetitious way.

[01:09]

But rather what happens when we unroll this practice or unfold this practice in the full forms of our daily activity. Yeah, our daily activity. activity may develop. And the practice may develop. Having this kind of view, this understanding, is... what the Buddhist practice is all about. To realize you can participate in your own life from the point of view of wisdom.

[02:10]

Now, if I review a little bit what we've done. It's pretty simple. We've emphasized this very basic Zen practice of just this. And I think you've understood why it's such a basic Zen practice. Basic because it's easy to do in all ways. circumstances. And basic because it carries many of the early Buddhist teachings into a single, the activity of a single phrase.

[03:20]

And basic because it is very effective in opening up the topography of Dharma practice. It introduces us to this pulse of the particular. as the nature of reality being its lack of permanence. and the absence of permanence.

[04:26]

And thus, because of the absence of permanence, it's not a fixed, continuous picture. What's the alternative to a fixed, continuous picture? The only alternative is continuous appearance. Now, how do we enter into this continuous appearance? Contradicting the habit and the natural... and the way consciousness functions.

[05:30]

And contradicting our own deep-seated fear of impermanence. We enter directly into change. We enter directly into the continuous reappearance. We enter with this phrase, just this. Shaping and focusing our attention through just this. And we... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, discover this pulse of the particular.

[06:49]

And we introduce, we... We transform consciousness in this way. We introduce into consciousness the noticing Wir stellen in dem Bewusstsein vor und bringen dort rein das Bemerken vom Erscheinen. Wir kommen, das wird uns zur Gewohnheit, jedes Ding als Erscheinen zu bemerken. Noticing each moment as appearance. noting each moment as a grouping of Details of objects.

[07:54]

That we comprehend and release. We can use just this to develop this habit. A habit we inhabit. And since it is truer to how things actually exist, while it may be difficult to introduce the habit at first, since it is truer, truer than permanence. Introducing it is the first step in

[08:57]

having it pervade how we exist. Particularly if we can notice our habits of resistance. And we can use our breath, attention to our breath, to enter into our own pulse. The early Vimuti Maga defines the whole body as the breathing in All the mental factors.

[09:59]

and perceptual aspects. All of that is what we call the body. Not just this. The body is this activity and is inseparable from this activity. So the buddhimagga says, know the whole body without confusion. Yeah, and in this way we anchor ourselves in factic perceptual reality. Which, because it's rooted in our actual situation, not in something we're thinking about somewhere else, we're part of the immediate situation.

[11:14]

We're not resisting or ignoring the immediate situation. And so we're nourished by the immediate situation. And you'll find out you actually don't get tired in the same way. Your activity is not tiring, but nourishing. So so much... flows from the practice of just this. Rooting ourselves in a nourishing in the nourishment of the immediate situation, freeing us also from much self-reflexive thinking, and introducing us

[12:20]

and developing the habit of knowing the world as appearance. And this mind we find ourselves rooted in. It's also percept-only mind. Rooting ourselves in the third skanda. And by the way, David, you said just sometimes you experience all the senses all at once. And that's what the word in English common sense used to mean. As I pointed out occasionally. As I pointed out occasionally. It now means something everyone knows.

[13:38]

But It originally meant a sense equally common to all the senses. So you didn't have one sense dominant, like eye consciousness is dominant for us. So to know each sense proportionately. This was not considered just an addition, it was considered a sixth sense. And this sense common to all the senses. And knowing each sense as our own experience.

[14:41]

Again is the source, a source of bliss. Yeah, as also the Mudimaga points out. points out. Yeah, and I mention the Vimuddhimagga because it's, you know, this very significant summation of early Buddhist practice. But what it describes in a rather more complex way is carried in Zen practice in just this. Yes, sometimes. All the time. Feel the presence of just this. in your activity.

[15:45]

It will slowly work its magic. Now I'd like to introduce the next step in our Dharma practice. That's so that we won't get finished and then you'll have to come back. Because, you know, I practice attachment in such situations as this so that I have to give up on Sunday afternoon. So I let myself get very attached to you as a group Because I know Sunday I'll have to deal with non-attachment. And you've been really particularly good group to practice with.

[16:52]

Okay. So what I want to introduce now is what I call the four practical renunciations. Yeah, that's it. Which is that things have no permanence. Things have no inherence. Inherence means they have no nature that is continuous. in the midst of the changing forms. And things are interdependent. And things are really Factors of our mind and perception only.

[18:08]

Any object we know is a knowing through our mind. mental and perceptual capacities. So we don't actually know the object, we know our knowing of the object. Okay, so how do I These aren't exactly philosophically separate distinctions. But I think they're very useful. Yeah, so I don't know, why not the microphone? We have the microphone here. The microphone's sitting on the floor. So I use, whenever I look at an object, I... see, for example, that it's sitting on the floor.

[19:17]

Or a table. And that reminds me, I index that, that it's interdependent. And each of you is sitting on the floor. You're dependent on the floor. In the air and so forth. So I use something to remind me of interdependence. And then I... See that it's a construct. It was made. And it's a constructed thing. As I'm also a constructed thing. I had breakfast this morning and so forth. If something is constructed, it has no inheritance. And it's also an activity.

[20:32]

It's turned on, you know, I hope. I don't care, actually. I can always talk again. But I never say the same things. I mean, to me, I don't. But I can move it around. So it's an activity. So it has no permanence. And then it's in my sense fields. So these, what I call the four practical renunciations, So I'm renouncing its entity-ness. I'm renouncing, rejecting.

[21:37]

It's entitiness, it's thingness. Okay, so now instead of saying just this, I've developed the habit, we've developed the habit of just this, so I can now feel each particular thing. Now I'm noticing each particular. I take away its substance. I subtract its permanence. I see it as interdependent. I see it as interdependent. And interdependence is the root of emptiness. And emptiness means the absence of permanence.

[22:44]

And the absence of inherence. So whenever I see an object or a person or anything, I see its absence, I see its interdependence. it's absence of permanence, absence of inherence, and that at this moment it's only my own perception and meditation. It's a little like, you know, if you've had a time-lapse photograph of a bridge. Let's take the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a big bridge in San Francisco, as probably you know. It was painted red. It was going to be painted gold. And they'd made special gold paint back in the 30s or something.

[24:04]

But then they did this undercoat of red. And everyone liked the undercoat, and they said, don't paint it gold. So it's still gold. painted red. I used to drive across it virtually every day. They're painting it all year round, they're painting it red. Somewhere. It's a big bridge. And it's been there for a long time. And it's quite stable. Cars go across it. But they had a scary moment one day because they had some kind of, I don't know, celebration in San Francisco, Marin County, maybe the 50th anniversary of the bridge, I don't remember. And the bridge was filled with thousands of people. And suddenly, one of the engineers realized, if all these people started dancing,

[25:06]

or moving together, the bridge could fall down. But in San Francisco, people start dancing sometimes. So they were all like... looking out the window from the observatory with their fingers crossed, hoping. They didn't dare announce it because who knows? Everyone started running. Okay. Anyway, it looks permanent, but, you know, a few thousand people can jiggle it, jiggle it down, dance it down. Yeah, we wouldn't want to have the love parade on there. Yeah. But if you imagine a time-lapse photograph... You take a picture and take a picture and take a picture and you see a flower opening and shutting.

[26:33]

Yeah. And... So this was for many years the longest bridge in the world. So anyway, if you imagine this bridge in a time-lapse photograph, you'd see this big gap between... And then you'd see there's all this activity and a bridge going up, etc., and then the bridge and then cars would go across it, and then suddenly it would fall down. And eventually it will be gone. But Somehow, when I practice these four renunciations, it's like I'm seeing objects almost like they were in a time-lapse photograph.

[27:37]

They're there, and then suddenly they're gone. They're transparent. And this is called actually one moment comprehension. Or we could call it non-grasping perception. At each moment you perceive the distinctions, the distinctiveness of each thing in the world. And they gather together in your perception. And then you release them. They disappear. So it's gathered together and then suddenly it's empty. This is thusness. Yeah. And it's called the Dharma realm.

[28:44]

And we can call it a Buddha field. Because our body mind is the instrument of space and time. Generating and releasing space and time. Yeah, that's what we actually do living. Generating and releasing space and time. And that's actually what living is. When we let things appear and disappear, this realm of letting things appear and disappear is the realm of you as a person. It can be the realm of you as a person, but it is also the realm of Buddha. This catalysis is the seed of all Buddhas.

[29:52]

The catalysis, you know, catalyst. It's the chemistry of all the Buddhas. It is how we exist. But when it becomes your chemistry, this is also Buddha activity. When you let the distinctiveness of all things appear, gather and let them all disappear. You yourself also disappear. And this freedom is the source of all. knowing how things actually exist, and the source and seed of what we call

[31:07]

So now you don't ever have to come back to another seminar. You just do this and everything will be groovy. You will generate a Buddha field. You know the vertical lineage is sort of like something poured into us. And when we get full, it overflows. And it overflows and it becomes the horizontal lineage. And each of us is the conjunction of the vertical lineage and the horizontal lineage. And each of us is the intersection of the vertical and horizontal lineages.

[32:20]

So understanding the vertical lineage makes us the horizontal lineage. And the horizontal lineage gathers the water from the wind and the dew from the grass and joins the vertical lineage generation after generation. And each of us is this conjunction of the horizontal and vertical lineage. In our realization of Buddha activity. Which is also and can be our human activity. We discover the Buddha in our own human activity.

[33:23]

Thank you very much.

[33:25]

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