I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I don't know who's, that's not me, but that's what we say. But then what is this, Buddhism is outside of words and letters. Zen teaching is outside of words and letters. By the way, somebody lit the ceremony candles. It's unusual. I've never had ceremony candles lit, but it's very nice. It makes me feel like now I have to do a ceremony or perhaps speak in a ceremonial way. So what I'd like to do is... trying to make more clear what I said in the first take-show.

[01:03]

That's, you know, this is a wonderful experiment for me to be writing and teaching orally, because yesterday, you know, I knew, of course, that seven, zero day was coming up, and so from yesterday my observations and thoughts, and that's what happens, I sort of observe things, and I observe things in the category of the lecture, or I observe things in the category of what I'm writing. But you are such a much more powerful presence, as you might imagine, than perhaps a large number, a few hundred at least, imagined readers. So my observations and thoughts go directly to you and not to the imagined readers of the book. It's just interesting. And the book is just in a different kind of texture than the

[02:14]

texture I feel from you and the practice period and from each of you. I feel each of your minds to the extent to which I'm able. Anyway, so I'm led to been led to through these observations over particularly over the last months to really think about the role of concepts in our practice. And I guess I've been led to that because what has struck me from the very beginning of practice is that the yogic culture is based on different worldviews, different concepts than Western culture. And in particular, the dynamic of koans and enlightenment is a shift in how you see things. Enlightenment is a shift in how you see things. And what's interesting about that is sometimes very small shifts, not shifts that you could say are from a deluded view to an enlightened view, but a shift simply from one view to another view, perhaps more convincing or different, but that shift from one view to another view can sometimes be the kind of

[03:51]

loose rock that starts an avalanche. So sometimes just a shift from one view to another can precipitate an enlightenment experience. So the koans are, you know, really the texture of the koans is lots of shifts in views. And then, for us practicing the West, there's the big shift in view from the views of a yoga culture, from the views of a... Then, from the views of a yoga culture to Western, we go back, and for us as Westerners, to the views of a yoga culture, which we can actually, and you do, accomplish because we're sitting In the context of yogic teachings, we're using the body in a yogic way.

[04:58]

But still, I think in our own minds, concepts are sort of our language. Concepts are ideas. They can be languaged, but they're not necessarily language. Concepts are more basic than language. I mean, I'm using language right now to express concepts, and I use language to refine concepts. But when I'm writing and speaking, I feel something which I may form into a concept, and it may just form into an image. but I may form it into language as well. But that doesn't mean concepts are language. And I want to make this clear because I think we have a... in our background feeling we have a feeling that concepts are somehow language. What's the first most basic ceremony in all of Buddhism, traditionally?

[06:09]

The ordination ceremony. What is the ordination ceremony? It's taking vows. What are vows? Vows are concepts. What are the precepts? Concepts. So jukai, tokudo, ordination. This is aligning yourself with certain concepts or intentions Concepts, intentions, vows, they're all different ways to say the same thing. Very similar anyway. So our practice necessarily has to be somewhat like philosophy, some would say, is the creation of concepts. And as I quoted Nietzsche last time, he said we can't take concepts as a dowry from Wonderland or something like that.

[07:13]

It's not just a given. Concepts have power and presence when you recreate them, when you make them yourself, when you make them your own. And we unfortunately have to do a kind of philosophical process in order to find ourselves, find how we're located in Western culture, which is a wonderful advantage we have in practicing. Allows us to refresh and renew and recreate and evolve Buddhism, as other cultures have done in the past. because we have this larger dynamic of a shift in view from Western culture to yogic culture. And in the process we're going to modify Buddhism. And we're going to find yogic culture growing, developing within

[08:22]

Western culture, Western culture finding a way to grow within yoga culture. So I don't think it's just a simple shift from one to the other. Because these are all human ways to be in the world. The discovery of, you know, even the word human is a concept. It has lots of implications. Human in contrast to what? What is being human and humane and so forth? So we exist in a field of concepts and practice is to sort those out and mostly yogic practice is sorting these out in a way that's a bodily mmm mmm guided, something like that.

[09:27]

Okay. Now, let me give you an example. Sounds funny, I'm sorry, but your feet, our feet, are genetically determined. by your parents, being human and so forth. But walking is not genetically determined. Walking is not hardwired genetically. You learn walking by walking. So we walk because we walk. We walk because we have legs, etc. But how we walk is something we learn, not necessarily... This is not my idea, it's others' idea, that walking is learned, but it's not genetically determined. But walking is also determined by concepts.

[10:31]

Otherwise there would be no difference, I could not perceive a difference between a British couple and a German couple walking in the forest, which is something I've noticed many times. I see people walking. When I first got to Germany, I thought, Germans walk funny. It was different than I would walk. And then I noticed, every now and then, a couple that walked different than German couples. In Johanneshof, there's lots of forests around. And I've noticed it in Austria, too. And I'd catch up with this couple, and they turned out to be British. And they simply walked differently than Germans do. Well, if you walk differently just because you're in a different culture, concepts have to have something to do with that, because culture is rooted in concepts, ways you think of the body, ways you hold the body. So walking is conceptually influenced. And no matter how you walk as a westerner, most westerners walk from a feeling of the center of the body is up here somewhere.

[11:45]

And in yoga culture, you walk from a feeling of the center of the body is here. And that concept is called hara. So hara is a concept that influences walking. And what's the difference in concept? Well, you know, I don't know exactly. No one's ever written about this, etc. But my own feeling is that breath, heart, and brain, or this area that we think of as thinking in relation to a more emotional feeling here, the combination of this, as most of you know, the word shin and similar words, shin or something like that, in Chinese, shin in Japanese, mean heart and mind both. And so it means actually the relationship of heart and mind and breath, spirit, inspiration. So breath

[12:49]

Mind, heart, brain, heart and breath together are felt to be mind. Okay. Something like that. That's the case. All right. It's also thought that we can say, not original mind, but that our originary mind, in other words, what at each moment something originates from, And in a yoga culture, it's considered that mind in its fundamental sense, the essence of mind, originates in stillness. So there's a kind of cultural bias to keep the upper body still. And you can see it in... you know, if you are in Asia, I'm not so familiar with how Chinese, I've been in Chinese temples, et cetera, but it's very clear in Japanese temples how a person walks to the altar or how a person does Kenyan, even fast Kenyan.

[14:00]

You don't walk like this in Kenyan. And some people stride along doing Kenyan. It's okay, why not? We're Westerners. That's the concept of the body, right? which is expressed in walking, that's characteristic of Westerners, whether British or German or whatever. But the concept of the body in the yoga culture is to keep this area still. So you walk, you kind of more shuffle. And of course, gaita, these Japanese shoes, wooden and rubber, lots of people wear them now, they're actually designed to be slid forward, not to step forward. Not to step forward with your heel, which is more our way of walking, but to step forward and put the whole foot down flat. So there's a kind of shuffle. Someone said, Yonasar, I remember, said, oh, Reiko Roshi's back.

[15:05]

I hear his shuffle in the halls. I said, shuffle? I don't know, but that's what I learned from Suki Roshi and others. I remember Edo Roshi, actually. I watched him. I saw him somewhere in the airport. Brought him to the airport in San Francisco, I guess. And I stood there. And he actually studied with a no actor how to walk. Because in the Noh and kabuki theater, definitely you're trained to walk this way. Whether your upper body moves like this, while your legs underneath it do their work. But he studied with the Noh actor to develop his way of walking, which is yogic and zen way. But I stood and we said goodbye. And he turned around and he just... sort of floated down the hall. Everybody else was walking along. This guy was kind of... I watched him until he disappeared in the distance to his gate. So concepts, vows, intentions are more basic than language.

[16:20]

I said, we language them, I language them, I refine them, I speak to you about them. But basically, although I use thinking to articulate a concept and refine a concept and then speak to you about it, the product, the concept, is not really language. I may language it, But it can be known bodily. And I'm giving you it in language, but it becomes an idea you can hold like a vow or intention. Wisdom phrases, koans, already connected. These are vows or intentions.

[17:22]

They're the maybe already connected, for example, which I would call a wisdom phrase, is the craft of vowing. So vows are absolutely the center of our practice. How we shape our life. The shape of our foot is genetically determined. The shape of our walking, it's a kind of vow. A vow we don't know we've taken. It's a vow to view the body a certain way. Now, what I'm trying to do is find distinctions that allow you to see the differences and enact the differences. So, as you know, I recently took the most basic definition of zazen, don't move.

[18:38]

What I've been emphasizing for some months now, don't move, is not advice, it's a concept. It's not advice that you follow or you don't follow. You form the concept and then you sit through that concept, within that concept, as that concept, all these different pronouns, give us a little different feeling for it. And zazen has no power without this concept, don't move. And within don't moving, All kinds of things happen. You incubate your life in a different way. Many things flow from don't moving, from not moving. So the concept don't move is probably the most important concept in yogic culture.

[19:45]

It's certainly the most important concept in Zen practice. That's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting to see it. Now, if I say, you know, I don't move is an important concept in a dynamic of zazen, but now I'm saying it's not only a dynamic of zazen, maybe it's the most important concept in our practice. Just to say that, that's another concept. To say it's important, more important, most important, those are concepts. So the concept don't move unfolds into all kinds of things. Then they start interacting. So the concept don't move and zazen is now informing the upper body doesn't move. The upper body stays still because mind, breath and Mind is breath, brain, and heart.

[20:50]

Okay, if this is such an important concept, what I was trying to say last, the first issue, is we enact the concept don't move in sitting, which allows, as Dogen Zenji says, sitting is different than The mind of sitting is different than any other mind. Well, now there's a concept, and a very big one. And if that, this mind that's different from any other mind, if this is the case, which we should explore and study for ourselves, investigate for ourselves, as Dogen says in the next sentences, informs zazen and allows non-dreaming deep, the mind of non-dreaming deep sleep to surface in our zazen or to generate a resonant mind to non-dreaming deep sleep, how powerful is this wide space or door that appears

[22:09]

Through the concept don't move join to sitting Okay So what I was trying to say and kind of get there last time is that We really if we're going to have the lay adept Sangha that transmits the teaching we have to find out how to transform we have to rethink investigate our lay life find out how to transform our lay life and extend practice into our lay life, transform our lay life into practice, etc., but not without taking away the value of lay life. I mean, because lay life has its own literal individuality and value. I mean, the Western concept of lay life is transforming the world. Global culture... is the introduction of the Western concept of lay life all over the world.

[23:15]

And somehow the concept of lay life all over the world has a lot to do with the creativity, our technological, and also the oppression of art and commodification of our life. Okay, so what I'd like us to do is to find a way to bring the concept of not moving into our activity. Hmm? To bring the concept of not moving into our activity. You're welcome. And we do that, of course, to some extent by the stillness of mind, of the upper torso in walking. Now sometimes I think maybe a good place to start is your closet. Come out of the closet.

[24:19]

When you hang your clothes up in the closet, if you could, can just, it's a time to practice, just have your mind on nothing else but the kind of darkened space of the closet, usually dark unless you have a light in it, and hanging up your clothes. And carefully put the hanger in the robe or your jacket or whatever it is. Make sure it hangs straight on the clothing. And you don't have to be in a hurry. I mean, often we're in a hurry. I mean, this is unimportant to hang up the clothes. I'm in a hurry. I'm just going to hang them and go to do more important things. Why is there something that's more important? Or you want to go do something that's more interesting because to hang up your clothes carefully and intentionally requires energy. And you'd rather listen to the radio or do something which is going to supply attention to you instead of you supplying attention to the world.

[25:25]

So it takes a fair amount of energy, a kind of vitality, to bring attention to the world all the time. But if you start out with a closet, this is kind of good. You'd have to hang up clothes once a day or twice a day. And again, I'm saying I'd like you to really find ways to locate your mind in the particularity of things several times a day. Of course, that's what oryoki practice is. Oryoki practice is kind of a version maybe of hanging things up in the closet. Oryoki practice, because we do everything in sync, synchronized with everyone else, it's not a time you can kind of chat with other people. You can't sort of eat Oryoki and stay in sync with everybody and say, well, Christian, what do you think about so-and-so? Should we go to that meeting or not?

[26:26]

I mean, you can't do that during Oryoki. It just doesn't work. Now, we can do it in the four- and nine-day meals. Very different conception in four- and nine-day meals. And the 498 meals are a, it's a kind of trick for the teacher to watch how people behave when they don't have the Oyoki practice. And they do it in Japan too, but they try to get you drunk. And they see how you behave, how you handle the liquor, whether you can manage the social pressure to drink or not, etc. And, you know, what's Socrates' Symposium is about the same thing. Who gets drunk first, who keeps clear, blah, blah, blah. So during the 490 meal, we're taught over and over again to do things with two hands. Do people do things with two hands during the 490? No, they just pass it like that. Do you feel the presence of each?

[27:32]

No. Let's define what a person is. What is a person? Let's try out a definition that a person is presence. Each person has a unique presence. It's as unique as fingerprints or voice. You hear somebody's voice, you know who it is. And I read the other day they studied the movements of infants and breath movements of infants. And the breath patterns of infants, every one they've studied is distinctly different than every other child, every other infant. So even at the level of very basic things, we're all breathing, we have a genetically determined sort of fingerprint of breath and little movements. And those little movements are all going to be affected then by concepts, the culture you grow up in, how you view the body, et cetera. Well, this is wonderful for us because we can inject concepts into our basic activity in a repetitive fashion.

[28:38]

in which each repetition is a reassessment, reappearance is a reassessment, a renewal, a uniqueness. So anyway, I'm saying, let's try on each, the definition of a person is a presence. Now I'm just, that's a concept, definition of a person is a presence. And by my saying it, we may have a chance, if you want to, to try it on. So in Oyoke-myo, you feel the presence of the person. You don't think about it. And one of the reasons you supposedly don't look around in monastic practice, you're not doing kin-in and looking around, or fan out, hitting the bells, or... The whole thing is just to feel the presence and know the person next to you or what's going on by presence. Sukershi has a whole lecture about... Actually, he's talking about Avalokitesvara.

[29:44]

The thousand arms of Avalokitesvara actually represent presence, he says. Because if Avalokitesvara... Concentrates on one hand all in other 999 are useless So the thousand arms mean a presence so security says he's actually said if I'm have that presence Someone in the Zen that moves I always catch him He actually used the term I catch it moving Some of us are in a daze during, you know, you can do about ten things just to, you know, to get them to notice anything. So what is this presence that's not involved in inner thoughts? There may be inner thoughts, but the presence is still there. This very much has to do with what Buddhist practice, yoga culture is about.

[30:47]

So let's take the first definition of presence. And you can try this on. You feel the presence. When you feel the presence of another person, it awakens your own presence, your own sense of being a presence, not a particular person with a particular history, but a presence. And that presence, once you start noticing presence, you can feel whether that presence is open or closed or receiving, receiving or offering. And Sukershi, in the same case show, same lecture, talked about so many people came to Zen Center and he said, who really wanted to be in the mountains and in all social situations they shut down. They're pretending to be a hermit in a cave in the middle of everybody else, and they don't engage. He said, that's not our Zen practice. Our Zen practice is to engage, but not... See, that's what 4 and 9 is.

[31:55]

See if people engage, how they do engage. Engage, yet not lose that stability of mind, body, and breath. The Oryoki is meant to teach you that. You can't socialize much while you're doing ariyuki. And it's particularly to do everything in sync. I mean, if you just, we all ate ariyuki the way we wanted to in three bowls, then you could talk to them. But if we all do it in sync, the in sync immediately takes away the ability to connect through socialization, but you connect bodily. So then, in a 4-9 day, can we keep that sense of a bodily connection of presence? Because this presence is also interdependence. Because if everything is interdependent, it's activity. You can't grasp activity so much by thinking about it.

[32:57]

You have to feel the activity of the field. the immanence of the field, as I said last station. And we have it in this staff too. I've showed you many times. Just exactly as the Kuan Yin, Kanon in the Kanon Do, the lotus embryo, the bud, the seed pod. But the blossom is the thousand arms. The iconography of a thousand arms is exactly the same as that Kuan Yin, Kanon we have in the Kanon Do, which is instead of illustrating as a thousand arms, they illustrate it as the blossom isn't present in a specific iconography, it's present as the space, the interaction, the field of imminence.

[34:01]

And now I'm using the field of immanence, I'm using the word immanence because immanence, everything is present is immanent. And the way I'm using immanence requires us to be finite beings. There's no otherworldly space in immanence. You can understand it that way and some philosophers, people have. But the immanence of yogic understanding is everything's present here, including enlightenment. There's no otherworldly space for things to be. Whatever is, is here, and nothing can escape from it. Or nothing can be not included in it. So it's an all-at-onceness. Imminence is an all-at-onceness of a thousand arms, of this blossom that you don't see, but we are. And immanence, the field of immanence arises from, we can say if we want to try to understand this as we can practice it, the field of immanence as an experience arises, well, from the feeling of other people as presence.

[35:24]

Because the presence of each of you creates a field of immanence. And in that field of immanence is not only predictability, but also uniqueness. all possibilities, including the indeterminate. And that we can also say that for our, in practice, prior to the field of imminence is the field of appearance. Because when things appear, a stone, I don't know, a slate, a table, a person, What does it mean to say appearance? Well, you have to practice with appearance. Appearance is, for us, the kind of step-by-step process of coming into the field of appearance is to notice that when you first notice something, it appears. Well, it was already there, so you can say, oh, it's already there. But the worldview that we're in is not...

[36:30]

that it's already there, because that requires creation. So we always say phrases and ceremonies which ignore that it's beginningless. Beginningless because we're not concerned with its there-ness, we're concerned with becoming close to it or engaging with it. or transforming. These are different worldviews. So when you first notice something, it appears. Well, it was already there, but you're not concerned with its already there. You're concerned with your experience of it and your engagement with its activity. It's an activity, not an entity. If it's an activity, not an entity, you don't care. Because if it's an activity, it's being created right now.

[37:32]

When it was created a long time ago, who cares? Right now it's being created and being created with your participation. So even if it's a stone, a little old stone, it's oval or it's round. First you know it's oval, then it's not quite oval, then it's got a jagged edge, then it's got some white lines on it, maybe. So there's a process in which even a stone appears to you. And that appearance is kind of activity, plus you could move it and construct it and all that stuff, you know, geologically. But when you are generating appearance, you're generating a field of mind in which things appear. Because it appears from somewhere. The word is on a page. The stone is in a field. So the more you practice appearance, the more you begin to have a field of appearance, which then becomes a field of imminence, which then becomes the potentiality for enlightenment.

[38:34]

It's always immediate. Well, I didn't get as far as I'd like, but I got pretty far. Thank you very much. They are gentle and equally penetrate everything.

[38:57]

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