Naturally enough, I feel something practicing with you. And I feel the last Taisho was not, you know, I appreciated it for myself, but I still feel I have to make many aspects of it clear. And I'd like to speak to one aspect, which I said, that it's a craft like physics or mathematics or something like that, which is not accessible to people who don't practice. Yeah. And I think that's important for us to think about. I mean, as I said to someone, recently. In a way, there's aspects of Buddhism that are only available to professionals.

[01:05]

In a sense, it's not a universal religion. It's more like a science or something. Again, as I've said fairly often, you can't be a physicist without studying physics. No, you can't be a lay physicist exactly unless you are, you know, autodidactically I mean, I do know one or two physicists who are self-taught, but still didn't have to teach themselves physics. So we have something like, if we look at the Buddhist picture in the West, we have something like, as I again said to someone, scholars. And You know, I can't be a scholar. I mean, I made a decision not to be a scholar. I started out that way. I'm not very good at languages, but, you know, I could have made a career as a scholar. I had grants to get a PhD and things like that.

[02:11]

But I decided the energy that I have to put into learning several languages, I... And the kind of study and the kind of institutional framework was clear that the university wanted me to come back up and teach in the department and things. I didn't want the institutional commitment, and I didn't want the kind of study. I wanted to practice. I wanted to put whatever energy I have into practice. And I also discovered very early on, practicing with Suzuki Roshi, the degree to which practice is a craft. And my shift in becoming ordained and so forth like that, and helping found Tassajara and things like that, was, hey, I saw it was a craft.

[03:13]

And I saw that it's going to survive through being a craft. And it's not going to survive by, you know, the ideas I had at first about it, you know, some kind of universal intuition of the way things are. That it's, you know, bamboo being hit by a tile and you're enlightened. Okay, so what we have is sort of lay practice and intuitive practice, something like that. And then we have the craft of practice. And we have scholarship. Scholarship and philosophy. Because the philosophical understanding of Buddhism is extremely important. The simple example I...

[04:17]

can give you, and probably the outstanding example, is the understanding in China of Buddha nature being some kind of soul or inherent, permanent dimension, being that all of us have. Well, that's simply not really Buddhism. It's all of Chinese Buddhism, but it's not strictly speaking, but it's Buddhism as a kind of religion or basically a kind of theological view of the world. So, I mean, it's like a difference between creationism and Darwinism, you know, something like that. You know, they both claim to be science, but one is probably accurate and the other is probably not accurate. So Dogen, as we know, if you've read much Dogen at all, makes a kind of abrupt break by retranslating inaccurately, violating Chinese grammar, to state that everything changing is Buddha nature.

[05:35]

Changing itself is Buddha nature. As Joan Stanbaugh says in her book, she calls the book, impermanence is Buddha nature. Well, that was a big shift that Dogen made out of his brilliance and out of his practice. And it just didn't work for him. His practice didn't let him think of Buddha nature as something permanent. Okay. So, my point here is that the the philosophy and the related scholarship of Buddhism makes a difference of whether you think Buddha nature is a soul or Buddha nature is impermanence. And that's worked out really not by the practitioners so much. Because the practitioners, you know, don't... Practitioners practice.

[06:42]

They do the practice. But they're not really creating Buddhism. They're continuing Buddhism. And some people create Buddhism, and we have to create Buddhism in the West. We have a different kind, we can't just practice Buddhism if we want Buddhism to continue. We have to, as Dogen says again, don't let the sutras turn you, you turn the sutras. So when Dogen felt the sutras weren't something he could turn, he changed them. Well, you can't do that in a religion of belief, a revealed religion and so forth. You can't just change the Bible. You can reinterpret it, but you have to, which isn't the same as just changing it. Okay. Okay. So the craft of practice is the way we continue practice.

[07:48]

It's through the craft of practice, not through my chance enlightenment or something like that, that I can teach and practice and we have this situation. And the scholars, if they're going to be good scholars, usually, and we have a lot of good scholars these days, many, I mean, when I first started, scholars couldn't practice. That would be like being a professor of religion and a Catholic monk. Well, you can be a Catholic monk in a seminary, but you can't be a Catholic monk at Harvard and teach religion. So many of the practitioners who got interested in Buddhist scholarship through practice had to hide the fact, they were in the closet, literally, had to hide the fact, in more ways than one sometimes, they had to hide the fact that they were scholars and practitioners simultaneously.

[08:50]

Now it's just up front that they're practitioners as well, and it's just the way it is. They had to recognize the universities that the practitioner scholars made better scholars. But also the lay people who practice for, let's say, well-being and not non-being or something like that, Really, that's also held in place. In other words, both the scholarship and the more lay intuitive practice is held in place by the craft of practice. Well, here, you know, I've worked, I mean, I enjoy every moment, minute of it, but I work pretty hard within this enjoyment to find terms and ways in which we can Notice this craft of practice. I hope you don't think I'm talking through my hat.

[09:56]

Do you have an expression in German like that? Probably not. Talking through your... It means you don't know what you're talking about. You talk through your hat. They have, in England, they... If you want to keep the parliament going and not, you just keep your hat on, which nobody can interrupt you while you've got your hat on in parliament. You've got all these hats on in parliament. So as long as you've got your hat on, you can keep talking, saying anything. But that doesn't seem to be where the expression comes from. But talking through your hat means you don't know what you're talking about, but you've got your hat on. Luckily, I took my hat off. So I really want to work with you in trying to develop this craft of practice. And even though I've been doing this for nearly 50 years now, I still keep finding obvious things that it's taken me a long time to notice.

[11:03]

So now let me say something about kin-hin. I noticed that sometimes when you do kin-hin, it's like five or ten people here are doing independent kin-hin on your own. So let me define kin-hin. Kin-hin is something like walking meditation. And it's not really so much about walking, though. You're not obviously trying to get somewhere. It's a rather slow way to get anywhere. So it's not about walking. What is it? How would I define it? Kenyan is about a relationship of the breath to the feet. That much, anyway. And a relationship of the breath to the feet... and the bodily posture, which moves this way and not that way.

[12:12]

And it's, when you're doing kin-hin with others, it's related to the person in front of you and to a lesser degree to the person behind you. So in general, you keep one arm's length. This is what many of you are not doing. You keep one arm's length from the person in front of you. and you kind of lock your body, the feel of the body, you generate a bodily feeling. Bill Kwong wrote once, somewhere I read somewhere, he said, if you do K'in Hin right, your eyes fill with tears. And I've noticed that too. Often my eyes will fill with tears when I'm doing K'in Hin. I thought that was good of him to notice that. Anyway, a certain kind of bodily feeling is created by relating the breath to the feet and moving forward, not wobbling, but moving forward sort of like that at an even.

[13:20]

And then locking your body into the person's body in front of you, letting the person behind you lock into your body. And then you move, when Dan's leaving it, you start moving quickly. Dan ideally can feel everyone behind him, because everyone's locked into this feeling. And he can feel when eight people back, ideally, are suddenly, you know, got two meters between them and the others. And when you do feel locked in with the other person, If the other person stops, for some reason, and sometimes when we do king hand, you stop, the leader stops very quickly, so the whole line, and you're not supposed to be like a dominoes, boom, [...] you know. You're supposed to all, whoop, you just stop. You feel it in your body. So you stop with that, your eyes are not looking, really, you're just kind of, you're walking by the feel of the person in front of you, and then you stop.

[14:31]

Well, that's kinhim. That's the form of kinhim. Now, what I'm trying to define here is the word form. Again, we've got to acquaint ourselves, acclimatize ourselves to this view of the world as interdependent. So, From that view, yes, in a sense, this stick exists. And in a sense, this exists. But what's real is the sound. What's real is the relationship. This is basically not real in Buddhism. You just got to get the usual idea form out of your head. This is not real. It's impermanent. It's going to disappear. Someone made it. Made like the spine, blah, blah, blah.

[15:36]

It's made so you see the person's handiwork. Just like some of the teapots I have, you can see where the potter held it to glaze it. So he's left his name on it in effect by showing you his handprint on the pot. So this doesn't exist in terms of Buddhism. What exists is the relationship, my use of it, as a backscratcher, as a teaching staff, or as a spine. Maybe this thread, what exists, look at that, that always goes vertical. That sort of exists. This doesn't exist. But this is a relationship to gravity, yeah. That's more real than this. One reason you have this on it, to show you that this is more real than the staff.

[16:39]

Because it always shows in a relationship. So you've got to just keep reminding. From the point of view of Buddhism, relationships are what are real. So when we're talking about form, meaning something that's real, it means relationships. There's just no other way to think about it. You've got to get in the habit of that. So what is the form of kinhin? It's nothing to do with feet. It's nothing to do with breath. It's nothing to do... It's the relationship of all... So, if I said, so-and-so really has the form of Kintian, I could see that when they were in Kintian, they were locked into the person in front of them, their sense of you-ness pretty much disappeared, and they just moved...

[17:45]

in this sort of relationship with the other person, almost like they're floating. Then we say, oh, that's the form of kinyin. So we keep certain forms. I keep certain forms in this crafter practice. A lot of the forms we don't keep. I mean, I haven't kept because it's just too much. But certain key forms, the zendo, the orioke is the most obvious. Again, what is the form of orioke? The basic form of Oryoki is to do things with two hands. So when you pick up the Setsu, for example, you don't have to. You can pick it up with one hand. But it's not about eating.

[18:50]

Eating is an excuse to have the Oryoki practice. If you want to eat, you just go in the atrium with it. with Marie Louise or Sophia or Christian. It's a little quicker. It's not about eating. It's about doing things with two eggs. the form of Oryoki. I don't know how to describe it just now. Okay. So when you pick up the Setsu, it's in here, or it's in the bowl, and you're going to clean now. You come over and you put one hand in front of the bowl, and then you take it.

[19:56]

You don't just take it. You put one hand here. Well, this sounds like a bunch of formal nonsense in a way. Well, yes and no. If it's about two hands, what is it about? It's about energy. Because it's two hands. I mean, I don't know. I'm not a martial amateur or artist like Coco. But I think that probably when you do martial arts, both hands are somehow present. If you're doing something with one hand, the other hand is part of the hand that's doing something. Because even in ariyoki, it's about energy. And it's about energy because it's about relationship. And relationship is form. Relationship is form.

[21:00]

Okay. So if it's about two hands, it's about energy. The kind of focus that comes from two hands. You can actually feel, as I've often said, a kind of spongy energy between your hands if you want. Kind of. If it's about energy then, it's about the chakras. And the whole design of the use of these bowls relates to the chakras. I've said that very often. And it's about no extra movements. So, for instance, you don't just pick up your chopsticks and put them down and you're below. You only put them down if you happen to be eating with them and don't need them anymore to signal that you're not going to eat seconds or something. Then you can put them down, unless you're the last person.

[22:03]

If you're the last person eating, you don't clean your chops, you can put them down. You just put them down so the meal can proceed. You put them down on the bowl. So there's a few rules. No extra movements. Everything that's possible is done with two hands, or both hands are present for the doing. And it's, as I've said before, you can't sort of chat with your neighbor. It demands attention. So it's about creating a way of eating that demands attention, that enters you into a relationship with the bowls and eating and with the other persons. Now, you're not doing it simultaneously with other people. You're not all trying to just unfold everything in a dance-like style. But you're doing it together with other people. Okay. Now here we have another idea which I bring up with out of necessity but with some reluctance.

[23:14]

The virtual now in 1959 I believe the idea of computer virtual reality came up you know virtual reality but virtual or virtually used to mean the same as something like that It's virtually true. So there's an aspect of the form of orioke eating, let's stick with that one, as a kind of, not in the computer sense of virtual reality, but a kind of virtual reality. Ritual in this sense this so basic in Chinese culture ritual ritual is a kind of almost like Plato's ideal forms Although I think Nietzsche said that all of modern philosophy is to kind of get rid of Plato but Plato this ideal forms and this is an inadequate representation of an ideal form and

[24:23]

Now Buddhism is very different. Buddhism would say this is the relationship of you to the stick is an approach to or whatever it is, is what's real. There's no sort of real out here. Okay. So there's a quality. I'll just go where this takes me and we'll then stop. And we'll see if it's useful. You can tell me later if it's useful. Okay, so when you do a ritual, a form, you're creating a form Now, again, the Oryoki bowls don't exist.

[25:25]

What exists is the relationship. The relationship is something we do with both hands, with energy, with tension, and with each other. That's the form. That's what's real. And at each meal, we recreate it again. Now, we each do our bowls differently. A little differently. We try to do them pretty much the same. But we're at different paces. And I know some days I kind of goof up. Some days I fold the Roki all up and I look and my napkin's still in my lap. I don't know how it got there. Somebody put it there. You know? So even though I've been doing a Roki, the Orioki, a very long time, I still kind of do it differently. But I know how I want to do it. and each of you knows how you would like to do it once you know it pretty well.

[26:28]

So in a certain way there's a virtual Oryoki practice that we are all approaching. Sort of like Plato's ideal forms, but it's not an ideal form out in some sort of heaven-like space. It's something that's in the midst of what we're doing, and it informs what we're doing. Now, since everything's a relationship, the concept of form is virtual form, is both the form that... is actualized and the virtual form that is aimed at. Now in Buddhism, what's aimed at is also what is. Now we can work with this very famous corn, Dung Shan's wine, among the three bodies of Buddha, which one does not fall into any category.

[27:37]

And Dzogchen says, I'm always close to this. I'm always close to this is an approach. Do you understand? It's an approach to what can't be reached. Okay? So, when we do the orgy, each of us doing it in a little different way, in a little different state of mind, distracted or not distracted, it's all moving toward a virtual form. of the Uriyoki practice, and that virtual form affects us. I find, for instance, food tastes better when I'm eating it in the Uriyoki meal than if I happen to eat in the atrium. The situation of concentration, the energy that's generated by the practice itself makes me taste the food differently. So the form of the Yoyogi practice is just in the air and it's a bunch of us doing these things, you know, but it makes the, for me, it makes the food taste differently.

[28:48]

It might bring tears to my eyes. So it's the form, the actualized form and the virtual form, which is what is real. So when you practice as I often say, perceptual immediacy or spatial immediacy. Let's take perceptual immediacy. What is this? Well, there's the things you're perceiving, the objects you're perceiving. And you're perceiving them, you're noticing them, but you're not reflecting on them or thinking about them. The immediacy means it's just as it is at that moment. That's a state of mind. So perceptual immediacy, without reflecting on it, generates a state of mind.

[29:58]

Now that state of mind has a bodily reality, a relationship. It's generated by perceptual immediacy, but it also is an experience which can be carried into other situations. Okay, now I'll just say two things to try to give you an idea where, how the philosophy of Buddhism and the practice of Buddhism coincide. We say the point of Buddhism is to practice, to know things as they are. Things as they are, not just thing as it is, or things as they is, as Sakyuris used to say. Things as they are. Is that possible? How can you predict?

[31:04]

Now, do all Everything's interdependent, right? And we have, you know, chaos theory, the butterfly effect, the butterfly causes a typhoon on the other side of the planet, so that we know that that interconnectedness has some kind of reality. But really, can we experience it? If we say everything is interdependent, how do all the parts participate in that interdependence? And can we relate to all the parts that participate in the interdependence? And if we could only relate to all the parts that participate in the interdependence, only then could we say we know things as they are. And knowing things as they are is the dynamic and the kinesis of enlightenment and what Dogen would call the changing Buddha nature, something like that.

[32:20]

Well, if you understand the Oriyoki, you understand how to enter into the field that's created kinetically by Oriyoki practice, You can bring that feel also to everything all at once. Or all at thusness instead of all at onceness. Now one other thing I can mention. Why do we say thusness? Thusness of this the. It's very interesting because the and thusness are really the same word. And we say they're the. The definite articles in English, the stick, the microphone. But for a Buddhist, the the points out the indefiniteness of each thing. Because this is not definite and that's not definite. It's all indefinite because it's all changing and it's all only in relationship. So the is the thusness of the stick.

[33:26]

So when you say the book, you're speaking about Buddhism, actually. The book. The thusness of the book. Well, if everything is differentiated, how are we going to relate to everything? We find some sameness for everything. If we find how there's a sameness to this and a sameness to that and a sameness to this, we can begin to relate to everything all at once. So thusness is a simple term that arises out of understanding everything is changing, the philosophy of Buddhism, but it also arises out of the practice where you can find a way to relate to everything all at once. Or everything all at thusness.

[34:33]

And all of this, what I'm talking about, is related to simple things like the form of kin-hin. It's not about the walking, but the particular way, the particular form that happens through several people walking together, locked in, breath-stepping and moving. And that same sense of form is what we mean by rupadhatu, or the form that happens in perceptual immediacy. Yeah, I don't know if I've made myself clear. It's a lot of fun to try. Thanks a lot.

[35:35]

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