We're here, each of us, with our individual lives and trying to make sense of the decision to practice within and through and because of our individual lives. And we can't ignore or neglect our individual lives, and we have to take care of them. But the emphasis in Buddhism is on what in what way are our individual lives not individual? Or how are they also inseparable from others and from

[01:01]

Everything, etc., obviously that's somehow a fact. But how do we experience it so that our individuality and our individual problems or something are put into a perspective of a wider sense of beingness? And this is the basic emphasis of Buddhism in contrast to usual Western psychology, which is trying to understand our particularities. Maybe we could say Buddhism is trying to understand our generalities. Yeah, or at least what widely connects us. And Connexus, Connexus. Well, anyway, I'm trying to say, you know, I'm in the midst of trying to find a way to speak about something. And whatever I say are approximations, but let's use these approximations.

[02:06]

So, the overriding view of Zen is matchamaka Buddhism and the emphasis on emptiness. I mean, emptiness we all share. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is... We're form, but we're also emptiness. Now again, I'm not trying to define emptiness here. I'm just using these words to suggest what we have in common. We have emptiness in common. It ain't that great. No, it sounds pretty boring, actually. What do you share with so-and-so? Emptiness. Big deal. I'd rather share something else. But anyway, let's try to look at this. Um... Zen Buddhism is not trying to just make you a better person, discover a way to be a better person, but the overriding concept is, in addition to emptiness, is how can you be an enlightened person?

[03:19]

Can you be an enlightened person? Okay. So from that point of view, while compassion, practicing the Brahma-viharas, unlimited friendliness, kindness, equanimity, and so forth, and the perfections, are all about bodhisattva practice and realizing compassion. Really, the emphasis in Zen is compassion as an entry to connectedness. Because if you really feel with each person you meet, there also goes I, or something like that. And that's a phrase you can even use to try to find the territory of how we are connected.

[04:25]

Then compassion becomes an entry to connectedness. Because compassion is not a dynamic of enlightenment. You can be as compassionate as you want, and hopefully you are, but it doesn't lead to enlightenment. It's the connectedness which is an expressed, compassion is an expression of connectedness in Zen Buddhism. And it's connectedness, it's the experience of connectedness which is a trigger of enlightenment. So you practice the Brahman Viharas and the Six Perfections and so forth, and it's a very satisfying practice. But when you're doing it, you're approaching connectedness and approaching emptiness. Now, so what I can do today maybe is to say a few things.

[05:34]

And let you make use of them or not. Dan is not sitting there. And that's Dan's place. I know that's Dan's place. But my eye consciousness can't tell me that's Dan's place. Okay? That's Dan's place. But my eye consciousness can't tell me it's Dan's place. That's awfully obvious, isn't it? But it's quite important. Because that means that knowing that that's Dan's place is not a result of memory. It's not as a result of immediate sense perception. It's a concept. It's only a concept. Your eyes are not telling you Dan's there. And if Dan wasn't in the room, our eyes don't even tell us Dan exists.

[06:40]

We know Dan exists because we have the concept that Dan exists. Okay. So the concept that that space, that absent space is Dan's space, we can say is a valid cognition. Now, there are cognitions or concepts, like the world is three-dimensional or something like that, or the world are entities. These are not valid. They're concepts, but they're not valid cognitions, and they obstruct understanding the world. Okay. So, what have we got there? This is so simple and so complicated at the same time. There's nothing to it. We know Dan's not there. We can't perceive this. But we have the concept that that's Dan's place.

[07:43]

Okay, so what have we got a concept of? We have a concept, in fact, of unconditioned space. That space can be conditioned by Dan, but it's also just waiting there for Dan. Okay? Does that make sense? Do you understand it? Well, even when Dan is there, that space is waiting for Dan. Do you understand? If I have a concept of unconditioned space, space is shaped by objects and so forth, but there's also any object can fit into a space. So in that sense, space is unconditioned. So we have unconditioned space, which Dan occupies. And when Dan's there, the unconditioned space doesn't go away. Okay.

[08:46]

Now, if you can get used to this way of thinking and noticing, it's actually a feel for an entry into formless emptiness. So this room, you know, we built this endo. I remember building the zendo. Mark, you were here when we doused this place and walked around, and we looked at where the insects were and the stuff, and then I watched everybody where they walked, and on the basis of how they walked, I treated everyone like they were a dousing rod, and then on the basis of where everyone walked, I decided where the building should be. And we put Gisela's hair down there. She'd shaved her head, so we put her hair down there. But it was space shaped by the trees.

[09:48]

We happened to live next to it. It was the main house. But still, basically, it was unconditioned space which we conditioned. But the unconditioned space is still here. It'll be here long after this building is gone. So what I'm suggesting here is you practice with feeling the presence of space, of unconditioned space, which Nikki happens to feel right now. So she's also Nikki, but she's also unconditioned space, which she is making use of very nicely. Now, what's the purpose of this? I don't know. Maybe we'll find out. But this is a basic way to think about how the world exists.

[10:56]

And what we're trying to find out, Buddhism, the emphasis in Buddhism is to know the world as it actually exists. So at each moment, we could say there's a site of engagement. And as I said the other day, talking about dark matter, 75% of everything they can figure out the universe is, is dark matter and only 25% is what we can notice. Well, Buddhism, it seems for the most part, Buddhism has always assumed something like that because you cannot explain existence. the scars every night, I just, I mean, you know, I mean, you can, what the heck are they doing there? How'd they get there? I mean, we don't know. But we kind of like, okay, they're there.

[11:57]

But Buddhism says if you really want to function in how things exist, you have to look at how they also don't exist and the mystery of that there's anything at all. Now, how do you open yourself to the mystery? Humbly, I ask you, those who study the mystery, don't waste time. So, we have to start somewhere, so we start with the site of, let's call it the site of engagement. What is the site of engagement? First of all is appearance, and let's call it appearance and breath. And let's call the path appearance and breath. So you develop the capacity to notice appearance. Not hold on to appearance. And as I say, you can take a simple phrase like receiving, holding, releasing.

[13:01]

Or just receiving, releasing. Receiving, holding, releasing. Until, again, this is a habit. You're taking... Habit that over 2,500 years has been useful to learn to inhabit a new habit Okay, I've given you one new habit notice unconditioned space is present in And it happens to if you meditate enough I can remember, I mean, simple examples that I would be driving along in the first few years of practice and I would be experiencing or feeling, without knowing that's what I was doing, unconditioned space. So do you drive through a red light because it's unconditioned space? Well, no, it's being conditioned by the red light and there might be some pedestrians. So I really had a little problem with it, unconditioned space. Hey, there's a person there. Because it is unconditioned space, but right now it's a person.

[14:07]

So you better stop the car, follow the traffic laws, and so forth, because other people are going to make agreements to follow the path, et cetera. I mean, all of our society is verbal agreements. John Cyril, the philosopher, points this out quite clear. Everything you think of is a verbal agreement. And those verbal agreements are in effect, as I say, the other day... scanning, identity, associating, and vowing. Because we're in the midst of everything. This building, who we are, what we dress, what we talk about, society. Everything is a verbal agreement. So we are in the midst of verbal agreements, which is what society and culture are.

[15:13]

And yet, Those verbal agreements, there's some empty background in which those verbal agreements exist, and you can have different verbal agreements. So you can begin to inhabit the feeling of unconditioned space, which is not right now occupied by Nikki or Earhart or Dan, not me right now. So I'm occupying unconditioned space and yet if I know it's unconditioned space, well, it's quite conditioned by, you know, fingers and hands and so forth. And yet if I feel I'm occupying unconditioned space,

[16:18]

if I'm bringing this attention into my body and this attention also into unconditioned space, there's a kind of freedom, almost a relative freedom, but an extraordinary freedom. So I'm also speaking here about carving a cave in emptiness, creating the structure to practice in unlimited time. I think from what I hear, we do have a feeling of the difference between activities and entities.

[17:21]

Now again, it's hard to believe it's so simple, but Aristotle said, a line, there's a line, that's one dimension. Two dimensions make a surface, and three dimensions make a body. And then Aristotle said, supposedly, and there are no other magnitudes, there are no other dimensions other than three dimensions. Now, from the point of view of Buddhism, this sounds incredibly stupid. But it wasn't until in our culture, until Einstein, with physics and all, emphasized the fourth dimension of time. You can't just eliminate it. But I suppose, I mean, I can understand it, and I'm not, you know, a philosopher, so I don't know, I can't really say.

[18:24]

And certainly Aristotle has been a great former of Western culture. But still, I guess if you think the world exists, and what you are trying to do is understand the world that exists... Not an emergent world, but an already existing world. You're born into it, and there it is. And you look around and say, well, it's three dimensions. The there-ness, the container-ness, the entity-ness of it is three dimensions. So that's all there is. There's no other dimensions. As Dogen would say, time ripens. Time isn't just a dimension of succession. It's a ripening dimension. Now, I'm not saying the Western culture doesn't have all sorts of subtle and interesting ideas about time.

[19:25]

But still, this emphasis on fourth dimension is time. Okay. So what am I talking about all the time? Incubation. What is incubation? A fourth dimension. What happens when you incubate something? What happens? Now, this is an openness that you don't know. It's not a predictable succession of time. Now, what about unlimited time? Now, it's conceptually analogous to Dan's not there, but there's a concept of a valid concept, valid cognition, that that's Dan's place. And there's the absence of Dan right now, in that place, at least.

[20:28]

And yet, and that space is conditioned by Dan, but it's also simultaneously unconditioned. Okay, here in this practice period, we have time, which is very clearly organized by the schedule. We try to do this time together. And you have to have some way to do it, you know. I mean, we could have other various kinds of schedules. But this is a variation of a very ancient schedule. And there seem to be, as I've been doing this, I've been making schedules for years, that the schedules, the first time I've ever done a practice period where the wake-up is at 4, not 3.30. And it's an experiment. We've had one practice period, I've done sashins where the wake-up is 2.30. I think every practice period I've done until now has been 3.30.

[21:32]

We're seeing how 4.30 works, and partly I'm doing it because I really, the main complaint I have here in practice period is people are so exhausted. So I thought maybe 20 or 30 more minutes of sleep. Let's see what happens. And also we don't live here all the time. And there are people coming here in the morning who don't live here. And so anyway, we're trying four o'clock. But it's clear that not all schedules would bring us into the point of a shared time which has some kind of dynamic or power in it. For these three months, not for the rest of your life.

[22:39]

Okay. Now, if we accept that incubation, if we try out this idea that incubation is a fourth dimension, you have your own particular fourth dimension of time. You have your own particular way you're incubating. So although we all share... the three dimensions, we don't all share the fourth dimension. Each of you has a different trajectory. And maybe there's a fifth dimension, which is unlimited time. So each of you have the fourth dimension of your own incubation of these teachings, And in the midst of that, there's not just successive time, but unlimited time. The concept of unlimited, that we're open to other realities.

[23:46]

We're open to, we don't know what. So just as we can have the sense of unconditioned space, we can also have the sense of unconditioned time. Time in which anything can happen. So in our practice, you have a real attention to your establishing the line through appearance and breath, appearance and breath, breath and appearance, appearance and breath. And within that appearance and breath, you're bringing the teachings, noticing things. Every person is a fourth dimension. Every person brings their own conflicts, resonance, reconciliation. What mind is big enough to encompass all these fourth dimensions?

[24:50]

All these other trajectories of paths, trajectories, incubatory paths. And then all of that Unconditioned time in which anything can happen. So the koan, which I like very much, koan 20, you know, and Shoyuroku. Where are you going? I'm going on a pilgrimage. What's the purpose of pilgrimage? I don't know. Oh, not knowing is nearest. Dichangun. So you have the phrase, not knowing is nearest. So here's a phrase, not knowing is nearest, which is a way to work with actually unconditioned space. We don't know what's here, but things are appearing.

[25:56]

Unconditioned time or unlimited time in which anything can happen. And that not knowing in the sight of engagement is the Majjanaka Zen path. Okay? Thank you.

[26:21]

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