You know, you had the first seminar the other day, and I always like to have a report on the seminar. And one of the things that was said is that the idea of contextual flow was a little difficult, or for some people. And that struck me as, first struck me as, the idea of contextual flow is pretty obvious. I mean... Yeah, seems so. And, of course, we could say it's, you know, stream of consciousness like Joyce, James Joyce's writing, and previous people, not just Joyce, and also Freud's idea of associative mind and so forth. Yeah, so... When what seems obvious to me is not obvious, I think, well, there's probably some problem here.

[01:07]

And perhaps it's not so obvious in the context of Buddhism and Buddhist practice. So I had to think about it a little while. And... Yeah. So let's take a simple example again, one that I, in the last few years, use every now and then. This basic, one of the two or three basic instructions of Zazen. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. Okay, don't invite. Can't be much simpler than that. And it's fairly simple to feel, to understand what it means, and to enact. Okay. But let's just first say, what is it? Well, it's some English words.

[02:09]

Don't invite your thoughts to tea. And originally, it's in some Japanese version. And through Suzuki Oshii, it got into English words. And we sort of take those, excuse me for being obvious, but I'm going to be obvious. We take these words, because we can say them, And we can think them. Don't invite your thoughts, that's the thought, to tea. Yeah. So we can, in a sense, think these words too, and we call those words we think thoughts. But thoughts also clump together as views. And, you know, even one sentence can be kind of configured to have one view of the world and you can kind of shift the emphasis and it can be a different view of the world.

[03:16]

Now, this don't invite your thoughts to tea actually points, words point to something, right? And they point rather Not very clearly, actually. You know, it wasn't Linnaeus the 1700s, 18th century botanist classified the world into the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom and then the mineral kingdom too. So we looked at things and they were either animal or mineral or plants but with the coming of the microscope and the electron microscope it all fell apart and now generally there's six kingdoms there may be more depends how you divide them because you have bacteria and you know various kinds of bacteria fungi and so forth

[04:25]

So now you can't see the six kingdoms exactly unless you have some genetic microscopic information. But three kingdoms, plant, and it doesn't point to the way the world is. But if we divide the world into plant, animals, and minerals, then we think that's a legitimate view of the world, but it doesn't hold up in physics or botany, chemistry. Okay. So the words clump together to form a kind of worldview. But now what we're doing here, we're actually Beginning to function in a different what in the end is a different world view and It's implied or it's present in don't invite your thoughts to tea Now what does don't invite your thoughts to tea I?

[05:35]

Mean you're practicing it And you're fairly good at it I presume Masters anyway you can have a feeling of not inviting your thoughts to tea and they stay uninvited for a little while and then they come in and take over the house. Okay. But if you really persist in developing the skill of not inviting your thoughts to tea, after a while, as I pointed out, what you're really doing is you have a thought to not invite thoughts to tea, but why can one thought not invite another thought? There must be some difference in the thoughts. Well, then thought is too general a word for mental formations. There's different kinds of mental formations. The thought to not invite your thoughts to tea, as I've often pointed out, is an intention.

[06:42]

The thoughts you're not inviting to tea are discursive thoughts. What are discursive thoughts? Discursive thoughts are thoughts that talk to each other. It's responsive mind. It responds to circumstances. An intentional thought is... used not to invite thoughts to tea. Okay? Okay, so what is the difference? Well, we have two mental domains here. And they're called in Buddhism, host and guest. So the basic idea of host and guest, which is in all the koans, and particularly the Blue Cliff Records, Heike Anroku, host and guest. Okay, so now what we've done is we've named... The mind that appears through intentional thoughts, host mind.

[07:50]

And we're now calling the mind, the responsive mind of discursive thoughts, guest mind. Well, those aren't just accidental names. They're fairly descriptive names. But they actually then divide the mind up into three functional spaces. The space of intentional thoughts and others, sort of similar. The space of discursive thoughts and the space of agency. The doer, the self, the observer, the one who... holds the intention to not invite thoughts to tea. Okay. So through this simple instruction to not invite your thoughts to tea, if you practice it, not if you think it, but if you practice it, you're beginning to divide interior mind or inward space or something like that into three parts.

[08:58]

functional mental spaces and two larger mental domains. Is that absolutely clear? No problem? It's what you're doing. Now a very basic idea in Buddhism and in Chinese culture When you look at the Confucian things, etc., one of the things that's always emphasized is rites. R-I-T-E-S. Ritual. And I think we, I mean, we Westerners, I know, at least I as a Westerner, have a lot of problems with ritual. I did my best to have no ritual aspects in my life, you know. never went to class in high school, never went to class in college, considered it all institutional stuff, and refused to wear a tie so they wouldn't let me eat in the dining rooms.

[10:01]

You know, none of this ritual stuff for me. Look at me, nothing but ritual now. Something happened. Anyway, Sukershi changed me into a ritual being. Okay. But I had a very narrow understanding of ritual, not a dharmic understanding of ritual or a wisdom, a wise understanding of ritual. Ritual in the sense that we use it in Buddhism, when you call a tree a tree, that's a ritual. Is it really a tree? Well, it might be a small tree, it might be a big tree, it might be a dying tree, it might be a mountain beetle infested tree, pine beetle infested tree, et cetera. Or it might even be the illusion of a tree. Computer generated tree in a photograph.

[11:03]

I mean, is it a tree? Well, we call it a tree. It looks like a tree, more or less it's a tree. But to call it a tree and to call all the various kinds of trees, trees, is like saying animal, mineral, and plant. Animal, mineral, and vegetable. It's, yeah, it's all right. But it's actually, the world is much more complicated, complex than that. There is no axiomatic definition of the world. It's essentially, as far as I can see from the point of view of science, random. The whole is always breaking into parts, into new, into the unique, into emergence. So this whole functions momentarily as sort of like blah, blah, blah. So Turing and Gödel and all, I mean, they established to my

[12:08]

a conviction that there's no set of axioms that describe the world. So the thoughts, axioms, views can only point. And it's always escaping from the description. This is Buddhist view, yogic view. Okay. So when you call it a tree and eliminate everything that's not tree, that's a ritual. in the Buddhist sense. When I suggested this morning during Zazen, I spoke for a moment for those of you who weren't here, I said, happened to say, the space of a person, the space, the feel of the space of a person is much of the essence of a person. The feel of the space of a person is much of the essence of a person.

[13:14]

Now that's also, I mention it because it's an aspect, it should be, can be an aspect of our 90-day Ongo practice period. Ongo is the word which means practice period in Japanese. So I said, when you walk into the kitchen, If you stop for a moment, that dharmic pause, and just feel the space of the kitchen, yeah, there's a particular feel to it. And there's a particular feel, as I said, to the atrium and to the main hall where we eat. Now, if you do stop and feel the space of the room, that's a ritual enactment. And if you do and embody the space for a moment, and then when you come back to the room, Dan's there, or Deborah, or Damon, or someone's there, hey, suddenly the room is different.

[14:30]

And the difference is the space of the person. You can begin to feel the space of the person. And in practice, in the Bodhisattva precepts, perfections, are to really first of all know the space of the person. Not social space. And I'll tell you, the space of the person is a lot more satisfying than their social definitions. So you feel the social, the non-social space of a person. The feel. And you've got to develop a feel for it. And you can't have a feel for it exactly until you have a feel for your own being here-ness. Let's call it being here-ness and being there-ness.

[15:32]

You walk in the kitchen or the atrium and, oh, there's the being there-ness of Eddie. Not so bad. And you know that the being here-ness or being here-ness there-ness of oneself is also present. And one of the qualities of yogic life, which took me a while to get the feeling of in Japan, is people just share space together. Don't talk. You can spend all day with someone without a single word being said virtually, except maybe we should get off the train now. The station's coming or something. And then afterwards they'll say, what a wonderful day we had. And you think, I thought it was pretty boring. You didn't say a damn thing. But there's a kind of tactile feeling of just being in the same space together.

[16:43]

And now I, when I think back, the people I loved and cared for and learned from the most, the Kiroshi Sho, Selver, Ivan Illich, we just, we're in the same space. We just do the same space. That's interesting. We do the same space. And I'm... I like this life because I'm in this space with you. And we have this practice period which is a particular mutual space we've generated. And it's not one we say, oh, it could be, as I said, it could be better, it could be worse. It is. It is. And this space is much, this non-social space, this space of presence, the presence space of a person is much of the essence of a person.

[17:50]

Okay. Now, yeah, you can understand my words, but probably to really know that, and have it really make sense, and you able to also enact it, requires the practice in zazen. Okay, what happens in zazen? Let's go back to the don't invite your thoughts to tea in the three functional spaces. Okay, so you're sitting zazen. And you're getting used to not inviting discursive thoughts to tea. and you hold the intentional thought. Now the intentional thought is the entry or initializing or initiator of host mind space.

[18:56]

So an intention held in the mind, held in the mind and body, held in the body-mind, initializes or initiates host mind space. And host mind space is the medium for intentions. Buddhism is very, very clear about vows. The role of vows. We take the vow, blah, blah, blah. This is a vow as well. I have it because I took vows. So the host mind space is the medium of vows and you use in effect a vow to not invite thoughts to tea to generate host mind space which then other things happen through host mind space than just not inviting thoughts to tea.

[20:06]

Okay. Now, host mind space is also the space of agency. Now, there's only three things here. Let's not think of this as complicated. You can handle three things. Phone numbers to 719-256, you know. There's three things here, and these three things have a relationship. Agency, intentional thoughts, and discursive thoughts. What's the relationship? And what happens? Well, Intentional thoughts may initialize or initiate a host mind space, which is the space of agency or observing. But if you do zazen long enough, the entry, the door, the intentional thought can dissolves.

[21:11]

And the agency, the sense of self or observer, dissolves. And what you're left with is host mind. Okay. Now what you've done is you've divided interior space, your experience of interior space, into three functional domains, and then into two larger domains. And those larger domains, by calling them host and guest, are identified with Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara, are identified with folding the world inward and folding the world outward. And the discursive or guest mind space is the responsive space. When it's not described, it's a responsive space which isn't necessarily involved with discursive thoughts.

[22:22]

Can be, but maybe it's just responsiveness, compassion. And then the host mind space, in which self is dissolved, and intentional intentions and so forth have dissolved, sublimated, like the snow in the mountains, and you're left with host mind space, which becomes imperturbable space. So the whole teaching of the imperturbable mind or the iron person, which is as it's talked about in transmission, arises from practicing don't invite your thoughts to tea. Because you are enacting a different kind of space.

[23:29]

So now what we have is no longer outer and inner. We have inner and inner outer. This is a different world. It actually changed, as far as I can tell from reading history, it changed the Japanese government. It undermined the imperial authority. So these simple thoughts can have immense political impact. Why did it do this? Because imperial authority in Japan was based on the idea that there was an informed elite and a barbaric periphery. And they justified their rule and ritualized their rule through distinguishing between the centralized elite and the barbaric periphery.

[24:41]

But when Buddhist ideas came in and the emperors started being Buddhists and so forth, well, then you have an inner outer space and the periphery, and particularly when the idea of enlightenment came in, an original enlightenment and sudden enlightenment, Even one of those barbarians out in the periphery can be enlightened. So the whole concept of a centralized elite kind of, and they couldn't, nobody believed the ritual enactments of it anymore. And it became a much more, you know, one of the main differences in Buddhism in Japan, in any country I've been in, is there's no cultural difference between the top and bottom. The farmer has the same level of clothes, same level of architecture, carpentry, etc. He's just got less. And the difference between less and more is very different than the difference between barbaric and sophisticated.

[25:52]

Probably that's the effect of Buddhism. So, I mean, in a similar way, computers and blah, blah, blah, and how we communicate, it all affects the concept of political authority and so forth. As WikiLeaks is demonstrating daily. That Wiki software. Okay. Now if you meditate, or as you meditate, meditation becomes more and more possible, and to sit for long periods of time without disturbance becomes possible when you occupy this host mind space where self dissolves, distinctions dissolve, inside and outside dissolve, and you just have this big space where you can't even feel boundaries. that you occupy is the main domain of zazen.

[27:03]

And that space is, when you feel that space in yourself, you begin to feel that space, that non-social space, which is much of the essence of being. the being here-ness, the being near-ness. Okay. So if I look at the mountain, the mountain is You know, I can apply words to a mountain. I don't know how many words you can apply to a mountain. Big, beautiful, but really it's just presence.

[28:08]

There's no words which take hold of it. It's just a presence. which is both inner and outer. So it's outer. But it's an inner outer. Because although it's out there, my, your, our only experience of it is inner. Okay. So we could say that's the conclusion of this station. Because what we have here is more and more an experience of the world as simultaneously inner and outer. And when it's simultaneously inner and outer, the contextual flow makes a lot more sense. You know, Zhuangzi, Chinese Zhuangzi, Taoist,

[29:18]

There's a famous story about, I think everybody in the West knows it too, that he says he dreamed he was a butterfly and he really felt he was a butterfly and he was enjoying flying around being a butterfly. And then he woke up and he was just Chuan Tzu. So then he thought, supposedly, am I Chuan Tzu? who dreamed he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly who's now at this moment dreaming he's Chansa? Maybe I'm just a butterfly dreaming I'm Chansa, which is real. Now this is usually taken by people I've heard talk about it in a very black and white situation. Is it, how can we tell whether we're dreaming or not dreaming, et cetera? But really, it's about a liminal periphery liminal periphery. Liminal means a border, a limit, when you're on both sides of the border. An experience of an inner and outer, the world is simultaneously inner and outer, is a liminal periphery.

[30:27]

Okay, so it's really about, and the story goes on to say that awakening, this is an awareness of a transitional transaction or a transitional phase. So it's really about how do we know the transition between dreaming and waking. Now, Dignaga and other Buddhist philosophers characterized all thoughts as having the quality of dream because all thoughts are, all perceptions are I look at the mountain, it's an inner perception. It's within my mind and sensorium. So it has the quality of a dream. But it also has this inner outer liminal periphery which dreaming does not. So the story is a kind of enacting or working out of what's the difference between an inner knowing

[31:37]

and a knowing which is simultaneously inner and outer. So Basho responds to this with his own little haiku. And he says, wake up, wake up. Dear butterfly, dreaming so cozily, wake up. Wake up and be my companion, dear butterfly. Wake up, wake up and be my companion, dear butterfly. Don't go on dreaming so cozily." So the haiku is actually a comment on Chuan Tzu's story. And Basho is saying, this dreaming mind and waking mind Let's not separate them. Let's open them to a flow of knowing which is also the practice of zazen.

[32:39]

Contextual flow. Okay? Thanks.

[32:49]

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