an unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect Dharma. Yeah, this is the world we live in. I started out the first tesho with a practice period speaking about that we, in a practice period, we have a chance to construct a posture. Yeah, this just occurred to me as we were finding our posture together in the practice period. But I also find I continue to have the feeling of finding our posture together and our chanting together. is a kind of aural, a-u-r-a-l posture together.

[01:05]

And in this sense I'm using the word posture as almost a synonym for dharma. Unsurpassed, penetrating, perfect dharma. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect posture. A posture, I'm using posture in contrast to perhaps the word position, which is any old position defined from outside, what position is that in? That's different than saying what posture is that in? You can't say an object has a posture. Only a mind can have a posture. And so when I use the word posture, I'm using it to mean that position, that shape, that form in which the mind the natural order of mind, the mind can find its own presence and ease. And what I'd like to, I want to continue with, really continue with what I started the last day show.

[02:21]

What kind of Zazen posture is what kind of thinking? But, you know, I want to put aside the specificity of that for now because I'd like to speak about words as mental objects. Or I'd like to use words this morning to refine and direct and redirect our attention, our attention in every way, in the world, in our posture, in our thinking, etc. The flow of attention within our words. When is there a flow of attention in our words? I think when they're mental objects, when they're experienced as mental objects, then there's more likely a flow of attention in our words.

[03:36]

Now, if I use the word words, that's defined through language and speech. And the word word is related to orator, rhetorical and rhetoric and rhetor, which is a teacher of rhetoric or also a orator. So the word word is defined through speech and language. It has its place in language as a communication of meaning. But if I want to use words to direct our attention and redirect our attention, yeah, let's change the word words into a mental object.

[04:43]

actually an interactive mental object. Now why do I add interactive? Because, you know, I'm not trying to be accurate or philosophical. I'm trying to be experiential. I'm trying to find a way to say things that allows us to redirect or direct or experience our attention. old saw of the tree, old saw of the tree, which falls in the forest and does anyone hear it? No. Is there a sound? This tree falls in the forest and no one's there. Is there any sound? Well, I would say, is there any mental object? Well, no, there's no mental object.

[05:48]

there's a sound within, probably, let's assume, there's a sound, likely, there's a sound within the hertz range of the human ear, because that's how a sound is defined, something within the hertz range of the human ear. But that is not defined as something that's heard, it's just defined as something that could be heard. So yes, something, there's a sound that could be heard, we should say. But there's no mental object. So if someone asked me, is there a sound, I would say there's no mental object. There's no interactive mental object. Okay, now if we define words as interactive mental objects, then we see that they're, we can see they're dharma. We can see that all objects are mental objects.

[06:51]

All interactive objects are mental objects. Perceptual objects, perceptual objects are mental objects. So it gives you a territory, like say you're doing the the Orioki practice, you know we do. If you have some feeling that you want to not be last or you'd like to be first or you want to do it quickly or something, then you're using a mental attitude to push the objects. And when you do that, you look busy. You're using a comparative thought to push the mental objects. And our practice is much more to let the mental objects push the mind or shape the mind.

[07:54]

Now, what would be the difference? If you brought your attention with no comparative thoughts of doing it fast, slow, or anything else like that, you just bring your attention to each aspect of the Oyoki, as a mental object. And the Yoriyuki is supposed to be complex enough that it requires you to bring your attention to each aspect. You can't easily be thinking about something else. I mean, you can do it. I know we all do it. But really, then you get kind of messed up or you go slow or something. But if you can just bring as much attention as possible, full attention, to each aspect as you do it, you may actually be quite fast. But whether you're fast or slow, it will feel at ease, and it will establish a certain pace, rhythm, I don't know what word to use, a metabolism, a kind of interactive metabolism.

[09:09]

This is, you know, before the lecture we have the densho and the drum and the ti and zazen. These all establish the pace or interactive metabolism which the teisho, you know, expects, requires. No, I'm speaking about this partly in relationship to last night's Super, less than Super Bowl. For me, a game, you know, I'm not much for games, actually. What isn't a game? But, you know, football is somewhere between baseball and basketball. Baseball was a good game for radio and for Sunday afternoons.

[10:20]

It has a kind of slow pace, and each player has his individual role in the game. It's a lot of different individuals. It's not a team game in the usual. It's like football, which is a war game, a military strategy game. In basketball, it's very televisable. It doesn't work well in radio, but televisable because it's a high level of intensity all the time. And staged time is faster. Observed time has to be faster than interactive time. So baseball doesn't televise very well. But football, and I know so little about it, we were all very happy with Brad's mentorship.

[11:25]

Matt's mentorship. There's the A. Matt's mentorship. For me, football, when I've played it and watched it in more normal circumstances, it has a pace of intensity and ease. Intensity and ease. And during the periods of ease, the team gathers itself, the players gather themselves, the strategy gathers itself, and then you watch it happen, and then there's a lot. But what they do in the Super Bowl, is they take the most intense parts and they cut out all the other parts. So the parts for the team, instead of gathering itself, they fill with instant replays and analysis and take your own experience of trying to figure out what's going on away from you. Or they fill it with ads at a weird level of warlike intensity.

[12:28]

To me it, I don't know for you, but for me it mostly destroys the game. You don't have a chance to feel the game. Well, this, you know, what I'm trying to just use as an example is that we have a choice about how we use the mental objects to establish our own metabolism, our own state of mind. It's not that the, it's not useful to say that the, or not useful right now at least to say that the addictive level of intensity of I suspect, although I never played them, computer games too, which is a very disembodied mind, but probably physically stimulating, I don't know.

[13:35]

Never done it. But the Super Bowl seems to be like a computer game level. That's a choice. You can make the choice of that excitement. A kind of excitement, I think. I see piercing, you know. I don't know how these people get through the metal detectors in the airport. As a kind of, you know, not that I know much about it. I've never pierced anything, you know. It seems to me it's a tribal possession a way to tribally take possession of the body. This is my body and I can do what I want with it. And perhaps a tribal erotic possession of the body in contrast to the disembodied mind of the media.

[14:37]

So it kind of maybe allows the disembodied mind of the media if you pierce yourself enough. I don't know, I'm just talking. Whether this is right or wrong, it feels like there's a territory in there where we make a choice of how we, if we don't think of them as words, you think of what I'm saying as mental objects, how we use these mental objects. Imagine if the halftime, in the middle of the halftime, yeah, Prince nobly stepped aside And suddenly we were there chanting. Homage to the Vairocana, Dharmakaya, Buddha, Dharmakaya, Vairocana, Buddha. Homage to the Sambhogakaya, Lojana, Buddha. Homage to the Nirmanakaya, Shakyamuni, Buddha.

[15:42]

Homage to the future, Maitreya, Buddha. homage to all buddhas in the ten directions past present and future would have changed the atmosphere quite a bit it would have been quite interesting actually suddenly and prince a couple of times i mean in the latter part of his high intensity performance at the same level as the ads in the and how the gut, the game is cut into slices and shown up and only shown us the intense part. The most beautiful moment in the game, I think, with those feet together touching, both touching the field before he went out of bounds. Because that's a yogic awareness and it's much like, not so different than we always know where our feet are and we have this much space between our feet. That's a posture. We could see a posture, mental posture in his feet.

[16:49]

Now, when we chant something like that, what are we saying? We're saying, let's start with Maitreya Buddha. We're saying, homage to Maitreya Buddha. Future Maitreya Buddha. That the future is defined through a Buddha. when we chant this so that this kind of gets in underneath your usual thinking, the usual mental objects. And you, if you can, you imagine a future in which is defined through a Buddha. Then if we continue to look at that chant, the present, we're in the period of the Nirmanakaya Shakyamuni Buddha.

[17:58]

Shakyamuni means the historical Buddha, a period defined by the historical period, defined through the teaching of the Buddha up until now. And Nirmanakaya accompanying, modifying, or being modified by, Nirmanakaya means this can also be you. It's not just Shakyamuni's period of time. It's also your period of time. Shakyamuni's period of time can belong to you through the Nirmanakaya, Kaya's body, the nirmana body. So your practice is to discover this nirmana body. And the Sambhogakaya body is the body of your experience free of conceptual thought.

[19:04]

Yeah, that's a simple way to say it. And the dharmakaya body is to perceive space and objects as flowing from the space and to define your world through a kind of timelessness, a kind of space. So this little thing we chant during the ryoki meal is a real statement about what kind of world we can live in. And it's a statement about seeing objects as mental, as interactive mental objects, and the space we live in also is an interactive mental object in which things appear. And in their appearance, And as soon as you say mental object, and as soon as you experience objects as mental objects, as interactive mental objects, you are immediately, dramatically reducing the subject-object distinction.

[20:24]

If the subject-object distinction has any meaning other than some kind of, I don't know, philosophical cliché, it means you experience things as separate from you. which means I and out there, and there's a kind of tension between I and out there. But as soon as you say, yeah, not words maybe, because words, it's interesting, the word word not only is connected to rhetoric and to speak, it's also connected with the mouth and the jaw and the chin, what juts out, and also relates to the word mountain, what juts out. So when we talk, when we say words, we're talking about something that is projected. And when we say a mental object, we begin to feel the world as not projected, and we're projecting ourself, but it's introjected, like introverted.

[21:31]

Introjected, it's an interior, a contained, yeah, introjected world. But as soon as you find the world introjected by naming it as feeling each event, each unit of experience as a mental object, then you feel the physicalized mind and you feel the physicalized mentalized world, immediately the subject-object distinction is almost gone. You're really in it. I mean, just by a simple redefining, calling each experiential unit, each event a mental object. I mean, like you feel that, something like that. you find yourself in a world where duality, the subject-object distinction, is almost meaningless.

[22:42]

You really feel like you belong. And then we have the, to all Buddhas in the ten directions, well, you know, most of the world's cultures until recently and, you know, speed used to be, you've heard me say and quoting Ivan Illich, God's speed. Originally it was God's speed. And that's not speed, relative speed, a horse compared to a car, etc. Speed is a very new concept. So the world was defined primarily through walking. You can look at our language. Walking is in the background of many words, as the word, as shining is in the background of many words.

[23:45]

Well, the ten directions, the four directions, are walking directions. That when you walk around the world, you feel the four directions, and then you understand, you know, our circumambulation, as I talked about before, and Squaring the lodge in masonry, or commonly you circumambulate a precious object. It's not that it's precious if you circumambulate it. That's partly the case. That's what initiates it, perhaps. But really, it becomes precious through circumambulating it. So when we circumambulate the Zendo, it becomes precious. And generally it's in three, traditionally in Buddhism, because of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So you have the feeling of Buddha in the first, circumambulating Dharma in the second. But really, that's not even the reason. More deeply than that, it's the same reason when you play with a child.

[24:47]

You usually do things three times. And the smile is elicited from the child on the third time, usually. Because the first third, it's a surprise. The second, ooh, it repeats. And the third it completes. The third ties the first and second together. And there's a sense of relaxation and this has been studied with children that if you tend to do things three times and the child then relaxes. Oh, it's predictable. Now it's predictable. And completed somehow. So that's more basic than calling it Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So there's a sense of completion if we circumambulate three times. So there's a kind of posture to even circumambulating this mental object with surprise, repetition, and completion. So I'm just talking about our experience, but I'm also talking about Buddhism now.

[25:51]

Our experience and our Buddhism kind of like find themselves together. So the ten directions, first of all, they're the four directions, walking directions, and eight directions, you know, northwest, southwest, etc. But then there's ten. What's ten? Well, ten is up and down. Well, up and down is like time. That's when you stop. You're not walking, and you feel the up and the down. And when you stop, the directions come toward you. So the ten directions means it's not way out there toward the north. The north comes to you. The south comes to you. And when the north and south comes to you, we have up and down. So the ten directions is a way of being in the world.

[26:55]

And when we are more physically familiar with the world and know the world through walking, we know where north, south, east, west are, etc. And then you understand why even these ancient, ain't very, quite old, Masonic rituals, masonry rituals, go back a long ways. There's a difference between the northwest corner and the southwest corner, southeast corner. And now you can see in some of the koans, in response to something, the monk gets up, rushes out his sleeves, which already shows a relationship. I mean, do you understand that this is about a relationship between you and the cloth? It's not form-fitting, made of spandex or something, so that you have free physical... The idea of being free in a physical space is very recent and contemporary.

[28:00]

This is more, you're already in a relationship. This is, as you can see, this is the loom, the length, width of the loom. so that you respect the cloth. You don't cut the cloth into little pieces to fit the body. As much as possible. And then the sleeve length is two loom lengths. Well, it's kind of long. It may be modified depending on you, but basically the idea is you're in a constant relationship to the cloth. So your location is completely determined by the cloth. mental object of the cloth that you relate to. It's not supposed to be invisible, just like spandex or something. So the monk gets up, shakes out his sleeves, and goes to the north corner of his endo. And in those days, people knew what that meant. North is different than south.

[29:03]

When you're in the north of a room, it's a different feeling than the south of the room because there's associations with the south, the north, east, west. and then the ten directions. What choice will we make through the mental objects, through the Dharma, the phenomena of the world? At each moment, your posture can allow you to step into zazen mind. At each moment your posture can let you step into the future of Maitreya Buddha, into the Sambhogakaya body. This is the case and it's your choice. over intention equally penetrate every being

[30:17]

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