Yeah, a few days ago, somebody I happened to be speaking to, not in the practice period, who asked me, what is practice period? And in the process of trying to respond, I said something like, well, we're here and None of us leave the premises except for if somebody goes shopping, but basically we don't leave the premises. And I said, that's one reason we don't do practice periods at Johanneshof, because it's sort of in a village and it's too confining to not be able to leave. Perhaps if we are able to purchase our neighbor's property, Wolfram Grabner, maybe we can have practice periods in Europe, too, where there's enough space to not leave the premises.

[01:08]

Well, they were quite startled by this, and it interested me because they're a couple who are, you know, let's say they have their own sense of way-seeking mind, of wanting to know how to, you know, find their own life in a way that's satisfying. So that surprised them. I mean, I felt quite sure in their own contemplation of how to find a real life or a satisfying life they didn't think of confining themselves to you know an acre of land or anything like that and then when I said and they're both musicians and when I said and there's no music and so really this sounded like a because their path is really primarily seeking within music

[02:21]

So, you know, when you, it's interesting, even though they both, let's say, have way-seeking mind, at the same time, they're skeptical. You know, and I kind of enjoyed the skepticism. Dude, I don't know. After all these years, I still don't know how to answer a question like this. So they said, well, what are the benefits? And I, benefits? Benefits? Well, I said, there are some benefits, but that's not really why we practice. Well, then what are you doing it for? There's no benefit. I said, well, because it's satisfying. And just aliveness itself becomes satisfying. Well, sounds good. I don't know. So we just have what we hear and as much as possible we don't have any access or not too much access to distractions.

[03:33]

So anyway, here we are. What are we doing here? And I'm sure to whatever degree you're happy to be here, there's still like the question, what are we doing here? And well, I would say that It's been discovered in our long tradition of monasticism developing, and it's still developing, it's developing here. One of the things that's been discovered is that if you can create an environment that's isolated or insulated, in German they're the same word, aren't they? Isolated, insulated. Isolated and insulated from distractions, It's quite fruitful. And of course with no distractions because we're kind of born to be distracted. So to take away distractions is not so easy and so naturally we get bored.

[04:44]

But really why should you be bored? Why isn't aliveness itself enough? This is the... I mean, you can do other things. But you're doing this, you're not doing this, and you're up and you're down, you're depressed. But if underneath that, aliveness itself is satisfying enough, hey, you're really in pretty good shape, whatever you do in your life. When you don't, when it's okay to do things, but you don't need distraction. Now, I thought of, you know, aliveness, I thought of the koan Sun-Faced Buddha, Moon-Faced Buddha, which is the third koan in the Blue Cliff Records. And it's really a koan very strongly about the relationship between teacher and disciple in the context of practice.

[05:51]

And it's a koan Sukershi lectured about, often referred to. And it's, Master Ma is unwell. Matsu is unwell. So, how are you today? You know, maybe he's got a bit of a cold or something. And, uh, He says, sun-faced Buddha. He answered the superintendent or the monastic, the directors. He said, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. So whether you're sick or not sick, still there's aliveness. It's not you have to be healthy and alive to be satisfied. Just basic aliveness. Being sick is a form of aliveness. Now, there's one way and a useful way to understand it, and you can feel in your life, you can use this term, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.

[06:54]

But it comes from a teaching of many Buddhas, etc., and the sun-faced Buddha lives for 1,200, 1,800 years or something like that. And the moon-faced Buddha only lives for a day and a night. And the koan begins with one device, one gesture, one phrase, one word. How do we find entry? Now, one device, one word, one phrase, one posture is a reference to the process of teaching. In other words, am I offering you entry or devices or postures which allow you entry? And it says, entry into each moment. Oh, already we've got something complex here.

[07:55]

I'm kind of complex. Entry, yes, entry, okay. But each moment. So now we have the whole process of the field of appearance. seeing the world as appearance, seeing the world, I mean, a moment isn't in a clock. A moment is in the phenomenal world within appearance. And one moment means the momentariness and the momentary experience of appearance. And how do you have entry into that? With what gesture, device, etc. And then in the, continues in the Introduction, not only one entry into each moment, but also discovering what covers heaven and earth and cannot be grasped. What covers heaven and earth and cannot be grasped? And heaven and earth, you know, in Chinese are thought to be two things that have been pushed apart but are related, heaven and earth.

[08:59]

Chinese mythology. It covers heaven. Let's say, the field of immanence. That experiential field in which you feel interdependence has the freedom that anything can happen. And one of the advantages of what I'm thinking, because I'm writing and I'm thinking about what are the advantages of... Speaking over writing, and I'm also thinking about what are the advantages of writing, in addition. But one of the advantages of speaking is I can kind of half suggest things and then pull back. And then I can suggest things or imply things and then deny I implied it. And in his koan it says, what do you do about the gap left by the teacher?

[10:08]

Who says something and takes it away or whatever? Or mixes up sun-faced Buddhas and moon-faced Buddhas, mixes up something that lives for a day and a night and something that lives for 1800 years. So let's imagine that we can begin to, you know, as I said, born to be, wasn't there some phrase, born to be loved, born to be, I don't know, some kind of, what? Born to be wild. Born to be wild, yeah, okay. I knew there was something there. Stuck together, those words stick together, born to be wild. Well, here's where born to be bored, I mean, born to be distracted. And that's the kind of being wild, I guess. Born to be distracted, and yet if we take away the opportunity to be distracted, and you don't need distraction, and you begin to find, well, you approach that, but still sometimes you're bored.

[11:34]

What you know when you're bored is, yeah, this is okay, but your practice hasn't reached the point where you're not bored. I mean, if we're going to free you from suffering, let's at least free you from boredom. That's the first step toward being freed from suffering, because the distractions often lead to a lot of suffering. So one of the things you can notice here when you're bored, when you're not bored, etc. When you just... You know, there's a word I heard recently in Japan, ikukai or ikugai or something like that, which means the goal you have or the reason you get up in the morning. And it's a phrase...

[12:38]

within a community in Japan, an area in Japan where people, many, many people live to be well over 100. And they chop wood and ride bicycles and go fishing, etc. And one of their things is, why do you get up every morning? Well, that's very close to being satisfied with aliveness itself. Now, I had a number of questions come up to me and I heard a little bit about the seminar. What is a field? What are we talking about when we speak about a field? Now, I'm giving you various devices, like the field of imminence, field of immediacy, perceptual immediacy, spatial immediacy.

[13:41]

These are devices, you know, like in the first line of the introduction of this con. that can give you entry. Now, I can't be, I don't know what entry they create for you, and I don't know if they create the same entry for me. These are, you know, you're not going to find perceptual immediacy in any text in Japan or China or something like that, probably something similar, because these are my putting some words together that, for me, I discovered is an entry. an entry into what I think is fundamental practice, India, China, Japan, et cetera, Korea. But still, I'm using English. I'm trying to discover within my own habits of mind or something ways to give me entry. And then I try to use these as devices to give you entry.

[14:44]

But whether it works the same way for you, I don't know. Got to try. But it probably, even if it works differently, still may be an entry for you. So with perceptual immediacy, I mean you take, your senses are functioning, and there's a number of perceptions, and those perceptions hold your attention. One-pointedness, We can call field-pointedness or one-fieldedness. Sounds like baseball. One-fieldedness. In one-fieldedness, there's no distraction. Your attention is fully within each percept and the immediacy of each percept.

[15:48]

And by saying immediacy, it means it's always flowering. There's a garden here. It's always interdependent, interflowing. So perceptual immediacy is, you know, make use of the perceptual field with the fullness of your attention to the perceptual field. Now again, if you only do that, if you catch a feel for that, only a few times in practice period, this can be a treasure the rest of your life. Because once you catch a feel for these things, they are so, in my experience and my understanding, so fundamentally close to how we actually exist That if you design your life, your lay life, etc., whatever it is, shape it so that such a thing has a chance to incubate and nourish you.

[16:54]

It will be a treasure. It will come back. You don't have to make an effort even once you've really felt it. Okay, so now space, let me use it. For me, this is a little different. I mean, it's all overlapping, but still it's a little different. Language is different. It's a little different entry. And again, maybe that one of the entries is, again, to see everything. These concepts are kind of like flow together here. To see everything as activity and not as entities. If you see everything as an activity, You get in the habit of that, and you have to first, and very spelled out, and all the most advanced teachers, dharma, you know, dharmakirti, etc., use reminders. Like, it's an activity, not an entity. It's activity, not an entity.

[17:59]

I mean, you know, you may want some magical, mystical experience. Sukershi says in his commentary to Sun-faced Buddha and Moon-faced Buddha, you want to enter the bliss of the teaching and the bliss of hearing the teaching, and you don't realize the great activity of heaven and earth covering everything is always present. It's always with you. And your teacher knows it's always with you, but you're looking for some sort of bliss. It's a benefit. Sunday's Buddha, no benefit, just. And we can think of just one day and one night, that's enough. 1,200 years, that's enough. It's the vertical teaching and the horizontal teaching. The horizontal teaching is one day, we have a few minutes, take the reins of the moment. 1,800 years is the vertical teaching.

[19:02]

basa-sukhi-rosha. The sangha, my disciples, my disciples' disciples. Can we act in both contexts at once? It's also this teaching. Maybe isn't the mind of the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors silenced? Field of imminence? Or perceptual immediacy? I mean, if Matsu appeared here and we said to him, what do you think about the radio? Or I don't know, you say, radio? I don't know if I want to listen to the radio. But we said, what about perceptual immediacy? Oh, that's great, he'd say. That's what I like, perceptual immediacy. I mean, Matsu or Basso, in Japanese it's Basso, the mind of enlightenment is not the mind of distraction.

[20:15]

We must imagine the mind of enlightenment is not distracted. So, what's been discovered, very simply, if we can create, a field in which we feel ourselves insulated or less distracted, we're closer to the mind of enlightenment. It's that simple. No big deal. And it's been discovered that if you spend some time and get a feeling for it, an embodied feeling for it, five years, five months, I don't know, three months, it opens you up to this mind of the Buddha and Buddha ancestors. You know, I've known two people who have been in prison for quite a while. One for bank robbery.

[21:22]

He drove the car. He says that's all he did. But that's quite a bit. The driver of... Dan knows him. The driver who's going to drive the car, he was one of the top motorcycle riders in the United States of riding motorcycles up hills. You know, I don't know, kind of racing up the hill and staying on the motorcycle. Anyway, he's a nice guy. I liked him a lot. And at the last minute, the driver of... They were planning to rob a bank was... Wouldn't do it. It was sick. I had the flu or something. I don't know. He was a moon-faced Buddha. I don't know. And so they came to him out. We're robbing a bank, and would you drive the car? Because, oh, all right, you know, so. Why not? I've got nothing better to do. No motorcycle race today. So anyway, then they got caught and the guys who asked him ratted on him and so he went to jail for some years and he put a little spot on the ceiling of his cell and he didn't know what to do, you know, so he just would lie on the cot and look at this spot and he began to have all these experiences which led him into Zen practice.

[22:46]

And the other person was Huey Newton, who was charged with killing police officers, or at least one. He did a lot of things. I don't know if he did that. But anyway, they got him in jail for that. And he was a very close friend of mine. And they kept him in solitary confinement for years. And he, again, like this other fellow, what's his name? Who was in jail for the bank robbing? Bob Watkins. Bob Watkins, yeah. He's great. I like Bob. Anyway, so Bob and Hughie both ended up having experiences that are very similar to the qualities of mind, perhaps not the quality of life, because they're in a very brutal situation. They don't have the sangha supporting them. But they came into qualities of mind by being in situations where they could not be distracted and all they had was aliveness which very similar to the fruits benefits of monastic practice and zazen practice.

[24:06]

I mean, I don't want you to think you're in a prison. But it does have similarities in that we're trying to put you in a situation where as little, as much as possible, here in solitary confinement, you're forced into it. We're trying to give you, which is much more subtle, a choice of freedom from distraction. And entering this, let's use the word field again, field of aliveness, which itself is all you need So going back to you remind yourself that everything's an activity and pretty soon you begin to not only see everything as an activity, the pillars are waiting, you see everything as an activity and it begins to open a sense of your own activity. Because you're noticing activity is an activity and pretty soon there's a kind of non-dual otherness.

[25:08]

Now those words don't sound like they go together very well, but That's part of practice, because practice actually, and the secret of it is that it's preconceptual or something like that, or it's conceptual, pre-languaged, prior to language conceptions. Because there's no words, I mean, I can use non-dual otherness, but what am I really saying? I'm trying to say something that there's no language for, no conception for. And much of this sense of being, not only appearance arising, but conceptions arising, which there's no language for, happens in this field, let's call it a field of silence. You know, vocalization is almost entirely, my speaking, is almost entirely on the exhale.

[26:16]

I can't say that... I have to, I can't say. I can speak on the exhale, I can't... The Japanese use inhaling as part of their... But we don't use inhaling much, it's part of our language. And so you can have a feeling, I mean, I don't know if it's psychophysiologically the case, but when you exhale, you're exhaling language. You're exhaling form. You can inhale silence. So this can be a little reminder to you, exhaling without speaking, exhaling language, exhaling form, inhaling silence. You know, you have to use these little entries, these devices as the third, that's a really early in the stage of Blue Cliff Records, colon, the third colon.

[27:19]

Using devices, gestures, phrases, words as entry. So you try to make them entries. Entries into what? Entries into what covers heaven and earth and can't be grasped. Can't be grasped is also, we can understand as a kind of silence. Silence in which everything's possible. So if you feel the activity and everything is activity and that you begin to feel your own activity, it actually starts, it makes a kind of spatial immediacy in which activity happens. Now, another image I could give you for field, I said to somebody else the other day, is if we painted this room, we painted the floor, I mean, I have a canvas here, I paint the floor, I paint the columns, paint the altar, Buddha, golden Buddha.

[28:28]

And what do I have? I have a painting of the room. Now, how do you think the paint feels? If you can imagine the paint, that's something like the feel of a field in my experience. It's just as if everything was made from the same paint. Something like that. And you know, I had a friend of mine who was a very good painter once said to me, have you ever noticed that The best painters use the same, really good painters use the same brushstroke, whether they're painting the petal of a flower or the wall of a room. Now, I don't think that's, the root of that is probably not the kind of technique, but it's probably the painters enter into a kind of mind,

[29:38]

in which everything is made of paint, and everything's made of the same brushstroke, and they have a certain pace, and that pace establishes a mind where the flower petal and the wall are, their boundaries are different, but somehow their substance is the same brushstroke. You can use breath that way. as if it was a kind of brush stroke. And one of the characteristics or signs of imperturbable mind or a very stable mind is that breath is always pretty much the same. Your breath doesn't get excited. You may be talking, breath is the same. You may be silent, breath is the same. So that's another entry.

[30:42]

If you begin to discover and notice how breath moves with your moods, anxiety, whatever, speeds up, goes down. If you just notice that the contour, the topography of the breath, you can begin to discover more and more kind of basis of breath, basic breath. You know, I call my book Original Mind. I think our subtitle is The Practice of Zen, but I think I'll probably call it The Practice and Craft of Zen. The Craft and Practice of Zen. But Original Mind is an idea that there's a mind prior to culture, prior to language, prior to thinking.

[31:45]

Now, or you can discover a mind or prior to history. That's the kind of idea about it. Probably not quite true But it's the basis for, you know, Buddhism is not a proselytizing religion. It's a practice teaching religion. And so from that point of view, our view is, you know, the basic mind, the original mind of the Chinese, of the Indians, of the Aborigines, of the Westerner, of the European, the American, et cetera, all share the same original mind. So we can practice Zen if we know our original mind, as well as a Chinese person or a Japanese person or anybody else, as well as a Buddha ancestor. What is your original mind?

[32:51]

Or, if we don't want to think of it as some kind of prior mind, we can just say, can you find a mind free of distractions, which is pretty close to finding a mind free of culture, which is pretty close to finding a mind prior to culture. Culture-free mind. Now, a culture-free mind in one culture is going to be different than a culture-free mind in another culture, blah, blah, blah. But still, culture-free mind, one of the entries, is aliveness itself. Rooted in aliveness itself and not in distractions or not in culture, etc., We can also, I could also say, originary mind, like ordinary mind, but instead of ordinary in the order, ordinary mind is a mind that appears from things. Originary mind would be a mind which is the source of each situation.

[33:53]

Now, if I talk about originary mind, that's a little different. Those are words, English words, but they are a little bit different entry. For originary mind would be in each situation, find the source. Can we have silence or breath? If each situation can start from zero, and then one, two, three, four, five, or whatever, seven, two, one, whatever, starts from zero. This would be, we could say, originary mind, or we can have a sense of a fundamental mind or something like that. but this being, finding freedom from needing distraction. Discovering that you're never bored. Okay, now also, you know, we also have this sense of knowing each person as presence.

[35:03]

This also establishes a field. Your presence, the presence, presence. So if you can find these three things, you can have a bodily sense of these three things, a visceral sense of these three things. No distractions. aliveness itself, that's one. Knowing each person first of all and primarily as presence and your own presence and the connectedness of your own presence. And finding a basic silence, the third thing, finding a basic silence or stillness from which everything appears. A silence, that's a kind of... First, because there's no distractions or you don't need distractions, there's a silence.

[36:20]

Even when you're speaking, there's a silence. And that silence, if it's there, like the breath evenly underneath everything and within everything, somehow the distractions are gone and the world falls into the silence. You feel this non-dual otherness. The world falls into the silence, even when you're speaking, doing things. Now these are treasures that can be in your lay life, your ordinary life, you don't have to be, but to get a feeling for these, we created this situation over centuries, where you have a choice to be free of distraction, and realize this silence, stillness or emptiness from which everything appears. Sun-faced Buddhas, moon-faced Buddhas. Thanks.

[37:24]

May our intention equally penetrate.

[37:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.58