So now I'd like to find a way to take at least some aspects of Zen practice which can be realized or practiced in the West. Now let me say, you know, I always face the danger that it looks like I'm idealizing yogic culture, East Asia, etc. And probably to some extent I am doing so. But primarily, not because of some value system, but because I am practicing an idealized form of Zen. I mean, you can read books which say, boy, the Western view of Zen is all kind of pure and wonderful, and if you really look at what's going on in Asia, it's a kind of mess.

[01:26]

People with superstitions, I mean, certainly, Every Soto Zen temple I visited in Japan has a fox shrine right beside the Buddha. Sukershi never told me that. But, you know, at first you go, fox shrine? What the hell are you... But then after a while you get kind of used to it and you understand why indigenous locals... temples do that. But again, we can easily feel a little defensive. The West ain't so bad. Asia isn't necessarily better. And let's assume that that's primarily a realistic observation.

[02:37]

And not an extension of self to your civilization. Don't criticize my civilization. Yeah, and certainly the D.T. Suzuki and so forth, they really idealized Japanese culture. So it was the best of all cultures, etc. Which is nonsense. But we can look at the differences. And it's always better to look at the differences than comparisons. And it's always better to look at the differences than comparisons.

[03:53]

And very simply, I would say the genius of Western culture or what's unique about Western culture is Western science. And I think it's right to call it Western science. It's primarily Western science. Yeah. And in some Intellectuals from the Near East sometimes think that Western science is used to kind of like a missionary version of Christianity. Christian As the Christian missionaries, it's a more subtle form of Christian, because they've been both presented as true.

[05:10]

Science has a little more claim to truth, I think. Well, anyway, So what the West has brought into the world through its civilization that I think is unique is Western science, Western democracy, and Western concepts of human rights, individual human rights. And the court in The Hague and all, is applying Western concepts of human rights to all kinds of countries who say, hey, that doesn't apply to us.

[06:10]

But there does seem to be a worldwide acceptance of individual human rights to some extent. So I would say to make it simple, the genius of Western civilization has been to understand the world as independent of the mind. And the, to again keep it simple, the genius of Asian, East Asian culture is to study the world as inseparable from the mind.

[07:12]

And for us as practitioners, that's the direction we're going in. Okay. Now, You know, in Asia, you don't climb to the top of mountains. I mean, if you're an Asian, at least. But Westerners climb to the top of mountains. Sir Edmund Hillary, for example. Why doesn't Asia climb to the top of mountains?

[08:17]

Because the power is their mysteriousness there. How they affect you is more important than seeing what's up there, which is just rock. Sukhiroshi once said, a rock sitting at the top of a mountain is different than a rock sitting at the bottom of a mountain. But certainly you feel differently when you get to the top and there's this little rock sitting there. How did they get there? Chicken Little dropped it. Do you know who Chicken Little is? Chicken Little, it's a children's story about Rocks are falling from the sky.

[09:18]

Chicken Little thinks rocks are falling from the sky. And I often, you know, I walk on the paths in Cresttown, and suddenly there's a rock in the middle of the path that wasn't there yesterday. I always think, Chicken Little. But Chicken Little is not very smart. Chicken Little run. Okay. And we don't limit ourselves to climbing to the top of mountains. We climb to the top of the moon. And Dogen never had a bit of interest in going to the moon. But he found the moon in a puddle, in the reflection in a puddle. His moon was in the tides and in our experience. I mean, these are kind of ephemeral but real differences.

[10:38]

And both have value. Okay, so... I said I wanted to speak about the practice of naming. And I also want to speak a bit about the temporal location and the spatial location. Let me start with naming. I named this a bell. We have the habit of naming things. And that habit is unavoidable. I mean what you a child learns

[11:40]

what a door is and what a kitchen stove is and what the burner is and all that stuff. And you have to be, don't leave the stove on when we go outside or something, or the candle. You can't teach anybody the most basic things without naming. And names, of course, turn into words when they're in sentences. Okay, so we have a process of naming. Which calls forth words. Which calls forth sentences. Which calls forth discursive thinking. So naming immediately leads to discursive thinking.

[12:54]

And we have the four dharmas and so forth. Okay, now, since naming is integral to us as beings, Can we make use of naming in the name of wisdom? One practice of naming is simply to name. And to not let the name turn into a word, a sentenced word. Very basic early Buddhist practice. You just use the habit of the mind to give attention to objects to limit the habit to naming.

[14:02]

And I would say if you're serious about practicing This is a practice you do in the midst of other practices or in the midst of your activity for the rest of your life and in a concentrated way for a year or two. So you get in the habit of glass. And glass and water. And it just sounds totally childish, I'm sorry, but it's the way it is. It is both childish and Sagacious.

[15:08]

Wisdom. Sage. Okay, the child does it to learn words. Somebody gave me little stickers. German words on it. I was supposed to stick on things. So on the table was tish. Didn't work worth a damn. I don't know how it works. He says tish. This isn't a tish. This is a desk. He was trying to fool me. Anyway, but if you now say glass, and you can use the naming to cut off associative mind,

[16:10]

Then the mental formation, glass, is identical to the perception, glass. And there's a kind of clarity to it. Glass. Floor. Fusco. Michel. Etc. And if you just name somebody like Neil, Marlene, if I just say Marlene and I don't allow associations to occur, Marlene is suddenly there in a kind of vividness without any memory of what she's like and what she's done and

[17:21]

And there's a vivid Marlene. Yeah. And I actually, if I take the associations away, I don't actually know who she is. Because the name doesn't name anything. Yeah, I mean, she's not just Marlene. Nor is she Lena Mar. Nor is she from Mars. But you could be from Mars. You're like an alien. You're just there. If I have no associations... What are you? Don't tell me. So you're playing with these simple techniques. You're playing with how the mind works. Yes. How we function.

[18:32]

Okay, now, if it's clear to me that the naming brings the mind attentively to perception, It's also clear to me that calling Marlena Marlena doesn't Name anything. If I call her the same syllables, the reverse, Lainamar, it's clear it doesn't name anything. I've never known anybody named Lainamar. If I had another kid, maybe it wouldn't be a good name. Lainamar. Where the hell did you get that name, Lena?

[19:37]

I don't know, my dad was a little crazy. Okay, so then what's behind naming is namelessness. Is that actually things are nameless. They don't fit into the name. So now we can further the practice of naming by not just naming an object or naming to turn an object into its name. the experience of its perception. We can use naming to remind ourselves of namelessness.

[20:38]

Now you can see that we're using language to get free of language in a way. So you can take as a practice every time you name something. And now you're working with the habit of naming. You're making use of the delusionary habit of naming, thinking it names something. And you're substituting the concept of an object Or the concept, basically, of emptiness. So every time you name something, you remind yourself that it's nameless.

[21:51]

So we could call this practice naming namelessness. So if I look at Reiner And I say, oh, that's Reiner. I know because I'm developing the Pavlovian habit that I'm actually naming namelessness. And I think if you practice this way, if every time I name Reiner, my feeling is, I'm naming the nameless. Reiner is much more vivid.

[22:52]

And we have this in Zen, we say, the flower is not red. Nor is the willow green. Well, if you say the flower is not red, nor is the willow green, no matter what the sentence structure says, you feel redness and you feel greenness. And you may feel redness as more powerful than... than when you attach it to a flower. Now there's a word in Pali, sana, I say N-N-A, In Pali there is a word sana, S-A-N-A-N-A, which is typical of Buddhist words and has a whole lot of meanings depending on its context.

[24:06]

But one of the meanings of sana, one of the more basic meanings, is you only see colors. It says blue, yellow, red or something. Okay, that's quite related to what we're doing here. Okay, I had a friend of mine, Michael Dixon, painted you know there's a picture of a famous calendar picture for those of us who are elderly gents of Marilyn Monroe on a calendar naked you're not really very naked but she's naked and it's It was a picture, I think they discovered it after she was a movie star and she was told, that was me, I was only a young girl and I had that picture taken.

[25:15]

Anyway, Michael Dixon, who also drew the fly that's in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind on page 65 or something, And Christian Dillow is now married to his daughter, Sophie. We try to keep it in the family. Anyway, Michael gave me a painting Of Marilyn Monroe, it was at least as big as that rug in the back of the wall. Of Marilyn Monroe, pink fleshly against a pale blue sky. And she, it was quite a nice painting, you know, she looked, I don't know.

[26:20]

So it was, I mean, larger than life Marilyn. So it was given to me and I hung it in my kitchen in San Francisco. And my daughters, my daughter in this time, And her friends, as they became like eight and nine, began to object to the picture. And Sally, that was her name, is still her name. And Sally kept thinking, can we take this out of the kitchen? I don't want to bring my friends here. And I said, well, it's only pink and blue.

[27:28]

Because really, I wasn't trying to be a smart ass. I mean, I wasn't into pin-ups, you know. Oh, you know what pin-ups are? I read a bit. He reads. He reads. The newspaper. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, really. Anyway. So for me it just had become this pink and blue thing, right? I never thought of it as Marilyn Monroe or a naked lady. So they would say, let's take it down. I said, why take it down? It's only pink and blue. My family still says, yeah, we know, Dick, it's only pink and blue. That's Marilyn Monroe.

[28:31]

Don't tell me it's pink and blue. But there is the experience of pink and blue. That's the word sana. Where you don't turn a perception into a conceptual content. No, we can do this. You may think it's impossible to be free of conceptual discursive thinking. But you have to practice interruption and substitution. The large sutra in perfecting wisdom in 25,000 lines is all about Interruption and substitution.

[29:43]

Okay, so what are we doing when we say naming something? If we limit ourselves to the name, that's practicing interrupting. If we add naming namelessness, that's practicing substitution. Do you see how simple Buddhism is? Interruption and substitution. of the perceptual process. I'm the straight man. Okay. So... Okay, so what happens if you, we've discussed what happens if you practice interruption.

[31:16]

What happens if you practice substitution? And incubate some substitution. Yeah. Now, I often say this just for the hell of it. Who are the two most famous enlightened people in the world? And you all know the answer. Let's say His Holiness the Dalai Lama and George Bush. But it's true. He's very famous and he had an enlightenment experience.

[32:21]

A Protestant conversion experience is an enlightenment experience. But he substituted God and the Dalai Lama substituted emptiness. So the George Bush had an experience that he stopped drinking, he changed his playboy life, etc. And he made a Christian substitution and not a Buddhist wisdom substitution. And so he emphasized God, the goodness of God, the voice of God, the direction of God, for this shift in the way the mind works. Now, Buddhism has a word for this.

[33:25]

It's called Wild Fox Zen. In other words, when an enlightenment experience is misused or misdirected, By the way, there's a Chinese Chan Zen poem, which is basically a conceptual poem. It's easy to hear the teaching. It's difficult to practice the teaching. It's easy to practice the teaching. It's difficult to realize the teaching. It's easy to realize the teaching.

[34:26]

It's difficult not to fall off the path. And that's true. We do pretty well at practicing even realization, but we don't do so well at staying on the path. And it's staying on the path which creates generational teaching. Every once a year, Andreas invites me here to check up if you in north central

[35:27]

Germany are still on the path. And Michelle came all the way from Bavaria to show me that she's still on the path. Thank you. Okay, so what happens if we are substituting the natural act, the necessary act, habitual act of naming? With the understanding That we're naming namelessness. Okay. And, you know, and again, I'm just trying to use words to kind of get us tailored in here. Sewn into the practice. You're unsewn from the practice. And it's obvious to all of you that the word sutra means suture, means sewing.

[36:57]

Okay. When we practice naming objects, it's a habit. It's also a habitation. It's where we live. We start living in a world of named objects and all of the associations that arise through named objects and it's absolutely real you can confirm it at any point and no one can convince you it's not real And no one can convince you it's not real.

[38:05]

But it is not real. Okay, so how do we convince ourselves it's not real? We have to start inhabiting namelessness. So you really start, and your views... taken for granted. The eight-fold path starts with right views. And the implication is, you're Whatever culture you're in, you actually have wrong views or deluded views. So how do you write these views? How do you perfect these views, make them more complete?

[39:21]

Now, that's the beginning of the Eightfold Path, right views or perfecting views. And the Eightfold Path is the rest of the teaching of Buddhism. And the eightfold path is the rest of the teachings of Buddhism. Okay. Okay. I'm going into much more detail, mister, than I thought I would. But I will stop in a little bit for you. You can have hope if you have any inclination toward imagining a future. Okay. So your views are not just taken for granted. Space separates. That's obvious. It's taken for granted. But in a yogic culture, space connects.

[40:21]

Okay. But it's all this space separates. To say anything else is a lie. But it's not just that our views are taken for granted. It's the very structure of consciousness is built from these taken for granted views. So you have to find some way to interrupt and substitute these views. You have to do it repetitiously, repetitiously, repetitiously.

[41:36]

It starts to get inside the construct, structures of consciousness and separate things a little bit. You know, supposedly American Indians, I don't know if it's true, it may be apocryphal, but when they do basket weaving, they make the design at one place where it doesn't quite fit. And whether it's true or not, the white man's version of why the Indians do that. It's to let the gods in. To let the gods in. Yeah, if you make it too complete, It implies we can make something complete.

[42:45]

But we can look at, you know, here's my raksu. And we have this funny little stitch in the back. And in sotashu, that's the stitch. And in Rinzai shu, it's a circle. And this is called the pine cone stitch. Or the pine needle stitch, rather. And it's also perhaps an astrological star shape that's here at the top of the spine. But in any case, it's extra. I just did Paul Rosenblum Roshi and Atmar Engel, the angel Roshi, and I performed six Jukais the other day. And I have you guys?

[44:10]

What? The three of us? No. What was it? What did you perform? I know what you performed. The Chukai. The lay ordination. Yeah. I did not name exactly. It's Chukai. Chukai. And we write on, you know. So somebody has to give me the raksu so I can write on it. And I was told, I can't give you all the raksus because some people haven't put their stitch on here yet. Okay, well, it's extra. Why do it? And it's not to let the gods in. It's to make you know it's all extra. It's all just made by human beings.

[45:13]

What do they say? They say God made the world and architects made the rest. Meaning our inhabited world is made by us. So you don't think this is complete, you add something extra. Which means it's empty. Because this is also extra. So these cultural views are embedded in everything. Okay. So if... I'm getting there. I'm moving along here. Look slow. I'm moving along. Okay. If you practice namelessness, naming namelessness, you start moving your habitation, where you live, out of the

[46:14]

out of the world of objects and associations, to the fact that we're making the world. When you name something, you're making the name. The object's there, but you're making your relationship to it. So let's notice that we're making the name of it and the name is arbitrary. It's not only arbitrary, it's empty. Okay, now, if you start practicing, every time you name something, the most basic habit we have, one of them, certainly, along with breathing, natural habit, you remind yourself over and over again that you're naming namelessness.

[47:45]

Now the three formless concentrations are the wishless, the formless, and emptiness. Is that right? Wishless, emptiness, I'll think of the word. Okay. You start practicing this nameless. And wishes fall away. Because there's no associations for wishing. So you enter a concentration called in the And that starts to be where you move away from wishing, you move away from giving form to things, you move away like that, and you begin to inhabit

[48:47]

a formless concentration. Now, the way the world flows into you flows through your five and six senses. It flows in relationship to all the associations and concepts and views and object-oriented world. So it's not you're living now in emptiness. You're living in a radical openness where the world flows into you and through you in a new way. By simply interrupting and substituting wisdom

[50:12]

for our usual habitations. Now, I could say a little more about this, but that's, I think, quite enough. Okay, time for lunch. So the wit, I hope you can, after all of this, you can recover your mind of wishing. So you can choose something on the menu. And how do you have a wishless lunch? I used to practice that actually. For several years I would never choose what I wanted to eat. Because I didn't want to be involved in choice. So I opened the menu and just put my hand down and ordered whatever my hand touched.

[51:27]

And I learned to stay to the left side of the menu because in American menus it's cheaper on the left. But I did that literally for years until I could order without any sense of caring what. And then people say to me, what are you eating? I say, it tastes wonderful, nameless. I didn't ever actually say that, but you know. Okay, thanks very much.

[52:00]

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