I'm sorry yesterday to keep you waiting so long. Before lecture. But I was going by the old schedule and the lecture started at four. Yeah, so... I mean, Dieter made up a new schedule that I suggested, but I didn't realize it moved the lecture. And I wanted to speak about timelessness, but I didn't want to keep you waiting. So now I'd like to sort of aim at a teaching of the convergence of space like mind, space like awareness and timelessness.

[01:08]

And I would also like to try to speak today to give you an example of of the texture of Zen practice. The nature of Zen practice. Yeah, because Zen practice... really doesn't give you particularly elaborate teachings. We don't give you kind of refined maps of practice leading from one stage to the next. Which are almost always in essence, almost always in character teleological.

[02:32]

Which means, I think you know, that they aim toward a particular end or they have a purpose built into them. As you know, Zen practice is, you know, I think somewhat unusual in not wanting to be teleological. Unusual. It wants to give you the freedom to go wherever you happen to go in this practice. Around corners you can't think your way to. When you may go around corners, not even the Buddha has gone around.

[03:40]

Just a simple statement, again, like... We are born in the same lineage, but we die in a different lineage. It has many meanings, practical meanings, obvious meanings. But it also means from the point of view of Zen, Buddha is not the end of our practice, but the beginning of our practice. We're not trying to... achieve what Buddha achieved. We're trying to practice the way Buddha practiced and achieve or realize whatever we happen to realize. Of course, there are aspects of this great ancient tradition

[04:43]

There's a territory of this practice that is largely similar. But still, there will be some difference. The emptiness of form is not the same emptiness. Each form has its own emptiness, we could say. So this practice then assumes, as I've said before, that we evolve, that practice itself evolves. And the territory of our practice... may be as Westerners rather different than the territory, say, of Chinese people at a particular historical time.

[05:53]

So what's wonderful for me is how remarkably similar it is, even though it can be different. And how much the practice the ancient Buddhas that precede us illuminate and inform us. But still we're in an open territory. Each of you is in an open territory. The way is not a map with the steps laid out.

[06:56]

Anyway, Zen practice, for the most part, emphasizes this approach. So the two words I would use today to... emphasize the three words, the thoroughness of Zen practice, is that practice percolates within us. You know, like if you have percolating coffee machines here.

[08:03]

Yes. Yeah, that's a percolator. Yeah, I think we discussed that before. I don't know if we have that. Yeah, so I'm... Well, the coffee tastes better here. Maybe it's because you don't percolate it. But you know what? Don't you all know? You boil the water and it goes up a little tube and it bubbles out. Yeah. Yeah, okay. But anyway, percolate in English has the, well, it actually means to filter, to enter, to let something filter into you is literally what it means. But since everyone's familiar with the coffee machines, it takes, it has the feeling of something bubbling up through you, almost up through your backbone. Then you turn brown. Sometimes I think in Sushin you wish some coffee would percolate up through your backbone.

[09:19]

Okay. And the other word is to incubate. It's like a bird incubates its eggs. Incubate means to lie down with Gerald. And incubate the poor guy's back. But incubate means to just stay with something until it matures or opens up or hatches. So we give you fairly simple practices, but you're meant to practice them... thoroughly until they kind of percolate and incubate.

[10:27]

We give you what kind of practice? Fairly simple practice. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, OK. So when I, I don't know, in the first three or four years of practice, I noticed that I tended to see the space of things before I saw the object. I saw the space of the object before I saw the physicalness of the object.

[11:29]

And I kind of noticed this. It just was a feeling that began to appear in the topography of my experience. Sometimes more noticeable than other times. But I particularly began to notice it when I was driving. Because I actually began to be afraid I might just drive into somebody. I don't know, this may sound peculiar to you, but I felt... the space of the person on the bicycle was not so different from the space of the intersection with nobody on the bicycle, with no bicycle there.

[12:41]

I'd just come into the habit of feeling the space of things as more essential than the substance of things. It's like you see the space that the tree fills out more than you see the branches in its trunk. The space of the tree almost feels like the body of the tree. And then from there you're into the preciseness of the tree. But I noticed that it had become so much a habit that I actually felt, you know, I've got to remind myself you can't drive into trees and into people.

[13:58]

Maybe the point is clear, but let me say, I'm driving along and I feel space around the intersections open and I used to be scared. What if somebody appears? They're not space at that moment. I'd better not hit them. This doesn't bother me much anymore, so you don't have to worry if you see me coming down the street in a car. But for a few years it actually kind of bothered me. I had to keep reminding myself. So, then I can stop and say, how did I get there? How did I come to this experience?

[15:30]

At first, this question actually doesn't arise much. Because I'm practicing with my teacher, Sukhiroshi. Yeah, I'm going to Zazen every day and every afternoon as much as possible. Yeah, and I've arranged my schedule working at the university so I can get back across the Bay Bridge and et cetera. Much of this time I didn't have a car, so I had to... In San Francisco, you have to really know the city to ride a bicycle. Because there's hills everywhere.

[16:31]

You have to figure out how to get quickly between the hills. In San Francisco, you have to know the city well to ride a bicycle. Because there are steep hills. So you have to see how to get around these hills. So I'm in the midst of practicing and going to work and riding my bicycle and so forth. And there are various fruits of practice that one begins to notice. Particularly during the first two or three years. After that, the learning curve seems to descend. You've got to go through an incubation period that is beating boredom.

[17:31]

Yeah, so, you know, these various things happen, you think it's kind of interesting and unusual, but you don't think about What did I do to lead to this? But after a while, after some years of practice, you... the various fruits of practice begin to sort themselves out. Some disappear or get absorbed into other experiences. Some stay rather clear. Very clear.

[18:37]

And one of the fundamental ones is perceiving. the space of objects, as more fundamental than the substance of objects. At first glance, it doesn't seem logical. Yeah. Yeah, there is a logic to it, but at first I don't think it seems logical. What is it?

[19:40]

Who is it? Is it Samuel Butler? Who is it that kicked a stone and said so much for Berkeley's mind only? Barclay, the British philosopher, said everything is mind and this guy kicked his thumb and said so much for that idea. So Barclay said, everything is spirit. And this guy bumped into a rock and said, that's how it is with this idea. But I didn't get there by thought somehow or thinking, logic or not logical. I got there because the experience appeared. Okay. If I look back, though, I would say that I got there through the very simple practice of not inviting my thoughts to tea.

[20:41]

Now, this is one of those, I think, deceptively simple practices. And if it has any special importance, it's only that Sukhirashi repeated it. Over and over. Yeah, so I want to look at it a little bit, this simple practice. I think once before, a few months ago here in Germany, I went into it a little bit. So, okay, again, when you're first told not to invite your class to tea, it seems obvious enough.

[21:54]

We can easily have the experience of not... Yeah, not thinking about something because it bothers us or because it's nonsense. we can easily have the experience, the common experience, to not think about something. You want to do something else, you don't want to think about that, so you think about something else. So to not invite your thought, yeah, sure, you can do that. And you have some experience for a while of not inviting your thoughts to tea sometimes.

[23:01]

Sometimes it works. But the concept in it, which doesn't seem important at first, becomes clearer after a while. Because the concept assumes that there are two minds. One mind represented by the thoughts. and one mind represented by not inviting the thoughts to tea. Now, you can start to wonder, where are you located when you don't invite your thoughts to tea?

[24:03]

Now, this... This question wouldn't have any purchase, purchase or handhold to take hold of something. This concept wouldn't have any purchase if you weren't sitting zazen. And beginning to have the experience of two minds. And beginning to have the experience of two minds. There's some difference from the mind that arises in this posture and the mind that arises in other postures and activities. So we can say, because the thoughts are like, don't invite them to tea, they're guests. So there's a guest mind.

[25:12]

And the one that doesn't invite them to tea is the host mind. Now, it turns out that the most common technical phrase And it turns out that the main term, the terminus technicus, in the description of the Maracanã rock wall, is host and guest. So here we have Host and Guest, which is one of the main openings into these hundred famous and deep koans.

[26:20]

Hidden in this simple teaching, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Okay, but then you notice that To not invite your thoughts to tea is also a thought. So, then there must be two different kinds of thoughts, too. thoughts which don't invite and the uninvited thoughts. So then you can kind of get lost in thinking about the different kind of thoughts if you're approaching this thoroughly. But you begin to have an experience of the different kinds of thought, these two kinds of thought.

[27:55]

And I think to make a long story a little shorter, you can call one intent thoughts intention thoughts and the other discursive thoughts. And the word discourse literally means, dis means to run and course means course, to run a course. So it has two senses. One is just to run about. And it's been used since ancient times to mean to run a course around. through logic and not through intuition.

[28:59]

An intent means to stretch out or to stay. So, you begin to notice the thoughts run about or follow some kind of line of reasoning. And you can feel the difference after a while of just incubating, percolating this practice. Between the intent thoughts, which are more like attitudes or views, Which tend, like intend, intend to stay in place, intend to stay in place.

[30:08]

And the discursive thoughts which run about. Try to be logical. Usually a selfish logic, but sort of logical. self-serving logic. I think the main reason I like is to start the chanting, I mean the service and the lecture, the teaching, Chanting in Japanese is because we don't know what it means.

[31:19]

I've told you before, for a while I switched everything to English, and then everyone was thinking in English when I started the lecture, and I don't want you to think in English. So well after my death, when you switched to all German, I hope you'll start with abracadabra, om, om, om, or something. But of course, teaching rarely met with in a hundred thousand million kalpas is pretty strange, too. How is that translated? How is it chanted?

[32:22]

Barely met with in 100,000 million Kelpas. We all know. Okay, I'm sorry. I have a blackout. Well, you can read it. Read it. What's it say? Yeah, see? With a Dutch accent, it's really... This is really good. Okay. So you begin to feel the mind of intent thoughts, intention thoughts, in contrast to discursive thoughts. Then you begin to feel the relationship between the host mind, which doesn't invite, and intention thoughts.

[33:29]

So this percolates through you for a while. And then after you've absorbed it, it begins to incubate. And pretty soon you can really feel all the time this difference between the host mind and the guest mind. And this is how you bring practice into your daily life. You know, not just sashin and zazen, but into your daily life. You incubate these teachings, percolate these teachings thoroughly enough in zazen and mindfulness practices.

[34:36]

that they begin unintentionally, virtually, to be the shape of your mind. So you find that the host mind feels better. You suffer less. And you find that by not identifying with your thoughts, Not inviting them to tea, not identifying with them.

[35:40]

Just let them come and go. Yeah, they... they become less substantial. You can almost like, the words are like labels and you can kind of peel the word off something. I mean, Gertrude Stein, what she say, a rose is a rose is a rose. Yeah, but what she meant is if you look at it, at any flower, even to say it's a flower makes it less...

[36:51]

And you begin to notice the host mind notices things much more precisely and uniquely. By not naming. And as your thoughts begin to lose their substantiality, That's carried over to the objects of the world. Because when you notice an object, the first thing you notice it, you notice it as a thought, as a perception.

[38:01]

And And so it's a thought object, first of all. So the objects, which are thought objects, also begin to lose their substantiality. You could name them almost anything. And you have... Common, all these Zen guys holding, if you don't call this a stick, what do you call it? I don't know, a butterfly. It starts a thunderstorm, you know, sort of. It starts a thunderstorm, you know, sort of. You begin to discover that the host mind and the guest mind begin to represent your own experience of these two great divisions of the mental divisions we have of the world, time and space.

[39:47]

And they actually become embodied physical distinctions. The host mind, which doesn't invite thoughts to tea, is more space-like. And the discursive thought mind is more... time-based. And this more space-like awareness of the host mind is not only more space-like, it's more timeless-like.

[40:53]

There's an absence of time. Now we're somewhere close to where we were yesterday speaking about stillness and timelessness. And with this more space-like mind, which somehow you know as more fundamental than the timelessness, defined mind, and although you know both at once, your emphasis is on the first of all in this more space-like quality of each thing.

[42:14]

And hence it's similar to all other objects. Because all objects have this space-like quality. And the experience of this we call thusness. Or sometimes sameness. And we feel the interconnectedness of the world. And this is another point where I could use my example of the old-fashioned strings of Christmas lights. I know you all use candles on your trees, but, you know, we use lights.

[43:35]

And the old-fashioned ones, you must have them too. If one bulb goes out, they all are out. Yes, and of course you all use candles, but we only use electric lights. And with these old-fashioned chains, if one bulb is broken, then all of them go out. And it's a bloody nuisance to find out which one's out. You have to unscrew each one, you know. And finally you get the right one. And you put a new one in and they all light up. So when you come to this mind where you feel the sameness of everything, We could also say this is the experience of the mind of the basic teaching of interdependence.

[44:37]

which we can also describe as a mind without preferences. Strangely, when you find the equalness of each thing,

[44:56]

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