The goal of the Bodhisattva path is the realization of emptiness with essence is compassion. Or the realization of a wisdom which understands emptiness and that the wisdom’s essence is compassion. Step by step, we need to be grounded in caring for everything we meet, with our whole heart. Our whole body and mind. Letting go of the separation of subject and object even while it may seem to appear. Even while there seems to be some separation, vow to let go of it and welcome whatever comes. With as much compassion as possible. And when we are ready move forward into the Bodhisattva’s wisdom, the Buddha’s wisdom. Which you may feel some yearning for. And that maybe because you are already fully possessed with the wisdom of the Buddhas. But because of some attachments or misconceptions it is not fully manifested. Continuing in the meditation on the teachings of this Sutra and in particular in centering on the meditation on the Buddha’s teaching that all phenomena have a character of being dependent on things other then themselves for their existence. Meditating on the other powered character of all the things we meet. Meeting them wholeheartedly makes us be ready to open to the other dependent character, I hope.
In chapter of the questions of Gunakara, the Buddha says ‘Gunakara, in dependence on names that are connected with signs the imputational character is known. In dependence on names that are connected to signs, the character of conceptual grasping is known. In dependence on strongly adhering to the other dependent character as being the imputational character the other dependent character is known.’
   The other dependent character is known, by adhering to it as being something that it is not. The other dependent character can be known through the conceptual clinging superimposed upon it. We know this character through conceptual clinging superimposed upon it. In dependence upon absence of strong adherence to the other dependent character as being the imputational the thoroughly established character is known. When there is an absence of adhering to the other dependent as being this superimposed concepts, an absence of that we know – or dependent on that absence and actually meditating on that absence, we know the thoroughly established character. Or the thoroughly established character is known.
   It is not just that in the absence of strongly adhering to the other dependent character as being the imputational character is not just the absence of adhering to the superimposition as being what is happening, but when there is a giving up of this clinging we are able to see this absence. So in the absence of the adhering we also get to see that there is an absence of the adhering. That actually the superimposition never really did stick. Whatever is dependently co-arisen and everything that exists dependently co-arises. Whatever is dependently co-arisen is verbally established. The identity of any dependently co-arisen thing depends on verbal designation. Conventional verbal designation. To say that a thing is dependently co-arisen is to say that its identity as a single entity is nothing more then being a referent of a word. The thing itself apart from a conventional designation has no identity. A conventionally dependently co-arisen thing apart from the conventional designation has no identity. A dependently co-arisen thing apart from a conventional designation, which depends on the imputational character, has no identity. A dependently co-arisen thing apart from a superimposition of false existence upon it, which makes possible a conventional designation, has no identity; is not known. Is not established in experience. To say that a thing or to say of a thing, that its identity is merely a verbal fact is to say that it is empty. Or to of a thing that its identity is merely a verbal fact, that its identity is merely a verbal fact, is the thoroughly established character. But without the thing being a referent to the work, the thing has no identity. And without the imputational, without the superimposition of a false status upon the thing conventional designations and the conventional world or the conventional way a thing exists is not possible. We can’t find it. But it is not that it is not there. It is just that it has no identity. And so for us, it is not established. We can’t find it in the conventional world.
 When the Zen teacher Dogen discusses the practice of the meditation practice of the Buddha and brings up the story of ‘thinking of not-thinking – how do you think of not-thinking: non-thinking’. He also quotes another story about sitting meditation where the great master Nanyue says: ‘if you grasp the mark of sitting you are not reaching its principle.’ The dependently co-arisen phenomena of sitting meditation is strongly adhered to as some concept of it. Making possible the verbal designation of sitting meditation. If sitting meditation is known through a superimposition of mere conception upon it, we can have the conventional event of sitting meditation that can exist without it, there is no sitting meditation. However, if you grasp it this characteristic, this superimposed word by which you can find this sitting. By which this sitting has identity, if you grasp it, you miss, you do not reach the principle of sitting. The principle of sitting being first of all the actual dependently co-arisen nature of the sitting and also the absence of this superimposition upon the sitting.
   Dogen says according to this translation: ‘if you grasp the mark of sitting, that means you reject the mark of sitting and you touch the mark of sitting.’ To grasp the mark of sitting meditation means to reject the mark of sitting meditation and to touch the mark of sitting meditation. So you reject the mark of sitting meditation means you say, ‘this is not sitting meditation’ and to touch the mark of sitting meditation means you say, “this is the sitting meditation, This is the grasp sitting meditation.’ So rather then like reach out and touch a tree and say, or look at a tree and say, ‘this is sitting meditation’ or look at a blinking of an eye and say ‘this is sitting meditation’. In order to do sitting meditation, we have to sort of say ‘that is not sitting meditation’ and then something else we say ‘this is sitting meditation’. And then we have sitting meditation, we can say ‘this is sitting meditation’ and then we have something, because of the identity of sitting meditation, we saw there can be sitting meditation.
In being a seated Buddha you cannot fail to grasp sitting meditation. And also this is wonderfully evident, this sitting meditation, which you grasp, it doesn’t reach the principle of sitting meditation. And then he says, this kind of concerted effort is called ‘dropping off body and mind’. His basic definition of what is meant by sitting meditation of the Buddha is dropping off body and mind. But it seems to me that what he is saying is that ‘if you practice sitting meditation by not grasping the mark of sitting meditation you don’t have phenomena of sitting meditation’. You don’t know this thing called sitting meditation without superimposing the concept of sitting meditation and grasping it. But if you do superimpose or if there is a superimposition of the mark of sitting upon this sitting and you do grasp it, you do not reach the principle of this sitting. This dynamic, dealing with this dynamic is dropping off body and mind.
   Without a word like ‘sitting’, then sitting has no identity. And the sitting we do, the sitting, which we experience, the sitting which we can find, is merely the verbal fact. This sitting, which we can find is merely a verbal fact, and understanding that is to understand our sitting is empty. Is to find the thoroughly established character of our sitting, which is the absence of the superimposition upon our sitting. Our sitting as a phenomenal event arises and ceases depending on things other then itself. But to find that sitting, to identify that sitting, we must take it, this wonderfully dependently co-arisen sitting, we must take it as being our idea of it, upon which we can say: ‘sitting’.
   And to understand that this sitting does not reach the principle of this sitting. And to also understand that this sitting which we can find, which we can identify is simply taking our sitting as the word ‘sitting’, that is the emptiness of our sitting. This kind of work is the work of dropping off body and mind. This kind of work is the work of the actual sitting of the Buddha.
And we must be very kind while sitting in order to be up for body and mind dropping off. The willingness to sit in such a way that dropping off body and mind is realized is based on taking good care of body and mind, which exist as a thing, as a single thing by itself due to verbal designation. Which again is based on imputing a false existence to it.
   The identity of my sitting has a single thing. It is nothing more then being the referent to the word ‘sitting’.

Settle into a steady immobile sitting position.
Think non-thinking. Imagine your sitting happening without an identity.
Imagine your sitting happening with an identity.

   The only way for our sitting to exist is in dependence on the word ‘sitting’. Pure sitting. Our wonderful sitting, the great practice of the Buddha sitting, nothing more then the referent of the word ‘Buddha sitting’. But we can’t have Buddha sitting without the conventional designation ‘Buddha sitting’. Or ‘sitting Buddha’. And this is why there can be sitting Buddha. This is how there can be sitting Buddha. Sitting this way as strange, ungraspable, and potential nauseating as it might seem to be is the kind of effort that we call dropping off body and mind. The ordinary grasping has a hard time with it. I have to be very kind to myself to be willing to live in the midst of body and mind dropping off. I can still grasp sitting, but I remember that this is simply grasping a word. And therefore I find the sitting, I have the sitting, I know the dependently co-arisen phenomena of sitting practice. But I also know, that I have just grasp a false thing in order to have an identity. And this sitting is actually empty of something to grasp. This maybe difficult for me to adjust to, to live in a world of sitting Buddha knowing that there is nothing to grasp and yet I must grasp. Otherwise no sitting exists. And I want sitting to exist and I want some other things to exist, too. Settled into a steady immobile whatever position; whatever for it to exist or to be established and known, there must be conceptual clinging. But when it is known and all I know is conceptual clinging, I don’t know IT. Settled into immobile sitting position and [turning tape]
This dynamic. Yes?
[Student not audible]
TR: It doesn’t exist as something that you can identify.
[Student]
TR: It contradicts that? Well what you said, I thought what you originally said was, you see me as a mystery and then you put a label on it?
[Student]
TR: That is very close thou. But if when you see me as a mystery you don’t really see me. There is-, I have no identity for you, when you see me as a mystery. You can’t actually see me as a mystery. If you see me as a mystery I am not a mystery anymore. You do see me as mystery, but you don’t know it, because you can’t comprehend a mystery. A mystery comprehended is not a mystery. So I am suggesting, remembering that people are a mystery, you must remember that people are something beyond what you think they are. Because whenever you see somebody or whenever you are experiencing something like sitting, the fact that the sitting is being experienced, you already grasp the word ‘sitting’ and placed it on top of something imputed to this sitting, so that you can have this sitting. You already got this guy sitting in front of you. Now remember that really he has this other character, which you can’t see, which you can’t identify, except by superimposing a concept on him and putting a word on him, that is the only way you can know him. But actually you are already experiencing him in a way you don’t know. So you remind yourself that he has this character, which is to you mysterious, but you can't see that. But don't worry about it, because your mind already superimposes an essence on him and with words you can identify me. And you can do the same with your own sitting. And we do, and we need to. But we can go further then that and remind ourselves that the sitting also has a character, which is not known without this superimposition and that is really the way it is happening. And also the way it ultimately is is that it is not happening, that sitting doesn’t even happen. Because happening is another word we put on things. Yes.
[Student]
TR: Yes really? It feels like the sitting exists? It feels like a feeling exist?
[Student]
TR: I think you can feel something without putting a word on it, however you can’t identify it without putting a word on it. You body is always in some posture, but in order to identify what posture your body is in, you need to put a word on it. But sometimes your body is in a posture, but you are not identifying it, because you are identifying something else – or something else is being identified. Something else is being existing for you. The conditions of your fingernails are not always something you are concerned with. But when you are identify, you know, the experience of something about your fingernails, at that time you need to superimpose upon the actually dependently co-arisen nature of that fingernail, you needed to superimpose. Some kind of like imaginary essence there and then you land the word  ‘present condition of the fingernail’ upon that phenomena, which is beyond the designation by which you can identify the condition, But once you are aware of it, once this is established for you in the moment of experience, it needed a word. Now the ability to project upon things, this false imagination is preverbal. The imputational depends on the need to use these words. But the imputational is not to put the words on things. The imputational is to put something on things that are not there, and then using the words we can create a conventional reality of a fingernail or sitting or a feeling. But the imaginary quality of a feeling is projected on the feeling, even if you don’t identify it. But even if it is not so much of an issue, because it didn’t happen for you. So in fact anyway, we are not talking eliminating this process, because, otherwise we wouldn’t have a conventional world, which has things in it like people and sitting meditators. Just recognize that in order to have practice, for example a feeling Buddha, we must grasp the mark - in order to grasp the mark the mark has to-, it depends on this imputational. In order to make these conventional designations we have to use our imagination and partly our false imagination. And then we can say ‘sitting meditators’ and I am one of them. And there is something there that we found the identity of, a dependently co-arisen person. It is actually there, dependently co-arising and ceasing, arising and ceasing. And in addition for that this person, the way this person is, is nothing more - the identity of this person is nothing more then the word. Because the basis of the word is imaginary projection. Take away the word you still have the imaginary projection, but not yet anything. Take away the imaginary projection and you have now the actual way the person is arising and ceasing. In other words the way the person exists, you have the way the person exists. And how this person exists: depending on other things. That is the way things exist. In dependence and fleetingly that is the way sitting meditation exists. However you can’t identify your sitting meditation without this superimposition. The actual way this sitting meditation exists is dependently. But in order to know it or identify it you have to take it as what you are imposing on it in connection with words. Meditating on this is a different way; being with this way of your sitting is a different way of sitting, called ‘dropping off body and mind’. It is not the way of holding the body the body and mind. Now in order to have a body and mind sitting you have to grasp it. Otherwise you couldn’t find it. There would be for you no conventional world of sitting in meditation. We must do this. But then, in that situation we can say, we can remember the teaching that ‘well, wait a minute, this doesn’t reach the principle, this doesn’t reach the full reality of this sitting’. And this full reality of this sitting is a little bit difficult to move in to, because body and mind are dropping off when you do. Because you start opening to what is ungraspable, namely the other dependent nature of your practice. And also you start to open to the emptiness of your practice and the emptiness of your practice is that your practice has an identity as your practice, which is nothing more then the word ‘practice’. There is nothing in your practice that is a practice. Practicing, realizing that there is nothing in your practice, called ‘practicing’ or in your practice called ‘practice’.
   But simply the identity of your practice depends on this word, this initiating yourself into dropping off body and mind while sitting. It is bringing this teaching into your sitting and that way the sitting becomes the Buddha’s sitting, with the identity of Buddha’s sitting which is simply the word ‘Buddha’s sitting’ or ‘Jo’s sitting’ or ‘me sitting’. Nothing more then that, that is the identity ‘me sitting’. But that identity is nothing more then ‘me sitting’. And the basis of putting ‘me sitting’ on ‘me sitting’ is a fantasy. Opening to this, living with this, we are starting to get into what it means to be in the realm of body and mind dropping off.
   To me, I have a, you know, identify, some experience, identify some experience of body and mind dropping off. By feeling-, part of my experience is feeling kind of wouzy, kind of unfamiliar, kind of unfamiliar, kind of strange. Rather then ‘I am sitting, this is it’. ‘Yes that is true, now take the next step’. ‘Yes.’
   But that identity of that feeling I have when I do this meditation and the identity I have even of that feeling
[The recording stops suddenly in the middle of the second side.]