I want to talk about something that we that's said in the Soto Zen tradition, then that is something like... I think it says... Well, I'll just say this, and maybe I'll check later, but it doesn't say this, but something like... Sanzen is... going to the teacher... going to the teacher and discussing Dharma or asking about Dharma or listening to Dharma and just sitting.

[01:08]

Another statement which I'm a little bit more confident about remembering correctly is that Than Van is a body and mind dropping off. Sanzen means, you know, practicing Zen. San means practice, or meet, or touch, or reach. It also means three, or many things. like Sondokai I guess sometimes translated as difference there same character that's Son Son Zen means more than anything reaching Zen or practicing Zen is body mind dropping away body mind dropping off so I think and you might

[02:20]

Until you're otherwise considered. But those are two different expressions for the same thing. One is dropping off body and mind. The other is just sitting and going to meet the teacher. So dropping off body and mind is not just a personal thing. It's also an interpersonal thing. It's both of them. I think that the middle way is dropping off body and mind. that I'd like to talk about according to the teacher on discussing Dharma side effects.

[03:38]

So, one side is just sitting. And again, sometimes they say, what is just sitting? Just sitting is what is it? Dropping off body and mind. Or body and mind dropping off. That's just sitting. That's one of the things you can say about what just sitting in Dzogchen is. But also, I would say that just sitting in your relationship with the Buddha, with the other authority, with an authority that's other, So the just sitting tends to emphasize, in a sense, the introspective or intra-psychic aspect. And the other is the interpersonal.

[04:45]

The medium teacher realizes the interpersonal arena. And one of the main things I'd like to say tonight is that this space that's created between these two beings, so-called teacher and student, this space is one that allows a creative generative tension between privacy and interpersonal relatedness or interpersonal disclosure.

[05:56]

Suzuki Roshi said that there was something like, I think, when you go to doksan, you should express yourself fully, you should expose yourself completely to your teacher. But that exposure, I would say, today, would include that you could expose yourself by not saying anything. You could expose yourself by being silent. You're equal. In my You are equally privileged, you're equally entitled to expressing yourself, to communicating or communicating by not communicating. By being quiet. By keeping something private.

[07:14]

that there is something really private about you. And that should be allowed. And you can feel it. And you can feel that private thing when you're sitting in an indoor too. But a lot of people don't feel it until they meet someone else and find out what they don't want to talk about. So one of the opportunities when you meet somebody is you find out something that you did not want to say. And you get to feel what that's like, which you can't feel by yourself. I guess if you have good imagination. But I think almost no one can imagine what it's like to actually meet that person. Some people try, I understand. They try to imagine, but then when they actually come in the room, it's a surprisingly different experience. Some people try not to imagine what it's going to be like.

[08:17]

Because trying to imagine what it's like many people find to be very uncomfortable. You know what I mean? You heard about those people? They rehearse the meeting beforehand. Try to think of something to say. So another name for this meeting is entering the room. I like that because it's a physical act of entering the room. And I think every time you enter the room you feel something. You have a feeling. And that feeling I think is, you know, you may be feeling something outside the room, or maybe not. But I think a lot of people get a big strong feeling when they come in the room because they become very aware of their body. So I think it's good to be aware of feelings anytime, but still, this offers an opportunity to have a feeling, get an insight into what the body's like when it goes into a room and bows and sits and meets somebody.

[09:26]

It's not so much that that feeling is an important feeling, but just that you're aware of your feelings. And then, you can be quiet with that, or you can communicate about it. And some people, oh, sometimes they'll sit quietly with the feeling. And then after some time they say, I'm nervous. Or whatever. My heart's beating. Or I feel hot. In other words, I'm aware of my body. Right now. And for me also, I think that... what I would like to do is speak with people who are experiencing what's happening now. If you're not experiencing what's happening now, I mean, it's okay that you're not. I mean, it's okay with me you're not, but I would like you to be experiencing what's happening now.

[10:35]

For you. So for me, a formal interviews are grounded in actual immediate experience that the person is having and that I'm having. Both of us being grounded in that experience and creating a space where you cannot say what your experience is or you can say what it is. But to talk about something other than your experience I'm putting out to you tonight, would it be okay if I ask you to talk to somebody else about something other than your experience? Is that okay? Maybe you can find somebody else to talk to about that? Is it okay if I don't talk, if I don't listen to you talk about something other than what's happening? Is that okay?

[11:36]

I'm asking you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you could say, yesterday morning I was, yesterday morning I was, I had a headache. Well, it doesn't sound like you're telling me about, it sounds like you're not telling me what's going on right now. Now, for you to tell me, I have this image of me yesterday morning walking around, holding my head, and you're telling me about the image you're having right now, about, you know, So that's different for you to tell me, then you're showing me that you're aware of, you're having that experience right now. You're not talking about something else. Yeah, so I might say to you, are you thinking about it now?

[12:46]

I might say, I can't see what you're saying. And you might say, no. I don't know. You might say, no, I'm not thinking about it. I might say, well, what are you thinking about? And then you could say, well, I don't want to tell you. And I could say, okay. I might say, do you know what it is that you don't want to tell me? And you might say, yeah. I say, okay. Also, sometimes, you know, just the way a person's using their face or body, they're talking about something, but I feel like they're looking someplace else other than right here. They're looking over there and looking over there. I say to somebody, how do you feel? And they go, um, they skip over this and they go look for something else, which is okay, but if you don't want to tell me this, fine, but you don't have to. I wasn't asking about that. Is that clear? Okay.

[13:49]

The other of yesterday morning. Alright. Alright. So if the person... Well, if they're not, they're not. If they feel like they're not, and they feel like they're not, but then I could invite them back into the room. Because I said, could we not talk about something outside the room? Yeah. So someone might also want to talk to me about what they're going to do after they get out of the room. So I might say, could we talk about what's happening now instead of that? So... Is that a little clearer? Yeah, can I mimic what I'm talking to you about in that way?

[14:53]

And also I offer informal discussions where you can come and talk about something that's not happening if you want to. I don't want to completely shelter myself from such conversations because they do happen in this world and I should be exposed to them too. But when those are happening in informal situations, I don't necessarily invite the person to come back to the present. Because they're not asking me to do that. And they didn't agree that I could ask about what's going on right now. So if they're not... For example, you come and meet somebody and you talk about your relationship with somebody else. even though you're actually in this room with this person. So many people experience that the person, when people come to meet somebody, especially an authority in their life, it takes them a long time to actually start talking about what's going on with the person in the room.

[16:05]

Talk about all other relations but the one that's actually occurring. But anyway, I don't want to say that I think this closure is better than keeping things to yourself. I'm feeling hot. Maybe that's because my fever's breaking. And another kind of tricky thing that comes to mind is to come and talk about practice.

[17:40]

But to talk about practice in such a way that while you're talking about it, you're getting away from your current experience. You're being sort of abstract. because what's going on is not very interesting, and you would like to talk about some interesting practice issue. And I think I can sympathize with, you know, just feeling hot or something is not that interesting, but if there's a way of talking about practice that doesn't It's knowledge that is ungrounded in the way you feel. And therefore, that conversation, I would say, is undermined by not acknowledging what's happening.

[18:56]

and not speaking from what's coming up right now. Now, there's many kinds of practices, but a lot of kinds of practices have to do with working with how things are coming up and going down right now. So to talk about dropping body and mind is fine, but while talking about it, is talking about it, body and mind dropping away. Or we just started saying, well, you know, I'd like someday to talk, I'd like someday for the practice to be body and mind dropping off, but that's probably not possible right now, so maybe we could just talk about the practice of body and mind dropping off. And that's kind of humble, but if we keep doing that, we'll just keep postponing the actual practice. This is body and mind dropping off.

[20:15]

Or is this body and mind dropping off? This is the middle way. Is this the middle way? And again, the same question could be asked in such a way that you're not talking about the present experience, you're somewhat abstracting yourself by those questions, but they don't sound too abstract the way I heard them, the way I said them. It is. Well, starting towards the end of what you said, I heard you say something about clearing away afflictive emotions.

[21:20]

So if there are afflictive emotions, it seems that what I would be talking about would be that you would be experiencing afflictive emotions. And you might or might not communicate that you're feeling an afflictive emotion. But I would think that part of clearing away or becoming free of afflictive emotions would be to experience them, to be aware of them. So to me, if someone comes in and says, I am experiencing an afflictive emotion, this seems to be talking about what's happening. I don't feel like they're talking about some other time in life that they're saying that now, if they were. Huh? No, unless they were lying, you know, that they weren't actually experiencing, and they just came in and said, no, I'm experiencing a reflective emotion, but they really weren't. Then I might say, not that I can read your mind or anything, but I might say, well, you don't look like you're experiencing a reflective emotion.

[22:29]

Tell me about it. And then as they try to tell me, maybe I find out that it was a trick. They're just telling you that because I said the night before that telling you that I'm experiencing afflictive emotions, that's okay. But if you're actually feeling an affliction and you say, I'm feeling an affliction, I feel afflicted, that to me is communicating. But you could also be sitting quietly, feeling afflicted, and keep it all to yourself. But be experiencing it. And being experiencing it with somebody else. You could be in the zendo also and be experiencing it too. And even though you're with the other people, you don't feel like you're not communicating to them because we don't do it there. We don't say. Guess what I'm feeling. Because we don't do that in the zendo, you don't feel like you're not communicating when you don't tell someone that you're feeling rage or lust or something in the zendo.

[23:36]

So when you're meeting someone and you don't tell them, you feel like it's an act of communicating, not telling, right? I mean, you might feel like that. You might go like, oh, I'm not saying anything, but it's not being enough, it's not being enough. I'm not actively not telling, I just don't feel like it. That's okay. You can feel like that too. That would be another de facto privacy. All right, too. Sometimes people tell me about non-afflicted emotions, which I feel, you know, are phony. You know, they come and tell me some really positive emotions that they're not actually feeling. But, you know, they want to impress me with a non-afflicted experience. Well, that's fine. I can sort of like say, well, really? Or whatever. Like, you know, Like again, this is body and mind dropping off.

[24:41]

Is this body and mind dropping off? Wow, that's desperate. Yes, David. What? You had a question? Okay, one question. You are verbally disclosing your silence. Very clear. You're not saying anything.

[25:42]

Very clear. Very clear verbal expression called not opening your mouth. Every moment of that is very clear. Unless you're kind of looking. What? If you can hide something, it's okay, but it's, you know, that's there. If you're actually trying to hide something, that's there, and you're actually showing it, but it's a little trickier to try to hide something by telling a lie. Like, come in and talk about something that's really irrelevant. But that usually has its own, its own, you know, takes its own course, because it often doesn't really make sense. It still feels, it leads to more questioning. This is about creating a space for, you know, authentic, authentic life.

[26:54]

And there's a certain aspect, I think, that but cannot be communicated. But that, it can be, you know, it can be communicated, but something that can't be communicated. And we need to be able, we need to allow that too. We also need to allow why, you know, actively, you know, putting up subterfuge. But the one kind of subterfuge I'm asking to set aside be the subterfuge of talking about something that you're not experiencing now. I shouldn't say subterfuge, but if that was a subterfuge, I would ask that kind to be set aside. Somebody might not be doing trying to hide by talking about something other than what's going on. They just are more interested in what's not going on than what's going on. There could be a person like that. I'm just in a lot of pain right now and I'm just not interested in talking about it. I want to talk about last week when I was feeling good.

[27:59]

It's much more interesting to me. This is really not interesting. And I'm saying, I can't understand that, but could you please talk to somebody else about what you used to be happy and talk to me about how you're feeling now, even though I'm sorry that it's miserable. I'd like you to tell me about it because I'd like to... I'd like this meeting to be an opportunity to... You know, to rationally and experientially verify the first truth of suffering. And experientially and rationally verify the source of this suffering. And rationally and experientially verify the way to become free of the source of suffering. But if you're not suffering right now, if you feel like you're not suffering, if that's what's happening, you can talk about that, that's fine.

[29:06]

At least it has the virtue of being how you're feeling now. It's an experiential phenomenon that just happens to be happening, so this is practically... The way of studying suffering is basically the same way as suffering pleasure. Late, you experience it. You watch how it happens. The same middle way is applied to all phenomena. All that we've discovered. Yes? I think you're a little ahead of me. So he said, in order to meet in this situation of, you know, this Sanchi Monpo that's going to see the teacher and asking about Dharma, does one have to let go of her conceptions?

[30:22]

Yes. You're letting go of conceptions, feelings. You're letting go of all five skandhas. You're letting go of body and mind. And I should say, you're letting go of the body and mind, including conceptions, which are part of the body-mind program. They're dropping away. So this meeting is an opportunity to realize the dropping away of body and mind. You can also realize the dropping off body and mind sitting by oneself and not really relating to somebody else. Not being so much aware that there's other people in the room. You're sitting in the Zen, there's other people, but you're not emphasizing that they're other. You're not turning and facing the other face. It's kind of like we're all brothers and sisters in the Zen though, right? But when you go in the room, it's like you're meeting. So that's a different kind of body-mind experience. But in both cases, there's conception going on in both kinds of situations. In both kinds of situations, we want to find a way for conception to drop away.

[31:26]

So experiencing conception and experiencing feeling, experiencing everything of body and mind, and being aware of it, paying attention to it, is part of appreciating this dropping off body and mind. Yes. It's unavoidable to talk about how you're feeling. On the path of letting go of concepts, it's unavoidable, put positively, on the path of letting go of concepts, you must sometime express concepts

[32:37]

But also what I'm trying to emphasize in addition is that it's also on the path of letting go of concepts. You should understand that you can also not communicate. That can be also part of the letting go. So part of letting go of body and mind is to communicate about body and mind. And part of letting go of body and mind is also to keep something about that to yourself. And that, I think, gives a more balanced attitude about this. But at some point, you can do certain kinds of study introspectively, interpsychically, and you can do some kind of study interpersonally or socially. They complement each other. But the interpsychic, there's certain kinds of expression which just don't happen. yes uh-huh

[33:41]

Dropping off body and mind might be something that happens to you later. No, it never happens later. It only happens now. So, right now you're sitting there. And what we mean by sitting there, you know, as a Zen practice, the sitting, the actual just sitting there, is the way that your body and mind is dropping off right now. That's what your sitting practice is right now. It's not something that will happen later. It can happen again. Now it's happening again. So wherever you are, the just sitting aspect or the zazen aspect of where you are, the how you are with yourself, is the way you are with yourself that you're constantly being dropped off. that you're constantly being, you know, released from your body-mind experience.

[35:16]

Impermanence is definitely part of it, yeah. Say, is there any more to it than impermanence? Well, can you sort of, by saying body-mind dropping off, it's sort of like emphasizing that impermanence Actualized as your life Your life your momentary experiences are impermanent they rise and cease but the dropping off of your experience is sort of is like the realization or the The way you that the fact that you're that way And how that's released how that's freedom So we're that way no matter what and then practice is to reach is to reach that way that we are and And so we call that body and mind dropping off. But it's not like you aren't body and mind dropping off right now. That's really what you are. That's really how you are right now here. Body and mind dropping off. Intra-psychically.

[36:27]

There's an intra-psychic way that's happening. And there's interpersonal ways happening between you and the rest of us in this room. You know it's happening anyway, but you can appreciate it if you are fully experiencing and verify for your own self the dropping away of yourself. You kind of feel like, yeah, I get it. I mean, it's happening for me right now. This is what I thought was going to happen later. In fact, it's not happening later. Now that could happen when you're talking to somebody or when you're just sitting in the zendo by yourself. When you're sitting in the zendo by yourself, then what you do is then you go tell somebody and you see if you can find that same dropping off in the meeting. And sometimes people have this body-mind experience, body-mind dropping off experience sitting alone.

[37:30]

They go to the teacher and the body-mind, they flinch and they start holding onto it again. They don't feel like it's dropping off. But also, in meeting with the teacher, they can be body-mind dropping off. Intracyclicly, you can be sitting like there's almost nobody there, forget about the other person, and then remember that they're there. You can experience it intracyclicly and interpersonally in a meeting. But you can't really experience it interpersonally if nobody else is meeting you. But if you're sitting in the Zen Dome, and everybody else is facing the wall with you, and somehow you feel like everybody's talking with you, maybe that would work. But be careful of that one. That might be a hallucination. They have to sort of, like, you know, agree with you on that one. Say, yeah, I was talking to you. Helpful. It's a perfectly, I mean, it's a fine thing to do.

[39:02]

You can meet with somebody and ask for help, but you can also ask for help when you're sitting in Zazen. Some people do that. They sit in Zazen and they say, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, please help me. Oh, Bodhisattva Mahasattvas, please concentrate your heart on me. High attention, thank you. Buddha's disciple, wish to sit Zazen now. Please help me. Please help me sit here. Thank you. Great. You're sitting. If you ask the Buddhas to help you sit, maybe that little request would help you sit. Sometimes you sit down and you say, I don't want to sit here. This is like one more boring period. I could be writing letters to my boyfriend or something, you know. Or reading some good Buddhist text. But here I am sitting here, you know, and this is greed, hate, and illusion going through my head, and I can't even get rid of it. Afflictive emotions, and I don't even, I'm not even paying attention to them. What a waste of time. So then you might say, Well, maybe it would be nice to practice just sitting here. I might ask the Buddhas to help, and you have to, and maybe when you ask them, suddenly you feel like, okay, we're here.

[40:18]

I'm willing to be with this, with this stuff that's happening. So you can ask in the den, though. Quiet. At the beginning of each period, you can ask for the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to help you. Settle into what's happening and realize, drop in our body and mind. But you can also say it out loud to another person. It's fine too. Just fine. No problem. Very nice request. Very nice request. And you know, in our ordination ceremony we say that. We say that, oh bodhisattva, mahasattvas, please concentrate your hearts on me. We ask them to pay attention to us. Whatever that bodhisattva, mahasattvas are, we want them to pay attention to us. And part of the reason why we want them to pay attention to us is because we know that's what they're doing anyway. We're just reminding them of their job. And they say, thanks. We're watching them.

[41:21]

So then you remember your job, they remember their job. We're working together. So together with all the Buddhas you can sit sadhana. Or sadhana can be practiced. Arimaya can drop away. And so you can also do it in a meeting. It can happen in a meeting. And you don't need a meeting for it to happen. What happens without the meeting? Realization of this drop-off arimaya can happen without a teacher around It's just that the interaction with the teacher completes the story. So, as you may know, in the Lotus Sutra it says, only a Buddha together with the Buddha can exhaustively realize the Dharma. But in the Kacchayana Gotra Sutra it says that the realization of the middle way does not depend on another. You can realize the middle way without a teacher telling you what the middle way is.

[42:28]

You just watch Very carefully and in a very balanced way, you observe what's happening. You will see things in her eyes. You'll see how it happens. You can understand the middle way without the teacher, but the fullest realization is also done with somebody else. So in that sense, you know, people say, you know, that we seem to emphasize in them the necessity of a teacher. You could say, well, but didn't Buddha, in his life, he didn't seem to have a Buddhist teacher. And he didn't seem to have a Buddhist teacher in the lifetime he was Shakyamuni Buddha. But the fullness of Shakyamuni Buddha was not realized until he had students who understood it.

[43:32]

It was only when there was a Buddha and a Buddha, or at least a Buddha in the world, that the Buddha Dharma was really cooking. And Mahayana Sutra says that you can actually... Buddhas can reproduce. There are two of them. Can we cut out? Is there an excerpt there? Oh no. It's just a terrible, it's a terrible problem. One line is missing. OK. Oh, I see.

[44:45]

Oh, that part. OK. Maybe just the Xerox machine, the last page got lost or something. We could, I guess, add that. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, it often says at the end, and all these people understood and were happy. Right? It wasn't just these five guys. And I think of my life, particularly when I was a boy.

[46:28]

And I have a memory of an experience. What makes me happiest was not so much the experience, but that it got to happen. So I didn't see that many neat things when I was a kid. Like I saw parking lots in the winter covered with snow. Just be kind of like absorbed into your body. But it's partly because you've let your body and mind be absorbed into the nature of the body and mind. You've directed your attention towards the nature of your mind.

[47:37]

And this is the final mode of completing the bringing the teaching into your life, into your body. And bringing your body into the teaching. Hmm? Well, this is kind of a trick. Kind of a trick. And another part of the trick is how one would engage in these practices without slipping into like, we're going to get a fundamental here. Well, actually getting a trick, that's what that is. A trick is like, I'm going to get a fundamental to rely on here. Every class I'll go to, I'll get one more trick, one more fundamental, one more step to take on the ladder to gain. So these dangers of tricks and fundamentals and gain, this is part of why I think the Zen tradition has shied away from telling people

[48:46]

how to do this because they get into how to do it, they get into how am I going to do it, and it turns into another karmic trip. So somehow, how can we bring these teachings up and let them happen and let our body and mind enter into these practices without getting all wrought up and excited about how wonderful it would be if these practices could happen. Even though it would be wonderful, we can't get too excited about it. So there's not quite a few hands there One, two, three, four. But some other people are probably ready to sort of expire, right? So I don't know, what do we do? We have these four questions and we're getting really, really tired. How about here are the questions and deal with them later? How would that be? Huh? Okay, try that, okay.

[49:49]

Here, question number one. Having no gaining idea. Can one aim oneself at a practice without a gaining idea? I think it's possible, yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think it's possible to aim yourself at a practice without a gaining idea.

[50:56]

I think, for example, you could want to help me with something even though you might not be helpful. Or even though I might not want your help, you might say, hey, could I help you with that? And I might say, no. And you might say, okay. I didn't just take the question. Sorry. Next. Yes. No. No. laughter laughter Uh huh.

[52:28]

But, you know... Which is? Which is? Like, where am I? No, like, just look at this. Look here. Look here. Look here. What? Uh-huh. [...] Yeah, that's good. That's good. Look at that. Look at that thing that's kind of hard to see. And its activity is not anything in addition to that. Kind of like you said, that's pretty much it. It's not that interesting. But it is highly recommended. And it needs high recommendation because it's not that interesting. And it's really very ordinary.

[53:59]

And it's not some big potential. It has great potential because it can deal with everything. So ability is capacity. Capacity is another word. But just the minds, the nature of awareness. sort of the fact that awareness is possible. All these different, these are just words to try to get a feeling for it, but what you said is, sounds like you're kind of directed in the right way. That's sort of where to look, right there. And then, is it Daniel and Daniel? No, there's two more. Helen and Eleanor. Daniel? Huh? What? I owned her a long time ago. Oh, I owned her a long time ago. You don't? No, don't be optimistic about not having a gaining idea. Don't be optimistic about not having a gaining idea.

[55:05]

That's a real big gaining idea. But don't be optimistic about getting over that one, too. So, in other words, not being optimistic about having a gaining idea sounds like you are somewhat accepting that you do have a gaining idea. You're somewhat accepting that. Accepting your deep inclination towards gaining ideas, that could be not such a gaining idea. Well, you could always do that, but just before you did that, that was just a recognition of your karmic consciousness. Here, I'm a human. I've got karmic consciousness. I'm sort of like, all I care about in every moment is what I can gain. Eleanor-gain. Basically the same thing. That's, you know, and not only that, but I'm not even like more that way than other people.

[56:05]

I'm just like middle of the road, just completely like everybody else. Everybody just, just like, I mean, you know, as far as I can tell, everybody's just on the same trip. However, although that's no big deal and everything, it is nice to hear that that's the Buddha's teachings, that that's the way we are, and I've accepted that teaching to some extent. Okay? So, Eleanor, Merritt, and Noah, and Melissa are all worried about this. But don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Just be vigilant. This is the danger of your mind. Be vigilant of it. It's going to be there. Keep your eye on it. Don't expect it to go away. And just keep your eye, watch out for it and see how it comes into everything. But if you keep observing of it, it might not ruin your practice. It might ruin your practice.

[57:07]

It can ruin a practice. It can ruin a practice. You can take a nice practice and put karmic consciousness on it and make it go really sour. And hurt other people with what was originally a perfectly good practice. Hurt yourself. But if you keep your eye on it, you can... That's the proposal. It might be possible for a human being not to make Buddhism into another big karmic trip. But not if we don't watch it. Not if we don't know this tendency. Then I think it's just going to take over because it's there. So is it possible that awareness could make freedom from these well-established, you know, acquisitive tendencies of the life process? More, more, more. Noah? I think you've got to stop. So, there's Noah, and Helen, and Cedar.

[58:11]

Is that all? Daniel. All these biblical names. So, I just think that we've got to stop. It's 11 o'clock. Time for lunch. Yeah, let's reassemble in the zendo. After the briefest possible what? Break. After the briefest possible meditation period. meh

[59:06]

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