one of our members here today. His name is Ted Brown. He was sitting in the other room there towards the back, I think. More or less shaved head. He practiced at Ten Center a long time ago and recently came to me and said that he wanted to start practicing again. I heard him talking on the telephone earlier today about his mother and I asked him what was going on and he said his mother took his mother to an emergency room and she was short of breath and she stayed. And he said, well, basically she's in good hands. And now he just got a call from his wife saying that she seems to be dying. So he left early. She's become in critical condition.

[01:03]

And so here we are, you know. We're living in birth and death. And we need to vow to embrace and sustain all beings in birth and death, to stay close to them, basically stay close to them, and not do anything, which is, in other words, to stay close and teach the Dharma. One of the ways to do nothing is to come to no abode and sit for a day. And we did that today. We've been doing that now at no abode for about eight years we've been practicing here.

[02:12]

And on January 3rd we'll have another one day sitting. You're welcome to come again and sit. And at the end of the day, there is an optional ceremony, you know, and I do not prefer that anybody do the ceremony or not do the ceremony. I just welcome you if you'd like to. And if you do not wish to do it, you are totally supported to not do it. Some of you may not be able to come to the sitting and just want to come to the ceremony. Some of you may want to come to the sitting and leave at the time of the ceremony or just witness it. And some of you may wish to come to the sitting and also do the ceremony.

[03:18]

And the ceremony is a way to formally invite me and encourage me to live another year to play the game of being a teacher for another year and to ask me, to encourage me to do that, to asked to be able to practice with me for another year. And the ceremony is usually done between priests and their teacher, but we're experimenting with opening this, what we call Householder Bodhisattvas, or Zaikei Bodhisattvas. So you're welcome to do that if you like. Yeah, maybe we end the one day break, a little recess, and then have the ceremony at the end of the day, like five o'clock.

[04:27]

For some reason or other, Joyful practicing here with you and I feel grateful to you for your great warm, wholehearted practice here. I hope that this practice place can be a resource for many years to come, although it is in a state of constant deterioration.

[05:42]

Is there anything you wish to express this evening? Yes. I'd like to offer an appreciation for your teachings on deep faith and the causal effect this year and the trajectory of those teachings to deep faith and wholeheartedly dancing with delusion. And just to share that my intention, which I believe I shared last January, this year was to study and darken them. And I feel that your teachings this year greatly enriched that intention and greatly informed it. So thank you very much. You're so welcome. Yes? I would love to offer my gratitude, and I'm sure everybody's gratitude, just for your presence to just be here. You're welcome. And you can offer other people's gratitude, too. who can't be there on a third, but who want to do that ceremony with you, is there an alternate way to accomplish that?

[07:10]

Again, traditionally, you can send in the mail the statement. So the ceremony involves making some offering. In the Japanese tradition, offering mochi rice, which is the traditional New Year's rice, pick a little piece of mochi, put it on the altar for three days, make the offering, and pray for the health of the teachers. And then after three days, I think maybe start on New Year's usually, but it could be before, if you're going to have the ceremony on New Year's, it could be before New Year's. But in this case, you could start on New Year's, make an offering, offer various presents to that offering, and then send it in the mail. That's why a little piece is good. Send it in the mail with your written statement so it can be done from a distance.

[08:18]

And if people want to have a face-to-face ceremony, we could find some time maybe later in the year. But I have had the experience of priests who are living far away sending me these. Yes? I have two questions. One, how is mochi usually presented? Well, you know what mulch is like? It's kind of sticky. So how is it presented? Usually you wrap it in paper, in white paper usually. Wrap it in white paper, a little bit, and offer it. But sometimes people offer, you know, if it's not going through the mail, you can offer It doesn't have to be a tiny, it could be actually like a, it could be quite a sizable offering on your altar.

[09:30]

But in the mail, usually people just send a little tiny, like a little wafer of it or something. And I have another question from your discussion this morning. How would you define the term Dharma as applied to a phenomena? Well, that's one of the meanings of Dharma is phenomena. Yes. So does that mean a phenomena unreconstructed in silence, or does it mean phenomena subject to cognition, cognized phenomena? Well, you know, for the most part it means objects of perception. It means things that depend on mental imputation. That means existing things, not potential or not the probability of things, but things that have been sort of precipitated by cognition into a kind of like entity.

[10:38]

pain and pleasure and confusion and colors and smells and ideas, all these kinds of, these are dharmas in the sense of phenomena. All phenomena are objects of sense, senses. So this is all the objects of knowing through the senses and through the mind consciousness. Yes. In the ceremony, should we also be thinking about, like, you just did what our intention is for the... Is that grounded in the expression? It could be, yeah. I mean, usually, like, the way the priests do it is we bring these statements, which are, most people's statements are pretty similar, or almost identical. They offer the pieces of writing,

[11:41]

And then we bow to each other three times, and then we usually sit together. And at that time, sometimes people say something. But we don't usually go through each person stating their intention. However, I sometimes, when I have time, when I'm around, I sometimes meet with the people, each one of them briefly at the end of the year. and hear their intention for the next year. But if you'd like to visually meet and express your intention for the year, that could be a later event, but it wouldn't be part of that ceremony. But after we do the prostrations to each other, we usually just sit for a little while in silence and stillness to observe the living enlightenment.

[12:48]

And then people sometimes get a little excited and say something. By the way, when Dogen is speaking of the working the dynamic working of the process of the middle way. And he says, all this, however, does not appear in perception because it is unconstructedness and stillness. It is immediate realization. The character for stillness, that character also means silence. But it's usually translated as stillness. But the character is silent and still. Unconstructed stillness and silence. That's where enlightenment is doing its thing.

[13:52]

Could you say again? Pardon? Could you say again the calligraphy? The calligraphy? Yeah, the calligraphy says... The first two characters are assembly or a gathering of living or a birth, which means sentient beings. The next character is nature or condition. So the nature of sentient beings, the nature of living beings. The next two characters can be translated as immediately is immediately is or namely. And the next two characters mean bodhi, enlightenment. It's bodhi. And the last character is like therefore or in consequence. So it can be translated as the condition of ascension being, namely enlightenment.

[15:05]

Therefore, the condition of a sentient being immediately is awakening. The nature of sentient beings is immediately is awakening. Pardon? I found it in what's called the Taisho Daizokyo, which is a collection of all the scriptures, and it's a mantra which I would translate as the non-activity of all phenomena, the non-action. But this section is about the non-moving of all phenomena. it's about and the non-moving of a sentient being the non-moving of sentient being is a sentient being being a sentient being that's what we mean by not moving and that is that not moving sentient being is attaining enlightenment this sutra has been

[16:24]

just translated very partially. But, you know, someday it might be translated completely. Please be content with little snippets here and there. Is this the piece that's on the altar? This is a literal copying of the text. of this Chinese text. There's enough available for everybody. And someone reminded me of something I said a while ago and it was that one time I was talking to someone and someone I really appreciated, but I was feeling a kind of aching in my heart area, my heart chakra, and a kind of achiness and deadness and dustiness in my heart.

[17:39]

And I kind of thought this person knew that I loved him. But I felt like my heart needed for me to say, I love you. So I asked if I could say something, and she said yes, and I said, I love you. And she said, I hope you don't say that to everybody. But not because she didn't want me to feel that way for everybody, but she thought some people should not be told that. And then I still didn't, was still somewhat blocked.

[18:44]

So I said, thank you. And I felt it was a little more open, but still a little blocked. So then I said, I'm sorry. It seemed to open it, those three. I love you. Thank you. I'm sorry. May our intention truly extend to every being and place, with which we'll marry above Buddha's way.

[19:35]

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