Expansion and Contraction - Graduate Level Version - Part 1

We've been.

Talking about a number of themes.

We talked about the theme of change impermanence. We also have been talking about the theme of that which represents no change.

Could be described as the one or the zero depending on your?

Tradition of practice.

We talked about the parallel between one and 0.

The one is.

The balance point.

Between stretch and squeeze.

The 0 is the balance point between moving this way, and moving that way. The center of the coordinate grid.

The origin, they play the same role.

0 is 2 addition.

As the one is to multiplication.

The point being that.

We have

Contrast ING activities, there is a way of multiplicatively affirming and negating their called stretch and squeeze.

And there's a way of additively affirming and negating.

Once called go this way. The other ones called go exactly the opposite direction and equal amount. The balance point is could be called 0 or could be called 1.

At the still point of the turning world as TS Eliot put it.

Neither movement from nor Twords.

At the still point there, the dances.

But do not call it fixity.

Where past and future are gathered?

We talked about.

Movement.

Change.

Flow.

And finishing

In the way that I like to.

Describe things my own technical vocabulary for describing experience any abrupt disappearance. I call Avanish Inge and when you label.

The label for that is gone, something's gone any other aspect of change any increase decrease affirmation negation speeding up slowing down, spreading collapsing moving this way moving the opposite way.

I refer to that all generically as flow just to have a general term for it.

One might say that.

There are 2 fundamental.

Flavors of flow if we consider that any kind of movement would be molded by an interplay of opposites. the Greeks lacked both negative numbers and 0 China had negative numbers, but no 0.

It was only the genius of ancient India.

Their mental set.

That.

Could see that?

You could have 0 as an authentic number.

They called it Shou Nya.

Or Shunyata, which literally means emptiness its cognate to the Greek word kennels KENOS, which means empty. It's a Greek cognate to the Sanskrit Word Junya 'cause. The cuss sound in Greek correspond to a share sound in Sanskrit.

So shooting ya candles kenotic as an adjective, meaning relating to emptying out.

Um.

Describes what God had to do in order to Incarnate as Jesus.

And it also describes what Christians were supposed to do.

With themselves in order to experience Oneness with God.

Empty out annihilate the something this within and that's called Kenotic, Christianity, Christianity, based on the notion of that Oneness Hypnosis, a union in Greek, a oneness with God comes about through and emptying of the something Ness of cell except the become God. There's tricky there's 2 words in Greek.

That correspond to one word in Latin, the one word in Latin is deification.

The 2 words in Greek are theosis and Apple theosis. We even have the word apotheosis, meaning the very embodiment of something apotheosis means to become God in the sense of like the emperors of the ancient world claimed they were gods.

But theosis as a Christian term.

Meant.

Uh.

Experience 8.

A direct.

Participation.

In the spiritual source, but they become one word in Greek in Latin deification.

The subtle distinction is Lossed Shinya.

Emptying out kenosis it's the same in the E in the same in the West. If you want to have a direct experience of that that balance point that nothing.

That very rich nothing that very special nothing that is the source.

Since that's the still point? How do you get to the stillpoint many possible ways actually?

One of them paradoxically is to utterly surrender to the opposite of stillness.

Which is the movement?

And the flow.

We can think of.

Movement.

As generated by a dialectical process of back and forth.

I have mentioned a number of times in these talks.

Things that my teacher, Sasaki Roshi Joshu Sasaki bro. She says you can look him up on the Internet. If you go to Mount Baldy, Zen Center website you can see pictures of him and.

Find out about his teachings when I first translated for him even though I had very impressive background in Buddhist scholarship and many, many years of practice, I couldn't understand what he was talking about.

I could mechanically translate it into English.

But I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning in translating and.

One of them I remember he said.

CEO Jean to Shawnee your wife.

Which literally means westerners?

Our week in abstraction now I thought.

You know.

That Zen was against abstractions.

So he must be pulling down Westerners so I mistranslated it as Westerners are too abstract.

But actually that's not what he meant he meant they're not abstract enough.

My preconceptions about what Zen was supposed to get in the way.

What he was really saying? Is there not abstract enough?

To see that a gazillion things that they think are completely different.

Are actually reflections of exactly the same thing?

And what are the gazillion things that they think are different?

That are really reflections of the same thing and what is that one thing that they are reflections of?