Sasaki Roshi & Burmo-Japanese Mindfulness Fusion

I would say his main innovation is the re framing of.

The Buddhist perspective called a Nietzsche or impermanence.

In terms of expansion and contraction in early Buddhism.

They talked about a stage in ones practice where after paying very close attention to sensory phenomena ones awareness becomes dominated by the perception of.

Sensory events, rising and passing the word in Poly is good, I'll buy a bhudia means coming up and VIA means passing away. You combine them together and you have the word daya baya so there comes a time in ones practice where the sensory clarity is so great that you're aware of the risings.

And Passings of sensory events and that dominates your awareness.

A stage after that.

Is an awareness?

Not of sequential rising and passing but an awareness that no sooner does something arise, but it's already passing.

And this is described quite clearly in the classic text on mindfulness practice called the V sued demoga. The Visuddhimagga was written probably in the 5th or 6th century AD in Srilanka by a man named put gosa.

So, in that he talks about this stage where.

No sooner is there the arising but there's the passing.

Now I'm sure that Sasaki Roshi never read the visit demoga.

But he's done decades and decades and decades of practice.

It's 102 now he began his practice when he was 14 years old, and what a practice Japanese Rinzai. Zen heavy duty summer. I boot camp. Monastic training from the age of 14. So the good news is he really, really, really has deep experience. The other news is.

It's hard to understand what he's saying 'cause, it's just so profound and an advanced.

I sincerely doubt that he ever read the V City Monka, but he has had all the experiences described there and has formulated them, though in a somewhat different way.

He talks about.

Simultaneous expansion and contraction, which is.

The same thing that that put the grocer talks about when he says no sooner is something rising, but it's also passing away.

So it's right there in the ancient literature, however, if you formulate it as it is done in the Poly in terms of rising and passing.

Then.

There is the danger that there's going to be.

A meditator over here, observing the rising and passing over there.

And in fact that would be a common criticism that then People might make of mindfulness practice well the expansion contraction formulation.

Solves that problem.

Because.

Now instead of its rising and passing at the same time, you have the notion of which allows for a 2 dimensional thing over here that I'm observing back here expansion and contraction is 3 dimensional. It's all encompassing when something arises. It arises in 3 dimensions and that includes The Observer as part of the arising.

The Observer is rising is expanding into existence and contracting out of existence simultaneously as opposed to a 2 dimensional thing that you observe it's now a 3 dimensional thing that you participate in so I would say the main innovation of Susac Euro sheet is formulating.

Impermanence in terms of expansion and contraction and the notion that.

If you simultaneously totally give yourself to the expansion and contraction. You become the expansion and contraction and then there's nothing but expansion and contraction at some point.

They cancel each other out into a flat line of 0.

Which is the unborn the primordial state of the source then there is an abiding in 0 until it re polarize is when it polarizes once again in between literally in between the forces of affirmation and negation. The forces of life and death.

In between are born the feel image talk perceiver and the touch sight sound world. Both of them are born simultaneously in the cleft that surrounds self and world. This gives a model for how consciousness works and it allows for an experience where?

You participate in expansion simultaneously expanding contract you end your world simultaneously are born in between the cliffs of life and death and then life and death cancel out into 0.

And you go back to 0 and then you in your world come out of 0 again.

Born in the cleft in between expansion and contraction and then that Cliff collapses back into 0.

And this is the cycle of.

Impermanence, which Sasaki also calls the activity of the Dharma or the activity of consciousness and so forth so I would say is main innovation is this 3 dimensional paradigm.

That vastly broadens and generalizes the early Buddhist notion of impermanence and actually gives innocence of mathematical formulation.

For what's going on in consciousness as far as the main difference between his teaching an mine. He has you experienced this through koan practice? what I've done is I've taken his model.

And I have mounted it within the noting practice of Burmese Vipasana.

To me that makes it more systematic and available to a larger audience. So instead of the sort of Intuitive, but very energetic. Zen koan approach. I take a more prosaic. Algorythm IC, noting technique that I got from Burma and divide the divide into a sequence of steps starting with just focusing on.

Ordinary experience and then breaking it up finer and finer until by small manageable steps of noting certain phenomena. I can bring the average person to actually experiencing this very advanced paradigm of expansion and contraction. So I would say that in some ways. I'm very much part of the modern world in that.

In the modern world we have cuisines and music forms that are called Fusion where you take 2 traditions and you fuse them in a way that's harmonious So what I've done is I've fused the most creative of the contemporary Japanese Zen Masters with a Burmese form of attentional skill training.

And sort of so it's a sort of.

Bermo Japanese Fusion that was created by Jewish science geek.