Now, I'm trying to... Yesterday, I'm afraid I might have been a little confusing, and I'll try to... You know, it's okay. I mean, I feel all right if I'm confusing. But still, it's okay if I try to clear out the confusion. You know, I'm saying that practice... that there's no gaining idea. This is coming to a... recognized to opening up a realized, discovering a realized state of mind. We're not talking just here about realizing enlightenment, but perhaps living in enlightenment. I'm de-emphasizing some special experience. But so this no gaining mind of no gaining idea, is Sukhiyoshi's phrase.

[01:01]

And at the same time there's only this, the fullness of this present situation. Here I am now. This is called the iron. Nowadays I can't say the iron man, the iron person. Which means someone who has come to the point of unmovable, immovable intentionality, who basically just says, here I am now. Sounds simple. It's very difficult. Here I am now. So there's that. And there's also the ripening or the incubation of practice over a long period of time. And these aren't contradictory. Practice is a manifestation of our life.

[02:12]

Practice becomes discovering that mind in which our whole life flows. into and from. That it's possible. It's our own capacity. Now when I'm speaking here, actually, you know, so many of you are new to this place, I feel a little... embarrassed at my failures. Maybe you wouldn't think they're failures, but to me they're failures since this is my whole life. Failures to redesign the robes so that they're a little more convenient or usable. Not so odd in Walmart, you know? Right?

[03:15]

Or so that they are affordable. I mean, if you actually buy the Japanese number, you need to sell your car. And especially nowadays, they're really expensive. Luckily, I stocked up in the 60s and 70s. They haven't worn out yet, thanks to Gisela repairing them on a regular basis. And redoing, making the English of the Heart Sutra better and translating the echoes. I think I can maybe translate some of the echoes, or English the echoes. Echoes are what we say in between the sutras, which are a little difficult because they're all about saving the nation and transferring merit and so forth. So you ought to express this idea of merit in relationship to karma, is a challenge.

[04:18]

But I feel that we can, in this coming practice period, have more of the echoes in English. So on the one hand, I feel embarrassed a little bit. When we do service, it's strange to people. You say all these... Things chant in Japanese, kind of Japanese. And I apologize for that. Partly it's my laziness and my... You know, I'm quite used to it now. Wearing these robes. So I stick to my habits. However, it's... Also, there's a There's a ripening teaching in this way we do things that also it's difficult for me to know how to disturb, how to change.

[05:28]

And I like to make an effort to describe aspects of practice which I find hard to describe anyway. And I like to make the effort because I feel that, you know, when you read the teachings or you read some person who's a good philosopher or thinker or something, there's two contents usually. One is the content of what the person is saying or writing. And the other is the person's realization or the person's way of thinking, a person's way of insight. And if that comes through the sentences too, it allows you then to take that more subtle content into other ways you look at things. So suddenly many things become clear, not just what is in the content of that teaching or teacher's sentences.

[06:39]

But that's also true for us in listening or finding our own voice or mind. And when we do, I don't know if you've noticed, there's a the way we do things in and it can get too much, it can get too choreographed feeling. But the way we do things is that they overlap and juxtapose each other. They fold together. So that the bells at the end of service lead into the meals. And the oryoki, which is the best example, is this physical object that's folded together actually in an extremely natural way. Once you get the feeling for it, you know what would come next, or in a similar situation, or something new were added, what to do.

[07:47]

There's a physical, mental logic to it, which is part of the whole process of analysis. I mean, I guess I would say the three major main practices of Buddhism are, of course, mindfulness, meditation, and analysis. certain way of analyzing things, making things clear, clear and letting them go. They're not clear, you can't let them go. So it's a kind of Tai Chi type flow. We have two Tai Chi teachers here, but in the room at least two that I know about. But it seems to me Tai Chi is made up of a number of individual actions or motions you learn, and then you put them together in a flow.

[08:54]

Now in Buddhism, and I don't know the history of it in the martial arts or those physical arts, but in Buddhism, it's rooted in Huayen teaching, where everything interpenetrates without interference. And so the Oryoki... Foles are really a kind of physical expression to teach you at a physical level this philosophy, this YN teaching. So that the physical world literally folds together and leads you to the next step. And that's, you know, it's very clear. It's, for example, why we take the water, the nectar or ambrosia and drink it, but also touch the edge of the bowl to where we share the water with the subtle beings of this world.

[10:06]

These little bowls we have are a little bit small. If you touch the side, you get your hands in the water, so you need a little deeper. Some of the bigger ones are pretty good, but the shallow ones are a little hard to use if we want to do this wayan contaminating ourselves with touching where we drink to the communal bowl. But the whole day in a sashina and in a practice period too is a kind of full overlapping juxtapositions. And I like the word juxtaposition because it's the same root as yoga in Sanskrit. To join. Join the positions. And if you know, I'm trying to give you a feeling for this, if you know how to think, I mean, if you're a person who's just developed how to think, if it makes sense, I think you discover that thinking is layered.

[11:28]

And there are many texts and subtexts in a thought. And those layers in thinking which lead to a subtlety, a thinking which reflects one's own clarity and feeling in the world, those subtleties or layers are apparent in the juxtapositions. Some words, for example, don't fit together. But a synonym, a word which means virtually the same thing, will not only fit with another word, but start your heart pounding. And when your heart is, something like that happens, you know you've touched some juxtaposition where there's kind of vigor, energy. Well, I'm using the example of thinking because I want to say that in the physical world there are also these juxtapositions and flow. Now this teaching of how we do the orioke and the service and how the meal and service work and the bells and stuff, you know, we have a little of that in the why we toast.

[12:48]

Because when you drink, you have the flavor and the feel and the smell and the taste, but you don't have the sound unless you put the glasses together. So you clink the glasses in the West so that all five, six senses are involved. So there's that kind of feeling very articulated in Buddhist so that all the senses are involved in each physical act. That's the desirable position and movement. So the robes, you know, and the way we chant and the sounds of the chanting and so forth, are all part of this Tai Chi like flow. And it actually makes it difficult to know exactly how to change the parts, because the parts then have to have this, the new

[14:02]

parts that new translations or transportations have to have this juxtaposition. Now the sense of it is based on, in Buddhism, maybe three main teachings. One is, as I said, this wayan of inner penetration. This also practice of mindfulness, and the practice of mindfulness at root is, here I am, or here it is, or as it is, as it is, now, now. You try to come to a mind of as it is, as it is. And the third, it would be that interior and exterior are rearrangements of the same actuality or reality. So if you practice this flow, if you get a feeling, a physical feeling for this flow in service and oryoki, etc., so it starts to be, I don't know how to say, you understand it.

[15:22]

I mean, what each thing leads, the world, the intelligence of the physical world, The energy of the physical world cohabits with your own energy, lives together with. And when you feel it in the exterior world, you also open yourself up to it in your interior world and open up the possibility of it. actuality of interior and exterior being an indivisible flow. So these things that we do in Sesshin that are just there, everything has some development. Now it may not be accessible to us. But we shouldn't remove it because we don't understand it or it's not accessible to us.

[16:25]

We should find a way to make it accessible to us either through a conversation like this or through your experience in doing it or through finding how to transform it so it also reaches us. No, this mind, as I said, of mindfulness as it is, as it is, is... First of all, we approach a mind like that from the outside. We try to do it, we see its value intellectually, philosophically, but, you know, we mostly lose it. But at some point, it becomes our ground mind, or our base mind, and And it's a physical, physical reality.

[17:33]

I mean, you know, I always find it so strange that in Sashin and living at Crestone, my taste buds change. I really mean my taste buds change, not just my attitude changes. You know, I am, as my friends know, I... I'm a rather picky person to go to a restaurant with because I'm quite... I expect... I know what the possibilities of food and cooking are and I expect people to practice it. But in Sashin I actually don't want to change the food. It's just too bloody much trouble. I don't want to have a mind which thinks, would this taste better, or would it not taste better, or should it be cooked differently, or should I have some gamacho on it, and the gamacho's about a mile away behind me somewhere.

[18:36]

It's just too much trouble. Just as the damn stuff is, it's good. And then... It actually tastes really good. I mean, you know, the beets taste like beets. And the grain tastes like grain. And as I say, it's really not that I have a different attitude or I think I should like this food or something. This is simple food or healthy food. Actually, my taste buds are different. And really, your body becomes different through practicing. Not just your taste buds. Your mind buds. Your emotion buds. And you bloom differently.

[19:39]

It's like there's bulbs down in you which have not yet flowered. And practice discovers those bulbs. And plants you didn't know were in you, buds you didn't know were in you, start, you can feel them start to grow. As I said yesterday, there are many parts of you seeking a home, a harbor in you, and you don't know how, we don't know how to give these, in this case bulbs, the nourishment they need, or find out where they're planted. Now, sashin is the nature of the territory, is, you know, you find that you start, your basements and attics, you start cleaning yourself out, or much stuff comes up, or you get irritated, and

[20:44]

angry or annoyed or the session isn't right and things like that. Or the person next to you has the wrong sock on. And this is, you know, it's really good to get into your attics and basements and clean them out. Or just let them tumble into the rest of the house. And seven days gives us time enough to do something of a house cleaning. And the bath gatha, if we ever build a bath here, the bath gatha is I suppose we could put it in the dorm bath. How's it go?

[21:46]

We vow with everyone, washing body and mind, free from dust, pure and shining, within and without. Washing body and mind, with everyone, washing body and mind, pure and shining, within and without, something like that, free of dust. Well, what this gatha conveys, and I think it's true, is that when you clean your own attics and basements, you're cleaning really our larger, our society, our culture, our larger beings, attics and basements. Let me try to come at this another way.

[22:49]

Sitting, each of you sitting there and me sitting here, sitting on a cushion, your blood and bones and flesh and stuff, liquids. And various streams or waves of awakeness or consciousness, thoughts, animate this blood bag. And your lips and vocal cords and mouth can make speech. But once you've made speech, There's language. And language belongs to everyone. Language has a past, present and future, a history, independent of you. Language has a continuity, continuation, independent of your continuation.

[23:55]

It makes me think of when you're on a... you call up somebody in their answering machine, At least I have this experience sometimes. And I just start saying foolish things to their answering machine. But I can't get in there and erase the tape. It now belongs to something stupid, I said. On this tape, they're going to come home and listen. Oh my God, what is he talking about? So language has that quality that it's out there. Language captures us. Imprisons us, frees us, captivates us. Language belongs. And much of that language that isn't our own history comes back into us and we make grammatical errors. We describe ourselves in terms of the possibility of the language and so forth.

[25:00]

So I don't know if you can feel this, but maybe in Sashin, or I'd like to suggest in Sashin, that you try to take yourself back out of this language, back into the flesh, blood of your lips and mouth. It might be good to, in this cleaning the attics and looking at the attics, at least looking at the attics and the basements, perhaps you know, wider than that. You have a, you maybe imagine an inner listener or inner dreamer, who's sitting in the living room perhaps, and every now and then go and tell this listener, this ideal listener, exactly what you'd like your life to be like, how you'd like to be known, or how you'd like your unknown life to be.

[26:06]

Developing or finding such a listener is not different, not very different from having an internalized teacher. internalizing the feeling of a teacher which then joins this inner listener or inner dreamer who also can share and manifest or express our visions. I said last night in a little poem, the past has no claim on us or free ourselves from the claims of the past. And the world, I said, flows in our blood and in our visions, manifests in our visions. And I think, you know, that we do, we function best when we have a vision of the world.

[27:22]

And that vision is in this iron or deep intentionality. And that vision is an interplay between the blood speech of us talking to ourselves and language. And I don't think culture is just the big players. the major players, each one of us is part of this subtext of vision and is immensely shared. We don't know how it's shared. We call it, in specific, teaching from the side. And I've tried to express that. Partly it means the horizontal lineage not just the vertical lineage back to Buddha, but the horizontal lineage with each of us. But it also means taking the bodhisattva, taking the bodhidharma posture and the zenda, which is wall gazing or facing the wall, because in that you turn inward, away from this looking together space,

[28:46]

or too often looking at ourselves from outside space. So the ideal posture in our lineage is this wall-gazing posture where you turn into your own space. But also it's like the Doan faces the bells, but needs to know from the side what's going on. And I think of it as Janie. Janie's a good teacher in this because she's that dog that's out there. But Janie gets friendlier all the time and really likes us. But she won't look at us very often. But she loves to be up next to you. But if you make her look at you, she feels, she seems to feel some diminishment. Like she doesn't want that mind of looking, except sometimes.

[29:48]

Mostly she wants a mind that we feel from the side of her and from our side. And this studying from the side, which is referred to in koans, is this ability to, and recognition, that we share our visions very deeply, but not through looking and conceptual mind. So cleaning out, bathing with all beings, cleaning out your own attics and basements and coming. And we can actually come to a feeling of strength and clarity in our body and mind. It's quite refreshing. Maybe you can feel it sometimes in sitting when you, sometimes even when you're most tired or kind of pooped out and pissed off, suddenly you, hey, and you suddenly you feel something take you over and just make you sit.

[31:01]

Getting to know and getting to feel or store the feeling of that, to know that inventory or that inner language of different pages, or of this, in this case, this clarity or strength. We talk about original mind, but we can also talk about original vigor, perhaps, or original energy. vitality or strength. I think vigor may be the best because it's a word which means strong, awake, and growing. So, original vigor. You discover at root some original vigor that sustains you. And discovering it, you find that original vigor is transferable, transmittable to others, receivable from others. And it's present in nature.

[32:13]

I don't like to call it nature. It suggests it's outside the zendo or something. It's in the physical, spiritual actuality that is us. And this original vigor, if I use that phrase, is also what this Tai Chi-like flow of discovering the physical, mental world, overlapping, inducing each other. That's kind of physical thinking, physical being thinking. I don't know, our words don't cover it. But it's this original vigor is often you sense it in the juxtapositions of things.

[33:21]

So I've said quite a bit too much. The basic teaching of Buddhism is, the Buddha said, I alone am the world-honored one. And one of our Dharma Sangha members in Europe had a baby very recently. And Monica Kurtz and I spoke to Monica. just shortly after the birth. And she said, suddenly burst out of her, she said, I know this is the most wonderful baby on the earth. And she's completely right. We can see when a baby's born that it honors the whole world. Everything has conspired for this baby to be.

[34:37]

And this baby honors the whole world and is honored by the whole world. But we lose the feeling of that as adults. It's true of each of us. Discovering this mind is a fundamental teaching of Buddhism. our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[35:22]

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