is to call on relationships to reemerge. Say someone you really loved and still love. And say goodbye. But there's no chance to love them in the present. But they occupy a lot of space in us. So you want to say goodbye to them. Yeah, you want to come to that place where there's neither hot nor cold. Where you're not feeling any preferences. There's no recriminations, excuses. Yeah. And just say goodbye.

[01:10]

And perhaps in your feeling, in your pure experience, give them the gift of your love by recognizing that feeling it in yourself. It doesn't have to be a former lover or someone you wish had been a lover. It can be a child who doesn't speak to you anymore. Or a parent or sibling who you don't have any real connection with anymore. Yeah, maybe just because they've become so different. All these Landscapes occupy a lot of space.

[02:24]

So part of this peeling away of sashin, we can say a kind of pure goodbye to many things. Maybe careers we wanted too. Or other lives we wanted that live in the shadow of the present. You don't want to keep these other lives sort of in the shadows of the present. Come into the actual arena of your life. Now, there's nothing predictable about tigers and rhinos. All of the teachings can't prepare you for tigers and rhinos.

[03:49]

There's no formula the sages have given us for the twin roads of life and death. For the things that happen to us and may happen to us. happen to our loved ones. There's no way anyone knows how to capture a tiger or rhino. Now, you don't want to be the kind of person that invites tigers and rhinos into your life. But you also don't want to be the kind of person that avoids them. Aber ihr wollt auch nicht diese Art von Mensch sein, der sie vermeidet.

[05:01]

And we're often scared of the actual arena of our life. Und wir sind oft, wir haben oft Angst vor dieser tatsächlichen Arena unseres Lebens. It's obscured by the many things we don't want to happen to us. Sie wird verdunkelt von den vielen Dingen, von denen wir nicht möchten, dass sie uns zustoßen. The adept can't live this way. Can't live in the shadows of many things you don't want to happen to you. Such shadows get longer and longer. So you can come into the actual arena of your life. This is also the place where there's neither hot nor cold. So this is a start on this koan. Okay?

[06:19]

Thank you. Thank you very much. May our intentions in the same way penetrate every being and every place with the true service of the Buddha's path. Shujo moen seya no O NAMU JINSE GANDHA, ABHA BHAJYO SE GANDHAKU, Good morning. [...] I pray you, I want you to come.

[08:51]

I want to see you, Jesus. I want to see you, Jesus. Hi, we're going to go to 12 o'clock. We're going to go to 12 o'clock. We're going to go to 12 o'clock. Yeah, so I'd like you to get the feeling through practice in general and in this Sashin.

[10:14]

As... As... as an experience or a feeling. Yeah, you know, I'm sorry to bore you with saying so often I don't know how to talk about this. Yeah. Because part of the reason is I want you to understand. But I want, for me, understanding means something like doing.

[11:21]

And not classifying. And I think for many of us we try to understand by thinking, what is this like? in psychology or in philosophy, or in categories of our own experience. Or rather, categories of our own knowledge. And one of the problems with classifications First of all, they neutralize everything.

[12:32]

They take the guts out. They take the danger out. But then the classification itself has a life of its own. and begins to deaden many things. So I wish I could speak with you like every time I speak to you, you've never heard it before. And maybe I should speak in a way that you don't know what I really said. And maybe that's sometimes the case. Or maybe I should speak in a way that you don't remember what I said. What the heck did he talk? Really, I couldn't tell you what he said. Or maybe I should speak in a way that you don't remember what I said, that you say, where did he speak about the devil?

[13:53]

Yes. Rhinos and tigers. The rhinos and the tigers. Yes. So we have this phrase, the total potentiality is equally present in all situations. This is like feeling, this is like being able to enter the uniqueness of each moment. As you know, that's not so easy to do. It's another basic. Some of the basics are feeling at ease.

[15:08]

At ease in yourself, at ease in this world. Almost as if this were paradise. You know it's not, but you know simultaneously it is. So to be able to live in this Dual knowing which is not dualistic. A dual knowing which takes away dualism. So you know this is not paradise and you know it is paradise. It makes me think of Voltaire's statement.

[16:17]

The optimist is one who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. And the pessimist is one who knows the optimist is right. That's not exactly what I mean. So one is this feeling at ease, one of the basics. Another is to be present to your breath. Not separate at any time from your heartbeat, your breath, your basic metabolism.

[17:25]

Of course, it's a fact. As long as you're alive, that's the case. But our mind and consciousness is often elsewhere. When there's always present physicality to your consciousness. I don't know how to say it any other way, but I think the words may not make sense. You'll know it when you feel it. Mm-hmm. And the third is the mind that engages the uniqueness of each moment.

[18:52]

The non-repeatability of each moment. You'll know that. You'll know one of the ways you can recognize that you're in the vicinity. It's almost impossible to be aboard. That little Sophia, she's often frustrated, but she's never bored. Things are interesting that we can't believe she finds interesting. Yeah, now, since yesterday, she's now... ready to get from room to room on her own.

[20:04]

Awful lot of things that are interesting at floor level. In the cracks even. So I don't know, we don't have to become babies again, but it's something like that. It's like... I don't know. Things are bright and shiny all the time. Yeah, does that come from enlightenment? Yeah, maybe it helps. But does it come from just knowing the absolute uniqueness of each each each? You'll never know. Or, I don't know, maybe you know.

[21:06]

So that's a given of Zen practice that you can feel the potentiality of. I mean the discovery or generation of a mind of non, I don't know, absolute uniqueness, non-repeatability, something like that. things are also marked by a kind of flow of creativity and insight. No, I can't tell you exactly what it's like.

[22:23]

But I can tell you where the wall is. When you feel in a situation that's predictable, kind of boring, then you know you're not there. So you can... And if you know you're not there, you know the wall of boredom. Or the wall of, oh, I'm in this situation again. I have to chant that sutra again? No, no, no. Yeah, this. We should really make the Sesshin one exact same thing after another all the whole week. It's pretty close to that.

[23:29]

Maybe we chant the same sutra a hundred times a day. And you write on the blackboard, I am a bodhisattva another hundred times. Yeah. But we have such compassion that we make the sesshin much more varied than that. Mm-hmm. It's funny how we dull the world. Okay, so this right on the other side or right within the world we live in

[24:34]

the repeatable world we live in, there is a unique, shiny world. This knowledge, this intuition is part of the practice of Zen. Okay, so then we have this potentiality is equally present in all situations. The total potentiality. Now that takes the uniqueness a step further. We're not just in a... It's not just that we've generated or opened ourselves to a mind. that arises from the uniqueness of each situation.

[26:04]

But we have a way of being in that which assumes the total potentiality of each moment. I can say the total potentiality for what? Enlightenment? That's stupid. That's a classification. Waiting around in the total potentiality, where is that enlightenment hiding? That view alone will kill you.

[27:05]

So, some kind of total potentiality for rhinos and tigers. Something that falls out of any classification. Yeah, maybe that's what enlightenment is. But maybe it would be better than to feel something like... I don't know what word to use. Unclassified documents. Yes. It's just a joke. Yes. They were secret and they've been unclassified. Yeah, I don't know. The non-classifiable. So, if we assume this

[28:18]

total potentiality of equally present in each situation. As is an introduction to this koan. the statement in the introduction of this koan, this should be in your sitting and in your walking. The way your foot is in the world. The way your foot is in the world. I'm trying to speak about some feeling, presence, experience, but those words are just a suggestion.

[29:37]

Ich versuche über ein Gespür, eine Präsenz, eine Erfahrung zu sprechen, aber diese Worte, das sind nur Vorschläge. You want to take as much away as you can and then find what's left. Ihr solltet so viel wie möglich fortnehmen und dann nachsehen, was übrig bleibt. Dogen calls it dropping body and mind. Dogen nennt es Körper und Geist fallen lassen. Are we talking about the experience of dropping body and mind? Sprechen wir über die Erfahrung von den Körper und Geist fallen lassen? Ja, we are. Ja, das tun wir schon. But we're really talking about the way body and mind and the world is or isn't when you've dropped body and mind. It's the same, but... But it's not the same.

[30:54]

And that's caught up in these phrases. What about when it's really hot and cold? It also means, like Dan Welch was talking about, they just cooked recently for a big group of people, 45 people in Crestone. We have this big burner that is like a volcano. Yeah, like about this biggest cooking rice pot or something real fast. And Dan knows about it very well. He installed it.

[32:01]

And when he first demonstrated everybody how it works, When he first demonstrated how it works. He said, you have to be careful with this. He lit it and he burned his eyebrows and hair off. So he cooked a lot of stuff for people in this burner. In the kitchen, it was already real hot there during the day. But he said, you know, I thought of that colon. No hot or cold, so I didn't care. So it has practical meanings there. Someone else in the kitchen said, how do you stand it in the kitchen?

[33:03]

I don't think about hot or cold. So on one hand, that's a stupid understanding of the koan. But it's a real experience of the koan. Because when you really know that place where there's no hot or cold, When there is hot or cold, it doesn't matter much. You know, the sixth patriarch was said to be illiterate. Yeah, and this was a kind of, even if true, a mythic turn in Chinese Zen.

[34:25]

Away from the erudite... commentaries on sutras by the Indian masters to ordinary language. Like, why don't you go where there's no hot or cold? And the monk says, what do you mean, San Francisco? It's always rather cool in San Francisco. Quite nice weather all year round. Not too hot, not too cold. So he answers in this way that is just an ordinary statement.

[35:28]

But it also reflects the practice. Each situation is... Repetitious, boring. Yeah, and at the same time, unique and nothing but potential. and at the same time unique and nothing but potentiality. So we need some kind of

[36:40]

sharp point. Sometimes in Zen stories they use the idea of a gimlet. A gimlet is like an ice pick or something. Yeah. Because this total potentiality, whatever we mean by that, it yields to something that pivots it, something that turns it. So we use these turning words or phrases. I'm always close to this.

[37:44]

That kind of statement. Arise from viewing each situation as nothing but potential. Now, someone asked me again, what did I mean by vitality? Do I mean energy? Well, you know, I don't mean energy. I don't like the word. It belongs to machines and electricity and things.

[38:45]

But we have to use it sometimes. But I prefer my new word, awarenergy. Yeah, gewahnergy, yeah. Yeah. I guess, govanagy and awareness. Govanagy and awareness. But that's not what I mean either. By vitality. You know, we're on Quellenweg. And vague, the root of vitality, is the same as vague or way. Do you suppose the well that's on our neighbor's property, which feeds this, is why this is called Quellenweg?

[39:53]

Up here somewhere there's a nice little place to walk to. I don't know that. maybe that direction, where the murg, is that what's called murg, starts. Yeah, and there's a little hole in the ground, and they put some stones around it, and this creek, the murg, which goes down to the Rhine, starts here. And there is such a hole in the ground, and they have put a few stones around it, and there springs out this small stream that then flows into the Rhine. The Rhine starts, well, one part of the Rhine starts there. A part of the Rhine has its origin there.

[40:59]

Yes. So vitality means more than just aware energy. Imagine one of those days, and I hope you've had a lot of them, where you feel completely rested. There's no problems. You feel full of energy. Everything's okay. You couldn't feel better. School's out. Yeah. Whatever it is, you know, that's your vitality.

[42:05]

I mean, that's when you feel most vital. Fully empowered in the way of the world. Empowered. In the way of the world. Now there's no reason we can't feel something like this all the time. Or know that feeling. Or draw it up into us. That's also the total potentiality of each situation. And sometimes you've got to stop and find a little pace. And let the world bring it up in you.

[43:11]

Find a certain pace and let the world bring it up in you. And someone asked me, why does Dung Shan say, where, a place where there's no hot or cold? Well, because we're not talking about philosophy or thinking or something. It actually feels like a place.

[44:12]

And as Dan Welch understands, it is a place. And when you come to this place, actually hot and cold don't bother you much. You know everything's only for a moment anyway. Even death. Oh. It feels like a place. Like coming into a room or feeling located. It's like you might count your breaths in starting a period of zazen.

[45:15]

Yes, you might then be able to follow your breath. But as I was suggesting yesterday, at some point you feel something like a breath body. If you feel the world rather than think the world. Direct feeling, I don't know what to say, something like that, without thoughts about it. You have thoughts, but you don't lose that sense of a place. And maybe I said too much yesterday than the day before. Too much about the shadows maybe that haunt our life.

[46:24]

Shadows that overshadow our future. So we look into the future and it looks dark because we have these shadows getting longer and longer. Or emptiness. Emptiness sounds sort of cold. Until now I'm talking about softness. Mm-hmm. Some kind of soft feeling. Some kind of round feeling.

[47:30]

You know, lots of people nowadays don't really get the idea of lineage. Yeah, and if I read or listen to their reasons, It's because usually they have some strong idea of each individual is possessed of everything. Dann ist es, weil sie ein ganz starkes Gefühl dafür haben, dass each individual is... Possessed, possesses everything. Oh ja, dass jedes Individuum alles besitzt. In the end there's nobody else who has more. We're all equal or something. But its views are indistinguishable from contemporary views of the individual. So when I read him or listen to him or her, his views disprove his point.

[48:42]

His views. Are you talking about somebody particular? No, just various people speak to me about and don't really get the idea of lineage. And I listen to them. And their views disprove their point. Because in their views, they're part of the contemporary lineage. the lineage is a kind of place instead of the horizontal contemporary lineage it's a vertical lineage goes back into the past and can go into the future It's a kind of place or body. And we're trying to walk around in it here.

[50:04]

It's not just my mind. Or Sukhiroshi's mind. Or your mind. Yeah, it's the place. Together we're walking around in it. And we're, you know, the bells, the schedule, the pace. The simple difference I think you felt refreshed by. The simple difference I think you felt refreshed by. Of ending Kinhin in this way, new way. This is a place where the mind of Buddha can appear.

[51:14]

We're trying to make such a place here. And we're trying to make such a place in ourselves. And in our shared identity. We have a kind of shared identity. And at the same time we have a real independence, strength and independence. That allows us to enter this shared ancient identity. Yeah, it is connected again to simple things like background mind, the place where there's neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

[52:34]

As I've been speaking about the fully established second foundation of mindfulness, established through first fully establishing the first foundation. So we're moving in a territory of practices. And the territory of practices begins to make a place here. And a place in ourselves. And a place with others. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Dankeschön.

[53:47]

Mögen unsere Absichten gleichermaßen jedes Wesen und jeden Ort durchdringen mit dem wahren Verdienst des Buddha-Weges. Die führenden Wesen sind zahllos. Ich bitte, um sie zu retten. Die Begierden sind sehr schlicht. Ich gelobe, ihnen ein Ende zu bereiten. Wir damals sind grenzenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Der Weg des Buddha ist unüberträglich.

[54:51]

Ich gelobe, ihn zu erreichen. BELL RINGS Uchō jen'u jen'u yon'u wa Yabu sen'u wa niyo ayōtoto katashi

[55:58]

vāryaṃ māṅkhaṃ māṅkhaṃ jīlaṃ jīlaṃ jīlaṃ sūpaṃ kataṃ etariṃ nebhāvāṃ pūvāṃ karāyinoṣaṃ yuṣaṃ lūdhvīlaṃ gacchītate māṅkṣurāṃ I know there are 12 and I understand that we thought one guy that I want. If you still don't, you're going to tell us and you're going to cut us in the section. We're going to ask you to say it, but we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. Hi.

[57:20]

What are we doing here? Yeah. As we all know, it's a mystery that anything appears at all. That anything exists at all. We have no real explanation. Something's here. Yeah, it's not really approachable by the mind. I used the example of, I don't know, earlier in this practice month of the physicist Richard Feynman's father responding to his question, to Sun's question about a wagon.

[58:31]

The physicist Richard Feynman. Yes, he said to his father, he was a little kid, Why, when I pull the wagon forward, does the ball go backwards? His father said, no one knows. It's observable, but no one knows. He said something like, well, we say it's inertia and something that's moving continues in the direction it's going. But that's just to name it. It doesn't tell you anything. Inertia is a name that hides the mystery. So, this little boy liked this answer of his father. At least he remembered it later in life.

[59:51]

But he said, if you look closely, you'll see that actually the ball didn't move, the wagon moved. The ball stayed where it was. But he said, if you look even more closely, you'll see that actually the ball moved a little bit forward on the side work because of friction. So his father taught him to look very carefully but not to try to explain, just notice. Rilke says something like, all those unsolved questions of the heart.

[61:14]

Yeah. He said, I don't know, can't remember exactly, but he said something like, try to love them like locked rooms. Like books written in a foreign tongue. Live the questions, don't try to answer them. Yeah, so, you know, I'm trying to talk about this koan. And why? It's expressed in such simple language, deceptively simple language. Yeah, why we like to hide things. And here's this little phrase, you know, go to a place where there's no hot or cold.

[62:31]

And why do we have this big deal introduction? That's, you know, what we're dealing with. Yeah, the hammer and tongs of transcendence. Oh, my gosh. The... Yeah. Here's this little stick I got here. Looks like a flowering branch. Yeah, but... And it's also that, some sort of springtime thing. But if you look more carefully... It's a mushroom. And like Alice in Wonderland, I might go through the rabbit hole if I bite it.

[63:37]

And it's also actually the soma of psycho and soma, psychosomatic. Soma means the mushroom. Psychosomatic means body, mind, illness. Soma also refers to a mushroom of ancient India. Which was psychedelic. So this image goes way back in Chinese and Indian culture, meaning transcendent experience. And if you're good, I'll give you a little piece. It's called zazen. Yeah. Yeah, here I go again.

[64:55]

It said that Hermes, the thief and messenger, Hermes, in his mother's house, he turned sideways and slipped through the keyhole like a Like mist on an autumn wind. Wind. Yeah. So when we sit, we try to bring our body into some kind of erectness, uplifting feeling.

[66:07]

Do you have the expression in German, that experience that was uplifting, that movie was uplifting? Is it similar? You lift up your body. And I think it's useful to try to lift... from inside your body. Lift the inside parts of your body. Just do it in any way you can, of course. If you can only lift the outside of your body, do that. Yeah, your backbone is kind of the outside of your body.

[67:18]

But if you, you know, the more you have practiced the establishment of yourself and the first foundation of mindfulness, you more and more find inside parts or domains of your body. The inside of your body becomes as clear as the feeling of the palm of your hand. Yeah, it's a little hard to explain. I'm trying to speak these days, for some reason, about bodily experience. Aus irgendeinem Grund versuche ich, während dieser Tage über körperliche Erfahrungen zu sprechen.

[68:48]

I didn't have an intention to go this way particularly. Ich hatte nicht eine klare Absicht, im Besonderen in diese Richtung zu gehen. That's one of the problems with koans. Das ist eines der Probleme mit den koans. They take you... where you weren't intending to go. They take you where you didn't know there was a place. That's one of the brilliances of koans. And one of the problematics as well. Because, you know, I don't know, if I wanted to go there during these lectures, go here during these lectures of this sesshin, And somehow we slipped through the keyhole of this locked door.

[69:58]

And some kind of autumn mist is carrying us somewhere. Yeah, so here we are. What am I talking? What are we talking about? You know, for a fish, the truth of the worm is the hook in it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you never know what's happening here. It looks like a koan, but there's a hook. So your body does become clearer. Right? You can feel your stomach like a space.

[71:12]

And your lungs and the soft stuff of your body. You can lift up those parts. You know, say the blood vessels in our forehead. Or the bones in our face. Yeah, we don't usually feel them too much. We don't know them like we know our nose. Or our eyes. Which probably when we were young we examined endlessly.

[72:12]

I know I decided very early on that I had a much too large a nose. I discovered that with two mirrors. And then I went around like this because I thought it made it look smaller. Why do you sound so funny? And then after a while you just notice it all the time when you wash and so forth. You know, we could say a seshin is the thorough ordering of the unfamiliar. Yeah, I mean, we hardly notice we're ordering things all the time.

[73:29]

The way you wash your face in the morning is usually quite a particular way you do it. So we want to make it unfamiliar. So we could say, put the soap on your face, if you use soap, with a toothbrush. This is quite unfamiliar, you know. Might work very well, you know. So for seven days in Sashin, put the soap on your face with a toothbrush. Which reminds me, although we don't take a bath in Sashin, we still try to wash.

[74:36]

Now, when some of you come to Doksan, I wish you'd stay in the other room. There's two rooms up there, so I could... You can still wash, you know. All the smelly parts. And your feet, too, because you lift them up into the air of everybody, you know. So sashin is a thorough ordering of the unfamiliar. As I said the other day, we do everything a little differently than usual, eating and so forth. So wie ich neulich gesagt habe, wir tun alles ein bisschen anders als gewöhnlich, das Essen zum Beispiel.

[75:58]

And a remarkable, often a remarkable clarity we feel in Sashin. Und da ist oft eine bemerkenswerte Klarheit, die wir während des Sashins spüren. From the ordering and from the unfamiliar. Durch das Orden und durch das Unvertraute, ja. Yeah, and that's something to do with this place where there's neither hot nor cold. You know, there's quite a famous story about Krishna. He was a kind of bad little boy when he was little. Krishna.

[76:59]

And one of the stories about him, which I actually saw danced once by Balasarasvati, by Balasarasvati, who was the great Indian dancer of this century probably. And Kamala, who was here, Buckner was here just last week, was her main disciple in the United States. And she was here once and did a dance thing for us. What, six months ago or a year ago or something? A while ago anyway. But anyway, this little boy, Krishna, starts eating some dirt. And the other little kids, I don't know why, maybe it's just the meanness of people sometimes.

[78:13]

They go and tell Krishna's mother. Your kid's eating dirt. So the mother goes out and says, come on, spit out the dirt, etc. And he says, I wasn't... Oh, I didn't eat any dirt. Oh, I didn't eat any dirt. And his mother said, come on, open up. And he opens his mouth, and she looks in, and she sees the whole cosmos swirling. And he opens her mouth and she looks in and she sees the whole cosmos swirling. Swirling, turning. Turning, yes. And when Balasarasvati dances, she looks in the mouth and she staggers back in this way that you really feel it.

[79:25]

And I can't. You can't, but... Can't pronounce the name. Balas. Balas. Sarasvati. Sarasvati. Yeah. And this is before likes and dislikes. Before likes and dislikes. Vorlieben und Abneigung. Before five years old, three or four, when you still eat floors. When you still eat? You still eat floors. Marie Louise and her brothers remembered when Sophia was at their place.

[80:33]

She started eating the floor. And really eating in the cracks, in the dirt, in the cracks. And that's what babies do, you know. But all her brothers and Marie Louise herself, as soon as they saw it, they knew what the wax tasted like. Because they did the same thing as kids, but they'd forgotten entirely about it, but they could taste the wax exactly. Yeah, also a similar story to Krishna.

[81:35]

Marie-Louise and her brothers had to eat all these things and they would hide them in their mouth. Certain food they were supposed to eat that they didn't like. Then she had some place where after the meal with all these things she hid and she would spit it out. Before going down the hall or something. And their mother at some point found this moldy pile of stuff behind a radiator or something. Yeah, like bread molds, you know. And her mother said, what's this? Oh, I don't know.

[82:41]

We don't know what it is. Yeah. Makes me think of Richie. Hermann's, Jutta's child. Yeah, Hermie's, again, the thief, the messenger. loved meat. But there was all this meat, sacrificial meat for the altar, and you weren't supposed to eat it. But he stole it. But then he didn't eat it. And he hid it in a barn somewhere. So he stole it and had it, but he didn't eat it, and so he still had it.

[83:45]

So it's no longer... It's meat, but it's meat not eaten. And then he denied he'd stolen it. Well, the other day, you know, Richie came up to our room. Who's six. But he told me he was four. And he insists that Sophia is a boy. So he looks first at this coffee table we have, which is a glass top, and there's things underneath. And he said, Well, you have a whole museum under here.

[84:47]

Yeah, so then he started going through all the drawers in the kitchen. And finally opened one which had quite a lot of chocolate in it. And he said, it would have been terrible if I had not opened this drawer. So I said, would you like some chocolate? Oh, no. So he had this, he found a hidden, for him, hidden chocolate. And then like Hermes, he said, no, it's the chocolate not eaten. But he still had it somehow, because he hadn't eaten it. And he came back the next day and asked for some chocolate.

[85:52]

The next day he came back and asked for chocolate. I think the similarity between Hermes, this myth, and Ritchie's behavior is actually accurate. The hidden, which is the truth, or the lie, which is also the truth? The hidden, which is... The truth, or the lie, which is the truth? Okay, so we don't know the blood vessels in our head or the bones of our the way we know our nose, which the way we know it from the outside.

[87:07]

But you start to, you know, but you're certainly connected to the blood vessels in your head and your bones. And through the first foundation of mindfulness, you can begin to feel that connection. Mm-hmm. You know, you hear a frog out here or a bird or something. And it can feel like you're hearing your insides. I mean, you don't know the You're connected to the blood vessels of your head or your bones. But you don't know them like you know your nose.

[88:33]

They're sort of separate from you, but they're inseparable from you. And the frog is something like that. It feels as much a part of you as your bones. You don't know the frog as another frog knows the frog. Yeah, but somehow it feels like your own body. The body you know from inside. And this is, we can say, is non-duality. The feeling of knowing everything as an inside.

[89:36]

Again, I'm approaching or speaking about this body experience. But if I say that, it's already wrong because that's a classification. And body experience is not a classification. It's more like an event. Mm-hmm. Or it's a movement. But often a movement you didn't see. Or notice. It's like you're trying to solve some problem. Or answer some question. And then one day, you notice that the problem's gone.

[90:38]

But you don't know when it happened exactly. You never understood anything. Just the problem went away. Why did the problem go away? Did it happen too quickly for ordinary consciousness to notice it? Or did it happen outside of some categories of consciousness? Anyway, it slipped by us through the keyhole. It slipped by us through the keyhole. Many things are like this. Often we would, you know, I think sometimes we say, I want the problem back so I can try to understand it.

[92:04]

You like the problem, actually. It's serving you in some way. So you didn't want an answer in the first place. But working with koans and working with yourself in meditation practice is often like this. The problems disappear. Mm-hmm. Tsukiyoshi was very good at this. I've been wearing my watch during Sashino. You're not supposed to wear watches. So it's stopped. So it's only quarter to three, so we can... We've got quite a ways to go. Maybe for the sake of normal time, we should find out what time it is.

[93:09]

Does anybody know? Ten before five. Oh, so that's what I guessed, actually. Okay. We have 90 more minutes of tape? Yeah, but I don't think there's 90 more minutes of legs. The legs are running out. Or they're recording at a high level of... I can remember, I used to sit through Sukershi's lectures. It was one of the hardest things to do. And sometimes, not every lecture, but sometimes they'd go on for an hour and a half or more.

[94:10]

And the question was, shall I hear the lecture or shall I prove how tough I am? Maybe the lectures get absorbed through the knees. So you lift yourself up into zazen posture. And you settle yourself in your breath. And then you bring your mind into one pointedness. And then you sense your vitality or your aware energy. and then you feel your vitality or your true energy.

[95:40]

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