As I said the other day, I gave one tissue after I arrived and I said I have to get used to not waiting for translation. So I've been in, most of you know, in Germany for six months or so. And I also have to... find out about the difference in what we can do here and what we can do in Europe. And of course, as I said, again, I want to, in a way, bring you up to date with what we did in Europe and vice versa. When I go to Europe, I try to get both sanghas somewhat in the same place. And it's, you know, it's not so easy because, you know, as daily zazen is to sashin, so sashin is to practice period.

[01:20]

Practice period makes a huge difference, a kind of difference even more so than sashin, the experience of sashin makes to daily practice. And yet I'm trying to weave some kind of teachings together that allow us to progress together in practice. The word Sashin means to gather the mind. But it means to gather the mind with other minds. You couldn't do a sashin all by yourself. That would just be more sitting. It would be like sitting in a barber shop, maybe, with a lot of mirrors. And you can't marry a mirror. I mean, marrying is different than living alone, and sitting together is different than sitting alone.

[02:28]

And it's a, from the point of view of mainstream of Buddhism, it is a very big mistake to think you can practice on your own. You can practice on your own up to a point, of course. And in the end we all practice on our own. Even sitting here in Sashin we're practicing on our own. Well, I can't say it's a mistake. How can it be a mistake to practice on your own? But it's a misunderstanding, let us say, if you think that can be the center of practice. Well, it could be the center of your practice, but you're not talking about the center of the lineage that brought you to practice in the first place. You can kind of get out of the stream and do your own practice. You don't even realize you've actually... received this sitting posture. I mean, you almost take your credit.

[03:33]

I can go sit down in my house. Look, when I started 30, 40, 45 years ago, no, people didn't sit down in their own house. You know, it wasn't, you'd think you're crazy, somebody would think you're, and people did think I was crazy and others for sitting down. And in fact, I was told by the Jungian Society in California that it was very dangerous to do that. Had to wait till you were 35 or 40 before you could sit down by yourself. And even Christmas Humphreys, who was head of the London Buddhist Society, when Grand Petya went to see him before he came to America, Christmas Humphrey said, don't sit for more than 20 minutes, it can make you crazy. So we're in a different world now, I mean, than in those days, in the 40s and 50s.

[04:33]

So whether you, even if you sit alone, you're actually part of a new vision of the mind and body That is everywhere in the culture now, like Freud's everywhere in the culture. And you don't even realize, most people don't realize when they say certain things that they couldn't have said those things before Freud. So we're all part of a stream that's entering into the stream of Western culture. And, you know, we can take advantage of it if we wish. But if we really want to be in the center of that stream within our own culture, then you need to practice with others. To some extent, there's various ways to practice with others.

[05:42]

So Crestone, Johannes Hart, there are ways ways we are trying to make so we can practice together. You've all brought the streams of whatever, of your various lives here and here today. Yeah, and this isn't just any other Sashin. If you think, oh, this is just one more Sashin I'm doing this year, where in the last few years it's, yeah, that's true, but with that truth, the sesshin won't be very real for you. As I say, when you hit the bell, you never hit the bell twice. You hit it once and once. And the sesshin has to be that kind of once. And if it's a gathering of the Se Shin, to gather Shin's mind, to gather the mind, gather your own mind and to gather your mind with others, then it makes a difference who the others are.

[06:58]

And right now we have this particular, these, you, And each one of you is making a Sashin. You're not just attending my Sashin or this residence here Sashin. This Sashin is now whatever it is, it's each of you. The other day I when I first got back and Someone slept in. The wake-up bell was late. And there was some discussion about it. What should we do? I guess then the wake-up bell wasn't rung at all, if I'm not right. Not like any traditional monastery, we have telephones here, so people phone, wake up, you know.

[08:01]

Right. That's all understandable. And there are various ways to respond to something like the wake-up bell not happening or would have been late. But whatever response we take, if we're practicing here, we should understand the logic of our practice. This is, you know, I've been, since that point, I've been thinking about it, because I really want us to understand the logic of practice. I was listening to a tape of Richard Feynman, that quite extraordinary and interesting physicist, this century, one of the two most important, I guess. And he said, If somehow all of physics was lost, or we could only transmit one thing to the next generation, the one thing we should transmit, he said, is that everything's made of atoms.

[09:21]

If you really give some attention to that, the rest of physics will unfold from that. Well, the basics of Buddhism are much like that. And he says, then he goes on to say, well, atoms are not, don't have sharp edges. They have fuzzy edges and they are always in motion and they tend to, can't pin them down and yet they form patterns. They are attracted to other atoms and they attach to other atoms and form relatively stable patterns. So if you look at an atom, it's fuzzy and it's not in any one place and it's moving around, yet it establishes patterns. And we can take Buddhism in a similar way and say everything changes, but really you have to look at that carefully and all of Buddhism will unfold. So I want to do two things this next seven months or so.

[10:45]

I'll be here a little longer this year. Also, I want to look at the basics, as I often do, but again. I want to look at the basics as Zen looks at the basics. Because Zen takes the basics of Buddhism and transforms them into the way Zen understands practice. And also, I want to try to get to the point, as I said the other day, it's taken me ten years to get the two sanghas to understand enough similar things that I can move on to teachings that depend on knowing prior teachings. So we start studying and looking at teaching, which only makes sense if you know four or five other teachings, plus if you have certain accomplishments in practice, like one-pointedness, non-interfering observing consciousness,

[12:05]

would be two I'll mention now. And you know, again, if I mention it, I think if you see it, you can begin to see that you already know it. You already have some capacity in this, even if you're a beginner. And you can begin to, by knowing about it, by identifying it as a capacity, attribute of practice, you can let it develop Okay, so going back to the wake-up bell. From the point of view of Sashin and living in a monastery like this, the wake-up bell rings when the wake-up bell rings. It doesn't ring some other time. So if you get up by the clock 15 minutes late, you just ring the wake-up bell.

[13:18]

What difference does it make? You don't make any comparison to the outside world at a clock time. A wake-up bell rings when a wake-up bell. So the person wakes up, oh my gosh, 20 minutes late. That's the last you think of it. You go up, ring the wake-up bell, and the whole day is 20 minutes late. out of sync with the outside world. But what difference does it make? You know, we don't have anything to do with the outside world. Unless you go shopping and need some phone calls. But that's the difference between... Maybe it's... Let me see if I can give you the sense of that's importance. Practice, our practice here and in Sashin is rooted in the Absolute. not in the relative. What does that mean? Well, it means, first of all, no comparison.

[14:22]

Can you have a mind? No comparison. And we're going to try to look at minds as... I was thinking the other day how within water within water are hidden snowflakes. If you change the temperature of water, snowflakes appear, can appear, given air and wind and things like that. Six sides of cold. Well, we don't only have one point of awareness, one kind of mind. if we change our body, change our concentration, other points of awareness, other centers of awareness appear. As ice, steam, snowflakes can appear out of water. In a way, we could say we're trying to return our mind out of various structures of water or mind to the fluid state of mind.

[15:35]

So I'm also going to be trying to find a way to speak about accessible gates of gates to what we mean by saying the absolute. And one that Kevin mentioned the other day is when you die, You don't die early. You don't die late. You die, that's all. You can't compare it to anything else. You die. It doesn't mean anything to say he or she died late. Well, I mean in relationship to when your child was going to arrive to be with you or something, yes, but in fact you died at that time. We could say that's the absolute.

[16:47]

If you can feel that, that's the absolute. So if you can feel at a particular moment, the wake-up bell rings when the wake-up bell rings. It's exactly like when you die is when you die. The wake-up bell rings when it rings. If you get the feeling of that, a lot of what we do here makes sense. or you can begin to see the logic of it. So I'm speaking now, you know, about the institution of Sashin. It's an institution inherited from Japan and China by us. It's a very particular, it's not like other long sittings. It's not just more sitting. It's a way of sitting with others.

[17:53]

It didn't exist in India. It's a Chinese creation. I don't really know the history of it, but that much is true, I think. So one aspect of Sushin is its name, that we gather the mind and we gather the mind with others. Second aspect is that we usually, we get up when we get up and we don't get up when the sun gets up. So it's customary to get up before the sun rises. Now that's a sense of the absolute. Sun gets up because the sun gets up. We get up because we get up. Does that make sense to you? We don't say, oh, it's so much.

[18:55]

You know, the sun does get up. But the sun also gets up in relationship to all things. We do things in relationship to all things. So when you have that feeling, you're the center. Each of us is the center. And we get up also before dawn, again, usually. We get up because we get up. We also usually get up before dawn. So dawn, in a way, happens in us. We gather our mind or gather our aliveness or being with things as they're happening. And we've chosen, you can choose any time, But Sashin has chosen to have a schedule. So if somebody says to you, oh, that Zen group is doing a Sashin and it starts at 5.30 or 6 o'clock, they don't understand what a Sashin is. They think a Sashin is more sitting. A sashim needs, you can have, you can sit, get up whenever you want, but if you're having a sashim, the institution of a sashim expects you to get up before dawn, so dawn happens while you're sitting.

[20:12]

And you're also mixing another aspect of Sushim, is you're not only mixing your mind with other minds, and that's a lot of it what the serving is about, we're not cooking this food to feed ourselves, I mean in a primitive sense we're cooking the food to feed ourselves, but we're cooking the food in a way so that we can cook it for each other and serve it to each other. And there's a whole synchronizing of the basic things we do, basic, you know, this wake up bell, and I sit, et cetera, and we eat. And so that the person serving serves in front of you or between two people. If it's me, I'm served separately. They bow to me. They don't bow over here. And you wait till I bow. You don't just decide to bow, well, I finished this, so now I bow.

[21:23]

No, you wait. Maybe I take a long time to fiddle with my bowls, so then you just stand there. But why not just stand there? Where have you got to go? Are you in a hurry or something? In the absolute, there's no where. We can stay here all day and we can all stand frozen in space with a serving bowls. That's the absolute. When you start thinking, well, I should, then you're not in the absolute. It means that when, if you're alive, breathing, your heart's beating, what difference does it make where you are? As soon as it makes a difference to you, you're involved in mental contents. It's okay to be involved in mental contents and get, you know, like, this is more interesting than that. But that's not the answer. That's the relative. I'm not saying we don't also live in the relative.

[22:27]

But what practice is trying to bring forward to us into our foreground is that we also live in the relative and we perform the absolute. It's not just there like some kind of groundless ground. We perform the absolute, we perform the relative. When you generate a mind without comparison, you're performing the absolute. If you think you don't perform it, then you believe in natural. You think there's some natural place, some natural way of being. Buddhism, there's no such thing as natural. It's just a cultural idea. Like we say, you know, you're talking to somebody and you stand too close, it feels unnatural. That's cultural. You go to other cultures and you stand right here and talk to people. In some cultures you talk here.

[23:29]

You know, that space is not natural. It's a cultural creation. And in the end, the idea of natural is the product of a culture that's primarily theistic. that there's some point where everything rests where it's true. Natural God or something. But isn't it? There's no such place. It's all many centers. So now we're trying to look at... I guess I'm ending up speaking about the... conceptual foundations of Buddhism itself, which are not the conceptual foundations of Western culture.

[24:30]

But they're also not the conceptual foundations of Asian culture. Whatever your culture, Buddhism is trying to move you out of your cultural framework. Though most of Buddhism in the West is going to fit into our Western culture. That's perfectly fine. But that's not the mainstream of Buddhism. And not even the mainstream of you yourself. Because you are more than your culture. And you are other than your culture as well. So we're trying to create a situation in Sashin in particular where you can maybe feel yourself outside your culture. So one of the aspects of sesshin is to interrupt your usual habits. The way we do things, everything is meant to be a little awkward and take a little time to learn it.

[25:40]

But once you learn it, Its advantage is twofold. One, it's different than your usual habits. And second, you don't have to think once you learn it. You just do it. And it's all about creating a situation, particularly in Sashin, where, in fact, if we hooked you up to a machine, your metabolism will all get in sync very quickly by the second day or so. And your mind will get in very similar waves with it. And something can happen in that situation. We can, in a sense, plumb the depth of a wider mind than our own. Plumb the qualities, at least. I don't know, depth, height, I don't know what word to use.

[26:48]

Snowflakes appear. And disappear. And we, as I started to say, we not only mix our mind with others, and with, in a sense, phenomena. And one way to do that, of course, is, again, the secret is to do things with two hands. You don't just put your chopsticks down like that. You put your chopsticks down with the feeling, with actually two hands, or the feeling of two hands. Somehow, you can find it out, these are just basics again, two hands weave the mind into the activity.

[27:57]

Focus the mind in the activity. It's almost like a conductor. You wouldn't see a music conductor conducting like this unless he'd had an injury. And you're conducting, you're performing Okay. You're also mixing night mind and day mind. So we get up early so that your night mind is not entirely gone. Wake up is usually, in a monastery in Japan, wake up is 20 minutes. Wake up, 20 minutes, you've got to be washed, toilet, everything, and on your seat. And a little faster than that, actually, because Han is... I think it's too fast for us. Plus, we live rather scattered.

[29:00]

We don't know if you all sleep in the zendo, you can do it. And there's a wash area right outside and latrines right outside. But you want, it's fairly fast to go from sleeping without thinking to sitting. You don't want to wake up, what did I do today? I think maybe I've got a zazen in 45 minutes. No, you want to wake up without Are you awake or are you asleep? You don't know. You just go into the toilet and wash your face. And traditionally there's no hot water. You wash with cold water. You don't think about, oh, is the water warm enough yet? You don't have it. You know it's bloody ice cold. So you just wash. It feels warm. And then you go sit. You're not even really awake yet. I really wasn't awake this morning. I mean, one should be physically awake, but somehow night mind is still there.

[30:06]

So you're mixing night mind and day mind. And as you know, all of you know, long before Buddhism, Indian culture had this sense that we're born with waking mind, dreaming mind, and non-dreaming deep sleep. And what that basic idea is fundamental to Buddhism. Because zazen is a way of non-dreaming deep sleep is surfacing in us. The skill of zazen is to let non-dreaming deep sleep surface in you. more than snowflakes or stars. So sashin is an institution with particular form so that you can join your mind, gather your mind with others,

[31:09]

At the same time of mixing these three minds, by getting up early enough, and you have to sit still enough, it's very hard to do it without sitting still, sit still enough to begin to observe, feel presence, not just observe, but feel the presence of other modes of awareness. And you know if you sit well and you feel physically clear, it's hard to say whether you're physically clear or mentally clear. Your body goes with certain states of mind, particularly more fundamental states of mind, modes of And there's certain kinds of pain involved, I'm sorry to say.

[32:17]

There's, of course, the usual pain of discomfort and stiffness, staying in one place and so forth. And that pain is, you know, you get more experienced in sitting and you're used to sitting, that pain mostly goes away. But there's the pain of... Well, again, the example I always use, if you put your arm down on a chair or a table during the day, and you say at 8 o'clock in the morning, I'm going to leave my arm here until 12 o'clock. That'd be quite difficult to do. After a while, your arm would hurt, you'd want to move it, etc. You can fall asleep and do it. What's the difference? The difference is your mind. You can put your arm on, if you fall asleep, you can come back several hours later and the person's arm is still where it is.

[33:23]

But if they're awake, the person's arm won't be there. So the question is, how can you come to a mind which, waking conscious mind, which doesn't mind if the arm is in one place all day? To be able to do that is a fundamental skill of Buddhism. Almost like you could be lifted up and put somewhere, completely conscious. Alive or dead. How can you have mixed the mind of the night mind where the arm can just be in one place into your daily... You're making a different kind of soup. Different kind of aliveness. So we just sit.

[34:27]

And it becomes painful until you can just sit without needing to move. Like at night. So that's one kind of basic pain. That you... You know, if you really want to... The Sashin creates the way you can go through this transition. And it's unfortunately, I don't know why, it's just painful because consciousness locks us in. And I'm watching, you know, I won't talk about Sophia today. Pardon me to resist, I probably will mention her. This is Sophia's, my little daughter, who's a tiny person, tiny huge person. This is huge to me. But I'm watching her form her consciousness.

[35:34]

and I'm watching it lock her in, or not yet lock her in, and wondering if I can relate to her in a way, her developing consciousness, which she needs to do, and various kinds of self. I'm watching various kinds of self develop. Not one self, but various kinds of self develop. Will her consciousness lock her in, or can we have a lot of doors in it? One of the doors is to have what I could call today the night mind present in the day mind. Once you have that, you're not distracted anymore. Things don't distract you. Whatever happens. You might as well be asleep. Unless you have to do something. So that's one. For some reason to go through that is painful. But you know, those of you who've done sashins a lot know that, you know, you can be quite painful for most of the morning or afternoon, and then suddenly there will be a period or two periods of zazen, it's all gone away.

[36:54]

Where the heck did it go? There's a fine-tuning in your mind. And you usually can't, the habits of mind take it over, and a period later, or ten minutes later, it's gone, and you're kind of sitting, oh my God, where's that bell ring, etc. And even, I think, experienced sitters, you still have the habit of the relative, and it's very difficult, you know, to move fully into the absolute in such a way that not only do you not care about whether your leg's back hurts, But it's almost not, it doesn't hurt. Somehow we discover that through finding a way to sit through pain. And there's advantages to it too, psychological advantages.

[37:59]

I'm not going to discuss that today, probably at all. Then there's also karmic pain. And the best example I can give you of that, which is somewhat related, is in a monastery you're expected to hold your hands like this all day long. You never put your arms down. And beginners, they give them very long sleeves. And if you put your arms down, the sleeves gather all the, whatever, dust, dirt, or something's on the floor. So you have to hold your arms up. Well, if you do this, and, you know, we put our hands together like this, it's all very precise. Everything is a... Nothing's natural. Everything's a mudra. Everything's a form. Everything you do is a form already, but a form you've inherited in your culture. Like this space, we feel comfortable talking to somebody. So you're taking the fact that everything is, in fact, a form, and you're altering those forms slightly.

[39:08]

And there's reasons for all this, but, you know. Then you hold your arm like this. After a while, if you do this, and I lived in a monastery, your back begins to feel like there's about eight or ten daggers in it. And I realized there's nothing wrong with this. What's wrong with this? I can do it for a few minutes. It's like you can concentrate on your breath for a few minutes, then you lose it. I can do this for a few minutes, and after a while, my back starts to hurt. Well, I decided, okay, this is a clear hold. My back must have unclear holds in it. And I will just stay this way till it... And everybody has to figure out some way to do it. They all do it, so I did it too. But my way was, okay, something's going to give. And so I just went around like this, and the first few weeks it was pretty bad. And then suddenly my back just relaxed. Now, that's a funny mechanical thing.

[40:12]

But, you know, it might be two or three years of therapy might not do that. But holding your hands in this posture does a fantastic... Because your body is leased by your mother and father, and your mother owns your shoulder, your... you know, your third grade owns down here, you know, et cetera. And you can find out when you're massaged sometimes that it makes you think. Memories come up. So a lot of our memories, feelings, are in our body. So Zen has us say, well, here's the shortcut. Give somebody a clear hold, and it releases the unclear hold. But we can't do that. I mean, I don't know. I haven't brought that kind of expectation to our semi-monastic practice or to sashi. But it's not bad. And it has a good effect. So we do similar things. Just trying to sit begins to release the karmic holes in our musculature.

[41:23]

No, what I'm saying here, and I think I should stop because it's getting the kind of time I'm supposed to stop. Relatively and absolutely. Yeah. Relative to your legs and to the clock. What I'm speaking about here is really the four foundations of mindfulness. And I'm trying to move us into looking in some depth or some accuracy at the practice of mindfulness, which maybe it's the first foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the body, but it's really mindfulness within the body or bodyfulness within the body. And we have a door here in this sashim that we can open. to these four foundations of mindfulness as a transformative practice, not just a practice of bringing attention to things.

[42:40]

Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every event and place.

[43:05]

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