ability to do it is dependent first on some preliminary practices. Meditation, if possible. mindfulness and so forth. But, I mean, those aren't preliminary practices themselves, except in relationship to something more advanced, like this sedimentation of a So if it's a fairy tale, Maybe it's a kind of fairy tale.

[01:08]

But if it's a believable fairy tale, then you may have the chutzpah, you may have the thorough intention to realize it. Usually, the Usually to do it for yourself, to do it to solve your own problems, to improve your own life, that intention isn't powerful enough. I think you need the energy of the Sangha and the sense of all sentient beings. I think only when you feel this is something really that human beings should do.

[02:21]

Some people should realize this possibility. Then you can have the power in your intention. And I think this piece, you know, I could actually put it out if you want, the one that Anton gave me from the New York Times. It says, you know, I don't know. It sounds like the research is probably valid. The other day I spoke to Michael Murphy.

[03:29]

I should have discussed it with him because he has the largest archive of scientific articles about meditation and anyone in the world, I think. Which he's accumulated, an archive, for his search on the future of the body and the zone, etc. Well, it's now called The Zone. It used to be called The Psychic Side of Sports. But rather, the research sounds good, but whether it is or not, What they speak about, the conclusions they draw from the research, in my experience, are accurate.

[04:42]

That is this bell curve, you know, which is either to the left or the right side in this I guess, study of the brain. It's the left and right side of whatever their piece of paper is. And if it's on the right side, the guy's in trouble. And for most people it goes back and forth and moves around. Depending on their mood. But in these experienced meditators, It seemed to be consistently on the left.

[05:59]

And sometimes extremely on the left all the time. That's what I call the set point. Well, that means they have somehow sedimented a mind which, no matter what happens to the day, somehow they find themselves in a joyful, relaxed state. Yeah. So I think that the idea of, I mean, I think that for me is an example of that you can shift around the composition of mind.

[07:02]

The sequence in which you perceive, know, think, etc. Mm-hmm. And once you are able to do it and establish it, then it begins to have its own fruits. It's its stableness or continuity over time that starts this process of sowing and reaping, as I spoke about this morning. And it is this stabilisation within a certain period of time that enables us to weave ourselves into the world.

[08:06]

Okay, someone else? Yes? In our group there was a question about this sedimentation, about this normal difference. I would like to... I would like to ask you something about sedimentation. There were some misunderstandings or some discussion about it, and I would like to present the way I'm understanding it. So my understanding is that sedimentation is a process that just happens, usually in life. So? And it's like ...

[09:13]

making layers of cultural experiences, personal history, and these layers are sedimenting and they influence my mind and so forth. And then, what you just said, this sedimenting of other consciousnesses, is it a conscious decision, where then what I have learned, or what I... So my understanding then is that the way you describe the sedimentation is something I'm doing and it replaces the other sediments. So it's like the initial mind replaces my old habits and ways of dealing. Sounds good. These are visual images.

[10:30]

And it does happen that visual images Like in mathematics, too, for some reason. Very helpful. You know, Einstein had visual images which helped him break through and then show the mathematics of change. What's the German word that I used? Ausschalung? Anybody remember the word? Anschauung? Anschauung? To imagine something... Yeah, that's the word Einstein used. Anschauung. Yeah, Anschauung. And so to imagine something like this, like there's layers and you're changing the layers, this can be helpful in your practice. Und so etwas sich vorzustellen, dass es da Lagen gibt, die ihr verändert...

[11:34]

And it can be further helpful when you say, then, how do I get rid of these, how do I move these layers that are already sedimented? Well, what I called this morning the Autobahn of Thinking, the Schnellstraße. This is no longer just sediment. This has turned into concrete. And what was... I mean, just by repetition it's sedimented. By repetition, it sedimented. But by the belief in permanence, it's turned into cement. Aber durch den Glauben an die Beständigkeit wird es in Beton verwandt.

[12:44]

So you can't really get rid of that layer until you give up your subtle belief in, your explicit and subtle belief in permanence. Ihr könnt diese Schicht nicht wirklich aufgeben, wenn ihr diesen subtilen Glauben an die Beständigkeit Unbeständigkeit nicht aufgeht. Beständigkeit, ja, nicht aufgeht. Yes. Ich glaube, es war fast eine ganz ähnliche Frage gewesen. We had a very similar question. I have. Vielleicht erzähle ich es nur drauf hin. Und zwar 1995 hatten wir plötzlich die Idee, wir mögen nicht mehr Fernsehen. In the year 1995 we suddenly had the idea that we don't like to watch TV anymore. Who's we? Oh, okay. Somebody said we will have an experiment for three months. And since then we stopped watching TV.

[13:45]

Except very important things like the soccer world championship. Of course. I still think that we had made a very good decision and if I look once in a while I find it very difficult to watch. And now it also happens with our newspaper, the same process. The newspapers get worse and worse. And it seems as if inside, implicit, something happens if I'm always taking in these bad news or these bad things. And that was the question, are there other sediments?

[15:12]

And I think the question has been answered already. But I think there's something like a conflict of goals. I don't want to completely retreat from the world. I cannot just try to get rid of all the bad influences. Yeah, I understand. But how to absorb and not get... You know, I call the... newspaper, the Daily Downer. And the fact is that a handful of people I've known who have the most liberated state of mind.

[16:13]

Simply will not read newspapers or watch television. Somehow they keep themselves informed enough, but they really won't, like Ivana Ilyich, she wouldn't read newspapers or watch television. Once he said, in the last ten years, he picked up a newspaper in an airplane sitting on the seat beside him and confirmed his decision. Im Großen und Ganzen halten sich diese Leute informiert, aber Ivan Illich zum Beispiel liest keine Zeitung und schaut kein Fern. Seine Erfahrung wurde bestätigt, als er einmal im Flugzeug saß und eine Zeitung aufhob, also aufnahm und darin gelesen hatte. For reasons similar to yours, I will go for... I don't get a newspaper at Crestown, for instance.

[17:17]

Yeah, I never read it. But for some reason, I don't know why, I do feel I have an obligation to keep myself informed, so... I do read newspapers sometimes and watch the news sometimes. Okay. Did you say that this also makes a kind of sedimentation? Of course, of course. Antonio, a friend there.

[18:38]

Yes. Somebody else. Yeah. When we talked about this question, Lona just put out, Then the question came up, what's the contents of this mind of clarity or the mind of the second skandha? What's the contents? So we then thought it's not a fixed content, it's more like a function. He knows a softie when he sees one. You sure that's our cat? Oh, yeah. Four or five, it looked like him. I've been trying to get in for years.

[20:05]

So is it more like a fixed content? We thought it's not more like a fixed content but more like a process or something that changes. In contrast to a mind where we identify with the contents and which is very superficial. Well, it might not be superficial, but the problem of identification is a problem. Well, I think this koan number three, which I gave you the introduction and case for, it says something like, the mind's eye sees everywhere like a mirror without any special discriminations.

[21:16]

Doesn't mean the mind is always just reflecting like a mirror. Again, we have to understand this as an initial state of mind. The content is whatever's there. The dynamic of it is that you're not thinking about it. Not comparing. But you may decide to think about it or compare. But you're not automatically thinking about it and comparing. That's a decision you decide to let yourself... go into.

[22:30]

But the default position is that your mind feels something like the ocean and everything just flows into it. Okay, someone else? Herman? Oh, little Herman. Okay, yeah. This is a picture of the sedimented mind. That brought me to the question, do we hold different states of attentiveness or minds at the same time?

[23:36]

For example I worked with the sentence, the one who is not busy practiced this sentence Then I have this this in mind. I have this level in mind. Then I have the level where I am very busy. Then I have the inner observer. And does this make sense, so to speak, or is this an intermediate stage? Does this make sense or is it a step in between?

[24:55]

Does your description make sense, you mean? No, that I'm practicing it all the time. And that's what it is? That's the result? Is the practising of it all the time the realisation of it, or is the practising of it only a stage? Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, both are true. I mean, if you practice something enough, it becomes... Well, let me just say something about sediment for a minute. The most common use of the idea of sediment is you have a muddy glass of water and you set it down, and by morning all the sediment has settled and it's cool.

[26:07]

And from that point of view the sediment is all the unnecessary baggage in your mind and it settles out. Leaving the mind clear. And that's likened to the process of meditation. But here we're using sediment not as stuff, but rather as a process of changing levels. So if you repeat something like noticing without thinking, enough, eventually you always notice without thinking.

[27:30]

When you always notice without thinking, you're very close to what I mean by the mind of non-graspable feeling. It's a new habit, a wisdom habit. And you don't have to exactly practice it anymore. But sexually, sometimes you do practice it, because you kind of freshen up yourself by... practicing it. And likewise with the one who is not busy. After a while, underneath, no matter how busy you are, you feel calm.

[28:39]

Somehow the busyness doesn't take hold of your state of mind. When that happens, you don't any longer have to really practice some kind of repetition or reminder to that of the one who is not busy. But still, sometimes it's nice to come back to it a little bit. You know, we're You know, imperfect human beings with a relatively short lifetime. Yeah, okay, something else? Moritz? Yes.

[30:06]

I'm still thinking about an example you once brought up. The spirit. So you said that if you enter a room, you should not move the mind to the side, you should just give it room. When you enter a room, there's a certain feeling of mind. Yeah, present in the room. Yeah. So it's important to notice this mind and not to just put it aside. So I don't know why it's coming up all the time and I don't have a certain question, but why

[31:26]

is it important? And I have the feeling it is important. Well, I think just trusting that you feel it's important is more important than the why. But I cannot... It makes more sense to just turn to our own present example. There's a particular feeling in this room right now. Different than before. And it's a different feeling than what's in your group. What makes the difference?

[32:54]

And also, by the way, since we didn't follow up on your discussion of the... Second group, anyone who wants to bring things up from that, that's fine with me. You mean the day before yesterday? Yes. And each person in a situation, just being present, their presence is part of this. They're each... Presence is your own non-graspable feeling. And that affects the feeling. And when you're in a group, Sometimes the group has a good feeling, sometimes it has a bad feeling.

[34:03]

If it's a bad feeling, usually the conversation, no matter what you say, feels like molasses. And if that's the case, how do you change it? You can try to say cheery things. Yeah, like, let's all go out in the snow and make angels. Okay. Or you can actually more successfully change the feeling in your own presence and it can change the whole room. Okay, someone else? I was in the same group like Moritz. And we exchanged experiences we have during a sitting And there was one experience that we shared and it was similar

[35:21]

So one person had that experience that he or she felt that the mudra is way to the right and then she looked but it was right in the center. And another person had a similar experience with the sitting cushion. The feeling was that it was way to one side, but when he or she looked it was still in the center. And I myself had that experience as if I'm breathing on the left hand side.

[36:46]

Then I tried to bring it into the center and it always slipped back to the left hand side and then I said, okay, I'll leave it where it is and then it by itself went back to the center. Maybe you could say something about that. Good. Well, generally in the early years of practice, if you practice three times a week and no sashins, the earlier years are the first 15. The first 15? The first 15. If you sit every day, twice a day, 365 days a year, the early years are about three. But anyway, in the early years, we tend to have this kind of experience. We feel like we're to the left and we're... Maybe we're very slightly to the left, but it feels like we're way over here, or our hands feel.

[38:03]

But, yeah. But it's normal to try to practice with it by making slight changes or something. But it's usually more effective to do what you did. Just notice it and let it do what it does. It's almost like our subtle body or kind of presence is centering on our physical body. And the thought sheath, didn't we speak about that? The thought sheath, the body sheath, is also one that gets us off center. Sometimes our meditation body sort of gets outside the thought body and then can't get back in.

[39:20]

At least if I'm using those words to describe something that feels a little bit like that. I don't know how to relate what I'm going to say now to the texts we were dealing with. You don't have to. Because it's not in there. My concern is anxiety. But it came up again during this week and when dealing with the text, so it might have something to do with it.

[40:25]

I would like to talk about fear, because it concerns me, although I cannot relate it to the texts, because it does not seem to be in there. Well, it relates to an experience I had during the session in October. I already talked about that in the group. Are you translating yourself? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Do you mind? No, I don't mind. And the experience was that Well, in the group I said it was some... I experienced it as a state of clarity and somebody asked me, so what was clear in your clarity? Well, nothing special, actually. I just noticed... Well, I would say it was sort of clarity, but what bothers me is what came next, and that is that I noticed that I had forgotten my name.

[41:36]

I don't know how long that lasted, but anxiety came up. I had to find out what my name was, and then I remembered my name is Alex, and I'm married, and I got two sons, and I was gone. The anxiety was gone. Yeah, and the state of mind, too. And And what Well, in rational thinking I know that I don't have to be anxious about that.

[42:49]

That doesn't help me. In the experience itself, that's not the first and probably not the last time that that happened to me, that anxiety sort of pulls me back What concerns me is... Again, this is a fairly common experience, I think, the early years of practice.

[44:05]

In your ordinary state of mind, usual state of mind, it would be very disturbing if you couldn't remember your name. And it might be And it should be justifiably disturbing, I think. But if you're in zazen, to have a mind with no reference point is good. You don't anymore know who you are. It's one reason we don't wear wedding rings, glasses and things like that if we can in zazen. We want to take off those reference points.

[45:07]

We all want to have a shaved head or no hairstyle and so on. One reason we try to wear similar clothes. We don't have to, but we do. Way's practical little formalities that help this no-reference-point mind. No, I would guess that in this no-reference-point mind, you're not so used to it. And you still have an observing mind. And it had a moment of nervousness at this new state of mind.

[46:24]

So it tried to check up and make sure everything was okay by bringing in the observer's name. And then the observer couldn't find his own name. And you lost your children. And so you got much more anxious. And the self said, I won that one. Tell me your name. Or maybe you're so deeply in non-reference point mind that you don't even know what the group said.

[47:29]

Yes. And this is something that interests me very much and also was part of our group discussion. To change from one state of mind to another. And I have a choice. The problem is that I'm the surgeon. The surgeon? Yeah, the surgeon. So we said the path towards it is through attention, mindfulness and presence. Maybe I'm mixing two things.

[48:57]

So the one is that I do this step by putting something in an input. Like I'm setting wisdom, for example. The other step is that I'm somehow cutting off the normal way I'm functioning. But because this normal functioning is happening all the time, So then that means that maybe every second or every other second I have to cut myself off from that state of mind and come back to my initial goal or my initial

[50:10]

Like, what would you want to do? What would be your niche? What would you be trying to do in contrast to your ordinary state of mind? Not thinking. So, I don't know why, but the feeling is to bring in a distance your space between my regular thinking and this other kind of experience.

[51:31]

It has something to do with distance. Yeah, an interruption. So a phrase like noticing without thinking is an interruption. And at first you have to do that. Because your usual state of mind has a tremendous momentum and inertia. But after a while, you can't really so easily make a distinction between your normal state of mind and the mind of non-thinking. Because you're so used to both, both are normal. It's just a matter of choice.

[52:36]

Is there a mind, something like in between, I feel myself breathing, and this mind has reached like 50% but not 100%? There are probably a million such minds. Every moment is actually different. But we do have to establish some kind of continuity from moment to moment. And you may get familiar, there's only a certain number of minds we can actually get familiar with. Like we can emphasize separation, we can emphasize connectedness.

[53:44]

Doesn't make so much sense to emphasize half connected. So usually there's certain categories that are our possibilities as human beings in a world where we have not a dualism but a contrast between contents and the absence of contents. Where we live in a world that's not necessarily dualistic. It doesn't have to be dualistic. But in which there will always be a contrast between A mind with contents and a mind without contents. Or identifying with contents or believing in contents.

[54:47]

Or accepting the contents and not identifying with them. There's only a certain number of possibilities. And we learn to feel at ease among those possibilities. But at first it requires kind of experiencing them separately. I know if we have a habit in one direction, an automatic, we have to break that automatic habit. Now you said that And you're the surgeon. Yeah, that's true. But also there's the problem that sometimes you have to let the world be the surgeon.

[55:50]

That would be a little harder to do. To let situations begin to to affect you but that's one reason we come to a place like this because the situation does some of the work for us and we can give in to the situation, as we can eventually give in to the world, without losing our power. Okay, that's enough. Yes? I have another question for you. Today at lunchtime, there is a bowl of blood. I have a question.

[56:51]

During lunch I dropped one of the bombs. Yes. The wonderful thing was that the ball wasn't empty. The contents were still in there. You mean when you picked it back up, the food hadn't fallen out. How long did you hold it upside down? I was thinking, I fell off the table. Whoa! The question is that I don't practice pleasure, no karma. I have no conscious about how it happened, how it dropped, how it slipped out of my fingers. The ball just was gone. And I also couldn't find that I was not attentive.

[58:05]

That's something I have no experience with. It's new to me. Could that have been kind of a white experience or a state of mind? Demons. Oh, I tell the... Demons. I tell the Welsh... There's a lot of demons that go around like... [...] Could it have been like a state of mind you talked about this morning, like a pre-knowledge?

[59:07]

Well, you know, we do... These things are interesting when they happen. And we do most things with, you know, just out of habit. It's surprising and scary sometimes how much we drive out of habit and still talk to people and do things. The way we handle bowls and things like that is mostly habit. We don't have to think about it. Und die Art und Weise, wie wir schalen, bewegen und damit umgehen, ist hauptsächlich aus Gewohnheit heraus. And sometimes when we bring a habitual activity into the realm of mindfulness, manchmal wenn wir eine gewohnheitsmäßige Aktivität in die Achtsamkeit hineinbringen, like eating with Oryoki, wie zum Beispiel, dass Sie Oryoki essen, it's the same but different.

[60:26]

And your attentiveness sometimes interferes. Sometimes our habits and our attentiveness kind of bump each other and we drop something. Whatever the reason, though, it's very interesting you can't catch the moment. But you know what I found in my own experience is I might not catch the moment of why I dropped this watch, for instance. But I also find very often since I started practicing meditation. But very often since I started meditation. My hand will just, without my thinking, follow it down and catch it before it hits the ground.

[61:35]

It used to be, once I dropped it, it was too late, it was gone. But there's an intelligence in my hand that does it now. But one still has these moments sometimes where somehow there's a slippage and you don't know quite what happened. That's interesting. It shows you one's mindfulness can get deeper. Now see, I tried to follow your instructions today. But I went too long, right? Thank you very much. This afternoon I hope to give you some portions of this koan in the Shoyuroku number 20. 20.

[64:13]

And it's a very important koan for our family style, our house, our lineage. But directly and in many other ways I've spoken about it for years. So I'm kind of hesitant. Und ich bin irgendwie zögerlich, mehr darüber zu sprechen. But it's the most well-known koan, using a phrase, not knowing his nearest. Und das ist der bekannteste koan für die Benutzung des Satzes. And it's also translated, not knowing is most intimate. But today I want to try to do something else this morning. You know, let's take this idea of an initial mind.

[65:58]

You know, say that you take it to heart. Maybe it's possible. I'd like to establish a different initial mind than the one I usually have functioned from. Yeah, how could you demarcate that? In yourself, if you want to do this. Yeah, perhaps, you know, you might come in here in the Zendo... a time when no one's here. And do three bows and vow to yourself, I will realize this initial mind. You know, I realize when I speak about these things, like I've been doing the last days in the seminar, that my effort to be clear is, you know,

[67:21]

Yeah, it is misleading. Because even if I speak about like noticing without or feeling before thinking, still I present it as a concept that you practice this Feeling without thinking, you can understand that conceptually. So although the practice is about feeling, the basket it's in, the frame it's in, is a conceptual frame. And I don't know how to get around that.

[68:47]

Because I know that particularly for, you know, all of you are so smart, the smarter you are, the more you enjoy grasping things conceptually. And I know that you are all very smart, and the smarter you are, the more the tendency is to grasp things conceptually. And even the non-graspable feeling you grasp conceptually. And so it leads you to, I think unfortunately, sometimes into that which you can grasp conceptually. Now most of the traditional antidote to that And the traditional counter-pole is built into the life of practicing together.

[70:17]

Mostly the details we just do without asking why. If you ask why, then you want a conceptual frame for it. But it goes against our modern nature to do something without asking why. But if we only do things when we understand why, things are always in a mental framework. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. Tassara helps, but rather Crestone helps. But a lot of us have a problem with Crestone because it goes against our

[71:26]

wanting to be in charge of our own lives. It's very hard to abandon oneself into the world. A sort of lay back into the world as if it were taking care of us. The world does take care of us. But we take that for granted. Instead of actually experiencing the world taking care of us.

[72:35]

I know this is my weak point too. And I try to find ways too. lesson to counteract my weak point. You know, sometimes, you know, occasionally I try to cook something. In fact, I do cook something. I don't just try, I actually do it. And I actually eat it, even occasionally other people do. And I chop the celery, for instance. And I... And my knife technique is improving a little bit.

[73:48]

But, you know, occasionally off the cutting board a little tiny piece of celery falls. And I hardly need it for the soup stock I'm making. It's really tiny and it sticks to the counter and it's hard to get back. But I feel quite uneasy if I don't actually get this one little last piece of celery up on the cutting board and then into the soup stock. And I think probably we all feel that way. It's not logical. I suppose if I were cooking for hundreds of people, You know, it doesn't matter.

[74:48]

You're losing lots of pieces of celery. I'm not trying to be efficient. I just feel some need to respect this last little piece of celery. sliver of celery. So again, I think we probably all feel that way to some extent. So it's not about some logic that you need that piece of celery or it's wasteful even to Let it go down the sink. But there's some lack of respect. I don't know what the word for German, of course, is.

[76:01]

Is it similar to respect here, the same word? Yeah, it's the same word, respect. Because in English it's quite an interesting word. The re part means to step back. To step back and do something again. And the specked part means to see, to look, to observe. And strangely and mysteriously, the specked part also means to auger. to foretell. Augur is to be able to tell the future. To predict or foresee the future. So somehow in this little tiny word, respect, is to step back and observe again, and to see again, and through that maybe foresee, that the word respect somehow

[77:18]

You step back to do it again and it reaches into the future. And that's very much what I'm trying to find some way to speak about. Suzuki Roshi always spoke about, very often, Buddha nature. He tried to introduce the idea of Buddha nature. And he tried to introduce it as different from soul, self, and so forth. And to, yeah. Yeah. But for me, I don't use the term Buddha-nature very often. In a comparable way I might say mind nature instead of Buddha nature.

[78:50]

Everything we see has the nature of mind. well as an objective dimension. So here she would say everything has Buddha nature. Has or is? I didn't understand. I said, so here she would say everything has Buddha nature. But then he would say, which... Geralt just anticipated, he would say, no, it is Buddha nature. Because if you say has, it's a kind of dualistic idea. I remember from years ago, Sukhira, she's saying, we never say, I have a stomachache.

[79:58]

Or I have a stomach. We would just say there is a stomach. There is a stomachache. And everyone knows, I don't mean your stomachache, I mean my stomachache. But the idea of, now I don't know if this comes from some yogic influence on Japanese language and culture. But they don't use the word, they don't have this sense of I possess something. I mean, the most common example I use of this idea that there's something that possesses something is like when we say, it rains.

[81:12]

We don't just say in our language, Rain rains. But we say, we have to have a doer of the rain, an it. It's a deeply theological idea throughout our language. And it affects us. All of our zazen, we're wondering, what kind of it is doing zazen? Who is doing zazen? Instead of just a feeling with not even having to ask that question, zazen is doing zazen. It's just not in our thinking. And Sikri, she said that the chanji, the character for

[82:14]

when it is used for have in Chinese is the character for skin. And I don't know the Chinese character but he spoke about it as, you know, the skin has your body, your eyes and so forth. And I think he expressed the feeling it was a lot like a blind person, as I said the other day, might feel the skin, the surface of everything. That shared surface that reaches everywhere. And folds together to make enclosures. If you have some feeling like that some image like that, it feels like your actions are more likely to penetrate into the world.

[83:51]

Instead of feeling we have to do something to get our actions to penetrate into the world, we feel our actions just penetrate into the world. In the world's actions penetrate into us. And we might do something in addition, but it's an addition, not the only thing. So the way to the traditional sense of how to develop a practice like sedimenting an initial mind, is to have the feeling of doing it in a context with others, And doing it in a way that it reaches others.

[85:15]

Or doing it in a way that it's possible for others to do it too. Yeah, you feel you're doing it in a little psychic room or spiritual room. And that spiritual or psychic room is shared by or touches everyone else. And almost in a morphogenetic way, your ability to do it makes it possible for others to do it. There's a At Eheji, there's a... Well, I, you know, practiced at Eheji for a while.

[86:31]

Ich habe für eine Zeit in Eheji praktiziert. And I was very pleased to find Half Dipper Bridge, because Sukirish used to speak about it quite often. That's a book? No, it's a bridge, Half Dipper Bridge. Oh, und ich war glücklich darüber, diese... And I went to, found the bridge and went and stood there with some deep feeling from many centuries earlier. Yeah, and half-different bridge, it's called that. In those days, they had to carry water always. They didn't have plumbing like we do.

[87:33]

And Dogen's habit was, whenever he used water, he would go back to the stream to put back in the stream the water he didn't use. He wouldn't just dump it on the ground, he'd bring it back to the stream. With a sense of respecting the running water, to go back into the running water. So the custom at Heiji, when you wash, everyone, even on a day like this, everyone washes outside on a long board with a metal pan with cold water. The bell rings. Wake up, pal, and you have 20 minutes from wake up to sitting in the Zen.

[88:46]

Well, 15, because you've got to be in early. And you have to pee and wash in that length of time. Pinking and washing, huh? And you have to get your robes on. And... So you have no choice, so it's just fine. If you have choice, you think, oh, I'd rather have warm water. If you have no choice, you just do it. So you wash very quickly. But then you always leave some water in your little tub. bucket your little pan and when you dump it you dump it towards yourself rather than away from yourself and you're much more careful with it naturally and that's kind of

[89:56]

It's a yogic culture. It really designs the activity, so you have to take care of it. You want cups and dishes and everything to be breakable. Because how you take care of things is more important than whether things break or not. Another funny story about Sukershi. He... When he went shopping in San Francisco, he had a habit of always taking the oldest vegetables, the worst ones.

[91:07]

And even though it was a Japanese, you know, Japan town grocery store. They thought it was a little strange. But he did it because he felt sorry for the old vegetables. So when he went to the counter, they'd say... Why don't you take these? These are better. He said, no, no, I want to buy this one. And they'd say, well, why? He'd say, I don't know. I just want to buy this one. And he said, no, I always had to pay the same price. as for a good one.

[92:10]

But he said, for me it was just my habit to do so. And when he was little, he was told, you know, one of the customs is If there's several things to share, the first person always takes the worst thing. And the second person takes the next worst thing. And they tried to explain it to him when he was little. And they said, it's so that you develop your virtue. So then he always thought he should take the best one. And leave the worst one for others so they could develop their virtue.

[93:21]

So that's the problem with trying to understand it intellectually. But rather it's a way of reaching into the world. I don't know how to explain it. But I notice in my own feeling, for instance. If I have a teacup, like I'm sitting at my desk and I have a teacup. When I pick up the teacup, I feel, I'm sorry, this sounds strange, but I feel the teacups taking care of me. And I feel a respect for the teacup. And when I feel that, it somehow makes me think of Ivan Ilyich. I mean, Ivan Ilyich, I don't know why he did this, but he always... tried to take very good care of me.

[94:48]

He would leave little obscure messages on my answering machine that he was thinking about. Some little note would arrive on a small piece of paper. But anyway, this sense he had, not just for me, but of actually taking care...

[95:19]

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