Let me say, a simple way to start talking about it, is where do most people think their feet are? Most people think their feet are down there. But down there in relation to what? If you think your feet are down there it means you have a sense of location somewhere above your feet. But can any of you tell me where that location is above your feet? Now most people, one of the most common places is your face.

[01:06]

And we talked about that already. And moving your sense of location into your chest. Not really into your heart, but into your heart chakra, into the middle of your chest. And the heart chakra isn't just something that's there waiting to be opened. And you don't have the key. You also have to make the heart chakra in order to open it. So the practice of the subtle body is a body that arises through the power you accumulate in your practice. Okay.

[02:12]

Now, you have whatever experiences you have in Sashin, not only because Sashin forces you into it, Or because it's possible to see things differently with a certain amount of clarity. But because the power you accumulate, Sashin, allows you to see differently. And you accumulate power by doing something like sitting through pain. Or sitting still in the middle of change. Or holding Dharma practice, holding in the midst of change.

[03:21]

Now, what's going to happen when you leave Sashin, as I said the other night, is you'll lose most of the power you've accumulated in Sashin. And Sashin mind will disperse. Now I said that the practice of Sashin is, and technically the word means, to gather the mind. and what we've basically talked about in the Sashin is gathering the mind turning it into a point or a jewel and that's the jewel that's often in the hands of the Buddha statues and then being able to move that jewel around Good that jewel to someone else.

[04:25]

And that's one-pointedness too. Now, if you don't have the energy and power, you can't gather the mind or turn it into a jewel or do anything. How do you gather the mind? Through concentration. What's the primary form of concentration, not the simple form of concentration? mindfulness practice. So if you can practice mindfulness or breathfulness practice in your daily life, you can begin to keep the fact of and the taste of the power you accumulated in session. So I would advise you to find out ways to practice mindfulness in your daily activity Because we could say to begin to bring your breath body alive in your daily life and a breath body that's continuous through all aspects of your life not turned off in some and turned on in others

[05:58]

And the more it's turned on and present in all your activities and deepened awareness open to whatever happens but stable you accumulate power. When your energy body becomes to be alive, which becomes more definitive than your physical body. This is Zen, Buddhist, yogic, tantric practice. Maybe I'm almost done.

[07:17]

You want to go to midnight or something? 5.04. 5.04. To stay within a koan practice. To stay with the whole atmosphere of a koan in each activity. To stay within a mantra or within chanting to hold the chanting. and bring your energy to the chanting, the hose that brings your energy to the chanting, that hose is one point in this.

[08:22]

Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, the combination of the practices of one-pointedness and following thoughts to their source the basic practice of following thoughts to their source and thoughts in this sense means feelings, moods, everything any mental formations so these following these two the combination of these two practices allows instant point awareness And instant point awareness is basic Dharma practice.

[09:35]

To see each moment in its entity. And this is also called maybe seed awareness. It means to be able to see each situation in its detailed interactions, see the point at which it's held together, the self-organizing point of each situation, and be able to join yourself to that point. That's Dharma practice. That's instant point awareness. or seed awareness, where the seed or center of the mandala includes the whole mandala.

[10:43]

Now, to see in this kind of detail is a different mind than generic mind. When you see in generalities, you can't see the details which tie things together in mandala-like patterns. So sashin mind is a mind begin through the gathering of your mind And the energy of your mind, you begin to see the details of life, not the generalities. And you begin to be able to let those details into you. Like I said, letting the ox tail into you. You can begin to accept the world at an acceptable level.

[11:57]

Feeling the pace of the world. Feeling the world at an acceptable and tangible level where you don't feel alienated and you can begin to resolve the world within your own experience. Now, you can change, you may have a particular sense of location. And you can move that sense of location into a particular situation. Now, your eyes don't entirely belong to this world. That's why we look into people's eyes When your eyes are full of thoughts and concepts they belong to this world But sometimes in Zazen and Sashin particularly you'll see that your eyes stop belonging to this world they start seeing things you hadn't imagined

[13:36]

One way to practice with this is practices I've given you in the past of direct perception. But a simple thing I can suggest to you now If you can move your sense of location into your ears so you can completely focus on a sound say birds or something like that and then look at something without thoughts But keep your sense of location or your sense of location of mind on the sound.

[14:44]

Such little things allow you to begin to feel an awareness that isn't based on thoughts. You can in this way begin to feel intent in your life, which is deeper than thoughts and feelings. Sukhriyashi used to talk about your innermost request. And this Oman is produce a single thought. that covers the world.

[15:50]

So this is the vow, to realize whole being with each person you meet. But it's also to discover first your own innermost request, not necessarily this vow. And then you can begin discovering your own inner intent. You can begin to deepen that intent. Now, when you can move that sense of location to this deeper intent, And then to cover everything without boundaries, we could say that's really the experience of selflessness or non-self.

[16:50]

So we can say there's no self, in a sense. And in the sense that you can now move this location so there's no particular self. Now, this is one of the mysteries of our life. There's no permanent self. But there is a sense of self or agent or location that can be in various places that can organize your existence that can free your existence and that can cover everything. I remember standing on the Tassara Bridge once to me.

[18:03]

Once, Sukhiroshi said to me, he brought up a koan in a lecture, and I met him at the bridge afterwards, or maybe I was his jisha carrying the incense for him. And standing on this bridge with a stream running underneath it. I said to him, is the meaning of that koan such and such? He looked at me and said, self covers everything. and he looked at me and said, He Himself covers everything. He covers everything.

[19:12]

What did I say? He covers everything. He covers everything. Are we having a discussion about translation here? What? Decked alles ab. Decked alles ab. Give me a new mantra, decked alles ab. Decked alles ab, decked alles ab. Decked alles ab. I like it. Well, don't you think that's enough for today and for this session and so forth? It's funny when I give lectures like this or do a session. I always think this is the best stuff I've ever talked about. And then I think, it's absolutely essential that everyone knows this.

[20:15]

You can't practice Buddhism without knowing this. And then a week later, I can't remember what I said. People say to me, that last sashin, I said, well, I remember But this sashin, I say, oh, this is really good And what was the bubbles? Oh, the bubbles, yeah Okay, I'll give a quick riff on that In a sense, when you stop having one location that organizes everything, when you stop, like we Westerners do, organizing everything through the cognitive skanda,

[21:27]

So we're always trying to put everything, dreams, everything through the cognitive skandha. And other cultures put it through another skandha, but most cultures have one territory they organize their life through. When you release that through the subtlety of understanding something like no feelings through feelings or know the body through the body the form skanda knows the form skanda without subject-object distinction when you begin to know in that way and so the sense of location is multiple Then your experience from the feelings kind of say is one bubble.

[22:51]

With an event horizon like in physics. And from the forms kind of another bubble. And secondary processes in psychology are another bubble And your primary process in the consensual world is another bubble Now mostly we tend to, out of the habit of a single self, look at one bubble and ignore the others or try to understand all the bubbles through the one bubble. When you start to practice and you do sashins and so on, you begin to find these various bubbles around you.

[23:54]

And each bubble has its own karma. And there's feeling karma that can't get into the cognitive karma skandha. And there's dream consciousness and imaginal consciousness which some can get into the other bubbles but most of it sits in its own bubble. Now when you begin to have this kind of experience one very healthy thing to do is figure out which bubble most people share. The consensual reality. Really be able to hold that one and know the taste of that one. Then you can go back to that one.

[25:07]

That's one reason we sit 40 minute periods or 30 minute periods because even if you could sit 8 hours at a stretch unless you're extremely adept you shouldn't because the habit of sitting 40 minutes should always bring you back into the consensual bubble So now in Sashin, we try to stay sort of in several bubbles and let Keenan not get us entirely out of it, but we still develop a rhythm of going in and out of this consensual bubble. Am I making sense or does it sound like I should be in the local hospital? I'll assume I'm making sense because I don't have any other choice. Okay, so now you can also, these bubbles are kind of, these bubbles are balloons, they're like balloons too.

[26:50]

You've got the strings and you can let go of them. But what happens when you can begin, again, one-pointedness, begin to stay with each bubble? You begin to see relationships between them. As Gerald and I spoke of the other day at Creston, if you can stay aware during dreaming, you can see not only how you have memories stored in your body and appear in dreams, but you can see how your body can shape the bubble of a dream. So you can move your shoulder, say, and a whole lot of stuff will spin right out of your shoulder.

[28:03]

So in this way, the dream body bubble and the form body bubble of your physical body have an interrelationship, but they're different languages. When you can bring those together in a common awareness called the Dharmakaya, that's really called enlightenment. But that's not such a big deal as I'm making it. If you just visualize something and hear something and then bring those two things together you begin to create the territory where you can move among these bubbles which now you perceive separately and interrelated.

[29:09]

And I think what you've experienced in Sashin is you start out with this consensual reality that you filled out forms and applied to the house distilling and did things that people are supposed to do. And then you found that several more people came to Sashin and sitting on your cushion than actually filled out the application. So different levels appeared. And you're finding through one-pointedness and the practice of following thoughts to their source Mount Sumer knowing the pace of things allowing everything allowing uncorrected state of mind you're beginning to bring these things together first to recognize them

[30:22]

and then to bring them together in a larger sense of self until finally self covers everything. Okay. I'm sorry, that was a little too much, but you can use it. Thank you very much. No, I don't think so.

[31:17]

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