You know, it's a very satisfying thing for me to see this practice, our practice, our Ango practice period going on without me in many ways. If you wanted to give me a gift, this is the best gift you could give me. It's... Yeah, and it's also wonderful that I can participate. I thought I probably could do more teishos, but this is only the second one in this practice period. It's wonderful that Atmar and I and we all can do this together.

[01:04]

And I apologize to Nicole for taking her out of her postural body-mind continuum of Kangaroo. Ich habe mich bei Nicole entschuldigt, dass ich sie aus ihrem Haltungskörpergeist-Kontinuum aus dem Tangario rausgeholt habe. Aber sie hat so viel Zeit damit verbracht, mein Vokabular zu lernen, dass ich nicht weiß, was ich ohne sie machen soll. But it also is, you know, usually here and in Crestone, the director is also the jisha for practical reasons. So if she travels with me, as she did when I went to Kassel and Hanover, she doesn't really have to do Tangario, when she comes back, but that was her personal choice, and she also did Tangario at the beginning of the practice period.

[02:30]

But I imagine sitting in Tangario was more fun than being here, but you'll have to suffer. Sorry. But that's partly the topic of what I was feeling. I don't know how many days it would take for me to say what I thought maybe I should say. But I will go to Berlin in November and Hamburg and give two one-day seminars. Yeah, Hamburg got attached to Berlin when Hamburg found out I was going to Berlin.

[03:47]

And I agreed to Berlin because Maika has been asking me for some time to meet with some people in Berlin and government people connected with their husband and so forth. And I think I should do that kind of thing sometimes. But mostly I don't want to be a traveling lecturer. An itinerant preacher. And Sogyal Rinpoche's group asked me to give a couple talks, and I heard I was going to be in Berlin, but I said, no, I'm not a traveling preacher.

[05:12]

Really, my precious... My... My precious treasure is being able to practice with you. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to give the Berlin folks the bad news. And I don't like to give them the bad news. And for decades I've been trying not to give people the bad news, at least sometimes. And from their point of view, I think the bad news is that without Zazen, without the physical practice of Zazen, there's no real practice.

[06:16]

What you're doing, what we're doing here. And it's actually not very easy for people to actually understand. I think it's been at least 40 years now in my life when every newspaper and magazine has at least one article on how important exercise is. And it's still presented as news, something new in magazines and newspapers and so forth. Yeah, it's being drummed into us and we don't only partially hear the message.

[07:36]

They should listen to the Teisho drum. It's drummed into them. Yeah. But you know, if you've been to China or you see films about China. The parks in China are filled in the morning with people doing Tai Chi. It's just culturally taken for granted that practice is simultaneously physical. And you can't ride in a Japanese subway with sometimes totally crowded, unbelievably crowded. And they don't need bodily space the way we do, distance with others.

[08:56]

They just, everyone against you is just fine. You ride along. Everyone supports everyone. But a large percentage of those on the, strictly one seated, but even one standing, are in a kind of samadhi. They're not looking around, they're just somehow settled into their proportionate body space. I mean, I find it strange really that it's so common in Western Zen to think that, to emphasize enlightenment, one big experience.

[10:08]

turning around practice, big ones or incremental ones, certainly are important, but it's only one aspect of practice. Or people in the West tend to think, and in Japan too it's often the case, sometimes, that you can understand Zen just by, through understanding, and you have a feel for it, and you think it's smart and intelligent, and that's Zen for you. And in the West, but I think sometimes also in Japan, but especially in the West, it is somehow assumed that you can understand Zen simply by understanding it. That you maybe think that sounds smart or intelligent or makes sense.

[11:24]

And that because you have a feeling for it, you then believe that it is Zen. Yeah. It's a kind of, I think it's a kind of romanticism. But they have noticed fairly recently that people who play computer games have more acute perceptual skills and their brains light up more fully than non-computer game players. I think they recently found out that people who play a lot of computer games, that they have faster perception abilities and that the brains in the examination show more activity or more extensive activity than in people who don't play computer games.

[12:33]

I'm not speaking from experience. I have never been able to get interested in what my thumbs are doing, unless they're in zazen. And I can barely get interested in a movie unless it's an exceptional movie, because all this stuff is just happening, and I don't know, I have any relation to these lights on the screen. For five or ten years, actually, I couldn't actually go to a movie. I'd sit down. I think I should go. Everyone said it was good. I'd sit down for ten minutes or so. What am I here for, watching these flashing lights? And I'd leave. I just can't get involved in the narrative. I've kind of had to, because I think I like films and I think they're sociologically important, I've kind of trained myself to go see a movie a few times a year.

[14:04]

But I don't mean that you who like films should feel you have to stop because you're practicing. I remember driving A few years ago with my daughter, I just drove 1,000 miles with her in New England, but driving with her in Colorado, and while we were sitting, she took my phone and started playing computer games. But I've never, I've actually never played even one minute of a computer game. But I could see she identified with some of the moving lights and shapes more than she identified with others.

[15:37]

And I said, which of these shapes are you identifying with as you? And she'd point, oh, that one. Oh, so that's the one who's carrying the narrative. So if we're going to do mind-body perceptual reactive training with computer games in the future, it'll probably be after I'm gone. We might do it. People might do it. Get quick. Your brain lights up and probably it's good. But what's clear from what they what they've noticed is that you transform, change and transform your perceptual skills and the use of the neurological pathways of the body with physical activity.

[17:04]

Not just thinking, physical activity with the hands and mind responding to the images. But this does point to an essential point. dynamic of our wisdom practice. Which is that you need to develop the habit of bringing wisdom attitudes, phrases, feelings into the details, the tailoring details, tailoring of your daily activity.

[18:07]

So you're kind of sowing your circum field, like circum fret, circum... circumstances, circumfield. You're sort of sewing your circumfield together with dharma cutting and karma cutting. What am I talking about? I don't know. This is so as ob du dein Umfeld nähst, zusammennähst, indem du das Dharma schneidest und das Karma schneidest und das dann zurecht zusammennähst. Because our path is also the pathways, neurological and physiological and metabolic pathways.

[19:24]

Because our path is also the neurological pathways, the physiological and biological pathways. Oh, and metabolic. I mean, because through practice, your body, you actually... How can I give you... You know, about terms and my vocabulary, we're in a new realm of experience through Zazen practice, which our languages don't have words for. We have to create a new language. So I say circumfield instead of circumstance, where you're standing in the circumstance, what surrounds you. The surrounding you is also you. Now, what I'm pointing out is it takes time for us to really believe that the physical aspect of practice

[20:39]

is what makes it really all work. And we all know we have a vertical mind and a horizontal mind. Let's say a vertical posture mind and a horizontal posture mind. As I always say, it's very difficult to sleep standing up unless you're driving. David Chadwick told me he can drive and be asleep.

[22:07]

I said, David, I'm not riding with you. So we have a waking mind, which is mostly vertical, and a sleeping, dreaming mind, which is mostly, usually horizontal. Also haben wir einen wachen Geist, der meistens senkrecht ist, und einen schlafenden, träumenden Geist, der meistens waagerecht ist. And the airlines know this. Und die Fluggesellschaften wissen das. And they will charge you a lot of extra money so that your transatlantic flight can be horizontal minded as well as vertical minded. And it probably makes a difference in how whatever they do when they arrive, wherever they arrive, how they function. Not just because it's sleeping, but because it's a horizontal mind.

[23:31]

And we're talking now, we've discovered this third mind which is developed and realized through this posture, which combines verticality and horizontality. It's one of the reasons we get up and traditional practice before daybreak because you want to be in that mix of vertical and horizontal mind, in that liminal space.

[24:33]

Do you know liminal? Liminal means to have two feet in both sides of a situation. One foot on both sides of a situation. Well, one foot in each, not one foot in both. Unless you're an acrobat. Yes. In English, the word's nice because liminal has the feeling of limits in it, but also has the feeling of light in it. So we could say Ango is a kind of developing a mutual liminal space in which we feel the vertical postural mind and horizontal postural mind and this new postural mind which

[25:47]

Develops through our posture which begins to unite the vertical and horizontal You can affect your bodily health You can affect your bodily health with attitudes without necessarily exercising. But doing it with your mind doesn't compare to actual physical exercise. So when you really get it that you're changing the body biological, physiological, metabolic, etc., pathways, neurological pathways of the body, it takes time.

[27:34]

Wenn du das wirklich kapierst, dass du deine physiologischen, biologischen, metabolischen, neurologischen Bahnen veränderst, das braucht Zeit. Das braucht Zeit. insights and enlightenment experiences do sort of clear the roads and point the directions. But it's wisdom, which is your DPS, Dharma Positioning System, You want me to say that? Is it embarrassing? Yeah. And we need that DPS system of wisdom which begins to let us feel the paths as we develop them.

[28:42]

It's a bodily knowing. In order to do almost anything. In practice. Now I was just in, as you know, in New England. the foliage is so dramatic there. Now here it's beautiful, but muted. It's like... Harris Tweeds or something like that, Tweed Club. But in New England it's like, wow, reds and yellows and brightness. There's nothing like it I've ever seen.

[29:44]

Maybe... Maybe Nicole Foss understands the chemistry of it, but I think it's cold weather and hot weather changing quickly that makes the leaves change. We don't have such hot summers and we don't have such cold winters here. So I'm in a hotel almost, new hotel almost every night. So in the morning if I want to do zazen I have to figure out what combination of pillows on the couch or on the bed.

[30:52]

I've never been able to make it work very well. In the early days of plastic, I bought two plastic inflatable cushions for Sukhirishi and I when we went to New York. But on the second day of sitting, they both deflated. First I started to sink and then I looked over at him. He looked at me and then he started to sink. I haven't tried plastic. I hear they're better now, but I haven't tried them, the new ones. And everything sags. bed sags, the pillows sag.

[31:53]

But anyway, I try to do it. And in a way, I would, you know, now that I have a computer and I have a lot of people to communicate with and She's sending me things and Christian is sending me things and urgent they're marked. So sometimes I think maybe I'll just stay in the familiar envelope of connectedness with others through my computer. And I always have my computer with me, and there are some people with whom I have to keep working, like Nicole sends me emails, and Christian sends me emails, and it's always on there. And then I let myself travel into the familiar feeling of working together. So it's a kind of shared... communal space, familiar space to wake up and enter your caring space.

[32:56]

And it's a caring space? Caring, okay. Caring, like caring for... You're caring for the work of the world, you're caring for the people you're associated with. you take care of what happens in the world, or you take care of the people you associate with. And you also feel this space is you. So you think your understanding of Zen, if it's going to, should be in the space of you.

[34:05]

But Zazen is not really the space of you. If it is, your Zazen is not very effectual. There's various levels of zazen and there's deeply gone zazen, gone from everything, zazen. So anyway, this hotel Zazen. I got caught up in B&Bs and B&Z and I better not go there.

[35:27]

Bed and breakfasts and bed and zazens. Yeah, so anyway. So I, you know, have a certain pattern. And being in these hotels, I sort of noticed the pattern more vividly than I usually do because I tried to get a posture where I can sit still. So... You know, I always say Zazen is a posture and the mental posture don't move. So it takes me a while in a hotel especially to find a posture on a couch or a bed in which I might be able to not move. Yeah. And so first, it's clear, I try to establish an attentional postural continuum.

[36:55]

And if I follow my usual pattern, the second thing I do is establish the body points. And I haven't talked about the body points for quite a while. But anyway, and Guido reminded me that when I was counting, I left out the hara. Thank you. Thank you, Guido. He was at Kassel. The tradition is usually seven, but I find eleven better. So when I first sit down, after I establish... The postural body continuum.

[37:59]

I bring attention to the base of my spine. And then the middle, the lumbar area, the middle part of the spine. And then the top of my spine at the beginning of the neck of the head. The atlas and axis vertebrae. And I feel this. Now I could If I could find a space big enough in the hotel room and a towel or something, I could lie down on the floor and do some yoga. And sometimes I do that. I'm an amateur yoga practitioner.

[39:00]

Not like some of you here. But for me, I don't bring the spine mind into the play of the circumfield being in the same way of by lying on the floor. But I do find it very valuable every morning to lift through the spine and particularly bringing attentional mind to these three, the lower, middle and top of the spine. Yeah, and then I bring attention to the crown and then to my two feet and then to my two hands. And then to my tongue.

[40:26]

And then to the middle of my chest and then the heart. Now, this is a kind of... I'm bringing the... I mean, you're all living in this background all the time. You have a spine, you have crown chakra, etc. You are in the midst of living these points already. They are in the background of our living. I find it very helpful to every morning, at least every morning, bring them into the foreground of my living.

[41:29]

The backbone comes into the foreground of my living. And so I just bring attention to the spine, three things, and then the crown, and then the two hands and the two feet, feeling the hands and feet's presence, and then the tongue, the heart chakra. Strangely, by bringing attention, potential attention, intentional attention, to these body points, you can make ones as you wish, but to bring attention to these bodily points, brings the background of my aliveness into the foreground, and develops this postural mind continuum,

[42:49]

In a way that gives my body a kind of stability. A kind of equilibrium. Now we use the word equanimity in Buddhism a lot to mean an evenness of mental attention. But in English, the original meaning of equilibrium is a balanced state of mind. So there's a kind of mental equilibrium. Maybe we could say bodily equanimity. And the word, what is meant by equanimity in Buddhism is both equilibrium and equanimity.

[44:23]

Because it's just assumed that every term has a bodily component. And even a phenomenal component. So, strangely, when you bring your intentional attention to the body points, If you're an experienced practitioner, it just sort of happens all at once.

[45:28]

But it's good to every now and then slow it down and notice each one separately in some sequence that you can feel the sequence. Again, I said the word strangely a few times, but I didn't finish what I meant. It's strangely, by bringing inner attention to the bodily points, you... include the so-called outer world as part of your field of being. Which is not the self-referencing continuum. Not the selfie continuum.

[46:32]

I guess there's such a thing called a selfie pole. Maybe the computer is a selfie pole. You keep looking at yourself somehow. But we do have a personal spatial field of being that is enfolded and unfolded in this kind of liminality, liminal space Proust has this term involuntary memory. And I have a good visual memory. I'm able to locate, unless they've torn everything down and built a mall, I'm able to locate exactly where things were and I haven't been there for 50 years or 70 years.

[47:58]

Ich kann genau verorten, wo alles einmal stand, selbst wenn ich 50 oder 60 Jahre lang nicht an einem Ort war, außer wenn die das alles komplett abgerissen haben und ein Einkaufszentrum hingestellt haben. A place I hadn't literally been since I was 10 years old. I went into this real estate office, which is now, and I said, I think there used to be a place where you picked your lobsters in this building. He said, you're standing exactly where it was. If you're born in Maine, as I was, you're brought up on lobsters, blueberries and maple syrup. It's not all bad. Sorry for the lobsters.

[49:01]

But I did find there were certain places that when I was at a certain street corner, a conversation, I couldn't have gone back to it myself. but it appeared through being at a certain stop sign in, in this case, in a town called Hicksville, Long Island, I got myself back to where the lobsters were, but I couldn't have brought myself back to that point by memory alone. It required the circumstances to unfold my personal spatial field.

[50:06]

And that personal spatial field, of course, will die with me. And each of you, your personal spatial field, which is not exactly self, will die with you. And that personal spatial field Has durational and spatial proportions.

[51:15]

Like music. And it's awakened by bringing the vertical posture and the horizontal posture into this new posture. So just to finish as quickly as I can now, for your leg's sake. The third thing I do when I sit is I... Use the code caring mind for consciousness. Open mind for the second skandha, fourth skandha. Precise mind for the perceptual skandha. And feeling mind for the second skandha.

[52:36]

And allness mind for the form skandha. So that's my pattern when I do zazen in a hotel or here. And this is my pattern when I sit in a hotel room or here. Except there I use a rock so usually and I touch it here and I feel subtle body. And then I touch my raksu here and I feel Buddha body. And then I bring my raksu here again and feel Sambhogakaya body. Then I let sasen begin.

[53:42]

In my mind it's he, she, kantasa. It's not she kantasa, it's he, she kantasa. Because I don't know whether I'm a male or female or whatever I am when I'm sitting. so that when you get used to it as I'm used to it obviously it's just all of this happens almost instantly in the hotel I noticed it explicitly and slowed it down But once you've established this spatial, durational, proportionate circumfield,

[54:50]

Then your practice becomes, what disturbs? If you have anxiety, then you work on, why does that occur? What's the triggers? If you have panic attacks, you work on that. If you have anger attacks, you work on that. If you have depression, you work on that. All of those preliminaries, there's three, and if you add the Raksu, four, those preliminaries are just to let you then see... how you can really have equanimity and equilibrium. And until you have equanimity and equilibrium, your practice doesn't really develop physiologically and metabolically.

[56:07]

Well, I did squeeze three days into it. An hour. An hour and five minutes. So I don't have to give the next two teshos. But maybe I'll slow down next time. Thank you very much.

[56:36]

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