Thank you for translating yesterday. I forgot to thank you. You're welcome. And Roland worked on my right knee today at work period. And it's actually much better. Thank you. And even my left leg, which was kind of sympathetically tensed up because of my right leg, is feeling better. So I'm speaking, I'm trying to speak about continuity. And the sense of continuity as a continuum. A stream we can enter. And I'm asking us to notice that as a medium of mind.

[01:06]

And you know, we have these rules in Sashin that we don't talk unnecessarily and don't read. And these rules are explicitly designed to make you, help you, settle in your own continuum. So maybe during Sashin you can experiment with this. I've noticed that in the kitchen, yeah, not so much. With Catherine, she's a little more strict than sometimes. But the kitchen often, what is unnecessary talking is a very loose definition.

[02:11]

But when I've been in the kitchen, the sashimi, it looks like it's pretty necessary talking. But I think you yourself can notice when it feels like unnecessary talking and when it feels like, yeah, necessary talking. With necessary talking, you can maintain your continuum better. You may even feel when you lose your continuum, there's a feeling of losing energy. And sometimes, particularly in the first Sashins, when we leave Sashin,

[03:17]

It can be a kind of painful, dramatic loss of energy when somebody starts talking to you what happened during Sashin or you have to go drive somewhere and you almost have an accident. Yeah, so how do we maintain our continuum? No, in emphasizing this, I think I'm partly reacting to a review I read of some Zen book recently. It's probably a pretty good book, actually. But the reviewer says, you know, this book is truly about, Zan, it's just about accepting yourself as you are. And this book has a sort of psychology developed out of accepting yourself as you are.

[04:48]

And it sounds a little bit like I'm okay, you're okay kind of psychology. Which is probably not all that bad. And of course there's no alternative but to start with acceptance. It's the most important initial mind to cultivate. Notice I said initial mind to cultivate. That's not exactly accepting yourself as you are. I accept that I don't have a mind of acceptance. Of course, if you don't have a mind of acceptance, you have to accept it. But that doesn't mean that it's acceptable.

[06:22]

We make a choice. To cultivate a mind of acceptance is a choice. As I say, you can practice welcome on every perception. And accept, the etymology of accept is to be capable of receiving. To be able to receive. Yeah, and this is an initial mind. This is also a

[07:24]

A yogic practice, an initial, the development of initial mind on each appearance. This isn't I'm okay, you're okay. This is Y-O-G-I-C. And it's not about I'm okay, you're okay. This is Y-O-G-I-C, yogic. Oh. Das ist Y-O-G-C. I'm yogic, you're yogic. We're both okay. Ich bin yogisch, du bist yogisch, und wir sind beide in Ordnung. My house is on fire. Mein Haus brennt. I accept it. Und ich akzeptiere es auch nicht. Both are there. Ja. My mind is distracted.

[08:35]

I accept it, but I don't accept it. And to settle yourself into your continuum is one of the most dramatic, transformative things you can do. To catch the feeling of that. And it, you know, so we have this we establish a sense of continuity that continuity can even be a stream feeling of a stream a continuum which we which we can feel when we are in and when we're not in And I guarantee you, if you can settle into your continuum, it'll be one of the hardest things you do in Sashin, but it'll be one of the things that makes Sashin a lot easier.

[09:40]

Maybe you can breathe into your continuum. Attach your continuum to the breath. and dein oder dieses Kontinuum an den Atem anhaften. Attach, excuse me, the etymology of attach is a stake, tie something to a stake. Die Etymologie des Wortes attach oder anhaften auf Deutsch ist etwas an einen Pfahl anbinden. So you tie, if you can, tie your attention to your breath. tie your sense of a continuum to your breath.

[11:00]

If you keep making, if you have an intention, of course, and you keep making the effort, eventually your attention, your mind, sort of settles into a tube. It feels like a tube. Nagarjuna says that zazen is to put a snake in a bamboo. Now you can imagine how difficult that is. First you've got to drill a hole through all those little partitions in the bamboo. Then you've got to catch the snake, which is sometimes an ox. And then you're holding the snake and it's going like this and you've got the bamboo and he keeps biting you and you're... And he means your backbone.

[12:14]

You put your mind, the continuum of mind in your spine. Now let's notice some times when this isn't the case. Yeah, well, you start talking to somebody, you read something, and what happens to your continuum? It commutes into another text or another stream. Yeah, the older meaning of commute is not like a commuter, but to change places with. Also, die ursprüngliche Bedeutung von dem Wort commute, also dem Wort umwandeln oder vertauschen, austauschen, ist nicht so wie ein commuter, sondern austauschen mit.

[13:26]

And sometimes it can be, you know, wonderful. As when you find yourself really engaged in a novel or a narrative of some book. Zum Beispiel, wenn du dich wirklich hineingibst in einen Roman oder in die Erzählung einer Geschichte. Or a movie, a good movie. You can feel your continuum sort of like whoops, goes right into the movie and stays there for quite a while and comes back reluctantly after the film. Du kannst dann spüren, wie dein Kontinuum so whoops macht und dann ganz in den Film hineingeht und dann nach einer Weile fast ein bisschen widerspenstig aus dem Film wieder herauskommt. And you have to move, you can say, hello continuum, welcome back. Let's go have a cappuccino. Let's go do something. But maybe just let it come back. You can say to it, did you enjoy your vacation? During the movie, you know.

[14:33]

Now, you know, I'm kind of a lazy practitioner, as you know, and I often say that's why I practice with you guys, because you keep me practicing. But occasionally, or in the past, I practiced pretty hard. But back and forth and in the past I practiced quite a lot. There was a five year period where I couldn't go to a movie. And there was a five-year period in which I couldn't go to the cinema because I couldn't see a film. During this period of establishing a continuum which I didn't stray from, it wasn't able to go into the movies.

[15:34]

And for those five years I didn't dream either. I'd have rest sleep and then I'd wake up. And dreaming was absorbed into zazen and into daily mind. No, I'm not the same. I rather like going to a movie or seeing a movie occasionally. But there was a period, and I'm speaking about it, to show that you can establish and not stray from your continuum. And there's almost no way you can get there in daily life and mindfulness practice. It takes sashin and or monastic practice.

[17:09]

And which there's no social space to take hold of your continuum. Es darf keinen sozialen Raum geben, der dein Kontinuum übernehmen kann. I think you notice I'm trying to use language at the edge of language. Ich glaube, ihr bemerkt es, ich versuche Sprache am Rande der Sprache zu benutzen. The power of language exceeds the forms of language. If the power of language wasn't greater than the forms of language, you couldn't create a new word. Or use words in different or new ways. So when you use a word in a new way or create a new word, you're at the edge of language.

[18:13]

Also, wenn du ein Wort auf eine neue oder andere Art und Weise benutzt oder ein neues Wort erschaffst, dann benutzt du Sprache am Rande der Sprache. I referred to colon 46 of the book of records last night. Gestern Abend habe ich mich auf den colon, auf den Pfeil 46 aus der Niederschrift des Marken in Felswand bezogen. Establishing continuity is indeed difficult. Beyond ordinary and holy. This is the Chinese teacher, Ching. It sounds like Ching Ching, Ching Ching. I don't know quite how to pronounce it. How would you pronounce it? Me? Like that? Just like you. Yeah. It makes me think of this woman I knew once at a meeting in a slum. Next to the Zen Center in San Francisco. We had this neighborhood foundation which worked with the real housing project next door.

[19:29]

And there was this great black woman that we were very fond of. She was our friend in trying to do something in the neighborhood. So he had to talk once to the group. And she stood up and she said, I just stood up and my thoughts sat down. And then she said, but there was this Chinese woman. What was her name? It sounded like a fork falling on the ground. But then she said, Oh, so that's Ching Ching. Anyway, he said to one of his monks, What is that sound outside?

[20:39]

Well, it was pouring rain. What a stupid question. What is that sound outside? The monk said, it's the sound of raindrops. And he said, people are inverted and they follow after things. What about you, teacher? I'm almost like that, he said. Yeah, it makes me think of Sophia, my daughter, who hangs around Zen people too much.

[21:40]

I was washing my face the other day. And she said, Papa, what are you doing? My turn, I said. You can see. She said, I'm asking you, what are you doing? And I said, I'm washing my face. She said, no, you're not. I said, oh yes, I'm telling you about washing my face. He said, that's right. I'm being tested all the time. During one of the big football games, I said, this is a big one with Austria, I guess. I said, everyone in Germany is watching this game.

[22:43]

She said, no, they're not. I said, what do you mean? She said, the players aren't. She said, the players aren't. So, Ching Ching is asking this kind of question. What's the sound of... What's that sound outside the window? And it says in the commentary, implies, Ching Ching is... sitting in the heaps of sound and form. Walking on the top of sound and form. This means how we use language in Zen practice.

[23:45]

We use language at the edge of language. And when you dwell on a word or settle into a word, it changes into a different kind of dwelling, different kind of house. Sometimes it becomes a house where the roof is blown off. You can see the stars. Sometimes it's a tent on the edge of a mountain. The forms of language cling to a word. But the clothes are sort of blowing off or sort of half-dressed words.

[25:06]

So if you take a word out of the forms of language... Yeah, let it escape from the dictionary. And jump over the fences of grammar. And just let it settle in you and see what happens. Yeah, continuity, continuum. Or mind and mind. You know, I suggested something, but what happens when you just say it? Maybe on the exhale you say mind. And on the inhale, mind. Or maybe you say mind on the inhale. And on the exhale.

[26:14]

And mind on the inhale. You know, just sort of start dwelling in, settling into the words. And they sometimes start calling forth sort of elemental meanings. Attach, accept, these words even are loosened from their etymology as well as the dictionary. What was the second attach and? Attach and accept, etc. Also zum Beispiel anhaften oder akzeptieren, das sind manchmal Bedeutungen außerhalb derer, die im Wörterbuch stehen. Und wenn wir mit Geist und Geist praktizieren, um ein Gefühl für dieses Medium des Geistes zu bekommen,

[27:17]

Yeah, mind as knowing and mind as experience. Then we're related to the famous, this very mind is Buddha. Yeah. It's interesting, you know, very is usually an intensive, like, this is very true. So it's very, excuse me for this stuff, very comes from virtus, which means truth. So, this is very true would mean this is true true, which doesn't make sense. But true in this true very also means actual.

[28:35]

So this very mind is Buddha. You can try that too. This very mind is Buddha. This actual mind is Buddha. You could try on both means. This true mind is Buddha. But then you're asking, which of my minds is Buddha? Which is the true mind? It's more exploratory. Exploratory. to use this actual mind as Buddha.

[29:45]

I don't know how this works in German. I'm sorry, Deutsch. You're stuck with an incompetent teacher who can't speak Deutsch. Ihr steckt mit einem inkompetenten Lehrer fest, der Deutsch einfach nicht spricht. Der aber eine sehr kompetente Übersetzerin hat. So this actual mind, do you believe it? Can you feel it, this actual mind is Buddha? What could that mean? But whether this actual, this very mind is Buddha or not, Let's give attention to the continuum of mind and mind.

[30:53]

I'd like to suggest that when I start Taisho, you know, whoever starts tesho, we do a shashubau. And the doan does a shashubau with the doshi. And because at that point the doshi and the doshi is the one leading the service or the whatever The Doshi Roshi, you know. The Doshi and the Doan establish a mutual continuum. So the continuum sort of flows together. And when I, for instance, bow, the Doshi is in that field.

[32:18]

Now in Sashin, I'm asking you to try out settling in your own, who else's, continuum. And the problem with the word, of course your continuum has various owners. But you're trying to make it continuously your own. But then we eat together. Yeah, so you're practicing settling in your continuum, but also when we eat together, our continuum, the whole way we serve and everything, is to kind of let the continuum commute mutually.

[33:24]

So when can the continuum, sort of like the infinity sign, a lazy eight, become mutual? Also wenn dieses Kontinuum, so wie das Unendlichkeitszeichen, die schräg gelegte Acht, wenn das gemeinsam wird. Also wann ist es dein eigenes und wann ist es gemeinsam? Und wann ist es ein gemeinsames und verliert dennoch nicht Energie? So the signal, I'd like to experiment during the Sashin with the Teisho, all of us, in this case myself, does the Shashu at the beginning.

[34:32]

We all do a Shashu. Wow. But while I'm talking, you don't have to wave your arms around like me. I mean, you may want to, but, you know, better not to. And then at the end, you know, again, we can sort of end this mutual continuum or, you know, it doesn't end, but it falls back into us. And then in the end we can end this joint continuum, although it doesn't end, but we can fold it back into us. Okay. Thanks.

[35:31]

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