Recently I was reading a lecture of Tsukiroshi given in a session in February of 1970. I'd never read the lecture before and I wasn't there at the time because I was living in Japan where Tsukiroshi had sent me. Because I was reading it or hearing it or being in the lecture for the first time, It was a little bit like I was there. I was just feeling his presence, what it meant, what he meant. And then, you know, at that time I had no idea that I would someday be giving a lecture in a sesshin myself.

[01:14]

It's just not something I ever thought about. I was just concentrated on how to find practice as my activity in daily life. So I was feeling that and then suddenly, oh my gosh, I have to give a lecture on Sashim. It's like waking up. What happened? And while I was feeling that, I suddenly thought, oh man, I have to hold a lecture in Sashin myself. So I woke up. Be careful. Some of you may wake up like that one of these days. Oh, I'm giving a lecture in Sashin. Already Otmar is doing it.

[02:26]

One day it may be that one of you wakes up and thinks, oh, now I have to hold a lecture in Sashin. And Otmar is already doing it. Yeah, so I yesterday ended with how to make our daily life the threshing board of wisdom. I say these things like they're dramatic, threshing board of wisdom. But when I'm trying to find words for something, it's not dramatic at all. It's just, that's closest. But then when I say it, it sounds ridiculous. Yeah, and I'm trying to talk also a little bit about things I spoke about in the focusing summer school I was teaching in recently.

[03:28]

And I also try to talk a little bit about the things that I recently talked about in this Focusing summer school, where I just taught. And I'm doing it partly because Nicole translated there and so she already knows how to translate these things so I thought I'd make it easy for her. Thanks. It's awfully nice. Yeah, I know. It's awfully nice of you. But I might do it a little differently so it gives you a little bit of a problem. But it also interests me, if I talk about the same thing with you, very different in experience from the folks in this focusing summer school. Yeah, what happens to the content? Yeah, it begins to be, I find myself, of course, speaking about it from different perspectives.

[04:49]

Yeah, and quite a different level. So it might be interesting to you. Because there are single teachings, but there's not one But that, how do I say, one teaching is not one teaching. One teaching, a single teaching can be and is many teachings. Depending on the intricacy of the context. Yeah, maybe all contexts are intricate. There's no way to avoid that.

[06:08]

We just don't notice it. But maybe I should say that the uniqueness of every context And that's part of making and discovering the activity of your life the threshing board of wisdom. Separating the worthwhile from the worthless.

[07:11]

Helping us notice the worthwhile and letting go of the worthless. And this is closely related to trusting yourself and trusting what appears. Yeah, it's actually rather hard to trust yourself. Who the hell is this self you're going to trust anyway? And it doesn't make sense to say you can trust your non-self. No, that doesn't make sense. But, so what's an access? I think to trust what appears. Trust what appears, whatever appears. Maybe the first step is to accept what appears.

[08:26]

I call it the mindfulness of every each. Ich nenne das die Achtsamkeit von jedem Einzelnen. Every each is an ancient word. Nobody uses it anymore. Oh, it's a real word. It's a real word. You know, Chaucer uses it, things like that. Kann das jemand übersetzen? But it's really good. Every each. Jedermann. Jedermann? Okay. Jeder Einzelne. Jeder Einzelne. Jeder Einzelne. Well, in English we'd say now every single one or something like that. But the mindfulness of every, knowing every is in each. So if I say all of you, that's different than saying each of you.

[09:28]

So mindful attention to every each. This is the secret of the gate or entry of making of discovering the power of your daily activity. I mean, you, yeah, I mean, we all do things all day long. And there's a million things, there are a very large number of particulars in front of us at all times.

[10:46]

But our senses choose some of them to notice. So first you just notice what the senses choose to notice. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that involves a certain trust. Because, I mean, if you start discriminating, well, I don't want to accept that one, and this is, this is, this is, I don't know, you know, etc. Then you really push yourself into a surface limited by a narrow band of consciousness. In this koan, Jingjing is said to use a reed shade. Reed is a woven thing from reeds, grass that grows along.

[11:51]

Grass that grows along a stream or something. A reed shade, like a fan made of reeds that you might hold up to shade yourself. Maybe I should say what it's used for. A reed shade is used by fishermen to block the light so they can see the fish down in the water. So when the image is that Wen Qingqing is asking Splash Splash, no, Ching Ching is asking the monk Splash Splash.

[13:10]

What is that sound? He's using a reed shade to look into the depths of the person. And also it's a probing pole. It's something down into the water with. Now, how do you answer? I mean, every... If someone asks you, what's the sound out there? I mean, you know. I mean, normally you'd say, I don't know, it's raining. And it's ridiculous not to answer the question normally.

[14:11]

But we... We know Jingjing isn't deaf. Yeah, he's not deaf, so he's obviously, as we say again, letting down a hook, seeing if the monk will bite. Yeah, now, what are the rules of this game? Well, you want to answer a question without generalizing. Generalizations are never quite true. That's where the seeming cleverness of Sophia's stories that I told you the other day come from.

[15:20]

I can remember my daughter Elizabeth now, 29 or 30. She was sitting in a car seat in that. We had it in the front seat of the car. I guess it's not allowed anymore. But anyway, there was a baby seat in the front seat of the car. And she was swinging around and her head was nearly hitting the dashboard. She was falling asleep. And I said, I said, Elizabeth, watch your head. And she said, you watch it, I can't see it. Now this sounds very clever. But actually, She's, you know, not very old, and watch means to look at something.

[16:38]

Doesn't mean to be careful. And since she didn't know I meant be careful, she just, she couldn't see it. So she said, you watch it, I can't see it. And I'm sure when I said to her, you know, everyone in Germany is watching this game. She started thinking, well, there must be some people asleep. And I wasn't going to watch it. She thinks. I mean, she probably is running through all the people who wouldn't be watching it, so then she looks at the television and says, oh, they're not watching it either.

[17:40]

So it's probably not so much cleverness as just simple, you know, not understanding and then trying to understand. We all know, if I say everyone in Germany is watching this game, we all know, I mean, everyone who wants to and can probably is. And... And her, I mean, she doesn't think that way. She thinks he's not telling the truth. It can't be true. Not everyone's watching. Well, this kind of literalness would be better appreciated from this monk.

[18:42]

So he might try to say something that suggests something, suggests the uniqueness, not just its raining. I mean, maybe it's just something corny. Some people would call that raining. That might be a little better. Yeah, if he was of a poetic turn of mind. He might say, oh, the fragrant leaves on the air of the wind.

[19:49]

I don't know, that's pretty corny. But things smell different when it rains. So some kind of, something that reflects interdependence, the interrelationship, because it's raining in ten directions. The ocean glinting with light. Der Ozean, der im Lichte schimmert, ist Teil dessen, was die Dinge regnen lässt. So somehow, either to speak to, without generalizing or to speak to the context, then you, yeah, it's not so easy for Ching Ching to say people are inverted then.

[20:54]

So now we're sort of looking at what is continuity when each thing is unique? Now, I spoke yesterday about the elemental experience of aliveness. What is it to be alive? And if you just notice aliveness, heart beating, lungs, whatever sensations are there, mind, mentation, mind,

[22:08]

There's a kind of presence there. There's a presence to aliveness. And you tend to notice your thinking, but other people tend to notice your presence. When I walk in on the Zendo, I always have fun. I mean, when you're all standing in a line, especially. Because I bump through all these presences. Because it's a little bigger than you are. So I walk through it. It's not smell. I mean, later in Sashin, later in Sashin, it gets a bit like that. She used a stronger word than I do. In the old days, Webster's dictionary, supposedly Webster was at a party in the 19th century whenever it was.

[23:26]

And they didn't have bathtubs and things like we do, running water, hot water easily, etc. People didn't bathe very often. And at a dinner party, a woman turned to him and said, excuse me, Mr. Webster, but you smell. They seem to be less polite in those days, too. And he said, excuse me, madame, but you smell, I stink. See what you get me to do, you tell me. So each person has a kind of field which you feel.

[25:08]

Even if somebody comes in the room, you can feel them from behind you. And though I notice your presence and can feel it, and we each feel each other's presence, We don't usually feel our own presence. We are our presence, so how the hell are we going to feel it? Well, if you notice aliveness, Yeah. One of the fruits of noticing aliveness is as long as you're alive, you're alive. Yeah, excuse me for being simplistic. But if you enjoy your aliveness, and there's no reason why not to,

[26:11]

And as long as you're alive, you're alive, you're going to enjoy the rest of your life. A equals B and et cetera. There's a lot of truth to that. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you're alive, and this actually can be extremely satisfying. And one of the best ways to get a feel for that is in zazen. And one of the things I said is your kind of conceptual... conceptualized life in manageable doses hopefully kind of comes apart while you're sitting

[27:26]

And all you're left with is your aliveness. And in any period of Zazen, you know, it doesn't have to be Sashin, You can just start with noticing aliveness. We could call noticing aliveness Shikantaza. Which means just sitting. But it really means just sitting with no comparative ideas and no idea of self. One way to get there is to just notice aliveness. You don't need anything more. That's all you got in the end, from birth to death. Und letztendlich ist es auch alles, was du hast, von der Geburt an bis zum Tod.

[28:55]

Nicht all die Gebilde, die du mit deinem Geist erschaffst, sondern einfach nur Lebendigkeit. Und das genießt du besser, solange du noch die Möglichkeit dazu hast. Ich spreche aus Erfahrung. Du wirst verdammt schnell 72. Mick Jagger has a song, a recent song, where it says something like, you're 40 years old and you look away and you look back and you're 60. Yeah. I looked away and suddenly I'm giving a lecture in Sashim. So if you get to know, get to feel and open up the experience of aliveness, you begin to feel your presence. your zazen is a good way to experience establishing presence.

[30:25]

And within that presence you find yourself sitting. The feeling of presence arises from the sitting And within the presence that arises, we can begin to adjust our sitting. And we feel the difference between holding up the sky with our spine. Yeah, and when we don't. And our presence is affected by our posture. And our attitude, our mental formations. And I'm sorry to say, as soon as you start much self-referential thinking, the old presence collapses.

[31:35]

And you begin experiencing yourself from outside and want external things to satisfy the outside. Und dann beginnst du dich von außen her zu erfahren und du willst, dass äußerliche Dinge, das äußere, no sorry, that external things, you begin to want external things to satisfy yourself because you're experiencing yourself from outside. Du wirst dann damit beginnen zu wollen, dass äußerliche Dinge dich befriedigen, weil du dich von außen erfährst. when you experience yourself from inside as presence itself, as aliveness itself, you almost don't need anything. And when you need something, it's okay if you get it, and it's okay if you don't.

[32:41]

Because your aliveness is more satisfying than anything you could get. And whatever you get is anyway for the sake of your aliveness. Yeah. Not really just for yourself. That doesn't satisfy you much. But really, when you're, you know, when What we really in the end want is, what we need is our aliveness. And this aliveness is also the basis of presence. And presence includes all your experience. And everything you have done, been, etc., is in your presence.

[33:51]

Now that presence, the engagement of The inseparability of presence and your moment-by-moment situation is when the activity of your life awakens bodily thinking. When your body begins to show you its thinking. Now I got there in a roundabout way. And it's rather delicate what I said. It easily slips away. Yeah, because it's not in our usual categories of thinking.

[34:53]

Well, I probably have to come back to it again. to see if I can find more experiential ways of speaking about it. Thank you very much.

[35:13]

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