Thank you each and all of you for being here. And joining in this experiment of studying ourselves. Observing ourselves. And maybe changing, hopefully changing ourselves. We come to a Sashin. We enter into a, yeah, we put ourselves under a regime. We put our body and our mind under a regime. And our self, our personal habit self or something like that, comes under the regime of the schedule and the...

[01:09]

practice. I think, you know, usually this is something of a shock. Even for those of you who come, many of you come here often enough, this is almost your second home. Yes, the way maybe for some people a favorite vacation place they go to every year is just like another home. Yes, and you know the rooms, you know the halls, you know the kitchen and everything. Can you hear us over there in the corner? Sort of the corner? Okay. And so even for those of you who are so familiar with Yohannesov and Sashin's,

[02:28]

Coming into a Sesshin is something of a shock, I think. But ideally, we get over the shock pretty quickly when we first do Zazen, like last evening or this morning. And if you're not used to sashins, it takes more than one or two periods to get used to it. Maybe for your first sashin, it's two or three days at least for you. Really? Is this what I'm doing? I like that translation. But if you are more experienced in the first period or so, consciousness, externalized consciousness collapses.

[03:47]

Or you withdraw your identity point from externalized consciousness. You withdraw attentional awareness from a consciousness. And you see, I try to say this in various ways, Identity point or attentional awareness. I do it because, one, I don't know quite what English words work. And then when I'm speaking about something I really haven't found a way to speak about.

[05:25]

At least in usual words. Then I have to make up words. Neologians, they're called in English. But And it's hard enough to find equivalent German words for English words that exist. But finding German words for English words that don't exist, this is something interesting. That's why she loves translating for me so much. I don't know if she loves, but anyway, it makes it interesting.

[06:28]

Yeah, I hope. So if I say it various ways, maybe, and then she says it in various ways, maybe... you can start feeling the territory that arises through practice. Yeah. And I often make a comparison between or point out the similarity between going to sleep and zazen. Just because it's similar, there's no excuse for me either to go to sleep. Because when we go to sleep, you also withdraw your attentional awareness or identity point out of externalized consciousness.

[07:40]

Most people have to wait until that happens, but if you're experienced at sitting and practice, you can just do it and go to sleep almost instantly. Yes, and then you have to learn how to withdraw that attentional awareness and yet stay awake. As there's lucid dreaming, this is a kind of lucid bodily awareness. You move your attentional awareness out of consciousness Into the spine.

[08:52]

Feeling it in the spine. Or you move it into your breath or both. Or you move intentional awareness into the body. body as a whole. The more familiar you are with this, the more instructive it is. Because I think most of us in the West have an idea body. And I don't know, I don't want to spend too much time on what's an idea body. We have an idea of things and we try to reach the idea of the body or reach the idea of what is Patiency.

[10:06]

And as many of you probably know, the idea of going to sleep doesn't help you go to sleep. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, if we do have something like, and I had never said this before, an idea body, then it's quite understandable why we establish our continuity in our thinking, in our ideas. then it is quite understandable why we establish our continuity in our ideas. So it's actually quite a challenge to imagine another way to establish continuity being and to establish aliveness.

[11:38]

I mean, at least it's taken me a long, long time, lots of years to notice what I'm noticing. Does that make sense? To notice what I'm noticing. jedenfalls ich, ich habe viele Jahre dazu gebraucht, um das zu bemerken, was ich bemerke, so dass meine Erfahrung klar genug war, dass ich eine besondere Art von Erfahrung bemerken konnte. So when you do... get over this shock of Sechin regime, and just can sit with a sense of inner intactness,

[12:42]

And I don't have any words for this inner... I mean, I'm saying inner intactness, but it's so thoroughly an experience and not an idea that I can only suggest it. So you sit as you release externalized consciousness. And when you do it and go to sleep, you really turn command over to the body. And so in zazen you turn command over to bodily awareness.

[14:07]

A bodily awareness you can't command, but you can allow. In English the word accept means to willingly take or willingly receive. The etymology. And so you're willingly receiving bodily awareness. Now, I often or sometimes define, you know, in all these Abhidharma lists, there's one of the common ones is patience.

[15:15]

And patience in English is something like at least something you endure, something you try to do. Most people have patience only if they have to. Yeah. But patience, one definition I give of patience for these Abhidharma lists is dynamic readiness. You're just ready. But open, ready, but it's not something you're enduring. Du bist offen, bereit. Das ist nicht etwas, was du aushalten musst.

[16:20]

Yeah, so, but maybe I can say positive patience. Oder vielleicht kann ich sagen positive Geduld. Now, okay. One thing I want to keep want to come back to as I've been doing now for several months this concept of mental posture because I think it's going to take us quite a while to plumb plumb Plum is to find the depth of something. To plum the possibility, the power of the effect of mental postures.

[17:28]

I think to define mental postures, we have to define it in contrast to intention. An intention is something like a direction. I intend to do this. But a mental posture is more like an enclosure. You create an enclosure for yourself. And you see what happens in that enclosure. We could say the whole of Sashin is a mental posture. And with the schedule and the physical location we create an enclosure.

[18:44]

And then we see what's going on in this enclosure. Maybe it's something like when you tell a child, don't cross the street without me. I would say that's more of a mental posture than an intention. For the child. Because the child isn't walking around saying, I don't intend to cross the street without my father or mother.

[19:46]

The child gets to the end of the sidewalk and says, oh, I have to wait and let someone cross the street with me. And the precepts, the way the precepts, some of you recently took the precepts, The way the precepts are understood is really as mental postures, not as intentions. You don't intend so much not to kill. You take the mental posture, I won't kill.

[20:47]

And then you see what happens when you have this mental posture of not killing. Yeah, when you eat something, are you killing microbes? You know, what's going on? When you eat, do you kill microbes? What happens there? Or don't take what's not given. That's an enclosure or mental posture you observe. What does it mean to not take what's not given? Okay, so the most basic mental posture for us in Sashin Or instructive mental posture.

[21:59]

Is don't move. So you have, as I've been saying often, you have the physical posture of Zazen. And as I've often said, you have the physical posture of Zazen. And the mental posture of zazen, don't move. And the two together create zazen. And we can say, of course, that don't move is an instruction to help your zazen posture. But again, as I've said, not to all of you, the physical posture can also be understood as the way to develop not moving. Now I'm trying to find words for this one who doesn't move.

[23:16]

An inner core that doesn't move. The best I can find so far is what I'm calling the unmoving one. Das Beste, was ich bis jetzt gefunden habe, ist der Unbewegte. In your activity, in your moving, you find one who is also not moving. In deinen Bewegungen findest du etwas, was sich nicht bewegt. This is at the center of any realized Zazen practice, any realized Zen practice. Okay, from the point of view of the unmoving one, that zazen helps you develop, an inner unmoving, inner, inner, maybe inner, inner unmoving one.

[24:31]

from the point of view of this unmoving one what is patience I would say maybe it's something like positive acceptance Or absolute acceptance. Yeah, and right now I'm favoring decisional acceptance. Yeah, in a simple way. We had breakfast and just had lunch. and the basic concept of orioke meal is that we serve each other and you have to wait to be served and when you're waiting You're just waiting.

[25:55]

Are you being patient? Well, we could call it a kind of patience. Right now I'm trying out calling it decisional acceptance. You have a decision. You can decide not to wait or you can decide to wait. But you usually just wait. In the midst of the possibility of a decision, you just accept that one day I'll get served food probably. In a certain way, even if you're hungry, you don't really care if it ever happens. I guess the potatoes will get down here eventually.

[26:58]

But if they don't arrive, I'll eat air. It's okay. You have this kind of feeling. And the more familiar you get with this unmoving one, who has this positive acceptance of whatever it's a kind of new kind of person living well within you But maybe a new kind of person that lives as you. And this one who doesn't move. Even in little things manifesting like waiting for the potatoes.

[28:21]

They were so delicious. Maybe it releases opiate-like endorphins into the system. Pain, suffering, who cares about it? You just... The endorphins are taking over. A new kind of body that just is alive without comparisons develops. So really, when we do sashim, when we practice, including Oryoki meals in the schedule etc. You are discovering, you can discover a new kind of person that lives, that you can live. I think that's enough for starting out.

[29:43]

I want to talk about the nomological... No, I'll stop.

[29:46]

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