Of course, in a sashin many things are going on in each of us. But I'm emphasizing in this session, you know, something like imagining Johanneshof as a swimming pool. And have a feeling that you're swimming through this swimming pool. Yeah, I don't mean sometimes you're not just treading water. Treading water? Staying in one place. Treading water on your cushion. Perhaps the water of the past coming up into you. Yeah, our concerns perhaps about the future coming into you.

[01:14]

But, you know, for some reason, I don't know, I never know why, this sashin I'm emphasizing, swimming in this water. Yeah, recognizing this water. Yeah, I'm really... I always don't know. I feel some important point I don't know quite how to get to it so I try various things. Now apropos of what I said yesterday that you don't have to read a lot of Various people or Dogen, for example. But just find your mind and body in the word shoes.

[02:16]

of the teacher, of the teaching. And Dogen himself says, realization does not require, awakening to the way, does not require extensive practice. learning or explanation, anyone can realize the way through a simple verse of four lines, he says. So, if you're interested in studying Buddhism, it's okay. If you're interested in studying Buddhism, it's okay. Yeah, okay. Oscar Knoop.

[03:27]

That's supposedly not true. Yes. You all know that story, right? Where OK comes from? Supposedly. There was this Chicago German guy and his name was Oscar something and he always signed OK. OK. Yeah, it's interesting, but don't think you're actually studying Buddhism. You're studying Buddhism when you find yourself hooked into, let us say, hooked into a verse of four lines or something equivalent. Now, if Dogen says, you know... Dogen says...

[04:33]

You're waiting for something. If Dogen says, you know, Kobachino, poor old Kobachino, so sad he died. But anyway, when he first came to America, I've told you many times, but Sukhiroshi told me he had to speak, give lectures. But he didn't know English. So really, he would really just do that. He'd say, Dogen Zenji says. And then he'd fall asleep. And then he'd fall asleep. Really, and we were all, you know, new, we'd all be falling asleep. And really, he'd after, sometimes 10 minutes, like, Dogen Zenji said, by the end of the practice period, he could sort of give a lecture.

[05:56]

I wondered if you were going to fall asleep there. Dogen says we can awaken to the way through simple four-line verse. Durgan says, we can awaken to the way through a simple verse with four lines. And by awaken to the way, he means become a Buddha. Well, if what's between us and a Buddha is just four lines, hey, let's get on with it. Well, what do we have to do with those four lines? What kind of unusual... I mean, let's say that a Buddha is maybe an unusual person. I mean, we don't go around saying everybody's a Buddha.

[07:07]

Not so many qualify. But if it's some kind of unusual person or some kind of person we want to exist in this world, What separates us from being a Buddha? A verse of four lines. Or a verse of four lines which allows us to be here now in a different way. So a stanza with four lines that makes it possible for us to be here now in all different ways. In one way it's all the same, the usual life and so on, but then again it's just this here and that in a very special way. And the four lines might let us make that shift.

[08:27]

So it's got to be four lines that take hold of your body, not just four lines that have some mental curiosity. That all... When we... When we cultivate and authenticate all things through conveying the self to them. What I'm trying to do in this Sashin is to say that a phrase like that and its companion phrase can be these four lines. You can write it that way if you want, two and two. And you've got to look at each unit.

[09:30]

Win all. What the heck are all things? What are all things? What is cultivate and authenticate? What is when all things advance or come forward? How can we locate this place? Well, I'm just, you know, what's some simple examples of the taste of this?

[10:30]

You know, I like to drink matcha tea ceremony tea. Yeah, and since it's, yeah, since I do it every day, usually it's, you know, it makes me notice things. And I'm not trying to teach tea ceremony here. Because I could speak about this, you know, in Hannover I think I spoke about a beer glass instead of tea ceremony. It's a little harder with a beer glass, but you know, it's... Tea ceremony is nothing but instant tea. Really, it's instant. It's just powdered tea leaves and you mix them up just like you would instant coffee and toss it down.

[11:39]

But there are certain rules about it, like in the Yoyoki. I love to eat Yoyoki meals. With all of you. The food tastes so good. And I notice sometimes when I have the same food, not in arioki meals, it doesn't taste so good. Just plain old white rice shucks. But in the Buddha bowl it looks so white and pretty. It's good. Oh. No, I mean, this is a real difference, you know. If, you know, just the way you eat can make the rice taste different. So with the tea ceremony, you know, you have this bowl and you whisk the tea.

[12:53]

And you... You can just, you know, drink it, you know. It actually doesn't taste very good when you do it that way. It's quite bitter. But if you whisk it and then you... The style of doing it is, after you whisk it, you hold the tea bowl for a minute. And you don't drink when the tea bowl is held that way, with the front toward you. So you pause. Really, you're pausing for the tea bowl. And there's the circle of the bowl, usually a circle, a kind of circle.

[13:54]

And there's the circle of the tea in that. And there's the spheres of the bubbles in the tea from whisking it. So if you actually follow the rule and pause, something happens to your body, at least to mine. Yeah, my breathing changes. Somehow these circles and the T and the et cetera, to actually pause for it, There's a change in my breathing.

[14:56]

Now that's not a small thing to change your breathing. You know that soul, spirit, psyche, all of these words are all related to the word breath. Mm-hmm. And self, the word self, means something like private or secret. Known only to oneself. And actually these roots of the words reflect something. Dogen says, When the elements come together, I does not, the pronoun I, the observer I, does not have to appear.

[16:19]

So what Dogen means by the self, to cultivate and authenticate the self, isn't the private, secret self. Yeah, and we know he doesn't mean that. He means something like soul or spirit, you know? So if this pause for the tea bowl and the tea changes my breath, This is actually the tea bowl coming forward and cultivating the self. You may think this is nothing. You may think this is nothing. It's too small a thing. But actually it's not.

[17:37]

If you more and more have that kind of pause, where you actually let things come forward, you are cultivating yourself. And then you turn the bowl more or less a quarter turn. And now it's a pause for the tea liquid itself, not the... Yeah, now you drink the tea. And somehow this very pace that occurs in drinking the tea makes the tea taste different than if you just drank it now.

[18:38]

The pace at which you eat an apple and savor the apple. And don't think, oh, this apple is not as good as the last apple. Just this apple, that's all. Yeah. Yeah, it tastes different to me anyway. It tastes much better when I... do that, eat an apple that way. What pace does an apple require? A good, you know, you can go to a very good restaurant and a very good restaurant doesn't necessarily have very good, that much different food than another restaurant.

[20:08]

but they control the pace at which you eat it. Attention to detail makes a difference in your own attention. It doesn't mean you can't have an attention to detail at McDonald's. Sometimes it's not so bad. But I'm talking here about the articulation of attention. And the tea has to be fairly hot so you don't drink it too fast. Okay. So Dogen says the elements swim together. Yeah. And I spoke yesterday about interior attention and exterior attention.

[21:37]

And interior attention and exterior attention flow together. And now I'm talking about a phascal of Dogen's called Ocean Mudra Samadhi. Or ocean seal samadhi. Or swimming pool mudra samadhi. Why is he using this image? What is this? Physicality that unfolds moment after moment. Dogen says all Buddhas and Buddha ancestors swim in this ocean mudra samadhi.

[22:40]

So he's trying to do just what I'm doing, which is to try to create a metaphor that makes us feel things, notice things differently. And he says, we enter ocean mudra samadhi when the elements... flow together. You've probably noticed, say, when you're going to sleep. Sometimes your mind is thinking about something. And then Between your thoughts, some images will appear.

[23:53]

Maybe you're thinking about something you have to do. Somewhere just under the thoughts, there's a sailboat. What the heck is a sailboat doing under that thought? If you notice that, what's happening is, Your attention is dividing. One is going toward the images of dreaming and the other is going toward the thoughts of waking mind. And you can actually make a kind of choice to let that division occur, to let the imaging start happening. And you can choose to go with the images and you'll fall asleep very quickly. Usually. Or you can decide to go with the thoughts and you'll probably wake up. So here you're articulating attention, two different kinds of attention.

[25:11]

Or two different kinds of minds which you can give attention to either. And Dogen means something like that in the sense that Things are arising in yourself, associations, etc. At the same time, the world is arising. And he calls both of those elements, units, elements, or dharmas. And when those flow together, he calls that ocean mudra samadhi. And The observing eye does not have to appear in this process.

[26:23]

Observing mind can appear. Now, am I speaking about something that's clearly enough that you can know that you already know this? Because Dogen says it doesn't take a lot of learning, sense of learning and explanation. And although if you practice and you really mature mindfulness, this ability to notice, to articulate attention is much easier. easier. I remember even when I started practicing, I could feel these little things, they just weren't as developed. So I don't think I'm just speaking to somebody who has really developed and articulated mindfulness practice, I don't think I'm just speaking to persons who have developed and articulated mindfulness practice.

[27:54]

I'm speaking to just that any of us can notice these differences If you practice on your own, it takes lifetimes to notice the importance of some of these differences. But if you practice with people who practiced for a while, it becomes easier to notice these things. Now, Dogen says this ocean mudra samadhi Is neither inside nor outside.

[28:55]

Nor is it in between. Okay, now he's talking about some kind of, again, somatic presence. Now, some of you are quite physical and athletic. But that, yeah, that's good. That's nice to be healthy. But that kind of physicality may help or may not help in what I'm talking about. And I'm talking about more as a feeling of the Space itself is physicalized. Folding in and out of the objects, so-called objects around. What you get, of course, for us who are practicing are not objects, but mind objects, percept objects.

[30:11]

Now, percepts get connected to names, right? So presence, presencing of things as they are. Presence. The presence of each of us and the presence of an object, the presence of a teapot, are often hidden under is often hidden under the names and the cursives. Paul Ricoeur says something like, step by step, all human activity is annexed to words.

[31:13]

Paul Ricoeur. And words permeate everything human. permeate and transverse the machine, the utensil, the hand itself. Transverse, cross through, walk through, cross over. And we lose the sense of presence. Everything is annexed into words and concepts. And in practice we're trying to reverse that process.

[32:27]

I don't know if this is a reasonable example, but Sophia has a strong sense that there's mama and her language and then there's my papa's language. I hope that changes a little after six months in the United States. I don't mind, but sometimes it feels funny. So today she announced that you and I, Marie-Louise, have the same language, different from Papa, don't we? And then she said, and the sound of my peeing, that sound is also in German, isn't it? I sort of thought that was a universal language. But she hears it in German, eh? No.

[33:50]

I key in German. Finger off touch. Well, maybe that's enough. Thank you very much.

[34:33]

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