This is the most traditional way, actually, to sit when you give a teisho. Facing the Buddha, so you have to... I better be careful what I say. But in the other zendo, it doesn't work to sit in the window, so... Yeah, so I sit to the side. Okay. Now, I've always found in practice that slightly different ways of thinking about things. I've found in practice that That's slightly different ways of thinking about things.

[01:01]

Release my doing. I can't understand it. Release my doing, how I do things. There's different ways of thinking releases your doing. Yeah. I may have already been doing the same thing, but my thinking didn't allow me to go where the doing led me. Or my doing was imprisoned in my thinking and not released. So I'm trying to, this evening, speak about our practice You know, this same old practice we do, but I'm trying to speak about it in a little different way.

[02:26]

So I'd like to describe zazen, zazen in the morning, As getting used to adjusting body and mind in non-thinking. Or zazen is to find a way to... Sit comfortably doing nothing. And really doing nothing, so you're not engaged in or identified with your thinking. So we could say you're adjusting body and mind in the realm of non-thinking.

[03:40]

Now this is harder to do when you wake up, in the usual transition between sleeping and waking. This is harder to do in the usual transition between sleeping and waking. Because very quickly consciousness takes over your mind. So, you know, the experienced practitioner, if they don't happen to do zazen, Maybe we could say wake up into awareness, but not into consciousness. So doing zazen and then the first thing in the morning. is a way to get used to waking up into awareness instead of consciousness.

[04:52]

And then see if you can carry that feeling, that kind of waking up through the day. then see if you can carry this feeling, this kind of awakening through the whole day. Unlängst habe ich Kin-Hin beschrieben als ein Gehen oder... And the doing, the other day I spoke about the doing of the service by the doshi, the doshi is the person who does the service.

[05:56]

Ideally, when the doshi does the service, you can't feel what the doshi is going to do next. I mean, if you've seen service a lot, you know what he's probably going to do next, he or she. And just to amuse us, maybe this doshi should go the opposite direction from usual sometimes, just for the heck of it. But like when the doshi steps back from the cushion, it shouldn't be clear whether the doshi is going to just stand there or go left or go right. Now, philosophers for generations, centuries, have spoken about time and how we're affected by time, etc.,

[07:04]

But here is a kind of ritual space, which is really also a philosophical space, in which you are not walking with a feeling of past or future. You're just where you are. Now, I've described that as stepping back into Leavitt space. Man, I've just made this term up. Because this guy, Benjamin Leavitt, was the first to show, I think, although it's been known, that our body decides to move before consciousness has delivered the information.

[08:27]

So if you wake up into awareness instead of consciousness. Perhaps you're more waking up into bodily knowing. Before consciousness knows what you're going to do. Before consciousness agrees or edits what you're going to do.

[09:37]

Now it's nonsense to think, as some people do, that this means we're in a psychological determinism. No, determinism means that you operate out of instincts or it's all done for you. The willpower is an illusion. I was just staying at somebody's house who has a swimming pool which isn't heated. It was a cloudy, cold day. And I thought I would go to maybe take a swim. And after 45 years of practicing Zen, I didn't know if I had the courage to dive into this cold water.

[10:50]

I want to change my body temperature so radically and involuntarily. involuntarily. So, but it's intention and willpower that got me down to the swimming pool, not my body. And then it's the intention and willpower that got me to go up on the diving platform two boards. And I asked my body, are you going to do this? And it wasn't too sure. So I said, I'll decide for you.

[11:57]

So I jumped off and my body tried to change its mind on the way down. And it was entirely too late. Okay. So willpower and consciousness got me to do that. But most of the time it's actually our body which, once the context is established, our body which decides. So consciousness is creating context and editing, but the body is mostly doing the deciding. And it's actually quite satisfying when you find yourself in this non-conscious bodily knowing.

[13:14]

Can I ask something? Yeah. Can you give me an example in an ordinary life when your body decides something? All the time. Okay, if I decide to move my hand. This is a standard example. And I have wires attached to the body, right? The machinery will indicate that the arm has decided to move. And about half a second, 500 milliseconds later, the consciousness notices that it decides to move. So, in fact, most of the time, consciousness edits the movement but doesn't decide. So, in fact, most of the time, consciousness edits the movement but doesn't decide.

[14:20]

comments, or edits, decides not to allow the movement to occur. And consciousness thinks it's making the decision, but in fact it's not. And again, using the example, if you fall down, you catch yourself very quickly, much faster than consciousness can figure out what to do. Consciousness doesn't even think anymore that it made the decision to put the arm there so you weren't hurt. Because it clearly happened faster than consciousness can respond. Okay, now if that's the case, and that's easy to notice if you practice mindfulness, mindful attention, Then can we live the day in the territory of bodily knowing rather than conscious editing?

[15:54]

Well, you can. And that's the part of the purpose of zazen and kin hin and so forth. Of waking up into awareness instead of consciousness. It doesn't mean you're not also conscious and editing and establishing context and so forth. But it means where you feel located is in bodily knowing. Now if you're thinking about this consciously, it's pretty hard to make sense of it.

[17:24]

But if you do think about it, you can notice it's possible. You can imagine it might be possible. Well, how do you do it? Well, you get a feel for it. People often ask me, how do I bring zazen, the feeling of zazen, through the day? Well, this is one answer. No, you know, because this teaching arose and generated a yogic culture in Asia.

[18:27]

Some of these things are more articulated in Chinese or Japanese culture and language than in ours. I don't mean their culture is better or worse or anything else than ours. I'm not making that kind of comparison. I'm just saying that things in the West have led us to our interest in the yogic culture of Asia. Yeah, and vice versa in Asia, but again, we're not making that comparison. Okay. Now, mostly we go through the day thinking we're a, you know, a person or consciousness or something like that. You know, it's very hard to break that habit.

[19:49]

And most of us would see no reason at all to break the habit. Nor would we want to. Oder wollten wir das? But if you break the habit, I think you'll find out that probably you suffer less. Aber wenn du diese Gewohnheit brechen könntest, dann würdest du wahrscheinlich sehen, dass du weniger leidest. We'll have less anxiety. Wir hätten weniger Ängste. You'll suffer your grief or your... pain, you'll suffer your grief or your pain or absorb your grief or your pain in a different way. Maybe it will be absorbed in the realm of bodily knowing more than absorbed in consciousness, which has so many comparisons and is so fragile.

[21:02]

In consciousness, our suffering gets so mixed up with who we are in comparison to others who suffer more or less. Other people and who we are. Bodily knowing doesn't make that kind of comparison. It just knows rather outside past and future. So if you have the feeling that you're carrying that what continues through the day, if you have the feeling that what continues through the day is the body and not your consciousness or self,

[22:27]

And the word, in one of the words, again, if we use Chinese here, shen in Chinese means the body person. I think we think of ourselves as a personality person or something like that. And we're so concerned with whether we're liked or not liked, etc. And we're so concerned with whether we're liked or not liked, etc. Yeah, but if you just thought of yourself, you know, as an object.

[23:41]

You're more like that, just an object like other objects. An object among other objects. Oder als ein Objekt unter anderen Objekten. Yeah, on the floor, standing on the floor. Boden, stehend auf dem Boden. Today in the kitchen. Heute in der Küche. Yeah, there's the tile walls, there's the person, there's this old stove, and there's this object too. It seems to have a location. Also da ist diese Kachelwand, der Boden, der alte Ofen, eine Person, und dann gibt es noch dieses alte Objekt hier. One of the objects got destroyed in the kitchen. Und eins der Objekte wurde in der Küche zerstört. But you didn't, and the walls didn't, and the floor didn't. But there's this sense of a more easy sense of the presence of change. If you bring attention to the breath you can think of the breath as an object.

[25:00]

So the sense of Shen let's try to use that word is the body person. Or the lived body. So the Chinese at least would think of themselves first as a body and second as some kind of person or something like that. And it makes a difference what you give primacy to. So it's a body, an inhabited, lived body that is your whole day. During service in the morning, it's an inhabited, lived body.

[26:05]

Yeah, and walking down the hall and making breakfast, eating breakfast. It's an inhabited, lived body. Okay, now the body, this word shen, not only means the lived body or the person body, Also means the extended, the stretched out body. If your first emphasis is the body and not the mind or consciousness or something. Wenn deine erste Betonung der Körper ist und nicht der Geist und das Bewusstsein, dann wenn du ein Gefühl für dein Umgebendes hast, dann wird es nicht so sehr durch die Augen gesehen,

[27:28]

as felt through the body, so you begin to feel the presence As if your body extends in space. As it does. Someone the age of Sophia is very aware if she's alone in a room or someone else is in the room. So I think that she feels the difference of the bodily presence in the room. So I'm suggesting you have a feeling of of this lived body and lived bodily presence. As if each object was a kind of somatic field.

[28:42]

Or something like that. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. That's good enough, body feel. And then another word for the body is, I think, shing, H-S-I-N-G. Is that how you pronounce it, shing? H-S-I-N-G. And that means the body as a continual reappearance. But each moment we're a little different. And the context is part of this difference. And the third word I really don't know how to pronounce is T apostrophe I. Just T?

[29:52]

Let's have a cup of body. Also, das dritte Wort, das weiß ich wirklich nicht, wie man das ausspricht, aber das ist... Tea? Tea zu sein, also haben wir doch eine Tasse Körper zusammen. Okay, yeah. Tea is the body as performance. Tea ist der Körper als... Can you say body as a doing? Perform as a doing, yeah. And performance in English means to furnish with what's needed.

[30:52]

To furnish form with what's needed. Performance, also dieses Handeln, heißt auf Englisch auszustatten mit dem, was gebraucht wird. So to be a little philosophical, it means the world is not assumed to be a given order but an emergent order. Also um jetzt etwas philosophischer zu sein, man stellt sich die Welt nicht als eine gegebene Ordnung vor, sondern als eine It means that at each moment you're performing the self. Each moment you're... No, no, no, I have to figure that out a little bit. In every moment you have to At each moment you're performing the body.

[32:08]

And the ingredients are the situation. Now no one is surprised that that Cooked rice isn't found on trees. If you want rice, you have to cook it. It's not found just laying around, oh, there's some cooked rice, let's pick it up. I mean, in the kitchen, it's like that. And the rice itself is developed over some generations from some kind of grass. So we have no problem thinking of rice or... the plant or the water and the grains as ingredients.

[33:26]

But we have a little harder thinking of ourselves as just an ingredient. But from the point of view of the way I'm speaking, Your day is a bunch of ingredients. And if you carry the self and the personality through the day, you cook your life differently. If you carry a feeling in the body, first of all, and secondarily consciousness and self and so forth,

[34:28]

But if you first carry your body and secondly your consciousness and yourself and so on, if you carry your body or this extended body or the presence of your body, then it is a different process of cooking your situation. So if you carry awareness primarily rather than consciousness through the day, bodily awareness, you're going to find the ingredients that make self, personality and so forth are different. Then the fact that everything's changing, yeah, it's not such a big deal. you find each moment is a moment that you put together.

[35:46]

That each moment is a situation you put together. That you situate. At each moment you're putting the body together. And what are the ingredients you're going to have? Bad moods or good moods? A sense of gratitude or a sense of irritation? So instead of thinking of your mood and your attitude and what you're thinking, instead of... Thinking of your attitudes, moods, etc. As you and how you feel and so forth. Think of them as ingredients. Do you want these ingredients in your living soup? Maybe not. But Now, I meant to speak this evening about gate phrases and what I'm now calling often lens phrases.

[37:22]

Lens like a magnifying or lens like a lens. Lens like a magnifying glass or camera lens. Because these wados are turning words. Held in the intentional mind, not discursive mind. Help you see into your activity. Help you see into your psychological processes before they become psychological habits. Help you see into... how mind and your doing are caught in each other.

[38:36]

Perhaps seeing how the world view implied by your doing is different than the world view implied by your thinking. So a phrase, a lens phrase, held in intentional mind, Linse is a lentil. And if you say lentil phrase, it can be also like lentil stock. We're talking about cooking. Yeah, sure. We're talking about the soup. Okay, sorry. So if you held the... Lentils are like little lenses, aren't they? Yeah, also linse und linse zum essen ist auf Deutsch das Gleiche. Und es klingt dann, wenn er spricht, wie wenn er von Linsensuppe reden würde. What did you do all day with practice? I made lentil soup all day.

[39:44]

So a lens phrase can see into the world view implied by the body and the world view implied by the thinking, which are often different. In that sense, a lens phrase can shift into a gate phrase, can allow you to turn a corner in how you see the world, know the world. And the more you are bodily in the world, the more these phrases have power. Okay, that's enough for one evening.

[40:58]

Thank you very much.

[41:00]

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