Of course, one thing that Sashin does, because Sashin establishes what I would call a density of attention. I mean, oryoki practice requires a density of attention. If you don't, you know, as I've said, you don't chat with your neighbors while you're eating your gnocchi or you drop your soup. What do you think about, you know... And, yeah... And of course, sitting through periods of zazen, when it's rather uncomfortable, requires a density of attention.

[01:08]

And of course, staying within schedule and being in schedule with other people all around you is also a density of attention. And I think what we find out during Sashin is particularly the first two, three, four days, this density of attention calls forth memories embedded in an equally dense attention. There's a saying that you get water out of the ear with water.

[02:10]

And in a similar way, you call forth deeply embedded memories through the kind of density of attention that occurs in Sashin. In fact, if you sit regularly, often the first two or three years of your sitting are a calling forth of a redoing, a reliving of many elements of your past. And somehow the posture and the regularity of the posture also puts things in order somehow. Okay.

[03:33]

Now, parallel to that, I assume this is happening for many of you, And parallel to that, I'm trying to present some teachings, some practices, some teachings which can work within this awakened density of attention. Now, I'm always speaking about world views. And the basic context of that is that we have world views and often considerable contrast to the worldviews of Buddhist culture.

[04:52]

So the contrast gives us a chance to practice, to enter into practice in a way that is special and useful to Westerners. And there are world views, not only of, you know, overall world views, etc., how you see things. But there are also worldviews about the mind itself, worldview differences in how we see the body, and how we see emotions and memories and so forth. And all of that can be sorted through.

[06:09]

And I think beneficially sorted through. But, you know, for the average person coming to practice, They want to find out something about Zen and Zazen and mindfulness. And they're not necessarily open to or interested in changing the view of their body. Or walking differently or handling things differently. But if you want to practice the larger context of practice is to know things as they are.

[07:25]

That can mean lots of things, but let's say, to know things as they are. Yeah, and knowing things and current science and philosophical phenomenology and current psychology, much of it and Buddhism are all pushing us toward knowing things as they are. So if knowing things as they are means we change the view of our body, well, that actually is part of practice then.

[08:37]

Are you feeling better? Oh, good. I was worried about your empty seat. Yeah, so again, let me bring up an example. An example I've mentioned in various ways before. Very early, I mean, one of the first instructions Sukershi gave me. Well, he gave general instructions like bring attention to your breath and so forth. But the first instruction I remember that he specifically gave to me personally Which was, as I've mentioned before, put your mind in your hand. And as I've said before, I didn't know what he meant. I didn't know

[09:49]

I mean, it had two parts, two aspects. One is I didn't know how to follow his instruction. And the second is I recognized that I was in the midst of a different worldview. I recognized that I didn't know what he meant by mind. And in those very early days, too, it takes time to sort these things out. I mean, you have to... Get, first of all, really familiar with your own views. Suzuki Roshi used to say he didn't like his students to become Japanese.

[11:17]

His advice was something like, really be Westerners. And then see the contrast. So really know your starting point. And some of us shift too early, experiment with different... And we don't really know what we actually believe and feel ourselves. So I saw... I'm confronted with a different worldview here. And I was quite sure, intuitively mostly, that Tsukiyoshi himself didn't know how different the worldview was. He was only recently in the West.

[12:19]

He was always, although he grew up in a kind of, you know, they used to say in Europe that you go up a thousand feet and you go back a century. And that was before automobiles. Because culture traveled in the valleys and you went up a thousand feet and people lived like they did in the previous century. And Suzuki Roshi lived in the countryside. I don't think he'd ever visited Kyoto until I lived there. And so he lived in what was still sort of samurai culture. At the same time, he was very interested in contemporary Western culture in Japan.

[13:44]

And he studied Western philosophy. I know he studied Kant, for instance. But still, I don't think he could have, couldn't have realized so early in his stay in America how different what we mean by mind is than what he meant by mind. And I would like to try to see if I can make this clear. Okay. So he spent all of his life up until coming to San Francisco in thinking and living as a Japanese in a Buddhist culture.

[14:48]

With some exposure to the West, but not changing his basic way of functioning. But enough exposure through reading to really be curious about the interface. And one of the talents, even I could say geniuses, of Suzuki Roshi throughout his decade or so of teaching in America He saw this interface of world views more and more clearly. So again, he told me to put my mind in my hands. Also, noch einmal, er sagte mir, meinen Mind in meine Hände zu legen.

[16:05]

At first I had no idea. I mean, as I've said before, did I... take my brain and put it in my hand? And I had some sort of gooey image of my brain in my hands, you know. Yeah. And then later I thought, well, he must mean attention you put your attention to in your hands. That's useful. You put your attention in your hands, more in your hands than, say, somewhere else. I don't know. But if that had been what he meant, he would have said attention because he said put your attention on your breath, he would have said put your attention in your hands.

[17:09]

Okay, so I think the key to understanding this or getting a sense of it is the concept of fields. And let me say, thinking in fields. Okay, so let's say, we tend to think in entities. And people in Asia too also think in entities, not quite the same way, but also. But Buddhist practice, emphasis on interdependence, The emphasis on change, on inter-independence means that everything is an activity, not an entity.

[18:16]

Now, I won't go into that in more detail. But I sometimes do express it by saying, like, there are no trees, there's only treeing. And as soon as you see a tree as treeing, you see the tree as a field of activity. Bark, bugs, birds... Rain, wind, sun.

[19:19]

So you immediately, when you see activities, you immediately have a field of activity. So maybe instead of activities, we could say you have contents. Again, I'm trying to find what English words I can use for this. You have contents, but contents are contained in something. You can have the contents of a house, the contents of a library, The contents of a bottle, etc. So the contents are parts. Parts of something else. Okay. So mind then has to be an activity. Because that's the only way Sukhiroshi would think of it, mind as an activity.

[20:44]

And if mind is an activity, then there's contents of mind. When you think about something, that's a content of mind. Okay, so if mind is an activity, it's also a field of activity. The contents of mind are within the field of mind. Die Inhalte des Meins sind innerhalb des Feldes des Meins. And the contents of mind establish the field of mind, interact with the field of mind. Und die Inhalte des Meins, die interagieren mit dem Feld des Meins.

[21:48]

And the field of mind establishes, that's really too strong a word, but establishes and interacts with the contents of mind. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's completely simple and clear. It's just the way it has to be that way, right? But now it becomes a little more subtle. Because we're speaking about the field of mind. And better the feel of the field of mind. Because it's not just an idea, the field of mind, it has to be experienced. Well, how do you experience, there's this content and that content, how do you experience a feel that joins the contents?

[22:57]

Also, es gibt diesen Inhalt, es gibt diesen Inhalt, wie erfährst du die Verbindung zwischen diesen Inhalten? It's invisible. There's this content, there's that content, there's nothing in between, but please feel it. Es ist unsichtbar, es gibt diesen Inhalt, es gibt diesen Inhalt, aber bitte spüre ihn. Okay, so now I'm getting a little more Buddhist technical here. I don't know why. This is what came up. Okay. It's the concept, and I spoke about it recently somewhere else, of simultaneous arising. Here's a content of mind. You can all see it. It's become a content of your mind, too, if you're looking anyway. You can hear it, too. That's not the content of my mind. It's empty. Okay, but what simultaneously arose with this?

[24:13]

Mind. Mind and the stick arise simultaneously. Because this has appeared in your mind, so mind has arisen with its appearance. Okay, now a basic practice, now this would be not just living in a yoga culture, but a basic practice of Buddhism, is to get in the habit of feeling, first of all knowing the simultaneous arising. So I've often said to know everything as a mind object, not just an entity or something neutral out there. So it's a mind object. So it's a spectrum, actually.

[25:31]

A spectrum from emphasizing the field of mind to emphasizing the object. And you can emphasize the feel of mind more than the object. In fact, if you really get into the habit of it, that you feel mind on every perception, And you even give priority to the feel of mind, priority, a stronger emphasis than the object. Now that's called experience of sameness. Because every object has the feel of mind on it. And if every object, every perception has the feel of mind on it, the world seems more and more related, intact.

[26:46]

And this actually reinforces the experience of the one who doesn't move, one which doesn't move. Because the unmoving one, which I mentioned yesterday and last night, is constantly reinforced by everything that the the unmoving sameness of everything. So the mind becomes more and more stable. Becomes more and more stable. unmovable, imperturbable.

[27:57]

And that imperturbability, that basic unmoving mind that one discovers through don't move, is now continuously reinforced with every perception, with every mindful perception. Okay. Okay. Okay, so again, Sukhiroshi, naturally, naturally for him and his Buddhist culture, saw mind as a field of mind with contents of mind. Now another fruit of this way of looking at things A transformative fruit.

[29:07]

Maybe grafted onto our western trunk. Like a tree grafted onto another tree. Grafted onto our western trunk is this yogic tree. And one of the fruits of this is that the contents of mind are felt to arise and do within mind. So the field of mind feels like it's the source of the contents of mind. And that's one of the things meant by original mind. Und das ist eines der Dinge, das mit ursprünglichem Mind gemeint ist.

[30:26]

Better would be originary mind or originating mind. Und besser wäre, von ursprunggebenden oder davorliegenden Mind zu sprechen. Okay. So Suzuki Roshif, would feel then that the field of mind is the source of the contents of mind. So basically what he was saying to me is put the field of mind in your hands. So he in no way saw it as an entity or a brain or something like that. He saw it as an activity of mind Er sah es als eine Aktivität des Minds, als eine Aktivität, die gleichzeitig fällt und Inhalte ist.

[31:33]

Er wollte nicht, dass ich bestimmte Inhalte in meine Hände lege. Ich fühle mich traurig. Was passiert? If he wants me to put the field of mind in my hands, he would mean he wants me to feel the field of mind arising in the mudra of the hands as your hands, you know, there's also often a circle, a spiral written on the hands of the Buddha and so forth. In yoga culture, your hands, like healing hands, are kind of source of mind.

[32:35]

In the yogic culture, your hands are a source of the mind. And in Buddhist statues, often the hands are given as much attention, or even more sometimes, as they are in the Crestone Buddha. The hands are often given more attention, even than any other part of the body, as in the Crestone Buddha. And the hands are always expressions of mind. So he said, put the field, the originary field of mind in your hands. How could I understand this when he told me? They never told me this in college. and it's taken me 50 years to understand it and what it means to have a feeling that everything is arising in a field of mind okay okay

[33:53]

Very big practice in one minute. I'm often speaking about mental postures. And I'm pointing out, as I did yesterday, it's different than an intention. And many of you understand and have practiced with the five skandhas. And we recite them every morning in the Heart Sutra. So the first skanda is the form skanda. Okay. Now, that means like Form. And it's a way to give structure to the teaching, so there's a beginning point.

[35:17]

Form, feeling, perception, etc. Yeah, associative mind and consciousness. What is the form's conduct? The form skandha is form and emptiness. And the form skandha is where from is the source of appearances. The source of feeling, the source of perception. Okay, now We can walk around on the floor and the halls here and into the kitchen. But we can also think of our walking around as walking around in the form skanda. Then what are we walking around in? We're walking around in the building and the floor and so forth as a mental posture.

[36:42]

The floor is not just the floor. It's the mental posture of the first skanda. It's where appearances arise. So we're already always walking around, if you get the feeling of this, if you can get the feeling of this, we're always walking around in the midst of the already arisen arising. In the midst of the already arisen, all of you, floor, wall, and simultaneously arising. Arising in your experience. Now what I'd like you to try to do And it's the kind of thing we can only do in Sesshin.

[37:53]

Not so easy in an ordinary, usual seminar. It's for the next five or six days, five and a half days. Six and a half days? Seven and a half? No, we're not... Anyway, you walk around feeling you're walking around in the field of mind. In the first skanda. In the form skanda. You feel form as the form skanda. And you feel form as the condition of horizon. And appearances arise with clarity. If they arise without comparisons, etc., just with clarity, appearances arise in their momentariness. Everything only lasts a moment.

[39:11]

And in that momentariness, this is also emptiness. So you can get a direct experience of emptiness. Form and emptiness in the form skandha form and emptiness in the form skandha when everything arises with a clarity without comparison now if you just get a taste of this for you know one hallway length one hallway might change your life yeah just to feel appearances As much as possible without comparison. And then they're felt as clarity. Momentariness and clarity.

[40:15]

So you begin to establish your continuity, physiological continuity. Your continuity, your feet walking. Your feet aren't actually walking. The feet are flooring. Or the feet are footing. And the floor is flooring. And footing and flooring are... And if there's footing and flooring, you're in the form. And everything is arising. Empty, beautiful, clear. Yeah. Well, I won't say more.

[41:26]

Thanks.

[41:26]

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