So we've been exploring together, stepping back into our experience. Wir haben miteinander erforscht, in unsere Erfahrung hinein zurückzutreten. What Dogen calls the backward step. Das, was Dogen den Schritt zurück nennt. Turning the light around. Das Licht herumdrehen. and exploring how the space that we begin to shape and rest in, it's a unique, particular, not a generalized space. A feeling of aloneness, not so much that we're alone, but that we're beyond a certain kind of comparing, picking and choosing.

[01:24]

A verse adapted from Rumi. I am with you always. means that when you look for true nature, true nature is the look in your eye. It's in the very act of looking. Nearer to us than ourselves, he says. There's no need to go outside. There's no need to go outside.

[02:40]

Be like melting snow. Wash the self of the self. A white flower is growing in quietness. Let our breath be that flower. Looking for true nature is the look in our eye. Nach wahrer Natur zu suchen ist der Blick in unseren Augen. It's knowing the world as mind. Es bedeutet die Welt als Geist zu kennen. It's knowing the world as an act of knowing.

[03:43]

Es bedeutet die Welt als einen Akt des Erkennens zu kennen. As an act of noticing. Als eine Aktivität des Bemerkens. It's the very act of looking. Smelling, tasting, touching. Not needing to add anything. It's nearer to us than ourselves. There's no gap between the self and the self. There's no need to go outside. There's no need to go anywhere. This territory that Rumi is beginning to chart and help us to discover.

[05:00]

The kind of perception that Rumi is directing us toward considering. It's not our ordinary everyday way of perceiving. We may say there are three ways of perceiving. First way is through consciousness. This is a room with a floor and walls and windows and ceiling. And in consciousness we tend to treat things as objects of consciousness and objects that we can know, that we can understand.

[06:21]

We can make the particulars of our world into different constructions and configurations that we can work with as part of our everyday life. And then there's a second way of perceiving, which is through awareness. So stepping into this room is stepping into a particular kind of space which is continually being shaped by all of us.

[07:22]

It's not exactly cognizable, no. Yet through a kind of absorbent awareness we may become familiar with and participate in its shaping. And then we may say there's a third kind of perception. Which is in a territory we may describe as not knowing. Not in the category of knowing.

[08:25]

Not in the category of our even well-tuned absorbent awareness. There's a kind of mysterious, boundless, almost forever extending quality to this space. almost, what did you say, almost? Ever extending. So to begin to consider a verse like Rumi's.

[09:53]

Is to begin to, not just with our thinking mind, but with a mind of verse is like a mind of song. Das bedeutet nicht nur mit unserem denkenden Geist, sondern der Geist eines solchen Verses ist wie der Geist eines Liedes. It's imprecise in many ways. It's imprecise to our thinking mind. Und in vielerlei Hinsicht ist der unserem denkenden Geist gegenüber ungenau. And our absorbent awareness may begin to Feel around in it. But it defies appropriation. It defies making it into something reifying. Aber es wehrt sich gegen die Aneignung.

[11:02]

Es wehrt sich dagegen, das in etwas Bestimmtes machen zu können. It's an elusive, mysterious quality. Eine flüchtige, geheimnisvolle Qualität. So Rumi says, be like melting snow. Rumi sagt, sei wie schmelzender Schnee. It means not to hold ourselves together with some idea of who we think we are. Who we take ourselves to be. What we think we're doing. Our ideas of good practice and bad practice. Be like melting snow. Washing ourselves of ourselves with this kind of ungraspable, mysterious place.

[12:10]

mit diesem unbegreifbaren, geheimnisvollen Ort. Es ist so wie nachts zurückzugreifen. Die Nacht ist die Dunkelheit und das Mysterium ist der Geist des Zazen. It's not a territory that we can chart and describe and map. Das ist nicht ein... Eine Landschaft, einen Bereich, den wir auszeichnen können oder den wir kartieren können. And immediately when we often have a tendency to do that. Und sofort, und wir haben oft die Neigung dazu, das zu tun. When we do that, it's no longer Zazen. Aber wenn wir das tun, dann ist es nicht mehr Zazen. washing ourselves of ourselves settling ourselves on ourselves as we are as we are with one another and as we're continually changing

[13:38]

Consciousness or everyday consciousness tends to operate in what Baker Roshi often refers to as a foreground mind. And this absorbent awareness that functions not just in the realm of the senses but also in between the senses. And a kind of ungraspable feeling. which we may become aware of, not through consciousness, but through awareness and our attention to awareness. Our attention not to the content of experience, but to the process of experiencing. This is Rumi's in the very act of looking.

[15:12]

nearer to us than ourselves, is pointing to another territory of mind, not a foreground mind or a background mind. Which we may describe as an all-ground mind. It's said that, and it's a traditional understanding in Buddhist Abhidharma, mind extends through all phenomena. And all phenomena is inseparable from the functioning of mind. And an all-ground mind.

[16:42]

Both quite particular and also abundantly mysterious and unknowable. A white flower growing in quietness. Suzuki Roshi's bottomless calmness. in which the particulars and their inseparability are simultaneously present.

[17:54]

We can barely point toward it. And then the verse, the adaptation of the verse is that let our breath become that flower. Allowing our breath to weave together ourselves and this world in some mysterious and unknowable way. Breath is a kind of front door to practice.

[18:55]

Breath is a journey. A journey to practice. A way to enter practice. With practice. Breath is simply the performance of practice. It's how practice is continually expressing itself in our life. It's our constant companion. What we always aim to stay close to. There's the journey to breath.

[20:30]

The journey with breath. And then the journey as breath. Breath is practice itself. There's no need to go anywhere else. It's a kind of completion and also a way of continuing to further that completion. Moment after moment finding us, ourselves in our inhalation.

[21:47]

In our exhalation, giving ourselves back to the one that doesn't own it. Washing ourselves of ourselves. Growing this flower that is equanimity and non-interference. Closer to us than ourselves. Truly no need to go outside.

[22:55]

Thank you very much. Amen. Amen.

[23:10]

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