So why sitting? First we introduce this sitting posture as a posture we live in, like standing and reclining. And just introducing it into our life makes us change our schedule, adjust our life, etc. So just introducing this posture into our life begins to, in practical ways, and Practical ways change our life. And then we begin to, through sitting, begin to sit in the midst of our life. Much of our life begins to activity, thoughts, feelings, decision-making, begins to come into our experience of sitting.

[01:24]

Yeah, and then... Yeah, and... And we begin to notice a difference between the mind of sitting and the mind of daily activity. And then we begin to emphasize this mind of being aware of, acknowledging this mind of still sitting. I would say a lot can happen through that, and that's the first stage. And then maybe we could say, put it simply, our worldviews begin to be affected.

[02:35]

And how we identify the world through our own person and self. begins to be challenged. Because the now is not originally possessed by the self. We begin to know that. And then either through practice bringing it to us or because life brings it to us. We're not just sitting in the midst of our life. We have to sit through certain things, fear, pain.

[03:36]

Distraction, boredom. I mean, I think pain and anxiety are actually more confirming of practice. Because you can see this is me. This is at least also me. So you can see this is also me. I will sit through it. A much more subtle attack. of the ego against practice is to bore you, to convince you this doesn't mean nothing is happening, you know, this is a waste of time.

[04:42]

That's when the ego has brought out his big, his or her, his big guns. None of us can dodge the boredom bullet. Almost none of us. You have to have a real faith at this point in practice to continue. Patience and faith. And the really big challenge, which some people have to face, the really big gun is, you're going to go crazy if you continue this practice. And if you can get through that, okay, I'm going crazy, but I'm going to sit and then, you know... the ego gives up. But I don't just mean the ego in a sense of selfishness. I mean the whole habit, the whole way we've constructed our identity, our way we identify the world and ourselves, this, you know, this is challenged by sitting.

[06:15]

Because the world is bigger than this, and you begin to know that in your sitting. Now, if you sit, and sit in the midst of, and then sit through Mara, you how can I put it, you create an interior space or internal space, interior space, which is not defined through It's potential externalization. Okay. Once you have this, and it is a fruit of practice, this really stable

[07:32]

Internal space. In Zen tradition, it's called the iron man. Yeah, and we could call it the Iron Woman, but then we have Margaret Thatcher. And I don't think that's our internal space. Okay. When you really have this staple interior, non-externalized space, You've created the basis for transformative practice, for non-being practice, not just well-being practice. Now let's go back to this Sandokai.

[08:54]

Many things, myriad things, 10,000 things. I don't like generalization, so I like 10,000 things better than many or myriad. And, you know, it's actually a mistake to translate it myriad because it is a particular. Everything is particular. It might be 10,000. So san means three, but it also means more than too many. Ten thousand. And do means sameness. But sameness means to know the world without identifying it through the self. So if I try to approach this from another point of view so you can get another feeling for it what I called earlier iconic seeing or knowing or hearing that everything is somehow

[10:18]

A representation of everything else. And it's kind of independent, it's timeless. The feeling of timelessness is a quality of sameness. And uniqueness. It's somehow unique, iconic, and timeless. These are all ways to say you've released, released objects from being identified through the self. And when you've done that, then you can shake hands with this being. protoplasmic being that we are.

[11:34]

Now, philosophy and thinking doesn't get us there exactly. And it's sometimes, you know, people have this experience of oneness. But if that's a Zen we would call it an experience of connectedness of everything in its place as it is. To draw the conclusion of oneness is to return to entity thinking. Theological thinking. If everything is one, then it's reductive and loses its independence. Everything is its own one. Everything is independent, unique.

[13:04]

Then we are again shaking hands in this teaching of Shidos with this great being. Yes. Now it's interesting that Shido actually was enlightened who wrote this poem, Sandokai. Was enlightened when he heard, read actually, Senjao's statement Heaven and earth and I share the same root. Myriad things and I share the same body. So the Sandokai is an expression of his realization and hearing the statement of Seng Chao. Seng Chao is someone who died in 441, as far as we know.

[14:10]

But here, if this is an oral culture, he didn't die in 441. His words, his mind... is caught somehow in these statements or present somehow in this pool of memory, pool of association. If you think of memory as a text, somehow it's my personal history, I have a personal history, I did this and that and so forth, then Sen Chao is a long time ago. Yeah, but, you know, it's only a few 200-year units.

[15:20]

I always think of that because, you know, my younger fellow practitioners will live, or my daughter at least, will live to 2050. I used to talk to my now-dead, long-dead grandmother. She had memories of people who went back to 1850. That's only 200 years. Which we, yeah, we're not so different during those 200 years. Ten such units bring us back to Christ. That's nothing. Twelve and a half bring us back to Buddha. Four forty-one yesterday. Our civilization is really young.

[16:26]

So many examples of that. War is an example. I don't think it's some Freudian in nature. It's a stupidity of our current civilization. But aside from that, if you don't think of your own past as being in the past, if you're always calling forth the cuckoo bird of the present, the timeless cuckoo bird, Aren't you supposed to make a wish when you hear a cuckoo bird? Isn't that the custom? I've heard that, but you have to be very quick, because if you have a cuckoo clock, you can make them on every hour. But in a pool of memory you can dip in But you can't find your place.

[17:35]

So we can have a text memory and a pool memory. And when we have more of this kind of pool memory, this is the best I can say right now. Because that's what it feels like. It's not in the past, it's in the present field of associations. And many things, you know, one of the first things you're introduced to when you start practicing Zazen is the fourth skanda. And the fourth skanda, the mind of association. As I've pointed out many times, a mind Freud recognized and changed the way the world thinks about things. And you find the mind of associations not only knows things consciousness doesn't know.

[18:43]

And knows things about your past that consciousness doesn't know. It also knows things like dreams seem to know things sometimes that are beyond the borders of our experience. Yes, so now we have some new ingredients. We started out with the ingredients of consciousness and maybe we discovered awareness in addition to consciousness. perception and so forth. But now the ingredients include an interior non-externalizable space. And experiences of the world with a feeling of timelessness or something like that.

[20:10]

And if we do take this statement of Senjou... Yeah, or Shuedo or Dogen. Mm-hmm. Shido I meant to say, but Shwedo is fine too. He was good. They are present here in this. They have their real vitality, not from the past, but being present here just as vividly for us as for Shido. So somehow let me say that this zazen posture through which we learn to sit discover how to sit in the midst of and become familiar with ourselves And then discover how to sit through the barriers of worldviews and self-identification.

[21:26]

And to realize a kind of this imperturbable space from which we can let the world change. I think that's enough. So let's sit for a few minutes. This space which we experience.

[24:24]

Space or feeling. And let's trust our experience. That we experience as... Yeah, not... Not externalized. And yet not having boundaries. Well, we don't know quite where the boundaries might be or are. And then we find words, words occur like, this might be our true nature. And then you're close to what Buddhism is trying to point out.

[25:50]

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