I must be making some sense because you're all sitting here. Or maybe you just like sitting. Anyway, worry sometimes. I'm not making any sense. Okay. So I'll try to present something in some kind of sequence. Ich versuche etwas zu zeigen in einer Art von Abfolge. Because I'm here trying to speak about practices that come together. Weil ich hier über Übungen spreche, die zusammenkommen.

[01:01]

Let's start with death. That's a good place to end. We're definitely going to die at an indefinite time. So, one aspect of practice is simply really being aware, knowing that you're definitely going to die. An exception will not be made for you. I think we think that because it's going to happen sometime, that's kind of like an exception.

[02:03]

This morning I reviewed every person I could think of who died. All of them didn't expect to die when they did. My mother who died two or three weeks ago at 96, I guess, yeah. Your mother? Yeah. 95 or 96, oh, it's okay. Has to be okay, yeah. She decided to die, but actually she planned to stay alive for another couple of years. And she was healthy enough to do so.

[03:04]

But even she died. to her unexpectedly. So, part of practice is this simple fact of Life? No, it's not of life, it's this fact of death. So you somehow... Get it in yourself that you're definitely going to die. Und irgendwann bringt es in euch hinein, dieses Bewusstsein, dass ihr sicher sterben werdet. But as I say, you at the same time gladly remain alive.

[04:07]

Und zum selben Zeitpunkt, wie ich gesagt habe, bleibt ihr freudvoll am Leben. And you're going to die at an indefinite time. Und ihr werdet sterben zu einem unbestimmten Zeitpunkt. This is the best route for understanding impermanence. Because it's going to occur at an indefinite time, it really makes you aware of impermanence. If it wasn't at a definite time, it wouldn't be such a teaching. Because you could trust on the permanence of... July 3rd, 2000 and something.

[05:12]

But it's an indefinite time. And that own sense, that sense of your own impermanence, is where the wider sense of impermanence is rooted. If you don't have the sense of your own impermanence, you don't understand Other senses of impermanence are just intellectual. Now, I just talked to a friend of mine who happened to be the other day at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. And Since you're in Sashin and don't have news, I'll give you a little bit of news.

[06:32]

And he got home and he was told, oh, no one, newspapers, nobody should go to 30 Rockefeller Plaza because anthrax had been found there. And a friend of mine's office is there too, as well as this person. But now the United States has been found at the Boston Globe, a newspaper. I think this is right. The New York Times. ABC News. NBC News. The Denver Post.

[07:41]

Some other place in the West. And in Washington. In Washington. And the majority leader of the Senate received a highly virulent form of anthrax powder, spores. And even a seven-month-old baby who was brought to the ABC News got a paper cut or something and got anthrax, the disease, so probably the baby will recover. And there's also been, so far I believe, something like 2,700 hoaxes as well as All kinds of hoaxes.

[08:49]

Envelopes filled with talcum powder and things like that. There was even a slightly funny one where somebody got to about three rolls in some toilet paper sitting in a public toilet. He was using the toilet paper, and about the third time he pulled the toilet paper off. Somebody had written, unrolling it and rolling it back, you are sitting in anthrax. So, I mean, people are nuts. They're nuts.

[09:50]

Life imprisonment if you perpetrate such a hoax. Because it's a huge event when they discover it, that buildings quarantined, everything stopped, the FBI arrives, the health officials arrive. Everyone has to be tested. Yeah. There have been many instances in Europe, but so far they've all been hoaxes, I think. Isn't that right, Louis-Louis? So this is making everyone aware of impermanence. Because some envelopes are leaving a trail in the mail. of everyone who handles it.

[11:01]

So it's strange, the world right now. At least I think it might make us aware that we have to live in some more proportionate relationship to the rest of the world. In any case, impermanence as a an awareness of impermanence that's inseparable from perception,

[12:13]

a basic is an assumed part of adept practice or serious practice. And it's rooted in a a practical acceptance of your own impermanence, that you will definitely die at an indefinite time. And when is that indefinite time? Now, I've been emphasizing often on the last few years developing a continuity of attention to the breath.

[13:31]

And And that has, you know, most of you know, many effects. One is, of course, it's weaving mind and body together. And I'm trying to weave in this talk various... teachings together. To give you a picture, a feeling of how you can weave practice together. So, it also, as I've said again, allows you to shift your continuity your sense of continuity, your need for continuity, from your thoughts to your breath and then your body and to phenomena.

[14:49]

This really changes how you are in the world. And I've been, again, going back to Sophia. What has struck me about her establishing a separate self, a separate self-consciousness, is that I don't see that there's any alternative. There may be some alternative in how she... what happens to that separate self-consciousness.

[16:07]

And it's also really struck me how it's involved with her being able to separate, crawl and now almost stand. She now kind of very casually holds the table while she stands and looks around. But today, she held something in both hands, forgot to hold herself, and... Luckily she seems to have a soft head. I would be knocked out if I had several of these. And again, that she needs to find herself during transitions.

[17:27]

The most obvious transitions being waking and going to sleep. I can remember a time when I was under considerable stress. I mean, I didn't even want to go to sleep. I didn't know what would happen if I fell asleep. Would I wake up? Would I be crazy? What would happen? And I finally decided, well, Go to sleep. Whatever happens will happen. So I trusted not trusting going to sleep. And I kept waking up and here I am. Somehow it worked out. But she doesn't know. Oh, she... loses herself when she goes to sleep.

[18:40]

So she needs to keep developing some sense of continuity. And Again, I'm emphasizing this because I really am struck by how fundamental a sense of continuity is. And how basic it is. And tied into our actual physical movement. And that we're changing that in practice. Sitting here in Sashin. Okay. Now, if you do establish a fairly consistent attentiveness to the breath, this not only shifts your continuity, until finally at some point, as I've said to you,

[19:55]

no longer find yourself identified with your thoughts. Your thoughts are something you do. Maybe like the computer, you can turn it off and it still sits there on the desk quite happily, I guess happily. The computer doesn't think it disappears when it's turned off. Only the software thinks it disappears. Will I ever be turned on again? Sometimes our thoughts are like that. Maybe Zazen is like your bunch of dead computers sitting on a desk. but also a continuity of attentiveness to the breath tends to purify mind and body.

[21:23]

And when you get to the point that you have a pretty close attentiveness to the breath, Und wenn man zu dem Punkt kommt, wo man eine ziemlich große Kontinuität in der Aufmerksamkeit im Atem gegenüber hat, dann werdet ihr das bemerken. Because as soon as you have a thought that's sort of contaminating, weil sobald ihr einen Gedanken habt, der irgendwie verschmutzend ist, or selfish or negative, oder egoistisch oder negativ, or compromising, You lose contact with your breath. And when you come back to your breath, that kind of thought that was negative or... critical, unrealistically critical or something, will tend to lose its strength.

[22:28]

So here I'm really talking about a craft of practice. Yeah. And that crafter practice is in a larger framework of what's called entry into principle. Entry into principle. Which goes back to Bodhidharma's time. Okay, but we'll leave that for... some other time, tomorrow, or I don't know when. Indefinite time. So I'm going to just emphasize the craft right now. Okay. And when you lose... when you lose the sense of your cohesiveness, integrity, when you lose the sense of coherence and togetherness, I mean the continuity, an attentive continuity with the breath, an attentive

[24:09]

changes your own experience of continuity. And in turn, When you lose that continuity, you lose contact with your breath. So it's an amazing kind of barometer. So it's again, I would say, it's a skill I would suggest you commit yourself to. No, the beginning is not, we wouldn't say it's a purifying practice. Only when your sense of continuity of the breath is so continuous that you notice when it's not there, then you notice the difference in your state of mind.

[25:22]

Then you can notice just what happened at that moment. What comparative thought didn't disturb you and what comparative thought did disturb you. Now this is also the point at which you begin to really have a way of knowing the path. You can feel when the path is there and when it narrows or goes off to a stray or a side. That's amazing.

[26:34]

Such a simple thing can be so effective. And now, you know, there's another background here I can bring in. What I'm heading for here is the unity of intent, mindfulness, Und worauf ich hier hinaus will, ist diese Einigkeit von Wille, von Achtsamkeit und Einsicht. Oder eine kontinuierliche Achtsamkeit der Qualitäten des Geistes gegenüber. So I'm just trying to give you a picture of practice. And the possibilities of practice.

[27:37]

Which are really deeply rooted in intent. The practice of intent. Okay, but let me go back to your breath, our breath again. Your breath, my breath, our breath. It's all here in this room. You know, Gerhard's put these machines in, trying to blow it out. There goes my breath. Is... Yeah, we need to trust our breath. How does it get to be five o'clock so fast, always? I barely get started and it turns out to be nearly five o'clock.

[28:47]

Yeah. Sorry. It's not yet five o'clock. We need to trust our breath. To... somehow, you know, it's easy to, it's fairly easy to see that, as I talked to someone today, that we can, uh, Yeah, notice our breath, be attentive to our breath. Anyone can do that, there's no problem. You may forget to do it, but you can try it. But that's not the same as trusting your breath. It's a sort of trust. Trust your breath as practice.

[29:56]

And that's related to trusting your own body somehow. Now, we're actually in a little more difficult world when trust at this level. Because it means you have to start trusting that you don't need anything from outside. You have to trust somehow that you're already complete. Or somehow complete. your immediate situation, it has everything you need. And I try to bring that into you, to you, by this simple phrase many of you used, just now is enough. And I try to bring that into you, by this simple phrase many of you use, just now is enough.

[31:01]

Now, another background of this kind of practice, like awareness of impermanence through awareness of your own definite death at an indefinite time, is a Uh... sense of sufficiency. Is that there's a sense of completeness here that it's possible to complete. You may feel incomplete. But it's just because you don't know how to put completeness together it's not that you're missing something it's just the arrangement isn't quite right so this is a kind of faith and you're very close now to

[32:23]

entry into principle. Because you're very close now to the idea of Buddha nature. If I say each of you is Buddha, that's a little too much. So maybe we can talk about it By saying each of you is complete. And we're... And that we are complete and yet we don't experience ourselves as complete. And practice is tolerating that place. Tolerating it without trying to Intending for it to change but not exactly trying to change.

[33:39]

Now we're into Bodhidharma's wall gazing. Can I put these things together for you? Okay. So to trust your breath, to trust your body, to trust your immediate situation, the things as they are. with a feeling that there's a sufficiency.

[34:42]

And that sufficiency is closely related to satisfaction. And the word satisfaction is different than happiness. So I chose the word satisfaction because satisfaction means you feel things are sufficient. Like you're satisfied when you've eaten enough. Ihr mögt vielleicht nicht glücklich sein, aber ihr seid befriedigt. Ihr mögt vielleicht nicht glücklich sein, aber ihr seid befriedigt. Und eines der Dinge, die ich vorschlagen möchte, ist, in Zazen, und ich habe das Ihnen wieder erwähnt, is that there are degrees of satisfaction in zazen unknown to dictionaries.

[35:53]

But this kind of sense, these various kinds of satisfactions of feeling complete or sufficient I mean, I have three or four words here, I'm talking about hundreds of gradations of experience. really occur only when you have this fundamental view that just now is sufficient. Nothing missing. Now this is not, you can't get there by analysis, and this is not Provable.

[37:06]

It's faith. And it's also, we could say, one aspect of entering into principle. In other words, if you don't have this principle, the craft of the practice doesn't work. So you're trusting your breath. Through trusting your breath as well as bringing attention to your breath. There's a shift in continuity away from conceptual and comparative thought and a purifying of mind and body. in the sense that, I don't know, we object to the idea of purity and impurity,

[38:27]

But it's an experience that everything starts fitting together. And when it doesn't fit together, or is somehow divisive or disturbs your state of mind, in an unhealthy way, you can now notice it right away. That's also called entering the path. Okay. Now, the way is cleared for the unity, inseparable unity, unison of intent, mindfulness and introspection. I'm sorry. Intent, mindfulness and introspection. The way... An intent can be many things.

[39:38]

It can be bodhicitta. It can be the view, as I just said, of principle. It can be the view of principle. It can be some particular practice you have. It can be a sense of impermanence. And then there's mindfulness. And then there's introspection. And that's a pretty good word. Because it means... It's like the inn, the hotel where you reside. It's an inner residing that spies, that specs, that serves. And most essentially, it's an awareness of the quality of mind.

[40:53]

It's a continuous awareness of the quality of mind itself. And this opens you up, if we look again at the craft of practice, to knowing phenomena, as a field of suchness that's illuminated by emptiness and impermanence. But by this time, this may just sound like words to you and not experience. Maybe, I don't know. So this is an experiment to try to present practice in a sequence like this.

[42:05]

Where each step depends on the preceding step. Okay, now let me tell you a funny thing that happened to me the other day. That's how they start jokes in America. A funny thing happened on the way to the post office. So I'm sitting and I'm trying to give you something. A kind of dumb example. The other day we were in the Zendo and the folks came in with the food before we'd opened the bowls. Do you remember?

[43:07]

Yes. It was a wonderful experience for me. When I was younger if that would have happened my mind would have tried to figure out what's going on here. Dann hätte ich mir überlegt, was geht da vor? How was this mistake made? Wie wurde dieser Fehler gemacht? How are we going to correct it? Wie werden wir das korrigieren? Yeah, so, etc. Und so weiter. I had no such thoughts. Aber ich hatte keine solche Gedanken. That's why I have a tanto. Dazu gibt es den tanto. That's the tantos, John. Das ist den tantos in der Aufgabe. And even if the tanto doesn't figure it out, something will happen. No one's going to dump food on top of the closed bowls.

[44:11]

But I had a wonderful interruption of conceptual thought. I didn't have any idea where I was, but I knew something was wrong. I didn't know whether it was lunch or dinner or breakfast. Or whether I was in session. I didn't know anything. It was just Now this sounds like, you know, the village idiot. And it may be somewhat related to the village, idiot. But if you don't know this experience from practice, you don't get certain... which you couldn't explain to anybody, this experience, in any normal way.

[45:39]

But if you don't know this experience of the interruption of conceptual thought and really being in a bright field of not knowing then you don't understand a koan like where Deshan comes down with his bulls, the famous koan in Mumonkan. And he comes down with his bulls, and Shuedo says to him, What are you doing here, old man? The bell hasn't rung yet. You're early. Oh. And Deshan turns around and goes back upstairs.

[46:42]

And Deshan is, you know, famous because he's the one who started the beating with a stick in part of the Linji line. Even though he's a Dongshan line descendant. So this koan is interesting because he was one tough, fierce character. And imagine him being said, what are you doing, old man? The bell hasn't rung yet. To imagine how he comes down and you say to him, what's going on, old man? The bell hasn't rung yet.

[47:27]

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