Hmm, I think this is, well, it may be the last teisho of the practice period, because perhaps Sunday, which is Easter, we'll have a work day. I don't know exactly what we've decided. And Janusho Hoff just did a, it seems to be a good thing, You know, the weekend, this is in Germany, it's a four-day weekend, Friday through Monday. They had nothing scheduled for this big weekend. I wasn't there, and Paul Rosenblum, Tenryu Roshi isn't there, and so forth. So we thought, well, we just do a weekend for all the people who make pledges. To the kind of free weekend of which and then the staff the residential staff itself would do something Well, y'all talked about what should they do and what would anyway?

[01:06]

So there's 93 people who? Send Monthly pledges to Yonis off for a total of about four thousand eight hundred euro a month and And so they invited all these people to, why don't you just come for the weekend? Easter, why not? Okay, so 40 people came with 22 children. And they even met, there's a few people who support Dharma Sangha in Europe, who people have never met. There's one Swiss woman who sends, I think, 200 euro a month for years. No one to know who she is. And she showed up with two children. So everyone likes, she seems to be very nice, everybody likes her, et cetera. So anyway, so they have this, and Atmar gave a taste show this morning. I just had a long talk a while ago with Atmar. And I think Uli and Katrin are going to just sit in front of everybody tomorrow and just talk about their practice and talk with everyone.

[02:17]

And I think Frank and Peter Dreyer are going to do the same thing the next day. And there's other things going on. Sunday evening they have a bonfire, an Easter bonfire. And the kids are doing an Easter egg hunt tomorrow morning with Swiss chocolate bunnies. No, I don't know about that. Anyway, could be. Anyway, it seems to be, everyone seems to be in a good mood and it's quite sunny in summary. And despite being summery, Atmar says there's still snow around the plants. So he's digging the snow out from the plants, but everybody's outdoors and stuff. So that's quite nice. One thing I wanted to do here, the weather's always so unpredictable. is I want to make a place down here and up by where the old Chinese headless Buddha is in the mountain on the stream. A place where we can go and have picnics together sometimes. Maybe we can still do one before we leave.

[03:20]

So I'm thinking all the time, you know, at my age of what happens when I retire or... And how this place continues and what makes it continue, both here and in Johanneshof. And I think the first answer is what makes it continue is the practice, the satisfaction of practice itself. I mean, I think of any comparable institution, Buddhist institutions are the oldest ongoing continuous institution in the world. 2,500 years, some kind of continuity of monastic institution. I mean, the complex institution history of China is 2,700 years old or something like that. No, 3,700 years old. I forget exactly. But anyway, but that's rather different than a Buddhist monastery.

[04:29]

So I think that it's so old primarily because of the satisfaction of practice. And also I think it's the teaching, because the teaching opens... you through meditation to another way of being alive, to another kind of life that approaches actuality, or you find yourself not, you actually experience not living in an interpretation, but more approaching, and approaching is sometimes arriving, approaching actuality itself, whatever that means, feels like. So that's another kind of satisfaction in which you feel you live in a world where your own power is actualized and where you're in the power of the world itself, something like that.

[05:32]

I said in the last practice period, Daisho, that the world itself is one interdependent continuum a single interdependent continuum. And if that's the case, and I think it's the case, interpenetrating an interdependent continuum, we're sort of like a rock. On the one hand, we're like a rock in the stream, and we can feel the stream going around us, this continuum. And at the same time, we're the stream itself. And we don't want to be one-sided. We want to be both, the rock and the stream somehow, something like that. This metaphor can be felt. Image. So practice is, you know, it lets you feel the stream and also be the stream. That's my experience anyway.

[06:38]

And so, okay, so what makes a place like this continue, hopefully continue to last, is the satisfaction of practice itself and the teaching which turns practice itself into another way, a more satisfying way, I think, for some of us, of being in the world. But then there's also the Sangha itself. which is a, I would describe Sangha as a particular kind of friendship. A friendship of respect and mutuality, but not necessarily common interests and things like that other than practice. The Sangha is a territory in which to practice the six paramitas.

[07:42]

And the Sangha is, you know, we're trying to learn. A Sangha is, I would describe as a hierarchical, consensual community, something like that. hierarchical in the sense that it's based on a hierarchy based on position and seniority but decisions can't there's no way to enforce the decisions unless they're consensual so basically whatever the hierarchy is the decisions in the end have to be consensual so there has to be a process of consensuality through the hierarchy basically the Buddhist model and it's something that's not so familiar to us Western organizations are more top-down and Buddhist organizations are a hierarchy, but basically it's from the bottom up. Partly because people are free to leave.

[08:53]

There's no way to enforce this unless it feels in the end consensual. Now also what allows a place like this to continue is the, I don't know what are the words to use, but the complex proportionate spatiality. How's that sound? What I mean is that there has to, we don't live in motel space. or hotel conference room space, there has to be space which allows attention to detail and supports attention to detail. There's a reason why Romanesque churches and Gothic cathedrals are as they are. Because they allow attention and support attention.

[09:56]

And proportionate is a proportionate speciality. By that I mean there should be, this attention should also allow a kind of dharmic breathing pace. And, yeah. Yeah. So, and the shorthand word for that is the monastic living, residential living space should have some kind of mandalic quality. You should feel you're in a location which constantly centers you, or where you can find yourself centered. If we don't move toward that, you know, people want to move out. You know, it has to feel like a location. And that's not easy to create a location where you feel good.

[11:02]

It feels, you know, so some, you walk in the mountains here, and some places where you walk feel like a location. You stop and you feel the way the trees are, the space, the view, it feels like a location. But other places don't feel like a location. Much of Chinese travel literature and poetry is about when you discover a location, and then the poems are written to reflect the location that you feel in being there. I think of Cavafy's, the Greek poet of the last century. It seems like the other day, the last century, but it was the other day. Nine years ago. Anyway, but he died, I don't know, in the 20s or something. Anyway, Cavafy has a poem where he says, it's called The Morning Sea, and he says, let me stand here for a moment and look at nature, the shore of the sea,

[12:21]

the brilliant cloudless sky, blue and yellow, large and encompassing, he says something like that. And then he says, let me stand here for a while, but did I really see this? For a moment I saw it. For a moment I saw it. But really, again, I'm in my memories, fantasies, and visions of sensuality. But for a moment I saw it. So somehow we have to find a location too that allows us to see ourselves functioning and our distractions, and at the same time a location where we can find our body, our embodiment of mind, perception, feeling it being located.

[13:41]

So I wonder, you know, I think, you know, we're not all, and that's not the point of Buddhist monasticism, that we live this way all the time. So how do we continue this in our daily life? It's always the question, the most common question I get in Sashin and things. And I would give you a mindfulness exercise. Not so much for zazen, but when you find a location in the mountains or by the morning sea, or something like that, you sit down for a little bit and you look at whatever you look at, or whatever thought appears, whatever sensation, or while you're sitting, whatever the sensation or the perception, is you make it certain.

[14:58]

You really make certain that you're noticing whatever you're noticing. Sometimes I call it a practice of direct perception, but now I'm using the word certainty. You make certain what you're seeing, feeling, thinking, etc. You just make certain about it. And you practice this certainty again and again. Whenever you have a chance, You practice the certainty. You're just looking at this flower, tree, object, stone, feeling yourself sitting, whatever it is. You stay with the certainty of whatever you're perceiving or feeling. Until you can really do that. Then you see if you can also establish an undistracted open awareness. Open to whatever comes up. So first you establish again and again certainty in what you're seeing, thinking, feeling. Then you practice an open, relaxed awareness.

[16:06]

You see, if you can find this open, relaxed awareness, it's sort of the adjunct to the certainty. And then you shift from this open, relaxed awareness to consciousness. And you notice consciousness and thinking. So you go from certainty of perception, in short, to open, relaxed awareness, to noticing mind and consciousness itself. Then you see if there's some duality, like do you have an inside-outside, interior-exterior distinctions? Do you feel that it's like a container or do you feel it's like something you're participating? Do you feel it's already there or not already there? Then this way you can examine your views, dualities, habits, assumptions. Then you try to get the feeling of a union, an experienced, not a thought about or philosophical union, but an experienced union of observer and observed.

[17:22]

No, you're not trying to say, oh, it really is a union. You're just trying to feel that experience where the observer and the observed, any distinction disappears. And then you try to get used to that, familiar with that. Now, this kind of practice of direct perception I used to describe as doing something at the morning breakfast table or something. But you take, it's not zazen. Zazen should be more, in my opinion, more open and uncorrected without any stages like this. But as a mindfulness exercise, to shift from the certainty of perception and sensation to an open awareness, to a attention to mind and consciousness itself, to noticing any dualities or assumptions in that consciousness itself, to then experiencing some taste of union or non-duality.

[18:37]

And you just get familiar with it. You go, like, go through that. And... I think if you do, and you have the occasional taste of that, you can more and more kind of swim in that rock and stream continuum and allow... and allow... what one has discovered practicing in a sangha and in a practice center to be more a part of your daily life. Just like that. You have to give attention to your telephone sometimes before you come to lecture. It's okay. Thank you very much equally penetrate every being and place.

[19:49]

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