It's very nice to be here. In this little room in Berlin. And even though struggling through the construction zones between here and former West Germany, It's actually a lot slower than it was a couple years ago. Probably two years from now there's going to be all these modern autobahns coming here. Mm-hmm. And my ears are shifting from being full of traffic to being full of, I guess, your silence.

[01:06]

Not just silence, but your silence. And thank you for reading the koan before I got here. Probably most of you are familiar with this question, this ridiculous question, does a dog have a Buddha nature? But even if you're familiar with it, it's still a pretty strange question.

[02:27]

Last night I gave a, believe it or not, I gave a talk at a riding stable, a new riding stable opened in Heidelberg. And you know, I was first, when I was asked to do this through a friend of Ulrike and a friend of mine, I, geez, I know somebody who does Feldenkrais with horses, but... But Zazen, this is too much. When I got there, this riding stage with quite a lot of people, up on what looked like several bales of hay were two Zafus. So I imagined the horse sort of sitting cross-legged on the front, cross-legged on the second cushion.

[03:45]

Trying to keep his back... And I knew at least maybe Ulrike would sit up there, but I wasn't going to sit up there. So anyways, I had to give this little short talk, which I did. And Klaus Steinborn is a Psychoanalyst who worked with Ulrike and doing some programs was the main person and he gave a talk and in the middle of his talk a white horse was brought out.

[04:47]

And Klaus Steinborn, who works with Ulrike and they make a few programs, he gave a lecture and in the middle of it suddenly a white horse was brought in. And it was quite remarkable because, you know, it was a dimly lit place and it had begun to take the feeling of an auditorium and it would be as if suddenly somebody walked a horse into here, this gigantic animal, you know, standing there. Yes, and you have to imagine this. So this hall was a little dimly lit and it suddenly became an auditorium and this animal was brought in there. So imagine someone suddenly bringing in a white horse here. And we were in a, you know, even though it was a riding kind of space, we'd established it as kind of human territory. And this horse looked as surprised as we did at being in front of this audience. He looked as if he thought he might have to give a speech.

[05:58]

And he looked around, and here's these gigantic eyes. And horses, as you know, have a kind of power, a huge presence. And they have an unpredictable quality and they're certainly stronger than we are. But here was this presence and he just looked around at us. So I asked myself, does a horse have a Buddha nature? And the question, you know, does a dog have a Buddha nature, is a question of... I mean, we know a dog doesn't have a human nature.

[07:01]

So we know that a dog doesn't have a human nature exactly, but does it have a Buddha nature? This tells us something about the question already, which is... What nature do we share with animals, horses, dogs, beings? And this already tells us something about this question, namely, which nature do we share with other beings, with animals, dogs, horses? And after this event was over and champagne was served and things, we went into the stables to look at the horses.

[08:18]

And by that time, you know, I spent quite a bit of time around stables and horses, and so by that time my mind was, oh, we'll be in the stables with horses, and they'd lost their, some of the power that horse had when it was in unexpected human-defined space. Well, I used to have a lot to do with horses, I was often around them and when this initiation was over and I had already internally set myself up to go to the stables and look at the horses, there was also something of this magic away that was there when this horse was brought in completely unforeseen. So when I had beginner's mind and didn't expect to see a horse, I really felt the presence of the horse much more, consciousness of the horse much more powerful. And it made me feel, definitely made me feel my own consciousness more precisely.

[09:27]

Although this is a kind of a hackneyed, a well-used, overused representative Zen question, does a dog have a Buddha nature? Mm-hmm. Still, it's extremely representative of Mahayana Buddhism in China and Zen Buddhism in particular. And I think in these days we have together, we should look at the term, the the terms, the phrase, English word Buddha-nature, and the terms which it tries to translate.

[10:46]

Not to look at it in a too scholarly way, but just lightly, because the vision of Buddhism is in this term. And if you want to practice Buddhism, certainly one of the steps is to discover your own vision of our human life. And then look at your own vision of human life in relationship to the vision of our life that we get from Buddhism. And during these two days, I'd like to, as I've been doing in the practice seminar and the Sashin, partly in Kassel too, I'd like to use the time to go back to basics of practice.

[12:06]

And one of the basics of all human life is to discover an order in your life. And as this initial image in the koan of pushing something down under water and it pops back up, a gourd floating or a cork or something, you push it down and it turns around and pops back up and doesn't stay in place. Ja, und dieses anfängliche Bild in der Einführung, wo ein Kürbis ins Wasser hineingedrückt wird und der kommt wieder nach oben.

[13:26]

Or even they also say a jewel doesn't have a jewel in light, which is what a jewel is about, doesn't have a definite shape. Und ebenso heißt es, dass ein Juwel im Sonnenlicht keine bestimmte Form hat. So this tells us something about Buddha nature and also something about my experience driving across former East Germany. Where's the inner order? Where's order in our life? Sometimes the Autobahn was more like a parking lot than a road. And I actually find occasional flower and the trash and the center strip, kind of interesting, you know.

[14:38]

Things you sell, I mean, it's a spot I'll never see again, probably, you know. I might, on the way back, I don't know. I'll be on the other side. Mm-hmm. But it gets kind of a little bit boring to study the occasional flower in the center strip. And the fumes are pretty bad. So how do we find order in our life? And that's also in this koan, in this question is, How do you find order in your life? And of course, as you can imagine, the main way then we find order in our life is through zazen practice.

[15:51]

To find the order, and many of the words in Buddhism, including the word tantra, are related to the idea of weaving and a loom and threads and so forth. And the word order itself refers to a thread in the word sutra. What it's teaching is a thread like a sutra. So zazen is a way to find the order that's already here. And of course we use our breath. And a study and analysis of our body and mind and the relationship and so forth.

[17:13]

But mostly physiologically, discover this order as it appears in our feelings, in our mind. And central to this idea of Buddha nature is when you, could we say, fall into this order, Do you discover some nature there? Perhaps we can say a bigger nature than just personal nature or self-nature. Nature that we share with this horse that you might see here, or a dog.

[18:29]

And I use the word fall because we are always holding ourselves in various ways. And Partly we sit in zazen, holding ourselves, and finally a way to be straight without having to hold ourselves. Being up straight on our own. You can also begin to let yourself fall. Fall into an order you discover. And I want to talk more about that tomorrow, but right now that sense of falling into order.

[19:59]

Again, is there some nature there? And what would we mean by nature anyway? Now, one of the early words for Buddha nature was Buddha datu, which means something like Buddha realm. How do you discover Buddha realm? And the most Common term is Tathagatagarbha. Now in the koan we looked at in Kassel in the practice seminar, both of them have an idea of thusness in it.

[21:08]

Yangshan is asked a question in which he can't really respond truthfully. Or the only way he can respond truthfully is to establish himself in his own order. And he's just coming from the farming, from the fields, and he puts his hoe in the ground and just stands there with his hands on the hoe. And the next koan about fayan has two stories in which the story turns on when someone in the middle of the story says, I am just thus.

[22:23]

And thus... Israel, of course, in English, the word the and this and that, and so for all versions of this word thus. So we have the cup, which is a particular name and form that we give to this conical piece of paper. And it's also the cup. But the question Buddhism is asking is the the-ness of the cup more than the cup-ness of the cup. Is the doneness of the cup a kind of nature?

[23:37]

Or can we experience it as a kind of nature? Can we find a a relief, not in something dead, but in just the thusness or the-ness of everything. Before I substantiate it as a cup, before I say cup, it's as I said a paper cylinder. And if I take this substantiation away, I think for some of you I should explain what I mean by substantiation.

[24:40]

Because by identifying things, we put a film over them that we don't see the film. And the sense of substantiating, that we substantiate things, we give our assent, we actually give a permission, a semi-conscious assent to identifying things in a way that hides them from us. So the example I've used recently, and some of you haven't heard unless you've been listening to tapes, if you take the word wave, For example.

[25:56]

And you mix the letters up so you have A, E, W, V or something like that. They just have a quality of otherness. But as you move them around, if you put them even fairly close to each other, so the W's here, maybe the A's, at least in English, suddenly they come together as the word wave. And that experience is called in Buddhism substantiation. You give it that simple act, you give substance to the world. And hidden in that act are all kinds of ideas, permanence, anxiety, and so forth. In part, And part of meditation practice is in following a thought to its course, which is the most psychological of the meditation practices.

[27:22]

And following an emotion to its source. Or feeling, even non-graspable feeling. In the process of following it to its source, you also know, well, one stage is what triggers it. In the sensory world, sensorial world, what triggers that emotion or thought or feeling? But it's almost like you're a sea of waves not yet called waves. A sea of currents not yet called currents. At some point, not only is there a trigger, but there's an act of substantiation where you give a name or a reality or a definition to this wave or current or feeling.

[28:46]

And one of the reasons we practice with kneading, K-N-E-A-D-I-N-G, kneading mind and body together, And one of the ways that's done, one of the techniques used, is to imagine a white ox or maybe a white horse that's present around here. Imagination is a tendency to weave mind and body together. And one of the basics of practice, or a pretty sophisticated basic in a way, but a basic of practice is this weaving of mind and body.

[29:50]

Which is usually fairly advanced in your practice before you can notice it. But when mind and body have begun to be phases of each other, you can begin to hold a mind that's pre-substantiation. You can, in a sense, notice how, not just in a sense, you can... It might be better to say you can precisely, though that's a little too strong, but precisely notice... how your mind and your body feel together before you substantiate something.

[31:00]

Now here another skill of meditation, of one-pointedness, comes in, and you can hold that mind-body feeling before substantiation. So then you're feeling the then-ness of the cup before it becomes cup. Now, this sense of thusness or the-ness before substantiation is central to this concept of idea and experience of Buddha nature.

[32:06]

Once you've got horse and dog and me, you're in the realm of names and self and so forth. So thusness is to allow a certain kind of flow or current to be present before it's given names. To say names is a little too simple because it's not just naming. Naming is a kind of mind that substantiates things. And you're able to hold yourself with a clarity in a more inclusive, deeper mind than the mind that names.

[33:17]

So that's what's meant when in these two stories of Fayan, in the middle of the story, Fayan in one case and and Shushan and the other says, I am just, well, it's Schwantze and I think, and Shushan say, I am just thus. And what both these koans that precede, these two stories in the previous koan that precede this, Does a Dog Have a Mood Nature, both also are saying that this just being thus isn't enough. But let me say, it's quite a bit quite good when you can just be thus.

[34:31]

And I recommend you try it. Horses walk right into your nature. And if they don't say nay, they say moo. That's a bad English joke. Nay also means no. And mu means no, and you have gathered, and also means emptiness. And the root of the sense of thusness, thusness is a gate of emptiness. So if we have names, form, and emptiness, thusness is somewhere in the flow of the in-between emptiness and names. And this in-between emptiness and naming has also a quality of causing.

[35:54]

And it also has a quality of fruit, of arrival, of maturing. So tathagatagarbha means thus coming. And it also means, if you move the A, it means thus going. And it also has the sense of, that's tathagata, and then garbha has the sense of womb and also embryo. Now, Buddha nature, just this word, doesn't have any of this complexity and subtlety in it.

[37:22]

And a lot of thought went into these names because they very precisely are prescriptive. In other words, if you really look at these terms, they teach you what to do. In this particular moment, which you don't substantiate, If I say self-nature, we're already somewhat separated. And then we practice connectedness from that self-nature, from that separateness. But with Buddha-nature, we practice

[38:23]

Separation from connectedness. Let me say that again. From self-nature you practice connectedness. But self-nature is based in separation. But from Buddha nature you're based in connectedness and you practice separation. You practice different kinds of separation. So this question is asking us, discover your self-nature as a place you reside in inner order. And discover your Buddha nature, your connected nature, which also has an inner order or inner-outer order.

[39:39]

And this immediate situation is simultaneously an embryo or a cause of Buddha nature. The feeling is right now the more we can have a sense of the doneness of our being here in this room, the more the seeds are realizing Buddha's awakeness are present. And more the seeds of our own quite possible enlightenment are present.

[40:49]

And the other is, that's the sense of embryo, the other is that there's a womb here. And there's an interactive in which we are all making this possible. In other words, part of the practice of this dog of a Buddha nature is to find that order where you step into this thusness. I think of Alice in Wonderland where she steps through a mirror.

[41:55]

Or excuse me, Alice through the looking glass. Now, I don't think you're going to find playing cards running around playing croquet if you realize thusness. Does everybody read that book here in Germany? No? You should read it. It's great. In any case, it's not like that, but there is a quality of finding the world so ordered and still that you step into a world that's always ordered and still.

[43:05]

So this is what this koan is trying to give us a feeling for. that I felt just a little bit in seeing that horse come into the room. That somehow there was a definitely I felt a nature And I did not feel diminished by feeling this nature. I felt much deeply satisfied by feeling a nature with that horse, that the horse gave me that feeling.

[44:18]

Und ich habe da ganz sicherlich eine Natur erspürt und diese Natur hat mich in keinster Weise kleiner gemacht, sondern ich habe mich zutiefst genährt gefühlt durch diese Erfahrung, ja, dass dieses Pferd bringt diese Natur herein. So it's not such a silly question, does a dog have a Buddha nature? So it's not such a silly question, does a dog have a Buddha nature? It gives us a chance to to study Buddhism, to look at the vision that was brought into Buddhism through this term in late Indian Buddhism and particularly in Chinese Buddhism. A vision and experience that's not so different from our own life and certainly not so different from our potentiality.

[45:23]

And I look forward to practicing this with you these two days, two coming up days. Maybe we could sit for a few minutes and then stop. And sometimes in our sitting a certain clarity clicks in. And then we can give ourselves over, let go or fall into a deeper order. Zazen may sometimes feel like holding a cork or a gourd underwater.

[46:48]

He turns around, flips easily back into the consciousness of names, of substantiation. Sometimes in that the water glints and suddenly it's a jewel. So shining, there's no definite shape. This is the beginning of this koan for the nature. Your nature as well as Buddha's nature.

[48:03]

Well, we have to know what our provisions are. what's accessible to us to practice with. And if possible, what's always available. And if possible, what's always available. You can't pray practice every day, Zen, if you have to go to a temple or some special place to find what you need.

[49:05]

Now as I said last evening, this is the most, must be the most famous koan. And the history of this koan practice is interesting, actually. Because I feel that if I can give you an understanding of the practice and the kind of setting of the practice, hopefully it will increase your faith in practicing. I don't want to particularly increase your understanding of practice, because that doesn't help much.

[50:07]

And this koan has developed to be more than any other, a koan that emphasizes and demonstrates practice. Now, the... Our predecessors in practice tried very hard to find ways to understand what worked for them and their teachers and fellow practitioners. And to keep finding ways that made practice easier, more accessible for people. Now there are difficulties in simplifying because pretty soon the simplification floats off on its own somewhere.

[51:50]

Simplification should exist in the setting in which it arose. And sometimes when the simplification floats off too far from its reason for being, the practice becomes, they substitute for that loss with making the practice difficult. So in other words, if simplification has lost its bearing, so just do it harder and harder. Because practice is really about the depth of your intention, not about the difficulty of the practice.

[53:09]

But one of the advantages of getting older is you have had a lot of difficulty. And getting older somehow makes life easier. There are advantages to getting older. More and more things fall into place as you put down unnecessary things. So, this particular way we do this koan, this introspecting, the koan, so-called, was developed primarily by a teacher named Da Wei.

[54:58]

And he himself is not, at least in any of the main collections of koans, because his teacher is the person who put together the blue cliff records. And I should say that, so you realize this is your practice, that Daoui himself was so, on the one hand, concerned about koan practice that he burned the main plates, I guess it was, of the Bluetooth records, But he's also the main person who developed the way that's lasted until today of looking into a koan, looking into a problem, any problem actually. And I tell you this because I really want to emphasize this is a teaching that's developed over the centuries and can continue to develop in your practice.

[56:15]

And you need to focus on it in a way that has an experimental attitude. You're not doing something rigidly following some way. One reason this koan is so famous is also because, and used so much, is because it's the first koan in the Mumonkan. Now again, so you have a picture. The Mumon Khan of the three main collections of Khans is the one that emphasizes the Khans as a way to practice the most. And the Mumon Khan was compiled by a man named Mumon.

[57:51]

And Mumon means no gate barrier. And the mu of the mu-mon is the same as the mu of does a dog have a Buddha nature? Mu. So if your aunt asks you what you're doing, you're saying I'm practicing something which has no gate. In fact, it's a no-gate barrier. And she might rightly say, you're wasting your time. Such a silly way of explaining things.

[58:52]

But again, this is... you know, it's awfully zen-y, but at the same time it has arisen as a simple way of practicing. And Mumonkan can also be translated as the no-gate checkpoint. So it's not just a barrier, it's where you're checked, if your papers are in order. And so, Mumon Roshi begins his introduction with mind is the basis, and the gate is no.

[60:23]

So the gate is no. So again, this word no is used as a way of looking at the world, really. Now you can also use, as this poem points out, you can also use yes, if you'd like. And Descartes weist darauf hin, dass man genauso gut auch ja verwenden kann. And I would suggest you use both. Try both, you know. Now, I started out saying we have to discover our own provisions in practice. Ich habe damit angefangen zu sagen, dass ihr eure eigenen Vorräte entdecken müsst in der Praxis. And so that's why we sit, because we have a body.

[61:34]

Und deshalb sitzen wir. Wir haben einen Körper. And so your provisions are your legs, your backbone, and so forth. Und so ist Teil eures Provians, eure Beine, euer Rücken. And first of all, practice is simply to, I mean, I don't know, literally, can you say literally? No, that's writing bodily to discover your body. Or maybe actually to discover your body and many perceptual acts to discover your body. So, again, we... But, you know, let's look at the I. You can't... The I is... Unless there's thinking and consciousness, the I is nothing.

[62:37]

Unless there's the I, E-Y-E. Without consciousness, the physical eye wouldn't see anything. And without consciousness, without the physical eye, consciousness wouldn't see anything. So when you begin to discover your body, you are discovering the mind that decides to keep your back straight or pay attention to your breathing and so forth. So part of practice is to notice the provisions you have. For example, when you hear something, you notice that you can hear something and think at the same time.

[63:40]

That means that hearing consciousness and thinking consciousness are different. Studying the body, you find you're studying hearing consciousness and thinking consciousness as independent and interrelated. Now again, this is basic practice and basic sitting practice that you'll find yourself doing if you sit. So again, your provisions are the bodily consciousness and effort you can make to sit still or sit straight and so forth.

[65:09]

To sit still and to sit straight. Can you say the whole sentence? So studying your body is also studying the mind that allows you to sit straight and to sit still. And if you can start to sit still, you can start to study your body, as I've often said, the solidity, the fluidity, and so forth, the material stuff in its various forms. So just sitting down 30 or 40 minutes a day, begin to use your body to know your body.

[66:19]

Okay, now we can say that's using the body's posture to discover the body. Okay, how do you more directly discover the mind? The essence of mind or the field of consciousness itself without an object is not graspable. So what object of mind will you use? You really don't have too much choice. In effect, if you use the object of mind, you're using the way in which an object appears to you.

[67:38]

How does an object appear to you? For anybody over about two, it appears as a name. So koan practice and this mu is rooted in the practice of naming. And I've talked about naming practice in various ways in the past, but I have to speak about it here in the context of this mu. Because this word mu, although it means emptiness or no, is still a form of naming. Denn dieses Wort Mu, obwohl es jetzt für Nein oder Leerheit steht, ist doch immer noch eine Form des Benennens.

[68:51]

No, again, probably the root naming practice as a practice is to notice that this is an in-breath or an out-breath. Und die Wurzel dieser Praxis des Benennens ist wohl, dass ich bemerke, jetzt atme ich ein, jetzt atme ich aus. Or a long breath and a short breath and so forth. Now, if you do that, and if you and me sit next time, you do that, you just notice you're, now I'm, now this is inhale, now this is exhale. You'll find it's actually quite freeing. Somehow naming something kind of cuts through the discursive thoughts around something. And you just, it's almost like you name it and put it on the shelf.

[69:52]

And in your everyday practice, you can simply take 10 or 15 minutes a day. As you're walking along, you say, sidewalk, car, you know. Makes me think of how American Indians were portrayed in movies 20 years ago. How? The Indian. You white man. So you play this Indian game, you know. Me, Eureka. You, Geert. I mean, I don't know if you want your friends to notice you're saying car.

[71:05]

Store. But it's actually quite helpful to do it. And you begin to notice what your mind pays attention to. Now an important part of this practice too is you begin to name unnameable things or non-graspable things. You name like your breath is not something you can get hold of, it's just In breath and it's gone.

[72:06]

So you begin to start noticing more subtle things like, again, now I'm a walking person. So anyway, this naming practice is basic Buddhist practice. Now, if you also want to name, to put it on the shelf, you also want to name in a way that takes the name away, that peels the name off the object of perception. So no is a practice like that. So I look at Gerd and I say no. No. I look at you and I say no. Or moo. Now, as many of you know, I practiced with a phrase in my first years of practice of no place to go and nothing to do.

[73:32]

And I also practiced with a phrase of don't bug me, man. And these were all forms of no. Somebody would say, good morning to me. I'd say, don't bug me, man. How are you today? Don't bug me, man. Wie geht's dir? Lass mich in Ruhe. Because I felt, you know, I was 20 or so, 25 or so, three, I don't know, but I felt all this stuff coming at me and they wanted me to have a good morning or not and I had other plans. Ich war so 23 oder 25 und alle Leute wollten immer etwas von mir, wie zum Beispiel, dass ich einen guten Morgen habe, aber ich hatte andere Pläne. So I just wanted to, you know, get that stuff, so I'd say, don't bug me. Und so wollte ich einfach diesen ganzen Krempel loswerden und haben dann immer gesagt, wirklich, lass mich in Ruhe.

[74:36]

So for a year I made that my practice about whatever people said to me. I said, first reaction, don't bug me, man. And in the early 60s it didn't date you quite so much to say man. Mm-hmm. So it was actually got me left alone in some way. It was until people called me Don't Bug Me Man Baker. So. So at some time, around the same time I started this practice of whenever I started to do something, I said there's nothing to do.

[75:41]

You understand, I still did things, but I said there's nothing to do. And I felt my distracted mind. I'd be walking along the street and I'd feel my distracted mind sort of go, well, maybe I should go here, I should go there. I'd say, there's no place to go. So whatever appeared, I said, either there's nothing to do or there's no place to go. This is really not different from using Moo. But Mu, I had more of an entrance with no place to go and nothing to do.

[76:45]

But you might find your own entrance. But the question is here, How are you going to respond to everything that comes up? And of course, I think most of us notice that when things come up, a lot of things are attached to it. A little anxiety, or what is this, or what should I do, or you feel threatened, and so forth. Or thoughts begin to chase their tails in the mental space that language creates. So, Joshu answered this question with mu.

[77:59]

And a previous time he answered it with yes, with u. But it was Dawi who really turned this into, and Hakuin and others, who turned this into a way to respond to the world. To name everything with no. Or if you like, to name everything with yes. But behind this practice is also what we talked about in the last koan seminar of our attractiveness, our addiction to either or. The middle way literally means a mind

[79:03]

Practice, the phrase middle way, means a mind that is not addicted to either or. It also means a mind, the middle way, means a mind that's not believes in material things that can be transcended or nihilistically material things that can be eliminated. Let's concentrate now on the sense that means to not be addicted to an either-or mind. So again, if you study your mind and notice your mind, I think you'll see that it either wants to like things or dislike things. It's constantly taking positions. I'm interested in this or I'm not interested in this. And this is a very narrow kind of mind space.

[80:43]

So this koan, the poem of Mumon, he says, it's getting free of yes and no. And here in the In the Book of Serenity, it presents it with both yes and no. So you can see, use both yes and no to get free of yes and no. And again, of course, it doesn't mean that sometimes you don't say yes or no or sometimes like things and don't like things. But it means your mind isn't trying to rest in yes and no. You can get sick from, I like this, I don't like that, I'm scared of this, I don't stand there, I mean, it's impossible. So, I mean, seeing that, you practice this to radically shift the basis of mind out of either-or addiction.

[82:01]

So when you say no, you're saying no to either or. You're not saying no in contrast to yes. And this no doesn't really belong to the question. The no belongs to you, the practitioner. The no has little to do with the dog and Buddha nature. The no has to do with your practice. Your direct method of entering the middle way. You have a body. And consciousness.

[83:35]

And your attention, your ability to bring your attention to things. So maybe we could say the most basic practice of uncorrected mind Is to attend your attention. As you're sitting, just notice your attention itself. Don't try to change it. And as your attention shines on something, let it shine on that something very clearly. And when it moves, let your attention move to wherever it goes.

[85:06]

Don't try to direct it, just notice what it is attending. Maybe, I hope, my voice. It might be your bottom hurting. Then it might move to your breath. Or the thought, should I cut my breath? Then maybe to an itch in your ear.

[86:13]

And that itch in the ear makes your eye feel funny. And then your scalp moves. So attending attention actually is a kind of inner topography of the body appears. Or a topography of mind that attention begins to touch on this point or another point. Just trusting and attending attention is a very basic practice. If you can't get free of distraction, just stay with attention to distraction.

[87:40]

This is using the provisions that are available. Starting here, always starting here. Without much discrimination. Yes. You mentioned this inner order. Is that a psychological state?

[88:43]

Do you want to say that in Deutsch? Is that a psychological state? Well, you know, in a way I just mean the words, in English, of course, inner order. But I also mean that your health, your wholeness is... result of a biological order.

[89:59]

And we tend to get out of kilter. And how do you put yourself back in kilter? Well, if you, you know, when people are stressed, you all know, one of the most common things to do is wash the dishes. you're at least getting a little order in your kitchen. W.H. Auden has a poem which goes something like, plunge your hands in the basin, plunge them up to the wrist.

[91:07]

W.H. Auden, A-U-D-E-N. A British poet. I can't spell that first. A-U-D-E-N. A-U-D-E-N. Auden. Auden. Plunge your hands in the basin. Plunge them up to the wrist. You don't have to say it again. Stare, stare in the... Plunge your hands in there. Stare, stare in the mirror or basin and wonder what you've missed. Anyway, but if we stare into ourselves, there's a kind of order in ourselves.

[92:22]

And I think one of the things that zazen does for us is not only does it refresh our mind by joining it to the biological order, which is more consistent than our mental order, And also though, doing that seems to restore or enhance our biological order too. I think I didn't understand. I said the first is... You join the mind with... That doing zazen brings... establishes us in our biological order. I've translated that.

[93:29]

And because our mental order is not so consistent. But also doing that helps re-establish or improve our biological order, not just our mental order. So I meant it quite simply like that. Yeah. No, but I also want to insist on hearing more from you about this order, because it means... Is this an order? It means mental orientation, and also on the spiritual way, and, you know, on the one hand, our own, as you say, provisions of...

[94:36]

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