Let's imagine there are two worlds. One world characterized by and rooted in stillness. And another world characterized by activity. And you've decided implicitly, explicitly to see, discover, to experiment with a world of stillness for seven days and for some of you for 14 days. No, I'm speaking in categories because that's the way our mind works. So we have two worlds.

[01:01]

It's nowhere near that simple, but let's keep it simple for the sake of trying to approach a stillness in our practice. Okay. Now, Since you're here, you all know that the basic physical posture is upright, spine mind sitting. And I say spine mind, Spine, mind, to emphasize the experience of the spine.

[02:34]

And the spine and the uprightness of the spine is the determinative dynamic and dimension of our still sitting. Dynamic and determinative, something or other. Yeah. And most of you would know from past Sashins, etc., that the for some reason I want to say the acclimatized mental posture, the accompanying mental posture is don't move.

[03:37]

And these postures together are allow us to stay in one place. So during these seven days you're trying to stay in one place as much as possible when sitting. Now I'm trying to speak about this. This is obviously real, completely basic. And I'm trying these days to speak about these basic practices in... in ways that I'm trying to primarily describe them in ways that you understand practice as a craft.

[05:07]

So I wish we didn't have to use handwork. But anyway, because my feeling is every word influences how you do things. And handwork is not what I mean. In English, I just turn it into a new word. I don't know how to do that in German. I suppose if I spoke German I'd say something like bodily mind work. And if that wasn't clear I'd say it's a hand work, a bodily mind work. Because really, we just have this terrible habit to think in categories that lead to generalities.

[06:15]

And if you Think of, say, yes, I'm practicing, I'm not still very often, my mind is always busy, etc., but stillness is a goal. As a generality, that's, yeah, good enough. Als eine Verallgemeinerung ist es vielleicht gut genug. But it's not very helpful for the craft of practice. Aber das ist nicht so hilfreich für das Körpergeistwerk der Praxis. A goal means you're not there, but you want to be there.

[07:17]

Ein Ziel bedeutet, dass du noch nicht da bist, aber du möchtest gern da sein. But stillness, you're already there. You just don't know how to notice it. So I would say it's not a goal, it's an emphasis. And I can, I'm sorry I can't do anything like this in German, but emphasis is from within to show. A goal is a description from the outside. And if I say the two postures, mental and physical posture of sitting, Through these two postures, you're trying to discover stillness.

[08:34]

But, yeah, it's okay, enough. But again, if I say trying, it implies you can succeed or not succeed. In English we have admonitions like, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. You must have a few of those in German, too. Im Englischen haben wir solche Hinweise, wie zum Beispiel, wenn du nicht gleich zu Anfang Erfolg hast, dann versuch es immer und immer wieder. But the etymology of try is really sift. Aber die Etymologie des Wortes try im Englischen kommt von dem Wort für siebeln.

[09:39]

And so what I mean when I say try to discover or try to notice stillness, I mean sift through your experience and see what's there. In order to stay in the Sashin, be in the Sashin, you need to try to, in the sense of a goal, stay in one place, be relatively still and maintain a relatively good posture. Even if you're sitting in a chair, it's good to try to see if you can maintain this mental and physical spine-mind posture.

[10:47]

Yes, so that's the kind of outside condition of participating in the Sashin. But When I say try, I mean notice what happens when you're sitting still, sitting in this posture, and see if you can discover how not to move. Notice what happens in your breath. Notice what happens in your back. Notice what happens when you begin to sit well and then some kind of irritating thought comes in.

[12:23]

Or notice what happens when your body releases such an irritating thought. You're discovering a typography, an inner typography of experience through still sitting mentally and physically. Driving is not the goal of a car. The goal of driving can be to get to Munich or Goerwil or someplace.

[13:26]

But driving is a condition of the car. If a car doesn't drive, it hardly is a car. It sits out here in the grass with weeds growing over it. Well, stillness is a condition of practice. A bigger condition than the mental posture of don't move and the physical posture of the upright spine. It's a more basic condition of stillness itself. What do I mean that it's always present? Or it's, as I say, the emphasis is to discover it from within.

[14:36]

If you practice with a sense of a goal, then you're trying to do something. Wenn du mit der Idee von einem Ziel praktizierst, dann versuchst du etwas zu tun. If it's just a condition, then you're trying to discover it from within. It's already there. Wenn es aber nur eine Bedingung ist, dann versuchst du sie von innen her zu entdecken, weil sie ja schon da ist. So you don't do Zazen exactly. You discover from within what happens when Zazen is... So you discover what happens when the body becomes an attentional body. If you're noticing, if you're sifting, if you're noticing from within, this is an attentional process.

[15:52]

when you notice and when you seep through, then that is a process of attention from the inside out. Like driving, driving is a process and not necessarily that you drive somewhere. No, so I'm trying to look at practices, basic practices, which open up in your continued practice. Open up in this case through your seven days of incubating, allowing a practice to work within you. No, what I'm trying to do here also is to get at a way for us to make use in our Western way of thinking in languages

[17:05]

of the concept of non-duality. Now this is a real hard nut to crack. It's perplexed and bemused me now for several months. I mean for years, but actively recently. Because I think it's at the root of our inability to get it, non-duality, is at the root of our... fragmented and frustrated practice.

[18:35]

Yeah. So I think without trying to go too much into sort of the kind of philosophical detail about nonduality, Let's say it's simply a category. There's a category dual, there's a category non-dual. And things are obviously separated and everything isn't... obviously connected, and so non-dual makes sense. But things are also profoundly connected. And we can say everything is molecules, right? But there's no experience.

[20:20]

I don't think any of us experience molecules. So we need experience. I think the word for neuroscientist is qualia or quali. It's from the word quality, quali. The quality of a breath would be the particular experience of a particular breath in particular circumstances. So what you're trying to notice or develop the attentional sensitivity to be able to notice. The quality, the quality, the distinctness of each breath.

[21:31]

No, I could say the quality of stillness. The experiential quality of stillness. That's okay, but it's actually more precise to say the quality of breath, of stillness. Okay. So what I'm suggesting now is that stillness is a... a shared aspect of everything.

[22:49]

If we look at separation, yes, there's separation and there's connectivity. Wenn wir uns Trennung anschauen, dann können wir sagen, ja, es gibt Trennung und es gibt Verbundenheit. But everything is partially characterized by stillness. Aber alles hat zumindest teilweise auch die Eigenschaft von Stille. And partially characterized in a good way in the sense that it's present and sometimes it's not present. Und teilweise die Eigenschaft in... Excuse me, sometimes it's present. The quali of stillness is sometimes present and sometimes it's not present. Okay, so that's, you know, then we have to sift and emphasize and so forth. Und dann müssen wir das durchsieben und betonen und so weiter.

[24:02]

Okay. So, again, many of you have heard my little riff about treeing and stillness. Viele von euch haben meinen kleinen Einschub über das Bäumende But let me run through it again. Because these images in koans are often rooted in images that function in a craft-like way for you. And often in koans one or two words is code, it's not described fully, but code for an image you're meant to internalize. Okay, so quickly. For tree-huggers.

[25:04]

You stand in front of a tree somewhere. And you feel it as treeing, not as an entity. You feel it as an entity, as an activity, treeing. Du spürst es als Bäumen und nicht als einen Baum. Also du spürst es als Aktivität und nicht als eine Entität. And as soon as you feel this treeing, it becomes a space. Und sobald du das Gefühl von Bäumen hast, wird es zu einem Raum. This immediately tells you something because if you think in terms of activities and not entities, then you're thinking in terms of space. of fields. So the tree as an activity, as treeing, will be a field. A field which stretches into the air and stretches into the ground in an almost parallel way.

[26:35]

Although you can't see it, you can feel it and you know it. obwohl du es nicht sehen kannst, kannst du es spüren und du weißt es. And of course it's a field in which there's insects, birds and blah, blah, blah. Und natürlich ist es ein Feld, in dem es Insekten und Vögel und so weiter gibt. And there's leaves. Und es gibt Blätter. And the movement of the leaves. Und die Bewegungen der Blätter. And the micro movements, the lower part of the tree compared to the upper part of the tree. Und all die klitzekleinen Bewegungen, Mikrobewegungen im unteren Teil des Baumes, die zum Beispiel anders sind als weiter oben. And I'm going into this detail because to know through field thinking rather than entity thinking is really to have an attentional field.

[27:43]

The sensitivity to the entirety of the field all at once. And the basic practice of Zazen is to allow and to accept. It's not directional thinking, it's field thinking. You're allowing and accepting whatever is present. Du lässt zu und akzeptierst, was auch immer gegenwärtig ist, was auch immer da ist. This field of allowing and accepting is essential, essential, essential. Dieses Feld des zulassens und akzeptierens ist wesentlich, wirklich wesentlich.

[28:49]

And it's discovered really and given a dynamic by spine-mind stillness. So now you've got the feel of the field of the tree. And again, The leaves are obviously moving, but they're also obviously moving in relationship to the stillness of the trunk and the roots. And they will continue to move in relationship to the stillness, the fundamental stillness of the tree until autumn. So in the movement of the leaf is hidden, not very hidden, is stillness.

[29:59]

So I suggest you take this image. And you feel your body is like the trunk of the tree. And your sensorial field is like thinking too. It's like the leaves moving but returning to stillness. And you can use the image as if you were the tree stretching right down through you and up. And this image of the still treeing can awaken actual experiences of yourself or your own body and mind, which aren't accessible usually.

[31:09]

So stillness characterizes the tree and the trunk and the leaf. And stillness... characterizes this platform. This zendo, this new zendo, we are continually inaugurating. This is the second sashin in it, right? You did the first sashin. The carpenters, the cabinetmaker carpenters, clearly tried to bring out the stillness of the wood. Die Handwerker haben eindeutig versucht, die Stille des Holzes zum Vorschein zu bringen.

[32:26]

The grain is the activity, the fibers of the wood are the stillness. Die Maserung ist die Aktivität, die Fasern des Holzes ist die Stille. And they joined the pieces together, not by some kind of mental nail, but fitting them together with... wooden pegs or with the shape of the piece itself. So we don't need this wood joinery zendo to remind us of stillness. The gesture of the floor in supporting us is stillness.

[33:30]

Everything around you has a quality of stillness. And the person sitting next to you in the zendo has a quality of stillness as well, even if they're experiencing their activity. So I'm suggesting in this session You enter for these seven days or more a cave of stillness. Or a mountaintop of stillness where all the other peaks are somewhere else. And a stillness you share with the wood, the wall, the people, everything.

[34:32]

To find a quality that everything shares will open you up into this dynamic of non-duality. Now how these basic practices open up and unfold into other practices, Let's leave until tomorrow. And now let's just see if we can discover this world of stillness here within us.

[35:51]

Not somewhere else. It's already within the tree. And it's already within you. And it's obviously in everything. So the stillness of the Zendo itself, the platform, your Zafu, all support your own stillness. Stillness is a quality that allows us to know each other and to know the world. Which allows us to know each other and the world. Thank you very much. May God bless you.

[37:11]

May God bless you. May God bless you.

[37:14]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.84