Yeah, in America right now, they're having the worst flu season they've had in 10 or 15 years. And quite a few deaths, actually. It doesn't seem to be as bad here. At least you guys look... Are you okay? You guys look healthy, but we've had quite a few cancellations for the sashin. I think last year in these two sashins I had the flu. But now I think I'm reasonably healthy. Mm-hmm. We have this rainy, snowy, darkish day today.

[01:08]

Which will become, I think it's going to continue these days, which will become part of our sashin. Probably already is part of our sashin. And ought to, ought to be part of our sesshin. We do go into a kind of, yeah, I don't know what words to use as usual, darkness in defining our days and nights by zazen practice. If the main definition of our days and nights is zazen practice, and not the way we usually define our days, then zazen can and I think ought to become kind of something we dive into.

[02:26]

We submerge ourselves into. Submerge is different from merge? Merge is to put together. Submerge is to be underwater. Yeah, okay. But when we emerge, which I don't know, this is my own observations, we emerge from Zazen as Westerners. Even though we submerge ourselves in this ancient, ancient teaching, Although we dive into this ancient teaching,

[03:50]

I think the way we're in this ancient teaching, submerged in this ancient teaching, is as Westerners. What else could we be? And why do I mention this? Why do I think it makes a difference? Because more and more, I used to think it was the preliminaries, but more and more I'm aware of the difference it makes. And the difference it makes is instructive for us. Now, what's the difference between the way in East Asian or we would submerge ourselves in Zazen?

[05:03]

Well, I can only speculate. I mean, I can't be both at once. But my speculation arises from finding myself teaching or expressing practice in ways that are different from an East Asian would do it. So then I want to wonder, why am I doing it? Why do I express it differently when I think it's basically the same experience? Yeah. It's because, well, let me see. I think to try to create some kind of field here,

[06:05]

I think, you know, who do I, I don't know. I'm going to say this even though I don't know what I'm talking about. An East Asian would think of potatoes and rice as something that's part of them. Ein Ostasiater würde Kartoffeln und Reis als etwas verstehen, was Teil von ihnen ist. But not only part of them when they've eaten potatoes or rice. Aber nicht nur dann Teil von ihnen, wenn sie gerade Kartoffeln oder Reis gegessen haben. But it's considered, it felt to be part of them before they eat it too. Sondern es wird als Teil von ihnen empfunden, auch noch bevor sie es gegessen haben. And the air we breathe just doesn't become air. part of us just when we breathe it. It's part of us right now even when we're not breathing it or you're breathing it.

[07:31]

Are you giving me your old air again? And the sunlight. What is the sunlight? It's a space we're inseparable from. It times our day. And it fertilizes the plant world which we live within and through eating. And the sunlight gives us, or is warmth and is light. And simultaneously it times our day, it gives us the fertility of our life and our light and warmth, all simultaneously.

[08:37]

We can separate it into these different perspectives, light, warmth, fertility, timing, but it's really just one phenomenon. The implied challenge here is how do we know the unity of our experience which is also differentiated? And the challenge here is, how can we recognize the unity of our experience, if it is also differentiated at the same time? As the sun is differentiated into timing, fertility, light and warmth, and more and more. And how the sunlight is divided into warmth, light, fertility, temporal division, and more.

[10:04]

Something like that is, I mean, I'm trying to sensitize us and sensitize myself, of course, too, because that's how I explore these things. How do I sensitize myself to a... a realm, a territory of experience which doesn't fall into a sensorial distinction. Wait, a realm of experience? Experience which doesn't fall into sensorial distinctions. Okay. So I'm trying to find a way to talk about this submersion in zazen practice, which you don't try to experience as if it were externalized. I think we think of air and food as something like fuel.

[11:21]

Gasoline or... Yeah. I mean, we don't think our car is gasoline or diesel fuel. We think of our car as separate from the fuel. If someone asked you, what is your car, you'd say, well, it's a Ford or it's a... opel or what some other car you wouldn't want to have a ford or an opel probably but when someone asks you what is your what is your fuel then you would say that is what is your car then you would say that is a ford or an opel even if you probably don't want to have such a car

[12:32]

You wouldn't say, oh, what is my car? Oh, it's gasoline. But now I think we're going to see that electric cars are electric. And electric cars are going to be electrically connected with all kinds of things in a way gasoline cars are not. Now we know we are what we eat. I mean organic food and all that stuff. But my experience as a Westerner and practicing with Westerners is we still think of these things as different. And we still try to understand our interior experience as if it was a version of exterior experience.

[13:40]

And I think we don't really know, even in Sashin, how to notice our interior experience. So after all these years, I'm trying to find ways to speak about interiority, experienced, experienceable interiority, which actually does not fall into categories of sensorial attention. I don't even think we can use the word awareness.

[14:54]

I mean, inner awareness is actually now, I've often used it, but I think it's got knowledge and perceptual baggage which doesn't apply to Zazen practice. Und ich glaube, wir können noch nicht mal dabei das Wort Gewahrsein benutzen, obwohl ich das schon viel benutzt habe. Glaube ich trotzdem, dass das ein Wissen und Wahrnehmungslast mit sich trägt oder Wahrnehmungsgepäck mit sich trägt, die nicht auf die, that doesn't apply to. Zazen experience. No, I got here partly because I began really carefully examining the mental concept, don't move, which is joined to the physical posture. But I realized I can't call it a mental concept.

[15:55]

I have to call it, as I do usually, a mental posture. And a mental posture, what happens within a mental posture? So you're going to sit Zazen, and Zazen is defined through it being a mental posture as well as a physical posture. Now these and other things have led me to describe Zazen recently as four postures. And I mentioned it in the seminar the other day.

[17:09]

But most of you weren't there. So very simply, the four postures are physical. Physiological. Imaginal. Now we could call it the physical is an exterior posture. And the physiological is an interior posture. And the imaginal is a visionary posture. And the fourth posture I call realisational. Or a everywhere manifest posture. Now I think if I think it would be useful if you explore your own zazen practice in these four categories.

[18:34]

And first, notice the difference between establishing your physical posture Which is done partly by feeling the body as an externalized object. And we discover our external posture primarily, I think, through The barometer, maybe, barometer of the spine. It's an inner lifting feeling, but it's an externalized experience. Now you're shifting though. I want us to try to feel the difference between the physical posture, which we can kind of imagine with our consciousness,

[19:43]

And our physiological posture, which you feel from inside, so we have to, maybe there's Maybe we have to not use the word awareness, but maybe use, emphasize feeling. And I keep trying to not use the words we... I find I don't feel comfortable using the words we usually use because they usually only have their usual meaning. And so I don't know what I'm going to end up deciding, but mentation means mental activity.

[21:16]

And I think at least if you're exploring this through English, you'd try to wonder... Is thinking is a form of meditation? Imagining is a form of meditation? Dreaming is a form of meditation? Or is it? What are the differences? If you have this spiritual activity, and in English we have the word mentation, then you would ask yourself, thinking is part of this spiritual activity, dreaming is part of the spiritual activity, and feeling is part of the spiritual activity, and then you would explore the differences. I sort of noticed this when I recently read several reviews of a painter's show, artist's show, named Jasper Johns.

[22:23]

Of his shows. And Jasper Johns is... He's somebody I know slightly. He used to stay at a friend of mine's house and I've talked with him a few times. And I mentioned that I know him slightly only because... to emphasize that he's not somebody in the newspapers. He's somebody that's part of our world and definitely part of my world. And he's 10 years older than I am, but I've been part of what he's done instrumentally over the years. And if you know much about Something about American painting, New York painting over the last 50 years or so.

[23:49]

He's the person who painted the American flag. And painted targets and things like that. And they always ask him, no. What led you to paint the American flag? And he always says, well, I dreamed it one night, so I got up the next day and painted it. And the reviewers never quite believe it. And the critics, they never really believe that. They always want him to answer, ah, this is influenced by Picasso or Cezanne and has something to do with our history or something. But instead he always says that he dreamed it.

[24:51]

They wanted to come from some external source and not some, just he dreamed it. So he thought, what the heck, I'll paint it. So the reviewer's disbelief of this, he always says, he just doesn't like to talk about his art, so he always tells us it was a dream. Huh? because our culture doesn't our official culture doesn't exactly recognize that dreaming is also a form of thinking and And knowing. Thinking and knowing. We can call it thinking. And zazen is a form of thinking and knowing.

[26:04]

But we have to allow another kind of knowing and thinking to happen. And what happens next? It's in the physiological posture that the main transformative dynamics of zazen happen. And zazen practice, the physiological posture, is something like a silken feeling or soft wool feeling. Or sometimes in some teachings it's called the nectar of sweet dew. Well, this nectar or this silken feeling is not in the categories, sensorial categories. And it happens in another kind of time.

[27:37]

It doesn't happen in conceptual or comparative time. It happens more in a kind of what I call plant time, a waiting time, where you wait, you wait, you don't conceptualize. And the waiting is a kind of knowing that you don't know you know. So everything's an activity, remember? Not entities, everything's an activity. And what are activities? They're potentialities. They're accommodations.

[28:37]

So there's Even if you're just completely still, the stillness is full of potentialities and accommodations. So you allow stillness not just as a kind of finally an inner vacation, that's good too. You have to approach stillness by allowing stillness. I try to find a word like instilledness. It becomes as much a part of you as water is water without it necessarily being waves.

[29:37]

But still water... has the possibility always of being waves. And has the possibility of being fish and algae and all kinds of things. So Zazen, and we have, for some of us, 14 days, and for some of us 7 days, we have a chance to find this stillness in its power and potentiality. just use this posture and use this mental posture don't move and use the shift from the physical into the physiological As a way to allow instilledness to start talking to you in another voice.

[31:05]

Maybe talking in such slow motion there's no words anymore but there's feeling. And you can't hear it if you're impatient. And you'll notice, I think, the difference when there's patience and you don't care when the bell rings, and when there's impatience and you want the bell to ring. And the impatience is, well, because it hurts and things like that, but it's actually because the external world is becoming how you define yourself. Und diese Ungeduld, klar, die hat damit zu tun, weil das alles weh tut und so weiter, aber im Grunde geht es bei der Ungeduld darum, dass du die äußere Welt benutzt, um dich zu definieren.

[32:27]

Wenn du wirklich in der Stille eingenistet bist, in diese Innerlichkeit, dann verschwindet das Äußere. There's no location. You can't even say there's a location because there's no comparison. And it's a kind of solidity. It's strange. It's nothing, but it feels solidity to it. Now you have to find a way to enter. And I think one simple way, which I'll suggest, is for a while. Is for a while. Just give attention.

[33:29]

Do we pay attention? Does it cost money? Give attention. Have attention. Have attention to your inhales only. And see how fully you can be attentive Maybe attention, maybe men-tentional. Men-tentional? No. I'm always causing problems, folks. Men-tentional, an inner attention which isn't really attention. It's something different, but I have no word for it. A silken waiting feeling. For the inhale. And you feel the more and more you see if you can attend Mention, attention can be completely with the breath, air going down into your lungs.

[35:02]

And at the same time, the whole body feels like the air is coming up from the bottom at the same time. And notice how the mind is, how the interior visuality is on the inhale and again how it's different on the release. And if you can't experience these things, you have no real experience of interiority or a chance to develop the physiological posture. Wenn du das nicht erfahren kannst, dann hast du keine echte Gelegenheit, Innerlichkeit zu erfahren oder die physiologische Haltung zu entwickeln.

[36:22]

And you have to give up your sensorial distinctions. Und dabei musst du deine Sinnesunterscheidungen aufgeben. And your interiority is the fullness of your life as well as your exteriority. And we have a problem with this, I think, because we need to notice there's a difference between interiority and exteriority. And the East Asian practitioner assumes they're versions, they're interrelated, the way the sun is both timing and fertility and also light and warmth. How to enter into it? Maybe I would try something like not different but new. The territory of interiority is new to us, but it's not different.

[37:34]

Eventually, it's next. Yeah, okay. I stop saying it, not just because I can't say it, but because I want to show you I can't say it. And what are you doing when you bring let's call it attention, to only the inhales, you forgot about the exhales. If you forget about the exhales, you'll still be alive tomorrow. Most of your life you've forgotten about the inhales and the exhales and you're alive.

[38:36]

So let's concentrate on just the inhale. For as long as you want. And what are you doing when you do that? You're exploring how to bring feeling, a knowing feeling waiting, to this interiority. And you're developing the skill of this knowing, feeling, waiting, which is not conceptualized or, I mean, I'm conceptualizing it, but really it's not conceptualized or compared. And you develop this ability, this feeling for feeling, waiting and knowing.

[39:55]

And that is not understood by the mind, even if I describe it conceptually. I'm conceptualizing only to point to it, because I can't conceptualize it, really. I can only point to it with conceptions. So please notice this indescribability which can describe us in realisational, a realized world. Waiting, feeling. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[40:35]

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