Good afternoon. Schönen Nachmittag. Good afternoon to you, too. Good afternoon to you. You know, I appreciate your decision to come to Sechin. Und ich schätze, eure Entscheidung, zum Sechin gekommen zu sein. So I can practice with you, so I can see you. So dass ich euch sehen kann und mit euch praktizieren kann. And I also appreciate your decision because often it's a difficult decision. And sometimes the sheen is understood or remembered as difficult. And so it makes the decision more difficult. But still, you brave souls are here. And there's always three or four, two or three people who at the last minute don't show up for reasons that often aren't easy to understand.

[01:07]

Hmm. And I find when I, almost always when I start a sashina, I find I feel like I should talk about the practice itself a little bit. Sometimes it takes the whole seshin, sometimes the first or second teshu. But this is, in some ways, an odd thing to do. I mean, somebody's never done a sashin if you mention I'm going to go sit for a week or something. What the heck is wrong with you? And then I get letters sometimes from people who say,

[02:07]

I'm not going to sit any more sashins. Because it's a drug. It makes me feel so good and then it disappears after a week and it's so disappointing I can't go through that again. So anyway, let me start with what I said this morning. I asked you to the little eating mat or whatever it is, made of bamboo or something, that we put our orioke bowls on. I asked you to slide it under your, you know, Part way under your saboteur. Hmm. Yeah, I broke down and mentioned it verbally.

[03:22]

You broke down. I broke down means I... Poor fellow, he broke down. To break down means you resisted doing something and finally you gave up and said, okay, I'll do it. Yeah. Because, I don't know, five or six or seven years now, I've been sliding my mat underneath... and waiting for everyone to do it. Really, at least, almost the whole time we've been here. Ten years next year. Now, am I disappointed in you? No, of course not. But it is extremely interesting to me that no one notices.

[04:39]

Or no one cares if they do notice. I think one or two people have occasionally noticed. And do it without my saying anything. And usually I find I pick something here and in Crestone that I do and see if anybody notices. Sometimes it's very obvious and sometimes it's not obvious. Still people don't notice. Now, do I think that... What do I think about that? I mean, I'm not critical at all. It's just interesting to me. Mm-hmm. And I don't want you all to start, you know, watching me like hawks.

[05:49]

Down to far in the sender with opera glasses. What is he doing with his orioke right now? But you can get opera glasses from you, Dieter. No, it's really about just feeling the difference. You don't think you sort of feel it. Because it's not exactly in the same line as the others. Yeah. I had dinner the other night with a cell biologist. Yeah, a very nice guy. I had a good conversation with him.

[06:50]

And he told me that plants can tell whether what's beside it is a wall or another plant. Yeah, it can tell by the kind of light that comes off a wall, say stone or brick wall. is different from the light that, say, goes through the leaf of a plant next to it. So if it's one kind of light, it'll go around the wall, try to, and if it's another kind of light, and it's not the same kind of plant, it'll try to grow up. so the other one doesn't overshadow it.

[08:02]

I think I would call this a kind of intelligence. Certainly it's discriminating and making... And I won't go into all of the distinctions, able to perceive color and things like that, able to make real distinctions. What plants can't do that we can do, we can move around, we can change our location. A plant generally can't change its location. It's stuck in one place, like you are during Sashin. So I'm talking about some kind of intelligence, body intelligence, that isn't about thinking.

[09:25]

And it's a kind of all at once knowing, not a kind of bit by bit knowing. Okay. Now, you know, at the center of Christianity is the Eucharist, the Last Supper, the wine and the bread and so forth, of Catholic Christianity at least. And, you know, when I notice something like this, this... I point out, let's make a little more space when the zendo is so full. I ask myself the question, why is this important?

[10:28]

Why is it important that you might or might not notice? Why is it important that we do it exactly the same? Of course, we don't do it exactly the same. For instance, I've noticed some of you Wait for the other person to fold their bowl before you fold yours. I mean, so you fold your Oryoki together at the same time. And that's not a rule or a custom. It's just something we make up ourselves to do. And it may even be taught by somebody who teaches how to do Oryoki, but it's actually just made up.

[11:35]

Because in the way we do the Oryoki, some things are simply done, yeah. independently of what the person next to you is doing. We're not all eating a spoon at the same time. The whole room. Okay, you got your old spoon lined up? We could do that. Let's try it. It's a kind of choreography, a zen musical. Then we could burst into song.

[12:36]

No, you can decide. There's a rule you should eat from the first bowl first, but after that you just eat. You don't worry about the guy next to you. And in the same way, you just open your eating bowls and you fold them back up. You don't have to do it in rhythm with the person next to you. But why overall do we do it together, start and end and etc. It's a kind of bringing us together in a liturgy of the body or something like that. It's a way of bringing us together in a kind of liturgy of the body, if you want to call it that.

[13:48]

And you do them and it's articulated in the space of the body. Now ideally Zazen and and the sashin practice should teach themselves. And when you... If you follow rules too closely, you won't teach yourself. You just follow the rules and do it different than others. It's not really. There's certain kind of customs or rules, but you want to feel it. Yes, there are all these books full of mudras, iconography of posture, hand positions, etc.

[15:08]

Yes, and Yeah, those are for, you know, for certain ceremonies, but it's also for sculptors to sculpt certain hand positions for particular Bodhisattvas or Buddhas. As you know, I've always liked this guy here. This golden guy, because he sits with his fingers like that, but he's got it a little to this left side. It's not quite in the middle. You know that I can handle this golden guy here quite well. And he holds his fingers like this in this way.

[16:11]

But he holds it a little to the side. He doesn't hold it exactly in the middle. But really you find out these mudras or the power of the hands and through, yeah, through, yeah, through, empowering the body through doing it. And you are in fact articulating your wider body when you do learning something about that when you do the orioke.

[17:15]

So, you know, it's a way of eating together. It's a way of eating together. Yeah, it's not our last supper, but it's, you know, something like that. Okay. But it's an eating together in which we also serve the food. So the serving is part of it. And a kitchen, while we're sitting, a kitchen is preparing this. Preparing to cook it and serve it. Yeah, and this idea is very deep in Asian culture because often the cooks are the waiters for very similar reasons.

[18:18]

Yeah. And then we're sitting together. And let's say for now that the basic idea of the Uriyoki is rooted in the sense of a mutual body. Yeah, I think that... Again, in the Catholic tradition, I believe that grace, eating together is considered a kind of, the bread and wine are considered a kind of physicalized grace or manifest grace. So we're sitting together, eating together as a practice in Sashin,

[19:20]

In a way to physicalize the space in us, around us, and that we share. So Sashin is just the basic thing is to... just survive sitting in one place, staying in one place for a week. And get used to that, so you can do it anywhere. It trains you to wait for trains with patience. You just sit down in the station.

[20:37]

It's going to come in a couple of hours, a couple of hours late. Oh, okay. Yeah. But maybe you can also notice the person on either or both sides of you. A little like the plant. What kind of light is coming from the person next to me? So you don't know much about this person's past. Usually you're just feeling their presence. But you're not, I don't know, you don't want to bring your mind, you don't want to think about it. And I think one of the problems with noticing a small thing, like the person next to you has slid, as I did, has for years been sliding my Oreo key about that much under my

[21:48]

Because if you have a, I don't know what we would call it, a body of aspects. A body of aspects. Aspects of the body. A body of parts. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting a little too far out for even the first day. Or not far out, just kooky. Kuki, do you have that word? Kuki means a little crazy. I hope it's all right, yeah. Okay.

[22:50]

So you don't think I've hands or arms or, you know, you're not thinking about the... You don't think about your... A body is an accumulation of parts. You feel it entirely from the inside. It's not a body named by doctors or the medical profession. That's something you know from outside, a kind of inside. But you know it, I don't know inside, outside, but you don't know it by thinking, as if you were looking at it. And some of the practices of traditional mindfulness are meant to empower, awaken, awaken, awaken the body in this way.

[23:59]

Then you've got to sort of live your body in some way during these next... Again, there's a word for body, I think it's shen, which means, in Chinese, which means the lived body. It also means something like the extended body. But we don't want the named body, we want the lived body. And Zen says you don't want a thought body, you want to drop the thought body. And if you can drop the thought body during Sashin, it often helps going through the periods when nothing much is happening but pain. But sometimes it takes pain to drop the thought body.

[25:43]

And you don't want to minimize the pain, or if you do minimize the pain, just put your legs up and sit with your arms around your legs. Don't try any tricks. Strangely enough, to drop the thought body you often have to go through pain. It more likely happens when there's a lot of pain and you finally drop the thought body and much of the pain disappears. Yeah, so we're trying to discover actually Sashin is meant to open us to a more ancient, fundamental and realized body.

[26:47]

You've got to sit here for these seven days. I'm sorry. That's the way it is. Mm-hmm. So as you, perhaps, let's say you can feel the person without thinking about the person, without judging the person, the person next to you, And if you try to feel the person next to you without thinking about them and without judging them. With respect and appreciation. And acceptance. And I would say, yes, and also awe. Yeah, that each of us is such, wow, woo, you know, this is pretty amazing, each of us.

[27:58]

Can you start thinking about this? The person next to me farts. Sorry. Sorry. The person next to me farts. Oh, they haven't bathed for three or four days? Whoa. So stop thinking, stop smelling. You're just sitting there with this person. Maybe they fart sometimes, but so do you. Let's hope they can wait till work period. So somehow you've got to get past these small disturbances. So you just accept with appreciation and awe. What you feel, and don't think about it, just feel it without giving it a name.

[29:08]

You'll understand the person next to you better if you don't understand. Or maybe I should say, you'll know the person next to you better if you don't understand. It's a presence. He or she is a presence you feel, not something you think about or understand. Now once you've established this non-judgmental acceptance of the persons beside you, transfer that non-judgmental acceptance and appreciation to you yourself.

[30:21]

In the same kind of present without a past that you feel the persons on either or both sides of you. You feel without understanding or thinking about your own presence. And you settle into and breathe into this presence. And the other day, two or three weeks ago or something like that, I was in Munich.

[31:27]

And I was given the title, I didn't even think it up, somebody else did, Why Sit? Why Sitting? So it made, yeah, I just said, well, okay. I think I should try to say something about this. I found it quite interesting. I taught myself a few things. Or I had to put together, I had to sort of notice things a little different way than I usually notice them. Yeah, and one reason we sit is a kind of intermediate space in which we can think things through. Yeah, why you made the decision to come here.

[32:42]

Or what's hidden behind the decision to come here that some kind of dilemma or problem in your life. Or think through isn't right, just feel through. Yeah, feel it in your hands. Perhaps your right hand and then bring it into your left hand. So you're just feeling it, you're not thinking about it. So the kind of intermediate space of knowing that's clearly different from the knowing of waking consciousness and dreaming knowing. And it's a great treasure to discover this.

[33:50]

And an expandable treasure. It can expand into you. Like this person who wrote me that Sashin is a drug and it goes away after a few days. It can. It doesn't have to. If you get a feeling for the ingredients that you discover in Sashin, the ingredients are with you, except nobody is sitting beside you all day, but much of the ingredients are with you in your daily life. Yeah, they're just mixed differently. So, first of all, zazen is a kind of intermediate feeling space.

[34:51]

Second, I said it balances... brings into balance, better balance, the minds of waking, dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep. And Sashin should always have a little less sleep than you need. So you bring the sleepy mind into your zazen. But if you begin to get what you need from zazen, often the sleepiness disappears. And surprisingly, later in the sashinyu, You don't miss the sleep, you're quite wide awake.

[36:12]

So you're balancing these three minds, I call them the three births, the minds we're born with. And you're also weaving in fact, by sitting here like this, weaving together body and mind. And much of this you've got to let Zazen teach you how to do it. Zazen will teach you. Or Zazen over seven days of sitting will teach you. The context will help teach you. And this weaving together of body and mind empowers the breath.

[37:15]

And breath is kind of the needle, partly the needle that weaves together body and mind. And breath is empowered in this, it resonates with the body from this practice. And you are, in fact, also generating what we can call a truth body. I mean, let me just use the simple example I always do of Lie detectors work a large percentage of the time because it's very difficult for the body to lie. So the more your mind, breath and body are woven together, you experience your body in your thinking.

[38:30]

It becomes difficult to lie to others and difficult to lie to yourself. This in turn changes everything. how our experience, our accumulated experience is known to us. Yeah, that's enough. So we're each, by our presence together, we're teaching each other and teaching ourselves.

[39:51]

Not the teaching that's thinking or talking. Not the teaching that's thinking or talking. And really, whenever the I or the Ino or anyone has to explain it verbally, we've lost something. If possible, we should find out how to do things in Sashin without requiring verbal explanation, which is going in the opposite direction. But each of you, if this works, each of you has to be open, open, yeah, with energy in your awareness. Maybe so I suggest you rest in your presence during the day, in the work period, in the kitchen, in the zendo.

[41:15]

Now see if you can rest in your presence and not your thinking. Or rest in your breath. Like that, then teaching isn't out there in a book somewhere. It's here with us in our activity. take what happens here and make it into a book. But that's not the source. The source is here. So true culture has evolved in That's how, anyway, yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay.

[42:36]

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