Of course there are many ways we find ourselves in the midst of practicing zazen. But it's shaped, of course, by taking some posture. And expecting to be in the posture for a while. And maybe even though it will be a certain length of time, sort of forgetting about time. So forgetting about time might be part of the imaginal space that you create, generate, as part of sitting zazen. So you sit down.

[01:04]

And you try to find a posture in which you can sit still. And usually it's good to start from the back of your although you may come forward a bit in the process of finding your posture. And you have to do something with your legs. So a half lotus, left or right lotus is... pretty good. And if you're flexible enough and have been sitting for a while, full lotus is the most stable.

[02:13]

You're establishing a kind of geometry or structure bodily structure that allows you to sit without much muscular effort. So you may sit in a chair too, of course, but then you tend to use more muscular chair to keep yourself upright. Seiza, where you're sitting with your legs toward the back, the Japanese word is seiza, is quite good. Many of you sit that way.

[03:14]

But it still requires a little more musculature to support yourself than in one of the lotus postures. Or you could sit in the half lily posture, which is what I called my posture in the early days. Which was some approximation, or sometimes my right leg was behind me, actually. The left leg was sort of crossed. And I called it the half lily because, in America at least, lilies are the most common flowers for funeral ceremonies. And I had confidence the posture would bring me to life someday, but right then it was killing me.

[04:29]

I have such stiff joints, it took me forever to even sit down. And Suzuki Rishi would go through the Zendo every period, first period, with his stick, walking around, all of us, after we started the Zaga. I tried to stay in some sort of half-louis posture until he walked around at least, and then my legs popped up. And one morning he came by he tapped me on the shoulder and said maybe you just ought to sit at home. But I liked being there so I didn't do that. Anyway, you sit and you try to find your posture.

[06:03]

And lifting up through the spine is a good idea. And usually it helps some to shift a little right and left and front and forward until you feel centered. And then it's good to bring your attention to your breath. To counting your breath usually in the beginning. Not just resting in the presence of your inhales and exhales. Oder einfach zu ruhen in der Gegenwart deines Einatmens und deines Ausatmens.

[07:14]

And then you might think of Suzuki Rishi's very most common Zazen instruction, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Und dann könntest du dir Suzuki's häufigste Zazen-Anweisung in Erinnerung rufen, lade deine Gedanken nicht zum Tee ein. And in this statement, and I don't know how it works in German, but in English, there's two modalities of mentation in it. One is the mental formation, don't invite. And the other is the mental formation, the thoughts that could be invited to tea. And even if you don't conceptually notice the difference, your body notices the difference.

[08:16]

And your body can find itself located in the intentional mentation and not in the discursive mentation. Discursive mind is talking to talking to talking the thoughts are talking among themselves. And the intentional mental formation is really just talking to you. And intuitively, I think, or intentionally, we locate ourselves in the mind modality, intentional mind modality.

[09:24]

And just by noting and practicing this distinction, you're beginning to feel into the potential and actual topography of the mind. And in satsang you need to in fact locate yourself in this intentional modality. It's really the only possible mental location if you're going to not move. And as I said yesterday, you're locating yourself through the mental posture of don't move.

[10:47]

And the spine becomes a big part of that. And it's sort of like the mast of your ship. Or the mast of the body's boat. And you're using your breath to still the waters. not just the waters of the body, but the waters, imaginal waters, in which the boat is floating. So you may be counting your exhale and inhale. Usually we count on the inhale and release on the exhale. So there's a certain consciousness that attends the inhale and then the exhale is more of just a release and you get more and more used to this release which is releasing consciousness too

[12:28]

In fact, you can use the words, if you'd like, receiving and releasing to follow your inhale and exhale. So with the inhale you feel receiving. And with the exhale releasing, letting go. And sometimes with the inhale you can inhale up along your spine. And that's enhanced by as you inhale contracting your sphincter. I call that shooting the spine. But you don't want to do that too many times because it makes too much energy.

[13:50]

But a couple of times or two or three times is okay. And you feel that lifting all the way through the spine, through the head and body, cheeks, ears. And then release. And what you're also doing, as well as simply developing the muscle of attention, In a way you're training attention or showing attention that it can be located within our bodily, as our bodily functions and not as discursive thinking.

[15:18]

And once your attention is mostly settled in the activity of the breath, You're now on the other side of this Dharma door called don't move. And now you're inhale and exhale. are actually working with the resonant bodily pulses.

[16:20]

I don't know if there's a scientific or medical name for the kind of It's sort of an electrical, biological pulse that is almost like different organs in different parts of your body have different pulses. One thing you're doing by getting attention used to being part of the body, not just, you know, wherever it wants to go. Your attention becomes part of the body.

[17:24]

I mean, of course it is part of the body, but it becomes physicalized. And it allows you to actually physicalize your thinking. So thinking becomes a physical experience. As I said, sometimes if you bring attention up the spine, for example, You can visualize the feel of attention and move by the visual images of the breath, the tension going up the spine. And when you do this, you're actually physically feeling the mind through the images of bringing breath up the spine.

[18:41]

So you're in a way introducing attention to the way it can be physicalized. And this physicalized intention will become more and more the way you think. Your body will be engaged in all your thinking. dein Körper wird Teil allen deines Denkens sein. Not just a biological location for your thinking, but engaged with your thinking. Nicht einfach nur ein biologischer Ort eures Denkens, sondern wirklich ein ganz intimer Bestandteil des Denkens.

[20:02]

As one of the distinctions emphasized in Zen, when they say live words and dead words, People who come to Doksan, traditionally, who are speaking in dead words are just... Roshi, or teacher, just rings the bell and sends them out in the first 20 seconds, or 10 even seconds. We can't do that in the West so easily because then people feel psychologically hurt and rejected. For some reason it works in Japan, but it doesn't work here. We take things personally, and they more take things experientially or something.

[21:10]

Anyway, it's different. But anyway, the emphasis is in Doksana, right now, everywhere, all of us speaking from within our body. This is carried into the general practice in the Eightfold Path of Right Speech. Because Right Speech, as I said the other day, is to feel how thinking itself, when it takes the form of speech, actually, sorry for making up a word, thinkergetically structures the body.

[22:14]

This is really the teaching of the body, speech and mind. Classic division and connectedness and division in all Buddhism. The teaching is that the body forms speech, and the mind forms speech, and speech in turn forms body and mind. And the teaching is that the body forms the speech, that the mind forms the speech, and that for itself the speech forms the body and mind.

[23:16]

So what you think even begins to shape how you are, kind of dharmologically. So you're noticing energetically the energetic dynamics of thinking itself. And you're beginning to notice how, notice in a way, I like there's an English word, unbeknown or unbeknownst. Unbeknown means known but not known.

[24:16]

He did such and such or she did such and such, unbeknown to herself. And so it's kind of a, no, I don't know, people don't use it too much, but it's a great word. But unbeknown to yourself, but perhaps be known to the body, Or to the bodily mind which is not limited to consciousness. This habit, this pulse of bringing attention to the exhale and the inhale begins to work within all your biological pulses or metabolic rhythms, et cetera.

[25:28]

And there's a kind of somehow the attentional breath begins to bring the bodily pulses together in a resonant field. And your body begins to feel a kind of completeness. Or unusual satisfaction. Or ease. No, I'm speaking these words, but they're signposts or code for a subtlety of feelings that language has no names for. And if you've read that sometimes in zazen there's joy and sometimes in zazen there's bliss, and then you start looking for what's the category of bliss and what's the category of mind and joy, am I feeling it?

[26:44]

It's a natural thing to do, and we tend to believe what we read. And so you may be exploring your aliveness outside of your cultural upbringing. But if you look and try to categorize it or name it, even if you're outside your cultural upbringing, you're within your cultural habits. So an important thing to do is to let Zazen show you Zazen. Also ist es eine wichtige Sache zu erlauben, dass Zazen dir Zazen zeigt.

[28:15]

By sitting and lifting through the spine and so forth, you create the conditions by which Zazen can teach you Zazen. And what's important is not to name what you experience or try to or take hold of it or repeat it, just notice. So sometimes the breathing in is bliss in, releasing, bliss in and releasing. But the word bliss, it might be 32 different kind of subtle feelings of ease or satisfaction or words I don't have. Shades of like colors which there's no name for many, an infinite shade, shades of color almost.

[29:29]

So unbeknownst to yourself, unbeknownst to consciousness, Zazen begins to show you the way the pulse of the breath can interact with the entirety of your biological activity and pulses. This is a knowledge that doesn't go away. Like if you burn yourself on the kitchen stove when you're a kid. Next time you go near the stove, you're a little careful. You don't have to be taught that.

[30:53]

You know it. It didn't pass through all kinds of cognitive structures. It was directly transmitted. That kind of knowledge which isn't cognitive is part of what happens when you feel the mind energy and the pulse of the breath and the pulse of the body in a shared resonant field, in the same resonant field. Shall I start over? Please. When you begin your unbeknownst to consciousness, unbeknownst and unbeknownst are the same word, unbeknownst to consciousness, the body now knows, feels what it's like when the breath begins to coordinate all the pulses of the body.

[32:08]

And so even if you're in a grocery store or an apotheke or something, Your body now remembers this, knows this. So as soon as you can bring, especially then if you bring without even, it just happens, you bring, find attention resting in the inhale and resting in the exhale. Each inhale is sort of like coming home. And each exhale is sort of coming home. Maybe we have an in-heim and an ex-heim. I'm sorry. Vielleicht haben wir ein Inheim und ein Ausheim.

[33:36]

On the way to Heidelberg, there's all these Heims. Heim, Heim, Schriesheim. Also auf dem Weg nach Heidelberg gibt es diese vielen Orte mit Heim. It's the first word I learned other than Gesundheit. Es ist das erste Wort, das ich gelernt habe nach Gesundheit. You can see that my vocabulary is still rather limited though. But Zazen actually begins to show you a way to be alive in the world that happens just through this simple process of finding your seat on the other side of don't move. And you're beginning to establish attention and thinking, etc., within the pace of the breath. Which is one of the Dharma doors or beginnings of Dharma practice.

[34:55]

Because Dharma practice is rooted in noticing, each noticing as an appearance. So these objects are all here looking like durative entities. But they're actually not durative entities, they're durative stillness. And then you begin to join the world through the pace of appearance which is related to the pace of the breath. Because knowing the world in a in a flow of appearances, is what the word Dharma means.

[36:15]

What the word Dharma means as practice. Yeah, so sorry to give you basic Zazen instruction, but thanks for letting me riff a bit. Also entschuldigt, dass ich grundlegende Saasen-Anweisungen gegeben habe, aber danke, dass ich ein bisschen mit euch Verschiedenes besprechen durfte.

[36:48]

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