I have a question to the thinking in the rising mind and the rising mind and its relationship to sitting. You want me to say something? Yes, please. Yeah, well, if you like your energy, you'll have a rising mind. If you like your energy, you'll have a rising mind. And you get to like it partly through sitting. Yeah, and changing the topic a bit, I would say that lots of, you know, there's all this stuff in the newspapers about fat people and all that stuff, you know, overweight people.

[01:02]

And, you know, the problem was eating too much junk food and all. But I actually think one of the problems for many of those people is they think they live in their body and not as their body. I think one of the problems for these people is And they don't experience much the relationship between the body and the self. So they're just sitting, living in their body, watching television or whatever they're doing. And we say... jokingly somewhat, their second body or their real body is in television playing sports.

[02:13]

Okay. So I would like to kind of make sense of what we've been speaking about. Or what I imagine might make sense. But first I want to speak about this, what I call informed, which has come up several times, informed non-institutional lay practice. Because this is, you know, a deep concern of mine. Yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, excuse me for mentioning it, but I'm in my 70th year and 10 years from now I'll be drooling down my front.

[03:20]

So I wonder if this place, Johanneshof and Crestone, will survive. I have confidence... that many of you will continue practicing. It's part of you, just like it's part of me. But will you continue without the help of Johannes Hof or Crestone? And will you continue as well or as easily Without the help of Preston or Johannesburg.

[04:24]

So who's going to... If we do think, and that's a question for us as a Sangha, do we think this place should continue? Yeah. I thought for a while an exception would be made in my case and I might not die. But I've given up that idea. And yeah, this place can certainly continue without me. But how is it going to continue without me? And also, you know, I've come to certain ways of looking at practice, which maybe I should try to... So far I've spent, thought the whole of my life should be involved in the immediacy of teaching and not writing.

[05:27]

And that's the basic tradition. There isn't much tradition in Zen of writing. But I'm at a particular point because I just happen to have been, you know, at the early stages of practice coming into the West. So maybe I should resign right now and just write. Okay, I won't resign, I won't write, I'll just sit here with you. And, you know, succession is not easy.

[06:30]

For instance, you might have a very good realized disciple But they attract different kinds of people than you do. So if they become head of the Crestone or Johanneshof, everyone leaves when they become head. Also man kann einen ausgezeichneten und verwirklichten Schüler haben, der aber andere Menschen anzieht oder anspricht. Und wenn er dann oder sie Johanneshof und Crestone übernimmt, dann werden einfach die anderen Leute weg. And often, you know, we chant in some... Traditionally, you chant the abbots of the temple as well as the teachers in your lineage because they support each other.

[07:36]

So what was the difference between... What was the difference in the Dharma Sangha before Johanneshof and after Johanneshof? And, of course, when we started Johanneshof, some people left. They liked it the way it was. So you're the people that will continue this place, or not really, you and others? No, I started practicing.

[08:39]

I mean, I became ordained. Because at some point I realized that almost, I mean, in fact, no lay lineage has ever survived. Most ordained lineages don't survive. There's thousands of people in one generation. The next generation, there's five or six lineages that are continuing, really continuing. So when I really saw that and I loved Tsukiroshi so much and I decided I could tell he wanted to see if this would continue in the West with a fresh start. So I said to Sekirishi one day, I'll get ordained, I said, for two reasons.

[09:47]

For the one I just mentioned, I said, because also it won't be a good example If there's only Japanese priests here, we need a Westerner. I was ordained at Tassahara the night before we had the opening ceremony. ordinated in the night before Tassajara was opened. And the temperature was something like 108 or 112 degrees in the sender. And the temperature in the sender was, I don't know, 40 degrees or something in the sender.

[10:47]

And I felt like a kind of stuck pig, you know, spurting sweat in all directions. A stuffed pig. Stuck. I don't know what that means. A skewered pig. A skewered pig, yes. So I felt like a sparrow. I was sitting there, but anyway, it was great. I did it. So here I am. La la. So my decision to do this was like, yeah, how do you continue a lineage? And Sukhiroshi clearly had the idea when he first came to America, let's see if we can have a lay practice without a monastery. But within... Four or five years, it was clear to him, as he expressed to me, we needed a monastery, we needed some kind of practice place, because almost no one was really getting it so far.

[12:07]

So I started looking, and by chance, hiking or camping, I found Tassajara. So I started looking. And by chance, through hiking and camping, I found Tassajara. And just by chance turned out a friend of mine, owner of Discovery Bookshop, had been the former owner, one of the two former owners. So that gave me an opening to find out that it actually was going to be for sale. So I brought Tsukiyoshi down to look at it.

[13:12]

It's one of the few times I've seen him really excited in a kind of bubbly way. We were driving out and he kept, I have to get out of the car. He wasn't too big a guy, you know. He would kind of run half, run along the car while I was driving. And he said things like, not even in China are there places as remote as this. And we started, and within a year or so, there were quite a lot of people who had a deep feeling for practice, deep commitment to practice. So, of course, these are formative experiences in my life.

[14:19]

Like Sazekirishi, I am... primarily or at least simultaneously committed to informed non-institutional lay practice. If I wasn't, I'd be with five people in the mountains somewhere. Which is actually something Sukhriyashi considered. He and I talked about moving to Arizona together or something. So we have lay practice.

[15:20]

And we have What I'm also trying to define, oral practice. Can we continue this no dependence on the scriptures oral practice? Now, oral practice doesn't depend on an institution, but it sure helps to have a place to meet. So there's lay practice, monastic practice, and then somewhere in between, sashin and oral practice. And although Suzuki Roshi was quite critical of Sojiji and Eheiji.

[16:40]

When I went to Eheiji and entered as a monk, He brought me there. And I knew, and again, of course, I knew his criticism of these two institutions. Which primarily... gave out licenses to monks after three months. But the Heiji is a complete monastery built on the ancient and traditional Chinese pattern. And when we got there he spent one night or so before I got dressed up in a medieval costume and sat outside the gate.

[17:43]

And Oksan, Mrs. Suzuki was with us. And a monk showed us to a room where we were going to spend the first night. While we were settled, one of the big bells began to sound. And Tsukiroshi, well, burst might be too strong a word, but something close to just was crying. So despite his criticism of Heiji, etc., there's some deep feeling in living in such a place.

[18:48]

And it's a place without Protestant clocks. It's great. I mean, I love Zurich. It's a great city. All the church towers, it's about clocks, not bells. You know, Heiji, there aren't clocks. And it's all done by bells and drums and so forth. And when you have... And each building has a particular bell, drum, et cetera, that represents it. And each activity has particular bells and drums that represent it. And when I was there, I think there were maybe 180 people living there.

[19:50]

Yeah, I don't know how many in the Zendo, maybe 60 or something. But there's all kinds of people with various responsibilities. And there's a lot of buildings. And while something's going on in this building, something else is going on in that building. And they, so you, while you're, one place you hear a bell going, another place suddenly you hear in the distance a drum start, boom. And you know a certain kind of service is starting there, or a lecture, and something else is going on here, which is represented by a different sound. And this sense of an aural, A-U-R-A-L, architecture for the place,

[21:10]

AU, auditor. Auditory. Is that when it's really snowy and it's, you know, up next toward Manchuria, the snow gets really deep. The villages in the area have doors on the second floor, so in the winter they walk out in the second. So you can't hear the bells and drums so a monk goes up and stands on the top of a gate or a door and he waves a white cloth and then another building they see it and then they start the drum. So I tried to bring as much as I could of this to Tassara. But it's a long, thin valley.

[22:41]

But I thought of this all when you spoke, Paul. Because you do want to have the buildings located so that you pass each other more often on this way and less often on this way. And you make the paths go a long way around so you meet people in the process. So as much as possible, and in the time I had, I tried to give this feeling to Tassara and find the drums and bells and so forth. And what I learned also living in Kyoto during the, well off and on for 30 some years, but four years continuously,

[23:44]

As I watched the city from, you know, city right after the Second World War pretty much and then suddenly start expanding. And the temples which weren't well cared for weren't beautiful, the city rolled right over them. They were gone. I'd come back, where was that temple? Gone. A housing development. A department store. I saw that the temples that were not beautiful and that were not taken care of properly, the city just rolled over. I came back and looked for this temple. Gone. There was a residential building or a shopping center there. You may have some interesting department stores.

[25:01]

But anyway, that's another subject. But the temples that were cared for, beautiful carpentry, beautiful gardens, the city went around. But the temples that were really taken care of, that had beautiful wooden works and beautiful gardens, the city developed around them. And I feel that So, um... Yeah, so I'm changing my schedule a lot, most many of you know, next year, and only doing seminars outside of Yonsef twice, once in Hannover, because it's twisted my mind.

[26:16]

So you know, most of you know that next year my program will change a lot. And I will only teach twice outside the Johannishof. So once in Hannover, because Andreas twisted my arm. You're good. And also because Hannover happens to be in sort of central northern Germany. Yeah, and one in Austria. So, and then I'll see what I can do to try to, you know, in the next 10 years, see if these places can survive and have successors. And you know, I will make my best effort, but I really don't care whether they survive or not.

[27:20]

That's up to you. I'll make my best effort, but I know very well my best effort does not control the world. Yeah. And one of the things that's helped Crestone a lot and helped people to practice there and also take care of this place is the Sangha wheel. So maybe you could say something? Christian? So one thing that helped Johanneshof and Christian very much is this Sangha Wheel. Would you like to say something about it, Akash and David?

[28:25]

Yes, the Sangha Wheel started in 2009 or so. Mm-hmm. When did it start? Probably 2001. I don't know. Some years ago. Yeah, I think when Sophia was born. And the idea was... Some of you may not know me. I'm Christian, and I lived in Johannesburg for three years, and now I live in Creston for two years. And the Sangerwiede supported people from the European Sangerwiede to practice in Creston. And Akush was now in Crestone and me with the help of the singers. And the focus was actually that we made it possible for people to take part in the practice play. From January to April in Crestone.

[29:27]

and I went to Queston because of this practice period, because my experience was, when I participated in it once, that this form of practice I know what we should do. The focus was to help us to cultivate this in person. The focus was practically for the most reasonable reason. And I'm very grateful that we have a monastery like Oji described. A monastery then takes traditional forms and and allows me to practice with her.

[30:33]

And I am very, very supported by her to be able to allow us to practice with her. I would like to thank you very, very, very much. I just wanted to thank all of you, and I want [...] to to a place where I can practice for myself and for others. I don't need to say much about it, but one thing that surprised me was that the monastery has a feeling, a feeling that comes to you, and that you somehow feel something. And what happens there is somehow... This is very complex.

[31:47]

This is something that happens, a combination of forms that allows us to practice in a certain way. And as Paul has already said, Paul has spoken from his carpet, or a piece of paper, from which he will also talk. I could now explain the details, and I don't want to take up too much of your time. This place is very expensive. It's a room that is that we see so much in our everyday life, in our society.

[32:52]

And I wish you very much that the sound of Miri, which has just been spoken, but also that we, as sounders, can make such a connection to these places, to pass on these places. Thanks. And implicit in what Christian said or part of what he said is that these two places are not defined through their are not only partially defined through their financial definition.

[33:56]

They're primarily defined through people's intention to practice. So, I mean, there's no salaries paid or anything, you know, just sometimes a stipend is paid to people. So, can these places survive after I die or after I start trembling and stumbling? With... Yeah, people just live here without money. Yeah, I mean... And that's why Crestone, you know, we own Crestone outright, but there's no support for people to live there. So that's what the Sangha wheel does.

[35:02]

So what we need is the intention to practice and the intention in some people to make this practice the whole of their life. And not everyone can do that. You have professions that are... at least as important as practice, and interests and family responsibilities and so forth. But unless a few people make the decision to do this as their life, neither place will survive. Okay. So we wanted to thank you. Many of you have supported Crestone and monastic practice through the Sangha wheel.

[36:21]

Because so far, mostly the kind of person who decides to make this their life makes this decision usually, most commonly, or almost only makes the decision after living at Crestone for a while. So it looks like the kind of person who will continue Yanisov and Crestone need to spend a little time at Crestone in order to give this decision real form. Yeah, so I'm not just concerned with how to practice with you.

[37:37]

And now we can develop the craft of practice and teaching together. But also the simple matter, can we continue these two places we had? Because when I'm giving you these teachings or trying to develop them, I'm trying to develop them not just only for you, but for will they last, will they continue? Because when I'm giving you these teachings or trying to develop them, I'm trying to develop them not just only for you, Yeah, I mean, on one hand you can say, oh, jeez, what do we say in English? About as much chance as a snowball in hell.

[38:51]

Melting fast. On the other hand, Buddhist institutions are the oldest ongoing institutions in the world, older than any nation state. So we have a chance. Okay, so now let me go back to this... Teaching from the Mudimaga. Okay. Now, please sit comfortably. Because we'll go until we have lunch. Okay.

[39:58]

Okay, now I've spoken about, tried to speak about so-called somatic space or something like that many times, especially in the last couple of years. Yeah, and, you know, things like just simply the experience people have of, when someone's behind you, of being watched. And you turn around and someone's looking at you. It's a common experience. Scientists deny it's possible. But... But people, scientists or people in a scientific way are trying to study this.

[41:10]

I know several examples. But I'm not talking about that today. And we've spoken about several names in Chinese for the body, for example. We talked about different names for bodies in Chinese. It's not so important that I write it down, but why not? Shen means the lived body.

[42:11]

It also means the extended body. Ausgedehnten Körper. I hope you can sort of guess it by handwriting. And the extended body also can mean something like you go into somebody's apartment and you can feel their lived body, how they live in their apartment. Dieser ausgedehnte Körper, das kann man auch so spüren, wenn man in die Wohnung von jemand reinkommt und man kann dort den Körper irgendwie spüren, wie die dort lebt. And Xing means the body of continuous reappearance. Can you see over there?

[43:29]

Okay. And... It's a word for body, meaning a share of the whole. This tea is a part of the whole. These are very different names for the body than we have. Um... And, you know, I like to... You're Christian, right? I like what Christian said about vesseling, but it's one... I don't think it's so good.

[44:30]

It's good to add ing to make it a kind of activity. I liked what Christian said. He said vessels. That's not so good, but it's good that you made a verb out of it, an activity. But it still has an inside-outside feeling. Like sometimes I say, making a gerund of tree by calling it treeing. And if we can turn all nouns into some sort of verb or activity, that's good in our thinking. Yeah, but when you said embodying, then in English at least I feel okay about embodying, but vesseling, it's... The basic idea I completely agree with is to try to look at your language, how you habitually describe the world to yourself, and try to make the words reflect more how we actually exist.

[45:37]

So, just think about these words for a minute. a share of the whole. So if I think of my body as a share of the whole, I feel, oh, I've got my share, but you've got your share. So you feel, I mean, I remember Uchiyama Roshi had an image in one of his early books, who lived at Raiji in Kyoto. We're all like a bunch of squashes in a garden.

[46:54]

We're having arguments among each other, but we forget that we're stems, stemmed together. So when you have an image or think of yourself as a share of the whole, this is quite different than a vat or a vessel. Or that the body is momentary, a continuous reappearance. Like some of you mentioned in your reports. So if I'm standing here, I have one body.

[48:19]

If I bend down, actually, I have a different body. And this instruction of the muddhimagga, has, for instance, that the monk trains himself thus, that while, for example, bending down, Breathing in and breathing out. He is aware, she is aware of the continuous reappearance of what? What a different way this is to think about things. You don't grasp the self so strongly if you think actually things are really changing in such a basic way.

[49:26]

It's very clear to me. For instance, I always come into the seminar a little late after you've been sitting. I don't want my body to be part of the shared body that appears to Zazen. I want you to establish that, and then I want to walk into it. No, that's not true in Sashin. It's a little different, but, you know. Excuse me for pacing around like I'm about to have a baby. Do they pass out cigars in Germany when you have a baby?

[50:36]

I had mine in America. Oh, yeah. They don't? I don't think so. It's a little bit Freudian, but that's what the boys... I just had a baby. Anyway, so I'm about to have a baby here. Well... And this sense of the body as a share of the whole is often thought to have to have some kind of ritual enactment. And we are a ritual enactment. Okay, so I'm upstairs. And before I come down, I sort of say, geez, it's the first evening, and I've got to speak about something.

[51:40]

Oh, God, I didn't say that. I say, oh, Buddha. Oh, God, I didn't say that. I say, oh, Buddha. What am I going to say? What am I going to say? What am I going to say? So I think, well, I'll have those. Yeah, I can at least say a few things. So that's as far as my memory carries me. My thinking. So I come down in here and sit down. A whole different thing appears. Suddenly, and it's not just that I'm picking up claims from you, which is also the case.

[52:42]

But it's also the pool of the Alaya Vishnana. Let's think of it that way and not a library. The associations... start popping up like fish out of a pool. And that's how a storyteller, and we've talked about this before in Ireland perhaps, or actually in Turkey as it was 50 or so years ago, They don't exactly have the text memorized. They have the units there and it begins to come out while they're playing their instrument or using, as I say, the lyre of the breath. Sie haben die Bestandteile, aber die kommen zusammen in dem Moment, wo sie ihr Instrument spielen oder, wie ich das sage, die Leier ihres Atems anklingen.

[54:03]

And the Buddhist tradition was largely, was oral for what, 300 years, 300 years after the Buddhism? I believe, I can't remember now. And at the beginning of the current era, or Christian era, still the Chinese monks were going to India. to listen to oral traditions and write them down. And there seems to have been some kind of intelligent decision, let's continue qualities of this oral tradition while we also write it down. And this is enacted and actually practiced in the formal transmission ceremony and in what we're doing right now.

[55:06]

OK. No. No. Yeah. Let me speak about this... Let's call it an exercise from the Vimuddhimagga. Exercise? An exercise, like... Let's call this... In other words, this isn't the only way to breathe. Or the way you breathe continuously. It's a training. So think of it perhaps in the context of pumping iron or lifting weights. Usually plastic filled with oil, but...

[56:32]

So every now and then the monk goes in the fitness studio. And along with the famous Austrian, you know. our governor of California, who told a friend of mine, a pump with the mind in it is worth ten without. That's not stupid. So this monk goes in and he thinks, I learned this from... And a pump with the mind in it, etc., So while he's doing this, he's concentrating on his breath.

[57:49]

And he makes contact with where the breath is experienced, at the tip of the nostrils or, you know, like that. And he sees if he can have no thoughts about something else, he just concentrates on that point, lets everything fall away, and he feels some bliss or ease. And he tries to experience his whole body. Yeah, what it says is the monk experiences his whole body. So now what does the weightlifter do?

[58:52]

Can he experience his whole body? Now we're not trying to factually define the body. We're trying to give an experiential definition of the body that's useful in practice. So our weightlifter notices whatever he thinks of or perceives. Notices thoughts, notices perceptions. Er beobachtet Gedanken, er beobachtet Wahrnehmung. And includes that in his or her experience. Und schließt das in seine oder ihre Erfahrung mit ein.

[59:53]

So he or she is bringing attention to whatever his or her experience is. Also er oder sie... And saying, at this moment, this is the whole body. And it says, the monk trains himself thus. But it's a kind of door into a new experience, another experience, or deeper experience, perhaps, of the body. Perhaps not so different than if you exercise, take a bicycle ride or jog or something like that every day.

[60:55]

Your body feels better maybe all day. Or you have a good yoga session. All day your body feels more alive, maybe. So this is a kind of exercise. And sometimes you add teachings to it. You're like... attending to the exhale and inhale, attending to the exhale and inhale, within this cycle of exhale and inhaling, one notices It tends to perhaps also the establishment of concentration.

[62:09]

Yeah. On the object. Okay, now again we have to go back. What is an object here? Really in this way of thinking everything is changing. Also in der Art zu denken, wirklich ändert sich alles. Alles fließt. Oder entgleitet. Aber unser Leben hängt davon ab, dass wir jedes Ding in einem Moment fixieren. And in fact, we're doing that all the time. The basic way we perceive is, yeah, everything's changing.

[63:10]

And as I've said before, if you're in a swarm of killer bees, you can't make anything stay in place. I was in such a thing, yeah. But normally we establish the column is there. A Christian is there, and a fly flies through it. So we notice the fly in relative movement to the person sitting there in the column. So we establish a momentary frame in which we can see the movement of the fly. But actually, Christian is going to move eventually.

[64:18]

I don't think he'll be here tomorrow. It's nice if you are, but... And this column carved in Rudolf Steiner anthroposophical non-right angle style is just moving more slowly than the fly. So actually it's all changing and there's nothing fixed. But the way consciousness works and the way you deepen the articulation of that through Dharma practice is to fix things for a moment. The way consciousness functions and the way the deeper articulation of that and experience of that is developed through Dharma practice.

[65:23]

is to establish the momentary relationship of mind and perception and so forth as an object of appearance. as a momentary object of experience, attention. And if you do that, there's a whole different kind of information and information in the system, in the situation. And there's very little sense of alienation or separation.

[66:28]

So you're going to feel more at ease. Now, years ago, one of the first things I began to try to express in a vivid way And so you've heard me say this before, is that space connects. Yeah, as I say, there's no strings to the moon, but the moon affects our reproductive cycles. There are no strings between us and the moon, yet it influences our... Hot planting, thank you very much.

[67:45]

Consciousness can't perceive this connectedness. Consciousness only perceives difference. Consciousness can only perceive separation. But through practice you begin to feel you're in some kind of fluid that's connecting everything. And this yogic practice makes you suddenly realize, yes, the share of the whole, extended body. And this is not simply, much of it is not without a neurobiological basis. When they've done studies of what's called peripersonal space, like the length of your arm reach,

[68:49]

The body, as defined in the nervous system and the brain and limbic system and so forth, is the size of the arm or the hammer. Or the size of the body when you're driving a car becomes the size of the car, if you're a reasonably good driver. If you're doing this, the brain defines the body here. If you're driving a car, the brain defines the body as extended in space. Okay, so, you know, I get tired of talking about space connecting.

[69:52]

So I changed it into already connected. Because that's an antidote to the assumption, a cultural assumption we make all the time, continuously, that we're already separated. Ardine's there, Paul's there, and we're separated. But if I bring a, what I call a wisdom phrase or a wado type phrase into my activity and thinking and feeling, and say to myself on each perception, the arising of each perception, already connected, as I've said often, that view is prior to the activity of perception. And if I hold that view and it begins to replace already separated, my senses will begin to confirm that we're already connected.

[71:20]

And we will start to feel that we're swimming in a field of connectedness, which often we can feel more with the hara than with the head. Okay, now here we're also talking about in three yogic postures. The physical posture. The mental posture is also a yogic posture. And the perceptual posture. So when I give you an exercise like Look at everything at once and then focus on a particular. And then look at everything at once and focus on a particular. This is a basic yogic education of a perceptual posture. Instead of just randomly looking around and noticing what catches my attention, that happens, but that happens randomly.

[73:02]

in a larger framework of a feeling for everything all at once and a feeling for the particular simultaneously. The random noticing or the noticing of what catches one's perception continues. Continues, but now it continues in a larger framework of this yogic habit of feeling all at once and seeing the particular. And by the particular, I don't mean Iris, I mean the fly on Iris' right arm. So I'm not thinking personalities, text, et cetera, information.

[74:18]

I just feel you, feel you all at once, and feel something particular, like your hand on your arm.

[74:24]

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