I discovered last night through experimenting that the genetic programming of groups of mosquitoes is far more skillful than my defense. It's more skillful than my defense. My defense. So I took some of this stinky stuff from the health room store. I almost never used it, but I thought I'd try it. So first it came out much quicker than I expected. It squirted on my arms. So then I put some on my head, you know. And that immediately created a moral problem.

[01:04]

Because I know that, you know, this is sort of from the mosquito's point of view, an international airport. And I thought, oh dear, if I put this stuff on top of my head, I'll divert flights to Ulrike and Christiane. And I got worried that they'd all start landing on you. And then I felt, this is wrong. It's hard in this jungle, you know. So, but the mosquitoes, they just, they saw it was on my wrist, so they just went up my sleeve and started biting me up the arms. One of them somehow got under my robes. And began biting me sort of on my legs, you know. And then once they discovered it was only located here, they just began congregating in front of it. Then some went directly to concourse A and B and landed on my eyelids.

[02:26]

But it seemed to be okay. Only a few bites, all in all. It's certainly better than that smelly stuff. And I found it really affected my breathing because my mind and my overall physical feeling is closely connected to my breath. And when I'm breathing this smell, it was not good. Since the air keeps breaking our sticks, we had some more manufactured in Crestone. We never found the piece to give you, Neil, did we?

[03:55]

Little piece. Yeah, I never found the other piece. This is oak. It's a little... a little sperm. But, you know, we've had such a sort of People crying and everything about using the stick. But in the end, it seemed to be all right to do it. Now in your light summer clothes, it will be more effective. So I don't know whether we should use the stick or not, but the third day or sometime is a good time to start carrying it. And of course, it's your own choice. You can not ask for the stick if you'd like.

[04:58]

I don't know whether we should use the stick or not, but the third day is a good time to start with it. And besides, it's your own decision whether you want to use the stick or not. When I first got here, I had this can of tea. Remember Ruth and the Vienna gang and Eric and Christina? When in Japan, Shunran Roshi at that party brought out all those presents. In Japan, of course, if you're a Christian, famous Roshi and head of a famous temple like Shunaroshi, people bring you enormous numbers of gifts.

[06:21]

So when he has visitors like us, he wants to be nice to us. He goes back into, he has one or two rooms just piled with gifts. He just grabs some and gives them away, yeah. Not schnapps. Did I say anything about schnapps? No. I don't remember saying that either.

[07:23]

Anyway, he gave us these cans of tea, and I drank one of them in the States. And it was the kind of tea I like, which is an early spring tea and has a very delicate taste. Das ist der Tee, den ich sehr gerne habe, also Blätter aus dem Frühling mit einem sehr feinen Geschmack. And then the other can that he gave Ulrike, which she hadn't opened, I brought with me to the Sashin. Die andere Dose, die er Ulrike gegeben hat, und die hat sie noch nicht aufgemacht, die habe ich mit zum Sashin gebracht. And I opened it and I thought, oh dear, it's a late harvest tea. Und ich dachte, oh je, das ist ein Tee von einem später ernteten Herbsttee. But earlier in the day, I'd gone for a little run. I don't get anywhere near enough exercise that I'm teaching in Europe. So I went for a little run, and they have this field where they've baled up the May grasses and these big bales, I don't know.

[08:26]

And when I drank the tea, it smelled just like all those bales of May grasses. So anyway, I'm enjoying my May grass tea very much. You know, last night I came to the night sitting for a while. Some of you were sitting. And I usually don't come to the night sitting, particularly the first night, because I don't want to put any pressure on you two. Actually, there's two kinds of night sitting. One is sort of not voluntary, and the other is voluntary. Daitokji, which is a Rinzai temple where I sat for two and a half years or so,

[09:44]

At night, in the first stage of night sitting the people of higher seniority can leave first. How this is exactly determined is quite subtle. But if we were like this, first we'd sit for a while and then pretty soon Randy would go out. I don't know. And who else has status here? Then after Randy went to Tenzo, Eric Griesler could sort of get up and go. And then Neil or Ruth as Doan and Assistant Eno would kind of get up and go. And then suddenly about 20 people would get up and go.

[11:03]

And suddenly about 20 people would get up and go. And the 10 or 15 left, you know, are really at the bottom, you know. Maybe they've only been there a couple of years in the monasteries. So that's the first stage of night sitting. The second stage is people, it really is voluntary, and they can sit in the zendo or out in the garden or wherever. Anyway, I would suggest that at least once you all try a little bit of sitting at night. I think it will change your feeling of the sashim. At least it will make it more your own.

[12:22]

To sit outside the schedule in Sashin a little bit is important. I'm not saying you should wipe yourself out for the next day. But just to come for even 15 or 20 minutes or half an hour one night is, I would suggest you do, sometime during the session. Yeah, so I... I say this rather tentatively because I really want it to be voluntary and not put pressure on you, but I also want to recommend it, at least trying it once or twice. Now, the more you are in this seshin with your body and mind, or in any seshin with your body and mind, it becomes a kind of ritual for your life.

[13:58]

So your body will always remember a sashin if you've really done a few sashins. It's a kind of, there's so many hours of a kind of bedeviled consciousness. Or a heightened or intensified consciousness. It's like sometimes maybe a year's experience of memories are in seven days. Und es kann sogar sein, dass Jahre von Erinnerungen während dieser sieben Tage sich bemerkbar machen. Or maybe dimensions of yourself or memories that you've maybe never encountered before are present in Sesshin.

[15:16]

Oder Erinnerungen oder Dimensionen von euch selbst, die ihr noch nie erfahren habt, die sich im Sesshin bemerkbar machen. So it's a kind of miniature journey through compressed time. So I feel very, I don't know what, honored or fortunate to be with you on this journey, to be part of this journey with you. At the same time, I'm trying to give you certain teachings that are... can be valuable to you in your lay practice, daily life practice. And I... I... Sometimes I'm surprised, actually, at what I can try to get across with your help to you.

[16:33]

And other times, like this afternoon, I looked through notes and some transcriptions of last year's lectures. And when I look through it quickly, it seems like kind of a jumble. And I wish I could do it better. And yesterday I presented to you in a little bit more organized way, you know, something about Sazen. But when I do that, I feel it may be useful to you, but at the same time I feel in a way that when it's more formally presented like that, I sometimes lose touch with your understanding as I go along. That was long.

[17:48]

Sorry. Last year I mentioned the four wisdoms. And I last year saw the possibility of bringing those into the teachings. Now I know that when I teach something new, I can see it in simple things like I pretty clearly explained something about the bulls. And then either through not remembering or being spaced out or resisting, most of you or a large part of you don't seem to get it.

[18:55]

Which is okay. But on the other hand, it's amazing how much we all know now. We arrive from somewhere and we do all this weird stuff. It's fantastic. And on the other hand, it's amazing how much we know. We come from everywhere and start dealing with these really strange things here. You've all developed a set of weird skills you can't use anywhere but the house distiller. You might, you know, a few years now not having done any sashins. Feel your fingers start itching to do the oriole key. Oh, I missed that.

[20:14]

I have to go to Sashin. But these ritual things, the bowing, and aside from whether you're involved with Buddha and the many practices related to Buddha as a teacher and so forth, but just the bowing and the or yogi in the schedule, begin to sensitize you in a... Anyway, that's enough. So, when I As I started to say, you tend to get the parts that resonate with something you already understand or, you know, so forth.

[21:29]

And I'm trying to present these teachings in ways that resonate with things you already understand. And as you know, I hope that the fuller sense of these teachings comes back to you in your daily practice or in the future. So I'm wondering if I can present the four wisdoms in some way, or at least get started on them in some way that gives you a feeling for why the instrumental sense of these four wisdoms.

[22:44]

This koan says something like if you can bring the great handle into your hand, the pure breeze will always reach you. Going back to the Yellow Emperor, the one other sort of myth of China is that at some point the other the world parallel to ours entered our world and created a lot of trouble, created a lot of chaos.

[23:49]

It was just too much for people to deal with this parallel world. So a spell was cast in the parallel world and a mirror was thrown across it. And so spiegel is mirror. So this spell meant that the parallel world, when you see your image in the mirror, is the spell requires this to just mimic you. The spell requires, when you see yourself in the mirror, these parallel identities of yours can only mimic you because they're under a spell in the mirror.

[24:58]

But the sense of this in this Chinese myth is that the spell won't last forever and eventually this parallel world will come out of the mirror. And create... chaos again. So we're always trying by our consciousness to hold this spell. And these Wisdom practices are meant to release the spell and bring the world into a unity.

[26:17]

This means both your unconscious and the phenomenal world. And mind is seen, mind in the large sense, is seen as a function of your whole body, your memory, and the phenomenal world. Now, to review a little bit, I heard people were trying to ask you to remember what did he say the three such and such were? And the translator herself didn't seem to have gotten them straight, so maybe you have to start over. It's really quite simple.

[27:33]

One is, you know, we are in sashin, part of the definition of sashin. And the way in which Zen has tried to develop zazen to cover all the teachings of Buddhism... There are three main aspects that are built into the posture. The first is the yogic aspect of the posture. It's straight back, not this kind of Buddha, but this kind of Buddha. For instance, the big Buddha that you see often as a symbol of Japan at Kamakura is a compassionate, pure land Buddha with a curved back, like this, bending forward looking at people.

[28:49]

So first is this yogic posture and finding your seat. And second is this your mental posture or unfabricated or uncorrected mind. And third is to be able to sit motionless. Inside and out. Now you're trying to develop these three aspects in Sushim. Now, say that you are pretty good at these things already.

[29:51]

You have come, you pretty much have come to your seat. You can sit pretty much motionless. In a relaxed way, not rigidly. And your mind is quite at ease and without gaining ideas. I suppose for most people, the first stage of coming to a sesshin... is really at a very basic level learning to sit and to sustain sitting. And faced with lots of identity information. And then the second stage might be developing these three, the yogic posture, the the uncorrected mind and really sitting still.

[31:11]

And the third stage would be beginning to explore the fruits of realizing these three aspects of satsang. The intimacy with yourself. The inner calmness. That you have broken the adhesive connection between thought and action. And you've begun to realize each of the vijnanas. And you now have developed your inner vision. And you can begin to explore yourself and the world and the mind of zazen itself with this inner vision and this takes quite a while actually because first of all developing this inner vision takes a while getting a

[32:30]

feel for it, a sense of it. And then in knowing what you're seeing. It's a little like a baby being first born. I remember my daughter Elizabeth when she first appeared from her mother. She got to about here and she immediately started looking around. It was great. She's been like that ever since. And she's now six feet tall. And she's now six feet tall. She's a lot bigger anyway. But I always wondered, Zachary, what is all this stuff, you know? And you don't have any vocabulary to make sense of it.

[33:53]

And when you first start developing this, what I'm calling inner vision, you're the same way. You're just being born into another kind of world. So developing that, Sashin's very good for that. And last, it's a good time to receive To have the fertility to receive and realize teachings. In a state of mind that's different from your ordinary life. So that's a review of yesterday. Maybe it's a little clearer. Actually, we have to go over and over these things again and again until they're like second nature.

[35:09]

Or even like first nature. And this is called in Buddhism the first principle. And it literally means when this becomes first nature and not just second nature or an unknown nature. So first principle, if you look it up in the dictionary, would be a synonym for emptiness. But when it's referred to as first principle in Zen talk instead of emptiness, then it means what I just said. Okay. Are you okay? Seid ihr in Ordnung?

[36:19]

If you want to change your posture or something, it's okay. Wenn ihr eure Haltung ändern möchtet, dann ist das in Ordnung. I want to say a little more and I don't try to be about the same length of time as yesterday. Ich möchte noch etwas mehr ansprechen und ungefähr so viel reden wie gestern. So this koan is emphasizing the perfection in action wisdom. So here I'm trying to figure out how to give you, feel out how to give you a sense of these teachings. So the four wisdoms are the mirror, the universal, the observing,

[37:24]

and the perfecting in action, or something like that. Now this koan is, if you know the teachings well enough, is emphasizing this perfecting in action wisdom. Excuse me, do you mean action in the sense of conduct or action in the sense of... All action, in the sense of the phenomenal world as action. Mm-hmm. Or it's in the five ranks of... Again, I'm just throwing some things out so you have some references, points for the future. In the five ranks of Tozan, the Dongshan, the... the person who's said to be the founder of our lineage.

[38:53]

And in Hakuen Zenji, a teaching of the five ranks too. This is the arrival at mutual integration. Okay. So what does this mean to you in a realizable or practical sense? Last year I just touched on these and I was wondering, how can I teach these? What can I say about them? Okay, so I think we can start with the fruit of sitting, one of the fruits of six fruits, I said, of sitting still. I'm still sitting. Is... realizing each of the vijnanas separately.

[40:11]

And it is said that the inversion of the five vijnanas produces the perfecting in action wisdom. And that means, if you reverse the five vijnanas, that as a result of that a fulfillment of the action wisdom takes place. Now, again, when I say these things to you, I think, oh, jeez, this must sound boring and technical for you guys. But if I can give you a sense of it, at least the architecture of it perhaps, you can have a deeper sense of your own possibilities in living as a human being.

[41:29]

Okay. So the first five vijnanas are simply your five senses. Ears, touch, taste, and so forth. Okay, so what does it mean to invert them? It's actually not so complicated. Generally, I mean, the first one, when you no longer, that I tell you often, you don't just hear these birds, but you hear yourself hearing the birds.

[42:31]

So, in a way... When you do that and you don't just hear the bird, but you hear yourself hearing the bird, you're in a way reversing the sense field. Do you see what I mean? So instead of your energy going from yourself to hearing the bird, The bird goes from you to... The energy of the bird goes to you and arises hearing consciousness, and hearing consciousness arises. So you feel your own mind arise on the bird. And you can see your mind on the bird.

[43:43]

Okay, now let me go back for a moment to this sense of inner vision. Now, the most common experience would be, I think, for people that's similar is lucid dreaming. So in lucid dreaming, which I know many of you have experienced, you have a feeling of being detached from the dream. and able to observe the dream as it goes on. And you can enter the dream and engage yourself in it, and then for a while, then pull yourself back out and observe the dream.

[44:54]

And you can observe the dream from the scenes like it's an all-around seeing space. There's no one point of view. It's like space itself is seeing the dream. I hope you know what I'm talking about or have a feeling for what I'm saying. And you feel you can change the dream if you want or re-enter the dream and change it or so forth. And this pulse or movement is possible from being a seeing surrounding space to engagement to back to the seeing surrounding space.

[45:58]

And this kind of inner vision or seeing space is also experienced sometimes when people feel they're up above themselves when they're about to go to sleep or at the ceiling or something. And this dimension of seeing is developed through motionless sitting. I mean, if I was to technically describe what happens in lucid dreaming... Because your body is motionless in sleeping, consciousness and awareness can separate it out like milk and water maybe.

[47:19]

And the water can begin to observe the milk. And a sense of seeing can shift from the water to the milk and the milk to the water. So it depends on the ability to see from the point of view of awareness, which is resolved through the body being motionless. So when you're sitting still but awake, you have more access to this kind of inner vision than you do when you're asleep. And it becomes an accessible skill and capacity not just something sometimes available to you when you happen to have a lucid dream.

[48:30]

Again, this is what's being referred to in the koan in rather a somewhat more disguised way than I'm presenting it. I'm trying to, for some reason, make these things clearer for us in our practice. I've never explained this so clearly. I wonder if I'm doing something I shouldn't. Do you look So you can, for example, use this and you can actually see your memories.

[49:34]

You can be back and you can see the agitation of one memory within the gelatinous memory stuff. And then you can enter into your memories like entering into a dream. For example. Okay. Now, this sense of seeing, hearing the bird, of rising hearing consciousness, is also more realized if it's realized in this seeing space. I don't know what else to call it.

[50:43]

In this space of inner vision. Now, the realization of each of the visionas separately means that you feel the fullness of your identity on hearing alone. Of course, you can't exactly feel the fullness on it, but it feels like the fullness of your identity on hearing alone. Natürlich ist das nicht wirklich die volle Identität, aber wenn man nur etwas hört, so kann man doch seine Identität spüren. And it can't be too unfamiliar to you, because we almost entirely feel our identity on our eye consciousness.

[51:50]

Und das kann nicht so fremdartig für uns sein, denn bezüglich des Augenbewusstseins, da fühlen wir ja auch fast vollständig unsere Identität gekoppelt. Okay, so now let's take the mouth, because the mouth is a... less, it's a harder one to understand. Okay. So taste or your mouth is a field of consciousness. Which you can see your mind arise as clearly in your mouth as in your taste as you can in your hearing field. And I decided to experiment with this before this lecture. And I decided to concentrate... I'm sorry to tell you these things. You start thinking I'm loony.

[53:02]

But before the lecture I decided, okay, I'll concentrate myself on my mouth and taste. And I will taste this lecture in my mouth. And I'll only talk about what I can, I'll talk from the taste of this mind in my mouth. Now this is an example of working with or realizing each sense field independently. Now, one of the hardest to realize, and I tried to talk about it in this writing workshop, is the proprioceptive or physical way of perceiving things.

[54:09]

So all I can do is to say that you can use your imagination. And it's very powerful. When you create an image of something, you really create potentiality. So say that I want to perceive or know Stefan proprioceptively rather than conceptually. I withdraw my sense of identity from my eye, vijnana, and my conscious thinking.

[55:11]

And I concentrate my energy anywhere I want in my body, but probably a little bit in my heart, below the navel. And then I imagine I'm communicating with Stefan. Or feel I am, or pretend I am, or something. Oder ich spüre das so oder tue so. And I imagine I feel a connection with Stefan. Actually we do feel physical connections, it's just hard to notice. Now you don't have to do it with somebody as tall and attractive as Stefan. You could do this with a tree, you know.

[56:14]

I wonder if the door is made of beech, I doubt it. So you could take the sense of this, of a tree, one of these beautiful trees out here, a pine tree, as I said last night, the stir of the... Like the breeze through the pine. And practice feeling the presence of things in your body. And the common experience of this, one dimension of the common experience of this, is when you can feel somebody behind you looking at you. And this kind of practice of realizing the five senses, the first five of the vijnanas,

[57:15]

realizing each one separately, and then to bring them together with a sense of intactness, with a sense of unity. Mm-hmm. This sense of intactness in how you engage the world through the five senses inverted is called the perfection in action wisdom. When you take the broken handle of the rhinoceros fan, And the cool breeze of the whole world is there.

[58:45]

This is the perfection in action wisdom. The sense of the phenomenal world understood through the intactness of emptiness is a kind of cool breeze or ease. Und die Welt der Phänomene verstanden als eine Intaktheit der... The intactness of what? Yeah, the intactness of emptiness, the experience of emptiness. Die Intaktheit der Leere, das ist mit dieser kühlen Brise gemeint. It's actually quite interesting, I think, that they so developed the sense of how you interact with the phenomenal world, so it's like a cool breeze or a kind of ease. It's quite interesting how this idea of intactness was developed, that you can understand it as a cool breeze.

[60:02]

So that in itself is one form of wisdom. Now for most of you in Sashin, even though it's difficult, during the Sashin or after the Sashin, you may feel a kind of new sense of intactness. spürt ihr vielleicht eine neue Art von Ganzheit. Oder eure Träume haben so eine neue Ganzheit. Und ihr spürt vielleicht so eine Gelassenheit inmitten dieser Schwierigkeiten. Your memory bank may be disturbed, but it also may be somehow feel more integrated.

[61:09]

These experiences, there are senses of intactness or ease. means that you're already picking some of the fruits off this wisdom tree. This wisdom tree of the perfection of the phenomenal world or perfection in activity. So that's why last night I gave you that little poem. A light breeze stirs through the pine. It is even better heard close by. Ten years of dreams, ten years of sorrows. Following the petals.

[62:30]

Following the grasses. Home. Green and red. Like this, like this. Thank you very much. You may have our intention.

[62:59]

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