Thank you for still being here on the third day. To transcend the world directly, manifest the magnificent Buddha ancestor's house. Magnificence of the Buddha ancestor's house. That's how this Zammai-O-Zammai begins. This is what Dogen said. I didn't say it. What did we? And he says that to be a true person live in the Buddha ancestor room. Something like that he says.

[01:18]

Zammai means samadhi. Now my job is the joy of practicing with you. The joy of a particular kind of friendship. For me, I find the most satisfying kind of friendship. This joy of practicing it together. Funny job description, Phil, out of one. What's your job? The joy of friendship. Oh, really? Not bad. Now this semi-monastic center, Johanneshof, was created by you. And we are essentially a lay sangha.

[02:19]

And this lay sangha which I started practicing with in the very beginnings were in 1983. He oppressed me often to do sesshins. And as I have often told you, often told you, often it's the same thing, I said I wouldn't do Sashins at first. I knew if I did Sashins, I couldn't leave. I can't abandon this kind of friendship that happens in Sashin. But after a while I liked you so much, I said, okay, I'll do it.

[03:54]

I won't leave. I'll do a Sashin. Yeah. And then next thing we knew, some of you were saying, let's have our own place to do Sashins. And so that led from Sashins to Johanneshof. So I don't think you knew what you were doing. Maybe you had some intuition, but still. Did you really know what you were doing, that you wanted a place to do Sashins and then everything that goes with it? Anyway, you created this place and you support this place and I'm your loyal servant. And what do we do when we do here? What do we do when we're here?

[05:15]

We do all kinds of things together. Even to the point that we raise our bowls all together more or less. We start service. Whoever's starting service leans forward and then everybody leans forward and it's This is nuts. A bunch of automatons. But somehow in this doing things together, the fragrance of the unique kind of friendship can flow. I remember when, after we got Yohannes off, people got used to seeing me in seminars in various places in Europe dressed in civvies.

[06:42]

In civvies? Civilian clothes. Civvies is in contrast to a uniform. I remember that after we had bought the Johanneshof and the people were used to seeing me dressed in civilian clothes in the various cities at seminars, And then when they first came here and they saw me all dressed up in girls' clothes. And black at that. Yeah. There was, you know, some kind of like problem. But I guess we're more or less used to it now. In fact, we've never had a rule that you have to wear a sitting robe at Johanneshof, but somehow most of you do. That's your idea, not mine.

[07:44]

Okay. So my job seems to be to kind of find a way to articulate, make clear this practice. The joy of this friendship. So that we can make it our own. And make it our own, as I said last night, we face each other near or far in the mountains and in the cities. So yesterday I spoke about, very simply, the three ingredients of sāsana.

[08:45]

The essential ingredients. Which without, there's no zazen. Yeah. Posture. The concept don't move. And the time limit. Now, I'm in essentializing essentializing making essential. In essentializing the ingredients of zazen, in making, describing the essences of zazen, I'm not trying to...

[09:53]

to make some philosophical abstraction. I'm trying to find essences we can occupy, essences we can experience. Locate ourselves through and within. So we can understand in a way also these three as body, mind and phenomena. Again, we're looking at the basic ingredients of living.

[11:07]

These aren't abstractions. And I'm trying to speak about it with no baggage, no baggage of gods and some kind of destiny and fate and so forth. And with no baggage of culture as much as possible, etc. What have we got here? What are the most basic ingredients? Something, I guess, we have to... We call it our body, the body. Sophia, you know, all of you know who Sophia is. She's not quite old enough to object yet to my speaking about her and Tesha.

[12:10]

But last year she, or last spring, when I had these eye operations, so I'm partly bionic now, as you know, she got very confused about it and wanted to know everything she could. And she announced, I am my body. Good to know. I am my body, she said. But how come I can't know inside my body? If I am my body, why can't I know inside my body? Of course.

[13:14]

Being a body is... She has this question. And then she said, if I could know, then we wouldn't have these scientists sensing around our body, telling us about our liver. Wouldn't it be cool, she said, if the body would stop every hour and we could see a picture of everything that's going on inside? Wäre es nicht cool, wenn der Körper jede Stunde anhalten könnte und wir jede Stunde ein Bild von allem sehen könnten, was da drin los ist? Wouldn't it be cool? Wouldn't it be cool? Habe ich auch gedacht, das wäre doch cool. So what I'm trying to describe to you is part of this cool. Und was ich versuche euch zu beschreiben, das ist ein Teil dessen, was da cool ist.

[14:19]

Okay. So... Without the baggage of, you know, there's body. Without baggage, there's body. And there's, you know, somehow there's thoughts and ideas, so there's mind. And there's phenomena. There's stuff. That's not the case. There's body and there's thoughts about things and there's stuff. We can also think of this experientially as coming into the direct experience of body, mind and phenomena. as posture, as this encounter with mind through not moving, which gives you a spatial experience of awareness. and this time limit which makes us face movement and succession until we get a kind of really we embody the essence of phenomena space and space as mind and

[15:52]

Now again, you might say, why tell us the obvious? Und jetzt könnt ihr fragen, warum sagst du uns das Offensichtliche? How could you do Zazen without a body? Wie könntest du Zazen ohne einen Körper machen? You can't even think, I can't even imagine an image of doing Zazen without the body. Ich kann mir noch nicht mal ein Bild vorstellen, dass ich Zazen ohne einen Körper mache. It's obvious you need the body, so why mention it? Das ist offensichtlich, dass du den Körper brauchst, also warum muss man das erwähnen? Yeah, and everyone knows you don't move in Zazen. And every classroom, every third grade, whatever it is, has a time limit.

[17:13]

Why mention the young kids? Well, if we're going to build a house. No, anyway, a house. Yeah, everyone knows you need walls and windows, door. And a roof, you know. Actually, you can do without windows, but you at least need a door. You couldn't even get in. So everyone knows that you need a roof and walls and a door, etc. Yeah. Well, that's obvious, but living... What happens when you live in the room or rooms of the house... Das ist offensichtlich, aber was geschieht, wenn du in den Räumen des Hauses lebst?

[18:29]

It's not so obvious. Das ist nicht so offensichtlich. Yeah, and we see on the news, if you watch news now and then, all these poor people all over the world live in shacks and packing crates and stuff like that. And we see in the news, when you look at the news, all these poor people who live in barracks and residential buildings. Schools in Iran, Iraq, which have no roofs. Every time it rains, the class has to disperse. It does make a difference when you live in a house. It functions. But can we live, I'm suggesting, we can live in these rooms, a kind of rooms in Sazan. Because you're, you know, just metaphorically, I want to think of these as three rooms.

[19:36]

You establish the as the room of posture, the space. It's nice that in German, in Deutsch, it's Raum and room are the same space. The etymology of room in English is also space. Von der Etymologie her bedeutet das Wort room im Englischen ist auch der Raum. But it's not used that way much anymore. Aber so wird das nicht mehr oft verwendet. Except when we say something like make room for that table. That means make space for that table.

[20:37]

Außer wenn wir eben diese Wendung da gebrauchen, dass man den Tisch beiseite schieben soll. So this is, there is in this, you know, and I think maybe you get tired of my making etymological distinctions. But I really make an effort to find words that allow us to feel together into this joy of practice. As we might all lean forward when we start service. Or we use the concept don't move together. And mostly we discover what don't move means by sitting with others who don't move. I think it would be very difficult to do a Sesshino by yourself.

[21:44]

I think when it got really painful, you might say, it's time for a break. So Sashin makes us discover not moving in many contexts that aren't controlled by our ego and convenience. So posture from the body as a position to the body as posture, we make the body into a kind of space, a space we can fill with attention.

[23:00]

And, you know, it's like when we do Kenyan, we walk with our hands, you know, like this, right? And we put our bodies parallel to the floor. And then we turn our hands up a little. And you can feel the difference. In this, there's not much attention. And in this, it brings attention into the hands and arms. It brings these two extensions of attention together. Now you can find attention in any posture. But the basic thing is can we together find attention that flows among us through a similar way of doing it?

[24:21]

Sorry, can you say that again? Can we find a way that attention flows among us through a similar kind of posture or experience? So we get used to what Samae Oba Samae is saying, Buddha's room. Buddha's house. Yeah. So, as I said, you find the posture which allows attention to fill the body. And you find the posture which allows breath to permeate the body. And you find the posture which allows a clarity of mind.

[25:23]

And you find the posture which has a feeling of ease and an inner peace. And you find the posture which arises from stillness. As ideally my words are rising from stillness and returning to stillness. So I don't only want you to hear my words, I want you to hear or feel the stillness from which the words arise. We could call this perhaps the room of posture, the space of posture.

[26:38]

And then this feel of the body when you don't move. Its mind unfolds as space. Unfolds everything in its place. So this is not just the space of the body, but now the space of the mind. The space of the mind where everything is in its place.

[27:40]

If we say, I've given you this phrase many times, just now is enough. Yeah, this is an example of there's no alternative. Now has to be enough. Because now is all you've got. But in actual fact, to say just now is enough takes you into the absolute, out of the distracted and out of et cetera. And what we might do next, etc. I mean, obviously, if you're really hungry or you have to take a pee, just now is not enough. Unless you want to make a mess. But if you have no alternative, just now, better be enough.

[28:48]

So even something of which there's no alternative, we have to be reminded of no alternative space. No alternative mind. This is one way to understand what Buddhism means by the absolute. When you find yourself in no other location, No other space, no other mind. This is Buddha's house. This is where the Buddha lives. And it's not far from where you live. Or you can live.

[29:49]

Or you can live occasionally in taste. And the time limit, time, sitting within this length of time, you open into phenomena as movement, as succession or progression. Mind unfolds as phenomena. I think, I mean, I'm just trying to find words for this. But I think if you play with it yourself in German or English, I don't care, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, all of them, you can play with the words which help cue your experience.

[31:05]

Now I often say, as you well know, pause for the particular. Maybe we could say now, pause for the mind of Zazen. Because you're seated in Zazen, but Zazen is also seated in you. And people always ask me, the most common question I have is, how can we bring the mind of Sashin or practice or Johanneshof into our daily life? And I'm trying to answer this question. Every now and then stop for the mind of Zazen.

[32:17]

Stop for attention unfolding as the body. Stop for the body unfolding as space. Stop for space unfolding as time. Find some sort of verbal action, verbal dynamic. Yeah, and wait till it occurs to you. Geez. I wish I could not be so distracted just now or so busy. I wish the mind of Saschin was still with me. Take that as an inner request. we can have way-questing mind, way-seeking mind.

[33:36]

The inner request, when you think, oh, I wish I could remember the mind of Zazen, As soon as you hear that inner request, you enter the three rooms of the Buddha. Attention as posture. Attention as space. And attention as phenomena. And then go about your life. But know these three rooms, this house of Buddha, is always with you when you want to enter it. Yeah, okay.

[34:36]

You can do it. I try to do it with various degrees of success. Thank you.

[35:00]

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