Robert, I heard a rumor that you're allergic to incense. Is that true? What does that mean, maybe? OK. Because if you want, we cannot use incense. I'd rather hear incense than a running note. We won't sit you next to the altar. Maybe you're sitting next to the altar. Where's your seat? Okay. Well, it's the slipperiest snow I've ever seen in my life. I've been driving this car and never not been able to drive. Since I've had it since 84. Did you get up on it? I was fine, yeah. And probably it may be I was so loaded with stuff, but boy, I'd get pulled up the last section.

[01:08]

And then I almost hit your car. I came roaring around to make the hill. And then there was a yellow car. But we missed it by... Wasn't it that close over here? It was, we went... And I stopped, and rather than keep going, because I would have slid into your car, and I thought, probably it's not worth it to get up the hill just to hit your car. So you had some introduction to the Sashin last... and Steve gave a talk this morning, and so I don't have to say anything, probably. But I'd like to give you some sense of, or an attitude in this Sashim that I'd like you to try on and I think is helpful in practice.

[02:16]

And it's really a little hard to find words that are faithful to our experience and practice. And so what I can do is, what I try to do is, well, in a way, when I speak or when we talk about Zen, at least in many, much of the time, we are talking about what you already know. But I'm trying to find language that is a kind of a new way to talk about something you already know that may give you a new door to the same room. Or to make a new door that makes the same room new. I mean, the room is you. And with language we can... And when I say language I mean, you know, my voice, the words I'm using.

[03:37]

And I also mean the language that you speak to yourself. And how everything appears. I mean, the world appears before us and many things appear within us. And you can take those appearances as language. Language just names those things as much as we can, but also those appearances themselves are your way of seeing. And, of course, there's some function in whatever appears. But whatever I... All of the ways in which things appear to us

[04:52]

in all the ways that things are language, or in what I'm saying, what I'd like to do, what I'd like to feel in my own practice, is that words carry you sort of like a dock brings you to the edge of the sea and then out into the sea a ways, into the bay or harbor, and then you let loose. So language brings you to a kind of edge. Appearance, the way things appear, brings you to a kind of edge. And then you let go. But your security is in... Because there's some, of course, insecurity in letting go. Your security is in the presence of your posture. And your posture... comes most alive usually through your breath.

[05:59]

So in a way you're finding your posture, your physicalness as presence, presencing in your breath. And if you... that is a real kind of anchor or security. this presence of your physicalness or posture or beingness. For as well as things appear, whatever appears, in that appearance there's also a beingness, presence that arises with each appearance. So what I think is a productive attitude in practice, in practicing, is to use a sashin as a sashin.

[07:07]

Seven days we have. Seven days. And many lifetimes or worlds in each day. In sashin we have a chance to allow of beingness, being, that we can't use, can't have much connection with or be much in touch with during our ordinary daily life. Now, I think it's Emerson who says that no state of being, no state of self is the last state. And each state of self is in itself a world circle. I think that's the phrase he uses. Each state of self is a world circle. Now, it doesn't actually become a world circle.

[08:15]

We just use that as a kind of convenient term. It doesn't become a world circle if you're looking for universals or you're looking for some unity. Or if you looked past the particulars to some immense narrative or true story going on underneath the particulars. In this sashin, I'd like you not to be looking for some universals or something that identifies you, some static thing that identifies, oh, that's me. But perhaps you can see patterns. This is certainly a pattern that comes into my life, or has been in my life. But in this session I'd like you to try to, even recognizing patterns that seem repetitious, I'd like you to try to remind yourself or to see those patterns as...

[09:23]

that's not exactly repeating themselves. There's nothing that repeats itself exactly. So in those patterns you see the shift, the changing in the patterns. So we're looking at the local moment. And it takes a sort of effort because we have a habit of mind, a habit energy, and habit energy is one of the things that you have to see in practice because it's habit energy which turns particulars into universals, which turns impermanence into permanence, which turns the fluidity of self into...

[10:29]

an identity that's outside of history. It's somehow not affected by what's outside of history, as if you could step outside the flow of your own history. So instead of being caught by losing yourself in things. I don't know if this makes sense. Again, I don't know if my words get to the edge of what I want to say, but instead of being losing yourself in things, losing yourself in the particulars of each appearance, I'd like you to find yourself in each particular. On the surface, perhaps the surface shimmers with what the surface covers.

[11:39]

I don't so much want you to go below the surface, but to treat whatever appears as surface. And to make that particular complete, not universal, but complete, not repeatable, but unique. So in the details of the schedule of your sitting, of your posture, even when your posture is most uncomfortable and you are in the midst of changing, wanting to change, or wanting to get up, or wanting to leave, or wanting whatever, in that you find this is also a world circle.

[12:43]

And move toward, feel yourself toward the completeness of each particular So you're making the very localness of this sashi, the localness of being here in Crestone, the localness of whatever comes up, not only in these seven days, or in this first day, or in this period, but the localness of each moment, you find your sense, you sense, feel a moving toward a completeness or acceptance. And in a way, notice the habit energy which tries to move you toward, oh, I'm that kind of a person.

[13:46]

Instead of, at this moment, I'm this kind of a person. At this moment, I'm in this kind of a world. And to see habit energy, because habit energy is one of the main ways in which you know, self is formed. It's inhabiting energy. It's independent. I can't say it's independent of your history, but it's independent. It hasn't, it has a kind of independence from your history because it acts in a similar way no matter what the particulars are. It's not too responsive to the particulars because it's always trying to turn the particulars into universals, into permanent self or something.

[14:54]

So you may have to give up during the sashin, looking at, wondering about who you are, and rather notice what you are, or what it is, or what is. Maybe there's no it. What it is, there's an intermediary there. What is, or just what. What. Now this practice with the word what or what-ness is used and brought up in many khans, some khans. And again, as I said, I'm trying to take this door of what, this local door of what, and Because this has to be right now, in fact is unique, this situation with Sashim and you.

[16:05]

That uniqueness is always true. But settling into that uniqueness is not so easy. You have to remind yourself of it because habit energy takes you out of that uniqueness. And habit energy The very habit energy that pulls you out of uniqueness is worth noticing and beginning to experience the habit energy directly. And sort of feeling yourself carried by the habit energy or able to resist the habit energy or be somewhat free of the habit energy. So just the opportunity to use the opportunity of this sashin to notice the movement or force of habit energy would be a very valuable ingredient in your practice.

[17:08]

Valuable ingredient in your life. Because what we're doing in practice, of course, is moving into, maybe we could say, virtual reality. Now, I think that the... Someone asked me the other day, he said, what do I think of virtual reality, you know, this computer stuff? And I said, reality is virtual enough. But what you can do with virtual reality, which is... It seems to me valuable. I've almost given no thought to it. But you can, and I'm using it as I see it, an example which could relate to practice, which is that you can, with virtual reality, create a, say, a molecule or an atom, a molecular structure in which it's the same size you are in terms of your ability to play with this equipment and see it and feel it.

[18:19]

Now the What seems to me, if I'm right about this, I don't know much about it, we don't, is that it gives you a proprioceptive interaction with molecules, which otherwise you could only get by conceptually imagining them or seeing them microscopically or seeing them mathematically, but to be able to walk around them, walk within them, because you can take... a level of reality which is not available to our senses and move it into our senses, not just in our conception, how we can imagine it, but actually move it into our senses. Well, whether that's correct, that virtual reality allows us to explore dimensions that are proprioceptively... Do you understand proprioceptive? It means you can physically... It comes, again, from the being able to... By your body knows... Your body knows your body is upright. It's not something you do mentally.

[19:24]

Robert, you're having some trouble with that. Your inner ear is... When your inner ear gets messed up, it's hard for your body to know where your body is. Isn't that right? Yes. So we know, so proprioceptivity in recent 10 or 20 years has been, its use has been extended a lot. You need a kind of body sense of things. But you can't get a body sense of things usually unless it's what you're experiencing is within the realm of the body. and sub-molecular reality is our body, but it's not in the realm of our proprioceptive sensing. Okay, in the sense... if that's the case, the way I'm relating that to practice is that through

[20:37]

and through letting go of universals. And universals is another way of a repeatable world. A repeatable world is just a more subtle way of saying things are permanent. For a permanent world is a repeated world. And so... To notice the impermanence of things is to notice the non-repeatability of things, and to notice the non-repeatability of things is to actually find yourself loosened into a non-repeatable world. Okay, loosened into a non-repeatable world in which each localness, each particular doesn't refer to a unity, or to the extent that it refers to a unity, it refers to a unity which is a multiplicity.

[21:52]

So you begin to move in or allow yourself to be in multiplicities that don't yearn for unity. That the multiplicity or the particularity itself you can find completeness in or move toward a feeling of completeness. Now, when you do that, you're allowing yourself to dimension, to experience or move within dimensions of consciousness and being and self, which usually you can only feel from the outside.

[22:56]

Because habit energy carries us to the outside. Habit energy carries us into permanence, into universals and so forth. So loosening up habit energy, able to stay in localness as wholeness or as a world circle. allows you, in a sense, like this stuff of virtual reality, to move proprioceptively through the presence of the body into how you are dimensioned, how you are formed within consciousness. How, whatever, the what, the what that you are, how they appear. So you're trying to move your sense of location into your breath and also into each breath.

[24:14]

And then into the beginning of a breath, the middle of a breath, the exhale of a breath, the beginning to inhale, So if for a week you can refrain from universals, keep trying to stay in the particular, without any reference to the past or future, to underneath or becoming, just whatever particular appears, you can stay, feel yourself located in the completeness of each particular, the world circle of each particular,

[25:24]

Staying away from universal. You can begin to move around in, or even sitting still, you're moving around in or being present in the parts of yourself without letting habit energy carry you into the way those parts are usually put together. It's very helpful to be able to have a place that's in the parts of yourself before self and your usual way of being is formed. It doesn't mean you can't and won't, because habit energy is so powerful, go back into the way you usually are. But when you begin to be able to spend some time in the parts without letting habit energy put it together into universals or into self in a permanent, kind of permanent way, you begin to know those parts, find an ease in being there, and you begin to sense and feel habit energy in its various strengths.

[27:02]

then a greater subtlety will start to occur in how you are put together. And this kind of practice is very difficult to do in any way but in a situation like Sesshin. Daily mindfulness and so forth is fundamental to practice, more fundamental than Sesshin. But Sesshin allows a certain territory to occur Meditation and Sashim, extended meditation, allows a certain territory of being. And exploring the virtual reality of being, there's no other way that I know of to do virtually. So that's my suggestion of an attitude toward the particular and the local and the world circle of each state of mind, each state of being, the world circle of each moment, that I think is helpful in making a sashin, allowing a sashin in you yourself to be fruitful.

[28:26]

Would it be present in a way that can become fruitful? Thank you.

[28:51]

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