This is the first time I've given a teisho in our nearly complete, maybe complete, zendo. Yeah, I sort of have to get used to it, but I like it. We need to get a widening machine in here that can widen the room a bit. Yeah. Okay. And I have a new translator today. Well, sort of new. I think Ulrike translated for me for about 10 years and was my main and best translator. And then she had a 10-year vacation.

[01:01]

And so, I don't know, I mean, how did I get you to do this? It's great that you came to help. So I'm going to pretend she doesn't know anything. We have to start slowly because I probably speak differently now and so forth. And I'm interested in those of you who've stayed... from the weekend seminar through this practice week. It's so funny to hear your voice again. Sounds like German. Because I learned German hearing you. I mean, not that I ever learned it. I learned the sound. Yeah, I'm interested in what the different experience you have in this kind of teaching practice, teaching in practice format, in contrast to the weekend seminar.

[02:28]

In a seminar, it's only three days if you came Friday. Two and a half days. One and a half if you came on Saturday. And during that time I give, I don't know, about nine lectures. And we have some discussion periods. And we have one group discussion, small group discussion. And much less zazen. And here we have four periods of zazen. And a study period. And only one lecture a day, so that's about five altogether. And there's four discussion periods.

[03:52]

And four with your own discussion and four with me. Now I'm asking because, you know, partly someone wrote to me, an old student of mine, and said, it's good you're doing the winter's branches, but it's not enough. So I'm thinking about if that's true or not, and if I could do anything more or different. And if I should do anything differently. Yeah. So anyway, if you have any thoughts about it, I'd like to know. Including whether I speak differently to your zazen and to your study period than when I teach in the weekends.

[05:00]

And I would also like to learn from you if I speak differently to you during such a practice week and to your sasen and also to your study period, differently than at the weekend. Yes, because I noticed like when I'm at the practice period in Crestone, I'm speaking to people doing five periods of sasen a day who are going to be together for three months. So that's a kind of, as I said the other day, a kind of dharmic release capsule. Yeah, which gets released in Zazen in over three months. And then I try to bring that same density to the weekend seminar and people have their mouth full of pills and they can't swallow.

[06:02]

Okay. All right. So that's just, I need you to help me. If someone asks me, are you a Zen teacher? I suppose practically, if I'm sort of forced into it, I'd have to say yes. But I don't think that way at all. I think I'm, yeah, I'm always approaching Zen teaching and not getting there. So ich nähere mich der Zen-Lehre immer an, ohne jemals da anzukommen. And every approach is something different. And some of you who are new, I'm going to try to approach your practice too, new to Dharma Sangha or my teaching.

[07:04]

It sounds like you can still translate. Okay, so you have this text from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And I think it's maybe a little bit important for me to explain as I did in the last seminar. That this particular section, the epilogue, was not part of the original group of lectures given at Los Altos. It's two lectures of Sukhirashi's that I merged to sort of finish the book. Or two or three lectures. And also to have the theme, the topic of Zen Mind, because Sukhirishi named the book Beginner's Mind, and the publisher and I named it Zen Mind. Because the publisher said, we have to have the word Zen in the title.

[08:26]

Then I had to hunt for, did he ever speak about Zen mind? And I found this lecture. Yeah, maybe it will be useful to you. I referred to it in the last seminar. And what I'd like you to do is to take from it, phrases, one or two or so, that resonate with your own practice or you feel like it expresses your own practice. And I'd like you to take a few sentences that

[09:27]

don't resonate with your own practice or you don't understand. It's very important in a text to notice what you actually don't quite get or don't understand. Because we tend to read for the parts we like and then we sort of ignore or just skim over the parts we don't quite get and just sort of accept them somehow. But what's the koan tradition of commentary in Sukhiroshi's lectures Expect a close reading. Now, the title for this weekend, which Andreas translated for me in an email, I wrote to Andreas, sent me an email, I said, Andreas, what's the title?

[11:03]

And I don't really know whether it's fundamental teachings and practice or it's the fundamentals of teaching and practice. What does it mean both? What does it mean, Frank? the fundamentals of, not fundamental teachings and practice. Oh. Well, you'll have to come back tomorrow. Okay. So the fundamentals would be the basic assumptions, views on which Buddhism rests. And the fundamental teachings would be just the basic teachings on which Buddhism, Zen, through which Zen is developed.

[12:16]

So I'll speak to both topics. Okay. If we speak about the basics of Zen practice, two or three or four things in their various combinations is suddenly very complex. Particularly if you view the basics as ingredients. Yeah, it's not like we have one red stone and one blue stone and one green stone. What we have is a rainbow of stones. And their relationship becomes the basis for all of Buddhism, all of Zen Buddhism.

[13:25]

Okay. Well, maybe I'll start with a statement of Suzuki Roshi's. As from this epilogue, to give you an entry into the text, He says, reality is not something that can be caught by thinking or feeling mind. Reality is not something that can be caught by thinking or feeling mind. Moment after moment, just to watch breathing, just to watch posture, is true nature. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then he says, there is no secret beyond this point.

[14:48]

No. Let's look at this from the point of view of a close reading. Because Sukhirishi is a mature and... realized practitioner was, is. So he can speak about practice very simply and you just read it. But within the text is all the things he didn't say. And could have said in those sentences. Okay. So first of all, he says reality. Now, he means two things here. He means reality that science and others try to capture in scientific explanations of the world. and philosophy and so forth, that reality can't be captured.

[16:10]

It cannot be captured by thinking or feeling. And he doesn't just say by thinking or feeling, he says by thinking mind and feeling mind. Okay. Then he says, moment after moment, just to watch your breathing, and to watch posture is true nature. Okay, now he's equating true nature with reality. Reality, whatever it is, is somehow your nature.

[17:16]

Or maybe it's not what you think is nature, but your nature, but it is in fact your true nature. Now he also means, when he says, reality cannot be caught, he means there's no reality. There's nothing real in any external sense. Now, on the preceding page, he says, big mind, which you must have confidence in, which you need to have confidence in, is not something that can be known objectively. Big mind is something that's always with you, always on your side.

[18:27]

Okay, now here when he says big mind, we can say he also means Zen mind. And he says it's something you must need to have confidence in. Now what does he mean by confidence? He's again speaking in the scale of the particular and his lifetime. What does he mean by confidence? He means, don't have confidence in consciousness. Or rather, you can only have a limited confidence in consciousness. He means, if you want to authenticate your world, we usually authenticate the world through some sort of belief system, you know, a religion.

[19:39]

Or we authenticate it through consciousness. And practically speaking, most of us authenticate the world through consciousness. As I said the other day, you wake up and you've had a bad dream or a weird dream or whatever. And you say to yourself, as the world comes into focus, waking up, And the practical matter of work and meals and sidewalks and so forth brings the world into focus. In a way, it authenticates your world, which was not the bad dream you had. No, practically speaking, we have to establish some kind of normalcy that way.

[20:49]

But if you authenticate the world you know through consciousness, if you establish your identity and how you exist primarily through consciousness, You'll have a lot of suffering. And all of the kind of fragility of our ego structure and stuff will make you very vulnerable to mental and and psychological, societal pain. So now how can you have a more settled and stable core Which you can have confidence in.

[22:05]

And that's what he means by big mind or Zen mind. So if we're going to speak about the fundamentals of Zen practice, We should have some during this week. And continuing for some of you from the weekend. Some feeling about what is Zen mind. Or how do we approach Zen mind? Okay, so Sukershi gives one answer on the facing page. And she says, moment after moment, just to... watch your breathing and posture.

[23:29]

His is, is true nature. Is Zen mind, we can say. Then he says, there's no secret beyond this point. So he means there, when he says there's no secret beyond this point. All the teachings of Buddhism. Majamaka, Yogacara, Nagarjuna, Dogen. don't go beyond this point of watching breath and watching posture. Could that really be true?

[24:32]

Can it be that simple or that actually perhaps complex? Yeah, it's sort of in the spirit of my saying I'm not a Zen teacher, I'm always approaching teaching Zen. So what does it mean to watch breath and posture? Now again, I have spoken about bringing attention to the breath very often. And this weekend I have emphasized bringing attention to the spine. So we can ask, what is the technique of watching the breath? And what is the technique of watching the spine, or watching the posture? And what is the consequence of doing it?

[25:50]

Okay, so I just want to, in this first tea show, give you a feeling or a taste of this. And if we're going to speak about the basics of Zen practice, we should review bringing review watching the breath. Now, watching in the way Sukershi is using the word includes both bringing attention to the breath And observing what happens when you bring attention to the breath. But you can't watch what happens when you bring attention to the breath until you bring attention to the breath.

[26:55]

And he means in all your activities you notice how breath functions. And you can't notice how breath functions in all your activities. Until you can maintain breath attention, until you can maintain attention on your breath in all your activities. Well, That's not so easy to do. No. But you know it's possible to do. So if you know it's possible to do, then it's possible to do.

[27:56]

Okay. So it's possible because each of you knows, as I say, you can bring attention to your breath for a few moments Right now. And pay attention to what I'm saying. I hope a little bit. And then you start thinking about something. And you think in the foreground sometimes and you think in the background. Mm-hmm. So as I say, again repeating myself, you have to form an intention. This is the technique to bring attention to the breath. And then you have to notice what happens when it leaves the breath. Where does it go?

[29:10]

Well, it goes almost always to your thinking. And your thinking is a heck of a lot more interesting than your breath. At least compared to thinking it's more interesting. But it's Not more interesting than the world. Your thinking is less interesting than the world. I mean, I think so anyway. And your thinking kind of separates you from the world. And attention to the breath will connect you with the world. Okay, so now, why does attention go back to the thinking, even if it's boring thinking?

[30:19]

Because it's not the content of the thinking your attention is returning to. It's returning to the continuity, moment after moment, continuity established through thinking. Now, as most of you know, we establish the self primarily through experience of continuity, connectedness and separation. And if you lose the sense of continuity from moment to moment, you feel crazy. You have a nervous breakdown. You're lost. You're on a drug experience. So the real question is, how do you establish continuity... Moment-to-moment continuity.

[31:39]

In some way, it's not dependent on thinking, in some other medium than thinking. Thinking is much more brilliant, really, when its job is not to establish personal continuity. So if you want your thinking to be really creative and intelligent, get the self out of it. And let thinking do thinking. Yeah, and often we can do that, of course. But we don't do it a lot of the time, too, and a lot of the time when we most psychologically define ourselves.

[32:45]

Okay, all right. So what you do is you lock in an intention. Through some process of belief, feeling, etc., you decide, I really intend to bring attention to the breath. If that intention isn't 100% or very close to that, you won't succeed. The establishment of continuity of self in thinking is simply too strong. The self is the strongest thing we have to... deal with in our entire life.

[33:57]

It's wonderful, it's great, and it's a scared bully. It's scared of losing its hold on you, and it bullies you. Okay. So the attention doesn't have to be 100% at first. Because actually you learn through this attention that goes back and forth to thinking, back to breath sometimes, back to thinking sometimes, etc. And eventually it will start resting on your breath more and more. If your intention is there, it starts to rest in your breath more and more.

[35:00]

At some point, like a rubber band, And at some point, like a rubber band. I always think I should start a rock group called the Gummy Band. It sounds good in English. The Gummy Band. So at some point this gummy band is stretched beyond, it snaps, and attention just starts resting in the breath, body and phenomena. And you're released from self-continuity established in the thinking. And then thinking becomes a tool.

[36:11]

A tool you use, but it's not how you establish your identity. Your sense of moment by moment presence and stability. If you get this much In this lifetime, it makes a huge difference. And you've also learned, realized, one-pointedness in the process. One-pointedness is like you can bring attention to something. And it goes away. Und sie geht weg. And goes away. And then you bring it back.

[37:11]

Und hier bringt sie wieder zurück. Like a dog on a leash or an oxen in the ten oxherding pictures. Wie ein Hund an der Leine, wie es in den zehn Ochsenbildern beschrieben wird. And finally it stays more easily. Und irgendwann bleibt die Aufmerksamkeit einfach ganz leicht, geht trotzdem immer mal weg. But then finally, not only, it comes back by itself. Und irgendwann kommt sie von alleine zurück. And then it just stays there. And that's also at the center of yogic practice, this skill. To be able to just put your mind somewhere that doesn't jump around and distract it and discursively kind of, etc. And the kind of location, the home base of mind is the body.

[38:12]

And very quickly it becomes the body and phenomena. Because the embodiment, the modality of embodiment taught by Zen includes breath, body, and the sight and situation of immediacy. So another thing that's realized this way is one of the major steps in weaving mind and body together. As I say, mind and body are not separate. are not separable. But we can experience them separately.

[39:14]

And we can weave that separateness of experience together. And when we do, it's not just body and mind which now feel kind of one, in unison, merged. Because that extends to our sight and our situation. Okay. So I didn't get to the spine. And it's time. But let me just say that you have here some kind of phase space of a dynamic system. This is jargon from complexity and chaos physics. In other words, when attention rests in the breath and the posture, you're again in the particulars of the world in a way that actualizes the particulars of the world.

[40:27]

I'll try to make what I mean by that more clear. But not today. Thank you very much. You didn't feel so much like a new translator. Du hast dich nicht so sehr wie ein neuer Versetzer angefühlt. It sounds like you can still do it. Hört sich so an, als könntest du es immer noch. Well, maybe a little. I hope I can still do it.

[41:24]

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