I guess these are the highest ranking monks on the left, right? And on the right, oh, the other highest ranking. Please take them as an example. And Atmar didn't make it, huh? That's too bad. Yeah. As I said last night in the hot drink statement, that Atmar has given us a wake-up call Because these things do happen, as I said.

[01:03]

And they often are sudden and unexpected. And I said at the end of the few words that it's a blessing that he's just fine, pretty fine, I guess. He's still here with us. And when I say still here, I'm using here as a technical term.

[02:06]

And I'm mentioning this because this is a necessary aspect of practice, I think, to... to recognize how words, you know, I'm always saying this in various ways, but how words aren't just a part of a sentence. They actually point into our life and point up as well. And I say it because I think, and I express it in different ways, I think it's an essential aspect of practice to notice that words are not just part of a sentence, but that they also show directly into our lives and that they also show out of our lives.

[03:19]

Now zazen forces us into this recognition. I mean the schedule and your own intention within the schedule brings us into an absolute here-ness. You may still think of this and that and kind of wonder if the bell might ring in this century. Und du denkst vielleicht immer noch über dies und das nach und fragst dich vielleicht, ob die Glocke überhaupt noch klingelt in diesem Jahrhundert. But really, the sashin works best when you just accept it might never ring. Aber also wirklich, das sashin funktioniert dann am besten, wenn du einfach akzeptierst, dass die Glocke vielleicht nie schlägt.

[04:27]

Even if you only recognize that now and then or only for a few moments. It becomes part of the inventory of your experience. And it can be part of the inventory of your experience when something like Atmar in the middle of Zazen having an epileptic fit Now... I'm sorry, I wasn't... I apologize for not being here for your day. So... So if zazen, sashin, establishes us, locates us in a here, an experienceable here.

[05:46]

Wenn zazen oder ein sashin uns in einem erfahrbaren here verortet. And not a here in contrast to there or some kind of idea like that. But an experienceable here. Yeah, and I don't know what words to use. You know, this problem that I keep trying to solve by just creating words. If I can't find one, I make it up. which words I can use for it. And I try to solve the problem again and again by thinking words out. If I can't find one, I think one out. So I now might say, mentalized, phenomenalized here-ness. And then I would now say, spiritualized. It's also amusing to see how she handled the problem.

[06:56]

Okay. Yeah. Sounds okay to me. As I say, it's not pretty. Yeah, that's the problem with these words. They get unpretty. But we do need, if you're going to, I mean, yeah, if here is more than, has an absoluteness as a location, it's an experienced one here after another. A here or here-ness in which you're as fully located as possible. for you at any moment. And it's clear that Sashin is designed to, whether you like it or not, as long as you stay, force you into this experience.

[08:06]

It becomes the only way to handle the discomfort and annoyance and pain of following a schedule like this. Because most people won't do it with words. Yeah, we're biologically... programmed to find the most convenient, safest, easiest way to do everything. Wir sind biologisch drauf programmiert, immer den praktischsten, einfachsten und sichersten Weg zu finden, irgendwas zu machen.

[09:28]

If the main reason people give all over the, at least America, of why they don't exercise, well... always a little harder to do than something else. I've done surveys asking people, why do you not exercise when it clearly would be good for you, right? And most people say, well, every time I think of it, I think of something easier to do. So we get as many people together, up to a point, sit together in a schedule, which, you know, it's kind of hard to decide to, you know, you follow it, okay, I'll do it.

[10:32]

But as we're a lay monastic practice, I'm also trying to find words that I can use to conceptually at least locate you in an absolute here-ness. Versuche ich auch, Worte zu finden, um euch zumindest konzeptuell in einer Hierheit, in einem Hier zu verorten. And to find a friction or an adhesion, inner and middle. So far I've been saying there's three dimensions to it, to immediacy.

[11:36]

Three experiential dimensions to, or three doors to immediacy. But this morning I added a fourth. Okay. So the first is spatiality. And that, I think you know what I mean. I mean gestural space. And it's helpful even if you're forced into an absolute here-ness in the sashin. It's helpful to notice that you're sitting in a gestural space. The room is a gesture.

[12:45]

The floor is a gesture. And if you don't move, not moving is a gesture. And if you do move, that changes things. So you're sort of in a kind of clay that is making things as you move or sit still. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then the second is what I call, it's hard to translate, I guess, patiality, the pace, the frame rate. Maybe we could call it modal, as modality, modal time.

[13:46]

Sounds all right. Maybe it isn't, but sounds all right. Yeah, before I left I said maybe since I wrote this paper, which I didn't say much about when I was there, but I asked if you want to give me some suggestions of how it works for you or what makes sense and then if not. And Nicole said some people like it and some people don't. feel it's just too dense. Before I left, I wrote this essay and distributed it in the practice period. And when I was in Esalen, I didn't say much about it.

[15:03]

But anyway, most of you have this essay and I asked you to give me feedback or any suggestions. And Nicole said that some people really like this essay and others say it's too close. But even if you're a native speaker experienced in close reading, it's still dense. Not for Dennis, but... I woke him up, you know. It's like my dad. Yeah, I know. I didn't want to point that out. So, you know, you have to kind of, this kind of text you have to read with your body, sort of syllables by syllable. Because also the syllables float free of the words and have a tonal field of their own.

[16:26]

As Dennis and Dentz. Because, you know, when you just read the word here, if I mean it the way I'm speaking now, I mean, it takes a little time. Otherwise, you just, oh, it's here and there, you know. But if you're going to practice the way Chinese adepts and the people who produced the koans have practiced with language, Language is talismanic. I mean, every word is a kind of... Rabbit's foot.

[17:42]

Rabbit's foot. Do you have those? In German? Rabbit's foot. It's a kind of little jewel that gives you some power or it metaphorically opens into the field of experience. Every word is something like a jewel that gives you a certain strength or that opens itself forward into the experience. One thing that they picked up on in this meeting, this five-day meeting I was just at, is they'd never thought of it, but the distinction between oneness and allness. There's a huge difference when you use them in practice, but most people just say, oh, Take all the books or take one of the books and they don't realize all have a very different dynamic and depth than one. One of the examples that people mentioned in this five-day conference is that many have never thought about the difference between the words unity and allness.

[18:56]

And most people just use the words as if they were the same, but they don't see that saying allness or everything has a completely different dynamic. So, you know, so just to develop the sense of space as spatiality, as gestural, is already, you know, something if you get the real feel of that. I mean, if you could walk underwater, you'd see that. Every move you'd make, you'd feel the water and you'd feel the ripples and so forth. But if you're walking in air, you don't feel it so much. You feel the gravity, of course, and you are also in a pervasive electromagnetic field, which you don't feel, but actually you do feel it, but not at conscious levels.

[19:59]

So these things take some pointing out or sensitivity to And a little bit of training. It's a craft. It's a craft to feel the gestural dynamic of space. A craft is something you develop by doing it. You can't think it or it's not just a story. So the modalities of time...

[21:16]

There are also various ways we can experience time, like children's time, the body's time, which is different than the mind's time. There are also different ways in which we can experience time. For example, the time of childhood or a physical time that is different from a spiritual time. So there is the heart's time, there is the breath's time, there is the physiological, metabolic, bodily time. There is the heart's time and the breath's time and the And the kind of practice we do outside of story or under the radar of stories is to engage more and more attentionally, fully with the actual experience of being alive, not being alive, of aliveness. So there's the gestural space you feel your, you know, and there's the modalities of time that you feel.

[22:49]

And then there's uniqueness, the third dimension. That nothing is ever repeated. Each moment is unique. If you are intentionally sensitive, Then it's that absolute uniqueness which makes immediacy, I was making up a word right there, which makes immediacy so accomplishing and satisfying. You feel you're accomplishing being alive within the uniqueness of immediacy.

[24:08]

And another door from which you can develop this is that, as the phrase I've often used, to pause for the particular. But yes, you can take this too, a description to pause for the particular part. But remember, everything is an activity. There are no entities. So such a phrase is an activity, and that needs to be operated. And so ein Satz ist damit auch eine Aktivität und der muss angewandt werden.

[25:29]

I like the word deploy. You have to deploy it and operate it. Mir gefällt dieses Wort deploy. Der muss eingesetzt, angewandt und benutzt werden. And so, as I said the other day, it becomes to pause for the pause. Not just for the particularity, but for the moment in which everything is stopped or everything is still, as Vicky mentioned in her first Chusot talk. And she was sitting on the crest of a mountain in Nepal. Nepal, yeah.

[26:32]

Well, we've got the crest of the mountain right here. It's nice to do it there, too, with vultures and birds. So pausing for the pause becomes this when the mind evolves through stillness, Now, again, the way particularly Soto-shu Zen practice works, which is a little different than Rinzai-shu, if I say the mind which evolves through stillness, Stillness, that becomes a phrase, like in a koan, that you work with until you discover how the mind is different from attention when it evolves through stillness.

[27:40]

But I don't point it out, usually like this, I'm not supposed to point it out, because only the adept ones sitting here get it. The way the practice works in the Soto school is that when I introduce a sentence like, for example, the spirit that develops through silence, then it becomes a sentence that you use over and over again until you notice what happens. So any phrase like that that you hear, it becomes, can I experience that? What is that? I mean, and that's one of the differences between monastic and light practice. In monastic practice, you can have such a phrase every few days or once a month.

[28:50]

But in lay practice, lay monastic practice, since you're all going to leave and go somewhere else, there has to be a whole bottle full of pills spread on the floor. Time-release capsules. I try not just put them on the floor. Actually, I try to throw them into the air and hope they float around get it absorbed occasionally. So the third deployment then of pause for the particular... And the third application is to hold on to the pause.

[30:02]

It's charismatic. But it's unique and precise. And the fourth dimension is uncertainty. When we don't know what will happen. They're not precise like uniqueness. Things are vague. Smeared. Yeah. Risky. Unpredictable. And sometimes they clog together in non-uniqueness.

[31:15]

And that's also part of the unnecessary dimension of it. A necessary recognized dimension. Except dimension of immediacy. So uniqueness and uncertainty. Thank you very much. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[32:03]

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