Yesterday when I was in Freiburg, they said to me, oh, you're going back up there to Harris Street. You're going back into the wintry world. It's going to snow up there tomorrow. In Freiburg, they think they live in California. And in Freiburg, they have this feeling of living in California. I like it. I like this wintery world. Thank you. Thank you, each of you, for coming here and to the Sashin. Each of you. For me, each of you is a world. Each of you bring a world to the Sashin.

[01:07]

And you enter into a world here. Yeah, an ancient world, equally ancient world. Eine altehrwürdige oder altertümliche Welt oder eine gleichwertige, eine gleichsam altertümliche Welt. We have to take some time since the largest percentage of our time is in our usual world. It takes some time to enter into this ancient and yet present world. How can you make this ancient world your present world? Und wie kannst du diese altehrwürdige Welt zu deiner gegenwärtigen Welt machen?

[02:32]

Or also your present world. Oder auch zu deiner gegenwärtigen Welt. Also this morning I said during the first period of Zazen. Also heute Morgen habe ich während der ersten Zazen-Periode gesagt. Sashin, to gather the mind. Sashin, das ist den Geist zu sammeln. Yeah, so let's use that as an entry into the sashin. And see if we can find that it's really an entrance. Maybe if each of us brings a world here, maybe we can, I think we can use this as an entrance we all can go through. although we bring a variety of minds and bodies to the Sashin, when we use these simple words, mind, body, perhaps we can

[03:48]

Perhaps there are words we all can feel in a similar way. And particularly perhaps when we locate the words in the word gather. When we locate the mind which can be gathered and the body which can be gathered and gather is the best word I can find and like a lot of English words it's really Germanic And it means in various old Germans to bring together.

[05:16]

And literally to bring together in the body. And to unite and so forth. So to unite the mind. To gather the mind, to unite the mind. Yeah, so I said to gather the mind and I said to gather the body. And I said to gather the mind in the body. And to gather the body in the mind. Hmm. Yeah, three little words. What's that song? Doris Day, three little words. I love you, I guess, anyway.

[06:17]

Three little words. None of you know Doris Day. He's a cult follower of people my age, not me. Mm-hmm. But anyway, we've got three words, mind, body, gather. And each of these words gathers the mind in a certain way. And that's what we're trying to do in Sashin at this stage, in this maturity of our practice. We're trying to define, find an inner lexicon. You have the same word in German, lexicon. So if you shape the feeling, idea, image, if you shape the feeling of to gather the mind and the body, I think you'll feel something.

[07:46]

And if you then shape the feeling, the image, the concept, the idea, to let the body gather in the mind, no. If you can have a certain inner stillness, you're not thinking too much. When you say something like, I don't know in German, but English, to let the body gather in the mind, you'll feel a somewhat different movement then to let the body gather in the mind.

[09:13]

And you can go back and forth. If you just try out how a word can, a term, a word can discover a subtle wind in the body. Yeah, now, what I would like to speak about is the self. The experience of a self. Yeah, because, I mean, you know, all Buddhists, early Buddhism, Buddhism is a fundamental thing.

[10:17]

all early Buddhism and Buddhism fundamentally in all its schools, says, well, yeah, when you do zazen, you discover that you can't find a self. And once you've done that then the rest of the teaching proceeds from there. Thanks a lot. Yeah, great. Yeah. I mean, some of us have been doing this 10, 20 years and we haven't really not located a self or located a not-self. We don't, you know, it's just us. What the heck are they talking about? It's a little bit like reading a recipe for egg drop soup. And you wonder from what height you're supposed to drop the egg.

[11:37]

And won't it splash all over the stove? Yeah. I mean, if they only tell you to drop the egg, you don't know what the heck, you know. You have to know something about the egg. It's got a shell, it's got a yolk, and it's got the so-called white part. And it cooks in a variety of ways. So if you don't know what's inside the egg and how the egg is constructed, it doesn't help you to read egg drop soup. So to discover that you don't have a self by doing zazen doesn't help much if you only have the word self.

[12:37]

It doesn't help much if you only have the word self. Yeah, I mean, does the self have a shell? Does it have a yolk? Yeah. What temperature does it cook at? And so what I'd like to do is see if we can find out something about the self that we do have. And something about the self we might not have.

[13:52]

Yeah, but first we have to learn how to make an omelette. Okay. So let's go back to gathering the mind in the body. Maybe in English it's easier to say to let, allow the mind to gather in the body. And I would suggest you try that over and over again. If this is going to be an entrance we all share into this ancient world surfacing in this sashin. Is it a movement towards you?

[14:52]

Or does it have a direction? And then also try on a number of times to let the mind, the other way, the body gather in the mind. Okay, so you can't let the mind gather in just any old body. Talking about letting the mind gather in the body in Zazen posture. No, in most of our body postures, we don't have... Yeah, we're too busy to gather the mind.

[16:03]

Yeah, it's not conducive to gathering the mind in the body or body in the mind. Conducive, I don't know. Conducive... supportive to conduct, to allow it to happen. Okay. But, you know, the tradition is, if you live in a Japanese monastery, For example, when you sweep. You're supposed to not be too obvious about it. But you hold the broom with the feeling that it's lined up with your spine. I mean, again, as I say, you don't be too obvious.

[17:14]

Look, I'm doing Zen. You hold the broom and you feel your spine. And sometimes you actually can draw a line down the front of your body. Now what are you doing? Well, you're trying in the act of sweeping to gather the mind and the body. And since that's such a common understanding in yogic monastic culture, Common practice. It adds a flavor to the koan of Yunyan and Daowu, Yunyan sweeping.

[18:15]

Okay. So, When I say let the mind gather in the body and let the body gather in the mind I'm giving you a yogic instruction. I'm trying to create a I don't know. There's no words for it.

[19:16]

Ich versuche eine... Ich weiß nicht was, dafür gibt es keine Worte zu erschaffen. I'm trying to create a... inner vocabulary. Ich versuche ein inneres Vokabular zu erschaffen. A proprioceptive vocabulary. Eine Art propriozeptives Vokabular. Inner lexicon. Oder ein inneres lexicon. Hmm. Maybe lexicon is the best. Because it also means to gather. But it particularly means to gather for the purpose of speaking. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be speaking. It's to... Yeah, so I'm using it to create some sort of term. A subtle term. And maybe I should use the traditional word winds. Like wind.

[20:30]

Yeah, and all of these words really often are at root about weaving. So I'm trying to create terms for subtle winds. Which I'd like you to begin to notice, feel, identify. Because they become a kind of inner vocabulary. And subtle itself means shares the same root as as lexicon.

[21:32]

They're both related to a root called T-E-K-H or something, tech, which is sub-tech, subtle. What does tech mean? Text or, yeah, text, texture, weaving. And at the root of all these teachings is the idea that you're weaving yourself in the world and weaving the world. So subtle, I mean, I think it's useful to look at the word. Because when you look at the word in some detail, just if you look at the word mind and body in some detail, Find the yoke and shell and white of each word.

[22:39]

So subtle means the finest thread in the weaving. The subtle thread that comes in subtle, the sub, means up from under. Sub, up from under. So the thread that comes up from under is hard to see. That's where Upanishads comes from. The teaching that's up from under that you sit near to. So we're sitting near to something which may come up from under. Also sitzen wir in der Nähe von etwas Subtilem, das vielleicht von unten her aufsteigt.

[23:58]

You know, the word Sanskrit means that which is refined. Das Wort Sanskrit bedeutet das, was verfeinert ist. And vernacular speech, ordinary speech, was called prakit. Und in der gesprochenen Sprache, da wird auch von prakit gesprochen. So Sanskrit was the language which refined you. So language wasn't just to communicate and speak. It was to refine you. To refine how you speak to yourself. I noticed this in Japan, actually. Because Japan has women's Japanese, men's Japanese, all kinds of dialects. And several layers of formality. And the levels of formality simply, I watched it happen, take more energy.

[25:13]

And it's not just status or sort of class or something like that. It's The language that takes more energy is a language not simply for communication, but to refine you. This all comes from a culture which isn't created. which isn't created. If you have the idea you're created, then you're created. There you are, a little old creation. But in the yogic world, all you've got is the ingredients. And you create them.

[26:20]

And language is one of the ways we create, literally create, how our brain functions, is structured, etc. And you are all so far ahead of me. Because you know one of the most difficult languages in the world. And you know a lot of English too. I'm just struggling to keep my head above water. So we're trying here in this sashin, in this first day anyway, to find some terms for an inner lexicon. For subtle winds. And the idea in India of Sanskrit and then in Tibetan and Chinese and Japanese Buddhism was, you know, let's start with language is a way of refining yourself.

[27:45]

And the word Sanskrit means language that's in contrast to natural language or unrefined language or what's unrefined. Mm-hmm. So we all have, of course, because we're Democrats or... We're not Democrats. We're... Advocates of democracy. Practicers of democracy. And we want to emphasize equality... everyone's alike, everything, you know, etc. And we kind of rubbed just the wrong way, refinement.

[28:54]

It feels like elitism. And the word refinement, that brings us to the wrong horse, because there's this feeling of elitism there. But you're practicing Buddhism and I'm sorry you're elitist already. Or maybe elitist isn't the right word. Maybe that's just a kind of political version of being refined. Because It's refinement which builds a world. At least that's the basic idea from India up through China, Japan, and in Buddhist culture.

[30:01]

And what you're doing, sitting Zazen, and what I'm trying to do speaking with you, is to develop a certain kind of subtleness. So that we together can go through this door that we hardly notice until there's a certain subtlety we've developed. Now, there's the idea of world-building arts. And sculpture, architecture, painting are world-building arts. And our culture is rooted in Roman and Greek culture. And for sure, The architecture of Greece, the sculptures, the paintings were meant to build a world.

[31:24]

And they're considered the arts of the body. And the arts of speech are poetry and chanting and... And the arts of the mind, body, speech and mind, the arts of the mind are meditation and philosophy. And this is a view of art as not just for entertainment or aesthetics. But when aesthetics in a sense of beauty are a sign or a measure, a guide into world-building arts,

[32:27]

Because whether you know it or not, in the larger metaconcept of Buddhism, when you're doing meditation, you're world-building. you're building your world and you're building a world that can communicate with within the community and with others in a certain way and you know you're doing this just face up to it by noticing the difference between gathering the body and the mind, and gathering the mind and the body, if you can begin to notice those things, and the noticing becomes part of an inner vocabulary,

[33:47]

This is a kind of, not a kind of, it is refinement. Yeah, when Sophia was little, I'd throw a ball to her and she couldn't catch it. She clearly understood the concept. You put your hands out and somebody throws a ball and it goes into your hands and you hold it. She had no problem with the concept. Her body wasn't refined enough to catch the ball. It would kind of bounce. Come on, Sophia, catch it. But through meditation we begin to be able to have a kind of body-mind refinement that can catch things thrown at us or said to us that we couldn't catch before. So what are the ingredients we have so far?

[35:14]

Mind. Body. Posture. And the idea of gathering. That's four. And in Old German, lexicon also means to speak with magic words. Mind, body, gather, posture. And then we have a fifth. Agency.

[36:14]

Someone's doing it. Is someone doing it? What is doing it? you can't do it in any posture is the posture doing it but you're intending to use the posture you came here to use the posture so we've got five ingredients mind, body The kind of proprioceptive concept of gather. Geist, Körper, diese Art von propriozeptiven Konzept von sammeln. And an agency, a what or a self doing it.

[37:18]

Und ein Handelnder, also ein Selbst oder ein Was, das das tut. This should be studied. Das sollte untersucht werden. Okay, thanks. During these 18 hours, you will be able to do this.

[37:39]

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