Next week I will fly to the United States and it's always a little difficult for me to leave because I always like to stay where I am There's enough newness wherever I am that I don't need to look for newness somewhere else. But my feeling is, because I'm leaving next week, I want to fly back into your zazen so I can sit with you during the next months. So I'm trying to, you know, during this Sashin, I discover I'm trying to make a landing field in you.

[01:02]

My inner airplane. Inner flight. It's a new term for psychology. I don't think it will go over big, but you know. Okay. Okay. Now I introduced Dogen's commonplace and unusual statement. Know that the world of zazen is different from other worlds. Put this way, it's an imperative, a command. Know that the world of zazen, the world of sitting practice,

[02:03]

He doesn't say it is different. He says, know that it's different. And that's my feeling, too. I'm trying to describe things, but my description is an imperative. It means nothing unless it becomes your imperative. Now, yesterday I also tried to make clear that Sashin is a kind of destination. A destination or location that we don't know quite where it is. And we can hopefully during these days locate ourselves in this location. Maybe I shouldn't say locate ourselves, but I like the plural selves.

[03:41]

Okay, I'm sorry. So maybe I should just say locate our location. Then I've said almost nothing. But this is maybe good. So again, Dogen says, know that the world of sitting practice is different from all other worlds. I'd like to try to make it clear during this session that that is the case. But for you, is it really the case? Do you let Zazen become different from Are you able to notice how different zazen is from your usual world?

[05:00]

Are you able to fly close enough to your experience? Notice close to your experience. The difference of sitting practice, the world of sitting practice from your usual world. This is not to diminish your usual world. This is to bring the power of the difference into your usual world.

[06:01]

Okay. This destination which we don't know where it is exactly. or what it is. And Dogen says then the next sentence is, clarify this for yourself. And then he says, then bring in the mind of the Buddha ancestors. The way-seeking mind of the Buddha ancestors. Now let's leave that to later on in the Sashin. Bringing in the way-seeking mind of the Buddha ancestors. So I want to emphasize just now, yesterday and today, clarifying this for yourself.

[07:21]

And I want to, I'd like to, let's clarify this together. As one of the first steps in clarifying this for yourself. Now, in what ways is the world of sitting practice different? One way is how basic it is. So now let me look at it as basically as I can. What is Zazen? Now I've spoken partly to this in Hanover and Kassel Seminars last week, I guess it was.

[08:39]

And some of you were at one or the other. I was at both. Yeah. Zazen is posture. A posture. Plus a concept. The concept is don't move. And plus a time limit. Zazen really has its power through the concept don't move and the time limit. I could say it's maybe a location you find your, you don't know what you are, but at least your location. I always like Wittgenstein's statement. There's nothing in the information that I see, hear, feel in front of me that tells me this is all happening in my mind and body.

[10:08]

There's nothing in the photograph that tells you it's in a camera. Unless you happen to see the camera reflected in a mirror. But once you know that not only is this room for me happening in my that it also means I'm a location. That I know this from this location. And you see this location in ways I can't see it. auf Arten und Weisen, wie ich ihn nicht sehen kann.

[11:26]

So, your posture, your location, where a location in the sashin. Deine Haltung und dieser Ort, dein Ort im Sashin. And to survive the schedule, you have to turn the location into a posture. And what do I mean by a posture? A posture is that position of the body which you can fill with attention. So you can check that out as you're sitting. To what degree can you feel this bodily position becomes a posture through being filled with attention.

[12:30]

And the position becomes a posture When breath can reach fully into the hole of both lungs. And feel like it penetrates the rest of the body. And that position is a posture when your head feels most clear. And a position is a posture when you feel at ease. And somehow you can relax into this posture. So in this way, your bodily position becomes a posture.

[13:53]

And this posture is able to come into the stillness of not moving. And not moving and stillness interrupt consciousness. Cut off, or in Nagarjuna's words, negate consciousness. The positive effect of negation, consciousness is cut off and awareness fills us. so we don't move and we come into a stillness and stillness originally just means motionless And at least in English, stillness, still means first of all only motionless.

[15:12]

And later it comes to mean quiet and silent. At least in English, I don't know if it's comparable in German, but we could say something like still there in the still of the night. Yes, that's not possible in German, but when I translate it, you can say something like, still there in the silence of the night, motionless, still in the silence of the night, motionless in the motionless of the night. Oh dear, let's zazen motionless in the motionless night. And even if you aren't motionless all the time, of course you're not. Touching motionlessness

[16:13]

And in a sashim, touching motionless in various states of mind has power. Okay, so then there's the time limit. 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Yeah, I mean, of course you can sit as long as you want sometimes. But it's most effective when you sit for a specific length of time. Especially if as long as you want is three minutes. Then you better decide on thirteen. Okay, now again, why am I making it so simple?

[17:33]

Because in this case, simple is basic. And like you could ask sort of philosophically, as it's been done for centuries and generations, what is time? What is space? Well, the question as an abstraction doesn't have much meaning. It may mean something for a physicist. But it only means something for us in our life. When you discover that you are time, And you are space. So you find this posture which you discover as space and time.

[18:35]

And it's through limiting time through the restriction of don't move that we really come to occupy space in body space and it's through the restriction of a time limit that you really come to be time itself You find out you are time. And you may find out when somebody tells you, or you say to yourself for a moment, I have no time. It might make you burst out laughing. Because you can't have no time because you are time.

[19:37]

So if you have no time, it's because it's only in relationship to someone else's time. And really, that's their problem. Your problem is to discover you are time. So even when your time doesn't quite match with other people's time, you can still be at rest because you are time itself. This sounds a little schmaltzy. But it's absolutely true. Our time itself. If time has a self, then you can be it. English is trying to delude us at all times.

[20:53]

And when you discover you are also space, you occupy space, you create space. objects create space objects of this room create this space you're one of the objects or subjects when you really experientially know this location is space You feel located in the world in a substantial way. You feel that you belong in the world. Yeah, you are inseparable from the world.

[22:23]

Okay. So zazen is this posture plus concept don't move plus the time limit. And it results in this very basic vocation. This newly reaffirmed identity. That you are space. And you are time. And everything else is added to that. All your thoughts, associations, etc. And all of it belongs... All of your associations, your life experience... is in a time and space that belongs to you.

[23:30]

This you, which is a location of space and time. So you come through zazen and you clarify it for yourself, experience it for yourself. You come into a basic experience of the most fundamental questions of philosophy. It cuts off alienation. Okay. Now, mostly I'm speaking about the singularity of Zazen experience.

[24:34]

Your individual Zazen experience. Now, what is this stillness? Okay. Stillness does something. Stillness is a door. Stillness is a receptor. Stillness is a receptor. It receives. It receives, as I've been pointing out often, it receives non-dreaming deep sleep. When you sit, the stillness of zazen calls forth the stillness of non-dreaming deep sleep.

[25:36]

And we can understand it as through the door of stillness. Non-dreaming deep sleep flows into our sasin. Or we can understand it through the receptor of stillness. A mind similar to non-dreaming deep sleep is induced. And the receptor of stillness, or the door of stillness, also allows the images of a dreaming mind to come into our... the associations and images to come into our zazen.

[26:39]

So you can see through the stillness generated by the concept, don't move. And the posture which can be filled with attention. We begin to have an experienced overlap with dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep. So these minds which are not far from us are now really not far from us. They're part of our experience in Zazen. And through our experience in Zazen, they flow into the world of our usual life.

[27:45]

And there's almost no way this can happen without doing Zazen. All the minds you lived are part of your living. But experientially part of your living and not just hidden in your experience requires zazen. Okay. Now, attention is also a receptor. You know, antennae or antennae, now they're used for radio aerials and things.

[28:47]

But they originally came from Aristotle, the horns or feelers of an insect. Aber ursprünglich stammt der Begriff von Aristoteles, um die Fühler eines Insekts zu bezeichnen. So attention itself, attention, attention, attention, attention is a kind of antenna. Die Aufmerksamkeit selbst, oder die Aufmerksamkeit ist eine Art Antenne. So maybe I can say antennal, that's an adjectivial form of antenna. Antennal attention. Sounds good, yeah? So attention goes out like an antenna to a flower. And Proust describes how his attention on a flower, the flower blooms within him.

[30:04]

So attention is a kind of antenna, a receptor. And again, overlapping with what I said yesterday, when the antennal attention is given to attention itself, you shift into sasen. Uh-huh. Attention receives attention. The receptor of attention receives attention. And when the receptor of attention is joined to the receptor of stillness, we call this the most fundamental definition of samadhi.

[31:06]

this is actually what's going on in real life sāsana. Attention is joined to stillness. Now in a sāshīn, this is a little different than just your individual sāsana. You're doing long sitting with others. And long sitting with others activates our receptors in a new way. The receptors of stillness and and attention are enhanced by others in the same process.

[32:23]

And our contextualized experience which we see most clearly in our dreaming mind and our contextualized experience which is seen most clearly in zazen experience, in dreaming and zazen experience. And if you ever noticed in lucidity that the events of the day can more or less intact be put into a dream. Maybe you can watch it happen as you go to sleep. And it's something that fairly intactively goes from waking mind to dreaming mind.

[33:25]

And it's immediately recontextualized. It's like you put it in a different bed and it wakes up in a different world. I was different during the day, now how did I get in this bed? And all of our experience is constantly being contextualized in the day and recontextualized in the subtextual dreaming mind. And for reasons we won't explore just now. This is enhanced and aggravated. In Sashin.

[34:44]

And your recontextualized life may kind of hit you with a slap. Or lull you with fantasies. So karma, come home. Okay, let's continue tomorrow.

[35:18]

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