Yeah, what's the topic of today's... ...tea show? Yeah, I think it's six... It's two arrow points meeting in mid-air. And why is that the topic? Because I found myself saying it yesterday or the day before. And it seemed to be, it was even important. Yeah, but then I think, geez, what a weird thing to say. I mean, that's impossible. Very unlikely, anyway. that two arrow points meet. And I implied that you should know how to do this. darauf hingewiesen, dass ihr das tun solltet.

[01:18]

Also ich würde davon ausgehen, dass ihr glaubt, ich bin verrückt, denn ihr habt ja nicht einmal Pfeil und Bogen. Also was auch immer das meinen mag, es klingt ziemlich unmöglich. Und jetzt versuche ich mal darüber zu sprechen. And what has been the topic of the day show so far? Yeah, I would say it's been mental postures. We can say that Buddhism and Zen practice is a yoga of mental postures. And a practice of mental postures understanding that there's no alternative to mental postures.

[02:31]

Marie-Louise and I are trying to bring Sophia up. Isn't that funny, to bring her up? Yeah, well, anyway, we're trying to bring her up. She spends a lot of time wanting to go down or sideways. No, we say come up, up. There. Anyway, and what are we doing? We're giving her lots of mental postures. Don't do this, don't do that. So we're loaded with mental postures. Yeah, and the Eightfold Path starts with right views. Yes, since we're loaded with mental postures, what view is a mental posture?

[03:44]

What views will free us from deluded views? And the main deluded views are the addiction to permanence and the addiction to self. Addiction to permanence and addiction to self. No, the permanent, I'm getting them both, I'm making them one. Well, they're more or less one. The addiction to a permanent... Permanence.

[04:55]

And the addiction to self. Maybe in German they are the same. Permanent self. Yeah, they're obviously related. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so I started out as simply as I could. Simple, the word means in English, one-fold, simplex, one-fold. Well, as I always say, English is just a... German dialect. With 50% of its vocabulary from France. But we are folding ourselves into this sashim. Aber wir falten uns selbst hinein in dieses Sashim.

[06:09]

Also, das Sashim ist doch recht einfach. Und ihr müsst über den Tagesablauf nicht nachdenken. Den kennt ihr schon. Und ihr wisst auch, wenn es Kartoffelbrei gibt, kommt die Pilze mit. So I say, in effect, fold yourself into the sashim. And that's already a mental posture. And that led, by following the details, led to two arrow points meeting in mid-air. And then I just followed these details and that led to these two arrows that hit the tip of the arrow in the air.

[07:16]

Sometimes when we're sitting, especially in Sishin, you may kind of wish the period would end. Or the meal would be over pretty soon. Would you clean your bowl faster, please? But then the period ends. And the ringing of the bell ends our worry about the period ending. And suddenly I think some of us find we actually don't want to move. So the bell rang. And now we're free to move at least. And the various things we were thinking about stop.

[08:38]

Including thinking about we'd like the period to end. And we may, I think we do, find ourselves sitting in a not entirely comfortable posture. But we don't want to move. We feel glued together in some way. Welded together perhaps. There's a word in English, meld, which may be a mixture, a combination of melt and weld. So we feel melded or merged or welded together, glued together.

[09:42]

So we take a few moments before we move. And this feeling of being welded together was somehow underneath, not noticed by one part of our mind. Not noticed by the mind or consciousness, which was thinking, this is uncomfortable.

[10:42]

And not noticed by whatever we happen to be thinking about, which is not uncommon. Und es wurde auch nicht durch unser Nachdenken bemerkt. Und das ist auch nicht ungewöhnlich. Also die Glocke, die die Periode beendet hat, beendet das Denken, aber sie beendet die Körperhaltung nicht. And when the bell ends the thinking, we actually find the posture quite satisfying. Now, if your practice is subtle, you know this feeling of being welded together. as an experience of, let's say, the term I use, the body's mind.

[12:02]

And so the bell ended the mind of consciousness. But it didn't end the mind of the body. It uncovered, in a sense, the mind of the body. Now that teaches us something. It teaches us, maybe next time, during a period of zazen, You can let the conscious mind kind of be absorbed into the body's mind. See if you can do it without the bell ringing. Yeah, instead of exactly stopping thinking, just see if you can use your breath, one of the most powerful tools you have.

[13:30]

Use your breath. Pull. consciousness down into the body's mind. No, what I'm talking about now can't really be written about in sutras. It can be hinted at or pointed to. Even with arrow points. In the koans and the commentary of the Zen masters, the Zen teachers. Mm-hmm. But if you read them, if you don't have the experience, you can't join the experience to what you're reading.

[14:47]

So last night I mentioned that Shido, the... our Dharma ancestors and our lineage. Was enlightened when he read an earlier Dharma ancestor of ours, the first Chinese, yeah, Chinese, not Indian Buddhist teachers. When he read Zhang Jiao's Always Observe Myriad Things as Oneself. And he read from Zhang Jiao's Now, unless you've come close to this experience, you've already created an inventory of experiences which is ready to hear this statement when you read it.

[16:15]

Also, ihr habt es erfahren, ihr habt schon ein Inventar davon angelegt, bis bevor ihr das lest. Ja, now we know, though, that this really one of the great teachers, Shido, Was enlightened when he read this from another great Buddhist teacher. So here they are giving you, and it's in the lineage, a mental posture. And here they give you a mental attitude that comes from our line. Always observe myriad things as oneself. Yeah, it's hard to translate.

[17:34]

Yeah, I'm thinking if you understand. And if your thinking has currents of dumbness in it, occasional dumb coughs, Pop up. Then you'll think, oh, this isn't true. Myriad things are not myself. This is not, please, a statement, a scientific statement. Yeah, in some kind of way, we're all molecules, it might be. But for practice, recognize it's a mental posture. Add this to the soup. So in your mental soup, you always observe myriad things as oneself. Whether it's true or not, scientifically is not the point.

[18:48]

What is true is that two of the greatest masters of this kind of practice in human history Was aber wahr ist, dass zwei große Lehrer in der Geschichte... In human history? In der menschlichen Geschichte? Yeah, okay. Had recommended this mental posture to you. Dass die diese mentale Haltung euch empfohlen haben. Have you got something better to do? Gibt es denn noch irgendwas besseres für dich zu tun? Do you have some other teachers that, you know... More interesting? Anyway, you might give it a shot. Give it a try.

[19:50]

Always observe myriad things as oneself. I can't even say as part of yourself, right? As the whole of yourself. As the whole of oneself. I change that sometimes into the trees also breathe. And that works as a kind of art, not as philosophy. Because if my awareness is settled in my breathing, and rooted in my breathing, then when I say the trees also breathe, it's a statement parallel to my own experience of breathing.

[21:03]

So again, it's a kind of dance of my breath with this mental posture. The trees also breathe. Yeah, you too. Everything. It's a way to practice with always observed myriad things as oneself. Now, I'm talking about... the teachings which depend on the experiences we accumulate in awareness through practice.

[22:17]

What I'm talking about is the way that some of the teachings can only be understood through the experiences accumulated not in consciousness so much, but in awareness, accumulated in the whole of our life in awareness, but often brought to a point of mindfulness or a one-pointedness through practice. but which have often been brought to a certain level in our lives through practice. A friend of mine, Linda's foreign fellow, Keith Critchlow,

[23:31]

Ein Freund von mir und ein Mitglied von Lindisfarne, der heißt Keith Critchlow, did a book, well, was the source of much of the research for a book and a video on Chartres Cathedral. Which we gave to Marie-Louise's mother who happens to be Catholic as her birthday present today. I'm hard pressed as a card carrying Buddhist on what to give my Catholic mother-in-law. And she's very aware of my heretical posture. For example, once I was eating pistachio nuts, which I particularly like.

[24:50]

And I said once, these pistachio nuts are so good, they almost make me believe in God. Who could have thought God created them? And my mother-in-law heard this and she said, eat some more. Right. So I keep getting big packages of pistachio nuts, you know, in the mail. So I found this present on Gothic cathedrals, etc. What's interesting, and I've known about this research for 15 or 20 years now, And I know that the chakra system came into Buddhism through and to China through India.

[26:14]

And I actually don't know if the chakra system came into the Indian chakra system came into Europe or not. In ancient times. But what's very clear in these, and there's a lot of Near Eastern influences and Gothic cathedrals, But what's clear is that if you know, let's put it in my language, if you know the body's mind... Then you really, on some level, know the chakras, whether you've heard about the system or not.

[27:38]

Then... And it's clear in the Gothic cathedrals and in the Romanesque cathedrals too. Churches, cathedrals. That the chakras are laid out in the floor plan and in the facade. The pointed shape of the doors that you go through in Gothic churches is meant to awaken your aura or animbus. that you open your aura.

[28:51]

That awakens your aura. Yeah, and both the Christ figures and Buddha figures have this halo, nimbus, and shape like that, commonly around the body. I'm not one who thinks there's one truth somewhere and all religions lead to one truth. Yeah, that's a nice idea. Yeah. From a Buddhist point of view, it's nonsense, though. Because it's just basically saying that there's some sort of God or creator. So I say that all the different teachings lead into the same mystery, but they end up in a different place in the forest, in the mystery.

[30:05]

We're all in this mystery, in this forest. Hopefully in Sashin the paths have come sort of close together so we can wave at each other. And there is some kind of wonderful pleasure to be doing this together. So one of the things that Keith noticed is if you take the facade of the cathedral with its rose window, on the floor of the cathedral,

[31:10]

Can I say that more clear? As you wish. But I didn't want to say what it means yet. But you said something which I can't say. Yeah, I know. All right. So I just said it's coming to the floor. I didn't say where. Well, you continue. I'll stop. Anyway, there's a maze on the floor. in the stone of the floor of the cathedral. And when you fold the facade down, the rose window and the maze are exactly the same size and in exactly the same place. And like Russian icons were meant to be not representations of a Christ figure or saint, but windows to God, windows to the presence of the saint. And the flying buttresses allowed the windows, the walls of these cathedrals to be penetrated by the walls to be penetrated by windows.

[32:47]

So these windows were also eyes into the mind of God or Christ. This is my understanding. And so then when you walked in the maze, you were in, in a sense, the eye of God. All I'm saying is that if you're not so addicted to consciousness, if the mind if the body's mind is more awake, as I feel it was in medieval Europe, and the parts of town, of cities, which are still as they were in the Middle Ages,

[34:22]

and the parts of European cities, I feel my body's mind massaged by such parts of the European city. So people read the statues, read the stones, read the windows. It was a grammar their bodies understood. Well, this kind of sensibility is much awakened through the physical and mental postures of yoga.

[35:38]

And our practice assumes that and the teachings of the koans assume that. Okay. Now I've got another hour to go. It always happens when I have nothing to say. But already my lectures have been too long. And I haven't got to the arrow points meeting in midair. Yeah. Or Now we open Buddha's robe. A field far beyond form and emptiness.

[36:41]

What's a field far beyond form and emptiness? What is Hakuen's... beyond the six sense fields of objects. And last night I said seven flowers, eight blooms. Sieben Blumen, sechs Blüten. What's the eighth bloom? Was ist die achte Blüte? And you know this staff.

[37:43]

Of course, you're all aware of it. So many, I've spoken about it. There's the lotus embryo, the lotus bud, the lotus pod. But where's the blooms? And I said last night, seven flowers, eight blooms. How, behind the mirror, how many things? behind the mirror, how many things? Well, let me just say where I go back to, if your practice is subtle, you'll feel this welded together Udana.

[38:58]

You'll feel this welded together posture that doesn't quite want to get up yet. And then you'll bring the subtlety of that feeling which, yes, is tied to the body, but also part of the body's mind. You're aware of it. You'll get up from your sitting and bring that feeling carry that feeling into the chanting of the service or the meal service or into your kin hin lifting your heel with the inhale

[40:00]

This is the mind which knows that the maze is the rose window. And you'll bring that into the sashin with others. and folding it into the Sechin out into the Sechin it will be reinforced by others and fold back into you and that's approaching what I've been talking about now Dogen's referring here to practice period. But I'm going to substitute, and I can do that, the word sashin.

[41:15]

Dogen's teacher said that it is in a sashin that we form, that you form the structure of true practice. It is their enlightened vision of the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors. And the root of their life practice. How can the structure of the sheen be their enlightened vision?

[42:18]

I mean, when the seven days are over, you'll be glad it's over and you're free of their enlightened vision. Denn wenn diese sieben Tage vorbei sind, seid ihr froh, dass es vorbei ist und ihr befreit seid von deren erleuchteter Vision. Was zum Teufel kann Dogen damit meinen? How can you find in practice? How is... Will you form the structure of true practice in Sashim? Wie... könnt ihr... Okay. Okay.

[42:54]

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