There is no other reality. But unavoidably, she mistakes the reflection for her head. Okay, now there's two analogies here to a signless state of mind. One is that the silver of the mirror is completely hidden in the reflections. And the other analogy is that the person looking in the mirror can't see what's looking. They can only see the physical aspect of it. If you held a corpse up there, you'd see nearly the same thing if it was fairly fresh.

[01:07]

But you wouldn't see what's actually seen. If I perish, you can hold me up in front of the mirror and see what you see. I brought a mirror. A spiegel. Okay, so what are the What are experientially that require the meditation skills of signless states of mind?

[02:07]

What are signless states of mind? One would be like samadhi. And samadhi would be like if you had a mirror, two mirrors, and you put them face to face. They're reflecting each other, but they don't reflect anything. Now, that would be a sign with stated mind. Yeah. But then you could also have an observer accompany that that knows that that's happening. We can also call that a signless state of mind. The mind has no marks, but it's accompanied by a knower. Yes. Observing and knowing is always a thought.

[03:27]

No. It can just be a presence. Not exactly a thought. It can be a body state without cognitive thinking. Anyway, let's just get the categories. And we're talking about this from a Yogacara or Chittamatra point of view, which is that while we're alive, everything is some kind of experience. It's not philosophy. Okay, now another... kind of sign of the state of mind is immediate consciousness. In immediate consciousness, Neil is present, but I hardly know it's Neil.

[04:29]

And Peter is present. And Peter. Julio. And I don't know your name. Heide. Heide is present, but I didn't know her name. So Julio ate Julio and Heide. So there are these, there's, the mind has the marks of each of you, but I'm not thinking, I'm not cognating. There's, it's a non-cognizing awareness, we say technically. Now, I'm not talking philosophy, I'm talking experience. I can really feel when I start to think about you or when I refrain from thinking about you. Ich kann das wirklich fühlen, wenn ich anfange, über euch nachzudenken und wenn ich das irgendwie unterbinde.

[05:42]

And I can hold myself, again, because all mental phenomena have the physical component and vice versa. Und ich kann also in diesem Zustand bleiben, denn also alle geistigen Phänomene haben einen körperlichen Aspekt. I can hold myself in this state of mind without cognizing about it. And as I can do that now in this mind of daily consciousness, I can also do it in zazen. And thoughts come and go, but I don't think about them. And the longer I don't think about them, a bigger and bigger kind of a wider mind appears. By knowing how to physically hold this state of mind, a kind of physical holding, And that's what zazen posture is, the posture of this Buddha on the altar, is the physical representation of a form which can hold a formless state of mind.

[07:04]

So you can say the Buddha is in a yoga posture, he's sitting cross-legged. But he's actually in a signless state of mind holding posture. And if the sculptor made this following the rules or from his own experience, even a Buddhist statue will tend to affect your own signless body image. Now you understand you have a body image that's simultaneous with your physical image. Now, one of the examples of that that I use most often is if your arm goes to sleep.

[08:17]

Your whole arm is gone. Where is it? I don't know. But finally you find your little finger. As soon as you find your little finger, now the rest of it is still dead, right? So you haven't found your arm, you've found the image of your arm as soon as you find your finger. So the location of the whole arm becomes apparent to you. Now that body image, and people try to lose weight now by changing the body image and so forth, I'm sure it works. Because your body image is a sinuous state of mind, even though it's simultaneous with your body.

[09:35]

So as you can hold this image of your breath moving in an oval, you can hold your body image or let loose of your body image, which is necessary for meditation practice to let loose of your body image. And sometimes when you're meditating, you have the experience of a vast body. And you might say to yourself, oh, that's just a meditation experience. Now you're showing the coercion of an inward consciousness that's outwardly anchored. Because you're saying, if I hold the mirror up to myself, there's no vast body there. But you have a vast kidney that isn't the kidney that would be shown in a mirror.

[10:54]

It's the kidney of all your functions. One of the things that's useful to... Supposedly Native Americans have this same view, but in any case, what you experience is real. If you have an experience of a vast body, you don't say, well, that's just a meditation experience. You say, oh, I also have a vast body. I don't know what that means, but yes, I also have a vast body. It doesn't mean you go around saying, I have a vast body. And you don't. It's something you discover that you most can know when you don't have a comparative consciousness.

[12:07]

Okay. Now, Now, if I hold this mirror up, I have to see this gigantic face in here. I have a vast face, yes. If I hold this mirror up, it exactly is reflecting what's there.

[13:09]

And you cannot see the silver. But you know it's there. Inferentially, you know it's there. So what I'm trying to at least do today is get you familiar with, inferentially, that mind is like the silver backing of the mirror that you can't see because it's exactly hidden in the reflection. And this is what's meant by mind in Buddhism. And when I was given this title, building a life together, I want this again to mean, of course, that we support each other mutually in friendship and so forth. But I also want us to support each other in realizing this mind of Buddhism.

[14:17]

And there's a saying, seeing the world as through the eyes of the congregation of sages. All things are reflected equally as in a mirror. This means that when you enter the house of enlightenment, you may have a Kensho experience and look into the window. You may have a Satori experience and get inside the door. And you may mature that experience living there. And that kind of personal realization we call Pratyekabuddha.

[15:34]

A Buddha who realizes through himself or herself, often by accident, that they can't teach others. And this so-called enlightened experience is a capacity of human beings, not necessarily the capacity of Protestants as well as Buddhists and Catholics. And as you know, Protestant conversion experiences are experientially as described, phenomenologically are virtually identical to the descriptions of the Torah. But they're moving into a different house. And in a lineage practice, we together start to live in a house which is not your house, but a house that belongs to the lineage.

[16:47]

We enter the tradition of realizing signless states of mind, or being at the north pole and everything is south, realizing the mind where there's no coordinates, we realize this mind and mature it within the tradition of our lineage. So this is what it means to say, to see the world as through the eyes of the congregation of sages. Where everything is seen equally as in a mirror. Which means you see the silver backing of the mirror as well as what's reflected in the mirror.

[18:03]

Now, when I reflect this, this is clearly the mirror is marked by destroyed, no, marked by Neil's image and Peter's image. Correct. Okay, so it's clearly there, and the mirror is marked by that image, right? So that's form. And that's not a sign of the state of mind. But the silver backing is signless, even though it's now reflecting Neil. Now that's what form is exactly emptiness, and emptiness is exactly form means.

[19:06]

There's Neil's image, but the silver backing, I turn it there and it's Markavi's image, your image, it's quite free. So its form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Now, this was discussed, of course, way back there in the 7th century, the sixth patriarch or sixth ancestor and all that stuff. They said, well, let's polish that mirror. And our venerable sixth ancestor, if you think you have to polish it, it's not signless, then there's something there. So our venerable sixth ancestor said, there's no mirror, there's no stand, there's no need to polish. Because that same logic that everything is reflected in the mirror, everything is, this is all at once the silver of the mirror.

[20:21]

So let's look at this house. It's a small space made larger. And it's a space bent upstairs and downstairs and so forth. In the same way of thinking, we can say the space of the building is emptiness. Even though this is a particular house, it could have been many houses. And that potentiality is still there. The brain is nothing but a whole bunch of foals. folded and folded and folded until they're virtually infinite pathways and we use some of those pathways as we use some of them to make this house but as you know many houses could have been built here

[21:49]

And this, I think if we can feel about this place that it is here in its particularity, at the same time, many houses can be built here. We can be quite free to develop this place. And since Neil is unfortunately sitting in front of me, so I have to use him as an example constantly. Obviously. That's erasing. There is the particular Neil I see there. What you know, Neil has many histories and many pathways that have been connected or haven't been connected.

[23:11]

And I guarantee you, he and each one of you has all the experiences of a Buddha. You haven't connected the point. The way you see your experiences, you've connected them a certain way. Practice begins to allow you to connect them in other ways. And to discover non-conscious experiences, not unconscious experiences, that you hadn't noticed. So if I can have a mind which sees exactly the form, particularity of Neil, But it's open to the many Nils that might be there.

[24:19]

I'm much more likely to feel and notice and bond with or respond to those aspects of Nil which are in subtextual or developmental stages. So I'm trying to give you a sense of familiarity with the idea of form as emptiness and with we are already enlightened and already Buddhas. You know, I just gave a seminar last weekend, as I told you, in Boulder, Colorado. And it was three hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Not too different from here. Of course, everybody had to go home.

[25:29]

Nobody slept at the place. But the whole thing was over. Experientially for me, the whole thing was over in a couple of hours. The whole weekend lasted, was very short. I couldn't believe it. It was gone in a moment. Already we're still in the first day, first day and a half. And this is much, much longer already than the Boulder Seminar. It's like the folds of this. There are so many more surfaces in this situation than in Boulder. where everybody went home and I haven't practiced with most of them a lot. It's not comparable. By the clock, it's a different, it's the same like the time. But in fact, experientially, in any real sense for me, it's not the same like the time.

[26:32]

It's again like, you know, excuse me, like being in love. You can be in love and one afternoon can stay with you the rest of your life. And a poet like the Greek poet Cavafy can write poem after poem over and over again about one afternoon. Because there were so many folds and surfaces of that afternoon. Again, this is wonderful to be in love but it also tells you what our mind is really like. is that you don't have to necessarily be in love.

[27:43]

But, you know, you're in love, more power to you. But if you are in love, more power to you. But if you're not in love, let's build sangha together. Because building a sangha life together is like opening yourself up to that many surfaces, inner and outer of mind and body. And good friendship. We already have that here. Maybe I think to change the flavor a bit and not get too far into this. Let me describe the difference between a position, a posture, and a mudra.

[28:49]

Now we have to start with our fellow Austrian or fellow German speaker, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who says that a pump with the mind in it is worth ten without the mind in it. And as you know, as I've told you before, that he had a vision as a young man of making bodybuilding a worldwide sport, which he did. And he also had that kind of ability to make distinctions or sensitivity that he knew the difference between a pump with a mind in it and without.

[30:10]

A pump with a mind in it is a posture. Is a, yeah, posture. Okay, so if we're doing kin-hin. Am I losing my translator? You think you're brilliant? A translator with her mind... You're filling your bicycle tires with your mind?

[31:13]

Okay. So if you do kin-hin, if you put your hands like this, that's a position. If you turn your hands up slightly as we do, that's a posture. Now if you try that, I think you can feel the difference. You just put your hands together, your hands are together, that's all. But if your arms are parallel to the floor, And you turn your hands up, suddenly there's an attentiveness in your arms. And that attentiveness is you literally put mind into your arms. And one of the qualities of a posture in a mudrik posture sensibility, is that a posture with your mind in it refines both mind and posture and leads to a more refined state of mind.

[32:36]

Yes, a posture where the state of mind is directed towards it refines both the posture and the state of mind and leads to a more refined state of mind. So a posture is also like a bridge because it goes to a more developed state of mind. Now, a mudra is when not just attentiveness is in it, but intention is in it. Now, if I take A certain mudra like this, this has an intention, it's not just attention. Now again, if you all take your hands and you put them together, you've probably done this, if you put them together like that and you kind of push till you feel a kind of bounciness.

[33:39]

And you can feel some spongy feeling. Out here it's kind of difficult, but in here it gets quite springy. Now to do that you really have to pay attention. You can't be thinking about something else. And you pretty much have to have a signless state of mind. Because if you think too much about it, it doesn't happen. This is the feeling a healer has. Now, when you, if we really want to get into this, when you practice a kind of feeling of an energy here, a warmth in your hands.

[34:48]

When we sit, we actually usually put our fingers in the palm of our hand and our thumbs together. And actually you're connecting not just your hands, you're connecting this energy channel to the center of the palms. And then if you come up into a posture like this, gassho, we usually come up to here and then up to here. And we generally put our thumbs like this. We don't put our hands flat. You put your hands flat, you lose that feeling. There needs to be some space.

[35:49]

So actually in this mudra, you are cupping a little space. And that's why your thumbs are usually like that, because they make a little space. Now generally you don't teach these things, you just do it and you hope that everybody catches the feelings. And then from that, you can go into such a thing, and that's all part of, it's not just this, it's part of being like this, moving up into this, into this, because you're carrying something. Do you see? So this is now a mudra, not a posture. It's a mudra as well as a posture. I don't think you'd have to translate it. Okay, so we practice with the body because it's much more accessible than the mind.

[37:05]

So you can arrange your posture quite easily. So this is an outer posture. Das ist eine äußere Haltung. But intention is an inner posture. Aber intention ist eine innere Haltung. And zazen, as I said, is an outer posture which allows mind to appear, allows you to study mind. Und zazen ist eine äußere Haltung. But zazen is also an inner posture. And you can understand the skandhas and the vijnanas as inner postures which also allow you to see and study mind. Okay, so that's... a kind of summary of the basics of, some of the basics of Zen practice.

[38:22]

This is what you're doing is you're finding a physical position. You're developing that into a posture so your mind appears and can be seen, studied and settled. Ihr entwickelt das weiter zu einer Haltung, sodass euer Geist gesehen, studiert und beruhigt werden kann. And as mind appears, you can begin to see those mental or inner postures, which allow you also to study mind. Und wenn der Geist in Erscheinung dreht, dann könnt ihr jetzt auch diese inneren Haltungen entwickeln, die es euch gestatten, den mind selbst zu studieren. And finally to study signless states of mind. So that's enough. Is there something anybody would like to bring up? Yes. Silent state of mind and background mind. Background mind is a kind of signless state of mind.

[39:40]

Kind of. Yeah. I always say kind of because if I make it too absolute, it's philosophy. You want to say it in German? You want to translate my answer? Sorry. No, please translate. Oh, you did. Okay, good. Yes? Yes. You said in the last session that you share with your friend Ivan Ilyich the ability to have a somatic resonance with the world.

[40:46]

And my question is... And if you feel the somatic resonance is that sort of similar territory, then you sign the states of mind. Yes. I mean, this is quite commonplace, what I'm talking about. It's commonplace, but it's not made clear. In other words, if you feel something with your body, we can say that's... body-mind, we can say that's a signless state of mind. But generally we don't develop that because we just take it for granted. Yeah. The scientist's mind, as you said, is folded.

[42:08]

Can be, yes. Can be folded. But for me there is a tendency to see it like a billboard because I have no other... that billboard is the easiest form to give it. To give someone no form who has no form is very difficult. So what helps to change from billboard to folded? I mean, is there an inner way to come from billboard more to folded? in German. I have the tendency to experience this mind without signs or the spirit of the background as if it were a wall, as if it were a surface. And Roshi said that it is more folded.

[43:11]

He also has the tendency to have several forms. And of course I would be interested in how you can come from this idea of the wall into the field view. Yes, the breath. Because you identify with mind as a billboard or reflections because you're identifying mind with visual consciousness. And we have a very powerful connection between conceptual and visual consciousness. so much so that it nearly proscribes proscribes the opposite, prescribe proscribes other ways of knowing so you it does help first of all to come to a seminar like this It helps me to talk about this.

[44:22]

Because it reminds me to quit turning things into objectified states of mind. And although I've been doing this a long time, I still have to remind myself to not turn things into objective states of mind. And when you bring your attention to your breath, Okay, when you bring your attention to your breath, in some ways, maybe I'll speak about it tomorrow, you are actually replacing continuity, connectiveness and separation as a conceptual thing into your breath.

[45:30]

Can you say that again? Generally, the functions of self are continuity, connectedness and separation. And as long as we experience those conceptually, we're very much tied to them. Once you get so that you are really... Your mind, your attention is inseparable from your breath. Your breath begins to function kind of like a self. Because it begins to supply you with a sense of connectedness, of continuity and separation. And just as these are mixed up in our conceptually, I mean, I can look at Neil and feel connected and separated at the same time.

[46:35]

So they're mixed up in breathing. But the breath begins to allow yourself breath begins to function as a kind of self, in that it fulfills those functions. And breath as mind is much more folded. It goes inside the flower and around and so forth. So you begin to have an experientially different sense. What some other teachings accomplish with visualizations and all kinds of other practices, Zen, which really likes everything to be practical and esoteric at the same time,

[47:42]

You know, in Zen we take the, we wash our dishes. And then we take this dirty dishwasher water and we say, tastes like nectar, like ambrosia. And we offer it to all the spirits and drink it. And so Zen tends to take practical things and ordinary things and bring the depth of practice into them. And the great emphasis on and The great emphasis on breath practice is particular to Zen.

[48:45]

And it's always with you again. It's always re-beginning. It's nothing special. Just bring your attention to it. And you physicalize your mind. And refine your mind. And the rubbing together of breath and mind actually make a more subtle attention. This subtle attention we call subtle breath. And that subtle attention is more like the mind you're speaking about. If I go on like this, there'll be nothing left to talk about tomorrow. But we'll probably find something. Yeah. Say something please about other mudras.

[50:01]

Last session you talked about that mudra. Could you say something to, for example, this mudra or other mudras, what meaning they have and how and why they are applied and by whom? It took a whole Sashin to get to that. So that's enough. And every now and then I see how you... Yeah? Yesterday evening you said you would talk about inward consciousness and interior consciousness and outward anchoring. Today I heard you talking mostly about inward consciousness, which is anchored.

[51:04]

I somehow have to be inquisitive to talk this well about interior consciousness. Yes. So, is it right that as soon as you talk out of interior consciousness or about that it will become inward consciousness? Mr. Rashi, today, above all, talked about the inner consciousness that is anchored in the outside. I've only recently made this distinction between inward and interior. Although I've been making the distinction between inner posture and outer posture for a long time, I realized recently when I talk about developing an interior consciousness, and I say that we tend to educate

[52:17]

an exterior consciousness but don't know interior consciousness. I realized I knew this but I didn't know how to speak about it. It wasn't completely clear because We all have an experience of interior consciousness, we're thinking and so forth. So it took me quite a while, the last weeks or last month or two, to find that the real distinction is between where the mind is anchored. So what I've been speaking about, as you say, is inward consciousness, like reading and thinking, which is primarily anchored in the logic of our culture.

[53:41]

But even beginners at practice, people who haven't practiced long, get to the equivalent of the North Pole or South Pole where all directions are the same. And what do you do when you get to that point where the coordinates fail you? Most of us start thinking about something. Or we get distracted. And we say we're distracted or... you know, we can't do zazen, but really it's just that we don't know how to stay in that place where there aren't coordinates.

[54:57]

And what I'm saying is the real development of an interior consciousness is when you can stay in that place where there aren't coordinates. And that's given various names. Like original mind. Or the mind before your parents were born. Okay. Or Buddha mind. Okay. Now, the key to that is the recognition of signless states of mind. Now, it's like this mirror. The images on the mirror are anchored. They're in the glass, right? Just like Neil's image is in my mind. Neil's out there, but what I see of him is actually within my mind and body.

[56:09]

So this image of Neil is in the glass. But it's anchored out there. But the silver is anchored in the silver. It's not anchored out there. Do you understand that distinction? And mind that's anchored in mind is what I mean by interior consciousness. Yeah. Now what's strange about this and oxymoronic is that an oxymoron is like American culture. Of course, I'm a believer that America has a living culture, but aside from that, and not just yogurt.

[57:34]

Okay. What's interesting is that while inward consciousness is an inward-outward movement, Interior consciousness is anchored in mind itself. It's a mind before a thought arises. And it's the purest field of intention and attention. But that interior consciousness or awareness, although it's truly interior because it's not anchored in the outside, it's experienced as inseparable from the outside.

[58:41]

When you feel most completely anchored in interior consciousness is when you feel most inseparable from everything. So it's strangely contradictory, but... That's the way it is. It's only contradictory because our language makes it sound contradictory. So we're here at the boundaries of what language can describe. Because whether Shakespeare or us, language is used to describe physical objects and communicate to other people conceptually about them. And without analogies, like the silver behind the mirror, which is hidden in the reflections, without analogies,

[59:51]

It's the analogy which I'm teaching, not the language. Okay, yeah, I think we did some good work today. That means that interior consciousness is inherent, I mean, in a way, inborn, so you cannot develop it. I mean, you can uncover it, but you can't develop it. Yeah, that's tomorrow. But you want to say that in German? Yeah. The way our... conception of the world works we'd have to think of it that way and it's actually somewhat useful to think of it that way and many Zen practices are actually based on thinking of it that way

[61:23]

I think they're wrong. But it's a useful way of looking at it. Wrong isn't quite right, but why I think it's... Yeah, it's too strong, because it's actually useful. And I think what Ralph is bringing up, that there's problems with looking at it that way. If nothing else, because Buddhism says everything is changing and there's nothing inherent. So how do we change our view of the world so we don't think of original mind as inherent. I think I've made too many demands on myself and you today.

[62:34]

So we've got to have a little less demanding topic in the latter part of this afternoon. It's not that demanding, but it will take a little time for me to... So maybe what I could speak about tomorrow is that and the parallel between original mind and an isolated, generated mind. These are things I've never spoken about. Maybe I think, hey, we're starting a new center here, I'd better... Better say something interesting.

[63:44]

Or maybe I feel it's necessary to move us to the next step in practice. To have a bigger understanding of what we're doing. Yeah. So I'll come to some of that tomorrow. Yes, Peter? Is it okay if I leave tomorrow? Yeah. The picture of the two mirrors, which are very close together, and the silver in the mirror, Isn't it the same state of mind? Isn't it the same, at least the same experience? Or at least very close? For me, for my experience, for my feeling, mirror to mirror reflects more the situation, feeling related with everything. So that's the reason for the question.

[64:49]

Okay. Deutsch? I asked whether the state of mind where the mirror reflects in the mirror and the one who represents the silver in the mirror, whether that is not the same, or at least whether it is very close. And for me, when I understand this emotionally, so from my feeling, this mirror is the mirror Let me say, last weekend in Boulder I spoke about, what they asked me to speak about is the sound of one hand clapping. And without going into it, let me just say that I don't like when the sound of one hand is taught as a Zen koan.

[65:51]

Where the one hand is identified with Buddha nature and the sky and space and etc. If the koan has the veracity, it's got to be tied to the hand. The hand can't be a symbol of all the big things. So I think we have to stay with the particularities. Yeah. So let's just stay with the particularity of this mirror analogy. You have two mirrors together. So they're reflecting nothing but each other. And then in that sense the mirror and the silver are the same. But this is not emptiness.

[67:05]

This is a very fragile state. As soon as you move it, it's lost. But the silver is still there. So... And this fragile state of oneness or a unitary state, I prefer unitary to oneness, is a window, is a gate, is a taste. And the skill at being able to stay in that fragile state is a skill that allows you to have a direct experience of emptiness.

[68:11]

But that fragile state itself is not a direct experience of emptiness. Because emptiness is not fragile. All the reflections in the world can't harm it. Must have been the plane to Munich. You said earlier that these mental conditions without signs, that when you get into them, you lose them very quickly, you start to think, you go here and there. I have the experience that I am often frightened and that it is important to stay there. I think that's the case. What could help to stay there? What could help staying in the signless states of mind?

[69:15]

Not to go into thinking and... Breath. Breath. Really? Yeah. If you can't keep your attention with your breath, you can't stay with the signless state of mind. It's that simple. It's all talk. Until you can stay with your breath, it's all talk. But when you can stay with your breath, you have a kind of physical ability to experience mind. Yes. I have a feeling when I'm walking or doing dishes or something like that, it's easy to stay with the breath or it's easy to practice that. A lot of times when life gets complicated... That's why monastic life has a lot of dishwash here.

[70:16]

But I find that when I lose a certain flavor of life, when I do that in a situation where life is more complex, I don't, like if... if it's an interesting discussion or I watch a good movie or I'm in love or something like that, I don't want to stay with my press. I'd rather get lost. It's my problem too. I'm being ganged up on. Yeah. Is it more like you use staying with your breath as a platform for getting lost at the right moment? Or is it more like you really, there's a goal to stay in your breath all the time. There's a goal to stay in your breath all the time. Or an intention. But while the realization of that goal is relatively crude or primitive or based on effort, naturally it interferes with your activity.

[71:25]

But when it becomes completely un-self-conscious you no longer have to make any effort. Then the breath mind leads you into abandoning everything. But at first it's a practice. So as a practice, your effort is to do it all the time. But you forget. And you don't want to over-practice. No pianist or athlete you can over-train. So you want to forget about it sometimes. But when you remember, naturally remember, easily remember, come back to it. Again, as I say, it's a homeopathic type practice. Lots of small doses. But eventually you don't have to think about whether your breath and mind are together.

[73:14]

Then you can really abandon yourself. We'll have a party when that happens. Let me know. Your rest and then mine. I'm looking forward to it. I'll have a party with all of you. Then I'll celebrate with all of you. Unsigned mind. Mind is not mind anyway. Isn't mind signless anyway? Why your emphasis on signless mind? Yeah, it is. I'm glad you know that. I'm glad you know that. Any other problems?

[74:15]

Okay. In a way, I'm using this as two technical terms. Unsigned mind, meaning mind without a knower, and signless mind, meaning mind without a mark. Because English gives me that opportunity. Unsigned, meaning unsigned, and one without a mark. I don't know. Does German have the same? No. Well, I'm sorry. But I'll never, even if I learn German, I will never be able to speak German well enough.

[75:20]

I can barely speak English well enough to do this. We give you as present Grimm's Wörterbuch. Grimm's? Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch. German language. Oh, not the same Grimm who wrote the fairy tales. I'll stick with the fairy tales. Yeah, okay. All right, well, thanks. I look forward to that part of it. It's so difficult to translate. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think this is enough for today, huh? Yeah, more than enough. Sorry. Overflowing. But it's so much fun to be here with you. Thanks. And it's such a wonderful, even though it's a little abstruse, it's wonderful to have an opportunity to speak about something like this with so many people.

[76:25]

And it's not easy to do, and you make it possible. And possible to do it, I feel, with some accuracy. So shall we sit for a few minutes? To see as through the mind, the eyes of the congregation of sages.

[78:02]

I'd like to speak about this place a little bit at the beginning of this morning. And I also think we should have, as we generally do in this February seminar, a kind of general meeting of the Sangha, which is here, who is here. Um, next year, maybe because of the, if we can, we couldn't this year because somebody had committed them, we'd committed this date to someone else. The Fasching time, maybe we could have a little more time if it was when there was a long weekend. We could leave a little later on Sunday instead of so early today.

[79:45]

Anyway, we have to, if we want this sangha to develop, we have to make time for it on several levels other than just teaching. And I believe, you know, and there's... You know, we have businesses and universities and the nation-state and the individual. So wir haben Geschäfte und... Businesses and... Universities. Und Universitäten und... Nation-state. I'm a little tired this morning. Oh, you look awake. Und nation-states. The nation-state, the country. Also die Regierung, governments. Well, okay. We say in English the nation state means like Germany or America.

[81:11]

So now, we have to stay concentrated over here. Anyway, I believe that there's other possibilities of finding your identity than just as an individual or in these units I mentioned. Yeah. So I feel that the Sangha, the assembly of sages, has a role. If not that we're sages, at least committed to wisdom. I hope we all have the immodesty to commit ourselves to wisdom. It's an immodesty we need and our society needs, I think.

[82:28]

So maybe around 11 we'll stop and have a gathering together and then we'll have lunch. Now, we had a meeting last evening to sort of see how we're doing here, and actually we're doing pretty well. We can discuss it in the meeting, of course, but I'd just like to give you a quick picture. We raised 305,000 Deutschmarks last year. Independent of the pledges, that's for the purchase of the building.

[83:46]

And we completed the purchase and we created the legal organization that can own the property as a not-for-profit corporation. And we borrowed 250,000 Deutsche Marks from the bank. 50,000 more than we needed. And we had a party. This is the party. And we have about 70,000 of that 50. Pretty good, huh? Yeah, so anyway, we have 70,000, and we had this extra 50, and now we have 70 as a kind of backup reserve fund.

[84:54]

And we have pledges which are coming in pretty well. And the pledges support about 80% of our expenses, 70% of our expenses. And then we're working, we're doing 35 weekends Something like that. 35 or more weekends or programs this year? I don't know how many weekends, but we have 105 days. Seminars. So basically we're also operating this as a seminar conference house, center. So 105 days this year are booked with events. So we operate this place as a seminar center.

[86:13]

And we're doing that, I mean, partly everyone was so generous in making this possible. Now we who live here are trying to work to produce income. And we're producing a pretty good net income, and we're going to save that for the 250,000 Deutschmark payment we have to make about two years from now. Ideally, if we can continue at least a pledge base of some level, we can reduce the amount that this is a conference center.

[87:16]

So 23 months from now or so, when we've paid off the building, which we will do, Und in 23 Monaten, wenn wir dann also den Rest noch bezahlen müssen, was wir selbstverständlich tun werden? I would like us to slowly reduce down as much as possible the conference side of what we do. Also ab da würde ich wirklich sehr gerne also die Konferenzaktivitäten reduzieren, soweit das dann möglich ist. Because I would like to see practice flow through this building 365 days a year. Right now, we can have various weekends of our own, but basically the energy of this place is very different because it has this different rhythm.

[88:21]

Now I'm speaking about this not just because I think we all should know and discuss it, But because I believe that this place is also teaching. Not just a place for teaching, it itself is practice and teaching. Another kind of home for us. I remember when I was in high school, there was a Greek community and a Jewish community.

[89:23]

And the Greek community and the Jewish community both had schools outside of the regular school. But they maintained a Greek community school and a Hebrew school. It wasn't that these kids were the smartest, though they were quite smart, but they excelled in all kinds of things because they developed some kind of identity together. It really made our school quite interesting. Basically, it was a slum school, which was 55% black. But these two other little schools somehow make the whole school better. Now I'm not making a direct analogy that we're kind of school outside of school.

[90:40]

But I do believe a practice place where we develop the practice together can make us in not obvious ways, but important ways, more intelligent. And helping each other in various ways. Anyway, that's my vision of this place and of our society and what's important. Now, Geraldine Giesler and also Sabina, from pretty much the beginning, the three of them, have really done a tremendous job in bringing the place together and making it work.

[91:46]

And they bring their, Gerald and Gisela bring their experience of about 10 years at Crestone to here. And Sabina brings her life experience, of course, in her time at Crestone and a practice period at Crestone. So if we look at the history, you know, we developed San Francisco Zen Center and Green Gulch to be the gateways to Tassajara. And Tassahara is an expression of Suzuki Roshi and my commitment to monastic practice and lay practice working together.

[92:51]

And to do what has never worked before, men and women practicing together. And really, Kasahara, the pressure on us was to make it for all men, but Sukhiyoshi and I both said, we've got to, at this point, have men and women practicing together. And although we were part of a general movement, we were the first and we set the pattern for the practice centers in the United States to have men and women practice together. In the last thousand years, it's never worked. That's partly because there's a societal bias against it, but still, it hasn't worked. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if 20 years from now all practice centers are all men or all women.

[94:03]

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