Now, we have the sense of... Excuse me, maybe we should close the window. Is it too hot? It doesn't bother me, but can you hear in the back? Yes? Because we can close the window if you want. All right. I think we all have the sense of the value for our body of a balanced diet. But most of us don't immediately assume that our mind needs a balanced diet. In fact, I think for various reasons we have some resistance to thinking of our mind as something we influence.

[01:07]

Because mind is either natural or it belongs to God or it belongs to the devil or something. Or we think we're interfering with something if we see our mind as a construct. Or we have problems with who's doing the changing of the mind. But that's a little bit like trying to find out who the it is when it rains. I mean, if you ask, at least in English, we say it rains.

[02:36]

But if you ask any raindrop who it is, the raindrop is going to have a hard time answering. And likewise, if you try to find the it that's doing you, you're going to have a hard time finding it. Each raindrop is doing itself. Or I can say, we can say rain rains. And so your various states of mind do themselves. But usually we're interfering all the time. And so what are the ingredients of your state of mind or state of being? First of all I think it's helpful to recognize your own power.

[03:49]

I mean we don't get up because the sun gets up. I mean, that's the usual way of thinking. Well, if the sun's coming up, I think I should get up. It's the day's beginning. But in Buddhist practice, we have more the feeling of the sun gets up and I get up. We're quite independent. Maybe the sun comes up because I come up. So each thing, all these things, on one sense it's a sequential causality. But whenever you get into a sequential causality, you get into an infinite regression.

[05:01]

Who caused the cause, who caused the cause, who caused the cause, etc. So to stop that, you have to be, I mean, it's all right here. Now, these are two ways of looking at the world. If you always look at yourself as cause, this is an effective and functional way to be. But you lose your power. You don't have your true power when you always think that. Now, Christiana is sitting here in front of me. But there's nobody else on the planet sitting where she's sitting.

[06:24]

She's quite unique, absolutely. And it's true of each of you. Each of you is completely in your own. No one else is where you are. This is a kind of power actually. If you can really find your seat everywhere you are you find your seat. So I mean if you're sitting back there or you're even walking there's a sense of in your walking you found your seat exactly where you are. Now at first this is a kind of idea. But experience of your body.

[07:44]

You begin to feel a kind of at rest in your body. Now one of the ingredients of the day in practice is this sense of being at rest. And in the midst of any kind of activity you can feel this. So now it's not so easy to feel this all the time. We could say one of the qualities of the so-called Bodhisattva, the person who has the suchness of enlightenment,

[08:52]

Feels something like this all the time. And is able to sustain it. But it makes a big difference if you can feel it just for a moment. So practice is also a kind of physical memory in which you have a certain kind of experience sometimes you've all felt occasionally at rest. But does your body remember that feeling? And do you feel that feeling can be present that you can let that feeling come up sometimes? Now Dogen has a statement which is something like experiencing manifold dharmas through the arising of self.

[10:26]

Manifold dharmas just means all the thing units of the world. So experiencing all the thing units through the arising of self is delusion. Experiencing self through the arising of manifold dharmas is enlightened. Now, what this kind of Buddhist expression means and I'm using such a phrase just to give you some familiarity with it is that when you let the world arise in your perceptual field creating a field you can find some rest in that.

[11:48]

And it's also the sense of creating a field. So when you wake up in the morning or right now you can have a feeling of letting this day to receive this day. Und auch jetzt könnt ihr ein Gefühl haben, diesen Tag zu empfangen. Maybe the it that rains is you. Because everything that you feel is actually interior. Denn alles, was ihr fühlt, ist im Grunde genommen innen. Now, this is something I've been trying to make clear recently in the last month or so. And it's a very important dimension of practice. In other words, again, Christiana is here in front of me.

[12:58]

And I know she's there or something's there. But what I know is only what my senses create. I can only know her to the extent that my senses reproduce her. Do you understand? So actually she's an interior experience. But the physical things of the world have a tremendous magnetism and draw us away from that feeling. Now, the more I can sustain the sense that what when I see her or I see you, I'm seeing my own perception of you.

[14:11]

Then I can make that perception brighter or dimmer. I mean, it's You are, excuse me for saying so, I don't know you, but you're actually inside me right now. And whatever you are, it's constantly informing that construct. And that construct has its own identity. So this room is, this space I see here is actually interior space. So in that sense, it's me that's reigning. And not only are you each of you in my field of being I'm in your field of being.

[15:35]

And there isn't just one space here there's the space of 30 or 40 people. Now, intellectually you can understand this, I think. It's not hard to understand. But it's actually hard to experience. And it's hard to sustain the experience. And when you do, though, and to do it, you need to do something like meditation practice. Or some kind of mindfulness practice. But the more you have this feeling, The more you feel complete all the time, because nothing seems outside you.

[16:51]

Even if you feel lonely, that loneliness is inside you. Whatever happens, it doesn't feel like it's out there and you're losing it. No. If you're going to cook your own soup of the day, You want to put some different salt and pepper and little this and that in it, right? And you can assume that you, again, the practice is, as I say, is a kind of homeopathic medicine. Very small quantities have a big effect in your life. So if each day you have a little sense of this subtle body,

[17:53]

This subtle body that finds itself at rest. And when you have that feeling of being at rest, you'll feel a kind of softness in your body. your skin will feel a little bit like a baby's skin. Or you'll feel some kind of softness behind your eyelids. Suikiroshi, my teacher, He says the quality of being is the quality of the activity itself. This is another way of saying when self arises through the arising of the world,

[19:11]

The quality of your being is mixed with your activity. And you're not forcing things. And one of the reasons we practice mindfulness of the breath And the many dimensions of practicing with your breath that occur over years as you do it. First of all, it begins to bring your mind and body together. So you're in a way bringing your intention is bringing attention to your breath.

[20:21]

And your intention is a certain kind of mind. It brings attention to your breath. But your breath with attention brought to it is also a certain kind of mind. And it's a different kind of mind than the mind that brought attention to the breath. So a kind of mind associated with breath begins to come up. So this more subtle mind begins to bring attention to your... Anyway, you got the picture. So if, as you, and one of the ways to kind of feel this during the day, this is a kind of alchemistry, alchemy, in which, again, you're using concentration

[21:45]

and energy and faith and knowledge to cook your soup. First you're accepting your soup and then you're kind of making your soup more subtle. You're moving from the graspable elements of our existence to the less graspable elements. But you start out with the graspable element. I mean, for example, bringing your attention to your breath. And in bringing your attention to your breath, you're finding a certain kind of pace. A pace that arises from your breath. And you, I mean, we're all aware that if you're in an agitated state of mind, you will breathe more rapidly. Or if you've been jogging, you'll breathe more rapidly.

[23:19]

So your breath is quite responsive, very responsive to both your mind and your body. So initially the breath is just this wonderful dimension of being that allows you to become more subtle almost immediately. And in practice you're not forcing anything. Basic practice is what Suzuki Roshi called beginner's mind. Or we could say an uncorrected state of mind. And this uncorrected state of mind is a kind of presence that takes care of everything. Now, we're only, us guys, you and I, we're only here together for what, about an hour this evening.

[24:34]

So we can't look at these things very thoroughly. But, Every now and then it's good to have a little feeling of this Dharma and this practice in your life. Whether you come to this lecture or whether you just find the companion of your breath with you. So if you again begin to find a kind of pace of your own mind and body through your breath and you begin to participate in this pace without forcing anything It actually becomes a kind of place you can feel in which mind and body sort of come together in a kind of pulse maybe.

[25:54]

And then you can use that kind of feeling to begin to feel the pace of your friend. And so instead of joining your friend with your thoughts about him or her, And just as you've now begun to feel your own pace, you allow, you receive your friend's pace. And you receive the pace of each thing, each physical object. And this is again letting the manifold dharmas experience himself through the arising of manifold dharmas.

[27:10]

And each time you do this kind of sense of allowing the haste of your breath and your mind and your body to come together, And you can stay with that for a little bit. It becomes part of the soup of the day. And if you do it in your meditation practice or you do it in a taxi on the way somewhere or on the bus on the way to work becomes part of this balanced diet of the spirit. Now, each of your, although your body is, for the most part, seems to be non-conscious, Actually your body is a kind of consciousness or awareness that's accessible to us, but not through usual consciousness.

[28:30]

So your body is, let's just say for now, for practical purposes, it's kind of non-conscious. But each part is working independently. Your kidney is working independently, your lungs are working independently and so forth. And each one working independently is also working together. Now, if for instance you thought that you could be healthy just by eating, and you took care of everything that happened to you through eating, And you didn't do any exercise.

[29:51]

Or much else. Whenever you needed something you either chocolate, coffee or something. You wouldn't have a balanced diet. And you'd probably be pretty sick. But if you feed your spiritual and mental the words are not very good, if you feed your mind and your spirit through conceptual thinking all the time, it's equally sick-making. You have to feed and nourish yourself in some way that's has more dimensions than just conceptual thought.

[30:59]

And you can kind of tame yourself with trying to control the past and imagining the future. But you won't be nourished by that. And so one of the practices I would suggest you bring to the balanced diet of the day Is the sense of being nourished when you do things? And that's, maybe I can use the example of feeling complete on each thing you do. For example, my glasses are here. And if I pick them up,

[32:01]

I can practice doing each thing completely. Just putting my glasses on, I can do it and I don't feel anything particularly. But I can do it so there's a sense of... of completeness in it that you can't see but can be known by me. In other words, I can feel I'm going to bring my hand to my glasses and I do. And that's complete. And I can lift it up and that's complete. And if I'm beginning to feel the field of my body, I can bring it up actually into my chakras.

[33:17]

Because the chakras are just places that you can find a location other than your head and your conceptual thought. And they're defined and arise through your activity. So when you, I mean, for instance, in Buddhist practice do this. You're bringing the energy of this chakra into your hands. And you're creating a little field here. And then when you lift your hands up like that, you're bringing it up into awareness. But that's also true if you have a cup of coffee. How you hold a cup of coffee and drink it, you're not just drinking coffee, you're actually drinking your chakras.

[34:29]

You're bringing them into attention Because there's a field here. And you may not notice it at first, but it's there. And if people do things, hold a pencil, they'll hold it here more likely than here. You can notice that when people move their hands, they'll move them in relationship to their chakras. But you can actually feel them as you become more sensitive and less conceptual in how you let the world arise. Now I'm telling you all these things To just give you a feeling for what the ingredients of your day can be.

[35:36]

While you do everything you usually do. Okay, so I bring this, I pick this up and I have a feeling of complete, I feel complete. I feel complete. I feel complete. I have a feeling of completeness when I do it. Now, if I do that all year, then the year I'm going to feel completer than if I didn't. I mean, if you want to feel complete at the end of this year, do the many small ingredients of your day completely. But that just means you also have to then develop the sense of when something feels complete.

[36:45]

So in a similar sense, you can come to the feeling of being nourished by what you do. You're speaking with a friend. And you feel a little uneasy afterwards. Probably if you do, that means you were leaking. And it's very useful to notice when you leak when you speak. So in practice one of the first things is you begin to notice on your activity of body, speech and mind when you're leaking. When you have a clear sense that you're losing energy, you feel depleted afterwards. Or you finish your day at work and you just feel depleted.

[37:57]

In Buddhist terms that means you weren't able to seal your energy body and it leaked out into the world. So one of the first senses... I don't know what she's saying, but I hope it's sort of similar to what I'm saying. So one of the first practices of the sense of everyday practice in Zen is to notice when you're leaking and when you're not leaking in your activity. And if you notice that, subtly you begin, this is a kind of knowledge, that your body has, suddenly you begin to negotiate better when you leak and when you don't leak.

[39:19]

And eventually you'll understand it well enough to stop leaking. And there's a kind of stability that comes with that, and you don't feel depleted. And it's one of the ingredients of what the Buddhists call tranquility, that your body starts feeling good all the time. And the next stage would be not only just when I'm speaking with somebody, I don't feel like I'm leaking. I also feel nourished by my speaking. Right now, when I'm speaking with you, I feel nourished by you.

[40:33]

I don't feel I'm using my energy. In fact, I feel you're giving me things. And actually I trust that feeling to find out what to say to you. So it's a kind of feeling I can sense as I'm talking with you. And so this is another sense that you develop in practice. Which is part of, again, your balanced diet. So this rain, which is coming and helping the dry period we've had, can also nourish you.

[41:41]

Now, when you leave this evening you might just see what can your relationship to the rain be so that it nourishes you. Dogen has a poem which is as simple as black rain on the roof. And you've, I'm sure, had many times in which the rain has been nourishing. You know, you're inside maybe and you hear the rain, it's wonderful. You let your body remember those things.

[42:42]

Or you let your body and your breath remember those things. Or you begin to feel the pace of this evening in the rain. How the cars feel a little different the way they're driving in the rain. And all this is happening in your interior space. These cars are actually driving inside you. I mean, they're outside you, but everything you know about them is inside you. Now what's one of the differences between just thinking they're outside and knowing, feeling how you're creating this perception inside you?

[43:54]

One of the differences is that the more you can feel this interiorized space, you're beginning to mature your continuum. Now, we have to do many things to live this life. And you have to mature yourself as psyche. But in Buddhist practice, you also have to mature your continuum. which means a kind of sense of almost tactile presence which by experiencing things arising in that presence more and more

[44:55]

this presence or interiorized space gets larger and larger until I'm living in a kind of field of being, not just kind of mechanical space. It's almost like a liquid in this room. That's been created by us this evening in the last 30 or 40 minutes. And it's absolutely unique. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. And it's completely dependent on this combination of people. And if there were two or three different people here, it'd be a little different.

[46:14]

It'd be equally valuable, but it'd be a little different. And the more you and I can practice keeping a sense of identity and beingness on our breath... the more we can sense this field of being in which we swim and live and if I move my arm this way in this direction I have to be careful because I may be hitting you with this liquid being pushed this direction. Now I'm just creating a picture, but it's sort of like this. And I feel I can swim out into the room over to different areas. And I feel some of you are sort of hiding under a rock out there in the water and some of you are swimming forward. And you each have the specific positions of your conceptual physical body.

[47:31]

But in the sense of your subtle body, you're occupying quite different kinds of spaces each day. It's quite great, you know. And this is more what's meant by bodhisattva practice. you're not living in a physical sort of mechanical world anymore you're living in a field of being that's arising all the time and the first way to contact it is through your breath and bringing your attention to your breath and allowing a mind to arise through your breath and beginning to sense and feel this and bringing a sense of completeness and wholeness to your activity and when you

[48:49]

Do things with a sense of being nourished while you're doing them. You're also nourishing and maturing this continuum or presence of being. And you're not fighting with the day all the time. I mean, we build buildings where you don't know what the weather is like at any time of year. And that's a kind of fighting with the day. And I think, anyway, when we fight with the day, we get older faster. And when you... allow, receive each day live in the presence of each day live in the presence of each person, room, situation as being arises and keep finding your rest and ease in it

[49:57]

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