Dogen said in one of his last teishos toward the end of his life before he got sick or when he was already sick I simply would like all of you to be steadily intimate with your mind field I simply would like each of you to be steadily intimate with your mind field. Yeah, and this is what I was, you know, trying to say or trying to approach yesterday. No, I'm not saying this because it's one of my last teishas.

[01:14]

Although I definitely considered, as you know, not coming to Europe this summer. And I did, primarily, I mean, it's also because I miss you guys and all that stuff. But the technical reason was that I couldn't really participate in whether we should get this property next door. Did you walk around in it today? No, you didn't. Okay. He told me, Mike, take everybody on the lunch in. I shouldn't have said so? I let the secret out? Oh. Maybe I shouldn't translate. Too many people here have been studying English with me. Go ahead, translate.

[02:19]

Get it over with. Okay. Sounds like much more than I said. Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, I think we should get the property. But I, it's, you know, it's not for me, it's for the Sangha. So really the Sangha has to decide. And maybe the sangha, even if they decide to, they can't. I don't know. Maybe it's too much for us. And we're a primarily lay sangha which is developed through Johanneshof.

[03:25]

And sashins at the house distiller. And this would be, you know, a different sangha if we had property next door too. We might be able to do practice periods here and we might have less of a connection with Crestown and so forth then. And that sangha doesn't exist yet, so how can they vote? Yes, I don't know. But in any case, it's a good shake-up for this sangha. We should try and see, get all shook up and... If we fail, that's good too.

[04:28]

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I couldn't meet with Herr Graubner and stuff like that if I was in America, so I thought, okay, I'll come. Because most of you know I wrote a letter to the Sangha saying I might well not come. Because I'm going to finish the book this year or die. Weil ich entweder das Buch in diesem Jahr beende oder sterbe. Also da gibt es Steuern und Sterben und das Buch.

[05:32]

We have an expression, there's only two things you have to do in life, pay taxes and die. Do we have that expression? I don't think so. No, I think in England, too. Yeah, well, it's probably true in Deutschland even more than in America. But you have more taxes. So I'm quite excited because after Sashina I'm going to be here until December 15th and I have no schedule except to work, to write. So anyway, I considered actually during this session just either not coming or maybe just giving the lectures and writing.

[06:48]

But, you know, I actually like doing Sushin with you. So anyway, doing Sushin and giving this lecture. Yeah. At the same time, I feel it would be good to just leave you with your sitting practice. Leave you with your sitting practice and the schedule. And this is the most, just that is the most effective way to practice. Yeah. But we still, as you know, have this practice of meeting and speaking.

[08:11]

And we should study this. Yeah. What difference does it make that I'm here talking now? Dogen describes Zazen as the Dharma gate of ease and joy. I think probably a few of you might disagree with this description. But anyway, that's what he called it. And he means that ease and joy aren't somewhere else. If they're anywhere, they're here.

[09:13]

Find your ease in what you're doing right now. This attitude is at the center of conceptual Zen practice. We say The jewel hidden in the mountain of form. The jewel hidden in the mountain of form. But why is it hidden? Because it's not hidden. It is the mountain of form. The jewel is the mountain of form. Now, does that help you practice?

[10:24]

I don't know. Yesterday I described Kin Hin as either bringing the mind up through the heels and the spine and through the body and with a forward motion. And I also described K'in Hin as bringing tension up through the heels, through the feet, through the body and then stepping forward. And some of you may have tried this. And maybe you saw that the different way of describing to yourself what you're doing makes a difference. So the question at the heart of this practice of meeting and speaking is how does how we describe what we're doing affect what we're doing?

[11:50]

I mean, you're just walking, you're doing kin hin, you know, you sort of Watson along there. And why isn't just walking, you know, the guy in front of you is doing it and you can do it too. And it's assumed in monastic practice if you're together enough for months and enough months if I do Zazen with that conception if I do Kinhin with that conception a conception which in a way comes after discovering this experience in Zazen, you would discover it without having to have it pointed out.

[13:15]

But most of us are not that physically attuned to each other. And we're not together enough. But as I've said before, I changed my style of teaching quite a bit when I came to Europe. Because in the States, I only spoke in monastic, really, basically monastic context. I gave Every Sunday I gave, or many Sundays I gave a public lecture with several hundred people would come. But they were definitely public lectures for non-practitioners.

[14:27]

But when I came to Europe, I didn't do many public lectures. But just practiced with those who happened to come to Sashins and seminars. And I found I had to explain, describe much more thoroughly Okay. And I think it's all in all been okay, good. And I try to describe things in a way that doesn't take away your discovery of what I'm trying to say. But I'm still always debating what should I describe, what should I not describe.

[15:51]

And yesterday I was trying to speak about what we could call perhaps an attentional continuum. Now, I know this experience. But why should I try to describe it to you? Well, again, if we were in a purely traditional Zen practice situation, The tradition would be that I would not describe it. You'd either get it by discovering, feeling it, or you wouldn't, and that's just the way it would be.

[16:57]

And I'm committed basically to that way of practicing with people. But I'm also committed to Western Buddhism as... to my understanding that Western Buddhism will be a lay, hopefully adept, Sangha. Yeah. And so I try to find some middle way. of describing in ways that doesn't take your discovery away from you.

[18:07]

Okay. So, again, I know the experience of what I'm naming attentional continuance. And let me assume that many of you already also know this attentional continuum. Which Dogen describes as being steadily intimate with your mind field. So why should I, if you already know this, and I already know this, why should I try to describe it?

[19:13]

Well, because what I have found is that If the description points rather accurately to the experience, it actually helps us advance our practice. Because the description often helps the development of the practice. This is not my theory.

[20:14]

This is my experience with practicing with you. Okay, so what has Dogen done when he says the Dharma gate of ease and joy? What is the tradition done when it describes the contents of self in effect as the skandhas? It's renamed our experience. So yesterday I said the self-referencing sensorium.

[21:15]

No, I think this is kind of weird mechanical language. But that's the point. I'm trying to rename your experience. So if I just say the self, a lot of baggage comes with the word self. So I'm trying to take to make To emphasize the experiential aspects of beingness. So I say it's the sensorial continuum. Or the attentional sensorium. Sorry, I have a problem with all these words in English and you have to say them all in German.

[22:35]

Poor thing. Okay. Okay, so let's play with these things. Let me use the word unit. Your sensorial unit. It sounds like we're designing a computer. All right. But I think it's useful to look at your experience not as self or senses or even perceptions but let's call it a Dogen calls it a mind field. So let's play with calling it a sensorial unit.

[23:39]

So at a particular moment, notice whatever appears in your senses. In your senses, to your senses. So there's, most commonly, when sitting zazen, at least, there's sounds. So you can ask yourself, are those sounds me? Or are those sounds separate from me? But say I took away sound and smell and smell of the wood of the Zendo. Insight and the kind of proprioceptive feel of the body.

[24:53]

Is there any self left? Can you take all of those things away and have some sense of self? How are they mixed up, self and sense? If you're going to know yourself, these are things you have to sort out. By bringing, giving attention to them. So say you go through the five senses. Noticing each.

[25:53]

Does it belong to me? Is it separate from me? Is it also me? Is whatever I mean by me inseparable from the sensorium? Okay, can you imagine a self without a sensorium? And all your accumulated experience isn't it in terms of smells and visual memories and sounds and so forth? If all of your memories are connected with the senses

[26:54]

What's the difference between the senses and the self? Well, you're going to have to start with there's no difference and there is a difference. Both. And you really get familiar with this, there's no difference and yet somehow there is a difference. And without trying to resolve this, just accept that there's a difference and there isn't a difference. Now, is that the totality of the ingredients? At this moment? Well, there's memories, there's five senses. But let's bring the model the template of the skandhas to this experience.

[28:28]

And so there's form. The first skandha. So there's the ingredients of the world that appear to your senses. Die Zutaten der Welt, so wie sie den Sinnen erscheint. But only some of the ingredients of form appear to the senses. So there's forms that aren't sensed, but they're still part of you, part of your location. Also gibt es da Formen, die nicht wahrgenommen werden, aber die doch And the second skanda is feeling.

[29:31]

And there's feelings about these sensed forms. And where do they come from? Are they their self? Are they habit? What are they? This is the beginning of becoming steadily intimate with your mind field. Believe it or not, this is the practice of uncorrected mind. Of getting to know the mind you're not going to correct. Just accepting, you know the other days, yesterday was Sunday. And Sophia, I talked to Sophia on the phone. And she said, she's nine now, you know.

[30:32]

And on Sundays usually she'll go see a friend or a friend will come over or she'll go riding or something like that, horse riding, horseback riding. So I said, Sunday, what are you going to do today? And she said nothing. And I said, that's best to do nothing. But to really do nothing. No distractions, no missing your friends, no anxiety. That's the Dharma gate of ease and joy. To really do nothing and have nothing missing. To just sit with ease.

[31:40]

The jewel is the mountain of form. You know, I've often said there's nowhere to go and nothing to do, and many of you have worked with this, I think, truthfully. So now let's make it, there's nowhere to look and nothing to find. That would be uncorrected mind. There's nowhere to look and nothing to find. At last, someone told me the secret. The secret. If I just leave you alone with your zazen, which I'd really like to do, will you start thinking it's going to lead somewhere?

[32:47]

This is the problem. Oh, that's why I'm saying something. Goodbye. Auf Wiedersehen. Auf Wiedersehen, sweetheart. This lovely day has flown away. You don't have to translate that. Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot. To be continued.

[33:22]

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