Now, that is a truthful statement, the stick doesn't exist. If you think my words should correspond to the object being described, it's not a truthful statement. If you think my words should correspond to the object being described, then I suppose it's not a truthful statement. But if in the world you inhabit the words correspond correspond to the mind that says them, not the object described. Then it's a truthful statement. Because it means I'm saying something that is meaningful to me.

[01:10]

This stick doesn't exist. Perhaps I mean its existence is only in its use. Now it's a back scratcher. Who said it's a teaching staff? Okay. Because it's obvious that there's something here, so you're nuts if you think it doesn't exist when I say it doesn't exist in some physical sense. Let's at least trust our senses. Not kick stones. Oh, that's a reference to Barclay and other first things.

[02:11]

So, obviously, we do zazen for gaining reasons. Yeah, it seems to improve our health. It seems to make us stronger. It puts us in touch with our fundamental mind. It helps us face and go through difficult things. That's obvious, like this is a stick. What about no gaining ideas about this stick? I mean, I can't think of a good example.

[03:39]

But say you fall in love. And you want to get married. So you get down on your knee and you have white gloves on or whatever you're supposed to do and you propose. And you say, darling, you'll improve my tax position. And I heard that even unhappy marriages... the people are healthier. Will you marry me? Well, I mean, there are gaining ideas in getting married. Well, I think it's much better to have no gaining ideas.

[04:46]

Okay, let's get married. We have no choice. I don't know if that's a good example, but it's something that's what I feel. Okay. Yeah. So one of the entries, I'm talking about this sense of a body in which you don't feel boundaries. And yet which you feel sealed. But as I say, not armored. Sealed, I mean, you feel glued together from inside. And part of practice is to find those spots where you feel glued from inside.

[06:05]

And in different periods of zazen, it can be different. Different weeks, it can be different. Sometimes it might be the lifting feeling in the back of your neck. Sometimes it might be a velvet-like feeling in your neck. from your chin to your heart, inside, with your breathing. Sometimes it might be in the tan, in the hara, and so forth. So you begin to feel, you discover this point which you feel glued or integrated from inside. We're integrating and completing. This is the activity of

[07:24]

The body has stillness and activity. And you feel maybe like in zazen, like now perhaps I feel like I'm peering out of my two submarine snorkels at you. Sorry. But in zazen, you often feel like you're somewhere here looking in. You sometimes feel you're not looking from here, you're looking from here in.

[08:46]

Now you can notice those things or not notice those things in your zazen practice. But if you notice them, they shift your sense of what the body is. Let your sense of what the body is be shifted. Yeah, let's let everything become your body. Now when the turtle has pulled the six in, then we're also talking about what I use as a symbol for the jnana practice. Which again, maybe you're tired of hearing about. But it's a sign, a feeling.

[09:47]

When you hear hearing itself. When you become the text and texture of the senses. The texture, texture? of the senses is you. So what you hear is you. So the source of what you hear is you. So the senses themselves The texture of the senses is also a text, which is read and spoken in your activity. And if we really knew ourselves as the texture of the senses we'd be more sensitive about creating such artificial environments as many office workers say work in.

[11:13]

Yeah, where you have A room full of plastics off-gassing. Do you have the term off-gassing? I think so. So the texture of the senses is when you hear the stillness of mind in each sense. You hear the world. as your own mind, own senses.

[12:16]

This experience begins to, you know, you make you really feel you're inseparable, not only a share of the whole, but you're inseparable from the whole. This is another way to look at the mind of interdependence. When you're the interdependence which... when it has an equal valence, lights up the world. Also can be folded within you and folded out. Because you feel you are also inseparable from the world.

[13:24]

Okay. Okay, I have to stop sometime, right? So, Zen has got a lot of practices built into it. to awaken you to this inseparableness and for you to complete it in yourself. Okay. So you might see if you're in Japan, for example, where I practiced, Probably occurs in China too, I don't know. The monk starting to sweep, for instance. Mike just hold his broom a moment and he might go like this. And what you're doing when you do that is you're feeling the broom as your backbone.

[14:41]

Now, when you do this, you're not just feeling, oh, this is a good Zen thing to do. I'm going to have to pray, the broom is my backbone. Yeah, you just feel, you feel your body and the stick in some relationship. And that's, of course, that kind of feeling is in the background of the I tell you often about Daowu and Yunyan and sweeping. And they bring the moon in. Okay. Now, in Tibetan Buddhism, they have lots of separate initiation rituals. Zen hides these rituals in ordinary practice activity.

[15:56]

And so I'm just trying to give you little examples. And again, I feel you're going to say, oh, Jesus, getting so complicated. But just remember, it's less complicated than dentistry. Maybe it's something like gardening. Yeah, okay. So as I started to say a minute ago, one of the entries is doing things with two hands. And many of you have got the feeling for doing things with two hands. And the practice of it. Some of you only have the idea of it. Or you think it means to kind of, in a mechanical way, do things with two hands.

[17:34]

Yeah. Well, that is a way to practice it. Okay. And you all know that I started this when Suzuki Roshi said that what he noticed in America most, being in the West, is that people did things with one hand. And that statement opened me to the practice of two hands. And the practice of two hands, as I'm putting it, means that both hands are fully engaged in any activity. Even if one hand isn't, you're doing it only with one hand because it only can be done with one hand, the other hand is there.

[18:44]

Nearby or totally alive. So this practice of two hands is one of the entries into the body as activity and stillness. The hands in a way always lifting out of this... Lotus mudra. This great circle mudra. And feeling like they return to the center of the body. This isn't theater or something like that. It's a different way of feeling about the body and the mind. Theater?

[19:44]

It's not theater. It's a different kind of way of feeling about the body and the mind. Okay. So the... Oryoki, for instance, is a practice that we teach. Within it, there's a kind of ritual. Okay, one example is when you clean your chopsticks. You clean them vertically. You don't clean them this way. then you're just cleaning it. That's okay. Why not just clean it? But the Uriyoki has this other form in it. And just like the broom is the background, chopsticks, the ohashi, become your backbone.

[20:50]

So the chopsticks are cleaned vertically. And then the spoon. And when you do it, you feel the connection between your backbone, your spine, and the Ohashi, the chopsticks. And I've often explained, although it's never publicly taught, I make the mistake to do it. This two hands, it's all related to the chakras. Zen particularly emphasizes the lower two chakras and the upper two chakras. In your zazen and as wisdom practice. And in your activity the body is then defined through this chakra and this chakra, which are the practice of compassion.

[22:07]

So you feel the power of these chakras and the lower two chakras through your backbone in your sasa. And when we clean the chopsticks this way, You not only feel your backbone, but you're the people who are with you, who pick up on the ritual, who then you feel it all together. Something happens, a kind of common mind happens. Because our mind is also a share of the whole. Inseparable from the whole. And from each other. Thank you very much. May our eyes pass through every being and every place in the same way, with the true attainment of the Kodārīgīs.

[23:30]

Sūjō lēṃ sēdānto Thank you.

[24:41]

And we kind of wandered into this practice of discussing this practice of non-doing. Wir sind da irgendwie in diese Diskussion und diese Praxis des Nichttuns hineingeraten. And now we're at the end of the Sesshin virtually. Und jetzt, wo wir beinahe am Ende des Sesshins sind. Yeah, it's, let's see, we can... we can talk about, we can think about where we've been. And I want to thank you for helping me try to develop this topic. And I want to thank you for helping me to try to develop this topic. This feeling that I get while speaking, that helps me.

[27:36]

And what you say in Doksan also helps me a lot. And tonight we'll have open duksan for a while, so you can help me some more. So one thing I'm finding it necessary to do to talk about these things is to take words and define them in the context of practice. Because the practice of non-doing is through a state of mind that supports non-doing.

[28:58]

So it's not just kind of non-doing or doing nothing. It doesn't mean that for sure. It means something like... What mode of mind, state of mind, allows the mind to do itself? The actor is the mind, not the you, not the observing self. Of course, as you know, and I've implied, I think that's always the case to a large extent. And consciousness plays a role in how we do things. But in the practice of non-doing, we're taking the role of consciousness out of our doing.

[30:13]

Now, non-doing is, you know... I would say the most fundamental practice within Zen Buddhism, for sure. And it's a practice in all of Buddhism. Particularly emphasized in Zen. And emphasized even more, I would say, in Taoism, but in a somewhat different way. So let me define consciousness again from the point of view of practice.

[31:17]

Consciousness is a state of mind which has to present us with a cognizable world A predictable world. And a chronological world. It supplies the timeline. And from the point of view of Buddhism, consciousness is the medium of self, territory of self. Now, that's a lot. These are necessary functions.

[32:17]

Okay. And consciousness is clearly the most complex of our states of mind. But I would not call it the maybe highest, not certainly from a spiritual point of view. It's not the most blissful or satisfying. But I would say that consciousness plays a part, a synergistic part, in all our states of mind.

[33:27]

Okay, now practice of Buddhism in any depth requires having the vision or view of the mind as... various modes of mind, and the experience of these modes of mind. And that's what happens when we do zazen with any attention. Now, non-doing implies that you can generate, discover and generate,

[34:39]

A mode of mind that's more extended than consciousness. And is not involved in being simply cognizable. Or chronological. Or certainly not necessarily predictable. It's much more integrated with the immediacy of the present. And not predictable. involved with establishing the chronology of past and future. And it's not a medium of the self. Okay. You got all that? It's actually very simple, but you have to get familiar with it. Okay. Now one of the problems, one of the things I had a problem with when Sukhiroshi used to say is soft mind.

[36:27]

He said we should have a soft mind. And in English it sounds so close to soft-headed. Which means you have no judgment, you're kind of, you know, it means you're stupid, basically. Hmm? What? Okay. All right, anyway. So I wasn't sure when Sukershi said I should be more soft-headed that I liked the idea. Okay, so what is a soft mind? So he said one of the conditions of the mind of non-doing is its softness. And what he meant was really a mind that's not hard.

[37:37]

So he didn't know what to say either in English. I don't know if there's a word in Japanese. So he picked the word soft being the opposite of hard. And a hard mind is a mind full of ego edges. Yeah. judgmental, quick to judge, to measure, to compare, to put down.

[38:46]

Now the soft mind is not only characteristic of the mind of non-doing, of non-consciousness because it like self works differently in a soft mind. But it's also the quality of mind that brings this practice into everyday activity. When you have a soft mind in your daily activity, it means you could at any time speak out the text of your mind, speak out what you're thinking about, without anybody being offended.

[40:01]

Sorry, I just remembered a Japanese couple who had twins in San Francisco. Ich erinnere mich da an ein japanisches Paar, das Zwillinge hatte in San Francisco. Yeah, in the... In the first few weeks, one twin was quite pretty and the other twin was quite ugly. When you came to visit them and congratulate them, they showed you the pretty baby twice. It was about six weeks before you saw both. Because they didn't want anybody speaking their mind, oh, what a... So, a soft mind also means you know that really people can read your mind from your body.

[41:20]

And ein weicher Geist bedeutet auch, dass ihr wisst, dass die Leute wirklich in eurem Geist lesen können über den Körper. It's so clear to me during the session, which ones of you are critical and suspicious and skeptical and so forth. Während des Sessions ist es so klar für mich, wer von euch kritisch und argwöhnisch ist. Your ears show, the side of your head, I mean everything shows. So little kids are wrong when they asked a whole bunch of little kids, what's the mind for? And the most common answer from the kids was to keep secrets. But the body is not very skillful at keeping the mind's secrets. That's why lie detectors work so often.

[42:37]

And why one of the practices of the Eightfold Path is to breathe the mind into the body so body and mind speak together. Breathe the mind into the body. So mind and body speak together. And this is called actually a truth body. So if you're practicing in a sangha, you can assume, because we're also more sensitive in a sangha, that people really can feel your thinking. I don't mean mind reading, just feel your thinking. So... Bodhisattva practice, one of the centers of bodhisattva practice is the development of what Sukhirashi called a soft mind.

[44:16]

And it's a way of saying a mind not controlled by the ego or a narrow sense of self. Comparative sense of self. It's a lot easier for you to say it in German than me. Thank you for making it. Okay, now another sense is a mind which doesn't leak. Because a mind which doesn't leak also means you can have a mind, an extended sense of mind.

[45:21]

And none feel vulnerable and, yeah, sort of like people can, you know, take your energy or hurt you or something like that. You're not wearing your heart on your sleeve. Which means you could be easily hurt because you have your heart on your sleeve. Yeah. It's more like you're nothing but heart. So, what the heck? Well, you feel the world primarily. And not think the world. Now,

[46:23]

Somebody told me an experience that many of you may have had. Yeah, which is a good example of a sealed mind. We've had quite a few mosquitoes in the Zendo and around recently. It's okay with me, but... Then I realized it was two people with claws draped over their heads to protect them, I think, from mosquitoes. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we used to have... In Japan, you really have mosquitoes.

[47:43]

Oh, it's really serious mosquito problems. So damp and muggy and hot and so forth. Mosquitoes fly over from Manchuria. I don't know. Anyway, they're huge. They fly over from where? Manchuria. I'm just joking. Because they can go right through your robes. And they find wherever there's a crease in your robes and they line up. You know? And you're not supposed to move. And you know, Zen in Japan is a big aspect of this young boy's Zen. So there's quite a bit of hazing. Hazing? Like public school? In England, where the older boys haze or, you know, hazing it's called.

[49:06]

Anyway, so like, for instance, you're doing Zazen, and you're in Tangario, and you're covered with mosquitoes. And you're not supposed to move. And you know the older monk who's come in to check has walked out, but actually pretended to walk out with quieter and quieter steps and is still standing there. And he's got this big stick. And just a little while ago, he shot it underneath your posture to see if your ankle was on the tatami. Because both ankles are supposed to be up. Actually, you know, I didn't mind all this. It was kind of fun.

[50:08]

It's a kind of game, you know? A boy's game, right? But I'm also telling you to show you how easy we have it here. So, you know, I can't sit. I mean, only in a hot bath after about an hour can I sit in full lotus. Sometimes in Japan it almost feels that hot in ordinary air, but I still sit half lotus. So when they would do this thing of shooting the stick under you, I'd have to kind of really be aware and pull my ankle up just straight.

[51:10]

And this monk beside me was so gambate, he actually had two places raw, which would scab together when he was sitting. Does that make sense? His ankles were raw from being together, because you sit without brakes. There's no keen hand. How did I get into telling him this? It's the opposite of a soft mind. So you really don't want to move because these bloody mosquitoes are there and this bloody monk, I mean this monk is behind you with a stick. At some point I rebelled, though. I got up and left the... Just to finish the story. I got up and left the... You can go to the toilet occasionally.

[52:33]

If you go too often, then they add four or five days to how many days you sit Tangario. So, but anyway, I get up to go to the toilet and I went to the room where I knew the older monks are sitting and I just took their Katori Senko. Katori Senko is a kind of incense which kills mosquitoes. A chrysanthemum in circles. Not grand enough. At some point I just went in to the older monks and took this remedy that works against the muscles, which is made from chrysanthemums. So I went in and just took it with me, and they cheered me up a bit. So that helped keep the mosquitoes down.

[54:11]

But they really do line up in the creases and then bite you and you get lines. So anyway, I learned already at Tassajara how to just sit when there were mosquitoes. the female mosquitoes have their day. The males don't bite. Anyway, this is a long introduction to say this story about a person who finally just let a mosquito land on their ear. They began to enjoy the feel of the mosquito walking around. It kind of looks around for the right blood vessel.

[55:14]

Pokes here and there. Finds a good one. And then takes a while and, you know... LAUGHTER And then after a while, flies off. Well, in this kind of case, and this person found themselves sort of on the mosquito's side. How are you doing? Good luck. And there was a big space and the mosquito had its space and you felt, this person felt rather... they were sharing a common concentration.

[56:29]

So we could call this mosquito mind a sealed mind. Because you have a wide field of mind The mosquito has its own space in. This is the image where the image comes from of a mosquito biting an iron bull. That's a Zen image. And your mind is clearly sealed because you're not disturbed by the mosquito. So that's a sealed mind. So why... sealed mind.

[57:49]

Usually anchored in your breath or your backbone. And you understand in Buddhism your backbone is really considered also your mind. Okay. So an open, sealed, soft mind. And often I've said that feeling of practice is like being pregnant. I can't say I have first-hand knowledge of being pregnant, but... I think I have some feeling for it.

[59:01]

Anyway, in practice you feel like you're maybe pregnant with the practice. You almost have the feeling, an image even, of a baby in you. And you breathe down into it, giving it attention or caresses. And your eyes become soft so the baby can look out through your eyes. I'm trying to describe a feeling anyway. You know this Mark Dixon who's painted Drew the little fly on page 65 or something, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[60:10]

I think that's also in the German translation, isn't it, the fly? His wife and I truly, you know, edited the book. Seine Frau Trudy und ich haben dieses Buch herausgegeben. And I asked Mike to do a drawing for it. So he sent me a drawing of a fly. So I just put it on the page. Und ich habe Mike gebeten, eine Zeichnung dafür zu machen. Und da hat er mir eine Fliege geschickt. Robert, he remembered when he sat and had a fly, you know, like the mosquito. Maybe he remembered his own experience of sitting when flies as well as mosquitoes crawl around the... Anyway, in those days, Mike was... His daughter was here for about... How long? A year, six months, a year.

[61:17]

A year? A year. It's wonderful. His daughter came and practiced with us. Anyway, Mike worked for supporting himself, putting beech nut baby food jars on shelves in grocery stores. Or Gerber's, maybe Gerber's, I think. And The label of a Gerber's baby food bar has a very round face of a baby. So every day he saw hundreds of these bottles. So he reversed the image I just told you about. He did a big painting, maybe a little bit bigger than that window.

[62:35]

With a big round baby's face. I had the painting somewhere. I should hang it up. With clearly Suzuki Roshi's eyes looking out. Maybe you have soft eyes and a baby looks out or a Buddha looks out. Yes, this is also the feeling of this mind of non-doing that you can bring into your daily activity. And as I said yesterday, it's also a mind arising from the texture of the senses.

[63:53]

And I'd like to go into the importance of that more, but I think we don't have time. So, in short, Non-doing is a way of letting the mind function through itself and not through self. So when you sit, you take care of your posture. You know, the... Chinese and nowadays much in the West, practice of Tai Chi.

[65:03]

We could say it's a way of bringing the stillness of the mind into your activity. Yeah, and to bring the stillness of the activity into your body. But that idea doesn't just exist in the art of tai chi. But it also is in many of the arts. The tea ceremony is such a similar art. Through the objects discover the stillness of the mind and to bring the stillness of the mind then into your activity. And that's also the... And that is also the practice of the Oriyoki.

[66:19]

It has developed parallel to the Tai Chi and the tea ceremony. As a way of expressing the stillness of the mind in your activity. So this sense of non-doing extends also into your activity. Yeah. So I think that's enough. May our intention be the same for every being and every place.

[67:33]

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