It's all so formal it sometimes amuses me. And there's a kind of drama to it, coming in the door and you're all sitting here. As I really did feel I should come in the back door. At the same time as I do feel that, I also feel that maybe there's some intimacy in finding a drama in our lives, not that has to do with other people, but a kind of sense of ourselves or our experience in very clear terms. I mean, it's remarkable to... I mean, it's going to take a while for me too to get used to this building.

[01:08]

It's remarkable to have a building just for us to meditate. It has no other purpose. And it's not a building of worship. It's not directed anywhere but at you. But at what part of you? One of the ways to see how a sesshin is put together is to notice, as I said this morning, that it's about non-daily life consciousness, not daily life consciousness. So if you want to know what the rules are, the rules are don't do anything that activates daily life consciousness.

[02:13]

That's more important than how you sit. And it's probably the hardest thing to follow because we want to talk. And it's interesting how a kind of ease, especially in Sashin, how relaxing it is to just have a normal conversation with someone. But in ordinary life, outside of Sashina, it's not so deeply relaxing to have a normal conversation with someone. Can be, of course. Now, a little aside in a moment, because so many of you are used to speaking with Ulrika's help and translating. So, Ulrika this morning almost started speaking.

[03:18]

Of course, since Ulrika's here and since quite a, I don't know, two-thirds of you, your native language is German, We could have a translation. I don't think it would bother anyone because it's a nice pace. But I feel we should do the practice here in America in English, and that's of course what you expected in coming here. But the reason I feel that we should do it in English is not because we're in America. That's a kind of reason. But really I feel that it's useful to find the teaching in a different sound. Because practice in a way is finding a sound that's always there.

[04:28]

And recently, as you know, those of you who have been here, Cresta and I have been, and even at the Sesshine I did in Europe, I said I wanted to work with our chanting and practice with sound. And I guess we'll start in the practice period, for those of you, a few of you who are going to be here. It's, I think, too complicated to try to do in the Sesshine. But still it's on my mind and so it's something I want to talk about. And also I want to bring up a little bit of the things I've been speaking about here at Crestone so that we can have some continuity with those of you who practice here and those of you who practice in Europe. Now, obviously or strangely, part of the secret of reaching into non-daily life consciousness is to sit still.

[05:44]

And I like the pun, stock still, not S-T-O-C-K, but S-T-A-L-K. Stock in German, I don't know, does anybody like the stock of a plant? And the word still and the word stock have the same root. I think you can even have a visual image of yourself sitting stock still as if your body was a stock of a plant, the still part of the plant. The stock is the still part of the plant. An apostle same root again, is one who stands still for the teaching and also one who is a messenger of the teaching. And I'm sure it's true that in your practice, if you really find out how to be stock still, you will hear the teachings and

[06:58]

be a messenger of the teachings. Now there's a koan in the Blue Cliff Records, number 46, in which it's Ching Ching's sound of raindrops. It's really quite simple. He's asked, what is that sound outside the gate? And Sound of raindrops. And the koan has a comment, sentient beings are inverted. They lose themselves and follow after things. Sentient beings are inverted. They lose themselves and follow after things. Then the koan says, if you say, if you answer, what is that outside the gate? Then you say, the sound of raindrops... Then the koan says, if you say that, then you are, if you call it that, if you say that, then you are losing yourself and following after things.

[08:08]

But then it says if you don't say the sound of raindrops, how will you turn things around? It doesn't say how will you turn yourself around. It says how will you turn things around? Now, you can look at a koan like this and say, oh yes, this is like all of them. I'm always close to that. Don't make a likeness. It's teachings about emptiness. Yes, it is teachings about emptiness, of course, but it's... I mean, everything is form, everything is emptiness. If everything is emptiness, you can't just say that every koan that's about emptiness is about the same thing. Obviously it's about different gaits, different practices. But in this case it's really about how we look at and how we turn things around.

[09:17]

Now I don't know if I can give you a feeling for this. This is really quite subtle. And coming back to the word sound, which I like the word sound a lot because it has so many meanings. The Germanic root is something like swim or to stir. And the Indo-European root is to be healthy or like sound of body. And the other Indo-European root is to do something in unison, like to sing or to... And that's where sonnet comes from and sonata and so forth. So it's a word which has lots of meanings. And here we have, and still also means to be silent. So, but in stillness, you may sound out yourself or sound out things.

[10:21]

This is... I mean, this is not just a play of words, it's accurate. Now, as we talked about the other day, the roots of koans is not in literature as written language, but in going back in the Puranas into India. It's in mantric speech where sound calls forth reality. And in story, which can be visualized and enacted. So the words are much more, they're not made, they appear.

[11:22]

And they're notes for an oral tradition where the presence is part of the telling. And there's no way you can tell a story to yourself the same as maybe a child being read to by the mother or father. It's not the same as reading the story yourself. And I think if you look back to childhood, you can feel when you were read to and how different that is from reading yourself. And I believe they say that children who aren't read to by their parents seldom learn how to read really well. So the con are notes for an oral presencing. That's, of course,

[12:27]

why we practice together. There's something different when we sit together. There just is. To try to get at this difference, In Asia, in Asian yogic cultures, the sense of sound is something that is always there. Now, what interests me in our culture is that, and in my own sense of practice, and this is also something that I'm trying to feel out because, you know, what I talk about is often my own problems are some ineluctable kind of something that I'm trying to feel out.

[13:29]

Which is that we find it very easy, we take it for granted that the visual world is there and is continuous. And it's always there when we open our eyes. And we only don't notice it when we close our eyes. But our ears are always open. And yet we don't think a sound world is always there in the way a visual world is there. We think sound is only present when we hear it. And I think most of us just take for granted that it's possible for there to be no sound in a way it's not possible for there to be no visual world. But in Asia or Asian yoga culture, they feel that sound is always there and more fundamental than the visual world. Why do they have that experience and we don't?

[14:37]

It's quite curious, you know. And I'm bringing it up because practice, Zen practice, grew up in this world. This world where a sound world, in all senses of the word sound, is always present. Now, this is a different attitude. We tend to look, for example, just let's take the word source. When we look at the word source, when we try to get to the source, we think we're getting to the beginning. In Buddhist culture, when you get to the source, you get to something that was always there or is always there and has no beginning. That's a very different way to look at things. So if you're getting to the source of yourself or source of this phenomenal world, the feeling is not that it's made, but that it's always there.

[15:44]

Now, what are the consequences of that? One is that you really remove yourself from consideration of past and future. Because we know, we have a sense that, in this practice, that if it's always there, then it's not changing into the future and it's not changing into the past. And we don't have the cultural values that are so fruitful in the West of progress and so forth. But there's other fruitful values, which are embedded in these Zen and Buddhist teachings, which is to practice now in the sashin with the sense of finding something that can't be in past or future, but isn't present, but isn't present because in some way we're not

[16:50]

able to notice or we're not subtle enough or we're too caught in daily life consciousness. And our identity is too strung out in daily life consciousness. And we're rather fearful of being out of daily life consciousness because somehow we might be out of control or or who knows. That's one reason an environment like this in Sashin is so ordered and protected and safe and food is presented and so forth. Because with this safety, I mean, this isn't a Western creation, this kind of Sashin and semi-monastic life. So obviously... the cultures which produce this have the same fears of non-daily life consciousness and need the same apparatus of security or order of security.

[18:00]

And stillness also, the root, means to put things in order. And this putting things in order so that they can be still, so they find their order. So I'm, of course, here talking about the attitudes or views that can make Sashin practice fruitful. Now no matter how subtle eye or subtle ear or astute you are, if your view is that everything is made, you're not going to notice things in the same way as if you feel some things have no beginning. Now this isn't about that the universe had a big bang or a cosmic something or other or a mythic beginning. It's not about that kind of thinking. It's about the way you right now in the present find phenomena and the word phenomena means that which appears.

[19:04]

How you find that which appears and whether you look at it as something made that had a beginning something audible, or can you look at it as something that has no beginning, that isn't made? So sound isn't just what's audible, and sound isn't made. There's no revealer of the word. In Christianity, there's a revealer of the word. In Buddhism and in Hinduism, there's no revealer of the sound. The sound is there. Now in Christianity, you have, and in Greek culture you have the Pythagorean music of the spheres and so forth and the heavenly intelligences which became angels or angels filled the same place in Christianity. But still I think even if you look carefully at that there's some difference in the way looking at things as unmade and made.

[20:13]

How do you turn around things? Now most of us, most of the time, and most of us, some of the time at least, are, excuse me for being so obvious, constantly in our thoughts. And in our thoughts about other people's thoughts about us and so forth. And you can hear it just in the way people walk around the room, ring the bell, chant and so forth. You can hear their chanting in some kind of envelope of imagining how they're being heard. And they're never out there in some kind of space where there's no control. Where things have nothing to do with thought. where there's no likeness for things.

[21:20]

And when you ring the bell, you hardly know what's going to happen or how it will be heard. Those aren't things that even occur to you. And when you actually can feel, even for a moment, things without any thoughts about how you think about it or others think about it, these things are so outside you, then, excuse me again for the paradox, but that's when they feel, you feel inseparable from everything. Or the bell pierces you. and isn't hit in any parlor space. It's not hit in any living room space. It's hit in the zendo.

[22:23]

Where all of us sitting, finding this taste or experience of stock, stillness, the roots, this stock has roots into the meditation platform, into the slate floor, and into the air and room and pillars. So again, what I'm suggesting is that as well as staying with your breath, I'm suggesting something that you stay with your breath as hmm, hmm, can I say, not just an inhale and exhale, but a breath that's a continuum within inhaling and exhaling. And if you find that thread, it's a kind of silent breath that then really the sap or energy or your backbone will really be a stalk.

[23:35]

And you actually can find your mind, your presence, without any future or past. You can stay with a presence that is sound, inaudible or audible. And I think this is kind of a jump for us because you know, it's not the usual way we think about our ears and sound and so forth, but many places in Buddhist literature it says the ear and sound is the easiest sense gate to realization, to fulfillment, to enlightenment. I mean, this building, this room, the zendo should also be acoustic space in its silence. You can see it, but it will really work in our practice when it's also acoustic space and allows my voice to be heard, but also allows you to find a stillness in which there's inaudible sound.

[25:02]

And maybe we can come closer to not turning ourselves around, but turning things around. What's that sound outside the gate? What's that sound inside the gate? Now I also talked about, and I just don't know if there's probably not time to mention it much, but that this present is, this present that we experience is actually a kind of sustained memory. Because the present has no dimension. Appears and disappears. But we experience a certain duration and that duration is held in a kind of memory like an eyeball stalk of the brain into storage memory.

[26:17]

And that sense of duration is part of mindfulness practice in that this present duration, which is a kind of present memory in actual how it exists in your sense fields, can be infused with energy, with vividness, but you float out of it. You float away from it if there's discursive thought or distraction. So here this stalk of stillness is also the... the jewel of the immediate present. Now maybe I've given you a little too many things, but maybe also they can resonate with your sense in this session of trying to to, even if you don't know or don't have much sense of non-daily life consciousness or awareness, you can refrain as much as possible from the satisfaction and familiarity of daily life consciousness.

[27:38]

Which means you follow the schedule. You don't read anything. You have minimal conversations and you try not to have discursive conversations for sure. And you keep bringing your attention to your breath and to a feeling of soundness, of sound, of sounding this world. Sound that's always here. The three mysteries in Buddhism are called body, speech, and mind. And that's because you can't have speech without body and mind. And body and mind come together to make speech. There's no speech without body and mind. And speech returns body and mind to the sound that's always there.

[28:42]

So the practice of chanting is to bring body and mind together in speech to return speech to the sound that's always there. So this sense of chanting is that when we say a word, it's not a word that was made, but it's a word that allows us to return the word to the sound that's always there. This is the feeling in chanting. That the words are Japanese or English, or whatever, are excuses, ways, bringing body and mind together, using the word to touch the sound that's always there in our body and our mind, and with each other. Now, if you have that view in chanting, in speaking, sashin, That view can make the subtlety of practice and the awakening of non-daily consciousness more likely, more noticeable.

[29:56]

I'm trying to give you a picture of the Zen world, of the Buddhist world, in which this practice of sitting stock still has evolved. And why body, speech and mind, which are so commonplace in daily consciousness, are called the three mysteries. And the mysteries of us having this treasure of practicing together for one week, each of you, in having this shared drama. Our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[31:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.81