Thank you for being here. And yesterday we spoke about, in effect, about Sashin as a process of discovery, like you've been handed a guitar and what the heck is it? And what I implied was, notice what's happening to you, even your dreams, etc. Yeah, notice what appears and don't second guess it. Do you have such an expression? bemerke, was auftaucht und hinterfrage es nicht. Yeah, it's appearing, so there it is. Es taucht auf und jetzt ist es da. Okay. So there I'm emphasizing practice as a process of discovery.

[01:07]

Und dabei betone ich Praxis als einen Entdeckungsprozess. And I mentioned the first five years of my own practice. It was a process of, what is this? Is this for real? But Sukhiyoshi's simple presence convinced me it's for real, but it wasn't for real for me at first. And Suzuki Roshi's sheer presence convinced me that this is something real. But in the beginning it was not real for me. I was always a person who, from birth it seems like, never believed anything unless I experienced it myself. Yeah, so it took me some time to make this practice real for myself.

[02:18]

Yeah. And then my... I was so startled and surprised by the... the way the practice... did make being real to me. Und dann war ich so erstaunt und überrascht davon, wie diese Praxis das Sein oder das Dasein für mich wirklich gemacht hat. So my second motivation and effect was how to share Suzuki Roshi. Because I thought, jeez, everyone should get a chance to practice Suzuki Roshi. So I began to try to think of how to create, help people have relationships with Suzuki Roshi.

[03:23]

And of course, the desire to share Suzuki Roshi led to Tassahara, led to the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and so forth. And led to now, here. And now my emphasis is to share the lineage, the teaching that Sukhiroshi represents. And I'm mentioning this not to describe myself, but I'm asking you to help me share this teaching with others. And I'm not saying this to talk about myself or to refer to myself, but I'm asking you to help me share this teaching.

[04:46]

So I'm approaching, it happened in the last session too, we approached and approached and approached the four postures and never got there. But I still, I start approaching and I see all this, whoa, look at all these things that are part of the approach. So I'm practicing the process of discovery. And also I described the mandala of us yesterday as a rather complex layering of shared practice. And if I'm going to speak into with this mandala, which we just did the vows and I'm sitting here with this stick and all this stuff, this is a mandala we've created.

[05:57]

Yeah, so if I'm going to speak into this mandala, which is us, I have to find a relevant point, a relevancy point. Because the speaking to myself is a rather different process than speaking with you. Again, I don't know why I describe what I'm doing, but it seems to me that I'm not just telling you something about Buddhism. I'm trying to describe something we all can do in discovering practice. So in looking for a relevancy point, my feeling was yesterday it was about discovery.

[07:09]

A process of discovery that occurs through this sitting practice with others. You know, I want you to be clear. This is not the same as sitting alone. The mandala you create within yourself the actuality of immediacy. And we could say that this zazen posture is a way to establish the actualization of immediacy. And as I've said a number of times using the reference point of my experience years ago, it's a minute to twelve, a millionth of a second to twelve, and there's no twelve, it's a millionth of a second after twelve.

[08:41]

So there's no dimensions to immediacy. Except in your sensorial field. And how to establish within that sensorial field, which could be immediacy, to establish the sensorial field as an actualization of immediacy. So in addition to discovering, this practice pushes us into discovering.

[09:42]

And so, in addition to this being a process of discovery, this practice forces us into the discovery. At least for me, and I think, and still, after I've done, I don't know, I don't know, a couple hundred sashins or more. You'd think I would be glowing by this time, but no, I'm still the same old funky guy. But somehow I kept doing them. Because I love you. I mean, I like you anyway. Yeah. So in my experience, and I'm sure in your experience too, to a great extent too, Sashin is a process of purging, purifying and clarifying.

[10:59]

So why is it a process of purging and purifying and cleansing and clarifying? It's the same word for all of them. Well, just say the same word. English has a big vocabulary. 200,000 or more words than German. But German has more verbs and English has more nouns. It sounds like German is more enlightened to me, but maybe. Yeah, we have a little thing over the door. We're against nouns. I don't think that would convince anyone.

[12:08]

Okay. So the phrase I've decided to use as a relevancy point is the natural order of mind that we chant, in English at least, in the meal chant. We say something like, being free of greed, hate and delusion, we realize natural order of mind or something like that. And I don't know what the original is, but when we started Tassajara, Sukhirishi and I sat down and realized we were going to eat together and we had to have a meal chant.

[13:10]

So this was with his help, of course, my translation of what he said. And I chose the words, the natural order of mind. It might have been original mind. I don't know what it was in Japanese. Okay. And I remember, as I suggested it, I had some problem with it, because the natural order sounds like there's some intrinsic nature, which I was convinced there's no intrinsic nature. And I remember, as I suggested it, that I had difficulties with it, because this word, of course, implies something as if there is an intrinsic, an inner-living nature of the spirit, and I am convinced that this does not exist.

[14:15]

Thank you. But if you think of when water is still, Maybe that's the natural state of water, because when you take away the activity, the waves and the wind, it's still. But on the other hand, if you imagine that when water is still, then maybe that's something like the natural state of water, because when you take away the activity, the wind and the waves and so on, then the water is still. It's funny, when you're translating, I feel I help you by looking away. You do. That's true. When you look here, I can't... I know, so I keep telling you there's kind of an invisible wall here. Thank you. It doesn't mean I'm ignoring you. Well, that was intuitive of me. That was perceptive, that's true. Are you doing better now?

[15:19]

She went all the way. We need a bigger platform, Otmar. I love Otmar. If you ask him to do anything, it was yesterday. It was done. I mean, no. How did you do it yesterday when I just asked today? Okay. Okay, the natural order. So maybe the natural ordering of mind would be okay. But we see and there are some Buddhist schools who say you don't really have to meditate and it's all wisdom and you can think your way. But if you look at all the statues basically of the Buddha, they're in cross-legged zazen posture. So the overriding communication

[16:23]

Overriding? Yeah. Communication of Buddhism is, it's this physical posture through which you realize the natural order of mind. Yeah. And... And the Zen school emphasizes this posture and meditation more than any other school. That's why it's called the Zen, the jhana school. And again, the pedagogy is, we give you the posture, the guitar, we give you the posture, and you discover it. Und auch hier wieder ist die Pädagogik, wir geben dir die Haltung, oder in meinem Bild, wir geben dir die Gitarre und du entdeckst sie.

[18:01]

We're giving you the posture, you discover the awakeness, which is implied by stillness. Wir geben dir die Haltung und du entdeckst die Wachheit oder das Erwachen, das in der Stille liegt. Now, I remember when I first, first year or two, I had to give talks occasionally because I had friends like Houston Smith. I'd visit him and he'd say, you know, could you say something about Buddhism because you're a new young practitioner? He was a professor of religion. Well, I didn't really know what to say. I was just a beginner. But I knew I'd had the experience, which was something like going along a road, and you see all these billboards.

[19:07]

And the billboards are one next to the other, so all you see is billboards, and that's... fairly common in America, particularly in those days. Cars went slower, so you could read billboards. Now cars are too fast, and billboards have gone. What I said, I remember it's It's connected in New York, the University of New York, I forget, yeah, of New York University. I said, just to his class, that it's like you see all these billboards, and as you practice meditation, the billboards get farther and farther apart. And at some point the billboards, discursive thought, etc., I found meditation practice shifted me into the spaces between the billboards.

[20:36]

Now, nobody told me this or nobody... gave me the image of billboards. It's just my experience was I suddenly found myself between the billboards in the space. And the space felt like the source of the billboards, you know, like trees and things you cut down and make into billboards. So space is one word. Stillness is another word. So somehow this posture, Amida Buddha right there, Amitabha Buddha right there, is... which I used to eat in a restaurant where I used to see this, that same Buddha, is his posture showing us stillness and actually showing us a space without reference points.

[22:06]

And some Buddhist texts say the adept or the bodhisattva is not known by name and form, as the Buddhist supposedly said something like that too. And bodhisattvas or adepts have no location. So how do we get to this, through this posture, how do we discover no location or space that's alive or stillness.

[23:11]

It's okay, I think. All of those things. Okay. I think, again, let's look at practice, and I'm just giving a simple, as simple as I can, definition of a sashin. Sashins are the classic interface for Zen Buddhism between monastics and lay practitioners. In a Rinzai temple, all the sitting is divided in five-day or seven-day units, and it's all called sashin.

[24:15]

And the seven-day unit of monastic practice has been used also as a lay practice. And the seven-day unit is conceived of as two entry days. And in this seven-day unit, it is understood that there are two entry days. Three days for focus and absorption. And two days of realignment and restoring you to the luminous screen. Now, that's the general conception, but of course you might have, your first day might be your seventh day, and et cetera, who knows.

[25:46]

This is your problem. Das ist zumindest das allgemeine Bild. Aber in deiner tatsächlichen Erfahrung mag das sein, dass dein erster Tag so ist wie der siebte Tag oder so. Das ist dann deine Sache. So here it's clear that this isn't about just still sitting. It's about still sitting over and through a period of time. Und darin wird klar, dass es da nicht nur um stilles Sitzen geht, sondern es geht um stilles Sitzen über eine Zeitspanne hinweg. So I say the first posture is physical posture. But the physical posture has no power unless you have the mental posture, as I say, don't move. Now, I use the word posture in English and not position because position is something you hold and posture is something you discover. Yeah, so there's the physical posture, which you refine and develop,

[26:53]

And you refine and develop it within the mental posture of don't move. And then there's the temporal, let's call it the temporal posture of the schedule. Which means no choosing. Yeah, and then there's a third, a fourth posture. Anyway, a fourth posture, different than the other four, which is no discursive activities. And no discursive means also don't look around. Some of you look around in the Zen. That's discursive thought. It's rooted in discursive thought.

[28:16]

If you're the Eno or you're responsible for the serving, maybe you look around. But if there's a small explosion in the Dharma Hall, you don't look around. If it's a big explosion, you better look around. And my relationship to the rules has been, I suggest them and then I see what you do. Because they're really enforced by we enforcing them. But I lived at a heiji for some time and I practiced it two and a half years at the Linzai monastery and nobody speaks during working.

[29:47]

If you did, while you're working, you spoke, you'd almost be asked to leave the monastery. And the first... Sashins we did with Sukhiroshi, nobody spoke. And after a while Sukhiroshi kind of relaxed it so that we felt more normal. And the rule became only absolutely necessary talking. And after a while it became emotionally necessary talking. Then it became gossip. I mean, no. Yes. Yuval Harari says, gossip is what distinguishes human beings from other animals.

[31:07]

Any case, it's hard to stop. But the point I'm making here is there's this don't move, Don't make choices. The schedule forces you to not make choices, but accept you'll probably get enough food, maybe. And probably the roof won't leak. So you just for the week do the schedule. And much as possible, you avoid discursive thought. The code for that, of course, is the natural order of mind, being free of greed, hate, and delusion.

[32:10]

Greed, hate, and delusion is a code for distraction. Is distraction, is that what you said? Is the code for distraction. Greed is a code for attraction and attachment. And hate is the code, in a sense, for aversion and aggrandizement. And delusion is a code for thinking anything's permanent.

[33:12]

So this means that when you explore what's arising, oh, you notice you're thinking some things are permanent. Ooh, okay. And this means that when you explore what comes up, then you notice that you think that some things are permanent. You notice that you don't like this or that, or yourself even. Or you notice that you're hurt because something or other didn't happen that you wanted. All of that stuff. Or you notice that you're hurt because something didn't happen that you wanted, or all of that stuff. The teaching clearly is that what is meant by ordinary mind, Matsu's ordinary mind, is the way. Is the mind free from distraction? So while you're sitting, you're exploring, noticing, just noticing, what are the various degrees of distraction which distract you? prevent you from really knowing stillness.

[34:42]

Or discovering a space without location. Yeah, or discovering... Yeah, okay, that's fine. And what's interesting... is why water, still water, has no waves. As you begin to free yourself more and more from distraction, if only for moments or half a period, It teaches you something. It gives you kind of inner knowledge of actual experience. You begin to have actual experience of immediacy, where

[35:45]

It's the only place real knowledge happens. And what's interesting is once you get yourself relatively free, sometimes for moments, completely free of distraction, The stillness that begins to appear or the space that begins to appear or the samadhi that begins to appear actually kind of expands and begins to push the accretions of accretions of consciousness away. Accretion is like accumulation? Yeah. In other words, our self-referencing, societally determining mind

[36:57]

You can, as you have less distractions, you begin to notice there's less self-referencing. je weniger Ablenkungen du hast, desto mehr bemerkst du, desto weniger selbstbezogenes Denken hast. And your societally formed mind also begins to, it can see spaces in it. Und auch in deinem gesellschaftlich geprägten Geist beginnst du auf einmal Räume zu sehen. And then this stillness, this new spiritual organ you sort of develop, But stillness begins to find, settle into your fundamental priorities. And your self-referential priorities and your societal priorities begin to dissolve or be pushed aside.

[38:20]

And this is the purging process and cleansing process that happens in the first days, or can happen, of Sashin. And it all it's amazing to me, but I'm familiar with it, arises through establishing this physical posture over a specific period of time in which you have little discursive thought and no choices. It's a posture in which you can discover the actualization of immediacy. The source mind of stillness.

[39:38]

As I said last night, shooting an arrow at the ground is an easy target. It's a hard target to miss. But there's subtlety to it. But it's a kind of natural subtlety if you're subtle enough to allow this posture to teach you. So that's a practical definition of Sashin that we can pass on to future generations. Or one version of it. Thank you very much. We would like to see the same as every festival and every place through the park.

[41:06]

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