Thank you all for coming to Sushin. You know, I open the door and I see, I don't know, how many are we? Twenty-nine people? Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight people. Okay, I see twenty-eight insides. you take form as 28, or some number, outsides. But before you take form as 28, or some number of outsides, I feel some, not just 28 insides, but some kind of 29th inside that we've made together. Or even 30th inside you've made with me. Then we close the door and you turn into 28 outsides.

[01:04]

Yeah, what the heck am I talking about? And when we, all of us, want to settle ourselves, satisfy ourselves, stabilize ourselves, And we don't want to just stable ourselves in some kind of photographic way. Like it looks like we're stable if you took a photograph, but it's like a building. A photograph of a building which, when you stepped inside, there was no inside. Or you stepped inside and the floor tilted. If we want to stabilize ourselves, really, if you really want to do this, you have to stabilize yourself in the truth. Now, what's that mean? You'll know what it means when you feel that kind of stability where you're no longer a photograph.

[02:16]

This photograph of a building, if, you know, somebody looks at it, If they don't like the building, the building starts to collapse. The building has to be more stable than that. And yet we are something like that photograph where something doesn't go right or someone doesn't like us. We start to collapse. Now, there's various ways to stabilize yourself in the truth or to stabilize yourself, period, or comma. But I would like to try to speak about really deeply what to stabilize yourself in the truth would mean in Buddhism as I understand it and experience it. But first we just, you know, it helps to know, have the technicalities of sitting down, to know the technicalities of sitting pretty well, if you're going to do a sashi.

[03:34]

So, you know, you come in the door and it's good as if you can check your images and ideas and guns at the door. Drop as much as you can. at the door and come into this space. And if you're on that side, you bow to this funny guy with the reversed robes, the Buddha of the reversed robes. Or coming this side, you bow, just bow. And then to your cushion, I think what I said this morning is good to feel the cushion, this place, this Tatami, as home. To batu, home. Now it's easy to say something like, It would be good to, anywhere you are, to feel at home.

[04:39]

We can understand those words. But to experience, to really feel that way, not so easy. And I do, you know, I can kind of guarantee you that if you can come to feel at home in the circumstances of a sesshin or Zazen, just where you are is home. You can extend that feeling to every situation. Find that feeling within every situation. So as I've been emphasizing, it's important at first to just come into a feeling of relaxation, of ease, of trust, of acceptance. All those words, whatever they mean. Ease. Ease. Through and through the body, ease. Through and through the body, relaxation.

[05:43]

through and through the body, this whole space of the body, even this tatami, kind of acceptance that extends to exactly what your situation is. A relaxation that extends, reaches every part of your body. And please do not think this is a small task or an unworthy task or just for beginners. It takes quite a number of years. And as, you know, you just attempt to relax, it's interesting, you attempt to, you can't, it's hard to try to relax, but you let yourself relax. And you're also coming into a kind of power.

[06:47]

You have to feel your power to be free. It's a kind of power, strength, power, courage to accept. whatever this weird world is. We can't always get in our sights. But you, anyway, before I say too much, you think you understand. So let's not try to understand anyway. Let's see if we can come into a kind of satisfaction. And as I started to say, if you do find more and more a relaxation of the layers of muscles in your body, the way your joints are, the way your mind penetrates your body, you begin also to find you're on a threshold.

[08:17]

Suddenly it's possible to know another world. another same, but a world we don't notice always or don't have access to. So I keep speaking, you know, about often there's some implication of the world we know it and some wider other possibility and that's the two truths of Buddhism. Absolute and relative. And it shouldn't be taken as, you know, I'm holding up a disappearing carrot. The more you practice, the more the carrot disappears. But just as you try to give up, the carrot reappears. Maybe the absolute is a disappearing carrot. Do you understand the image? I don't know if in Germany do you get a turtle to go by holding a carrot in front of it or something?

[09:21]

What? A rabbit. Probably in America it's a rabbit too, but turtles are more my speed. But you know it takes a while to come into understanding this basic teaching of Buddhism of two truths. And then to come into the relationship of the two truths was much of what we've been talking about this practice period. So back to the technicalities of sitting you. Come in. Park your, check your world at the door. Come into this space. Go to your cushion. Bow to this cushion. And then you have to have some kind of way to get up on this high platform of dignity.

[10:30]

So you want to get up in some way which continues your feeling of composure. As you get up, you lift yourself even into another space in this room that you entered. Sit down. And then you have to find your posture, adjust your posture. Relax into your posture. Bring attention to your breath. And then I would say, what can I say, bring your attention to your body with distinctions and your body without distinctions.

[11:33]

I could say something like, bring your attention to the feeling of your body or the feel of your living. But I don't know if I say, I'm afraid Such words, we move toward the words and away from the experience. And what we want is to use the words as kind of arrows or a door where we abandon the words at the door. So maybe I can try to know, and let's not even say body, but to know the experience of distinctions and without distinctions. But let me say for now the body with distinctions, because I have to say something, right? This is ordinary Zazen, and what I'm trying to also convey is, you know, mostly we live in a world of generalizations and images.

[12:41]

We live as I said something this morning about sighted world. We live in a sighted world, a sight-based world. Yeah, it seems normal. Why not? But what about in the Sandokai where it talks about the streams flowing in darkness? What is this flowing in darkness? And, you know, I'll try today to... maybe the whole Sashin, I don't know, but try today to give you, give us, give myself in speaking some feeling of what I'd call a haptic yogic world. And I really do believe this is the world in which our ancient forebearers practiced. And, you know, I, for myself, taste it.

[13:49]

And I know it enough to talk with you about it a little. You know, how can I imagine that I have some sense of a world that's not the world of our culture? Why would I have such a feeling? Well, I've been sitting a pretty long time. And if you keep sitting, either you don't know where you're going or there's no going exactly. It's pretty boring to sit. And it's boring as long as you're in a world of images and generalizations and ideas. And our sitting grips us really to the extent that we begin to shift around the corner of ideas, of generalizations. At some point, you know, if you keep sitting and just decide to do it, you know, this kind of boredom is right here, you know.

[14:56]

And at some point, you do actually kind of look around the corner of that and you begin to find a world which now I sense in the koans and in our ancient forebearers. Which I would call, now, I often speak about yogic practice, you know. So now I'm adding haptic yogic practice. And haptic is a word, an ancient, a modern word, because now they're using it for computer technology. They're trying to design haptic computer mice that respond to feelings. Because haptic means, it's a Greek word meaning to grasp or something tactile. So I'm trying to talk here about a world you feel as if when you saw someone, you didn't see them first, you felt them first and the feeling emerged.

[16:03]

Like, you know, they say an electron, you can't say anywhere where an electron is, but you can say the field is stronger where an electron is perhaps. So there's a field or a feeling and maybe then sight appears. So I said I come in the door and I discover, feel 28 or so insights. Actually you're not countable, you're not 28 or 27, but some number of insights which become outsides. So this insides, what I'm trying to talk about now, the insides you become familiar with in sitting. So first we begin, can we start with the distinctions of the body? You can just, don't look for distinctions you can name. Just look for distinctions or notice distinctions.

[17:05]

And scrutiny and investigation, which are the techniques of the Abhidharma, are also to stop the mind. So don't go for what distinctions appear. There's some kind of sensation or feeling. You can maybe sense your organs or what you know, some image of your body, but you want to kind of get past the image of your body. Maybe colors appear or maybe sounds. Or maybe some kind of light gray or bright or some kind of gradation. Or maybe there's more feeling at home in one part of the body than another. Or a feeling of mind or light penetrates some parts of the body more than others. This is a kind of topography which, if you want to practice, you really want to come home and feel stabilized in the truth,

[18:07]

You've really got to slip outside of the inherent instability of a sight-based world or a conceptually based world. You know, Plato's cave, perhaps we entered the darkness when Plato's folks, whoever was in the cave there with Plato and his idea of cave, got out into the light and they really were in the darkness. Because he has this idea of you're in this cave and there's only the shadows and images that you see and the shadows are something in the firelight and they're not the real images. So the cave is imagined from the point of view of seeing. So obviously you don't want to be in a cave if you can only imagine that a sight-based world is better. What do we have? We don't have just the clear light and Zen. We have utter darkness. We have flowing in darkness. The streams flow in darkness, which we chant sometimes.

[19:09]

Well, what about when there's no firelight? Then there's no shadows. What world do we have then? So let's again notice what we can notice. And see if you can notice the nameless. Allow yourself to notice the nameless without naming. Here I'm trying to name things or talk about things here, but really I'm trying to create a kind of skein, skein means like fishnet or something, skein of words that as you feel them they dissolve. So you have this chance, and here you are, you're devoting seven days of your life, which is a pretty big chunk of your life, pretty big chunk of a month. A month is a big chunk of a year, and you don't have so many years, you're already elderly.

[20:18]

Oh no, I know. You're just getting older. Now this is a week, a one week of your life, so we don't have to just set up, endure it. It's okay to endure it, that's good too, but This week is a treasure. You somehow arranged to come to the practice period or to come down here for this week and step outside your life. Let's really step outside and really just find out what's sitting on the cushion. Without names. See if you can come home to the nameless. As soon as you're in the named world, you're in a photograph. A photograph. Your culture is taken. All words are shared meanings. All words are public. Enlightenment, the Sambhogakaya, whatever these words mean, are about getting on the other side of a named world.

[21:26]

If you're interested in enlightenment, get your ass on the other side, excuse me, get yourself on the other side of a named world. But you want enlightenment in a named world, and then you can tell other people, look at this name. It's got an E-D on the end of it, enlightened. And then you're a noun. Enlightened is a noun. You don't want to be a noun, do you? It's just another name. Do you have the courage to be, to sit here in the nameless? To find the power of your being outside the named? surrounding the named.

[22:28]

So you can start this little practice by trying to notice distinctions, scrutinizing distinctions, but not classify them or name them. Yeah, something, some feeling, some color, some thought comes up, but Let the thinking itself sink into the nameless. It's just names. You can see the transparency of the names, of the thoughts. Plato really thought, and I'm not trying to be hard on Plato, and I don't really understand Plato, but what he represents in Western culture, I think, is a move toward the abstract and ideas as more real. And we want to get here into something more tactile.

[23:31]

Imagine washing your feet. Let's take a commonplace example. You wash your feet with your eyes open. So you wash your feet. And your feet are down there somewhere. It's kind of hard to get them up close enough to wash them. But you wash them. Because they're down there. Down there in relation to what? The sky or your head or something. But they're down there anyway. And you wash them. And between the toes, that's kind of a strange place. You can't see between the toes. So you have to make an effort to go out of the sighted world in between the toes. Anyway, you wash the image of your feet, and that's kind of a nuisance. But let's wash your feet with your eyes closed. You don't even know quite where your feet are, but you find them and wash them. Now between your toes is exactly the same as every other part of your foot. And your foot isn't down there anymore, it's in your hands.

[24:43]

And you couldn't quite say your foot is your foot anymore because your foot is now a hand's foot. And it's not just that your hands went to your foot, your foot came also to your hands. And so you're, what is your foot now? But a foot hands or hands foot or it's the subject object distinction is kind of lessened, it disappears. You can't really say hand, foot. I mean, there's no image or kind of sight object there. I mean, such a simple thing. I mean, excuse me for using such a dumb example, but we have to start somewhere. And it's nice when you sit your feet face the sun. I mean, they're looking up. All right, feet. You're bringing your feet up into the realm of the body when we sit.

[25:47]

So when we wash our feet with our eyes closed, I'm just like a little experiment, I think you'll see that the subject-object distinction tends to disappear, or lessen at least. Hands and feet are one, it's an activity now, not an object. Your feet are always an activity, there's all kinds of things happening in your feet, whether you pay attention to them or not, but they're not an activity you tend to think of as an object. You're not inside your feet. But when you wash your feet with your eyes closed, I think, again, it's a way to get a sense of a lessening of the subject-object distinction. You can begin to know that feeling. Hands, feet, feet, hands. And what's interesting is not only does the subject-object distinction disappear, there's a vivid, can be a vivid experience

[27:07]

of interdependence. Because you begin to feel all those acupuncture points in the feet or in all those areas in the feet which represent other parts of the body. So your feet suddenly, you can feel your feet all the way up through your whole body. So your feet aren't your feet anymore. They're somehow... You can't say exactly what your feet are because they don't fit into any image anymore. You can say the whole body or this or that, but that's not really... That's just some kind... That puts you outside it. So let's stay inside now. Inside washing your feet with your eyes closed. Suddenly you're washing or something in your whole body. And your feet, you find your feet are dirty in different ways each time you wash your feet with your eyes closed.

[28:17]

Your feet are somewhat different. Clean too. You know, Ivan Illich told me in the old days in Catholic monasteries that when a visitor came to the monastery, the abbot was called, and a monk prepared a dish, a bowl of hot, warm water, and the abbot was called. And after a while, the abbot would come out from his room, and you'd hear him padding down the hallway. And he would sit down and wash the feet of the visitor. There's Christian stories about washing feet. Well, can you imagine? I mean, what kind of world is that? I mean, say that Hannah Strong and Gary Harden both come to Crestone.

[29:19]

And so Katrin comes up and says, Gary and Hannah are down here. So I I come down and I wash Hannah's feet and I wash Gary's feet. What kind of pace does that... I mean, I don't have time to wash my own feet. Let alone Gary's and Hannah Strong's every time they come to visit. Well, of course, I think Gary would think twice about dropping by. He might say, you know, I don't want anybody to wash my feet, but... But just imagine what kind of world this is, where there's time to wash a visitor's feet. What's the propane guy's name? Walt or something? Who brings propane? What's his name? Walt? Huh? The man who drives the propane truck? Yeah. Walt is the one who repairs. Oh, Walt, okay. Okay, fair means. I wouldn't wash fair means feet every time he came, probably. But maybe I could. You'd be kind of surprised.

[30:21]

Get out of the truck, please. I'm going to wash your feet. But I just want to get you to imagine what kind of world, what kind of pace is it where you can wash a visitor's feet? We live in a different world. Just a detail like that tells us how different a world we live in. So, I mean, we take this world for granted, but it ain't always like this, not only in Asia, it ain't always like this in our own culture. And how different for the visitor feels and how different the abbot feels. And you're not just taking, when you take the sighted dimension away, or let's lessen it or give it not the first emphasis, you're not taking something away, you're actually adding dimensions.

[31:27]

You find yourself in a multi, as I talked about in the practice period lectures, a multi-dimensional lattice. I don't know what other word, but I use the word multi-dimensional complementarity, or multi-dimensional lattice. This is what I mean by haptic yogic world. Well, we're trying to, I'm trying to find the gates here, doors here. And one of them is to, when you sit, see if you can notice distinctions and without distinctions. Bodhidharma said to emphasize the transmission, mind-to-mind transmission without distinctions. You see a little phrase like that, oh, Bodhidharma, mind-to-mind, without distinctions.

[32:33]

Okay, let's practice without distinctions. Take it seriously. Without distinctions. So see if when you sit, you can, well, you make some distinctions, but you make distinctions which you don't name. That's already moving toward without distinctions. So let's sit down and see to what extent you can taste distinctions without names, and then move next into nameless, to see if you can really move further toward nameless itself and no distinctions. Now we come closer to this world flowing in darkness, where the world is all insides. We're not just in a sight-based world now.

[33:40]

Sight to sight means, in English, to also like to sight a gun, to get something in your sights. Usually we try to get the future in our sights. So sight lends itself to such images. Let's get the world out of our sights. Find maybe a non-sighted world. See if you can know the darkness of this. It's not dark like depressed or sad or something like that. It's dark like a big link. Space itself has a name but no distinctions. Space has a name but no distinctions. So the name doesn't mean anything. of the name but no distinction, then this space is also our space. But let's take the names which don't mean anything.

[34:45]

So let's maybe practice with the word nameless, because we have such a habit of naming. Let's see if we can sense a nameless world. The musical-like modulations of movement, stillness, activity, silence. Let's have a worldview based on, what did I just say, a worldview based on the musical modulations of silence, movement, stillness, not on a sighted world that's in place outside. I mean, if you want to live that way, please be my guest. But if you want to be the host of your own life, yes, we can always have the sight of you. But let's also see if we can feel this more ancient world, I think in the West as well as the East. where we really see what interdependence means because you feel your foot all up into your body and you feel the insides of situations and of yourself.

[36:02]

And then you know you're actually, whatever this here-ness is called, this here-ness has no name and you have no doubt about it.

[36:11]

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