And when you find this mind, you're not just penetrating your personal psychology, your personal life. you're entering into how things actually exist, we would say in Buddhism. And when you enter into how things actually exist, again, this is not about your personal history. But if you enter into things how things actually exist, it transforms your personal history. One of the words for it is enlightenment. And your karma is transformed through how you existentially are present.

[01:08]

Your suffering is transformed through discovering the mind through your preferences. Euer Leiden wird transformiert durch den Geist, der frei ist von Vorlieben. Yeah, I've touched on what I wanted to say. Ich habe berührt, was ich sagen wollte. I haven't said it very to my satisfaction yet. Ich habe es noch nicht ganz zu meiner eigenen Befriedigung ausgedrückt. But perhaps you can understand why much of Saschine is about just doing things for this period of time only. Without preferences. It's time to eat. We eat. When it's time for me to give a lecture, I give a lecture.

[02:14]

When it's time to sit, we sit. Okay. This is this experiment. And you are individually each making this experiment within yourself. And this is practicing Buddhism. Thank you. But I have the same faith in the Lord, and I have the same faith in the Lord, and I have the same faith in the Lord. Om mani-paryo te yad mani-yad po.

[03:25]

Vatsa-dho'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'o' I believe to guide them. [...] We were living in the middle of nowhere. There was a man in my heart. He told me, he [...] told me, Thank you.

[04:26]

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining this session, entering and entering this practice.

[05:50]

Last night my daughter called me in the evening. My 24-year-old daughter. And she spoke to me for a couple of minutes and she said, Dad, you're in Sashin. Yeah, I can tell by your voice. I can see that in your voice. It must be early in Sashin, though. You're not a zombie yet. I said, yes, it's the second day. Even Sophia likes it. She's much calmer than last week. Why is it?

[07:04]

What is it? What is this practice? Now, I called this a practice of yesterday. And what I meant by that is that you can't think your way into practice. It's like, I don't know how to say it, but if you practice, after a while you find yourself maybe around the corner. Yeah, there's an A. A. Milne, Christopher Robin poem I liked when I was a little boy.

[08:18]

My mother knew them all by heart and used to say them to me. What's the... A. A. Milne, Christopher Robin, you know, Pooh Bear... I guess not everyone in Germany knows it. But anyway, this little boy used to like to sit halfway up the stairs and halfway down. And I did too. I always wondered what's going on downstairs. They'd think I was asleep, but I was halfway down the stairs. The little boy likes it because halfway up the stairs isn't anywhere at all. It's not up and it's not down.

[09:24]

It's not in the nursery and it's not in the town. Nursery, that's where the little kids play. Yeah. It's no place at all. And that's how I have always felt about Zazen. It's halfway in the world and halfway somehow out of the world. And that poem I gave you last night, I've told you many times of Rumi's, you know, knocking on the ancient door, and when it finally opens, you find you're already on the inside. And...

[10:25]

Yeah, sometimes you practice and you find yourself around a corner Or you are around a corner and you don't recognize you're around a corner. You're in a place you can't think yourself to. You can only walk around the corner. You can't think yourself around a corner. We're often already on the inside. But our thinking doesn't let us notice it. Yes, I'm trying to think of ways to give you a sense of this. how practice brings you somewhere in increments.

[12:01]

I try to find ways to give you a sense of how practice brings you to something in increments. And you go right to these increments, and they don't seem such big steps, but then suddenly you realize in your... slightly different world. Or you may deny or not notice you're in a slightly different world. Many of the things I say are to try to get you to kind of like open I don't know, the middle eye or some eye and notice. that you're in a slightly different world. It's like, you know, to open your eye and see that you're in a slightly different world.

[13:06]

That's what the middle eye means. These eyes keep seeing you're in the same world they're used to, But this eye sees, oh, maybe I'm not in that world anymore. Yeah, maybe it's something like you're living in a house. Yeah, you live there quite a while and you're on the first floor. And there's a forest and a garden out the window. And one day you find yourself on the first floor, second floor and where I'm from, but first floor here. You're on the ground floor, and now you find yourself on the first floor, which in America is the second floor.

[14:24]

See, it's already confusing. And, yeah, so you look out the windows, and there's a beach and an ocean. It wasn't there on the first floor. Seems to be the same house. Yeah, so if you aren't careful, you look out and you see the forest. It was only an illusion for a moment that you saw the ocean. So part of practice is to be willing to notice that it was the ocean is the ocean and maybe you go up to the second floor the third floor second or third floor and you look out the window and

[15:45]

No ocean, no forest. There's no ground. You seem to be just floating like a balloon in the sky. Just now, we're all falling through space. The planet, the solar system, etc. Yeah, but we're all falling at the same speed, so it looks like we're somewhere, in some kind of place. So practice is something like that and you can't think yourself to the next step in practice. And often where we think we want to go is not really where we want to go.

[17:08]

And part of practice is trusting it that it will take us where we need to go, like Mick Jagger taught us. And part of the practice is to trust that it leads us to where we have to go, which Mick Jagger taught us. You remember that song with the London Child Choir or something? You can't always get what you want, but you try sometimes, you get what you need. With the London Child Choir... You can't always get what you want. So that's where trust, not belief, but trust in practice comes in.

[18:34]

Now I've been also trying to point out how profoundly philosophical, now I'm using it still with a sense of practice, Yeah, you can't separate this, I'll call it philosophy, from the practice. So I pointed out simple things like Bowing to the host, always bowing to the host. Or penetrating where there's no opening or penetrating on level ground.

[19:37]

One of the collections of koans is called Playing an Iron Flute with No Holes. Yeah, that means we can't think our way into practice. Das bedeutet, dass wir unseren Weg in die Praxis nicht hineindenken können. We say it's like a mosquito trying to bite an iron bull. Oder wir sagen, es ist wie eine Mücke, die versucht einen eisernen Bullen zu stechen. So we just practice, we just do it. Wir praktizieren einfach, wir tun es eben. So now let me look in a similar way at the two most common zazen instructions. Don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[21:18]

OK. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. Okay. Who doesn't invite your thoughts to tea? What doesn't invite your thoughts to tea? Your thoughts are your guests. Okay. Clearly in this instruction, your thoughts are not you. So already this teaching is there in this very simple instruction. That... The job of consciousness is to give us a predictable, cognizable world.

[22:31]

But we're already discussing that the world isn't predictable or cognizable. cognizable fully. So consciousness can only show us that part of the world which is predictable and cognizable. And try to fool us into thinking often that it's showing us the whole of the world. And self, as it's understood in Buddhism, is a function of consciousness. Okay. So, If your thoughts are just visitors, who is the host?

[23:53]

The host is the one who doesn't invite. der Gastgeber ist derjenige, der nicht einlädt. So you could even practice with that as a phrase. The host is the one who doesn't invite. Damit könnt ihr sogar als einem Satz praktizieren. Der Gastgeber ist der, der nicht einlädt. So clearly in this simple instruction, if there is such a thing as a you or a... You, it's the host that doesn't invite, not the thoughts. And when you really get that, It's easy to let go of your thinking.

[25:01]

It's when you identify with your thinking as you that it's very hard to not think all the time. We can think of the self as a kind of glue that glues us to our thoughts. Yeah, the self is lots of things. Self gives meaning to our world, etc. But it also is a kind of glue. So what do we discover if we just take this simple instruction and... fully practice it, means there's two different minds.

[26:03]

One mind in which thoughts swim. And one mind which doesn't have to have those swimming thoughts. And these minds not only are different, they can be simultaneous. One mind has the thought guests and the other mind is not inviting. Now, here again, if you look at it carefully, you can see a Buddhist definition of thoughts.

[27:11]

Because here thoughts are discursive thoughts. The thought that I won't invite my thoughts to tea is not a thought. Sorry. It's an attitude or a view which takes the form of a thought. But it's not It's not a discursive thought. They're both mental formations, and we loosely call them thoughts. Discursive mental formations are different than intention or attitudinal mental formations.

[28:13]

Attitudinal or intentional. oder Absichtsgedanken. Now, unless you get that kind of distinction, you'll be always a little confused. What is this? How do you not identify with your thoughts or stop your thoughts when you are... They're different kind of things. They're mental formations. Let's call them instead of thoughts. Solange ihr das nicht versteht, werdet ihr immer verwirrt sein. Da... Okay, so now another teaching in this little statement. And another teaching in this little statement is that whoever or whatever you are is not limited to the self.

[29:37]

The self doesn't cover or define the whole of our life. And the teaching also gives it a secondary priority to mind. Okay, so what is this mind or host mind? That is not thoughts or self. This is a fundamental question that arises from the practice of don't invite your thoughts to tea. Now, host and guest are the main technical term, maybe, throughout all the, particularly the Blue Cliff Records, those hundred columns.

[30:49]

Gastgeber und Gast, das sind die zwei Hauptbegriffe, die beiden technischen Termini, die die ganze Niederschrift von der smaragdenden Felswand durchziehen. So you could even ask, instead of asking what is the self or who, ask what is the host. Ihr könntet also, statt zu fragen wer oder was ist das Selbst, fragen was ist der Gastgeber. Who is the host that welcomes or doesn't invite the self? Wer ist der Gastgeber, der das Selbst willkommen heißt oder nicht einlädt? Now in this process of practicing such a simple phrase thoroughly, gradually you begin to feel you're not a self but a mind.

[31:51]

That's quite a big shift. Because the boundaries of self and the boundaries of mind are different. Yeah, I can't... Although I can talk about these things in Sashin better than in a seminar. Yeah, we need some other kind of more intimate meeting of less of us to really go into these. Because we all have to feel it. We all have to go around the corner more or less at the same time to together go the next step.

[33:00]

So there's some things right now I can't feel out how to carry another step. But it's all folded up in this. It's like the idea of the 11 dimensions or 10 or 11 or 12 dimensions of this world that we only see four, are folded up inside. Just look at how much teaching is folded up inside. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. Practice is to learn how to unfold these teachings.

[34:16]

And I don't really have to say any more now because it's all... there for you to unfold if you practice. Now you have to practice in a somewhat different time, though, than your usual mental time. Most of these teachings simply won't unfold in consciousness. They unfold in another kind of mind. Okay. Now, just let me say that much of what and who we are is our karma.

[35:25]

And our karma is a little bit like a flow of water. that splashes into the present. Let's all have a karma spritz, please. A karma shawler. Yeah. So when you change the present, when you change the kind of world you live in, The karma doesn't exist in the past. The karma only exists in how it surfaces in the present. And the main conduits of our karma are our preferences and our self. Our preferences and ourself.

[36:54]

And if you change how self functions, you change the conduit, if you have a mind for your preferences. Karma simply... splashes into the present in a different way. We could even say it doesn't flow into the future. It stops in the present. You don't know what to do with this muddy water. So this is the particular Buddhist way of working with these things, which is to transform the present, which then transforms the past, as it's present through your karma. Okay, now the other simple zazen advice

[38:05]

is don't scratch. Don't move. Now, the point of practice is often described as to achieve a calm, abiding mind. Here we already have calm. abiding, abiding, it stays in place, mind. But the point of zazen and practice is really not to obtain a calm abiding mind. It's nice to have a calm mind. And much nicer to have an abiding calm mind.

[39:29]

But that's only calming down the mind you have. And Buddhism is always transformative. Otherwise the word enlightenment wouldn't have any meaning. And real enlightenment is a continuously enlightening mind, not some enlightenment experience. So the real point of a calm, abiding mind is its transformative potential. So what happens when you can really sit still?

[40:46]

Inside and out. And you're already, you know, having some experience of this. When you're sitting through a meal or through a zazen period. And everybody around you seems to be sitting quite calmly and, you know, nobody's jumping up and knocking their orioke bowls over. So you sit calmly and don't, but of course everyone, half the people in the line are knocking their orioke bowls over in their mind. That's part of the teaching of the oriochi, to trap you behind them.

[41:58]

Okay. While you're sitting there, in zazen or during a meal, and if you were by yourself, you'd probably get up. As you're discovering, you're coming closer to a calm, abiding mind. Coming closer to a mind free of preferences. And you're beginning to see, as I said yesterday, the difference between the mind that has preferences and the mind that doesn't have preferences.

[43:02]

And you begin to feel like maybe a little pastry knife or something you can... slide between these layers of mind. So practice here, first of all, is to begin to see the layers of mind and then begin to separate them and find that each one has its own integrity. and actually the usual mind we call consciousness is several minds all kind of glob together and we see it as sort of one mind

[44:06]

Because the self views it as one mind. And the self views it as a mind that's in a kind of flow from past to present to future. But Dogen says... time flows from future to present to past. He's trying to get us out of this mind that flows from past to future. So it's still sitting that allows us to see the layers in the water, the currents in the water of mind.

[45:32]

And to begin to find that these different minds have their own integrity, their own... Yeah, homeostatic, self-organizing quality. Okay, so it's self now as a kind of glue which glues us into... A world of past, present, and future. That's probably enough on that. Oh no, not quite yet. I want to say something about concentration.

[46:49]

Because I think I maybe confused you a little bit about concentration. So there's ordinary concentration. A classic example would be the watchmaker. He has to very carefully do tiny things with little tiny tools. And often such a person stops their breath in order to concentrate. And that's actually one of the physical dangers misunderstanding concentration in zazen. Because sometimes when we concentrate, we actually sort of stop our breath, which then changes the oxygen in our brain, and we start having all kinds of other things happen.

[48:04]

That's one of the reasons we don't breathe here, where you stop your breath. We breathe from our heels, our feet, below our diaphragm. Yeah, for in this kind of concentration, Everything is function. The true concentration, at least what's meant by concentration in the eightfold path. Now, how can I think of an example of what it's like?

[49:07]

Imagine a car is driving along and the engine's going and That's one kind of concentration. Now say the car stops. And the energy which was in the engine Somehow disperses to all parts of the car equally. You thought you had an old car, and suddenly the paint is glowing. And you notice after sitting or in sashin sometimes, your skin feels different, like soft, a baby soft. This is concentration.

[50:08]

This is the paint glowing. The whole metal of the car is so, I'm so happy to be a car. That's how the car feels, is sitting there thinking, How the owner looks at a new car. The car feels that way. As they try to make cars look in advertisements. And when the boundaries of... And you no longer feel your boundaries as the boundaries of a self on the way to the future.

[51:10]

Time more or less ceases to be your boundaries. And space is more your boundaries. And space is more your boundaries. Really, from the point of view of practice, time is really just physical events. Even in a watch where the... minute hand swings around so smoothly it's actually fraction of a second physical events. So you cease to feel like you're in time. You feel like you're in a physical event which has the qualities of irreversibility and distance.

[52:22]

You understand what I mean by irreversibility. It's like seeing somebody in a movie go backwards out of the swimming pool onto the board. You know that doesn't happen. Or a broken egg doesn't suddenly kind of recombine. No one has ever seen that happen. So there's an irreversibility to this event we are, but Do we need to call it the self-experience of time? So when you begin to have this different... You're on another floor of practice.

[53:28]

If you have this different experience, you're on another floor of practice. And your boundaries are different. Then you feel space, and let's say also time, as also you. Just like you feel the bones and stuff as you. You feel the tree branches and the sounds of the birds as you. When you're sitting and you really feel this whole thing is somehow... your experience and that is the host mind.

[55:01]

And you don't have to go anywhere or do anything. That's true concentration. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

[56:07]

As we begin to pray, I ask you to lead us. [...] Thank you. I'm not going to stop you.

[57:38]

I'm not going to stop you. I'm not going to stop you. Good afternoon. Guten Tag. And I think it's the fourth day, is that right? So, more than half way. But of course you're not counting. Yeah, I would like to try to explain today the practice of doing nothing.

[58:46]

I think maybe the hardest practice to try to explain. Yeah. I give suggestions of it always, but I... I try to give you something to do, too, because you want something to do. And doing something in our practice is also part of our practice. But it ought to be in the larger context of doing nothing, if that makes any sense. And also, you know, I always find you quite wonderful as you are. And I don't see any reason why I should tell you to do something or to improve yourself or something.

[60:00]

And how am I to know anyway what improvement is or isn't? Yeah. I just live here and I enjoy practicing with you. That's all. Yeah. Sakyurashi said that Yeah. He himself said, we really shouldn't do anything in our sasen. He said, but if you try to improve yourself or to learn something, you'll stray from true practice, he says.

[61:07]

And after ten years, you'll say, I wasted my time. For ten years, I didn't gain anything. After ten years? Yeah, after ten years I didn't gain anything. I wasted my time. Yeah, and Sikorsky implied that because you tried to gain something, you didn't gain anything. This was hard enough for Dogen Zenji to teach and Suzuki Roshi to teach. And now how difficult in our capitalist society where you're supposed to spend most of your middle years making sure you have something to eat in your older years.

[62:13]

And the government will do it for you, I guess, if you spend your middle years in the right way. Not in the right way. In the right way. And I can't, how can I say this is wrong? This seems very sensible. And who wants a bunch of old people mooching off their parents? Moochi? Moochi, not their children, I mean. That's how I'm going to end up. Luckily, I have nice children, and I'm starting... you know, making sure this went around for a long time.

[63:18]

Okay, I don't know what I'm talking about. The word sashin, the ses part, is quite a subtle word. Usually I present it as meaning to gather, shin being mind-heart, to gather the mind-heart. And that's what we do in Sashin. We sit here together gathering a mind individually and together. And seeing into this gathered mind, which is different than seeing into your mind.

[64:20]

when you sit alone. It's actually quite funny that there's some difference. Quite strange. Why should it be like that? Why should it be so? As complete individuals, we can do it ourselves. We have everything we need. Well, it's very important to have the view that you have everything you need at each moment. But at each moment when you sit in a sesshin, you have everything you need in a different way. And anyway, you're made of other people. I mean, two people made you.

[65:44]

I mean, I think it was like that, wasn't it? And then people brought you up, and there was school, and you read books, and you're just a composite of But at this point I have to, saying something like this, I have to tell the story I've told you often of my life. 40-year-old daughter. When she was three or so, she wouldn't do what her mother told her to do. And so the bad cop got involved, me, and I said, you really have to do this. No.

[66:46]

Listen, Sally. Virginia and I made you. You belong to us. So you have to do what we say. She said, it's too late now. I belong to me. Oh, I thought, okay. Okay, and I bowed deeply. Mm-hmm. So it's also true we belong to me. Dungsan was enlightened leaving Yunyan.

[67:50]

They had quite an interesting discussion about where they would meet after Yunyan died or would they come back together and so forth. On leaving, he walked across a stream. And he looked in and saw his reflection. And he had some experience which he tried to express in a poem. And he said, alone I proceed through myself. Everywhere I go, I meet him. He meant union.

[68:56]

How we're in this, even alone, we're in this realm of other people. What other people make your realm? every morning I bow to Suzuki Roshi offer him incense and I look at him you know I always look at him as if he was there and he is there and I Yeah, yeah, it's like that. Like he's here. But I look right through him, too, to a man named Shukrila Ali. Shukrila Ali. Who is this guy I met on a table in a half desert in Iran? on the Euphrates River.

[70:07]

When I was working on ships when I was about 20 years old. And he was the first truly extraordinary person I met. So when I see Suzuki Roshi, I see him too as neither Shukrila Ali or neither Suzuki Roshi. But the possibility of being like this, this is a human possibility. And I look at you and I also see this human possibility. Somehow, I never stray from this. Everyone I see, I see this human possibility.

[71:22]

Say why exactly I've come to see that way. For me it's not about practice, it's just a fact. It's a fact, so I see it that way. blowing my nose like this since I was in fourth grade. I'm sorry. I'm a very good customer for Kleenex. Or something. He said, alone I proceed through myself. Everywhere I go, I meet him.

[72:35]

He also meant, everywhere I go, I meet myself. Everywhere I go, I meet him. He is the same as me. Yet I am not he. This was his main enlightenment poem. What does it mean? I don't know. The poet I told you about the other day, Yan Wan Li, said, when you take away words, And you take away meaning.

[73:38]

What's left is poetry. Yeah, what am I talking about? So this word sashin, again, we... gather our own mind and body and we gather a mind together. But cess also means to respect. As you treat a guest or treat your teacher. To respect, and it also means to put into order through respecting.

[74:45]

So this word ses of sesheen has this kind of subtle, these subtle meanings. And so I said yesterday, you know, looking into don't invite your thoughts to tea. And I asked, what is this host mind which doesn't invite the thoughts to tea? What is this host mind that we can respect? How can we let this host mind put things in order?

[75:50]

Now, it may sound odd to you, and I apologize for it, but I spent ten years sitting zazen and not doing anything. Was it a plan on my part? Was it a plan on my part? Would I recommend it to you? Got nothing better to do in the next 10 years? Try doing nothing. How can I recommend that to anyone? Why did I do nothing? Well, I listened to Suzuki Roshi saying somewhat similar things that influenced me.

[76:56]

But it mostly was that how could I do something without my small mind being that which did it? Of course I did. In the first years I was practicing, I learned to count to ten. And that's no small feat. Feat, F-E-A-T, accomplishment. Small feat, too. Because, you know, when we teach, we're teaching Sophia sort of to count. We've shown her 60, because between Sophia and myself and Marie-Louise, we have 60 digits, toes, fingers.

[78:04]

So we're working on 60. But she's going to learn to count to ten with her consciousness. That's fairly easy. In zazen, you're learning to count to ten with your awareness. That's not so easy without bringing consciousness to the fore. So to be able to count without losing zazen mind is actually some accomplishment. I even learned to count to a hundred and sometimes I did that. And sometimes during those ten years I'd start out the period of zazen with counting or following the breath.

[79:17]

But mostly I actually didn't do anything. So although I'm not recommending it, here I am sitting here, you know, pretending to say something about Buddhism. So I have to at least speak from my own experience. So although I'm not recommending it, I'm speaking about my experience. Yeah. I think the main reason was I could never ask myself to do something in practice without a trace of a gaining idea. And it seemed more important to me to have no gaining idea than to accomplish something.

[80:22]

So my practice was to not accomplish anything. Just to sit. Accept, accept, accept. This is what I am, or what is, what is anyway. And Sukhiroshi commenting on this poem of Dungsan's about the water and the reflection. So Dungsan looked in the water, he didn't even see his reflection. He just saw the water and that was good enough for him. Just to see the mind was good enough for him. And the same Yang Wanli, who, as I told you, died when Dogen was six. And also his lifetime coincided, I think, with the publication, compiling and publication of the Blue Cliff Records and the Shoyuroku.

[82:00]

And he's a poet I like a lot, and he was very influenced, of course, maybe by Buddhism. Yeah, and there was some Chinese fellow built a pavilion of reality. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that great? You build a pavilion where you can see reality. Yeah, I think around this pond up here, which is so different now that René cleared, Widmer cleared all around it.

[83:06]

We had to build a little wooden platform that kind of extended into the pond a little bit and you could sit and discriminate and have preferences. We could call it the reality pavilion. People would go there and sit there Yeah, nothing would happen. In fact, we could draw a square anywhere and say that's the reality pavilion. We should make it big enough so we can all sit in it. Mm-hmm. And Yan Wanli, commenting on this guy who built this pavilion, said,

[84:20]

If someone asks you, what is reality? Tell, say to them, look in the mirror. Or look in the mirror and see the sky in water. Yeah. You know, I was 20 or, I don't know, 23 or 24. I remember the party once. For some reason, I never liked parties much, particularly ones where you have to talk to people you don't know. And I said to somebody, how do you get rid of these people? I wasn't very Bodhisattva, was I? I said, how do you get rid of these people? You don't want to talk with them. And this guy said to me, well, I found the best way to get rid of somebody is to ask them, what is reality?

[85:41]

Immediately they go talk to someone else. Maybe I'm still trying. What is reality? I actually asked that question of Yamada Roshi once in San Francisco. He said, I'll answer tomorrow. And the next day he had us all sit. And we sat, and he just asked us to sit in as empty as possible. And he asked us to sit as empty as possible.

[86:52]

And then he said at some point, this is reality. And I've often said, when you find your seat, when you feel empty, This is being alive. And you feel completely at ease. Yes. Whatever it is, this is being alive. And I think both Nietzsche and Heidegger asked the question, what is the being of beings? What is your own being, but what is the being of beings?

[87:55]

That's basically the Bodhisattva question, vow. To be the being of beings. Now, of course, when I talk about doing nothing, I'm talking about doing nothing in zazen.

[89:01]

In zazen mind. So, yeah, I figure she would say open yourself completely or empty yourself. Sukhiroshi would have said, open yourself completely or teach yourself. And he could have said in various ways, yeah, see if you can have no gaining ideas. And if I thought, if I really don't If I really decide not to have any gaining ideas, I can accept the result of that. I mean, I really thought, I have only one life, why shouldn't I waste it?

[90:06]

It's not of much consequence that I can make my life this kind of experiment. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to sit here anyway. I like to do zazen. But is this any better than daydreaming? What's wrong with daydreaming? Listening to the rain. I've often said that For non-meditators, the closest experience they may have of zazen is sunbathing. And sunbathing may be a kind of sun-dreaming, day-dreaming. Yeah. So you let appear what appears.

[91:37]

And at least you know whatever appears is your mind, the mind. Is reality, is actuality? Is thusness? Yeah. So your mind actually gets used to, in this practice, just letting things appear. and if there is no gaining idea or as little as possible you notice it when it's there and you let go of it but it is a way too then of gently gently, gently dissolving the self The self becomes something you use, but not something you...

[92:54]

function through, at least in Zazen. Anyway, you get deeply into the habit of just letting things appear.

[93:04]

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