If you can find an equanimity of mind or a kind of calmness of mind when it's painful, when your legs are painful, your body's painful. Yeah, you really do... come into a state of mind that isn't a depth of mind, that isn't affected by the surface waves. And there's a certain, there's a considerable, let's say, considerable dimension to pain. a considerable dimension, which is not much different than thought.

[01:09]

And as I think some of you have discovered in Sashin, you can be very painful in Sashin and then suddenly it's just gone for a while. Nothing's changed, but something's changed. Yes, Neil? Yeah, but I found, especially in my experience, was that you just get to that state through pain only. What you said about 40 years sitting, we had a group too. If no pain is there, you're not forced to get out of that state. At least it works with me that way. Pain forces you to give up. In other words, you don't ever get there except through pain. Is that what you mean? In the most direct and brutal way, yes. I see. So that's why I've seen you taking walks, you know, sort of... Well, it's not true that you only get there through pain. Es ist nicht wahr, dass man dahin nur durch Schmerzen gelangt.

[02:37]

At least my experience is it creates a kind of basis that's there, sort of when you need it. In meiner Erfahrung erschafft das so wie eine Grundlage, die da ist, einfach auch dann, wenn du es brauchst. Geez, I didn't think that would be... I thought you would hardly hear me say that. Yes, go ahead. I know comparable experiences, but by pain, emotional pain, psychological pain. Okay, yeah. Okay, also just, you know, you can substitute psychological pain. Comparable is the word, by the way. It's not comparable. Comparable. Comparable. Okay. Okay. It reminds me of something which we talked about, which is in relationship to this psychological pain.

[03:58]

which is sort of approaching it from a different point because the pain is already there and then the sitting comes after, next, yeah? And we discussed how zazen is a very good opportunity to be with pain and to go I mean, you'd be considered crazy if anybody heard you say that.

[05:12]

Outside of a circumstance like this. Is it so? Is it like that? What? That this is a good opportunity to be with pain? Well, it seems to be. But, jeez, is that all you guys talked about? You had some other topic, I hope? But let me say something first. It is extremely useful to really go through pain. Does that mean I'm recommending that you look for a little pain to go through?

[06:17]

No. At Tassajara, before the Zendo burned down, I used to sit on the altar with Suzuki Roshi. He sat like there, and I sat here. And in those days, we didn't have zaflus. We just sat on the tatami floor. We had Zafus. In Japanese monasteries you don't have Zabutons. But you have to tell me, you know. But Sukhiroshi and I sat on Zabutons because the altar just had wood, I think.

[07:33]

I don't remember exactly, but anyway, we sat on Zabutons. No one complained about Sukhiroshi sitting on Zabutons, but they said, how come he gets to sit on a Zabuton? I never actually thought about it, because I'd gotten used to sitting on tatamis. But it was an issue, so after Suzuki Roshi died, I think it was after he died, but everyone sat on tatamis. I didn't want to give it up. No. That's one way to look at it. No, it was just the custom, so I just thought, you know, we'll just have everyone sit on sabotans. It's easier. But in any case, that's not the point.

[08:42]

The point of my story is I could see very clearly everybody sitting in the line, in the sender, four lines. Paul knows that sender. It's gone now, like many things. Anyway, I could really see when people in Sechin were having a very difficult time. And I remember particularly one person who was sitting right there on the wall. And through, I don't know, five or ten or more periods of the seshin. He was really barely able to do it, but he didn't move. And I watched him and I knew that he would be different afterwards.

[10:08]

And he was different afterwards. A kind of enlightenment or something like that happened by his being able to go through it. Maybe physical enlightenment, not mental enlightenment. So usually I could see the difference between when finally somebody was able to sit through anything. So I think if that comes your way in practice, this is good. Do I think you have to repeat this four times a year? I don't think so. And in fact, I'm surprised at how many people think they have to go to Sashin.

[11:28]

Yes, so we have practice weeks and we have seminars. But still, if I compare practice weeks and seminars, more people will come to Sashin than to practice weeks. Because I think that going through that once or twice in your life is probably sufficient. And unless you live in a monastery, If you live a normal life and you come to Sashin once or twice a year, it's going to be difficult every time you come, for most people anyway. There's a few people who, a few people, some people sit without pain, but not a large percentage. And I know there's two or three or four long-term Dharma Sangha practitioners, 20 years or so, in Europe.

[12:50]

who part of the reason they don't practice with the Dharma Sangha much anymore is because they don't want to go to Sashins. But they seem to identify being part of the Dharma Sangha with going to Sashins. That's not my idea. Because, you know, at some point, I mean, it's maybe helpful to do this, you know, if you want to do sashins. I'm not asking any of you to do sashins. Except some of the senior people. No. Um... Yeah, because the practice should be doable.

[14:29]

It shouldn't be something you only can do when you're young or something like that. Now, if it's your life, then you have to figure out some way to be able to sit if you want to practice with people. But if I get so I can't sit, then I'll still participate in sessions and all that. I just will have to participate in a different way. And after my radiation treatments for those eight weeks, I somehow made me really stiff for a year or so, and it was quite difficult to sit. It's getting a little easier now.

[15:42]

But now as I get older, I'm finding, as I told some of you the other night, I'm finding I have to really put my desk on the floor. Yeah, that's how I, in a way, that's how I learned to sit. You know, I sat in what I used to call the half lily. In America, lilies are only used at funerals, practically. So I called my posture the half lily because it nearly killed me. And I had very complicated ways. This right foot stuck out back there. I don't know what I did. For the first year or so, I'd have to sit down and push my legs down.

[16:52]

Finally, I'd get in a position. And after about five minutes, they'd pop out. Finally, Tsukiroshi would carry the stick every period in the city. He sat on the altar and I sat in the first seat right there, or second seat sometimes. And about a third of the way through the... Thank goodness it was a third of the way. A third of the way through the period, he'd come and walk around. And after a while, I could manage till he got around.

[17:56]

And then when he got around, I would bow and sit the rest of the period, my legs up like this. With your knees up, with my arms up, which is a rest posture. And one morning, Sukershi walked by and he said, why don't you just stay home and sit in a chair? But I took all the furniture out of my house, my apartment. So I ate sitting on the floor, I worked at the desk sitting on the floor, etc. And finally my legs just said, we give up. So now in Crestone my desk is on the floor and it's all day long I sit on the floor from four in the morning till five in the afternoon or six in the afternoon and it gets easier to sit.

[19:15]

So my project now is to get my desk on the floor upstairs. Yeah, because, you know, I want to be able to sit with you, and as I get older, I get stiffer, so. Yes, because I would like to sit with you. And the older I get, the stiffer I get. And beyond that, I really enjoy sitting. Yes. But for most of us, most of us with normal lay lives, you know, if you can just sit sometimes, that's enough.

[20:17]

Alan, you want to say something? I just want to say we come to the Sashins because of the cake. That's not true. We can have cake. You can have your cake and eat it. Yes? You asked whether there was another topic about pain. Yes. We also talked a long time about pain. But I think it also had to do with the question, how do we make our practice real? Because I noticed that I couldn't quite handle this question. How do we make our practice real?

[21:31]

Because if I understand Zazen correctly, then there doesn't exist any reality. And how... And how can I make then my practice more real? We found a small answer. That we don't get captured by concepts which we take for real. But we didn't get much further. Well, I meant the question in a really conventional sense.

[22:39]

Like, how do you make your practice real? Well, you try to do zazen once a day. Oh, you practice zazen once a day. You're all too deep for me. Ein Thema in unserer Gruppe war, One theme in our group was which value or which priority does practice have in our life. Is it kind of a nice suffix to life?

[23:54]

And somebody asked, what happens when the daily practice doesn't show any results anymore, kind of gets stuck? and how to deal with that. Especially if it's a longer period of time where nothing happens. I understand. You give up. You do something else. I don't know, I don't, you know, it's... Yeah, do something else.

[25:25]

It was someone in the group. Oh, I know. I wanted you to take the blame. As I put it, do you bring practice into your life or do you bring your life into practice? Do you stop sleeping because you're not getting any results? Even if you're sleeping terribly, you still try to sleep.

[26:33]

So it does depend on the depth or thoroughness or something like that of your decision. I mean, I can't explain why I made the decision I made. And I'm a little embarrassed by the decision I made. But I decided that practice would be virtually the only priority in my life. And I've never made a decision since 1961 that wasn't based on practice. Und seit 1961 habe ich keine Entscheidung getroffen, die nicht wirklich auf der Grundlage von Praxis gefällt.

[28:00]

I got married only when it would work with practice. Ja, ich habe auch nur geheiratet, als ich wusste, dass es geht mit der Praxis. I remember I seriously threw my back out once. I'm not telling you this because I think it's a little odd on my part, but I'm telling you because I think the kind of decision you make has a lot to do, or something to do at least, with how your practice develops. But I was walking up from the beach in Japan where I had this little house on the beach. Some young Japanese guy had driven, there was a few houses there, and driven his car into the ditch.

[29:17]

It was a small Japanese car. And so I lifted... I lifted the... front end of the car out of the ditch. It was a rain ditch. I put it on the road. Somehow it was easy to do. It was light. The engine was in the back. We only had one tire in the ditch. Great. I think my kids were there in Miami. Yeah. I lifted it out. And then a whole lot of Japanese people who had been working in the rice fields north were so embarrassed that the Westerner lifted the car out. That they came running over and insisted on lifting the other car. the back part out themselves.

[30:31]

But they wanted to give me at least a chance to participate too. So in the middle of this group I had one little hand in, about six people, I had one little hand in, and when I lifted that time my back just went completely out. And I somehow got back to the house, but it would take me, if I laid on my back, to roll to my side would take me more than half an hour. I had to do lots of little movements until I could get the weight to move to my side. And it took me about an hour at least to get upright, sitting upright.

[31:42]

And my only goal was to sit Zazen. And I figured out how to get up and sit Zazen. I couldn't do anything else, but I could sit Zazen. Then I learned how to relax the muscles in my back so they didn't tighten up. And this was like two or three days like this and then I drove back to... I had to drive the car and I drove the car back keeping my back relaxed all the time because as soon as it tightened up Back to Kyoto, where there were chiropractors and things like that. But what struck me when this happened is how I really didn't care anything about my back, just could I still sit Zata. So I've never, myself, ever been concerned with whether the results in practice

[33:03]

I've just decided to sit like you wash your face or like you breathe or something like that. If it doesn't work, fine. If it doesn't work, fine. If Buddhism is a complete failure, I don't care. I just decided to do this. And I decided to do nothing else, to try nothing else, only this. I won't go to doctors, you know, I had prostate cancer, I did, but generally I don't take medicine, I just do this. If this works, fine, if it doesn't, fine. Now, do I recommend you be a fanatic? No. Yeah, but somehow that's... So if you're involved... So anyway, the learning curve, to put it shortly, the learning curve in Zen is often flat or downhill.

[34:42]

And you just have to have a decision deep enough to keep doing it. And you just have to make a decision deep enough to carry on. I'm embarrassed to tell you these stories, but okay, what else? Yes, is there anything else? In our group, we talked about whether you can do any practice without breathing or not. My experience is that without noticing the breathing, without breathing practice as a basis, without noticing the breathing exactly, In our group we discussed whether there is any technique where you don't take the breath as a vehicle to observe.

[36:01]

And there were some people who said, okay, you can also practice without the attention on your breath, but for me it doesn't work without attention on my breath. Well, I think in some ways no practice requires you to bring attention to the breath. Except bringing attention to the breath. But it's always a resource. And very often it's a help. But I look at it that way more. It's a... Like you can establish your continuity in the body and in phenomena without using the breath.

[37:08]

But it's a heck of a lot easier to use the breath. And particularly in the kind of practice I'm talking about, this practice as a craft, The breath is the medium of the craft. In enlightenment experiences sometimes there's just a complete shift without craft or anything, just suddenly you're in a different place. Yes, but above all in the craft of realization, there the breath is important. If there are such experiences of enlightenment, then the change can happen quickly and immediately. And yesterday's...

[38:15]

Discussion is also, you know, or tomorrow's discussion can be. Yes. Were you going to say something? Yeah. You said that there are people who sit for 40 years and nothing happens. Not much, I said. So do I just take this risk when I make the decision to sit? If you just sit and really don't do much further to articulate your practice, well, I suppose it's a risk. Yeah, I mean, nothing bad happens to you.

[39:31]

I mean, it's not a bad thing to sit 40 years and have nothing happen. You haven't caused any harm. Yeah, he kept you out of trouble, you know. But there are situations where people do practice for a long period of time. I guess there's some satisfaction in sitting. And I think it gives them a sense of well-being and helps balance their life perhaps. But it's a kind of mental and physical therapy then. It's not really a transformational practice. Or something like that. I mean, I think that practice to develop has to be... active and intentional.

[40:45]

Maybe what I said was too strong. Because I do know people who sit, they just feel better if they sit, and if they don't sit for a couple of weeks, they don't feel as good. Like if you have a good night's sleep, you feel better. That's not bad. There's nothing wrong with that. I have been reading books by Suzuki Roshi for a long time. For a long time I just read the books of Shonri Suzuki and sat with what I read.

[41:58]

Can it be an intention just to sit like a beginner, as he said? Is that already an intention? Yeah, sure. That's an intention. To sit like a beginner for 40 years is not so easy. Yes, it would be a very good practice. So the intention doesn't need to be something very big. It can be something small. I don't know what the difference between a big and small intention is, but yes, okay. Sometimes my intention is to just adjust my cushion a little better. Okay. This morning you said a little bit more about gradual practice.

[43:11]

Yeah, for me it's still not clear what is meant by sudden practice. We tried to approach this term yesterday in our group. So, and with the incremental practice there is more Well, something predictable and something... Influenced.

[44:24]

Influenced, yeah. Or intentional, maybe, also. And with the sudden, there is more something unknown, something surprising. And so we came to the conclusion that it might be helpful to create a specific state of mind. Or being open to and ready to leave or release the usual reference points.

[45:30]

I forgot the third one. Somebody in the group with him remembers the third? Oh, Paul? I think it was, there was also trust. And it begins with the trust. And I think Peter said it very well. And it was also about trust. And it starts with trust. Basically, Zen practice is sudden practice. And in that way, it's kind of conceptually related to the Pure Land schools, for example.

[46:53]

The pure land school. Like, you just chant... And that's enough. Yeah. So Nichiren-shu and Jodo-shu and Jodo-shin-shu, you don't have to translate that, are all schools which are basically rooted in faith and repetition and the idea of a single practice. Namu ho renge kyo. Namu ho renge kyo. This is chanting the name of the Lotus Sutra. Okay. So you're chanting something. What?

[47:55]

You're just chanting the name of the Lotus Sutra. Namu johannes hof, namu johannes hof, namu johannes hof. So you could do that, you know? Ja, also du chantest einfach. I like watermelons. Ich liebe Wassermelonen. Ja. Wassermelon, Wassermelon. It's good in German. Wassermelon. Wassermelon. Okay. Conceptually, that's like Zen practice. Okay, what's it based on? It's based on faith. In the Pure Land School, in the Pure Land Schools and the Nichiren School, which is really a kind of Pure Land School, it's based on faith.

[48:59]

In these pure land schools... They usually conceptualize it as somehow it comes to you from outside. And I forget how it's characterized, but usually it's the Zen school is from inside out and the Pure Land schools are from outside in or something like that. Yeah, and this is, you know, experientially rooted. And I can remember when I first began to feel a kind of somatic field of mind. Yeah. I could feel it coming from outside and I could feel it coming from inside.

[50:01]

Which did I emphasize? It's something I talk to security about. So the difference is that the Zen school's view is that you're somehow articulating your own mental and physical experience. And in the Pure Land School, there's a feeling that somehow Buddha is everything all at once and comes towards you.

[51:06]

It's almost like believing in God. But the pure land is the happy hunting ground. The pure land is not somewhere else, it's here. So, for example, when Thich Nhat Hanh speaks about with each step feel you're in the pure land, something like that he says. This is not so different. This is really a kind of pure land practice. Now, if you look at Pure Land in a sophisticated way, it's not really very different from Zen.

[52:22]

And Suzuki Daisetsu, for instance, who, you know, is the person who made Zen best known in the West, D.T. Suzuki, was a Zen scholar and sort of a Zen practitioner for most of his life. But for the last 10 years of his life, he was a pure land practitioner. Okay. The way it's usually formulated is other power and self-power. So the Pure Land School is other power. You chant and let By chanting the name of Amida Buddha, Amida Buddha takes good care of you.

[53:48]

And I chanted the name of Amida Buddha for a year or so I practiced it. And while I was practicing Zen, I just thought, why not add Namu Biributsu? What the heck? And a rather well-known musician, jazz musician, sometimes through somebody, through somebody, etc., you know, they were Namu Ho Renge, a What's it called? Soka Gakkai Buddhist, which is a version of Nichiren. But a friend of mine was the former girlfriend of the drummer.

[54:55]

Oh, shall I translate that also in detail? As irgendein Freund. So this person would invite us to join him when he gave concerts in San Francisco. And about half the group would go take drugs in one room and the other half would chant in the other room. Sometimes I'd be in one room. No, that's not true. No, I would join the chanting group. And we'd chant, for, you know, 30 to 40 minutes. And then they'd go play. Okay, so chanting Namu Ho Renge Kyo or chanting Namu Minabutsu, is it much different than saying, this very mind is Buddha, this very mind is Buddha, this very mind is Buddha?

[56:09]

So this is a development of what's called Kamakura Buddhism. And the Pure Land schools and the Zen schools are in a sort of the same conceptual framework in the Kamakura period. But the Zen school has the practice, the so-called single practice, much more developed, doesn't depend on faith. I don't know how useful it is for me to go into this in much more detail. But while you practice a phrase, let's just take this very mind is Buddha.

[57:32]

Or Mu. This is all sudden practice. Or not mind, not Buddha, not a thing, not an object. Or not knowing is nearest. Or I'm always close to this. Already connected. Just now is enough. In a certain way they're dynamically similar to Namo Mirabutsu. But actually each one is different. Conceptually the same, but as a practice each one is different. Now let's just take a simple one, already connected.

[58:37]

Yes, let's just take something simple, already connected. Ja, das ist mein, das werdet ihr in keinem Zen-Text finden. Ja, wieso ist schon verbunden ein kraftvoller und machtvoller Torsatz für uns Westler? Because we assume that we're already separated. We assume that space separates things. Yoga cultures, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc., don't assume that space separates things. They see space as connecting things.

[59:40]

Now that's a very simple formulation, but there's a lot of truth to it. Look at our letters. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. You could make them with 2x4s. 2x4s, that's typical pieces of wood. Look at this. You couldn't make that of 2x4s. And these characters down here, they're really connected by space, not by the brushstrokes. And many characters, like Yamada, Momon Roshi was unusual that he generally made his characters in the space of a circle.

[60:49]

But mostly calligraphers and Japanese calligraphers or Chinese calligraphers are taught to make their characters in an imagined square. So you can have on the left side a mirror. On the left side you have a character. On the right side you can have a character. And the third character down here. And they're all in the same space, but the three aren't touching each other. And if you do the grass strokes, they may just be kind of like... flow of a gesture and they look connected because it's all kind of like but you can't even read it unless you can feel the gesture which shortcutted the territory does that make sense so it exists in the gesture not on the paper

[62:20]

And often people can't read them unless they sort of, oh yeah, that must be that. All right, now I give you often, I'm going a little over, but I'll try to not be too long, boss. I give you often the definition of the word for body and its etymology in Chinese. Is it a share of the whole? And... In contrast to our word for body, which means, the etymology means a brewing vat, like for making beer or something.

[63:55]

So if I think of myself, this body-mind, as a share of the whole, It's not like my share, it's my piece of pie. It's more like I'm a piece of your pie. It's more that direction. Yeah, so... Or we're all pieces of the pie, but you don't see the connections between the pieces. No. Again, for example, the moon affects the tides and affects our reproductive cycles. And it's clear the moon is in our gravitational field.

[65:08]

And when Einstein did his measurements to detect gravity, He had to assume the laboratory also moved. Work he did here in Bern. So nobody up until, no scientist up until that point thought, oh, the laboratory is a fixed point and we can measure light and sound in the laboratory. But he said, uh-uh, the laboratory is also moving. Now Einstein was one of the first people to show that actually there's invisible connections everywhere.

[66:09]

But in all the thousand years or so of Western history, up to 2,000 years almost, up to Einstein, no one thought of the laboratories also moving. But in Asian countries, they would think the laboratories also moving. Because they assume everything is connected. Space connects. All right. So if I said in Asia, all of us are already connected, they'd say, oh, yeah, well, so what?

[67:12]

This is a boring thing to learn after 40 years of Sazan. The martial arts and yoga, they all assume there's some kind of connective field. So when you say the body is a share of the whole, practice is about how is it extended into the whole, and how is the whole extended into the body? So you couldn't have a koan based on recognizing that? You could have a koan recognizing it in a deeper way or a more thorough way?

[68:13]

Okay. Vielleicht ein Korn, wo es um das Erkennen davon auf eine tiefere Weise geht. But a phrase like already connected wouldn't have much power. Aber ein Satz wie schon verboten hätte nicht viel Kraft. Why does it have power in our culture? And I think for many of you it's one of the most useful of the gate phrases I call gate phrases. Now we're at the heart of sudden practice. If you have a context of views... rooted in a particular assumption.

[69:19]

When we design our buildings, they're rooted in the assumption that space separates. Wenn wir unsere Gebäude konstruieren, dann gehen wir davon aus, dass Raum trennt. Look at this wall and these windows. Wonderful windows, but they separate. Schau dir diese Wand an oder diese wunderbaren Fenster, aber die trennen. If we were in a Japanese temple, that wall would not be there. Flat out, it wouldn't be there. What would be there? There'd be sliding doors of some sort. In recent centuries, glass, maybe, but paper. And what would be outside that sliding door?

[70:33]

A walkway called an engawa. And what would be outside that? Another set of sliding doors. What would be outside of that? Another walkway called a roca. What would be outside of that? A little thing to rinse your hands with. Water in the little stone trough. And a stone lantern up there. They would find it, in traditional culture, like being in a prison to be sitting in a room like this.

[71:39]

They just don't make sharp inside-outside distinctions. It's a kind of gradual movement from outside to inside, so-called outside-inside. Now, we would be obligated, if this were Japan, when I lived in Japan... to clean to the middle of the street and snow because we would own to the middle of the street. There's no public territory. If it's warm in here, I have my underwear on. If I go up to the museum to get something in the little stand there at the museum around the corner, I wear my underwear if it's warm enough.

[72:45]

When I lived in Japan, no one heated their houses. And if you said to a Japanese person, why don't you heat your house? It's freezing in here. You can see your breath on the air. They'd say, heat the house? The house isn't cold. Ja, und dann sagten sie, das Haus heizen, das Haus ist nicht kalt. Your body is cold. Ja, dein Körper ist kalt. So they heat the body. Also heizen dein Körper. It's really that simple. How do they heat the body? Und wie machen die das? They have hibachis, you keep your fingers warm.

[73:47]

At least your fingers have to be able to move. So you have hibachis that heat your fingers. Ja, also da gibt es Fingerwärme. And they have tables with a blanket over the table with a heater, charcoal heater, under the table to keep your legs kind of warm. And it wasn't not uncommon to go to visit someone's house. You knock on it. Nobody answers. Und es war nicht ungewöhnlich, wenn du jemand besuchen wolltest und da angeklopft hast. So you just anyway dare and you go in and there's the housewife under the table, under the blanket, curled up in the pit. Because it's the only warm place in the house. Und dann saßt du die Hausfrau... Oh, excuse me, I was taking a nap and they come out. ...unter der Decke bei dieser Heizvorrichtung liegen.

[74:49]

Then you take a bath. In the hot water. Baths are about heating your body, not about cleaning your body. Cleaning is only part of it. Main thing is to get warm. Then there's the little heaters that you slide into your clothes. I never mastered the technology, but I have a few of them. And they're kind of like cigarette lighters. They have cotton in them and you light it and you close it up and it burns very slowly and you stuff it in your obi. Also da ist Baumwolle drin und du zündest die an und die erhitzt ganz langsam.

[75:53]

You keep your kimono and the heat's filling your kimono and the Westerner's freezing and you say, oh, you say it's cold. Und die Westler frieren und unter ihrem kimono werden die Japaner erhitzt. And the monks all had them when I was at the monastery. You're not supposed to use them, but you see the matches. Okay. What am I saying here? I'm saying you have a distinction like space separates or space connects. Such a simple distinction. And the material forms of the culture can be shaped by that distinction. The clothes, the houses, how you heat the houses, how you design the houses.

[77:09]

Frank Lloyd Wright got his idea of the kind of way the dining room moves into the living room. That's all Japanese idea of how rooms... are just the same space but different use defines them. So the rooms, the exterior rooms are all kind of flexible space and the inside outside is a flexible space. Okay, so we very deeply in our architecture, our clothes, how we heat the body or don't, etc., have the assumption in it that space separates. That we're not connected. That we have to make an effort to create a connection.

[78:13]

So if you practice with already connected, And you practice in the fullness of your body knowing in your own culture that space separates. But you say to yourself, already connected, And as I say, this view, sorry I'm taking some time, but this view is behind perception, it's prior to perception. If you have the view that we're separated,

[79:13]

then what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch will confirm that there's separation. Your perceptions will show you that that's true. So if you practice with already connected, while you're saying the phrase, The power of a phrase in intentional mind, not discursive mind. All worked out in Zen practice pedagogy. That an intentional frame or image that's in conflict with how we see the world begins as an intentional presence to notice ways in which we're actually connected.

[80:33]

in a subliminal way. And there can be a sudden shift and you suddenly feel connected. Now, when that happens to Westerners, Sometimes it's a Protestant conversion experience. Down the birth canal twice, our great leader. No, excuse me.

[81:56]

I was beating around the bush, yeah. Okay. So, if we have an experience like that, we tend to immediately call it an experience of oneness. Because if we are connected, it's because God created us or something like that. God supplies the connecting. So we make it into a kind of theology. But in Zen, it's just connectedness, not oneness. When, again, here at the core of what sudden practice is, if you have suddenly, there's a shift, a fundamental shift in your view, All your views shift.

[83:15]

All your views loosen up and fall apart. And there's a big open space with no views. If you're lucky. This is called enlightenment. And that big open space with no views, the whole world in one way can just be black and dark. You can't see, you can't see, hear anything. It's just black. then all the teaching, everything makes sense because it all comes together with the freedom from prior views.

[84:20]

So Zen as a pedagogy Vets the house, the car, and the firstborn on this experience. House, car, and firstborn. It was a mistake. As a pedagogy, it's brilliant. But as a practice for Zen practice, for just people, it's a tough nut to crack.

[85:22]

Sudden practice really requires such an energy and commitment to the practice. And really a monastic life. Or a lay life where there's no other priority but practice. And I don't want to limit my practice to just that, with you. So I'm emphasizing the incremental craft of realization. But if you can do sudden practice as well as part of it, this is very good.

[86:31]

Now does that sort of respond to your question? Short answer for a long question. It is a short answer, actually. You asked a long question, exactly right, and I gave you a short answer. But I think we should stop. But you gave me a chance to say something about it. Because when you compare it with pure land practice, it seems too simplistic. But when you see in Zen practice, it's really based on how the mind works and gets locked into views and what happens when you free yourself from those views.

[87:38]

So we have a number of gate phrases, 10, 20, 30, that probably should be a part of our practice. To refine, open up, and augment our enlightenment. Augment, you know, to help. Okay, sorry I went on like that. Thank you very much. Take care. Tragt euch Sorge. Tschüss. Ciao. Ciao.

[88:34]

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