the residents of Green Gulch are inspired, I hear, by the people who moved in here for the practice period. Since this is the first talk I want to reiterate a kind of theme which struck me, and that is from a poem by a Zen teacher named Tore, which goes something like, this is of course a translation from Japanese, wall gazing. In the back or behind, a spring flower opens.

[01:12]

This wall gazing has other names. For example, sometimes we call it global thinking, or the thinking of nature, or nature's thinking. And when I say nature's thinking, I mean, you know, what do you say, yeah? It's nature apostrophe s thinking. So that means it's the thinking that nature is doing. And it also is a statement that nature is thinking. Nature is thinking. Nature is thinking. How does nature think? wall gazing.

[03:18]

Not me looking at the wall, but this activity called wall gazing, which is not my activity or the wall's activity. alone, but it's the wall's activity and my activity and your activity. So you can do this wall gazing any place, any time, or rather it can be done where you are, any time, any place. And while that's happening, in the back, a spring flower opens.

[04:27]

Sometimes people describe Zen meditation as sitting quietly in emptiness, or sitting empty and still. But when you hear the word empty, or when I hear the word empty, I think, empty, how do you empty? How do you sit empty? Wall gazing. Wall gazing is emptying. It is total self-emptying. And self-emptying is the way to attune ourselves with nature.

[05:35]

It's the way to find our place in nature and let nature find its place in us. Because nature is also emptying itself and attuning to us. And all other beings are emptying themselves and attuning to us. So wall-gazing is a nickname, is a Zen nickname for the self-emptying activity of all beings and all things. It is a cartoon version, referring to the cartoon of Bodhidharma facing the wall for nine years. That image of

[06:49]

you attuning yourself to all beings in nature, and nature attuning itself through you. This is not a conceptual operation, and yet it doesn't interfere with your conceptualization at all. In the midst of all distinctions, it is clarity without aiming at it, or it is effort without desire. So it's quite simple.

[07:55]

We just sit and attend to posture and breathing. That's all. Other activity occurs, it seems, but these activities don't reach the sitting or the breathing or the posture. The breathing, sitting posture is untouched by all words. It is just wall-gazing. Someone asked the other day what esoteric, something about the word esoteric.

[08:58]

And esoteric has a root, eso, which means within. And I mentioned that the funny thing is that very simple practices, which everybody can do, and actually which everybody is doing, only appeal to a small group of people. And I'd also say that practices which are more difficult which almost no one can do, appeal to large numbers of people. For example, rather than tell people just to sit, which everybody can do, you can tell people to sit and do something, which is much more difficult but much more attractive to people, even though it's much harder. I guess what I'm talking about is attunement.

[11:28]

Yeah, attunement. And how can we practice attunement or attune without doing it sort of conceptually, like tuning in a television set or something? Because this kind of attunement is not like just tuning to like one dial, but it's attuning in all directions at once. So how can you tune like that? Well, one of the main ways is through the breath. And again, we don't usually suggest that you make your breath some way in order to attune. but more that you find your breath. And I also suggest not to just directly, not immediately look for your breath, but also, again, do it more indirectly.

[12:38]

Namely, first attune to your posture. and listen to your posture and feel your posture. And then the breath that you discover, I recommend that you attend to that breath. If I turn directly to the breath as a mode of attunement with nature, the breath I turn to is a breath I already know. I turn, I reach naturally for my concept of breath. Or, if I don't reach for what my concept of breath, I can tune, I can reach for the opposite of my concept of breath, or I can reach to some concept next to my concept of breath.

[13:42]

But anyway, I'm reaching through conception for my breath. But if I rather turn to my posture, and then again not only turn to my posture, but turn to my posture without turning to my concept of my posture, then the breath that appears to me is not only my idea of breath. This is nature's breath that one discovers under those circumstances. So, maybe you have some questions about that.

[14:46]

Do you? Do you know what I'm talking about? How could you turn to your posture without turning to your concept of your posture? How would you do that? What? By the way, always, if you're not sure of what you have to say, say it loudly. Just seeing what's there. But when you turn to look to see what's there, okay, what will you see? Will you see a concept? What do you think you'll see if you just turn to see what's there?

[15:49]

Well, like for example, let's say you sit down on your cushion and you spin around and then you look to see what posture is there. How's that? What will you find, do you think, when you spin around? Want to try it? Sure. Go ahead. Just stand up and sit down and spin around. Tell us what you find. What did you find? You found that your concept is spinning around. Good. Anything else? Just tell us what you found. Well, I haven't spun around yet.

[16:59]

I know, but before you even spun around. Because, well, when I find my feet on the floor. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. When you're on the cushion. And the hands on the floor, feet on the floor, and what in the cushion? My rear. Your rear. Are those concepts? Oh, gosh, I hope. It's hard in that class. I don't remember. I don't know how to do it. I feel pain in my back. Anyway, yes, those are concepts. Those are concepts. And spinning around is a concept, too. Okay, but even so, go ahead, do it. What did you... Oh, you went all the double... double spin.

[17:59]

That's round. And what did you find now? What body did you find? You can spin again. Could this be Zen? I'm glad you mentioned that. Does anybody know the lyrics to that song? Could this be Zen? The next line is, could this be Zen because I feel so well? Because I feel so well. This must be Zen. This must be Zen because I feel so well. Is that a song? Sure.

[19:01]

So she's going right ahead here now. What else did you find? Anything more? You did something. I saw you do something. Something familiar. And what are legs? Concepts? Yeah, they're concepts. So you're dealing with concepts here, right? And sort of you say, well, I have to because... Well, not have to, anyway, I did. I took a hold of the concept of leg, and I took a hold of it, the concept of I took a hold of the concept of leg, and now I'm all set. Now, do you have any further excuse for needing concepts? Yes. Now that you got yourself all situated. Do I have any further excuse? Yeah, or need for concepts in order to be aware of your body. Yes. And your excuse is? My further excuse? Just any excuse. Or don't you need any more concepts?

[20:13]

And you can just be aware, attuned to the body without concepts. Can you do it? You're not sure? No, I'm not sure. You're not sure? How would it be to attune to the body without concepts? How would you do that? feel the body. What kind of things would you feel if you weren't dealing with concepts? You couldn't feel a thing. Well, you wouldn't be feeling things. Right. What would you be feeling? You wouldn't be caught up in thinking of yourself. You might not be thinking of yourself or legs or anything like that, maybe. In fact, if you're aware, if you're sitting and you're aware and you know about bodily sensations, what even, not to mention legs, but certainly legs or arms, if you're aware even of bodily sensations in a simpler level than legs, if you're aware of them and know about them, they're concepts.

[21:33]

Any awareness you have at the level of knowledge of an object This is a concept you're aware of. That's not the body. However, simultaneous with this conceptual awareness, which is basically thinking about quotes a concept, quotes a body. That kind of awareness, at simultaneous with that, there is consciousness of physical experience, bodily experience. Not arms and legs, but pressure, heat, roughness, softness, heaviness, lightness. There is this kind of experiences. You're having them all the time. These experiences, however, are not known to you. So does attuning to the body mean attuning to the concept of the body?

[22:47]

Which can be gross concepts like spines, chests, arms, legs, or subtle concepts like lightness, heat, coldness, roughness, pain, pleasure. But as long as you're aware of these things, these are concepts you're aware of, So you're aware of the body through concepts. But simultaneous with that awareness is another awareness, a physical direct experience of your body. And the direct experiences are never arms and legs. They are heat, coldness, roughness, heavy, light, this kind of thing. Which you could, which you actually could, and many... and you are actually consciously very close to being aware of that conceptually. I propose this to you. What do you think of this? Any questions? Knowing is always naming.

[23:53]

Yes, I propose that when you know something, you know a word. However, not all we're aware of and not all we're experiencing is words. We have experiences which are pre-verbal constantly. However, you do not know, you are not aware of this pre-verbal continuum which is happening to you all the time. You're not aware of it in terms of an object or in terms of knowledge, but you are living it nonetheless. That was part of the meaning of wall gazing If you face the wall, if you look at the wall, okay, even looking at the wall behind you, a spring flower is opening, even if you look at the wall. Looking at the wall means you see the word wall. You're dealing with the conceptual version of the wall and you looking at the wall. But simultaneously with that looking, you cannot see behind you a spring flower.

[25:07]

You cannot see it at the level of looking at the wall. But the level of not looking at the wall, but being like the wall, not seeing any objects any more than a wall sees objects, or any less than a wall sees objects, then the spring flower is lived. Even though it's in the back of the knowledge, And it's in your back. It's in your back all the time. Yes? So are you proposing that we can or cannot be aware of the subtle concepts? Concepts, you can be aware of the most subtle concepts. And by subtle concepts, you really mean concepts I mean, yeah, right, exactly. So then we're saying that to become aware that we become directly attuned to

[26:24]

perceptions without overlying concepts? Overlying concepts will always be there unless you have some kind of blank in your knowledge. You'll always be dealing with gross and subtle concepts. They'll always be there? Unless you don't know anything, which happens to people sometimes. be that then along, simultaneously there's always the gross concepts and then there's this pre-verbal perception. Direct perception. Direct perception. Going on all the time. But then as we become more aware that we become conscious of what before was pre-conscious, Pre-conscious means pre-verbal conscious.

[27:27]

It's not pre-conscious. You are conscious, but it's not verbal consciousness. It's not consciousness in terms of knowing objects. It's direct experience. You are already conscious in a non-verbal way. What happens is the verbal level... No, you don't ever become aware of it. As soon as you become aware of it, you're aware of the verbal realm. If you're aware of the other realm, the other realm is converted into the realm of knowledge. which is happening all the time. We always take the realm of direct experience and convert it into experiences which we can know. But as soon as we convert it, it's not that experience anymore. It's a concept of it. No, no, no. Up in this realm, prepositions are vital.

[28:32]

These two realms do not know each other. But our life is the integration of the two. Our actual life in nature is these two integrated. Yeah. But they don't know each other. No. It's like it says, right in light there is darkness. But don't confront it as darkness. Right in darkness there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and dark are like forward and backward steps. The realm of light, right in the realm of light is the realm of darkness. The realm of light is built, gets all its material from the realm of darkness. But don't try to see the darkness in the light. Don't try to see your actual direct experience in the realm of derived conceptual experience. Don't look for it there. If you try, what you get is this special version of conceptual experience called non-conceptual conceptual experience.

[29:52]

It's like looking underneath the page, you know, to see something, another world. Well, you'll just see the backside of the page, which maybe has a name on it which is saying, this is another world. And also, in the dark, there's light right in the dark. The darkness is totally built up of the effects of past concepts. However, it's in the dark, and you can't see the light in there. As soon as you see the light, you're in the realm of light. But they're forward and backward steps. You never have one without the other. So that's part of the meaning of faith, is to sit with the confidence that in the realm of light you cannot do the attunement which integrates a realm beyond the light, beyond concept, with the realm of concept.

[30:54]

You can't turn the dials and make that happen. And yet, if you just simply do what you're doing, it gets done. If you do what you're doing in order to make it happen, then concepts reach what you're doing, words infect words, and then the integration is blocked. But if you simply conceive of your body, and become attentive to the concept of your body and know that you're aware of a concept, not a reality and not a direct experience. You're just calling a spade a spade and that's exactly what it should be called. To call it something else, like, you know, this is a pre-verbal spade, this is tricking yourself. To call it a spade is tricking yourself, but you know you're tricking yourself.

[31:57]

So you attend to your body, but you also know that you're not really attending to your body, you're only attending to a concept of your body. And if you attend to the concept of your body with your whole body in mind, with no reservations, because that's in the realm of the light, that's all you can attend to is the concept of your body, you are also deepening your attention to your body that's not a concept. You're already attending to your body. You're already having a very intense, I say very intense, but I would just say a totally vital experience of your non-verbal body. You're having it all the time. But if you don't put all your energy into what you know about, and you try to split your energy off and spend part of the time looking in some place which you're never going to get anything from, then because you don't put yourself into your limited realm, you won't be also working this unlimited realm.

[33:01]

And the unlimited realm is not exactly bigger than the limited realm. It's unlimited because it has no limits. Not because it's bigger, but just because it doesn't have any concepts to make it small or big. It's just simply, you know, it might be real small. Like if I touch Hans with this hand, give me your hand please, and I touch him with the other hand, Okay? It's sort of my hand goes around there and comes around back to him. To me, it's not that big a deal exactly, except it's hard to tell where it begins and end after a while. It doesn't exactly have a limit after a while. It just keeps going round and round. Like when you cross your legs. After a while, sometimes, you can't tell which leg's on top and which one's on the bottom. In fact, all the time, part of you doesn't know which leg's on top, which leg's on bottom, and part of you doesn't know anything about legs or top or bottom. And that part of us is always going on, which we call darkness.

[34:03]

So attending to the body means attending to the whole body, the conceptual body and the non-conceptual body. If you really care about attending to the non-conceptual body, then you should put all your energy, all your conscious knowledgeable energy into attending to the conceptual body, arms and legs. And even, you know, and this is very tricky, not to sort of get fancy about how you conceive of your body, but thoroughly work the concept of your body. In other words, You know, I remember when I first started sitting, I tried to cross my legs. I crossed one leg, and then I started to cross the other leg, and I looked down, and I could see pretty clearly that the other one could not go up on top of that because it's just structurally you could see it was impossible. I mean, it just wouldn't happen. It was like one of them would break, obviously. So I couldn't do it because I could see very clearly legs down there, right? Ankles. various lines, you know, distances, measurements.

[35:10]

I could calculate it all and figure out it was impossible to cross my legs. And a lot of people, I think, are able to do that calculation. So what I did at one point is I sort of went like this. I said, hey, look over there, and I pulled my leg. Because I could see I couldn't do it so I had to look someplace else and let the hand pull the leg up without anybody knowing about it. And it got up there and I looked down and then I started to confront some other problems. The consequences of that trick. physical pain and stretching and all that stuff. But anyway, I knew from the books I was wrong, theoretically. I knew you could cross your legs, but when it came to me, I knew I couldn't. So I just looked someplace else. But that all was in the conceptual realm. Looking over here and pulling my leg was still in the conceptual realm.

[36:13]

But it was creative and a little bit creative or tricky or whatever. In other words, the conceptual realm is very big. It's endless also. It also has no limits, but in a different way than the non-conceptual realm has no limits. If you put all your energy into thinking about your body and all the ways you possibly could think about your body, and if you sit and walk and stand and live with your body, you will think of lots of different ways to conceive of your body. And you'll even start having conceptual experiences of your body which you never had before just because you weren't working at looking at it. And you'll start to get scared sometimes because of the concept you get of your body even. Like my body's getting fat or skinny or hot or cold or too loose or too tight. You know, many things you'll start going to the edges of what you could let yourself conceive of your body as still in the conceptual realm. But you're getting more and more into it. And the more you get into it, the more you get into exactly the other realm simultaneously, the more you get into it, even though you don't know about it and can't do a thing about it.

[37:23]

Not a thing. You can't do anything. It's cooking away completely, all by itself, all the time. And at the limit of all the work you can do in the realm you know, when you reach the limit of that, then there comes a kind of matching grant. from the rest of your life. You don't understand it. It's in your back. This flower opens in your back. It's not, and again, it's not something you know about. You can't see it out there. You feel, you know, you know, like you say, the room seems brighter, but they didn't turn the lights up. What happened? Or the room seems darker, and they didn't turn the lights down. Something is different, and yet it's not different. It's because the boundary, the blockage between the two realms has been overcome because you aren't looking for any more supplement. Because you completely accept your conceptual version of your body, you get union with the non-conceptual direct experience of your life.

[38:37]

And that non-conceptual realm is a realm of innocence, innocent of concepts. It's a realm of emptiness. It's a realm where everything's the same. We're all interconnected except nobody knows anything down there. Nobody knows the difference between me and you or you and me. but it's direct experience, and it is our life. And it is our place in nature, but our place in nature is not just that. It's also our particular concept of our place in nature. It's the two. We don't just go down there and stay there. That's not human life. Human life is that realm and this other one that we are somewhat ambivalent about engaging. So I say, attune to the body, and that means attune to the conception of the body. And through attuning to the conception of the body, in many, many wonderful ways that you can attune to that, or to those, actually those, because moment by moment you get a new conception.

[39:43]

And also you get conceptions of parts, you know. You conceive of an arm, a leg, a back, a throat, an eye, you know. But in a few minutes you scan the whole body and put a whole body together. But maybe not. Sometimes people when they're sitting concentrate just on their left scapula for hours. And forget about the rest of the body. The rest of the body just evaporates. And they're just thinking about that section of the back for a long time. That sometimes happens. They don't scan the body. Well, people do that. Fine. Or you can scan the body and keep putting it together into a nice package or into a circle, into an egg, into whatever. Work that area. Attend to that area. Attune to that area called body. And don't kid yourself to think that that's the body. Accept your limited views. And accept them not by saying, okay, I got a limited view of my body. No, no. Accept it means totally engage with your limitation.

[40:47]

And if you totally engage with the limitation of your view of your body, I'm proposing, you are relieved of that limitation and you get this huge, not huge, anyway, perfect complement. this body, working with this body in this way, you will notice in the conceptual realm, which is derived from the direct experience realm, direct experience will force the realization that this conceptual body is breathing conceptually. But that Revelation will be a concept of breath which you haven't even had before. And you'll be able to then again engage totally in the full range of concepts of your breath which will then also bring you in contact with direct experience of breath.

[41:50]

And this is nature's breath. And this type of work is also called emptying the self or emptying of self. Because self has trouble. Once in a while, you know, in the midst of an expiring lecture or reading a good book or seeing a picture of Buddha saying, with a big balloon above his head saying, follow your breath. Once in a while you think, hey, breath is really neat. But to stay with it really and fully requires, you know, a real dedication. Not to the self, but to self-emptying. Because the self is not getting that much kick out of following the breath. But something else is, the emptied self loves to follow the breath.

[42:54]

Our natural will to find our place in nature where we will meet all beings, that can enjoy the breath. Because enjoying the breath is exactly self-emptying. What do you think of that? Yes? What do you mean by totally engaged? What's that concept? Do you break that concept down into other concepts? Well, totally engaged means in the realm of concepts. Try all the different kinds of concepts. Which doesn't mean you sort of say, okay, now I'm going to try a different concept, necessarily. But it might mean that you try some different concepts of your body. But it also might be that you listen and you hear. If you listen carefully, you may hear all kinds of hints about what your body is. Like I just heard today, St. Francis said, There's no use in walking anywhere to preach unless your walking is preaching.

[44:02]

That's a conceptual message, but it tells you something about how to walk. It gives you another slant, another conceptual slant for your navel. Or sometimes we say, put an egg, feel like you can put an egg under your armpit. Or spread the tissue across the back of your neck. Or feel like you're hanging from this part of your head by a wire. Or feel like you're holding the ceiling up with this part of your head. Or practice wall-gazing. Wall-gazing. That's another kind of... What kind of a body is that? This is another little... This is a new slant on your body, you know? Listen from the soles of your feet. And so on. We have all these hints. And you can think of many more yourself. Feel the spring flower blooming in your spine. On and on.

[45:08]

Right. And within the concept of emptiness, the concept of emptiness is constantly sponsored by actual emptiness. So anyway, there it is. And each of you has a very simple practice which is Emptying the self, but this process of emptying the self and doing something so simple brings in this tremendous resource of what your body could possibly be. And sitting with that body, then the breath that comes there is not just your idea of breath, although your idea of breath will be there too. Many more than just your new ideas, new concepts of your breath will come in, attuning to the breath and the posture. Just sitting there doing that

[46:12]

This is, of course, the key, the simple practice that we start with. Again, this practice is done as a way to find our place in nature, to situate ourself so that we will be able to actually join hands with all beings. Not according to my idea of joining hands with all beings, But really, my idea of joining hands with all beings will burn me out. I won't be able to sustain such a practice. But the actual joining hands with all beings will not wipe us out. It is true compassion that works for all concerned, rather than my idea of compassion. So our job is to situate ourselves in our actual position where we actually do have our connections already established and then live those connections rather than maneuver ourselves into what we think is our place and try to live out those connections, which those connections will blow our fuses.

[47:23]

Still, we sometimes do that. We move ourselves into those positions and we blow our fuses. That's part of our learning process, so we do that. This kind of practice is the practice of a bodhisattva who's trying to be extremely stupid. To be what they call like a kill deer. No, scare deer. Is it kill deer or scare deer? What are they called? Scare deer. Yeah, scare deer. You know, in Japan they have these little water fountains. They have like a bamboo tube. And water flows into it and when it gets full... it tips over and pours the water out. You know what I mean? It's got a bamboo tube and the water flows in it and it's on a pivot. When the water fills up to a certain point, it tilts back this way and pours the water out and then it falls back and the bamboo goes, scares the deer out of the garden. Bodhisattvas are like that.

[48:28]

I mean, an actual bodhisattva meditator is that stupid. They go and sit in the zazen like that. They go... Can you be that stupid? Well, it takes a lot of work, actually, to be that dumb. You have to be totally engaged in order to be that, just like a, you know, filling with water and then tilt and water blows out and you fall back. In fact, part of us is like that all the time. Yes? Well, you always concentrate on what you're doing. Just like I said today, I hope, my deepest hope is that wherever Adele's sister is, that she's really doing what she's doing. Wherever she is, whatever she's doing, that she's completely doing that to the limit of her knowledge of what she's doing.

[49:38]

And we start with maybe some fairly tight and limited version of what our body is and we concentrate on that. But the more you concentrate on it, the more you open up and your body becomes more and more and more of what it can be conceptually. And you concentrate on every new frontier. What's the difference between an expanded frontier and just distraction? The difference? The difference is in the mind. There's really no difference. If you think that it's distraction, or if I think that it's distraction, then it's distraction. And the only reason why I would think it was distraction was because I really felt that you thought it was distraction. So if you're looking up at the ceiling now and you feel, boy, this is the most wonderful concentration, and you look over at me and feel distracted from the ceiling concentration, then that is the definition of distraction.

[50:43]

If you're focusing on your body and then you look at something else and lose that focus and you feel you switched to another focus, then you don't feel distracted. But if you think you're focused on this, and you switch to this, and you say, this is my focus, and now I'm not looking at my focus, then your mind is operating in such a way that you have to deduce that you are distracted. You're not really distracted, but the way you set it up, you're distracted. That's basically the only kind of distraction there is, a setup. Because the mind is always concentrated. The mind is never not concentrated. It's always centered on what it's aware of in the conceptual realm. And also in the non-conceptual realm, it's also always concentrated. Both realms are completely concentrated. But what about when you've got all these different levels going on inside at all times? Yeah. And there are things going on that are probably conceptual or somewhere, I'm not sure, but emotions say, things that are bothering you that you don't want to look at.

[51:58]

Yeah. But they're there and they're clearly bothering you and then what's happening is your mind is real busy and it's all over the place. Yeah. So, it isn't really focused. It is focused, but because of not being familiar with the emotions that coexist with the focus, you have trouble believing in the focus. But the mind is, by definition, always focused because the mind is always centered around what it's aware of. I mean, the name of the game is always the game of the name. It's always what you're looking at. However, if certain emotions coexist with it and you're not familiar with those emotions, then you have trouble calculating in how this focus would look with this emotion there. And then if the emotion switches from this one to this one, and also the focus switches to another object, you have more trouble saying, I'm still focused. In fact.

[52:59]

So part of what people do, actually, is to try to... calm the emotions so that they can get a hang of what it's like to be concentrated in the conceptual realm. In other words, you get a feeling for concentration. It doesn't work. No. It's just something people try. The irony, one... Another thing he said, it's ironic. Well, the funny thing is, since there's a possibility for irony in the human language, then the human body better be ironic. And the human body is ironic. And it's paradoxical. And one of the ironies is that new students, lucky new students, and older students, if you give them a chance, when they have pain, especially if the pain's fairly attractive, they cannot think of anything but the pain.

[54:02]

And they are completely concentrated. for a long period of time, they cannot get their mind off the pain. But because of the emotions that coexist, the emotional reactions to the pain, they have no belief at all that they're concentrated. Even though, obviously, they are totally concentrated. And they're fighting against what they're concentrated on. But looking back, some years later, you look back and you realize, I was concentrated for six hours that day. Non-stop. But I was fighting it the whole time, but actually I was concentrated. Amazing concentration. I'd never been able to concentrate on anything else the way I concentrated on the pain during that sitting. But I was screaming about the pain the whole time, but my concentration was so strong that even though I was screaming, it didn't disturb my concentration. That's right. Resisting it. That's right.

[55:03]

That's right. And if you accept it, then you could probably say, my God, I have pain, I'm accepting it, and I'm concentrated. That's right. And the accepting, because of the emotion of acceptance, it's easier for you to believe you're concentrated. But when you're screaming, you can hardly believe you're concentrated because you're screaming. But you actually are concentrated. But even if you're not screaming, you're concentrated also. And even if you're not in pain and forced to stay on the same topic, you're concentrated. Again, in the esoteric practices of Buddhism, they are the easiest practices because they're all practices of doing what you're doing. which anybody can do, and therefore almost no one wants to do it. People want to do what they're not doing. They don't want to do what they're doing.

[56:07]

So because we make it so easy, only a few people will go for it. Only people who are, luckily, kind of stupid. Or who have, for many years, experienced how difficult it is to be smart and finally given it up. Some great Zen people have been very smart and they finally got over it. And some other ones who were also great were dumb from the start, like Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki Roshi was dumb from the start. You know, he had a real strict teacher from the time he was 13. And he started out at the temple with, he had six, I think, Dharma brothers, and they all ran away. He said, except me. He said, I would have run away too if I knew I could. But he became his teacher's successor because he couldn't figure out that he could get away. So he stayed. And if we could all not figure out, even without having brain damage, if we could not figure out that there's anything other to do than just deal with what's coming up for us, we would really develop.

[57:24]

But it's not so easy because we're so clever. Yes? Yes? By studying Abhidharma and Buddhist psychology, I really enjoy the various teachings in Buddhism about how to analyze the self and observe the self and observe all the phenomena and all that. And I'm actually going to be discussing with you, and I have been tonight too, discussing that very thing. But the purpose of this discussion is to simply take us back to posture and breathing.

[58:27]

and in our natural concentrated state, in our natural state of being in nature. And each of us is situated right now exactly where we should be. It's just that we have some preconceptions or some desires and attachments that make it hard for us to completely believe that. and to completely realize that. Right? Don't we have a little trouble? I do. But anyway, my story is, although I have trouble realizing this, my story is pretty well-believed in by me. I mean, I put my... I'm putting all my... chips down on this story, even though it's hard to actually practice it.

[59:37]

It's like it's hard to make, when you walk around Green Gulch, it's hard to have your walking be preaching. It's hard to have your walking be singing the song of Dharma, the song of love. It actually, your walking is actually doing that all the time. but it's hard to sort of give your body enough attention so that you can hear that song that it's singing. Because we tend to get ahead of ourselves a little bit. Or behind ourselves. Get on to the next thing, or be kind of kicking ourselves for the last kind of thing we just did not quite on the mark. Rather than just keep abreast, of this body and listen to its song, listen to its sermon that it's constantly putting out there. And also look at other people, see other people, see the song that they're singing as they walk around.

[60:42]

Even the song that they sing while they're looking ahead of where they are. They're still singing. It's just they may not be listening to themselves because they think there's something a little over there that's more interesting. But still the song is coming off them. So sometimes you can see how beautiful their song is even though they don't hear it themselves. Just like sometimes you don't see their song or hear their song. Now I was supposed to, my sponsor asked me to mention a few things tonight. Like for example, please bow to each other. Okay, it's okay. Not only that, but somebody at Green Gulch wants you to do it. And to make life simple, we say, bow in the central area.

[61:49]

Now... Yeah, right, bow in the central area, right around in here. See this thing? You put it right in here someplace. And also, geographically, in terms of the topography, you're bowing the central area, and I'd like to leave it to you to figure out what the central area is. And if you meet somebody away from the central area... And it feels, you know, and they don't seem to be busy or, you know, whatever. It's okay to bow to them farther out, too. But in the central area, let's, you know, make, let's make it more of a kind of, I don't know what the word would be. Habit? Agreement. Habit, agreement, requirement. Acknowledgement. Acknowledgement. Gain. Gain. Did you say gain or game? Game. Yeah, game. Let's play that game. Even on Sunday, yeah.

[62:53]

Anyway, try it, and let's see what happens. And was there something else I was supposed to say? Oh, you forgot to remind me. Can I say it now? Okay. Tomorrow we're going to have what's called a shosan, which means little meeting. We're going to have a little meeting tomorrow in the dark. And that's when you come up and formally or informally make a statement or ask a question or something. And... So should I say anything more than that? Is that enough? Any questions about that? Maybe somebody has a question? No?

[63:59]

No, it's during the early part of the half-day sitting. It's the pre-breakfast section. Is there going to be a breakfast in Zendo? Let's just close by this quote by Thoreau, something like, all one needs to do is to sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the forest, and all the inhabitants will come

[65:24]

in turn and present themselves to you.

[65:28]

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