How are you doing, everyone? It would be nice if one of you said, oh, I'm wonderful. Or I'm horrible. Sometimes I... I... I wonder what I'm doing and why I'm teaching you these things, or trying to, or I feel like I'm belaboring the point. Belaboring the point means over-emphasizing something. But even with the chanting, you know, I listen to you. Some of you I can't hear at all. I can hear Gisela. Usually I can hear Eric. But each of you, I mean, Ken, I'm sorry, tell you all these things.

[01:06]

Each of you should say the chant with the feeling that every person can hear you. Like right now I have to speak so every person can hear. And if you have that kind of energy in it, then you can bring it down into the chanting, not bring the tone, the loudness down, or bring it down and move into the overtones. But the feeling is each person can hear each thing clearly. And this is really about a practice of continuity. And I notice some of you, I can hear you when the English comes, but you kind of mumble the Japanese. And that kind of discrimination is really not practice. I don't care whether you like the Japanese or it means anything to you. Each syllable of the Japanese you say as clearly as each syllable of the English. It's not like, oh, now I understand what the English means so I say it more clearly.

[02:11]

This kind of effort is... It's like finding the sound... in the words or finding the prana in the breath. Prana is a Hindu word which more or less in Chinese and Japanese it's ki or chi but I like using prana better. But it's this equal continuity of energy and effort and if it's too much then you make it more even. And this sense of taking care of your prana, taking care of your hara, is also a sense of understanding intervals or space or pace. And you're not thinking of yourself as a physical body.

[03:19]

or a mind, you're thinking of... And it's not bad to have an image of some kind of... Although you may be completely... I hope you are completely ready to die. At the same time, you live as if you're going to live forever. No idea of dying or something. Hmm? And the image is of... Gosh, I hear it.

[04:21]

There's no language. You know the difference between eating vegetables out of the garden and eating vegetables, old vegetables from the store? I mean, you have the feeling here. There's a kind of vitality to the vegetables. So I'm suggesting you think of yourself as a vegetable out of the garden. I don't really mean that. I mean there's some quality like that that you feel. So it's like when we bow. Robert gets after me sometimes. Because people bow with one hand. And I bow with one hand sometimes. I feel old. I'm not doing it the right way. We still have a light out over there.

[05:24]

But the sense of it is you do everything with two hands that you can in Buddhism, as you know, because it's all about bringing this imaginary backbone, this outer backbone together in your hands, bringing your energy together in your hands. So that's the Yoyoki practice and so forth. So generally, if you bow, you stop and bow. But the stopping is even more important, or it's part of it. I notice people go walking right by with a bow. Well, it's okay if you're in a... I mean, I don't know what's happening. Maybe someone's dying up the path and you've got to get there, you know. What's a rush? So there's a feeling of stopping and I tell you it's actually good for your health. Because this sense of the duration of a present is also an interval, a kind of stopping.

[06:31]

So practice has a lot of feeling of stopping or I mean, when we do the doors, for instance, you come to the door, and there's the door. And these doors are made, you know. There's a hardwood handle, and you're not supposed to touch the white wood. You only touch the brown wood. If you hold it, you... And you stop, and you feel the door. I mean, you can tell me to leave. I don't have to talk about these things, you know, how you open a door. Shit, man. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh dear. Anyway, you stop and there's the door. It's a wonderful door. I designed it myself. It's a wonderful door anyway. And you stop, it's beautiful wood. And you stop and you, like, the door's you.

[07:35]

I don't know what to say, but there it is. And you put your hand there and you move the door. And you let the door move. You respect the door. You let the door do its thing. Okay, door. Hey, great. Then you step through. Usually with the foot nearest the side of the door. Coming in this side, you step in with the left foot. Coming in this side, you step in with the right foot. We're out. Then you turn around and close the door. and you feel the movement of the door in your hara. And you bring the door right to the center, and the doors don't have a kind of thing which automatically brings them to the center. You have to bring them to center, or they're not in the center. So some of you, I noticed you coming in after, keen in after going to the toilet or whatever, and you leave the door open a gap where it's to the side.

[08:38]

The doors are designed to be you have to pay attention to getting them right down the middle and closed. And the door, I mean, the wooden is the hara. I made the door with a hara. Sukhya used to tell the story. Most of you know it, I think, but he was a young monk with his teacher, Gokuj and so on, Roshi, and he opened the door to the room. In Japan, you get down on your incesa, open the door. His teacher said, open the other door. So he opened the other door.

[09:40]

Next time he came, so he opened a different door next time. She said, open the other door. He couldn't figure out what was going on until he realized later that the guest was sitting by one, and the next time the guest was sitting by the other one. So he's supposed to know from the other side of the door where the guest is sitting, so which door to open. But you can't tell that if you're doing it in your head. You can only tell it if you're doing it with this stopping and letting something talk to you. There's a kind of interval. We meet, we bow, and you stop. If you really actually stop for a moment in the bow, that person actually, there's a feeling of that other person. That's more important than getting up the path. Sometimes 10 people are coming. It's okay, it's fun, you know.

[10:43]

We have nothing better to do this whole week except bow to each other. I mean, I know you can't do it in your ordinary life all the time, but you can try it, you know. I mean, Thich Nhat Hanh does it, but he's crazy. He makes the whole world adjust to his pace, you know. But most of us have to go back and forth. But this sense of pace really is very much a part of your health. And it's not the pace of your body and it's not the pace of your mind, it's a pace of prana. I mean that's the word I'm using today. And unless you have a sense of prana, it's pretty difficult to know what I'm talking about.

[11:45]

What I thought of notice to try to suggest it, is say that in Zazen or Kenyan or whatever, you have an itch in your ear, say. Now the tendency is to want to scratch that itch. Feels good. But another way is to relate that itch to your prana. or to your body. And here I'm talking about a sense of two points. And that sense of two points is also a sense of interval. So you feel something in zazen, some kind of... And instead of trying to get rid of it, you relate it to something. So it's a kind of scratching. But you relate it to something. And if you can relate it to a feeling of the whole of you, this can awaken a sense of prana, of taking care of yourself.

[13:07]

And when you're a little out of sorts, you know, not today, I'm a little out of sorts, for some reason. I think I entered the sasin pretty deeply with you the first two days, and now the third day, which is a transition for all of us, it's... Maybe I have to personally enter this sashin. Probably that's what it feels like. But if you're a little out of sorts, say, you may discover that your sense of where you're located in your body is up a little high. And you can relax it and let it down. Now this word tan is quite interesting. We call the meditation platforms the tan. And it supposedly means a slip of paper that's put up with your name where you sit. And that slip of paper is, you'd see, Kural would see his name. Oh, that's my tan, my slip of paper. And that's where he sits. And then the whole meditation platform is called the tan.

[14:10]

But also we talk about the tan den or the tan tien in Chinese, which means the fields of cinnabar. or the fields of mercuric sulfide, or mercury, which is an alchemical and Taoist term. And mercury was also, and mercuric sulfide was also important in Western alchemy. These are three fields of alchemy, the head area, the heart area, and the lower, below your navel. In the Tan, the sense of a point here is a little below the navel. And you should discover it for yourself. Sometimes it's a little left or right or in the center. And sometimes it's actually a little out in front of your stomach. You can feel some point. It's also called the ocean of breath. So the sense of putting your mind in your tan is not just that the tan is so important, and it is very important in Zen practice, but that it's relating two points.

[15:34]

And that same relationship of two points can be to another person. It's almost like you can throw out a point. And stick it on the wall or stick it on another person or on the altar. And I find it, you know, wonderfully primitive to bow on the night after open sitting, to bow on this slate floor. Something naked about it. So in Zen practice you have a feeling of this area that you begin to feel more and more and can relate what happens to you. You relate your zazen to it, you relate feelings to it, you walk with it in the physical world.

[16:44]

So it's a kind of way of relating prana to the world or finding, instead of scratching, you create this relationship of two points. Now, as we awaken this tan, this tan-den, we awaken this area here, which is also considered where realization joined. Yin and yang, or that kind of Chinese way of thinking, is joined in the tan. Then the head in thinking is brought into these two areas. It produces another kind of thinking. Thinking and insight and observation is all part of Zen practice, but it's integrated in this feeling of awakening in these two areas.

[17:47]

Now I'm telling you a lot of things this last two days, three days now. But really all you have to do is sit. Just sitting, if you can just sit there. Find a way to do it. You are massaging your, Sazen is massaging your mind and body. And a kind of cleansing process is going on. So all this stuff I'm telling you is a kind of background And today I'm going to be a little simpler and just talk about massaging our body with zazen, letting a cleansing process go on with the feeling of the lower washing machine and the upper washing machine or something. Now tan-den, tan-chen in Japanese, tan-den also means the transmission of the one or the transmission of the Buddha Dharma.

[19:09]

So for some reason, and I don't know the reasons, that this field of cinnabar, which is also the color of vermilion, which is also the Buddhist colors of reddish orange, what if there's any kind of ancient relationship there? The fact is, this tan that we sit on is actually the altar in this room, as most of you know. The Buddha's on the altar, but really the zendo is you're on the altar. And this altar is called, in a way, your lower belly. And it requires a certain... I mean, nothing's made real easy in a zendo. It requires a certain kind of oomph from the tanden to get up on the tan. And if you're out of sorts, you miss your pillow, you know, or you forget to pull it, and you... Or somehow it doesn't work.

[20:20]

So even getting up on the... requires a kind of... You can feel it, and when the moment... You land on your cushion. So in this third day I want to emphasize finding finding your mind and your breath and finding your body and your breath and through your breath discovering a larger feeling of yourself as mind and body. And it requires a certain letting go of your

[21:22]

of too much thinking, of course. And I'm emphasizing the sense of stopping or an interval and of connecting two points. as a way of taking care of your practice and also taking care of your body and mind and your health. It's a way of letting yourself take care of yourself. So please, Sashin, just plant yourself, as I said, in the stalk, in the stalk of your backbone, in the larger stalk of a feeling of aliveness being all around you.

[22:55]

And see if you can settle into that more and more when you're walking, when you're sitting, and whatever you're doing in the 24 hours. And especially take a moment with each thing that appears, each person opening the door, bowing. When the bell rings, you see if you can let the bell speak to your prana rather than to your mind or body. One good practice that we've been working on here is to not create any likeness.

[24:14]

The body is a likeness. Sense of you have to do something is a likeness. So when something comes up, you create an antidote of no likeness, no image, no resemblance. If you can practice with this not creating a likeness, your sense of body and mind as prana or breath or energy or let's just say prana will become more alive, more accessible. And you always, what I mean by prana, you always have prana. But it can be weak or strong. And although it's always there, it's born from your awareness. The more there's a clarity and awareness and an ability to perceive things without thought coverings, the stronger your prana will be.

[25:25]

So today I want to leave you just with that feeling. of discovering something that you are, we can say, that's not your body and not your mind. See if you can listen to it and give it the pace and the intervals needed for its awakening. contention equally, and trade is every being and place. I vow to taste the truth of the Defectors' works. You know, I don't feel we are imitating some Buddhism from the past.

[27:22]

For me, this is the present moment of Buddhism, as entirely valid as any present moment of Buddhism. I'm quite sure that at any other point in history they could have also, Buddhist history, they could have also felt, oh, we're imitating the Buddhism of the past, but now in a way we're imitating that moment when they thought they were imitating the Buddhism of the past. In actual fact, I'm quite sure this is the immediate moment of Buddhism. And we are a kind of forum for realizing this practice and it requires all of us or all of you who want to do it. And I personally believe it's a great cultural gift even if it's not, it's leaving aside, shall we say, the spiritual awakening of you, yourself.

[28:35]

It's a cultural gift in our society. to our society. Now it's quite nice to study, there's a nice quality. I like the feeling of that we're doing something very ancient. I always liked seeing Chinese pictures over the centuries and the monks always look the same in their funny dress. And every half century or so the lay people's clothing changes. They always look funny, but the monks always look the same. And Sukhriya, she asked me to wear these things. I don't know. I don't really understand why I said unhesitatingly, yes. Such a funny party dress. Funny way to look.

[29:37]

And I'm sure much of what we do will be soon archaic. And certainly in Europe and in the United States, in America, the Buddhism, we won't be chanting, noho wako tokata. Nobody will be doing that song. Or wearing things like this. But I think, I mean, I am not capable of abandoning them at this point. I just don't know enough. And I think as long as we can before they change, before they disappear, and I'm afraid in the West they'll disappear very rapidly because that's our style. Japan and China, I mean Japan still, one of the vitalities of Japan is in some strange way they've kept certain resource cultural nodes, something like that, intact as they received them from China, Korea and other places.

[30:56]

And although most nobody practices the more archaic ones now, they still are a kind of resource, a kind of glow at the center of the culture. And you change these things too fast and you lose something, I think. So I treasure now, while we still have a chance, So even if we don't know what we're chanting in Japanese, and really I mostly don't know myself, I once knew, but I don't care what it says. Somehow I find the study of the present includes for me the study of these old, even ancient, actually ancient forms. Now we've passed through the barrier of the third and fourth day, or we're more or less through the barrier. And I should start duksan, which... I love seeing each of you, meeting each of you, one by one.

[32:13]

But I actually don't know how to do it. Last time we had a tin can set up out here. which I couldn't quite get my legs crossed in because the sides came to about here, so I had to force my legs together and sit there in this cold metal sardine can while other sardines came to see me. But it was right nearby. Now Geraldo's dragged it up to the parking lot, I believe. Did you destroy it or just hide it up there? There's no way we could take the benches out in there, so it'd be a little wider, or would that open me to the tires? Oh, yeah. Well, the alternative, I don't know what the alternative is. Out on the deck here, it's too cold. Not too private. And I was planning to use my room

[33:17]

I can straighten it out so it's usable. I used to do dokes on there, but it's quite far away. I don't know how we'll hear the bell. I think we should experiment. I mean, I really don't know what to do. We could rush a tough shed down here, one of these storage sheds, buy a cheap storage shed and stick it out here. We can go into cold storage. Lenny, who built the inside of this endo here, has agreed to build a Doksan, little Doksan house over here between this building and my little tower room. And he can do it next spring. this coming spring. Then it would be quite close and we could have a little, ideally we'll have, I think the Bodhisattvas of good weather are protecting us. They say, those guys don't have covered walkways yet, so we'll give them nice weather during the Sashin.

[34:22]

Generally in the Sashin we have at least one or two good storms. I kind of miss the storms, but it would be kind of hard traipsing around in snow and mud and things. So maybe our luck will hold for this sashin, but I hope to have some, maybe if we can manage it, some covered walkways built. I want to apologize that I am going to leave here very early on the morning of the 8th. I am supposed to be, I agreed to be in New York to give a short talk, believe it or not, on enlightenment. And I'm feeling very endarkened these days.

[35:28]

But anyway, at this benighted, at this event for Tricycle Magazine, And I accepted. They scheduled it for Bodhi Day, which is actually Enlightenment Day only in Japan, but I don't know. They scheduled it for this day. And I accepted because several people really encouraged me to do so. And also because they're reading Jack Kerouac. I suppose most of you don't know. I'm surprised sometimes people don't know. Even in America they don't know. But anyway, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg and some others more or less created the beatific beat generation. And they definitely were my They're all older than me, ten years or so or more, but they ... God, they must be getting quite old then.

[36:32]

They seem like young people to me. Anyway, they were my friends in the 50s and 60s, 50s in New York, and very much my predecessors exploring a new kind of self or a new kind of identity, different than the identity I grew up with, and yet somehow also quintessentially American. I have no idea if the Beat stuff influenced Europe much. But there's a tape of Gary Schneider reading with Paul Winter, both Lindisfarne fellows, which happens to be quite good and I meant to get some copies of it and audio tape and give it to maybe some of you in the European sitting groups because actually listening to it I think would give you a sense of a kind of dharmic background for the growth of dharma in the United States.

[37:44]

So anyway, the sesshin will be over, but I really like very much treasure the day after sesshin because we're all quite relaxed and we have a nice meal and do a Buddha's Enlightenment Day ceremony and fool around. And I get to see you, be with you in a nice way after Sashin but anyway I had to leave at four in the morning or something to get a plane and because the talk is in New York and I have to be at this event at 6.30 and they're having various people read Jack Kerouac some portion of his Ann Waldman and David Byrne of the Talking Heads and Philip Glass who's a composer and some other folks. So, anyway, I felt I should do it soon.

[38:49]

Anyway, I apologize for not being here in the day after Sashin. And I'll use the opportunity, I'll go to Boston too, to see if I possibly, I haven't done any fundraising in ten years, to do some fundraising to see if we can build a little doksan house and I would also like to build a kitchen over here where the shop is. And perhaps one more dormitory. But if we had the kitchen there then we could, for a practice period, we could just be in this area. The kitchen would be there and it would be easy to bring the food to the zendo. and have a library there and use the house more for retreatants and visitors and for other kind of feeling than the practice of a practice period. What I'd like to do here is create a fairly small but

[40:05]

complete practice center here for people who want to try this for three months a year, every now and then, or something like that, or come to Seshins. I mean, my life has been about discovering and developing this practice, and so it would be the best way I could at least pass on what I know about practice. and then pass the place on to others to use over, I hope, many generations. And this is one of the last really remote areas that you can find. And I think it will stay fairly remote for a long time because it's sort of high desert and not too easy to alter. Anyway, so I'll be gone about a week.

[41:17]

After the sesshin. Now I've been speaking about this sense of continuity to find a, what maybe I could call a continuity of mind. And I want to emphasize how important that is, and it may be obvious, I don't think I've ever spoken about it quite the way I'm thinking about it, speaking about it in this sesshin. But it was one of the first things certainly I noticed in sesshins that the only way to get through a sesshin really was to establish a certain continuity of mind or mood. imperturbable mood that didn't interfere with, as I tried to say last night, this morning, didn't interfere with other, with more personal mood swings. And at some point I found that I could create a state of mind or discovered a state of mind that was some underlying way or very present way too

[42:33]

The same in each period, the same throughout the night. Not exactly, it's not in your thoughts, it's not in your karma, it's not something... Sometimes we speak about it as a rising mind in contrast to a sinking mind. I think the terms are pretty much self-explanatory. It means you can find, no matter how you feel, a kind of brightness in your posture, no matter how painful you feel. You can kind of ignore the pain. Hey there, pain, how are you? Please enjoy yourself. You know, some kind of attitude like that. You don't tell it to go away.

[43:38]

Just kind of ignore it. But without this kind of bright feeling in your posture and the ability to keep your posture, it's very difficult. The sashin gets you down after a while. And if you find out how to do this, it's, boy, a treasure in all circumstances of your life. Now, you know, some people, there's a person who left the sashin in House Distillo we did recently. And He wrote me a letter, and he's quite an intellectual, smart fellow, and he wrote me a letter about how this was a kind of anachronism, what we're doing, and Japanese teachers he knew didn't.

[44:42]

They came to Europe and taught and did it the European way. You know, I can understand how he feels, but I know, I'm pretty sure I know Japanese teachers pretty well. They don't know what to do when they come here. I mean, they think it's courteous to do it the Western way. And they go along with it, but they just, it's a kind of mercy Buddhism. They don't really try to, they try to teach in a way that, you know, to take on what we're taking on here is to do this practice in a way that also resonates with our own cultural paradigms is a big task. I think we're doing pretty well. Robert, today after the meals, said, because the meal, you know, had some problems, maybe some people think, or I had trouble without a soup eating.

[45:44]

He said, should I apologize? And that's a custom in the Zen Do to apologize. I said, no, no, I feel there's nothing wrong with the meal. I felt it was an experiment. And we have to experiment. In fact, I I love it when everything goes smoothly. But at the same time, I also love it when there's some disruption. And you see how difficult it is, what we're doing. Trying to make a meal for three bowls that's Western and yet eat edible with chopsticks. Eatable with chopsticks. Edible and eatable with chopsticks. It's like writing a sonnet, you know, An inverted haiku or something. I don't know. Try to get Italian nocci down the throat. I liked it. It was my idea to have nocci. So I did.

[46:45]

Yeah. No, and I like nocci a lot. So, and then, how we all, it's wonderful, it's like looking, peeling off the surface of something and seeing the complexity. So, in a way, we could say that intention, an intention in Buddhism is that which allows you to thread the needle of mindfulness. Or the intention is the needle. It allows you to awaken the mind of continuity or thread through the mind of continuity. Linji Rinzai says something like, an object appears, just shine your light on it. An object appears, just shine your light on it.

[47:57]

Can you understand? An object appears, just shine, shine like a flashlight, your light on it. He says, what does he say? An object appears, just shine your light on it. Have faith in this process itself. That's a big second step. Have faith in the process of just shining. Shining your light means, of course, your whole energy, your presence. No wavering mind, no ambivalence, no discursive thinking. And have faith in that process itself. And then he says, there is nothing else in the world besides this. on such a moment the three worlds appear of past, present and future.

[49:03]

In an instant you enter the realms of purity or defilement. When an object appears just shine your light on it. In this instant the three worlds appear You enter defilement or purity. And have faith in this process of just shining your light on it. This is quite difficult. So we find some intention that we can thread the eye. In this koan, it's Jin Jing's Sound of Raindrops. It says, His, the whole koan is explaining the I of the path. It's called explaining the I of the path.

[50:05]

What is the I of the path? In this sense, now, is discovering a continuity of mind in each object that appears. In this whole, you know, serving and serving the, in Zendo we, We are taking care of each other, serving each other and establishing taste, a moment of a common mind. Very pure common mind. And we practice this here so that you can recognize it when it happens in your daily life. And you begin to know the presence of mind which allows this to be established. And this common mind is one thread of the continuity of mind.

[51:13]

So mindfulness practice, which you begin here in a new way in Sushin, and then you carry this thread and begin to sew it through. Maybe in the whole Zenda we're a bunch of seamstresses sitting here trying to thread mindfulness through our own karma, through the physical activity of sitting, the stability or sense of our posture. Now, Buddhism does not conceive of the individual as a sort of homeostatic event, afloat in a sea of microbes with your immune system, the skin of the boat. In any case,

[52:29]

The view in Buddhism is more that you are not finding passage through the immediate situation, through the immediate present, by your karmic identity, but rather you are recreating yourself, recreating each situation through the nourishment you find in the immediate situation. So there's an openness and vulnerability and danger on each moment, which we don't like. We like to shut off into a kind of security. So if there's a vulnerability, openness and danger in each moment and you're actually in the process of finding the nourishment in your environment for reentering each immediate situation, How do you then seal yourself?

[53:34]

And every time I do seminars, people ask in Europe, people keep the question that comes up most often, how do you seal yourself? And I always imagine seals in a zoo barking. But I've never started barking in a seminar. Or have I? But today I'd like to talk about four seals. One seal in this immediate present of which you are, this duration of present in your sense fields, is, we can say, the seal of karma. So that means you're working with what you bring into the present, the baggage of the past that you're carrying into the present, and you work with it, and again, Sashin and Zazen is an excellent time to try.

[54:35]

You tend to work with it so that, you try to work with it so that it doesn't interfere with how you are, doesn't make you overlook the present for some, you know, idea of the future. So you're working with your karma so that it seals the present, that you locate yourself in the immediate situation through your karma but remain open to it. That's one kind of karmic seal that you bring to the present. Kind of neurotic, maybe a functioning in which your neuroses are held in a certain abeyance. Next we could say is the dharmic seal or dharma seal. And that means to find the intervals, the pauses, the units which allow a kind of deep spiritual metabolic pace.

[55:42]

As I've often said, and it's in the Yogi practice, if I am going to pick this up and I touch it and I feel the coolness of the wood, that moment is a dharma. If I just pick it up like this, then I'm not. So moments, a dharma is the smallest unit of perceptual noting. So the dharma seal of the present is to, if I touch it, I feel it. Next I put my fingers around it and I pick it up. Maybe I take it down in two hands. Each of those, if you can experience things in that moment, In that sense, that's a, each one of those is a Dharma. This is a stick Sukhya gave me. It's a back scratcher, actually. So it's a teaching staff because it's meant to reach anywhere.

[56:44]

It also always reminds me of New Year's. So when you do things in this sense of perceptual units, dharmic units, there's a feeling of completeness that occurs. So the second dharmic seal of the present or the immediate situation is to do things in such a way that there's a feeling of completeness. If you don't have this kind of stability in the present, which is actually you're afloat in, we then have to go to heavier forms of karma to protect ourselves. So you get the habit of doing each little thing with a feeling of completeness. This is the Dharma seal. Each breath.

[57:53]

And breath is of course another way of threading, discovering, awakening the mind of continuity in which the world floats, our personality floats, so forth. First it's a narrow thread, pretty soon it's quite wide. Now the next seal, the third seal, is what I use the Japanese word ma. And it means not completeness but a sense of wholeness in the complexity of the moment. And I've often explained ma by saying if we imagine everything in this room was attached by a string, me and David and I and David and Gisela and Gisela and I and you and to the pillars and to the lights. All those strings are all over the room.

[58:57]

And there's a point at which you can take those strings and touch everything. That is the ma point. And it's like looking at a vase of flowers. Usually a vase of flowers has several in bloom, several still buds, several leaves, one of them's wilting. Some of the leaves are curled. So what you're seeing is different flowers, some different stages, but you're also seeing one flower in several forms. that you can't see with your ordinary eye, but actually if you kind of practice with a mantra which seals the present, or like just now is enough, or no likeness, if you're practicing with no likeness, it kind of awakens this inner eye of the path where you see the one flower which is in its various forms.

[60:05]

That's like the ma point of the vase of flowers or the garden. And when you know the ma point, you know that there's certain boundaries to the situation. This is not extending, of course, in some ways, in an interdependent ecological sense, it extends everywhere. But each situation, each immediate situation that's our present has this ma point. So the third and more subtle seal of the present is to feel the ma point of each situation, exactly where you touch it. And you can't do that with your mind. You have to trust the process of shining your light on each object. It's a kind of strange letting go into a feeling of an extraordinary integrity.

[61:14]

And the fourth seal is disorder, movement. So the third seal is a kind of symmetry. Seal is a kind of broken symmetry because the whole thing is rolling and disordered at the same time. So the fourth seal is a kind of acceptance and awareness that allows the whole thing to keep disordering. Now this is quite interesting that Buddhism has such a view of the present. And a way for you to function in it that's bigger than your self or ego or and which requires you to find a way so that there are many boundaries.

[62:23]

You don't just have the boundary of skin or some homeostatic sort of situation. You have many boundaries, and you begin to find different boundaries that go with different states of mind. And some boundaries, which are so permeable, they're barely there at all, and you then definitely need these seals in order to hold the present. It says, what's the thing, I think it's nonchalant, I can't remember it now. He something and had a road to go out on himself. Somehow in the immediate present you can throw a road, a path out of yourself to go on. So what I'm saying here, you know, is... This is Buddhism, but this is really not Buddhism. This is the apparatus you need to discover spiritual knowledge.

[63:26]

And I can't tell you what you'll discover. In this session, in sitting, and in these views, subtle views, of awakening how we exist, or one of the ways we exist, or one of several interlocking ways we exist. This is a way of realizing a knowledge or a way of being. I don't know what word to use. And as this whole process increases your inner complexity, which allows a simpler life, simpler outer life. You need less and less. Because you feel so nourished by each situation as it is without anything added.

[64:38]

Now although you don't, maybe this is too much all at once, maybe it's clear to you, maybe partly or entirely, it's like hearing an old voice that you've heard before. In any case, I am telling you this so you have faith in this process of shining your light on each object that appears. each person that appears, each situation, each ma point that appears. This activity and its fulfillment, it's called enlightenment or enlightening. Enlightening activity, enlightening being.

[65:47]

Where the boundaries are moving and pulsing in our life with others. And you start the practice in simple things like being able to join yourself to the person in front of you in Kenyan, walking Kenyan. then little things you get a taste of, this thread of mind, the continuity of mind. Thank you very much.

[66:25]

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