We've had the privilege to be together this week. Together, while at the same time each of us may be in a kind of extraordinary separation or difference from your usual life. Sometimes it's not so different and sometimes it's quite different. And it's sometimes more different than we notice. Now, your practice is developing faster than my ability to articulate practice.

[01:04]

So you're getting ahead of me. This is good. I have to kind of see how can I... Yeah, okay. And as I said yesterday, consciousness experiences, how can I say it, consciousness sees itself Consciousness sees its externalization, consciousness sees its externalization, but it doesn't see the externalization as consciousness.

[02:07]

So we have to develop some kind of more subtle eye, Also müssen wir ein subtileres Auge entwickeln. And even, you know, this sounds maybe a little corny, you can try to see with your forehead, your third eye. Das klingt vielleicht ein bisschen kitschig, aber du kannst versuchen, mit deiner Stirn, mit deinem dritten Auge zu sehen. And But whatever, if you just have some feeling like that, it interrupts our usual way of seeing. And sometimes a more subtle eye is an interruption of our usual way of seeing or sensing. Sensing. Not only are you getting a little ahead of where I can articulate, I'm also surprised by what I can talk about.

[03:23]

I actually thought, and my experience in the past has been, when I did something as condensed as the fifth teisho, that most of it wouldn't be consciously noticed. But I found many of you, through Doksan, found it quite ordinary. So this is great. Okay. So now I'm trying to speak, as I said yesterday, about how we can bring practice into our daily life. And I've never spoken about it this way.

[04:51]

Although I practice it this way. Which is, I think we have to start with thinking of... thinking of our lived life as a broadband continuum of many frequencies. Or a broadband stream. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. which includes, of course, our night mind and our day mind.

[05:52]

But let me also say our mountain mind and our city mind. Now, mountain mind is just a way to say, not just zazen mind, but all of practice. And every temple, every Buddhist temple in Japan, even one in downtown Tokyo, is called a mountain. When you go in the temple, out of the Ginza, into the temple, you somehow go into mountain mind, forest mind, cave mind. Shramanic, wandering ascetic mind. Why not? Shramanic. Shramanic? Yeah. Oh, what is that? Shramana is a wandering ascetic. Gautama was a wandering ascetic. And wandering means?

[07:08]

Wandering? Walking. Walking around. Oh, may I go a-wandering until the day I die. Oh, okay. An... Ecstatica. Ecstatica? Okay. Well, wandering is not ecstatic. It can be ecstatic. No, he means ascetic. Ascetic. A wandering ascetic. Ecstatic means out of stasis. So maybe it's ecstatic. Okay. So this mountain, this broadband, this broad stream of mind, That not only includes, as I said, mountain mind, city mind, night mind, day mind.

[08:13]

Yeah, Sashin mind. Okay. But Sashin mind, as we all notice, much of it disappears in our daily life. I think it would be useful to imagine it's still there in the broadband. It's a frequency less frequent than other frequencies perhaps. Das ist vielleicht eine Frequenz, die weniger häufig auftritt als andere Frequenzen. Oh, okay. Oh, dear. All right. So then, the word I've been looking for is to kind of help me make sense of how to speak about this.

[09:21]

I decided on the other day, yesterday, was calibrate. How to notice the, I mean, I'm using the word rather freely. but how to notice the layers and strands of our lived life and calibrate them with, relate them to practice. Okay. So what are some of the layers? Well, of course, it's what I call our birth minds, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.

[10:29]

Yeah, and then we can also add zazen mind. And we can say something like bodily mind. And as someone pointed out, we can even say chakra mind. Because while some of our accumulated experience which may be actually multi-generational accumulation It's very clear to me that although I wasn't alive during the First World War, I really wasn't. But it was a... I wasn't born too long after.

[11:41]

I used to think it was way back in the past. And I look at history, boy, it wasn't too long before. But I realize, even though I wasn't born during the First World War, that I carry attitudes, views, etc., arose through the First World War in my parents and my grandparents. Which affect how I'm willing to step out into the world. step out into the world with others and in front of others. So that flows in this broadband stream. So my point here is not everything flows in consciousness, obviously, or dreaming mind.

[13:11]

Some things don't ever take that form. They're kind of bodily or chakra frequencies. And you may find such things appear more often in Sashin than they do in regular Zazen, for example. I find that to be true. I think it's good for us if we are physically capable of doing Sashins and young enough. It's good to do two a year if you can. Because then Sashins start developing from Sashin to Sashin. The broadband frequencies become more apparent.

[14:24]

A simple little example of what I mean by calibration. And this is, you know... Nothing special, kind of funny example. But it tends to come up for me now and then, but especially it'll come up almost in every Sashin. I was driving in Berkeley, which I knew very well. I drove there every day because that's where I worked and went to the university. I'm driving along and suddenly I was at a completely familiar intersection. I didn't know where I was.

[15:32]

I found it a little scary. Early onset Alzheimer's at 27. It does happen. Where am I? Anyway, now I realize it was one of the first times I noticed, and particularly noticed because I was driving, the mind of uniqueness. Okay. So I was driving and I thought, this is very strange. I know this intersection extremely well. I drive here every day, yet I don't know where I am.

[16:32]

And at the same time, I knew where I was and I knew I had the experience of not knowing where I was. I had a third experience, which is I really didn't know where I was. Because in the mind of uniqueness, I saw things about the intersection and how you could drive in the city I wouldn't see in my habits. So being there and confronted with the uniqueness of the situation as if I'd never been there before, it was actually true that there were possibilities of where to drive from there that I hadn't noticed before. Sorry.

[17:41]

It got more unique with your translation. Yeah, so even while I'm, you know, eating a meal and using the uriyoki, I might suddenly see that intersection in the middle of bringing mashed potatoes to my mouth. And I like mashed potatoes and they're very familiar to me. But I realized that at that moment I sort of don't know where I am in the middle of the Urioki.

[18:56]

What comes next? And that iconic frequency calls up this image of driving in Berkeley and not knowing where I was. And this iconic... For me it's iconic. It's the symbol of that experience. The icon for that experience. And this iconic frequency, the symbol for this frequency, was... So that's what I mean by a kind of calibration. You notice certain little images sometimes or a feeling in your shoulder or your left shoulder tightens up or something.

[20:00]

And that means that some kind of, one of the strands of your accumulated existence is surfacing in you, but surfacing below consciousness. And as you become more sensitive, you have more of a subtle eye for these things. You can... adjust your life and allow this some space, this unseen thing that appeared in the shoulder, you can give it some space in your daily life.

[21:04]

Mm-hmm. I'm just trying to create some examples here. You have a dream in which you really don't want to wake up. You want to stay in the dream. And I find we have a number of kinds of dreams. I think we have consequence dreams or summate dreams. Summate means that sum things up, summate dreams. And sometimes those are predictive or precognitive or educative teaching dreams. And there's associative dreams, which is daily life sort of being put into the context of other memories.

[22:16]

And then there's what I'd call another life dreams. And I would say they're sort of old or almost ancient, deeply embedded, literally embedded dreams. Where did you say ancient, deeply embedded and? I said ancient or old, almost feeling, I almost feel ancient. And they're deeply, literally embedded, because you're having them in bed. I'm always testing you. She always wins. Okay.

[23:31]

And I call them another life dreams because my experience is you actually live another life sometimes in your dreams. They're often repetitive, same situation, et cetera. But it's like this life isn't lived in consciousness, but it's lived on some other level. So if you have one of these dreams that or you find your other life, another life is appearing, then it's good to adjust your day so this has some presence. And maybe go to sleep, go to bed a little earlier, longer the next night, so you can continue it.

[24:50]

Now this is examples of what I mean by trying to bring, see each moment as comprised of the many strands of your life. So instead of bringing zazen mind into your life, you're discovering that it's already there. And then you can try some practices to kind of scoop it a bit to the surface, like you scoop water out of a stream. And then... Sorry.

[26:00]

Then you can try to bring it to the surface the way you, like, scoop water out of a stream. You put your hand in a stream, and it makes water flow up. So this is not only to bring practice into your daily life, but discover how it's already there. And dabei geht es nicht nur darum, wie du die Praxis in dein tägliches Leben bringen kannst, sondern auch zu entdecken, wie sie bereits dort ist. Natürlich atmest du auch während deines täglichen Lebens. Du atmest nicht immer im Zazen. Und der Atem trägt die Praxis und ist in deinem täglichen Leben gegenwärtig. So you can use, you know, practice skills like bringing attention to your breathing.

[27:03]

Or bringing attention to attention. These are all sort of switches, where you can shift, where you can switch or shift. So you feel an opportunity, and then when the opportunities appear, you bring attention to attention. Or you see through mind itself, as I said, like you see through the stillness of consciousness. not moving, the concept of not moving, you see into mind itself not moving. So one of your skills is also to feel stillness and see the world for a moment through stillness. These are lots of different things you can do.

[28:17]

It's kind of a toolbox. Kind of... A bag of skills. And it's good to have, you know, five or ten in there. Because there's different kind of circumstances you can bring them up. Okay. Now another example of calibration. You know, I see, let's take the three painters, Cezanne, Picasso, and Matisse. Yeah, and when I look at a Cezanne, I mean, what's interesting to me is they painted still lives.

[29:20]

What's interesting to me is that they painted the still life. When I was a child, we always hung up these reproductions. So I didn't grow up with real paintings. I grew up with reproductions of famous paintings that my aunt sent every Christmas. And I actually think Why do they paint a candle and a flower and an orange on a table? We've got one of those right here. And I'd say, well, and my mother would say, well, that's a still life. Well, yeah, thanks a lot. It's still dead to me. But they're objects that are representative of life.

[30:32]

And what I discovered is that in painting still life, Cezanne, I found, painted movement. If you look at one of his trees or mountains or something, little movements, and if you follow them, if your scanning, visual scanning process, psychotic process, follows the painterly quality, the leaves and things start to move. You feel the space in the tree. And when you look at his trees, for example, you see that small leaves or small branches have moved there.

[31:33]

And when you follow the saccadic search process, you see that it looks as if the tree would actually move and the room of the tree appears. And in Picasso I find painted auras. Every object, every person has a kind of aura around it, just hidden in the context of the painting. And I find Matisse painted what I would call extensional space. In other words, each object creates space. The space here is obviously created by the walls. But if the stick is in the painting, it also, the stick creates space. So in this calibration of the broadband strands of being, it can even include feeling the aura of something.

[32:53]

Or the dharmic eye, which Cezanne seemed to have. To see the momentary appearance and disappearance of each thing. And one of the simple skills... one of the skills you can bring into your calibration of daily life and practice, is this dharmic noticing. And often you can bring in wisdom phrases And a wisdom phrase, a simple one that helps, one of the most basic and simple, is just this.

[34:15]

And just this not only interrupts narrative thinking, and brings you into a perceptual immediacy, it's also one of the best techniques to notice appearance. Because if I say, just this, just this, just this, each one is an appearance. And if you begin to use, if through just this you begin to be in the tapestry of momentary appearance, you begin to see the appearance and disappearance. And if you bring that kind of mind for a moment into your daily life, Sashin mind will flow right through that.

[35:36]

Eye of a camel. No, no, that's not the... I left a needle out, just the eye of the camel. Oh. That's right, you did that. Okay. Okay. Or you can feel how space is created by everything. So there's no outside, there's only insides appearing. And perhaps, though, in addition, you can notice certain kinds of physical, as I said, your shoulder might tighten up or something, or you might feel some kind of, like Dogen says, in this samayo zanmai.

[36:57]

Sitting practice opens in the top of the head. And so what he means is one of the calibrations of sitting is when during the day you suddenly feel this part of your head start to itch or, you know, for its various sensations, you realize the Zazen mind is surfacing in you. One of the qualities we have of Sashin is We're all in the kitchen, say you're in a kitchen crew and you're busy.

[38:04]

It's a certain kind of, you're not supposed to talk, but it's all the same, a certain kind of social space. But within that, you know you have to get the meal out at a certain time. And within that, we know we're doing something serious, the sashin. We're all doing the sashin. And some of you are medical doctors and one of you is a surgeon. And I imagine that as a doctor, you're talking to other people in the hospital or in your office. And there's a kind of social space. And just under that, we're doing something serious.

[39:24]

Together we're about to perform an operation. Cut open someone's body. I think I'll go have a cup of coffee instead. No, I can't. You're about to tell somebody he has cancer. Oder du stehst kurz davor, dass du jemandem sagen musst, er hat Krebs. So, underneath the social space, you're able to have this other kind of seriousness. Also hast du unterhalb dieses sozialen Raums diese andere Art von Ernsthaftigkeit. Which is really quite comparable to that underneath Sashin space is we're doing a Sashin. And all that surfaces individually in us that we still kind of are brewing, percolating while we're, you know, cutting the string beans.

[40:32]

So you can be in the midst of a bunch of people in a party or a restaurant or something? And you can feel at the same time, we're doing something serious. We're constructing a life together. And deeper than that, we're constructing an ideal life. And our version of that as Buddhists is we're constructing Buddha's life.

[41:45]

So sometimes the degree to which we're constructing Buddha's life can be very slim, small. Sometimes we can expand it. And feel the sasin mind appearing in the midst of wherever we are. Now I could say a little bit more. And since yesterday was short, we can add 20 minutes or something. Maybe it was not so good for our posture. But when do you take an opportunity to practice these things?

[43:10]

Well, I would say you can start out with the first encounter with another person. You know, a spouse or a child or something. You try to Feel for a moment the first three parameters of the six parameters. And then also maybe the first encounter with a stranger. And then during the day the first unstructured space you have, time. You find a moment of unstructured time and you bring attention to attention. Or to the breath or to the window of the mind. I think that's enough for now. It gives you something to do for the next few days, weeks.

[44:27]

It's lovely to practice with you. Maybe it's not the same as you may have seen.

[44:58]

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