And as I think everyone knows, she will be our head monk for the practice period. Called Shuso. Which means something also like toilet cleaner. Yeah, to keep things in perspective, you know. I suppose you could say in English, she cleans the heads as head monk. Head is a slang word for toilet. Oh, it's the same head like that head? It's the same spelling. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so after two or three days we'll have the Shusel entering ceremony.

[01:01]

And for me to ordain Christina, is not only to recognize our long practice together since we met in Poland, But also to the creativity of her practice over these lots of years. Because she's not just looked forward to being a monk. Thinking that was the ideal practice.

[02:26]

She's tried to make her life as a layperson and a mother and a wife and an accountant an ideal practice as well. So she just creatively tried to make her life reside in practice. So it's great and it makes sense that now in this practice period she will be ordained. And as part of our experiment on what is this relationship between lay and monastic practice And the fact that so many of us here, it's probably a larger percentage of lay persons in a 90-day practice period in history.

[03:34]

So it makes it look like the unit of time of three months and not years in a monastery actually may work very well for lay practice. So as all of this has been for me an experiment, this experiment continues with ordaining Christina. Suki Rishi very early on in San Francisco said, I see you as monks disguised as lay people. And he also said, and those of you who are ordained as monks, you're sort of disguised lay people.

[05:08]

So I've tried to live that line as well. Live on that line. Now I've never talked so much about the way in which patterns to speak about this monastic practice as an interplay of patterns. I've never spoken about this so much before. But partly I'm doing it because so many of us are lay persons. And partly I'm doing it because we're trying to make these We're not designing these buildings just for practice.

[06:28]

We're making use of buildings that had other uses. Now we're using them for practice. So just last Tesho, after the Tesho I bowed, and then I went out that way. And I went out that way because I came in that way. So there's a certain logic to that. And if we don't find a certain logic in these patterns, we can't just let our body do them. And we can't pass them on to future practitioners. So, I mean, first of all, it's all based on everything is a pattern. erstmal beruht all das darauf, dass alles ein Muster ist.

[07:50]

And the patterns are inherently empty. Und diese Muster sind im Wesentlichen leer. Because it's all just patterns, then the patterns become very important. Und weil alles Muster sind, werden die Muster ganz wichtig. Because it's not that the building or the nature is more real, it's... Nature, buildings are patterns, we're patterns. So if you're going to establish the world from you, then the patterns you establish, establish your world. So maybe we're doing zazen and you're deeply engaged in your zazen. In a big space with almost no patterns. And maybe that experience when you really don't want to get up when the bell rings.

[09:10]

You can say, well, this is what we mean in practice by bliss. Now, bliss emphasizes a physical joy and joy emphasizes a mental bliss. So zazen is sometimes called the gate of ease and bliss. And sometimes in zazen we taste this. And the taste is a promise. Taste means now you know it's possible. So you're exploring this possibility taste of, hmm, jeez, I'd just rather sit here, even though the bell is rung.

[10:29]

But people are getting up and so you get up. And you're getting up into patterns. And those patterns can continue the feeling or not. Now the other day I've been speaking quite a bit about the three dimensions of time. And I'll add a fourth this morning. What? Oh, to me it's morning. I just woke up. Yeah. And although I've spoken about these dimensions of time to many of you, not all of you, so it's so important I should speak about it.

[11:53]

Because the first is bodily time. and that becomes a reference that can be a treasure for you you can always reference bodily time and we're not talking about clock time although all of us are clocks in fact and affect everything a stone or a A mountain or a bumblebee, they're all clocks. They have a certain length of time they're going to exist. They're all clocks with a certain length of time. So each of you is a clock and has a certain length of time that practice will allow you to, to some extent, extend and adjust.

[13:19]

Though I'm all the time so aware of the situation of Steve Stuckey, who's the overall abbot of San Francisco Zen Center. So he was my disciple for many years. And I have a real respect for him and his life and his values. And at the beginning of this practice period, I happened to speak to him on the phone because I wanted to talk to him about Dan Welch, the Abbot at Crestone, visiting California.

[14:36]

So just at the beginning of the practice period, I spoke to him. He said, I have to see an oncologist tomorrow. He said, I'll let you know what the oncologist says. And the next day I got an email from him and he said, I have pancreatic cancer, which is metastasized throughout my body, and I have maybe three months to live. So he has another kind of practice period. We have our three months, he has his three months. On some level we have the same three months.

[15:52]

Some of you have spoken to me about how powerful the Tangario was for you. And how it induced certain experiences. And it's sure that the sitting together and the painful sitting too creates a concentration. But practice is not about creating as much pain as possible to create as much concentration as possible. But discovering a way to create concentration in your practice, which allows the Sambhogakaya body of bliss and ease to be present.

[16:56]

So in zazen you're maybe in this big space where time both appears and disappears. And then the bell rings and people are moving around and you enter contextual time. But then also there is what I call gestational time. To enter situations through the feeling of how the situation is developing. That has, you know, someone may have some phrase, as someone told me the other day, that stuck with them over some years.

[18:16]

And just the phrase sticking with them began a gestational process. So this third dimension of time is to know how to let things gestate. How to create a way of being in the world that allows the teachings to gestate. Giving the body, through bodily time, Read him of its own awareness. So bodily time is your heartbeat, your breath.

[19:32]

Your basic metabolism. and as I say your mental metabolism and that can always be a reference point if you can't go back to sleep at night it's sometimes quite helpful to just shift out of thinking into bodily time And often that bodily time will turn into the space of sleeping. Now, I said I wanted to add a... Fourth dimension of time.

[20:47]

And the best language I can find for it is stopped time. It happens in Zazen. Maybe as we talked before, the nuk stans, the time which stays still. But also this practice now of the dharma of appearances. So let me review a minute. I said these various rituals we do primarily have several reasons.

[21:52]

One is just to do things together. When we lift all the bowls at the end of a meal or at the beginning of a meal, this is doing things together. And it starts kinds of invisible connectives. As I said the other day, I talked about dark energy. And the five senses are only five pieces of the pie. We don't really understand what this is we're doing. But we can see that if we do certain kinds of things together, another kind of rapport begins to develop.

[23:03]

Yeah, when we do what I call the chakra bow, when we bow with someone, The custom is when you meet somebody, as you know, you bow, stop and bow. The stop is a kind of stopped time. And you allow the movement of the hands to be the movement up the spine of of your presence. Yeah, the movement up the spine with the hands and then disappearing into that. disappearing into that with another person.

[24:23]

So these little things we do, you know, on one hand it's just a kind of ritual, we do a little bow and we see something, but they have the possibility of entering a kind, really, I'm not kidding, a kind of shared chakra space. A kind of inclusive Sambhogakaya body. Okay. So when you practice this bowing, like you bow to your cushion before you sit down, and then turn around and bow, well, of course, we're bowing to the cushion and we're bowing to the space.

[25:27]

Natürlich verneigen wir uns zum Kissen und dann verneigen wir uns zum Raum. And you're adjusting yourself in this way. Und du stimmst dich auf diese Art und Weise ein. But you're also, again, I've never said these things before. Maybe I shouldn't, but I will. Diese Dinge zuvor noch nie gesagt und vielleicht sollte ich das auch nicht, aber ich mache es trotzdem. But you're manufacturing a kind of valuable space. fabricierst, du stellst dabei eine Art verbeugbaren Raum her. Really, you can be surrounded by a kind of bowable space that a stranger would come and feel like, why do I feel like bubbling into this guy's space? Und du kannst wirklich so eine Art Verbeugungsraum um dich herum herstellen, wo sogar ein Fremder eintreten könnte und sich wundern könnte, huch, warum habe ich eigentlich das Gefühl, ich möchte mich vor diesem Menschen verneigen oder mich vor diesem Raum verneigen?

[26:47]

We find it hard to grasp these things because we don't, but dark energy is hard to grasp. Maybe valuable space is a kind of unknown energy that appears around us. I'm not trying to be some kind of physicist. I'm using conceptions we human beings have. Intuitive conceptions we have. That we're in the midst of the known which is in the midst of the unknown. Dass wir inmitten des Bekannten sind, das inmitten des Unbekannten liegt. And yet the unknown can become part of our knowing.

[27:49]

Und doch kann dieses unbekannte Teil unseres Erkennens werden. Now again, these patterns. Also nochmal diese Muster. One is, of course, the architecture. The building as a form. And our movements within the building articulate the architecture, reflect the architecture. Das Gebäude hat eine bestimmte Form und unsere Bewegungen innerhalb des Gebäudes bringen, artikulieren diese Architektur. And the forms or patterns of our movement also are based on our activity. Und diese Form... I lost you. The forms or patterns are also based on our activity, not just on the building. So if our activity is serving, then sometimes the activity of serving takes precedence over the architectural pattern.

[28:51]

And I change my mind about how it's going to work in this room. But now I think if you're serving, it makes sense to just go across this way. Sometimes. And if you're serving this person, maybe it just makes sense to go this way. And you're ending the serving. But we have to work these things out. Aber wir müssen diese Dinge entwickeln. And there ends up being kind of invisible energy paths that we can begin to tune into in the activity or through the shape of the room.

[30:07]

Und das werden dann letztlich sowas wie Energiefade, auf die wir uns einschwingen können in der Aktivität oder auch in diesem Raum. Mhm. Okay. So that's one locus of activity is the architecture. Another is the activity. And the third is the altar. And usually you relate to the altar through clockwise circles. So you go up to the altar in a circle and return completing the circle. Okay, so you've internalized the circle. The circle itself becomes an altar. And I pick up my eating bowl and put it back down.

[31:11]

I've created a little altar. Mama, there's a skull in my lunch. There is. Okay, but that's... We do that out of respect for the Buddha. Look at all the trouble they went to to design these bulls so they nest together in the skull. And to treat the skull differently in the midst of eating. For me, it also always reminds me of the history of eating bowls, you know, and history of dishes and utensils.

[32:31]

And then in the midst of eating, it reminds you of death. Skulls. You know, in Buddhism we don't worship the Buddha much, but we have a skull in our lunch. We respect the Buddha by having his skull part of our lunch. And a skull, you know, I mean, a stupa is where you keep the relics of the Buddha. So the meal is also a little kind of stupa because the relic of the Buddha is in our meal. And another conceptual dimension of it is that we're bringing the Buddha to life by feeding him.

[33:38]

So let me finish one more thing about serving and then I'll stop. In general, the basic rule is you don't start the next stage of the serving until the Zendo is completely finished. But in practice, we start the next step when most people are finished. Or we do it cooperatively and with the Tanto or the Abbot you get a signal. Oder wir machen das in Kooperation und du bekommst ein Signal vom Tanto oder vom Abt.

[35:07]

That's just the way it's often, much of the time done, but I think some of us want to feel we know what to do without waiting for a signal. So wird das gemeinhin oft gemacht, aber ich glaube einige von uns möchten das Gefühl haben, dass wir wissen was wir tun, ohne dass wir auf ein Signal warten müssen. the tanto or the dojo also is happy when you know what to do without having to be signaled. But the practicality of, you know, waiting till everybody's done Or the practicality isn't really about when, oh, it looks like most people are done, I guess we can start. It's really knowing the feeling when the Zendo has already settled into the next step.

[36:20]

Sometimes one or two people can't quite get the cottage cheese off their bowl. And there's only two of them and they're way at the end, but their energy doesn't make the Zendo feel like it's ready. And if you start the serving then, just because it looks practical, Zendo feels rushed. On the other hand, sometimes On the other hand sometimes you can be three or four persons who are five or six who aren't done. If the whole Zendo feels like it's settled into the next stage.

[37:22]

That feeling you should know. And when you know that feeling, you know when to start. Or the dojo or the tanto should know. Now let me just say one thing. Stop time. When there's the dharma of appearance, when let's say I get up I or you get up from Zaza we bow to the cushion and then we turn around and bow into the room And then you turn and start Kenyan.

[38:43]

Now sometimes I conflate that and I just get up and I go straight into Kenyan. But the more you get the feeling of a transition between each appearance... That you articulate with a bow or you articulate with an inner feeling. That inner feeling becomes, that appearance becomes stock time. And you can feel you're living from stopped time to stopped time more than in some kind of movement of time or flow of time. So the dharma of appearance is a... practice of ordering the present as stopped time.

[39:54]

Early Buddhism emphasized renunciation. Mahayana and Zen and Tantric Buddhism emphasized the performance of suchness the performance of the particular, the Dharma as appearance, and simultaneously the totality of phenomena as appearance. This is Asanga's teaching. Asanga is the older brother of Vasubandhu. Vasubandhu's name we chant in the morning. He's part of our, one of our buddies. And more or less they're founding the Yogacara school.

[41:12]

And this view I just presented is the basic teaching of Dogen. So wishing you a happy stopped time. Ich wünsche euch eine frohe, angehaltene Zeit. Ich höre jetzt auf.

[41:38]

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