And since I think it would be good if you discussed this among yourselves in Deutsch, because if we're really finding codes, words, phrases, for this shift of worldviews. You also have to, I think it's important to discuss these potential codes, coded terms in Deutsch as well as English. Okay, so let me say that if you accept and if you get the feeling for, if you accept and you get the feeling for a field of mind,

[01:06]

And the feel of field of mind. Itself as a mental posture. And as a mode of knowing. and a mode of knowing that we establish because we're not in a world of entities but because we're in the golden wind of the 10,000 things. There's koans which talk about being in the golden wind.

[02:30]

And it means everything's changing. And so changing around you and within you at a variety of speeds. And to... to know, to put yourself in this golden wind, this massage of the 10,000 things is going to be a secret.

[03:35]

I don't have much words for these. I can make up things. Because this is not a way that English has thought about the world. So if we do see that the field of mind is a mode of knowing, then how do we... turn it into a mode of knowing. Develop it, articulate it as a mode of knowing. Now... I know this sounds... strange or radical, bizarre.

[04:54]

But the mind in a yogic culture is not a medium of thinking. I mean, it's not a medium in which you develop, locate identity. Because, I mean, you would say identity is a kind of location, and you can't have a location in thinking. We can identify ourselves with a narrative, but that's not much of a location. That's an ongoing story. So I think it's, you know, when you really think about it, it's rather far out to say that mind is not a medium primarily for thinking.

[06:03]

It may be if you see the world as entities. But it's not an effective way to function in a river of being, or whatever that Agatha's title was. You can't find a location in a river unless you're the location. How do you make your non-self body the location? Okay, now, so you all know what mental postures are.

[07:30]

And I often say that Madhyamaka, Yogacara, Zen practice is primarily a teaching of mental postures. I remember sitting puzzling in the middle of one of Sukhirishi's lectures after two or three years of practicing with him. And I thought to myself, you know, immersed myself in this. This was before Tassajara, so it was two lectures a week. And daily Zazen. Twice daily Zazen, usually. And I thought, what the heck is he talking about? What is he teaching? And I thought, basically it's attitudes.

[08:37]

He's teaching us one attitude after another. And an attitude is a mental posture. Okay, so I'm really trying to extend, even though you know already connected is a mental posture, I'm trying to extend this concept which we understand and we practice with. Extend this thing we already understand so that we can see that it itself is a mode of knowing.

[09:37]

Okay, and I'm trying to show you why I think it's a mode of knowing in relationship to the concept of the 10,000 things as a golden wind. Sorry. Oh, dear. I try to show you why it's a mode of knowing when you see the world as relationships, as the golden wind of the 10,000 things. Now, you may not notice that it's a golden wind, But the more you get the feel of relationships, it's like if I got up now and walked through this room. my experience would be very similar to walking through a brushy forest.

[11:06]

Because I'd have to brush through the field of relationships. They are the space around each of you, a field of space. And I have to walk very carefully, as I do usually. I don't want to step on your foot or your mind. And your mind is bigger than your foot? Some people's feet anyway. Okay, so a mental posture is like already connected. A mental posture is like in Zazen, don't move. As I often say these days, zazen is a physical posture that you discover and relax into.

[12:34]

And it's a mental posture. Don't move. And without that mental posture, there's no zazen. So when you sit and you don't move, the golden wind begins to pass through you. As the koan says, exposed in the golden wind. You have to tune out the station K-O-N-S. That's consciousness. And tune in those more distant stations. That you hear sometimes driving through a canyon or someplace.

[13:54]

You hear... There's a voice somewhere, a little music in somewhere... And then you tune it in and you go around the bend and a station comes in. Good translation. So if you can tune out consciousness, K-O-N-S, let's call it, The fainter stations that are arising from the myriad things begin to be felt. Okay. Now, one of the things that took me a long time to really get was Suzuki Roshi telling me when I was doing the Heart Sutra, don't speed up.

[15:10]

For about two years, I don't remember how long, I did the morning service every morning. I mean, I did the Doan. It wasn't the Doshi, it was the Doan. In San Francisco. And I said to Suzuki Roshi once, when do you speed up on the Heart Sutra? And I asked Suzuki Roshi once, you know it's you don't have to translate that they all can translate it for themselves actually and well he said you don't speed up and

[16:19]

And I thought to myself, well, Tsukiyoshi's not a liar, but what the heck is he talking about? He definitely speeds up. Because he was this strange little Japanese guy, I could completely trust him. I had no cultural associations that would make me suspicious. But he said, don't speed up. So I said, okay, that's what he says. I believe him. Then I listened to him carefully when occasionally when he did the Heart Sutra, he sped up. And it took me really until fairly recently that I understood the degree to which he was pointing out a mental posture and not about thinking.

[17:42]

I mean, I understood how it worked and I did it over these years, but I didn't really understand how thoroughly for him thinking was about mental postures. So what he said to me, and now I would interpret it this way, you don't speed up. In other words, you have a mental posture of not speeding up. Okay, so you think, I'm not going to speed up.

[18:59]

But as everyone starts chanting together, the chanting speeds up Because it's more together, not because it's speeding up, it's just more together. So if I have a mental posture of not speeding up, as people get more together, there's a speeding up that occurs, but my mental posture doesn't speed us up. Now, why this is important and what I will maybe try to talk about tomorrow? If we're going to practice interdependence, interindependence, we need a territory in which to practice interindependence.

[20:23]

brauchen wir einen Bereich, in dem wir diese gegenseitige Unabhängigkeit praktizieren. What is that territory? The best territory is you yourself. So mind in this kind of Japanese yogic understanding is that Body and mind and phenomena are inter-independent. You let your body be free of your mind. So like I said the other day, when I looked for the button on the Volvo which turned on the heated seat,

[21:42]

I couldn't find it, but my hand knew where it was. And this emphasis, for instance, if a Japanese person will know 20,000 characters, kanji or more. The mind can't know that many. The body can know that many. And so if you ask a Japanese or Chinese person, what is such and such a character? And they go, oh yeah, that one. That's developing the body as a separate medium of knowing from the mind. Okay.

[22:44]

So now you understand about mental posture. Okay, another simple example. When Sukhiyoshi said, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Okay. but of course somebody might say, well, if you don't invite your thoughts to tea, I'm not gonna even say to myself, don't invite your thoughts to tea because invite your thoughts to tea is a thought. But in a yoga culture, don't invite your thoughts is a mental posture, not a thought. It's a mental formation. but it's better to call it a mental posture. And it's a mental posture that's held in place like vows, intentions, and attitudes. And then the thoughts, discursive thoughts, are not invited to tea because of the mental posture.

[24:35]

So Buddhism primarily uses the mind as a holder of mental postures. That winnow out the 10,000 things. Winnow is the air you blow through a grain to get the chaff out. And what winnows out what? In your sense. It winnows out wisdom. Oh, no. Oh, no, yes. So the mental posture held, like a vow or intention or whatever, is a process of investigation.

[25:36]

And in English, the word investigate means to follow the tracks, follow the footprints. So if you say you have a mental posture of already connected, keep using the same ones. If you hold that mental posture in place, it begins to sift out or investigate the 10,000 things. Because everything's changing. You just have to let the change occur around you. At any moment, innumerable little things are happening. And if I don't have KONS tuned in, Then I begin to see you are all sending, you are all the station sending out signals.

[27:05]

Carolina started signaling right away. Okay. Okay. Now, the last thing I'll say in this little review is over the last couple of years I've written a number of long essay-like letters to the Sangha. trying to explore for myself as well as to share with you. Why do sashins work in a way that daily practice doesn't work? Although daily practice is more important than Sashins, Sashins do something to daily practice.

[28:18]

And 90-day practice periods do something to Sashins and daily practice. So why has it been like this for a couple of thousand years? Okay, well, the first, I made a list in one of the letters Because I didn't want to go ahead with this purchase of Hudson Holds.

[29:20]

Until we understood it as a sign. As well as possible. Because we're not a bunch of beginners. We're, I say, a mature, adept Sangha. And I'm deeply needed and felt we should make the decision together. The first thing I listed was the opportunity to develop a continuous state of mind. That's what I've emphasized in this.

[30:24]

Generally, I used to just let practice periods happen, but now I see I really have to get people to see the opportunity and make use of the opportunity. So I've emphasized, among other things, but I've certainly emphasized developing a continuous state of mind. And most of you know how to do this, and I hope do it. But let me at least review it, and for those of you who aren't familiar, bring it forward. So since I'm speaking about mental postures, we're not talking about the effort to bring attention to the breath.

[31:38]

That's a very mechanical and not very effective way to do it. Das ist eine sehr mechanische und nicht sehr effektive Weise, das zu tun. The effort is to make the intention to bring attention to the breath. Die Anstrengung sollte darin liegen, die Absicht zu formen, die Aufmerksamkeit zum Atmen zu bringen. And here you can see the difference between a thought form and a mental posture. The mental posture is I will bring attention to the breath. I intend to bring attention to the breath. But you let the golden wind do most of the work. If you keep sustaining and you really irrevocably decided to bring attention to the breath, it starts to happen through the intention, not through an effort to bring attention to the breath.

[33:16]

This is the easy way, no heavy lifting. You know, I have to bring attention to the breath. No, that's not like that. You just allow attention to come to the breath so you have an intention within the myriad things, to do this. And if you hold this intention, yeah, for a year or two, to really have it happen takes a year or so. Because it's such a major shift. Because when this, as I say, rubber band, which is attached to... Well, I have to go back.

[34:35]

I didn't explain something. Okay. Go back. She's so flexible. It's difficult to bring attention to the breath for long periods of time. It's easy to bring attention to the breath for two or three breaths, or maybe even six. And for most of us, we practice counting to one when we count to one. We don't get to ten, we count to one, or two, or one. If you're counting breaths during zazen. Now, we can ask, why is something so easy to do for a few breaths so hard to do for a hundred breaths? And the answer is really simple.

[35:48]

Because we establish our continuity in our thinking. Which means we establish our identity in our thinking. It's like Sophia in the computer game. Her location was in this little electronic thing moving around in danger all the time. So our thoughts aren't that interesting, but they are our continuity. And we have to establish continuity.

[36:50]

In a world where everything is changing, you have to establish continuity. But you don't have to establish continuity in your thinking. So if you have a deep and thorough enough intention to bring attention to the breath, eventually it starts to happen. Then you lose attention and then it comes back by itself after a while. And then it's almost like a rubber band snaps and attention stays in the body.

[37:55]

And what's happened? You've stopped establishing continuity in thinking, which isn't a very good medium for continuity. And you stopped establishing your identity in narrative, the self-narrative, self-narrative. And this can be almost as scary as pulling the world up under your feet. So now where is continuity established? Established in the breath. And very then easily in the body.

[39:18]

And then not so easily, that's tomorrow, in phenomena. So at some point you always feel located. Even if the world is pulled out from under your feet, that's not where you're located. You don't have to believe in an external world to feel located. This changes your psychology, it changes how, it changes everything. It's amazing, it's an amazing change. And the point is, it's doable. It depends on how attached you are to your narrative self. But what's nice about it, if your continuity is established in breath, body and phenomena, you can indulge yourself sometimes in a little narrative self.

[40:47]

After a while you'll feel a little sick. You'll start comparing yourself to others and stuff like that. You want a sleeping pill. So after a while you don't indulge in the narrative self as much as you used to. And discursive or discriminating thinking becomes a tool you use when you need that tool. So, you know, Descartes' famous statement as it's presented in English, I think, therefore I am. That's true enough if it's taken as evidence.

[42:10]

In other words, there's thinking going on, there's blood circulating, there's breathing, there's something going on, so I am alive at least. But if I think therefore I am means I am thinking. thinking is the road to knowing myself, then this is very not Zen and very not yogic thinking. So although that was a little compact, now you understand everything that I understand. so I'm presuming you'll have a break and Ottmar is in charge if he's willing and he gave me a blink and I think you ought to discuss anything you want that's no good I know

[43:45]

Maybe something about mental postures, your feeling for mental postures. These phrases as a way of, as a mode of knowing the world. of a way to investigate the world. To see the footprints of wisdom in how things actually exist. Okay. Thank you for translating. Yeah.

[44:45]

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