I have often wondered why I... Can you hear me back there, way back there, Nicole? I've often wondered why I've kept, we've kept, I've kept the Japanese chanting and then an English translation often, or a German translation often. Years ago in San Francisco I tried for a few months not chanting in Japanese. And I really didn't like it because I like starting out with not understanding. And it's a kind, it's obviously an acknowledgement of our, that we're continuing something that was started by others in other cultures, other times.

[01:16]

Und das ist offensichtlich eine Anerkennung dessen, dass wir etwas fortführen, was in anderen Kulturen und zu anderen Zeiten begonnen wurde. And it's a reminder too that what we're doing is a translation. Und es ist auch eine Erinnerung daran, dass das was wir tun eine Übersetzung ist. Translation is the art of saying something similar. Und Übersetzung ist die Kunst etwas ähnliches zu sagen. But of course not necessarily at all the same. So we're living in the midst of translating this practice in our own lives. And I've spent my whole adult life being astonished by Buddhism and by Zen Buddhism. Anyway, it continues to surprise me, amaze me, astonish me.

[02:37]

And I think we, particularly those of you who are younger, take it sort of for granted. You've heard about Buddhism and sesshins and things for a few decades. But in the context of our Western culture, it's revolutionary. Although psychology and psychotherapy have anticipated much of trying to study, observe, etc., oneself, But that also is, although many earlier anticipations, still also it's revolutionary.

[03:43]

If we go back to, you know, the earliest days of our Western culture, let's say Greece, we have the maximum To know thyself. We could say to know oneself, but thy seems more religious or something. In English. But the degree to which I've sort of studied, what does knowing oneself or knowing thyself mean in Western culture? But the degree to which I've sort of studied, sich selbst zu kennen in der westlichen Kultur.

[05:12]

It's not clear that it meant anything instrumental. Und es ist nicht wirklich klar, ob das überhaupt irgendwas... The Greeks had a kind of seer tradition and they retired to caves and there were sometimes psychotropic gases in the cave and so forth. Yeah, but that was mostly for very few people, persons, and a kind of shamanic elite of some sort. Yeah, and concerned with knowing the future primarily, not knowing the present.

[06:17]

The whole... I mean, again, this is not... You can find examples of people over the centuries who talk about how important the present is. But the degree and the ancientness of the degree of emphasis in Buddhism is unique. Aber das Ausmaß und die Betonung auf die Gegenwart im Buddhismus ist einzigartig. That all and whatever is included here in the present. Und dass alles hier in der Gegenwart eingeschlossen ist. And your present just now. Not somebody else. The present is your present just now. So in Plato's dialogues, Socrates talks about, refers to know thyself in like be modest, don't be boastful.

[07:25]

It's better to know thyself than to know odd information. But there doesn't seem that I can discover, and I will make some more effort, there was no instructions on how to know thyself. In the 1500s, it was secret anatomical charts made through dissection of human bodies dead bodies, was called knowing oneself.

[08:52]

And Benjamin Franklin, one of the great early founders of America really, Who was a diplomat, of course, but also a scientist. He said there's three things which are hard to know. There are three things which are hard. Steel, diamond, a diamond, and knowing thyself. So I wonder. I mean, I'm just putting this in some sort of context.

[09:54]

If Plato and Socrates and Aristotle and so forth, Hobbes and others, had a... practice an instrument like Sashin, would they have answered the question to know thyself differently? So although we may, some of us take Sashin, oh yes, I'm going to go to another Sashin. For granted, it's, I think in our culture, a revolutionary approach. to knowing oneself. And the Chinese emphasis has been primarily to do this practice with others.

[10:58]

There's assumed a resonant dynamic that makes the whole process accelerate. And so basically we are taking an upright sleeping posture. I didn't mean to say that. Well, for some of us it's an upright sleeping posture, and it was for me in the second period this morning. Yeah, but it is in... the sense that your back is straight, etc., like you were lying on your back, but now you're upright, it has some of the posture and allows a certain mind that's something like sleeping, and actually like sleeping too often.

[12:28]

And as most of you know, the main posture is the upright spine. And then developing a way of sitting where you don't have to use musculature to support yourself, or as little as possible to use musculature. The structure of your posture supports you. So you have the physical posture of half lotus or full lotus or something approaching those lotuses. And then you have, as most of you know, I say, the mental posture of don't move.

[13:45]

And these two ingredients, the physical posture and the mental posture, And the ingredient, when it's possible, of sitting with others as well as sitting by yourself, though of course sitting by yourself is very powerful as well. So you're you've got this physical posture and you say, don't move.

[14:47]

Of course you are moving, I mean you're breathing, your heart's beating and so forth. But there's a mental posture of don't move. And that mental posture functions within consciousness. Und diese geistige Haltung wirkt im Bewusstsein. And what it does is it limits you in space and time. Und was sie tut ist, sie begrenzt dich in Raum und Zeit. So a seven-day sashin is seven days of limiting yourself in space and time. We sit for a specific length of time. 50, 40, 40, 30, etc. And by not moving also and staying on your, having a particular cushion in a place, you're limiting your spatial And you're locating yourself in the schedule.

[16:07]

Which limits your personal choices about what you're going to do next. By the way, thank you for being patient with our trying to figure out how to make this room work for a taisho, a lecture. And for service and zazen. And I'm surprised, actually. We had an idea, maybe we could use both these spaces, additional spaces, and it worked, I think, pretty well. It reminded me of Maria Locke when we expanded into the adjoining spaces.

[17:10]

The first Sesshin in Europe that I did was in real life. But I, you know, I... Yeah, I mean, I said I was astonished, been astonished by Zen practice throughout my life. And I've just been doing it and then ended up doing it with others. Yeah, that's what's happened. And I've had an unyielding intention to continue practicing no matter what. With others, if it happens or not, you know, whatever.

[18:24]

So the first revolution for me was meeting Suzuki Roshi. And deciding, I like this guy. I'll live with him the rest of my life if possible. Yeah, so then, you know, I started practicing as closely as possible to what he did and what he was showing. Well, the next big shift occurred when I came to Europe to visit and go to a couple of conferences, and then I ended up practicing here with others.

[19:29]

And again, as I've mentioned occasionally, I decided to stop teaching in the Japanese style, which is without much explanation at all. And in San Francisco, I was speaking primarily to people who'd been at the monastic center we started, Tassajara, for usually five years or several years or more than five years. And in San Francisco, I mainly practiced with people who lived in our monastery center in Tassajara for at least five years or even longer than five years.

[20:38]

And when I came to Europe, I did not speak to an initiated audience. So I've just been going along and all this has happened and we have this Johanneshof and I don't know. So it sort of happened. But then there were two, then we could get this place across the street. And this coincided with my noticing in the mirror that I was getting old. I didn't feel so old, but I looked in the mirror and, who's that old guy? So I realized, if I'm taking this practice seriously, and my intention is to practice it as long as I live, And I thought, why do I have to limit it to as long as I live?

[21:55]

What about as long as all of you live? And I realized I was being rather irresponsible just to talk about Buddhism and practice with people and then up and die. Or down and die. Is it up and die or down and die? And then I realized that it would be pretty irresponsible of me to just talk about Buddhism and to practice with you all and then just die. Either to die up or down. Yeah, so I realized... Now the job is to establish this practice in all of us together so that we all continue.

[22:57]

So getting started in this place across the street from Yanisov was a big part of my deciding We really have to establish this in a way in ourselves. So this continues. This revolutionary way of knowing oneself and knowing others. diese revolutionäre Art, sich selbst zu kennen und andere zu kennen. And who could believe that it's so simple as sitting in a particular posture and not moving for seven days with friends?

[24:03]

Und wer hätte gedacht, dass es so einfach sein kann, wie einfach in einer ganz bestimmten Haltung sieben Tage lang mit Freunden zu sitzen? But something happens or can happen in... I'm not making any promises... Nothing happens and can happen which you can't think your way to. And the instrumentation in the way of these tiny ingredients sit still, don't move For one week. As much as possible. What was the last thing you said? One of those things. Okay. So what happens when you sit still and as much as possible

[25:11]

stay in one space and one time frame. Consciousness turns in on itself. And you begin to be able to use consciousness to know oneself. Du fängst dann an, fähig zu sein, das Bewusstsein zu benutzen, um sich selbst zu kennen. Now, you make consciousness visible. Du machst das Bewusstsein sichtbar. Yes, I always say the job of consciousness is to categorize the world, to create a medium for self, to make the world predictable and so forth. But consciousness is also, one of its aspects, is it's invisible. Without, if I'd never done Zen practice, I would see you but I wouldn't see consciousness.

[26:42]

If it were midnight now and it was completely dark in here, you would, if we turned on the light, you would suddenly see the room and you'd see the light. But you wouldn't see the consciousness. You'd just see the room. Oh, and you'd see the light. But not the consciousness, which is seeing the light and the room. And if you don't get the ability to see consciousness, there's no such thing as knowing oneself. So if you sit and limit yourself, So if you just sit and limit your space, limit your time, and of course sometimes a certain physical difficulty happens.

[27:57]

And it's actually physically hard to stay in one position for quite a while. But also consciousness is pretty angry at you. You've trapped me in space and time. I want to do something. And then you say, no. The bell hasn't rung yet. So you find yourself in the midst of consciousness. And you find What do I mean? You find yourself, oneself, some kind of self in the midst of consciousness? And just by doing that, a kind of agency separates itself from consciousness and is able to observe consciousness. and is able to observe consciousness.

[29:24]

It can observe you counting the minutes or imagining you're counting the minutes. It can observe you, all kinds of thoughts appear. But now you have a clear experience of an agency function which is not just an aspect of consciousness. And you can ask, which is consciousness? But even if you ask that question, you're already in the midst of how you function.

[30:29]

Aber allein indem du diese Frage stellst, bist du schon mittendrin in der Frage, wie du funktionierst. Yeah, so you can bring attention at the other main posture is bringing attention to breath. Und die andere Haupthaltung ist die Aufmerksamkeit zum Atem zu bringen. And you're, by bringing attention to a breath, to breath, your attention is some kind of aspect of mind, right? Has to be, right? So by bringing attention, you know, I've gone over this a lot with all of you, but let's get ourselves on the same sort of page. Go ahead. You're bringing mind in the form of attention to the breath. Du bringst den Geist in der Form der Aufmerksamkeit zum Atem.

[31:56]

And what's the breath doing? It's going into your lungs and coming back out and spreading through your blood, throughout your body and all that. Der geht in deine Lungen hinein und geht wieder hinaus und verbreitet sich durchs Blut und durch den gesamten Körper. And it is really the case that attentionally infused breath is different than non-conscious breath. So you're not only weaving breath into the body, Weaving mind into the body through the breath, through the loom of the breath. You're bringing an attentional interiority into your experience.

[32:57]

So you're weaving mind through attention and the breath throughout the body. Weaving mind and body together. So in this very act, this developed Buddhist East Asian practice, An Indian practice. No, you're... you're weaving mind and body together.

[34:20]

And through this very process of observation, you're trying to use breath attached to attention as a means of observing oneself. versuchst du die Aufmerksamkeit als ein Mittel, ein Werkzeug, um dich selbst zu beobachten, zu benutzen. Aber genau dieser Prozess des Beobachtens und des Verwebens So now in order to develop the means to observe, you're transforming what you're observing. You may not notice it all at once, but after a while you start noticing something's different. It's strange, but just the simple ability to... absorb, not get too flustered by physical and emotional discomfort.

[35:52]

Maybe I should say the ability to keep cool during physical discomfort becomes also an ability to handle emotional and psychological stress. So the difficulty in sitting It's designed to be difficult. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tell you that. But you'll experience it. Because much of the alchemy, the transformational dynamic of practice, is absorbing, living with, discovering, stopping in the middle of the difficulties.

[37:06]

And people, and I know a number of people over the years who have very little difficulty sitting often practice is not as transformative. It's not transformative. Yeah, so I think that's enough for this afternoon. So you, by not moving, by bringing the mental posture and don't move into consciousness,

[38:11]

You end up discovering the difference between agency and consciousness. Self-agency and consciousness. and you begin to find bodily, excuse me, breathing attention is different than selfing attention. And you can begin to experience a difference between breathing attention and selfing attention. And again, I'm not making any promises. But the more you can really find this sense of location in breathing attention,

[39:14]

And not much in selfing attention. You may find the difficulty is not so difficult. But then you play with that edge of when it's difficult and when it's not so difficult. But it's still all in all pretty difficult. And you begin to see consciousness. And develop an attentional interiority which can make a big difference. Thank you very much.

[40:30]

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