So what I have to say this morning is quite simple. But I don't know if it's still not easy to say. I'm trying to review with you the feeling of the yogic presence of our practice. And what yoga means for a Zen practitioner. A yogic posture is an upward bridge. That's all I want to say. It's all over. Good. He's trying to translate it. It's an upward bridge. That's the best short definition I can come.

[01:02]

It's a movement of of energy to a greater energy. Or a movement from less precise to more precise. And less clear to more clear. Yeah, like that. Okay. But it's also, let me say, a... a liminal posture, as mentioned yesterday. Now, liminal in English means sometimes the initial posture or initial position, but it also means more precisely both sides at once. In English, liminal means a initial posture, but more importantly, it means both sides at the same time.

[02:20]

You can also call it a threshold posture. You always feel you're on a threshold. Or you're on both sides of the bridge simultaneously. Now, so to say it's an upward bridge is easy. To give some relevance to the sense that you're on both sides of the bridge at the same time is a little more difficult. Yeah, okay. Well, again, everything is an activity, not an entity. In an activity, you're doing more than one thing. In an activity, you're doing more than one thing.

[03:21]

You're driving a car. You're moving into movement. And you have to pay attention to your posture, the road, steering wheel, etc. So an activity includes doing several things at once. Okay. So how can I get, again, an upward movement? In this case, the feeling, we could say that I'm speaking about the yogic attitudes and mental postures in Zen practice.

[04:29]

In a way, we could say that we talk about the yogic attitude and mental posture in Zen practice. So, a yogic attitude is perhaps something like the yoga of each moment, allowing the yoga of each moment. Again, we're always in the context of appearance, allowing appearance. Okay, so here you're allowing the yoga of each moment.

[05:32]

We could say it's allowing The stillness of each moment. As if you were moving not into moving like in a car. But you're moving into stillness. Right. You know, I'm not a tennis player. I'm not anything. Like a sitter. Anyway. But I imagine a tennis player is moving toward the stopped moment when the racket hits the ball. Moving into the stillness achieved when the racket hits the ball.

[06:39]

I don't know if that makes sense. You know, there was a famous 49ers, you know, there. the San Francisco team that won the Super Bowl many times when the Super Bowl was worth seeing. Anyway, he was one of the famous quarterbacks. And he was a friend of a friend of mine. I never met him, but I know lots of stories about him. And he, when he threw it, he a number of times won the award for the most completed passes.

[07:47]

You know, you throw the ball and it has to be caught to be called complete. And he... He would throw the ball toward a stopped picture of it being caught. And one famous time, which is recorded on film and things, This other player jumped up to block the ball and the ball jumped over his hand and went to the... I see disbelief washing over your faces. And Brody himself, later, when he wrote a book, said he kind of pulled back from saying it, looked like it jumped over.

[08:54]

But after it was published, the book, The guy who tried to block the ball said, no, no, Brody's wrong. He had jumped over my hand. It's a little bit like when you throw... something in the wastebasket. And your mind stays with it, your mind almost feels like it's getting into the wastebasket. We could call that feeling of the mind accompanying the thrown a piece of paper or whatever. A yogic act or yogic posture.

[09:55]

And Taking a cold shower is a yogic act. And he, he told me yesterday, it's good for your immune system. But aside whether it's good for your immune, it's using change to create change. And watching my daughter ride a horse, she always has to adjust her posture to the horse. So she's always in a movement And riding a horse creates a good posture.

[10:56]

So, you know, you could be waiting for a bus and be in a yogic posture, standing or sitting. Okay, so let's say that maybe as a mental attitude, this upward bridge, we can have a feeling that we're moving into stillness. As if each moment had the possibility of stillness. And you were discovering that stillness with your attentional body and mind. Yeah. No, I don't quite know how this makes sense.

[12:08]

But to think of movement as a movement towards stillness. A movement meant to discover stillness. And knowing requires duration. If there isn't duration, at least some duration, there's just sensation. Yeah, now it doesn't, I don't think anybody observing a yogi practicing in this way would notice it was like a movie stopped frame after frame. But you might feel a stillness in the overall flow of activity.

[13:24]

So to practice Zen yoga, mental or mind-body yoga, is to have a feeling that you're always moving into stillness. On each movement, you're discovering stillness. On each movement you're discovering a dharma. Discovering and allowing a dharma. Yeah, something like that. If you can catch the feeling of that, this is kind of the overall feeling of Dharma practice.

[14:24]

Yeah. And when you have a feeling for that, the various ritual enactments of monastic Zen practice, like bowing at your cushion, bowing to each person you meet, And when you bow to each person you meet, it's a feeling of discovering the stillness of that person.

[15:39]

And showing the stillness of yourself. As Richard Bauer pointed out yesterday, the most inclusive Zen posture is the unmoving mind. So ideally when two practitioners bow to each other, They're showing each other their unmoving mind. Or we can even say original mind. Because there's always this dynamic of form and emptiness. And stillness and movement. Yeah. And ordinary face and original face.

[16:59]

You know, I have a little gourd. A gourd, a gourd, you know, a plant, a gourd. Like they make razzles of and things like that. Yeah, thank you. I have a number of little ones that I found in Freiburg one day at this Chinese furniture store. And they're all carved with little fine line drawings. And one of them I have on my desk. Is this guy. a monk meditating in the mountains and inexplicably there's some little tiny baby monk sitting on his head and this is actually very characteristic of yoga culture you're always in a dynamic of who you are and who you want to be.

[18:14]

You are an activity. Riding a horse, you're relating to the horse. Practicing zazen, practicing mindfulness, you're moving toward being a Buddha. Actually, it's a traditional practice called maximal greatness. Whenever you do something, you've heard me say before, whenever you do something, you say, Well, that wasn't so bad. You don't put yourself down. But a Buddha could do it better. So you always have this sense of, well, it was all right.

[19:19]

I mean, I really told that person off, but I could have even been worse. But a Buddha would have been much nicer. The Dalai Lama just decided to resign as head of the Tibetans outside of Tibet. He says, I wasn't elected, so I'm going to resign. He said, I believe in democracy, and we're going to have to have an elected president. Dali Lama. Hello, Dali. So, this is great. He said, I'm moving toward, yeah, another form of the Dali Lama. Yeah, you're always moving toward

[20:21]

In this case, the practice of maximal greatness. So at the last winter branches, I think it was the last winter branches, I brought this guy for some of you to see. I always carry rabbits in my sleep. This This is a rabbit. Yeah. I mean Alice in Wonderland, it's the cousin of... I'm late. I've got a very important date. Now this is clearly not your ordinary rabbit. This is a yogic rabbit. Full of authority.

[21:47]

Moving into an energetic presence. I can't even do that. I should try it. I mean, can you see? That's a yogic posture. That's just not any old rabbit. And if I saw a rabbit out there doing that right now, Here is a non yogic rabbit. Much cuddlier. More fun to sleep with. This is the one end of the bridge, this is the other end. This is the other end of the bridge. Okay.

[22:55]

I like this guy. Or girl or whatever. Okay. And then... So this guy... is opening his robe and there's a Buddha in the middle of his chest. These are the 16 Arhats. Ordinary people in realized yogic postures. So this is the same sense as the little gourd I have with the... another monk on top of the head. And I've always liked this guy. There is this movement toward this Buddha.

[23:57]

Okay. So now you understand the upward bridge. The liminal posture. The threshold posture of always moving toward stillness. Moving into each moment as a dhamma. moving into each moment as a Buddha. So, in that sense, if I'm practicing this way, I have the posture of both your postures. Your posture of allowing who you are, whatever you are just now, and the feeling of also allowing stillness to appear.

[25:21]

Yeah, and the yogic world is also a world of And the yogic world is always a world of touch. We don't emphasize touch. Everything's meant to be touched. This wonderful floor we have, you almost want to rub your hands over it. In a yogic culture, all the objects tend to be objects that you handle daily. objects you want to touch. Objects which have been made through attention and which then receive attention when you use it and return attention.

[26:23]

But this About touch, that's a little extra, not part of the lecture. Maybe I'll come back to it later. Thanks a lot.

[26:51]

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