Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming to the Sesshin. And thank you for being so patient with learning the Oryoki involves in the morning. And I know that for those of you who are not familiar with sashins or haven't done too many, that sitting zazen during the meals is added burden to the Seishin. Although it's important to get just used to this position and eating in it too is a valuable practice.

[01:08]

Still, it's sometimes hard to sit in meals too in this posture. So what I'd like to do is, if we have a table, we can find one. We could set up here And have three or four chairs. So if a few people want to sit some meals at a chair, it's all right. And we can serve with the orioke bowls there at a table, too. But you may feel that you are weak, a failure to eat at the table.

[02:25]

And if you feel that way, then sit on your cushion and suffer. If you have the courage to be a failure, then sit at the table. As I said yesterday, the important thing is just to be here, do the sashin. If you have to sit at a table for a couple of meals, it's fine. And as I said yesterday, the most important thing is just to stay here and to do the shishim, and if it helps to take a few meals on the table, then it's okay. And this morning, at lunchtime, I used the Oryokis we've made up for you, because my Oryoki and some other things got left by oversight in Heidelberg. And today, Ulrike drove to Heidelberg, just came back with... You found my oracle?

[03:53]

So... I'll use my Oryokis starting tonight. But it was interesting to use the ones we made up because I discovered little things I didn't know. For example, the amount of water you need to clean the big bowl doesn't fit in the little bowl. And I felt very sorry for you all. And you have to... But it's a normal part of ariyuki to drink some of the water anyways, but you just have to drink more. For how many of you is the Oryoki practice new to you?

[05:11]

Can you put your hands up high enough so I can see? Quite a few of you. Yeah. Sukhyoshi, I would say in the first years, Sukhyoshi, my teacher, I would say in the first years of practicing with him, when he was getting people familiar with Buddhist culture and Buddhist teaching, I would say spent about 50% of his time teaching us Buddhist culture, how to do things. And I found it actually quite a lot of fun to learn these things. But, which was surprising given the kind of person I was as a young man, I wouldn't wear a tie, I wouldn't do anything, but then I did all these funny Buddhist things.

[06:28]

And I didn't... As I said, although I enjoyed learning them, that was a kind of curiosity, it never took me a long time to realize how important it was. And to understand why he emphasized our learning the Yoyokis and many other things. So I should tell you something about this since you are trying to introduce this style of doing Sashins here in Europe. Now as I said yesterday, the way you walk into a room defines the room.

[07:55]

And I've been talking about this in the seminars I've been doing the last few weeks. And it really comes from Sashin practice. So you have a feeling when you walk into a room that you're stepping into this place. And you try to do everything with a feeling of completeness in each thing you do. Almost as if I step in with my right foot and there's a sense of I've just done something and finished it. And there's actually a little rest or stop at that moment. And I step in with my left foot and there's a little rest and stop.

[08:57]

I don't mean all of you should be walking lots of like robots but there's a feeling of that that you take a little rest or stop at each moment I want the basic things that is taught in an entering a sender is you step in if you're stepping in a big door if you're stepping in this side you step in with this foot if you step in on this side you step in with this foot And if you're in the middle, I guess you're the right foot.

[10:13]

And that practice is extended if you're indoors. None of these doors work, but we talked about in the seminar. If you're in a door which has a hinge, you step in from the side that the hinge is. And as I say, this doesn't mean, as I've said, this doesn't mean that you come up, you do a little dance, trying to figure out which foot to go through. Though at first you may do that every time. This means you have to start your plan back here somewhere so that you know we can get there which foot goes through naturally. Now that's not only the sense of defining your body and space as you

[11:16]

through how you do things. But it's also the sense that we define this room by how we deepen in it and how you come in and sit down and so forth. And you define your zazen place that way, that's why we bow to it. I would say the two most basic practices in Buddhism in general, in the world, are this gesture, and the inner smile, the feeling, not necessarily on your face a smile, but the feeling of a smile in your body. Now if I shake hands with Jürgen, for instance, it's thought that the history of that is I don't have a weapon in my hand, a sword or something like that.

[12:33]

So I'm showing Jürgen I'm his friend and I'm weaponless. And this is considered a more spiritual handshake, a kind of spiritual handshake. And it's of course like prayer in Christianity. It means you're bringing your energy together and saying hello to someone. It's a kind of offering of your energy. Now, these kinds of movements, can you hear me okay for transcription? These kind of movements are not like military movements where you're saluting and things like that.

[13:34]

There's a sense that the body, there's an inner and outer body. And the outer body is here. And just as you define the room by how you walk in it, you define your outer body and inner body by how you move in it, how you move in the space of it. Now, I'll say more about that in a moment, but first let me show you how we bow. Generally, in this way of thinking about the body, you measure everything with the body.

[14:37]

So if you're going to while we're chanting and you're receiving something, you put your hands up, your hands are that distance from your nose. And the tip of your finger is the tip of your nose. And the other common gassho is you relate your heels of your hands to this chakra. And when you stand at your cushion, or you stand in general, your ankles are that same distance apart. And you get in the habit of just standing that way. Now, I'm not saying you should all learn these things that I don't even care for you.

[15:54]

I'm just trying to teach you something about what a yogic culture is like. So that generally when we do the bow, your hands are here. And then you come down pretty much with your back straight. And do your knees touch. Then you come down and actually your elbows touch first, just slightly elbow touch. Then you bring your hands down with your wrists up a little. Then you touch your forehead three times. Then you lift your hands from the wrists. And we'd say you bow with the feeling of plunging into it.

[16:54]

You don't know where you're going. And when you lift your hands, you imagine Buddha standing very lightly on your hands. And then you come back up, again pretty much straight. Okay, now when you come to your zazen kushin, you acknowledge your zazen kushin first.

[17:57]

As if you were making the space at that moment with the little breathing. When you turn around clockwise, And you have a physical feeling of acknowledging the room. Even with a feeling of gratitude. You know like if you were out camping in the mountains and it was rainy and you feel very good when you get in your tent and it was dry. So we kind of forget the effort when intimating this room. We're dry in the air and warm and so forth. So you stop for that little moment and you feel a little bit of gratitude. And now I sound sort of silly.

[19:18]

Religion is sort of silly. And then you get ready to sit down, step back. And again, you do everything with the sense of one thing at a time and each thing complete. And if you practice completeness in the details of your activity, it's very healing for you psychically and spiritually. In the West, we're always dealing with something wrong, but I think it's quite right, the original sin and so forth. But in Buddhist practice, you always deal with complete, complete, complete, every moment.

[20:20]

Everything is totally complete at this moment. So you just stand here. And then you place your backbone on the cushion. So you have that feeling of bringing your backbone down to the cushion. And you don't do anything else until you get that feeling of your backbone on the cushion. And then you're sitting cross-legged. Whichever leg you put down first, you put that one down first. Of course for me these robes are designed so I have to do each, I only put my body one thing at a time, I have to do each part of the robe one thing at a time.

[21:37]

So now I have to move Buddha's robe here so that it's out of the way. And I have these big sleeves so I have to make sure each one of them is is separate. And then I put one leg down. And I make sure it's down, and then I straighten my back bone with just one leg. And then if you're practicing cross-legged sitting, it's important whether you pick up your foot by the ankle or by the foot and what angle it is. That makes a difference in your posture in the end. Then you place the second leg. Although you don't have to worry about robes, you should have the feeling of your shirt or blouse or whatever sitting on your body in the labels.

[23:31]

Often you are sitting with the labels up in the back of your neck. So you tuck the labels in if you have all your labels stuck up. And you have the feeling your clothes are hanging on you okay. And usually you put your hands on your knees. And rock forward and back. And left and right. Letting your head be loose and circle around. It's sometimes good to turn your head as far to the right and then far to the left as you can.

[24:35]

And your ears are lined up with your shoulders. Some of you are sitting with your head pretty far forward. And you think more when your head's down like this. Act a bit emotional like this and you get thinking, you know, abstract thoughts like this. Having just been in France, maybe the French sit this way and the Germans sit this way. Being in Belgium. And after feeling, then you kind of rock back and forth and center yourself. And then you put your hands in your lap And I feel you should sit any way that's comfortable without holding your hands up in the air.

[25:53]

And you can just sit with it in your lap together or you can put your thumbs together and your left hand on top. And your fingers overlapping, but your fingers not going into your palm. You make a kind of oval. And your nose is supposed to be pretty much just above your navel. And your tongue goes to the roof of your mouth. And your eyes are a little bit closed. So you can just see light coming in. And if your eyes are closed sometimes, it's fine.

[26:56]

You want a state which is not waking and not sleeping and your eyes may a little open help. And you want to move the sense of seeing, if you can get a feeling for this, the sense of seeing to the back of your eyes, not at the front of your eyes. Not as if you're looking back in your head, but rather looking from the back of your eyeballs out. But you're not really looking, you're just feeling the light. And if you get that feeling at the back of your eyes, you'll feel a little differently around your cheekbones and the way your scalp is. And generally, none of this is explained very clearly in Zen practice.

[27:58]

That's the style of Zen practice, not to explain. But Zen has always been taught in monasteries and with people who grew up in a Buddhist culture. So I'm trying to teach you things as serious practicing lay people that are generally just learned intuitively And in a concentrated way in a practice center with a teacher and monks or students. With a teacher and monks or students.

[29:00]

What you usually learn in a concentrated way in a practice center with a teacher and students. For example, Zen rarely teaches, except to advanced students, anything about the chakras. But they teach you from the very beginning things that you do things in the space of your chakras but they never mention your chakras. And the result is that as your chakras and your energy body awaken, they awaken quite differently and more diffusely throughout the body than in specific kundalini practices.

[30:05]

I always have a moment, maybe I shouldn't explain these things. You're not supposed to. But, you know, if I don't explain them, you're never going to live in a practice center long enough to get the feeling of it. These robes are designed specifically to make me feel that in this outer and inner body. I have to lift my arms a certain way and I have to move them a certain way. Maybe you can get a feeling for this if you imagine there was a kind of liquid around you that you could feel as you moved your hands and so forth.

[31:21]

That you can feel even as you bring your hands together, Gassho. So for instance, gassho is never flat hand to flat hand. There's a little space in there. You can see that feeling even physically exemplified if you come up and look at this little ablut of kishvara on the altar. So the Oryokis, after you get used to it, it takes a while to get used to it, first it makes you fight with your food. I think some of you may wish we served food with a hose that came down from the ceiling.

[32:22]

It's said we put it in all these little dishes that make it very hard to eat. So when you use the ariyoki balls, if you noticed, when you do things you tend to move the objects into this territory of the middle of your chest and then out of it. When we pick them up, we hold them here. When you bring them up, you bring them to here.

[33:25]

And when you do things, you tend to bring physical things into this space and then out. You don't just bring something across like this. It comes up and you can feel a little something and then it goes down. Now instead of explaining all that again, generally it's just required that you do it that way and then pretty soon you begin to feel something in just doing it that way all the time. It's sort of like the feeling that if you're in a room and you suddenly feel somebody's behind you and you can feel somebody's looking at you, but you can't see them, but you can feel them. If you just keep practicing with this kind of feeling of your outer and inner body, pretty soon you have that feeling all the way around you.

[34:41]

And this is the same way of feeling, thinking that produces Tai Chi and so forth. And it's a little like we have a grammar of language. In fact, many structures of consciousness. Language is a structure of consciousness. And we have many such structures that we put on our consciousness. And they inhibit us as well as bring the brightness of consciousness up.

[35:47]

There's many things we wouldn't know about our consciousness without language. There's an expression in Zen, be careful not to only make a cart to fit the ruts. Be careful not to only make a cart to fit the ruts. It means that Consciousness is structured, and if you only have the forms of consciousness thinking to fit the ruts... If you want to get a cart down a muddy road, if you make the wheels too big or too small, it's much better if the wheels fit in the ruts. So our tendency is to make railroad trains that fit the tracks. But Zen says you don't always want to do that.

[36:53]

On the other hand, There's many things about consciousness we wouldn't know without language and the form and structure of the consciousness. And there's many things you won't know about the body, the physical body and the inner and outer body unless you have a grammar or structure of the body and the space of the body. You really can say all that in German. Thank you. I'm always surprised because I can barely say it in English.

[38:08]

She seems to say it so easily in German. So I've given you a kind of zazen instruction. which includes zazen as a practice of coming into the room, how you come into the room, how you sit down and so forth. And when you sit, you have a lifting feeling through your back. This feeling of melting butter or honey or something coming down through you.

[39:08]

So you feel relaxed basically. And then, if much is possible, you let your mind sink out of your thoughts into your breath. And the more your mind is settled in your breath, then you throw away mind, you throw away your body, and you disappear. And then when the bell rings, you, oh, come back. It's possible. Even short periods are very tasty.

[40:11]

And one of Suzuki Roshi's favorite stories was about Matsu and his teacher, Nan Yue. Matsu and Nan Yue. And Matsu was, of course, one of the really powerful Zen masters of China. And Sukhiroshi used this as a teaching story more than any other story I think. We heard it in Sashin after Sashin, Sunday lecture after Sunday lecture. And for some reason, maybe because I heard it so often, I've never taught it in a Sashin. It's a simple story. Matsu is a sitting sadhana. And Nanue sees him and knows he's, as it says in the story, a worthy vessel of the Dharma. And maybe we'll come to what the word dharma means, but there's a question there, what's dharma?

[41:50]

Dharma is partly the teaching of how to move and do each thing in units and to have a stopped feeling on each thing. That's partly Dharma practice. In Dharma practice there's no distinction between mind and body. In a yogic practice there are mental postures and physical postures. But all mental postures are considered to be partly physical and all physical postures partly mental. So anyway, he's sitting there doing Zazen.

[43:16]

And Dogen Zenji, when he comments on this story, and though some of you may not have heard of Dogen, he's the leading, probably leading Zen teacher of Japan, and lived in the first half of the 13th century. So Dogen, for some reason, doesn't say a worthy one. Dogen says Matsu had already received the mind seal transmission from Nanyo. And Dogen says not that he is worth it, but that he is someone who has already received the mind seal from Nanyo. At least the point is that Matsu is a very alert guy. He supposedly had a tongue which reached to the tip of his nose.

[44:18]

And so anyway, he's sitting very... So he's sitting very... And Nanue comes by and says, what are you aiming at there doing the seated meditation? And Dogen translates it, what are you figuring at sitting there doing seated meditation? And Matsu says, I'm aiming to become a Buddha. And in Dogen's translation he says, I'm figuring to make a Buddha.

[45:22]

This isn't such a stupid answer as it might seem. We probably... If you are familiar with Zen practice you know you are not supposed to aim to be a Buddha. But when you sit down and do Zazen you are actually taking Buddha's posture. And although you accept the form of your posture Whatever it is, not perfect, but you accept the form of your posture. At the same time, you're informed by Buddha's posture.

[46:24]

So Zazen practice is always a kind of communication between Buddha's posture and your actual posture. And without criticizing yourself, and without criticizing Buddha for his good posture, you accept Buddha's posture and your own posture. It's okay. So there he is, Matsu sitting. What are you doing? I'm aiming to be a Buddha. So what are you doing? I am making a Buddha. And Dogen asks, is he sitting with a sense of the path beyond seated meditation? Or is seated meditation the whole path of becoming a Buddha? So that's about one third of the story.

[47:35]

And I'll leave it there for you. What are you doing for seven days? Oh, now one day we'll see. Doing seated meditation. What are you making? What are you aiming at? Or is it really possible to not aim at anything? In fact, what's happening? And Dogen says, don't don't value what's far away and don't despise what's far away just become familiar with it and he says don't despise what's near and don't value what's near just become familiar with it So don't despise what's near or don't despise what's far.

[48:55]

Don't value either, just become familiar. Now I'd like to actually dedicate this sashin to Rolf Sundel, who sat this sashin last year. And he was an editor, a writer for Zeit magazine. And Ulrike knows more about it than I do, but she can translate what I say and expand a little bit on it. He sat in the Zendo back there. And he was, I guess, in his 50s. And I think he was pretty well known later in Zeit Magazine. It turns out he had terminal cancer during the session.

[50:09]

I don't know. We don't know if he knew he had cancer or not. But he had a strong feeling that he had to do the Sashin, one Sashin in his life. And there were several people in the Sashin last year, three I think or so. that had some kind of Kensho Satori experience. He was one of them, near the end of the session. And his wife, you could tell him what his wife told him. And I didn't hear directly from his wife, but from a good friend of his wife, that this was one of the happiest moments of his life.

[51:26]

And he died three months later and died very, one could say, very free. And this Fashin experience helped him a lot. That's what he did. When he came to Doksan first time, Sanzen, he said, my lectures were too much. They were too complicated and too detailed. And I thought, he's probably right. And I'm always trying to teach you things in detail, but not make it too much. And I felt quite legitimately corrected by him. But then later he said suddenly the point of the lectures came across. So I felt better.

[52:44]

But I didn't forget the initial criticism, which I think is also right. But because of his intense need and way of doing the sashin, he made it work. And then he died only two or three months after the Sesshin. So I think tomorrow I'd like to do the service mentioning his name. And I'd like to, for me anyway, dedicate this sashin to him. He's the first person I've practiced with in Europe. He's died. So please, during the Sesshin, sit as well as you can.

[54:17]

Take this week to forget about everything. And just be here. No place to go and nothing to do. Except to follow the schedule and eat the meals when they come. And maintain your concentration in your body and mind as you walk and do things and sit and sleep. And see as much as possible a deep feeling of relaxation inside you. It's okay. You've been sitting quite well.

[55:33]

And you've learned the serving and general feeling of the Zendo almost immediately. And this atmosphere is quite important, and I'll try to give you more of a sense of why it is during this talk this afternoon. I don't mean to say that everything we do has some special meaning or some deep understanding. A lot of the things we do, we just do. But I don't think it's easy to get, again, how different a theological A non-theological yogic culture is from a theological non-yogic culture.

[56:45]

The whole center, location of where you think things are happening is different. And the dynamics and concept of what's happening are different. Now let me ask, last night for the people in this other room, the other part of the Zendo, could you hear what I said after the hot drink? Yes? You could, unfortunately. What? It was difficult. Could you hear the translation? Well, we could, if you want, and what we did last year, is as soon as the servers of the hot drink come in here, the people in that room can come in here too, if you want.

[58:08]

Do you think that would be better, to come in? Yeah? Okay, then I'd like... What? Okay, then I'd like all of you to come in, not just some of you. And you can sit in the aisle somewhere. Now, I've been doing quite a lot of seminars since the end of April here in Europe. And I'm very relieved to be doing a sashin with you. Sometimes people come to the seminars wishing there were more zazen. And often if I do more Zazen, people start saying, it was 43 minutes, not 40, and I nearly died or something like that.

[59:31]

I was told that the seminar in Brussels was full of experienced sitters. And half the room nearly rebelled and they all knew in their bodies it was two minutes over 40 minutes. Yeah. But there's a problem here is that We have to do something within the time that we can absorb it. And the absorption depends on, this sounds kind of crazy, but the absorption depends upon the four structures used in the seminar or in the sashin. Now, the word for structure is a translation of some word Heidegger uses.

[60:43]

For, F-O-R-E. Something, a structure that goes before. I don't know what word Heidegger uses. It's an obvious idea, but... but what he means is that usually we anticipate what we're going to do by structures that we already have. Now I can only teach you some things by linking them to four structures you already have. So in a seminar I'm linking it to mental four structures and in a Sashin I'm linking it to physical ones.

[61:50]

And it produces a different kind of event that has to be worked out differently. Now, this is how I've studied Buddhism. I've had to myself practice by working with structures I already have. And there's things I'm teaching now that I couldn't have dreamed I would have accepted or understood fifteen years ago. Sukhiroshi taught them to me but I just didn't even understand that he was teaching them to me. Now this Now this ability to accept a teaching and wait and be able to retain it until you can understand it is a special kind of memory.

[63:12]

I don't know to what degree I'll introduce this kind of memory in this session because I've been talking about it in the seminars. If I find it unavoidable to do so, I'll do it. Partly I avoid doing it because I don't like to make Ulrike translate it all again. But just for the term that I use for this kind of memory, it's dharanic memory in contrast to karmic memory. And dharanic memory is a capacity, spiritual capacity, that as a Buddhist you're supposed to learn in order to understand and develop the teachings. It's closely related to, but not exactly the same, as techniques of memory used in oral cultures which don't pass the culture through writing.

[64:33]

And this is well known that in oral cultures where there is writing or the main things aren't transmitted through writing, people have this unbelievable capacity to remember entire sutras and things like that. So anyway, it's not the same as that, but it's actually quite closely related to that. Now what I just did, in a sense, was introduce a teaching.

[65:57]

I said something which you may or may not have got the full feeling of, but now I've stopped. Teaching would be something that holds together with a kind of mandala-like integrity. that you can kind of apprehend with your body for a feeling level and use later. So a Buddhist lecture that's done in a traditional way would be a series of teachings linked together where you don't see the breaks between them. but your capacity as a student would be as a practitioner and student would be to know and feel when what those teachings three or four teachings are in a particular lecture particular session

[66:58]

Thank you. I always want to, every few minutes, I want to thank Ruka for translating, because it feels like so much work. Now, in the serving, again, you're doing it quite well and carefully. Now, there's several ways that a sashin is defined. And I'm not going to try to make an exhaustive list or a complete list of... all the ways the Sashin is defined.

[68:15]

But of course one way is so that you can just be as much as possible by yourself in the midst of all of us with one practice, emotions, feelings. And that we all support each other serving the meals and so forth so that we can each have this time alone. But there's also a powerful interaction between the being alone and creating the feeling of mutual support that allows each of us to be alone. So, for example, someone asked, which I like to do myself, is if they could sit through the kinye.

[69:17]

And in Santa Fe where we have a small lay group and each person is really practicing quite individually people can sit through two or three periods if they want But in Crestone, in the mountain center, where Gerald and Gisela are the directors, we have more of a mutually supportive practice. So there, when Kenan comes, we get up and do Kenan. There's an important even mirror-like quality where you mirror another person to establish a certain kind of bond or resonance.

[70:46]

So it's important actually that not only is your body lined up in terms of parts of your own body, But also that your body is lined up quite exactly with the person to your right and left. There's a kind of field that's locked into when you do that. And I'll try to say a little bit more about that today. And also, you know, in a Sashin we get in the habit of not doing Zazen according to our own personal schedule.

[71:48]

It's usually when we start following our own schedule, even if it's more sitting, which we're usually following our, not all, but usually following our ego identity and not our spiritual identity. So sometimes, but usually in fact, the way to break the ego identities making use of practice is to have a schedule that you yourself didn't make. But if your spiritual identity is quite aroused by the last period of zazen after the hot drink, You can sit in the zendo or in the garden as long as you'd like.

[72:53]

You can do qinhan too, as much as you want, as long as you don't trample the flowers. Now, last night I said that sashin is to gather the mind. And Ulrike and I had a discussion about this word gather, and I guess it doesn't work exactly right in German. And in particular, I used the word congeal. And she intuitively translated it seal, not congeal. Because I guess the word to translate congeal in German has a more rigid meaning. congealed quality than congeal in English.

[74:13]

So maybe we should just say focused... Sashin gathers and focuses the mind. And that focus, of course, is also in your body and in your activity. Now, probably the main reason I keep bringing up the differences in words Ich glaube, der Hauptgrund, warum ich immer wieder eben auf die Unterschiede zwischen Worten zu sprechen komme, is I'm reminding you that what these words are pointing out is in you.

[75:14]

Denn ich will euch daran erinnern, was diese Worte wirklich aufzeigen. Das ist in euch. And you have to feel it. And it's not exactly German, it's not exactly English, it's not Sanskrit. You have to feel out where it is. Und ihr müsst das erfühlen, wo das ist. Das ist nicht genau in Deutsch und nicht in Englisch und auch nicht in Sanskrit. So this focusing or settling the mind means your whole activity should be settled. Which includes don't look around in the Zenda. Some of you are watching all the servers and staring around. What's going on? As you know, the Zen admonition, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Also, don't invite your curiosity to tea. Again, your eyes are part of your brain.

[76:18]

And you want to keep your eyes settled. Even if someone spills an entire pot of rice soup in the aisle, this rice soup should be far from where you are. It's almost happening in another world. Which Beate Gerard has to take care of. But if they slip and fall in it, and the tide of rice soup begins to creep up your leg, then you might say, oh, yes, yes. But as short as such an event you hardly know what's going on. And when you serve again, as I said last night, you're serving big mind, not just food. And when you serve, as I said last night, you're serving big mind, not just food.

[77:36]

So when you're serving, there's The serving activity is defined mutually and equally by getting the food in the bowls and the relationship to the people, to the two people. And the first and the beginning and ending definitions are the people not the food. So if I'm serving these two people, and I come, say, from this direction, I come to this point, and then I bow to the two people at once, as much as possible in the middle.

[79:03]

And now, the serving should go quickly. But still, each thing is done in its own time. But at the time you bow to the two people, there's no food, nothing in your mind except bowing to the two people. You're not already moving into sloshing the soup into the bowl. You could die at that moment and be just fine. Right now it's stopped. Then the next thing is, get your pot. If you can, you sit down and say something. If you came from this direction, You serve the person who you came to first.

[80:23]

And you only take the bowl from them, or they only give it to you, when it's like soup or something that can be spilled. And it's never the big bowl. And you receive the bowl this way, not with your fingers on the edge of their bowl. And you don't eat food off their bowl that you spilled onto their bowl. And you don't eat food off their bowl that you've spilled onto their bowl. It's a very helpful thing to do, but still we don't do it. If you spill food on their mat, then you clean it up. But if you spill food in their bowl, you let them clean it up. And while this person is being served, this person gets their bowl ready.

[81:40]

And when that's finished, there's a moment of stop again. And get up. Serving the food is long forgotten and you just bow and give it to people. Now, if it's so narrow, you can't bow, you can't do it straight because there's bowls behind you. I was just saying you are completely sideways, not at an angle. And then you turn this way to serve.

[82:40]

I think that will work better if you do it completely straight sideways. You guys have to try it out. And as I think you all know by now, but for those of you who aren't serving, I'll say it. Row one starts with Orito and goes into that room. And row two starts with the last person on that side. It goes up this aisle and then back and up this aisle. And then to whoever is sitting there and then to me. Row one on this side starts here, I guess, right?

[83:55]

And goes all the way back. Is that right? No. It just goes that way. And row two starts here and goes back and then includes the back of the wall. No? No. Oh, the second goes to the window and down this way. And then up this way. I figure this out. So I can see why you get mixed up sometimes. Sometimes I tell people, I just told them there is something else in mind. I didn't sit down right that time.

[85:20]

I'm all tangled up. Okay, what is this sense of a settled quality or how to let big mind settle in your activity about? What is the sense of this settled quality or big mind settled in your activity about? Now this is a In the developmental stage of Buddhism, this is basically a tantric idea.

[86:28]

A tantric idea in the way Zen makes use of it at least. Now, the basic idea of Buddhism is that everything changes. The word Dharma means root means hold, to hold. So the word, the basic idea is everything changes. The word Dharma means stopped or held. and refers to emptiness as the place of rest. And the word Tantra basically means to weave. And means you as the site of weaving.

[87:36]

Now this Heart Sutra, which you don't have to pick up your card, but this Heart Sutra was written, I forget now exactly, I believe around 400 in India. And was translated into Chinese in around 600. I may be off in the dates, but it was something like that. Now, what it is, is it's first of all a tantric conception and use of a Mahayana wisdom text. So it's a tantric text laid on top of a Mahayana text. A wisdom text. And it's a wisdom text.

[88:35]

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