Now, as you've heard me say quite a few times, I'm always in the dilemma of how to teach. People who are serious about practicing can only see a cake. And I need your help, Anesti, for you to let me know what works and what doesn't work for you. Because there's also no tradition of teaching the things I'm trying to teach in context of people you don't see very often.

[01:09]

But if I respect, if I do lay practice, then I don't want to dilute the teaching point. Now also where I have great sympathy for the people who are just starting. Partly because I've been just starting for 30 years. To keep starting over. To think that the people who have been practicing more, I can hear them, what they need more with my body.

[02:18]

because they've been practicing longer so I could feel their communication more clearly. So one thing I do sometimes is I take one of the sticks I have And this one was given to me mostly by Suzuki Roshan. Actually, this form has two sources. One is a back scratcher. And because it can reach anywhere, it's a teaching staff.

[03:32]

It can scratch my back. It can scratch yours. And also, often this shape is a mushroom shape. I'm going to a bar now. They'll give me a mushroom. And the mushroom goes way back when it represented a transcendental experience through psychedelics. In a way, what Buddhism has decided and made a decision, in fact, made in India prior to Buddhism,

[04:41]

In the lineage developed in Buddhism. Decided what any experience is a capacity of human being not related to take that psychedelic. And it has to do with the way you can experience the world. Anyway, sometimes I take a stab like this. And I pass it around. And I ask each of you, when you get the staff, say something. But this many people, if I start, will still see me.

[05:58]

That's what has to happen. Still, I wouldn't do it. Maybe not all at once. Yeah. Now, one koan, one of the key phrases, koan, is, and a very common statement in Buddhism, is this matter is not within words and phrases. But without words and phrases, you'll never understand. That's the basic problem of teaching.

[07:00]

So I guess the, certainly one of the main things I can give you a feeling for in practice is the degree to which the path is the body. . And the degree to which the mind is the body. And the degree to which the mind is discovered most easily through the body. Another phrase, key statement from a poem, It's a question.

[08:21]

In what world will you place mind and body? What world do you place mind and body? Can you determine? Now, a phrase like that is not meant to be understood right away. Someone asked me actually to speak a little bit about Koan. So I think the easiest thing to do is to give you some phrases from Koan. Let's go a phrase like that. In what world do you place mind and body?

[09:23]

In the statement you just stated. Kind of in your background mind. And you have to have a certain amount of faith in it that It makes some sense somehow. I mean, the first thing most of us might respond, I didn't know I had a choice what world I placed my body in. So that practicing with the koan in the most fundamental way It's really just a way of looking very thoroughly at a phrase or at yourself or at the world.

[10:41]

And the assumption that while there's a phrase, you can't eat painted cake, You can't eat a painting of cake. But then it's also said, oh yes, you can. Painted cakes are delicious. And the idea that you could separate the world apart is not correct. So painting takes me to work. But it's also a part of work. So how do you enter the world, the word, at a level that you understand differently than just ordinary thinking?

[11:50]

You know, it's funny. Your mouth becomes calm. When you're thinking or feeling or understanding something, you tend to rise into words. And if your mouth is calm, doesn't need to speak, that understanding rises toward words, goes back into another kind of understanding.

[13:04]

I'm using that example to show you how physical this practice is about to be. When you're sitting and you're practicing, and you are Are you paying attention to your breath? Let me say something about your posture for a moment, your postures. In general, you're sitting pretty well. I would suppose the main thing, I know this is, you have your arms too far forward. Give your arms here, it closes your chest in.

[14:21]

And if your shoulders are forward, or your arms, it pulls you forward. Maybe you put your arms to your back like that first. And then you bring them forward and see if you can let them come straight down from your shoulders. That's so your elbows are beside your body. And there's a little space between your arms and your body. Then your hands go. watch him actually interfere with the way you breathe but when you are sitting in zazen and you brought your attention to your breathing

[15:39]

you're trying to, you can try to locate in your breath a point of the kind of stillness. You feel a kind of physical stillness in your breath. For example, if right now in this room Did I stop you a moment? There'll be a moment of stillness in this room. Get there for only a moment and then go. Could you feel it? It's like that kind of stillness, but in your body. So you're sitting and you breathe and it takes over how to get settled.

[16:54]

And bring your attention to your breath. And then you feel there's suddenly a little moment of stillness. You try to stay in that moment of stillness. But if you try too hard, you won't be still. But the subtle matter of noticing cannot interfere with it. Yes. So one of the basic, simple things in practice, which takes a long time, is to sit and actually relax in your sitting. A lot of people are 30 or 40 or 50 years old and can't relax enough to go to the toilet.

[18:00]

They need three cigarettes, closed door, two magazines. So it actually takes us a long time, decades, to learn simple things like how to go to the toilet. So all you can learn how to sit on the toilet of your cushion. And let everything go. So really your practice is as simple as, and as difficult as, just waxing and pushing.

[19:12]

And the attitude of koan practice, which is not different from any other kind of Buddhism, It's really a skill at noticing that point where you don't feel it even if you can almost hide it. And I suppose the style of poem practice is to notice that point and then to stay with that point in the difficulty of it and in the possible resolution. I think the point of the poem is that you simply try to understand the point, that it remains as it is, that it is so difficult, and that the solution is already within you. And though yesterday I likened Buddhist practice to the examination of the world of matter that physicists do.

[20:24]

Basically, Buddhist practice could be more likened to a naturalist, a biologist studying an animal. Or you just watch an animal in the woods, a badger or something like that. Or is it Jane Goodall? Watch a girl... You just watch the chimpanzee that you are. And the badgers running around in your body. You don't think about it too much.

[21:29]

In this koan where it says, This matter is not fundamentally a matter of words and phrases. Matter is not found in words and phrases. But without words and phrases, we'll never understand. It also said, don't bring your own understanding to words and phrases. It means, look at the words and phrases, if they were a strange creature that just came out of the wood, that you don't know what they are. You don't bring your own meaning or stick to your own meaning, the word pray.

[22:37]

Ken, this is a typical example of the emphasis on emptiness or indeterminacy the way you look at the world. So in concert, always the context has more power over the words than the word. And they'll typically use a word that means the opposite, but to put it in a context which forces its meaning to be something else. And the only kind we really use words like that commonly is when we're in love. You might call somebody you love either a very endearing name or a very shitty name, but you both mean, in both cases, you mean you love the person.

[24:03]

I don't know what she said, but it sounded good. Dear, I'm so helpless among you. Do you all understand English and German? Yes. You've suffered sympathy, kindness to this dumb American Buddhist. She didn't translate it. So you have to read koans and study Buddhism a bit like you're in love with it. It's a little like, you know, if you're not in love, you hear the songs, all these love songs constantly on the radio.

[25:29]

They sound completely grippy. Grippy? Schmalz. But then when you fall in love, they go, ah, that's my car losing another car. So you have to fall in love with koans, otherwise they just sound . So you're just trying to sit still enough to watch yourself.

[26:31]

And what you will begin to find, because I think it helps to have some suggestion about what you will find, is that there's the very strong and indivisible relationship, though it's not immediately apparent, between your body and your thinking. It's almost like first you notice thinking like seeing a beam of light. Then you notice you don't see the beam of light until it's shining something, hitting something. Hitting the area.

[27:47]

Then you see that you can actually make a mirror or lens and the light becomes much clearer focused. And that your body in its stillness and locating a kind of point of stillness becomes a kind of lens that focuses this thinking. Then after a while you notice that the lens and the thinking, the light, all are the same thing. And you begin to find out that you think differently, and you absorb what you think differently, depending on how you allow your body and state of mind to cooperate.

[29:00]

Now, in my mind, it may seem as if I think, you know, I think absolutely, but I don't think so. I don't think so. I think so. So that in practice you do it a little bit every day. And this morning we sat almost for a minute. It's about as long as anybody ever said. If you do practice a little bit every day, you

[30:06]

you become very familiar with yourself. And it's important not to interfere too much. Not to try too hard. You sit down in the larger context of trying But in specific, you don't try. You sort of leave yourself alone. And you don't want to sit too long. Now, one of the reasons we sit as a habit 30 or 40 minutes I don't have my little god. I want to dance.

[31:21]

I'll just go again. Oh, there. Oh, that's all done. There we go. In a way, when you do zazen, this is your primary process here. As I said, your sense of location might be down here. Okay? That's a location maybe here. Not always in the primary cluster. And you have a rubber band that catches it here.

[32:22]

Now, this sense of this rubber band becomes As you practice and you become more familiar with yourself, you can actually attach this rubber band to emptiness. You don't need something to attach it to, and yet you can locate yourself. But at first, when you're practicing, you find you can move this around, but you keep it attached to your primary process. Okay. Sometimes you can go all the way down here, here, over here.

[33:37]

Well, one of the reasons you sit 30 or 40 minutes is a habit. It's a certain reality associated with your simple physicality. That's why people commonly, when they're really under a lot of stress, they're having an anxiety attack, go and wash the dishes. You're kind of stressed, so you just wash the dishes. Take a shower. So when you do zazen and you have the habit of sitting always 30 minutes or 40 minutes, once you really have that habit, even if you sat three or four hours, which after a while you can sit for hours if you like,

[34:54]

There's still a rhythm of starting sounds and letting go into letting lots of things just float up. And then after 30 to 40 minutes, we attach it to your radio. So I know some people, when they meditate first, often it's beginners feel it's more and more adept people. If I really concentrate and lose my ordinary sense, for instance, a common experience is you after a while can't tell where your hand is. Or if your thumbs are touching or not touching, separated.

[36:20]

It feels like it's about six feet between your thumbs. And you kind of look down to see if they're only separated by that much. But... That's a common thing. As that can happen to your thumb, sometimes it can happen to your whole body. And you ask me, am I sitting straight? I'll say, yes, you're sitting straight. Well, I feel like I'm sitting way over here. But I have the feeling that I'm hanging. I feel like I'm hanging. So I'll look more carefully, and yes, you're about this much to the side.

[37:13]

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