I believe he has a tall man in the back. Let me say again that I'm honored to be here in this Hamburg and German Buddhist center. When I cough, it makes the little red light go. And to be able to do a sashin here. Now, any sashin schedule has to be not too unreasonable. It definitely shouldn't be reasonable. But it should be not too unreasonable and it should be tailored to the particular situation.

[01:10]

So Gural is responsible for the Zendo as the Eno. And by the way, if any of you have to leave for some reason or miss a period, please let Gerald know. If any of you have to leave for some reason or miss a period, please let Gerald know. And if Gerald is for some reason not here, then you should let the person keeping the time, the Doan, know. And Gerald, may I say Gerald? Gerald's a bit sick. He's been sick for about five days. He got the Crohn flu. So he's making a good show of looking like a good Zen student, though.

[02:23]

But if he collapses, have sympathy for him. Anyway, Geraldo is observing how the schedule works. And whether the breaks are long enough for everyone to use the toilets. And the time between things is time enough to get to those of you who are staying in the big house have time enough to get there and back. Now, how is it working in the rain, bringing the food down, Gisela? Wet. So there's, what, four servers and the soku, the head server, and the cooks.

[03:30]

So that's four, five, six people. Six people getting wet instead of all of us. Because otherwise all of us have to go up to you and do it. But if it turns out it doesn't work, maybe we can have to talk to Frank about it. Maybe we can find a way to sit in the dining room up there without tables and eat oryoki-style on the floor in that room. certainly if there's a serious hailstorm and blizzard we'll consider it but then we'd need more cushions and everything anyway for now let's try it this way And I considered... I was thinking about next Sashin.

[04:47]

We'll do a Sashin here in May. Isn't that correct? Beginning to chant or trying to chant some things in German. Then I heard you brought the Heart Sutra in German. So we could start now. What I wanted to do was to... ask three or four people to begin a translation, studying existing translations. Because at least in English, most of the translations don't chant very well. And some of the translations have mistakes in understanding.

[05:56]

So I wanted to study the available translations. Maybe this is a good one, I don't know. But I still think there's some value in chanting in English. Partly because so much of the Buddhist texts that are available now are in English. And I always hope some of you come to visit me in Preston and then you have to know English. But then if we start chanting in German, I'll have to learn German. I've learned the menu chant in restaurants. I've learned the menu chant in restaurants. So I love this weather.

[07:17]

Yeah, we don't have it. In Crestone we have 340 days of sunshine a year. It almost gets boring. And here it feels like we all went on a big camping trip. And somewhere in the woods we got lost. and we found beside a lake this beautiful monastery which took us in and said oh you can stay for a week we don't have much space but we'll give you each a few feet square each of you get a square meter And you can camp out in this square meter.

[08:22]

And listen to the storm. And you'll have food and sleep. And you're with good friends. And you can begin to try to find your ease on your cushions. And actually, that's very much what a sashin practice is all about. I think sashin is good for nest builders. Nest bower. So you're a nest bower. You can make your little nest and put your Kleenexes under the pillow. Some of you make the most elaborate nests, amazing.

[09:26]

If we try to move them we find many things. As we say, everything but the kitchen sink and a coffee machine. I remember when I was in a monastery in Japan, I arrived actually to do tangaryo, which is you have to sit for ten days to two weeks sort of outside before they let you in. And you're not allowed to have anything. You're not allowed to change your clothes or bathe or anything. But like Gerald, I was quite sick, actually.

[10:27]

And I decided I'd take some vitamin C. So I had to hide this whole line of vitamin C high up on a beam, higher than the Japanese could reach or see. So you're not allowed to have walking meditation or anything, but occasionally, if it's not too often, you can go to the toilet. So I'd stretch and have a light of conceit. So finding your ease camping out for seven days on a meter square is not so easy.

[11:29]

It's possible. And it's actually a significant achievement if you can do it. But it means you have to be become more sensitive to your own microclimates. And what I mean by this is like, sometimes when you first start to sit, you can let your eyes be closed for a moment. And as I'm sure most of you know, the Zen tradition is that you keep your eyes a little bit open and let a little light in. But rules in Zen aren't magical, so you can do it the way you want to. But the basic recommendation is that you keep your eyes open a little.

[12:53]

But let's say that when you first start sitting for a moment you leave your eyes closed. until suddenly a little soft feeling appears. A little pause. Or even a kind of little spot that you feel soft in or at ease in. And when you get a feeling, sense this feeling, Then you open your eyes and let your eyes rest in that feeling. And if this feeling is kind of like a little spot, you let yourself rest inside this spot. This is what I mean by a microclimate.

[13:54]

Now please in the Sashim, as much as possible, and it is possible not to, don't look around. And don't look at your watch. In fact, really only the tenzo, the cook, and the doan, that's the timekeeper, and the soku, who's the head server, And the abbot and the inu can have a... It's okay to wear a watch. And the rest of you shouldn't be on clock time. Or looking around time.

[15:02]

If you need to know something about the people around you, feel it, don't look. This isn't just an arbitrary rule, it's quite essential to the subtlety of finding your own self. or becoming aware of your own microclimates. Now I hope you'll be patient with me because so much of what I'm trying to say depends on the microclimates of particular words. What particular words can give you a feeling for? And also be patient with me for making it so difficult for Ulrike to translate Can you hear okay? If you want to move, up here you can.

[16:24]

Could you help me bring a cushion? Thank you. Thank you. So anyway, it takes a little bit of time and exploration, I think, for Ulrike to find exactly the right word or to find what I mean by small distinctions between words.

[17:35]

So, while it's said in... A well-known saying in Zen is, this matter is not in words and letters. But without words and letters, it can never be pointed out. So I have to use words in a way that are very specific and not generalized. Words as generalizations don't help at all. So what you're trying to do when you're practicing sashin is really getting used to camping out on your meter square.

[18:42]

And that means becoming sensitive to a kind of pace and to several kinds of paces. Now that's one of the essentials of what orioke practice is about. And I think given that for some of you it was the first time you've used orioke, the meal serving and eating went very well. But one of the essential qualities of Oryoki practice is that each thing has its own pace. Each action has its own pace and each object has its own pace.

[20:05]

Now I don't know any other way to say it but the way I'm saying it. The stick of Suzuki Roshi has its own pace. And I can put it down several ways. I can lift it up certain different ways. And it's a kind of funky old piece of wood. And it has calligraphy on it. And it has this string on it that kind of gets in your way. But it's meant to get in your way. Just like these robes are meant to get in your way. And the aureokis are meant to get in your way.

[21:06]

And life is meant to get in your way. Buddhism is meant to get in your way. If it doesn't get in your way it won't become your way. So you really have to get used to it getting in your way. And even practice gets in your way. This morning I was very sleepy. And particularly after the first couple of weeks I fly across the ocean, I feel like I had no jet lag, but then if I do Zaza and it won't work. And some people say to me, you shouldn't even come to the Zendo when you're so sleepy. It doesn't look good for the students and for the practitioners. Particularly for the newer ones.

[22:33]

You should have a large cup of coffee. Or stay home. But it's not a performance. My practice is not a performance. I'm in the midst of the inadequacies of my own practice. And I'm not proud of the inadequacies, but I accept them. And even in sleepiness, which is one of the main enemies of good zazen, there's a certain territory of consciousness and awareness that you come to know. If you're sitting up and sleepy, the upright sitting has intent in it. An intent is a kind of consciousness that's different than usual consciousness. So even though you may be sleepy, the intent has a kind of awareness, well, there's consciousness in it, consciousness that I call awareness.

[24:04]

So this is what I mean by a microclimate or... using the obstacles of your practice as your practice. Frank, do you have sticks for hitting people around here? Yes. We might want to use them. I haven't used them in sashims in Europe yet, but this might be a good time to start. No, just me. Yes, carried them. Oh, carried them. So I don't know how you feel about being hit with a stick. Hmm. Hmm. Won't help me much because you're not supposed to hit me.

[25:31]

But if you get out of control, I'll accept. But we don't... I would say... To start with the practice here, if we do it, you don't hit anyone unless they ask for it. And you ask for it by putting your... When you hear the stick going by you, behind you, you ask for it by putting your hands up and then tipping your head to the side To be hit on this shoulder and the side to be hit on this shoulder. If you want to be hit farther down your back, then you lean forward more. And you have to accept that some people aren't so good at it and they may hit you in your ear.

[26:43]

It doesn't happen very often. And unless the person does it all the time and only to you, you assume it's an accident. So I'd have to teach a few people how to hit with a stick. It takes time actually to learn how to do it. If you're too timid, it doesn't do any good at all. If you're too, you know, careful, it doesn't feel right. You just have to sort of be able to let go. Actually, it feels quite good. It's an instant massage. Hmm. So when you're doing the orioke again, coming back to that, like this stick has its own pace, affected by the rope and the shape and everything.

[28:14]

And this stick has a curve to it, which is supposed to be like the backbone. So when I pick it up, I can feel, feel this stick in my back bone. So when you're using your orioki, there's a certain, obviously, weight to it and so forth. And when you have a particular ball, say the middle ball, the middle ball, when you pick it up, has a different pace than the other two balls.

[29:15]

So each thing you do in the Aoyoki practice, you sense the pace, I'm going to use the word pace, sense the pace of that particular bowl. And you express that pace in the way you pick it up. If it's full, for instance, of soup, you pick it up carefully and slowly at first and then move it up. And if it's empty, you can do the opposite. You can pick it up quickly and then pause and then move it slowly up. And that expresses the difference because you can't do that with a full bowl and you can't do that with an empty bowl.

[30:20]

And then we usually pick up to the heart chakra. Now I notice some of you are doing it a little differently than we do it this way. And some of you are hiding the waste water when you dump it. All those different ways that you can learn from different teachers of doing it are okay. Anyway, you bring it up into the territory of your body. That in itself has a certain pace. And then if you're picking up the cloth, and it's under several layers of your sitting robe or whatever,

[31:30]

You obviously can't pick it up, the cleaning cloth, like it was just sitting on the floor. Especially if you have as many robes as I do. You have to find which layer, where it is. Sometimes Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva with a thousand arms, her practice is described as looking for your pillow at night. You know, you can't find it, so you need a few more arms. So that's a little bit like looking for your cleaning cloth.

[32:32]

And then that cloth and the particular bowl together have a kind of pace of how you put that on the bowl. And how you wipe it. So these are not rules, but rather these rules that we have taught you last night come out of discovering the pace of each situation and each object. So the word for pace in German is tempo. It's difficult to translate. depends on the context because pace in English tempo is used for music and pace is used for like walking or physical anyway you understand what I mean because most of you know English

[33:42]

When I have all these robes get in my way, so I have to do things with a certain pace. The robes... And this is quite essential to Zen practice. Hmm. So what you're doing when you're sitting again is you're beginning to feel the pace of each object in each situation. If you'll let me to keep stretching the meaning of the word pace. You feel the pace of your zafu, your cushion. And the pace of your meter square zabutan. And there's a certain pace also of your clothes. And then there's a pace too of What kind of mood you're in.

[35:16]

And whether you're angry or annoyed or feeling at ease. Or feeling interfered with or claustrophobic or comfortable and cozy. So actually these different feelings are little microclimates. And these seven days give you a chance to kind of settle yourself into these microclimates. They're almost like when I've seen electron microscope pictures of tissue, the way that various kinds of tissue fold in together. You may feel annoyed, but almost woven in with it, there may be a feeling of being at ease.

[36:17]

Or vice versa, you may feel at ease, but right beside it there's this feeling of annoyance too. And some of these feelings come from outside. And some of them come from inside. So actually you're in several locations at once. We can name three locations. One is the location you're sitting in. And this room. And then there's the location you're letting into yourself, that's coming into you. And then there's a location that's coming from you.

[37:31]

And, you know, the word sashin translates, means gathering the mind. But we could make this gathering the mind as a little delusive. We could make this a little more accessible just today by saying Sashin is a gathering of these three locations. a gathering and identifying and locating yourself in and integrating yourself in.

[38:35]

So we step into this wonderful zendo that the Hamburg group here is letting us, the house distiller is letting us sit in And it has a certain pace and feeling that they have established. And this altar of Mount Sumeru of tables one on top of the other With Buddhas at various levels. Also gives, of course, an atmosphere to this room. So there's a certain location you are in. We're all in. Now, how much do you let this location come into you?

[39:48]

This is the form skandha. Form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, associations, consciousness. Form skandha doesn't mean just the dead sentient world, insentient world. It means, as I'm saying, how much of the phenomenal world do you let into you? Like you can let the rain sound right now into you. This isn't just being romantic or poetic.

[40:52]

This is entering your life at a manageable, accessible detail. If you feel the world is outside of you all the time, or pressing too hard on you, you're going to feel uncomfortable a good part of the time and alienated. And as I said the other night in Hamburg, on the one hand, to not see the emptiness, the changing relativeness of this world, To not see the wide vision of emptiness without boundaries, without subject-object distinctions. Ohne Abgrenzung, ohne Subjekt-Objekt-Unterscheidung.

[42:04]

To not see and know this emptiness we call delusion. Und diese Leerheit nicht zu sehen, nicht zu kennen, das nennen wir Täuschung. We can say not seeing the world as it is. Und wir sagen auch die Welt nicht zu sehen wie sie ist. But then the other problem is when you begin to open your eyes and see the world as it is, instead of delusion you may be disillusioned. And if you don't go through a period of disillusionment and despair with the world, you don't have your eyes open. So how do you get past this either delusionment, I don't know if that's a word, delusionment and disillusionment. Is that hard, delusionment?

[43:05]

Now this is also, this letting the world inside you is also the practice of sealing and not armoring yourself. Now, whenever I bring this up, I get quite a few questions right away. How do you seal yourself and not armor yourself? It's not so easy to answer simply. But I'm trying to respond to it now in at least one way. Because farming yourself, keeping the world out, that's a very weak position.

[44:08]

So how are you able to let the world in and yet remain sealed? and able to act in your full power without feeling alienated or disillusioned. Now this is a skill that can come from simply finding out how to camp out for seven days on your cushion. If the atmosphere of the practice is right. And you have your own confidence and courage. And you're not in too worrisome critical state of mind. And if you are in that kind of mind, then sit in that and find your ease even in that.

[45:15]

So you're beginning to let everything speak to you by hearing each thing's own pace. The room, the altar, your cushion, my voice right now, your own interior climates, Each skanda, feeling, perceptions, cognitive mind. The sea of associations. The consciousness that arises from these things. So you're beginning to find again a space in these microclimates. The location you're in, the location you're letting in, that's coming in, and the location that's going out.

[46:31]

You're actually establishing your location too. Mm-hmm. And it's good in the next days if you can begin to sense these three locations. And find a unifying play of these locations. This is also a practice of acceptance. Now if I use the word acceptance, you may I think some of you won't like the word. It means to many of you, I think, something passive or submissive. So maybe I should create a technical term, integral acceptance.

[47:33]

And maybe integrated acceptance. Even resignation. I think resignation mostly has a negative meaning in German and I think mostly in English too. But sometimes there's a kind of wise resignation. Even a kind of disillusionment that's also resignation acceptance. Not a resignation that bows you down, but that you sit up in the middle of this resignation.

[48:52]

In this sashin, if you can keep sitting, it's okay to give up. To give up and leave, you'll feel lousy. but if you stay in the sashin on your cushion and just give up you'll feel very good actually you may feel a deep relief or an interior kind of crying and that's That's a territory of acceptance and sealing yourself, actually. But not armoring yourself. It's a little like you can't let go of the world until you've got hold of it. You've got to be able to let the world in you so that interior, exterior becomes a kind of play, as I said.

[50:10]

A play of the phenomenal world. the physical world of your body, the mental, emotional world of the four skandhas, and the interplay of these mental or emotional, feeling skandhas with the form skandha. When you have that, it's like the world is in your joints and your skin and your stomach. It's in you in a way that's accessible to you. and it's acceptance in that it's acceptable to you and you don't feel alienated or threatened or overwhelmed you can feel quite at ease or comfortable with the world partly in you

[51:30]

It's a little bit like the whole ox or cow is heading toward enlightenment or heading toward suffering. But the tail is inside you and it's wagging around inside you. And in sashin you let this tail kind of wag around, itches and things like that. By letting the world inside you and remaining sealed and sitting and at ease, you actually get hold of the tail of the world. You can begin to have a little bit of control over this ox.

[52:45]

Hey, enlightenment is over this way. Quit going that way. You can pet the tail. At some point where you really feel at ease, then you can let go of it. Then you have the big world, the big vision of no subject, no object. The wide vision we call emptiness. But you're in this interior-exterior play where you're quite comfortable. So I think you may be able to feel this tail of the world if you can camp out. On your meter square cushion, these seven days. This kind of attitude is basic to zazen practice and seshin practice.

[54:09]

Letting the world in, but feeling at ease. And it begins with feeling at ease in the limitation and discomfort of sitting. And this whole sashin is individually for each of you. It's not for anyone else. It's not for all of us. All of it is for you individually. So, So what will you do? Please have whatever sashin you have. I can't say, have a good sashin.

[55:10]

So be here in whatever sashin you have. And be gentle with yourself. And strong with yourself. And feel your own power. Don't give in too easily. But don't force yourself either. Find these microclimates in which you can exist. And that way I think you can find your real strength. Thank you very much. Thank you. In your heart, in tension, individually...

[56:05]

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