struggling just as I'm struggling. Because he, in Japanese culture, which was much more yogic than ours. He still created these kind of funny phrases like the position, the position of the present moment. I want to emphasize that this teaching is not Japanese. Yeah, it's not Indian, it's not American or German. You can be of various kinds of persons by birth, by the birth of your culture. Buddhism is a language that doesn't belong to any culture. That was created by human beings to show us a particular way to live.

[01:17]

A way to live that is as much as is thought to be possible in accord with how things exist. And it's in accord with how we most fruitfully can be alive. Now, I don't want to go on quite so long as yesterday.

[02:23]

So I'll just try to present one basic way of looking at things in Buddhism. You know, we say form is emptiness and emptiness is form. But we also say form is form and emptiness is emptiness. And maybe you can work with that with some phrase like just this, just this, just this. So in this image of the moon in the water, This is emptiness is emptiness.

[03:26]

And form is form. Water is water, the moon is the moon. This is again this ashes... Firewood is not the past of ashes. Or as I sometimes say, pig is not the past of pork. So pig is... Pork is a history of meat eating applied to unwilling pigs. Pork has its own past, present and future. Pig has its own past, present and future. This moment has its own past, present and future.

[04:32]

That's not related only to the past and the future. This is the sense of text. Say that I took the feeling of seeing and put it in my backbone. You can do that. Doesn't mean you put your eyeball in your backbone. Or that your backbone now sees the way your eye sees. But take the feeling that arises through seeing and put it in your backbone. And your backbone will feel different.

[05:38]

So in this sense, the act, the feeling of seeing has its own past, present and future. This is what I said. This is going to be hard to try to express. Let's take all these lovely birds who accompany us during much of this sashi. Okay. Birds are singing for themselves. They have their own past, present and future. And the birds also, we're hearing the birds. Thank you bird. Very kind of you to be listening to the lecture. So maybe the birds are singing for us as well. But a certain feeling of listening arises.

[06:39]

that the birds caused us to feel. But once that feeling of listening arises, It's independent of the birds. It can have its own past, present and future. Let's take the way Proust points this out. He speaks about remembering when he was reading as a child. He remembers the chair. He remembers the day. The kind of afternoon, kind of like ours, wet and gray. He remembers somebody coming in to tell him a late lunch will be ready.

[07:54]

And he remembers saying he didn't want to eat, he just wants to continue reading. But he doesn't remember what book he was reading. He remembers more clearly the experience of reading than the book he was reading. So sometimes we read in order to create the feeling of reading. Now this kind of fairly subtle distinction is essential to yoga practice. We may not understand the implications of it, but we certainly sometimes, I wish I had a good book to read. And we don't mean any particular book, we just mean a book that gives us the feeling of reading.

[09:05]

We're looking for that feeling of reading. Because we want that experience of text and texture. Yes? Could you please explain the difference between text and texture? Yeah. Okay, thank you. By texture I mean the feeling, it's a kind of pun of course, I mean the feeling of connectedness. Texture is like the topography of a feeling.

[10:18]

So we listen to the birds, we hear the birds. And a bird feeling, bird singing feeling arises. And even after the bird stops singing, we can hold this bird singing feeling. We can hold the texture of it and when we hold the texture of it it becomes a text. It begins to tell us something about the world. We begin, now the word tissue, like Kleenex tissue or something, but the word tissue is also the same root word as text.

[11:23]

And you can begin to engage yourself in the tissue of sound. Und ihr könnt euch da hineinbegeben und hineinverwickelt in das Gewebe des Klangs. Und das ist die grundlegende Vijnana-Praxis, mit jedem der Sinne zu praktizieren. Und mit dem Gewebe der Kontinuität in jedem Sinnesfeld zu arbeiten. Okay, I'll end with one image now. It's understood in Buddhism and it goes way back in Indian culture and philosophy.

[12:24]

That the... the cosmology of the world, the cosmogony of the world, the evolution of the world as a whole, and our evolution have the same roots. We have different functions now, The technical word would be homologous. It shares the same roots, though it functions differently now. So one of the famous statements of Hinduism is, that thou art. That thou art.

[13:40]

It's not easy to translate. Now, of course it's not quite true. When you hear the birds... The birds aren't you. The sound that arises in you is you. But still, if you say when you hear the birds... That is also me. Now, this is the use of metaphor or analogy, not as a simple equation, that Neil equals birds, birds equals Neils. But rather, if Neil feels that when he hears the birds, he hears himself.

[14:48]

When Neil hears the birds, he hears himself. Not only in the sense that he's hearing his own mind hearing, But he feels he and the birds share the same body and same root. Now, if you hold this idea, It becomes a text which begins to teach you. So this is an analogy as a life map. In other words, if you live your life with this feeling, it begins to open things up.

[15:50]

So it's not true as it exists verbally as a simple statement. But it's true in the sense that as a medicine when you take it, or a tonic, it begins to make you extremely well. Make you healthy. So a phrase like Dogen's The moon in the water. The water, and he makes it subtle now, the water, the moon does not get wet. And the water is not broken. This is a gift from the 13th century of Dogen's. A gift I'm passing on to you.

[16:58]

And you don't try to understand it intellectually. But you hold this image in you like a medicine or a tonic. Like a subtle life map that unfolds in you. You let this unfold in you. You let yourself become the water in which the moon is reflected. You let yourself Thank you very much. I feel that our intentions are equally to go through all of Hesse and all of the North, with all the merits of the brotherhood.

[18:08]

I feel that our intentions are equally to go through all of Hesse Die führenden Wesen sind zeitlos. Ich glaube, sie zu hätten. Die Regierten sind unauslöschlich. Ich gelobe ihnen ein Ende zu bereiten. Die Damaskentoren sind los. Ich gelobe sie zu erherrschen. Der Weg des Bruders ist unübertrefflich. Ich gelobe ihnen zu erreichen. kare manken no shi juji suru goto etari negawa kuwa nyorai no shinjitsu nyo geshi tate matsuran

[21:19]

Now, ladies and gentlemen, even if hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas can rarely be remembered and accepted, I consider the purity of the Tathagata to be remarkable. Well, it's the third day and you're all still here, so that's a kind of progress. And, you know, I'm touched and impressed by how carefully you're doing the sesshin.

[22:24]

And although the third day is a kind of hurdle, a hurdle, okay. Still, now is the time really to see if you can find a flow in the details of the schedule and of each moment. Although much of what happens in Sashin has very little to do with what I've been talking about. Most of what happens is always junk comes up, psychological and psychic stuff. And some beauty, not just junk.

[23:45]

And there's some pain sometimes, emotional pain as well as physical pain. I guess there's both. I know there's both. And there's some satisfaction often, purifying feeling in this. We could call this function of sashin as maybe the taste of karma. But I'd also like, and sashin should also be a taste of dharma. A taste of reality or how things actually exist.

[25:00]

You know, most of us, we have a habit now because of the nature of our culture to look for a psychological revelation. We think if something's going to happen to us new or something as a result of all this sitting still and hurting. That will have some maybe psychological clarity or revelation. And we might. That's possible. And likely. And also we just get familiar with our Our associated history as it comes up.

[26:32]

But still we have a tendency to expect this which is different than it just happening. Or we expect some kind of big overwhelming experience of lights and sirens and things like that. And the finger of the Buddha God will lift us up from all suffering. Yeah, might happen. But mostly... It's a butterfly from another world.

[27:42]

That just momentarily flies in and then is gone. And we don't recognize this perhaps messenger. If we're caught in some kind of expectation of a psychological opening. Or some big experience. Yeah. Now mindfulness is the, what should we call it? Mindfulness is the bed and wake up bell of insight. In other words, if you start practicing mindfulness regularly, It's a kind of where you live and sometimes there's a wake-up bell and some insight happens.

[28:55]

And I would say that in a similar way, the vision we hold of how things exist Is the real precursor of realization. Yeah. So all this stuff comes up. And Zazen practice is to learn to just absorb it, to sit in the middle of it.

[29:58]

And to let it be there and not get too involved in it. I call this the practice of uncorrected mind. But we also want to let this sound of the wind and birds in. Sometimes we have all this stuff coming up and then sometimes we notice, as I've been saying, this tissue of sound. And there's a physicality to it. If you let the singing of the birds arise in you,

[31:17]

it becomes your experience. We can say it becomes something, again, which has its own past, present and future. You know, again, we go back to this famous koan of Matsu and Bajang. And the wild geese. Again, the wild geese are flying over. And Matsu says to his disciple, Baizhang. And they'd been practicing together about 20 years at this point. What's that? Says Matsu. And Baizhang says, wild geese. In some stories it's wild ducks. And then Matsu says, where have they gone?

[32:30]

And I won't do it. Thank you. And Matsu says, and Baijang says, they've flown away. And Matsu says, indeed, have they? Or when have they ever flown away? And he grabs his nose and Yeah, illustrating this story, I've lost two translators. Yeah, I should protect myself. Now if I said to you, the birds have been singing, they stop, and I say, what happened to the birds?

[33:55]

You could say, oh, they've stopped. And I could say, indeed, have they? It's the same thing. When have they ever stopped? So in a way we could say that, you know, we could understand it that Bai Jiang just was, you know, a good earnest disciple. And he gave a simple answer. Wild geese, yeah, and they flew away. And this is what we could call a relative answer. But in the absolute, they've never flown away.

[35:02]

And Matsu wanted Bai Zhang to have the freedom of the relative and the absolute. So he twisted his nose at this point. You can understand from the way I think I've explained this in the last couple days, that if this singing of the birds arises in you, if the birds stop, this singing is still in you. And this singing is there waiting for the singing or waiting for the truck that goes by. So it's not just a conceptual idea like, In the absolute, everything is always present or something.

[36:08]

There's also a physical experience of this presence that arises. So we could imagine that Matsu walking along with Bajang felt a deep pain or ache. or joy in his heart as he saw the wild geese flying. And Bajang on the other hand saw them as objects flying. Matsu hoped was this feeling that arose in him was arising in Bhajan from him as well as from the geese.

[37:13]

So twisting his nose is also, I, Matsu, am also the wild geese. So we have this connection, this connectedness. Which we don't usually recognize. But I think we feel it together when the house distiller birds are not stiller. Remember when Coco was here and the cuckoo bird kept calling him? He was sitting over there and we... I mean, for... Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.

[38:21]

That was some years ago. But several years in a row we had a cuckoo bird on a regular basis. Do you remember? Yeah. So Coco had a special calling. Now there's a, you know, Buddhism is, you know, I think it's great. It's really kooky too. One is a conception of the whole world as a sutra. And in a way, that's what we've been talking about. How do we know the interiority of the bird? Oh. Sounds okay to me.

[39:39]

Joe and I think it's a great translation. Hey. Okay. You know, when I was in Hamburg this last Friday evening, a woman asked a question at the end. And she was quite, I was quite surprised she remembered something I'd said from two years earlier in the Bremen conference. And she said, I talked about hearing, you know, I must talk about the same thing all the time. I talked about hearing, hearing. And she said, I talked about the bird, how the bird hears itself now.

[40:42]

We hear the bird. And she had some idea and she'd been practicing it for two years. Of trying to get to the real hearing which the bird and she shared. I had to tell her there's no real hearing. But she had heard what I'd said fairly well, but she believed, I think, partly just being a Westerner, that still there was something real somewhere. Yeah, unfortunately, not in Buddhism at least.

[41:56]

I mean, the bird makes a sound. It's far more complex than our ears can hear. And another bird of the same kind probably hears it one way. Another bird hears it another way. I hear it one way and Joe hears it another way. It's all like that. It's all different. But there is a shared interiority. Mm-hmm. No, no. No, that's good because we're developing a German-English-Buddhist terminology. Yeah.

[42:57]

So I started to say this, the world as sutra. And I've been trying to again give you this sense of bird, sound, us are serving the meals together. All these details that our life consists of. Well anyway, at this point the world is sutra. They say imagine you had an immense canvas. With as large as the 3,000-fold universe. Yeah, with 2,000-fold universes within each of those. And imagine you had a canvas that big.

[44:36]

And that you then painted the entirety of each universe on the canvas. The entirety. In their full dimensions. And then you also painted Mount Sumeru and Mount Everest as big as they are. Yeah. And the apple plum world. And then you took this immense canvas and you rolled it up. And you put it in each atom. So this enormous canvas, as big as everything there is, was rolled up and each particle of dust and each atom has one entirely in it.

[45:45]

So the practice, this kind of practice is, is to first imagine this great extent. Imagine painting it. And then imagine rolling it up into a tiny little particle. And then folding it in each particle. Then you imagine that each particularity is like this. And you imagine if only each particle could be opened up, the truth of everything would be apparent. So then you think, If only people knew that each particle of dust contained the entirety of everything.

[47:03]

And each person, including myself, includes everything in this sense. If I could only have the energy to break open each particle and reveal this. So Buddhism makes this so we have this big vision and it's reduced to this tiniest detail. And if you understand this kind of image you can see why Buddhism pays so much attention to each detail. And such a practice of imagination as this is this typical, the Avatamsaka Sutra, is to help you imagine This particularity.

[48:28]

This particularity that is also each of your breaths. And even the tip of your breath on which you rest your attention. Or in the... or yogi bowls, this... If you have the traditional one, this black surface which seems to be endlessly deep. So this kind of vision is meant to allow you to really rest your attention on each note of the bird.

[49:30]

Each breath. The mind as it arises on each perception. So this sutra says, Not this sutra, this koan I gave you of heaven and earth and I share the same root. Myriad things and I are one substance. Mountains and rivers are not seen in a mirror. Berge und Flüsse können nicht in einem Spiegel gesehen werden.

[50:32]

Der kalte Mond ist schon untergegangen. Die Nacht ist schon fast halb vorbei. Mit wem wird er einen Schatten werfen? In dem kalten, klaren Tal. This is a very ambiguous and evocative poem or statement. Ambiguous? Ambiguous. Ambivalent. Ambivalent. Ambiguous means it's... Two meanings? Several meanings. It's not clear what the meaning is. Mehrdeutig. Ja. Nicht zweideutig. Mehrdeutig. Ja. Danke. Yeah. You know, and when this official who had practiced very well and had been with, he was a government official who brought this statement up,

[51:45]

He practiced with Nanchuan for many years. He was one of the famous adept lay practitioners of that period in the Tang Dynasty. And Nanchuan answered his statement equally ambiguously. He pointed in his garden to a flower and said, people these days see this as if it were a dream. Now a statement like that you practice with, like probably it's easy in the first thing in the morning, We get up early enough that probably you might have some interrupted dreams.

[52:56]

And you bring that interruption into your zazen. As I said this morning, waking up, is the world a flower or a dream? We have a mind in the first period that's sort of commingled. sleepy, dreamy, and a new kind of zazen energy. Or maybe it's a butterfly from another world. So he says, seeing the poem, seeing, hearing, awareness, knowledge, are not one and the same.

[54:16]

This really, this is a statement of the uniqueness of everything. Like again, you hear the birds. When the birds are, again, have their own past, present and future. And your experience of the birds arising in this session which I'm sure maybe even years from now will be part of the history of whenever you hear a bird. So again, this hearing of the birds has its own past, present and future in you. And this is quite independent. So, Shwedo says, hearing, seeing, awareness, knowledge, each one is independent.

[55:34]

Hearing, seeing, knowledge, each one is independent. Yeah, awareness, knowledge. Each breath is independent. Each thought that arises is independent. This kind of mind which notices the independence of each thing is part of zazen practice. In the midst of this taste of karma you can have this taste of reality. By having this view of the absolute independence of each thing.

[56:38]

So then he says mountains and rivers are not seen in a mirror. They exist. not in some kind of oneness, but each one quite on its own. And I think this is a reference to old Taoist shamanic types who used to, when they went into the mountains, kept a mirror on their back. Yeah, and mountains were thought to be dangerous places. And they're usually a century or so behind the culture of the plains.

[57:49]

At least in those days before roads. And tigers and things like that. And hungry ghosts. So this mirror, if you saw a demon or somebody appear, You put this mirror out and you looked at it in the mirror. And if it was a beneficial demon, it looked like it did there. But if it was a hungry ghost, it looked like a person there, but in here it looked... And it was somehow, one idea was, Yeah, yeah.

[58:54]

One idea was that you could really see the true form or the true mountain in the mirror. So in one way it's a little kind of friendly slap. from this suedo of the Taoist view. That the mountain is not just as it appears in the mind, your mirror mind. And the mountain that appears in your mind is your mountain. Which was given birth by this mountain, Crestone, whatever it is. But there's another interesting use of this mirror. Which appears in the latter part of the poem.

[60:05]

The Han Dynasty mirrors were silvered and polished on one side. And on the back side were images of the universe. And sometimes they had people playing a flute or a flute. And sometimes they had people who had feathers and long beards. Who were ancients as old as gold and stone. So the meaning of this mirror was that you can find them in museums today, I believe. Which is if you look in the mirror, you see the reflection of yourself. But if you look through the mirror, you see the universe.

[61:10]

And you see that the universe is, you are as ancient as the universe. This is another one of those visions carried in a symbol like the mirror. So Shwedo says this by saying, the moon has already set. If it's already set, how can there be any reflections? So the moon is now on the other side. It's under the pond. And so Shwedo says, in a sense, with whom will With whom will the reflection, will there be some reflection or shadow?

[62:19]

He means, who will share this understanding with me? Who among us will feel this moon from inside? From the other side of the mirror. Who will look at everything that is and know that we're as ancient. That we are also the world root and body. Accomplishing Zen is not so hard. But letting Zen accomplish you is not so easy.

[63:40]

Accomplishing Zen is in the realm of tasks. Accomplishing to... Accomplishing Zen is not so difficult. Because it's in the realm of tasks. Like bhajan, it might take you 20 years. And since you are so alert and adept, maybe it will be quicker. But letting Zen accomplish you I told him I would test his capacities, this sashim.

[64:56]

No, no, you're doing great. Joe and I agree. Because it's not in the realm of tasks. It's beyond our dreams. It's letting the Sound the singing of the birds arise in you. And becoming your text of the world. Well, I've said too much, so I'll stop. Thank you very much. Before our intention, as it was in the beginning, will be the true service of the Buddha Path. SHUJYO ENSEI GANDHO BONO BUDJEN SEI GANDHAN OM KORYO SEI GANGAKU

[66:17]

Mokutsu-do, Mujo, Seikan-jo, Die führenden Wesen sind zahllos, Ich gelobe sie zu hätten, Die Lerngeheben sind unausrischlich, Ich gelobe ihnen ein Ende zu erreichen, die damals sind tränzlos. Ich gebore sie zu erreichen, bedenkt es wurde es unübertrefflich. Ich gebore ihnen zu erreichen. It's a new guest she had a much to run.

[69:03]

I am very proud to have been a part of your life. [...] Couldn't talk. Yeah, tomorrow I will start Dokusan. And since we are a small Sashin, I can see you more than once. Or maybe even more than twice. We'll see if anybody wants to come. You have to come once at least.

[70:18]

And Sunday we have a wedding. Someone's getting married. Lily's getting married. In a Buddhist wedding. What time did we decide? And I presume he invites all of you to the wedding. I'm glad he said yes. And I hope some of you can stay, and I hope you all can come to the wedding, but at least I hope some of you can stay and help us set up and perform the wedding. He hasn't decided which of you five women he'll marry yet. But I think in the next couple of days, maybe, in the next couple of days.

[71:53]

This is actually the sashin with the smallest number of women I've ever done, I think. So I'll try to be more girlish. No, actually his wife isn't in the Sashin and she will come on Sunday, right? So I'm sorry, none of you will get proposed to. At least not in the session probably. Now Zen has developed in successive stages over the centuries.

[73:01]

Usually the first stage is imitating the past. And then shifting the emphasis within the imitation. Because, you know, again, it's like a language which you can't create a whole new language. You have to start from the language you have. And you don't want to change it too fast because there's a magic and a mystery in a language you don't want to lose. Okay. Now, it's customary to become a monk to take, in most of Asia, 252 precepts.

[74:18]

This has been simplified in Japan primarily to the 16 Bodhisattva precepts. But what Dogen emphasized especially is our daily life as a form of the precepts. Now, Bajang, who thought the geese flew away, is attributed with having formed our separate Zen monastic life and community. and community.

[75:28]

There's really very little historical evidence for this. The closest to him, the closest reference to it occurred 150 years after he died. He died in 814. But there was certainly some kind of Zen, separate Zen from other Buddhist schools, life during his time, maybe even before. But the rules we follow, the earliest version of them that we know is from the early 13th and early 14th centuries. But the rules that we follow, they come from the early 13th, 14th centuries.

[76:50]

Yeah. And it's surprisingly similar to what we do now. And they have a lot of Indian influence. There was quite an Indian influence in Song Dynasty China at the time, Indian Buddhist influence. So they were trying to clarify the rules in China by going back to India. But in the emphasis, particularly as it came to Japan about that time, they emphasized these rules as the expression in daily life of the precepts. Now, most of you have the feeling for how to do the Oryoki.

[77:59]

But in general, you don't have a sense of the details. Or the sense of how it works. Yeah. And the pace. So... So I should try to give you some small examples. Now the main thing we do that comes from these rules is the orgy practice. But it also details the life more specifically of the whole Sashin and especially of the life at Crestone.

[79:08]

Now the reasons for these rules are threefold. One is, this practice is a way to free yourself from your society and culture. It doesn't mean you shouldn't re-enter and participate in your culture, but you're born from original mind, not born from your cultural mind. So the rules first of all were to be a self-governing community that didn't let the government in. In America we have this separation of the state and religion. So in America the government can't tax religion and so forth.

[80:12]

You have to be a really obvious criminal before you can get in trouble if you're a priest or a minister. And this idea was present in China that Buddhist communities should govern themselves. There are rules saying if the local president or governor wants to visit, he can, but only as a visitor. So the first was to establish our own governance. And the second was to free you from your contemporary culture. Because the culture is much more pervasive than the government.

[81:57]

So you wanted to create a specific Buddhist culture in which you lived when you practiced. That was in some contrast to your habits. And third is you want the rules are meant to support realisational practice. Okay. Now there's a surprising degree of logic behind how we do the orioke and how we do things. And the logic is so clear to me that if I was told by the Rinzai school or the Soto school in Japan that they had now decided the right way to do the orioke or something else was some way, I'm quite sure I would know whether they were correct or not.

[83:13]

So there's a certain style to Zen. And there's a reason behind that style. For example, when... Someone said, when I give lectures, sometimes I put six fingers on one hand. I thought I was only establishing a third eye. Anyway, I'm sorry. All these things, again, are appearing before us. And the third koan in the Blue Cliff Records begins, one posture. One posture, one word, one verse.

[84:42]

One gesture. Even this is gouging holes in good meat. Gouging to scrape out. It's a funny image for a bunch of vegetarian Buddhists. So some of us might appreciate a handful of, you know, hamburger right now. No, Joe is transformed. No. In practice period in Creston, I think you had visions of, no? But in such an image, you can see that what it means is this world we are is nourishing.

[85:55]

And it is its own power. And as soon as you do something to it, you start destroying it. Even if you only do one posture, one gesture, Do you understand? I'm back now to how I started these lectures. All these things appear before us. What is it? How do we relate to it? Yes. Basically, the yogic position is you view it as all and as each. Now, we make a distinction in English between each and every. Every is one and all.

[86:57]

And each is one of all. For instance, if you say, every baby is beautiful, it means that There's something about babyness that makes babies beautiful, no matter what they look like. And there's, when you say each baby is beautiful, it means you've looked at each one, and yes, this one's beautiful, but this one, I don't know. I knew a couple in Japan. I told this story before, but in San Francisco, a Japanese couple had twins. And for the first month or two, one of them was pretty funny looking and the other one was quite attractive.

[88:13]

And they'd show the same one twice. Till about the third month you never saw the other baby. So this was each baby. So we have The emphasis is on one and each, not on every, each and all. And not on many or generalities. So this is actually kind of yogic practice, very basic, though hardly ever pointed out.

[89:21]

But you can see it in such a thing as when we're chanting, for instance. When we're chanting, we hold the chanting card in front of us. In other words, if you don't know it by heart, Even if you only know most of it by heart, if you don't know it by heart, you hold it this way. Jet, we hold it this way, but that's not my point. You don't do what some people do, and very commonly, you say... Now, if you do do that, you lose all.

[90:27]

Because you're kind of doing this and doing that and you don't know what's going on around you. Everybody else is doing something else and you're kind of trying to do this. So you really do one thing at a time, one gesture. So you either know it by heart or you hold the card. That's all. There's no in-between. And once you know that, you can see who gets it. Some people just know, okay, in Zen, that's Zen style. But it's not just a style, there's a reason behind it. We're not supposed to explain the reasons, so I apologize, but I'm doing it. You're just supposed to get the feel of it, that you do one thing at a time so that you have a feeling for all, the field.

[91:37]

In other words, of the many ways in which we can look at all these things that are going on, yogic practice says, do one thing at a time, not just because that's effective, but it's the way you can sustain a feeling for the whole at the same time. And it's that relationship between the each and the all which begins to affect you in some kind of energetic way. So you can practice with this by in your thinking and acting Try to avoid generalities.

[92:51]

This is back to this point I've been making throughout this session for some reason. Each thing, each thing, each breath. Okay. It doesn't mean sometimes you don't do other things. It's just this is the primary emphasis. In computer language, it's the default position. Okay. Now we've had a little discussion about how you do this, that we do things in threes.

[94:03]

Or three folds rather. For example, this is not a very... This is overly foldable. But now, why do you do it in threes? Because it's a single gesture. If you do it in fours, two halves, you have to kind of think to do it. So it's two gestures. But three is one gesture. And so that's, in yogic culture again, if possible, the body is given precedence over the mind. For example, at Creston, which we maybe, if we do Sashinyu next year, and it's going to be small, I may try to buy some of these gosamats, straw mats, for us to do service on.

[95:19]

But if you have these gosamats, and they're quite big, they're six feet long, If you spread them out in threes, you just go like this and it's spread fully and you put them back with one gesture. If you do it this way, you have to fold it this way, then you have to grab it again, etc. So in the cloth on the left, Is folded in half once, but then three. But it's two different gestures. One is you reach underneath it and go like this, and that physical gesture folds it.

[96:14]

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