generates the thought of enlightenment. It's the basis for the thought of enlightenment. And what's interesting about the thought of enlightenment is that for most of us, we want enlightenment to be our newfound certainty. Certainty. But we should recognize that enlightenment arises out of a deep acceptance of uncertainty. Yeah, so that insight is a big part of it. The observing analysis that leads to insight.

[01:04]

And to hold those insights until they generate a mind And that's what we're trying to do here together. To support each other. And people say to me, I come here and I come inside the door and it becomes easier to practice. And that always amuses us who live here. Because we're muddling about trying to keep up with the work and wondering if we're practicing at all. And yet, because we're committed to practice, somehow we support other people's practice and our own. Okay, so we're trying to hold this mind that sees into the uncertain world of birth and death.

[02:24]

And at the same time, we have to forge, temper a... new continuity. And that's basically in the field of mind itself. And that's described in Buddhism as sameness and other things like that, suchness. But the intermediate steps are discovering continuity in breath, body, and phenomena. And these are primarily realized through the practice of mindfulness.

[03:30]

The four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness with the body and particularly the breath. Mindfulness of feelings. And the pendulum of likes and dislikes. And mindfulness of the mind. And mindfulness of emotions. Now also we need mindfulness of the Dharma. And mindfulness of the Dharma means that you are mindful enough of moment after moment And the reason we organize monastic life in tiny little details, how you put the gamachio back on the tray to make space for others and so forth,

[04:34]

And so the spoons don't bump the stomach of the server or don't bump the other... These details get finer and finer. Sukiroshi, one famous story used to tell us how it's common when you open sliding doors to open them on the right. So he was bringing tea and cookies to his teacher and a teacher's guest. And he opened the door, the right door, and came in and his teacher shouted at him. I thought I did it right. So the next day he came in, he opened the door on the left and the teacher shouted at him.

[05:54]

He was quite bewildered, but then he realized that the guest was in the room on the right side. And even though the doors were closed, his teacher expected him to sense where the guest was and open that door. The purpose of this kind of detail And the kind of detail that's in the Orioki, just how you pick up the Setsu stick. I know once I looked at Tsukiyoshi when I was first learning the Orioki. And I was the original Mr. Natural. I wouldn't, for instance, wear a tie, things like that, for a photograph.

[07:10]

I was very attached to the idea of natural. So that the idea that when you took the, if you were a monk, you had these little paper, lacquer paper tables. That you wipe it, whether there's water on it or not. This is nuts. And then you move the bowl to the center, and then there's the little section you missed, and there's no water on it either, and then you wipe it. I thought these Zen guys, you know, I'll go along part way, but not all the way. But now I think it's totally wonderful. I love wiping the thing with nothing on it.

[08:16]

And when I saw Sukhiroshi put his hand down and put the spoon toward his hand, I suddenly understood something again about the physical passage, not the mental passage in the world. And how our hands are actually, although you don't see it with our mental senses, are fields of power that are shaping our aura. But somehow when he did that, I saw it. So there's these kind of little details And the teacher's job is to keep drawing the practitioner, the disciple, into noticing at the same level the teacher notices.

[09:31]

So if you don't, it's the way to see the instantiation, or maybe I should say actualization, The word instant essentially means that which is so imperceptible it can only be approached. So it's too short to perceive, but it can be approached. That's an instant. Stand is the stand part means to stand and the in means either no or to approach.

[10:34]

Yeah. What stays. Mm-hmm. I'll try to stop soon, don't worry. If you want to change your posture, it's okay. So I said the instantiation, which means to recognize the instant of time and space. The actualization of time and space. Like they pour in and make each particular thing. So you can look at the world as a container and But you can also, if you practice mindfulness in enough detail,

[12:01]

Feel the opportunity of each Dharma. And the I Ching, if you like the I Ching, is all about knowing the opportunity of each moment. You feel this actuality of each moment. And unless you practice mindfulness, Und wenn man nicht Achtsamkeit praktiziert, mit Einzelheit genug von Augenblick zu Augenblick, if you slur over moments, und wenn man so über die Augenblicke hinweg rutscht oder wischt,

[13:04]

then you slip into generalizations. You slur over moments, you immediately move into what Harold Bloom says, facticities. They look like facts. And they act like facts, but they're not really facts. So mindfulness is an essential practice. To move yourself into the Dharma realm. To find a new kind of continuity. In this world of discontinuity. This world of birth and death. And this continuity first in the breath. And to know the feeling of that, even though you're living in the ordinary world that we share with others.

[14:21]

No, I'm only getting warmed up, but it's time for the legs to get cooled off. It's a great pleasure to talk with you. I'm sorry I talk so long. In the same way, in this and in the other way, with the true merit of the Buddha-Way, I would like to say a few words. Oh, oh, [...]

[16:02]

I believe that the path of the Buddha is unsurpassed. I believe that I can reach it. Yerushalayim.

[17:08]

Amen. Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji and the hindrance is completely unbearable, it will also count in hundreds of thousands of millions in the body. Now that I can accept the blessings and other gifts, I promise to hear the truth of the Tathagata. Well, here we are again trying to understand why we're doing this.

[18:41]

And I'm sure most of you have had a few minutes, if not days, Why am I doing this? At least one of the answers is your body wants to. Even if it hurts, your body wants to. And I think for some of you, you might say this is just about the hardest thing you've ever done. So I just got a call from somebody who's been practicing a long time and has done many, many, many sashins and he's in a love crisis and he says it's worse than anything.

[19:48]

He hasn't slept for two weeks and he's just vomiting his food. He's really having a hard time. He's dying for Sashin to start. So, I'm trying to explain why Zen is not a recipe. A recipe literally means in English a received teaching.

[20:50]

Receive means something that you receive. And perhaps Zen differs from all other Buddhist schools to the degree To the degree that... How can I say it? It conceives of practice more like, again, the way a woman makes a baby. In other words you can't make a baby from a recipe. Excuse me when I say it.

[22:02]

No, I say it, but recipe is both, can also be a prescription. It's the same word in English. Well, you can't make it with a prescription either. You can stop it with a prescription. Oh, dear. You can't say, well, let's add a little of this and let's add a little of that and see how the baby turns out. If you tried to think it through, you'd end up with a toenail in the cheek or something. You have to let some immaculate, extraordinary process put this baby all together. So we're literally trying to create a kind of womb in our practice.

[23:03]

That when we get the posture right, The mental and physical postures. A Buddha is born. Yeah, so this is the practice you're doing, so I should try to explain it as best I can. And I should try to explain what I think I'm doing, which might be different than what you think you're doing. But to the degree there is, and there certainly is, difference, that's good.

[24:10]

Now, some of you may have, we may be, for some of you, both intentionally and some of you not yet intentionally, we may be doing the same thing. And in retrospect, I can explain moderately clearly what I think I'm doing. But in fact, most of my decisions and way has been just trying to be sincere. I followed my nose more than my mind. Luckily my nose is bigger than my mind. It's fairly easy to follow. Embarrassing sometimes.

[25:33]

Once I was in Japan and all these Japanese waitresses way up in a country temple were sitting way down there watching me while I was eating with friends. I kept looking at them and finally I said, what is it? They said, does it get cold on the end? They have much smaller noses. They thought I needed a sock or something. So I could say also I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm following some intuition or sincere feeling at least.

[26:37]

And I think you all cannot know exactly what you're doing, that you also are following, can only follow some sincere feeling. You thought you'd take a look inside the Johanneshof door, and then for some reason you've been here for months. Or you tried sitting once and it hurt, but then you continued. These are things we can't fully understand. Now the other day I was, the German Buddhist Union sponsored a dialogue, a kind of conference, but part of it was a dialogue between Sogyal Rinpoche and myself.

[28:00]

In Freiburg. And some of you were there. You had a holiday in Freiburg and came to the dialogue. Not yet. Isn't that right? Yeah, yeah. Mostly they partied, but they came to the dance. Anyway, during it, someone asked me... Sogyal and I were, Rinpoche and I were asked, you both have many people who practice with you, how do you take care of them? Good question. And what I said was that I feel that part of what I've done, particularly when I was younger, As a Buddhist teacher, I tried to spread the seeds of Buddhism.

[29:18]

I tried to find ways to introduce people to Buddhist practice. And I hoped also into our culture. Because if our culture becomes more open to Buddhism, it will make our practice easier and our successors' practice easier. And when our society becomes more open to Buddhism, then our practice becomes easier and it becomes easier to practice for our followers, above all. The fellow across the street, Wolfram?

[30:20]

Wolfram? What's his last name? Graubner. Graubner, yeah. Who rebuilt in 1990 the bridge from Bad Säckingen to Stein. And he has that canoe quite much larger than it looks in a workshop architectural place next door, across the street. He told me he came here in this area because he first came to Johanneshof. And lived here for some years. Can you say years? A couple of years or something? Two or three. Yeah. And... One thing he told me I found very interesting is that this was, as I knew, we all know, was an anthroposophical Steiner Kinderheim.

[31:47]

Supposedly, he says, a lot of women came here and were in the kindergarten. Including, believe it or not, Gerald's mother. When she was a child, yeah. But she came and looked around and says, I've been here before. It looks the same. We're trying to change it a little. But he says that the women who came here, quite a few of them married into the farmer's families around here. I thought that was quite interesting. And maybe it's part of the reason the neighborhood is so empathetic to us strange people here. The fertile ground was prepared for us.

[33:08]

Were there women who used the dojo here last night? It gives me a new perspective on these women who come here to do exercises or something in the dojo once a week. It's great. I used to just think we were being courteous by letting them continue to use the room, but now I see that there are Dharma ancestors. I used to think what? I used to feel that we were just being considerate to let them still use them. Yeah. So last night when I went by and I heard them in there, I bowed. They didn't know I was bowing, but...

[34:09]

So I said I was I saw what I've been doing one aspect of what I've been doing is trying to plant some seeds of Buddhism And the second thing I've been doing, I feel I've been trying to do, is to prepare the ground for the seeds. And that I would say, maybe I would just say I'm a Dharma teacher. I'm trying to give people and find in myself a feeling of the Dharma, to prepare the soil, cultivate the soil, so that the seeds grow.

[35:36]

And I'm also, a third thing, I'm trying to transmit the teaching. In this sense I would say I'm concerned with the fruit of practice. I want to share the fruit of practice with you. develop it, mature it, and understand how to transmit it. So mostly nowadays I emphasize the latter two. I'm not so much trying to introduce Buddhism anymore. And most of all, in recent times, I have been dealing with the last two aspects and not so much to present Buddhism to people.

[36:59]

So mostly I'm trying to prepare the ground of practice and mature the fruits of practice. So I should say what I, as a transmission teacher, what I'm trying to do. Now, this is not necessarily the concern of each of you, of course. But it's part of the overall thing we're doing. And each one of us makes all three of these aspects of practice possible.

[38:15]

In other words, none of it happens unless we develop a Sangha body. Okay, so to keep it simple, what does it mean to create the conditions for transmission practice? Or what does transmission practice consist of? One is the development of a shared mind-body. A second is an identical understanding of the major teachings. And an identical understanding of the lineage teachings.

[39:21]

My teacher's teachings and my teacher's teachings and so forth. Yeah, and... If we can understand it together the same way, then the disciple can surpass the teacher. Because the disciple has his or her own creativity. That is freed through the shared understanding and permission gained through knowing the teaching the same way.

[40:26]

Permission gained through. Permission gained through. And Buddhism is always at least 60% application. It's historical context. So then the disciple is free to develop the teaching according to circumstances. So that's the second. And the third is learning the ceremonies. And that should be, I think, separated. I think we should do it slightly differently, but basically, as part of transmission, it's learning the tantric side of the ceremonies.

[41:30]

And therefore, Fourth is, believe it or not, the architecture, space and procedures of a monastery. My job traditionally is to teach you the architecture of a monastery. How the sender should be, how it should relate to the kitchen and all that stuff. And if there's a Buddha hall and so on. And of course in the West this means mostly how to adapt a building to this. And in fact, you chant the lineage traditionally of the temple or monastery as well as your teaching lineage.

[42:46]

After a hundred years, for instance, there would have been five or ten abbots of this place, and we would chant their names as well as your own teaching lineage. And this is part of this understanding that Zen and nothing exists in some abstraction. It's always physically located. So the physical location of practice is part of the teaching.

[43:48]

And part of how the teaching is continued. How do we create a space for the realization of this sangha body? And fifth is all those procedures and rituals and so forth that are part of the daily life of the monastery. And sixth are the teachings that The teachings about transmission itself, how you transmit. And I think some of you will do this. At least I can't die until you do. I shouldn't have said that. Maybe you'll try to keep me alive. No, you have no disciples, and I keep staying alive.

[44:59]

Have mercy on me. I need to die sometime. I used to, up until the 80s sometimes, I used to try to prepare all the time for the stupidity of an accidental death. Now as I hear you pointing out, I'm getting old. I have to prepare for the inevitability of a natural death. Not that I'm predicting my death, I just have to start getting ready. Because I dearly hope my Buddhist life is much longer than my physical life. So that's one of the reasons I wanted us to get Johannes off. Because if we're going to establish this lineage in Europe, we have to have a physical location in which the teachings that are concerned with how to make a monastery work

[46:28]

are also possible. And we need the creativity of how to make a monastery work in what is primarily lay practice. So, you know, part of the reason was because of our female Dharma ancestors here, which I didn't know about. And second reason was perhaps because it had been a Zen temple. And I thought that shouldn't be ignored if... Opportunity has been given to us to take care of a place that's already started as a Zen temple, so we should continue.

[47:42]

It wasn't so much, is this the absolute ideal place? No. This is what's presented to us in this actualization of time and space. And the third reason is that staircase. Because the one in the next building. Because it's just like a staircase at a heiji. And the halls are quite like halls in a heiji. So I liked that resonance. And fourth, we needed a place to practice together.

[48:45]

And mostly a place to establish the lineage and transmission of the lineage. In fact, my main job is to have at least one successor. Maybe I'll have many successors of various kinds. Many of you already could teach Buddhism to people. To help people practice. But that's not the same as continuing a lineage. If we look at the history of the Tungshan school and Soto school in Japan, For example, the first Zen school in Japan was called Daruma Shu.

[49:57]

The Bodhidharma Daruma Shu. Shu is school. And in the 12th century, a fellow named Nonin, N-O-N-I-N, established the Daruma Shul. And as I said, I don't know when, a while ago, I talked about this idea of natural wisdom. And these earlier schools, well, this earlier school, Daruma School, which I've always felt some spiritual connection with, were more uneducated people. And in those days, only the upper classes had education.

[51:24]

And could afford to go to China and things like that. So Nonin, for instance, did not ever go to China. But Eisai, who was Dogen's teacher, in a sense Dogen's first teacher in Mount Hiei, had two extended trips to China. And there was also a tradition of what I call Zenji. And Zenji is a posthumous title for an eminent teacher.

[52:25]

Like we say Dogen Zenji. We could say Suzuki Zenji. But Zenji also meant practitioners of natural wisdom. Maybe we could say karate practice is a kind of natural wisdom. In our culture, people who practice a physical art or meditate on their own without much connection with sutras and so forth. There's an understanding that develops through that, simply through the practice. And there's a kind of Buddhism implied in it, but it's not an intellectual understanding of Buddhism.

[53:30]

So the Dharomasu and a natural wisdom tradition was a big part of early Soto school. Dogen's main two disciples Ejo and Gikai were both disciples of the Daruma school. And Daruma school never established itself. It didn't have the ingredients to establish a lineage. But Dogen did. Dogen established the first, I think, Zen monastery in Japan. Two specifically Zen monasteries. And it's Dogen's ability to know how to establish the physical setting of practice that was the basis for establishing the lineage.

[54:40]

He also decided to move, although he was supported by the military aristocracy, And he and Gikai both belonged to this class. They wanted to be free of religious sectarianism in Kyoto and the government. And they moved into a very remote mountain place, which became a hajj. So they could have religious freedom, practice freedom, and how they developed the teachings. Now, I'm not in any way consciously intentionally imitating Dogen.

[56:02]

Yeah, I mean, this is a remote place, but it just happened to be a possibility. And really, in the end, I just wanted us to establish this place because I like practicing with you so much. But my liking practice with you so much is also the seed of continuing our lineage.

[57:09]

So what we're trying to do is create a place for the practice of seated Buddha. Seated Buddha. Sitzend Buddha, okay, fine. Sit Zen, I like it. So while this is an extremely arcane and elusive subject, I'll try to be short. Dogen distinguishes between sitting Zen and seated Buddha.

[58:25]

He would say sitting Zen is just you sitting. And if it's just you sitting, why should we be concerned with remote familial lineage connections? Remote and yet familiar settings? Remote, familial, family-like, lineage connections. Okay, if I don't give you a recipe of how to sit, If I expect sitting to be an own organizing or self-organizing process, then I have to teach you primarily by attitudes.

[59:51]

And attitude is a surface of a mind and a gate to a mind. So when I say something like already connected, this is an attitude. It can be an expression of a mind of feeling connected. Or it can be a gate. to an opening to becoming, to realizing this mind. Now there was a long ancient Buddhist debate on what mental factor continued when there was mental cessation?

[61:05]

It's not an obscure question, but it's central to Dogen's teaching. In other words, if there's mental cessation, there's no thinking, no mental activity, What mental factors are present? Because you're still alive. And something's happening. So this is the root of Dogen's famous statement. That the practice of Zen is not thinking. But what is not thinking? The practice of Zen is thinking, not thinking.

[62:06]

Or non-thinking. Yeah. This non-thinking is difficult to... Distinguish between not thinking and non-thinking. No, it's difficult to translate. Not thinking and non-thinking because we don't use this non. Yeah. Say non-thinking. Non-thinking. Okay. Remember when we first started I said, when you're sitting here, This is both Buddhist posture and your posture. And when we sit, now Dogen would say that if you think that He says, if your breast is free of concerns, when you're at ease,

[63:18]

Then meditation is just a practice of calmness and peace. He says these people who think that are illiterate. And he's equally critical of people who say everything is Zen. Walking is Zen, running is Zen, etc. For Dogen, only this seated posture is Zen. Why all the Buddhas almost entirely are shown in realization in this seated posture. And it's not just you sitting, but seated Buddha. So it's not like there's some point of realization And then sitting is just some kind of calm thing to do.

[64:56]

Sitting remains a... It's so hard to talk about. Sitting remains a kind of cognition There's no observer of the knowing, but sitting itself is a form of knowing. So when you're sitting seated Buddha, even beyond many enlightenments, this seated Buddha practice is a kind of knowing and creates a presence that appears in all your activity and thinking. So although you don't know what you're doing exactly, the seated Buddha posture is a forge and wound in which a kind of cognition or knowing beyond ordinary knowing

[66:19]

happens which turns you into a Buddha and your culture into a Buddha, Buddha field. So basically what this means for us practically is that if you have a moderately good understanding of Buddhism. You understand the basic things pretty well. As all of you do. And you have a... unequivocal intention to continue. A vacillating intention doesn't work.

[67:33]

So if you have an pretty good understanding of Buddhism, an unequivocal intention to continue, and in fact you do continue, you will in your own way uniquely realize Buddhahood. And you don't have to do anything. You just have to trust this seated Buddha posture. That you in your own unique way will realize yourself. will find your true home.

[68:39]

And this mind of our true home will be communicated to others without your making any special effort. This is Dogen's understanding and vision, I would say. And there's other ways to understand Buddhism. But this is a very powerful way to understand Buddhism. Which depends not on recipes, but a trust in our somatic intelligence, the profound activity of everything as it is when you allow it to function within you without obstruction.

[69:48]

Yeah. Thank you very much. In our mind, there is equal help from everywhere, through all the services of the path of the Buddha. Shuddho bhuvan se gandho hono bhuvan se gandham Satsang with Mooji Die fühlenden Wesen sind zahllos.

[70:57]

Ich gelobe, sie zu retten. Die Hygiene sind unauslöschlich. Ich gelobe, ihnen ein Ende zu bereiten. Die Damals sind grenzenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Der Weg des Bruders ist unübertrefflich. Ich gelobe, ihn zu erbrechen. Satsang with Mooji

[72:14]

Shifuji suru koto etari, nega wa kuwa norae lo, shenen jetsu ni o keshita te mazuran. An unsurpassed, subliminal and perfect Dharma can also be found in hundreds of thousands of millions of three-price receipts. Since I can see, hear, hear and understand, I can perceive the truth of the Tatalika. You know, this Buddha did a funny thing in my mind that I'm a little embarrassed about.

[73:44]

It grew in my mind. Which is very strange because I'd actually picked it up, I knew it, I looked at it quite, you know, I carried it around. But, you know, I asked them to send me the measurements, and they sent them in centimeters, but I thought it was in inches. So I said, oh, okay. And so suddenly it was almost as tall as me. I was quite convinced in my mind that... But it's partly my bad habit of not thinking.

[74:45]

Like someone could tell me, you know Zurich has moved to Austria. And I would say, oh it has? I thought it had to stay in Switzerland. Really, I mean, I sort of, oh, okay, yeah. What's it doing in Austria? So I didn't think. I said, oh, these are the measurements, okay. But then when we got it, we... And when we kept it and opened the box, we found that we had almost one meter less Buddha than we thought. But sometimes you get very big in my mind, too.

[75:48]

Sometimes very small, no. But you know, like the Buddha in Crestone, I don't think it would happen to me. I mean, I know how big it is, and I wouldn't get bigger or smaller in my mind. With the Buddha in Crestone, I don't think it would happen to me, because I know exactly how big he is. He wouldn't move in my mind anymore. I know this sounds like a good excuse for my stupidity, but I think actually this is a kind of mental, physical image. That is meant to have this kind of fluid identity within you. Even so, I was a little embarrassed. Yes, the girl told me it's the sixth day.

[76:48]

Yeah, I'm sorry. It's gone by so fast. And this is a very intimate time, the sixth day. When our practice mind, our Buddha mind is very fluid. So I don't know what to say exactly. But a popular subject in Sesshin always is pain. And a few people in Dokusan, not everyone, but a few people in Dokusan mentioned it. So maybe I'll say something about it. And they say, I mean, traditionally they say, pain, suffering in Buddhism comes from ignorance.

[78:28]

This means you should have known better than to come to the Sashin. What does it mean that you should have known better than to come to the Sashin? You guys are not too smart and you pay money. But the ignorance in this traditional Buddhist sense is the source of existential pain, existential suffering. And Buddhism does not... doesn't make any pretense to end physical pain.

[79:28]

And the seven, I mentioned the other day, it's the seven hardships or the seven kinds of pain. And the The list is kind of interesting, so I'll tell you. It's the traditional birth, old age, sickness and death. Tsukiyoshi, when he said this, I remember, said, well, I don't remember being born, but I guess it must have been difficult. And the fifth is too much energy.

[80:37]

I know when I first started practicing, I consciously, intentionally got a lot less sleep than I needed. If I could keep myself tired enough, I didn't worry. I didn't have the energy to get worried or anxious. I just tried to get through the day. So anyway, it's rather interesting. Too much energy is one of the hardships. Or your energy out of balance, anyway. Mm-hmm. And another is being separated from someone you love.

[81:53]

And then, Dogen or Sukershi says, and also to be, then live with someone you don't love. Too bad we laugh. It sounds common. And the seventh is expectation. Most of the things we expect or hope for don't happen. But let's speak about the pain in Sesshin. Now it's interesting that after 72 to 96 hours, After three or four days, usually Sashin becomes easier.

[83:12]

And you know the first day of Sashin has to be the seventh day of Sashin. In order that the seventh day be the seventh day. In other words, I think that's obvious, but for the seventh day to be as it is, often like we feel we could just continue. The first day has to have the same schedule as the seventh day. So it's interesting, what is it, you know, if the second day is harder than the first day? Your knees hurt more, your back hurts more, and so forth.

[84:15]

And the third day is often worse. Why isn't the fourth or fifth day worse? You'd think that the legs just would get more sore. So it's not a quantitative difference, some kind of qualitative difference occurs. You know, I would say that what happens is we break through our habit body. It takes three or four days to shake off one's habitual way of doing things, expecting things. I think if you studied it, you'd see, I mean, I think if I looked back on earlier this year when a close friend of mine, Dick Graff, was killed in the small airplane he was flying.

[85:38]

He'd been in college with me and was quite a close friend and it was He was very healthy together and it was quite startling that he died. I think it took, if I remember, three or four days for me to really accept, yes, he's died. There's some kind of habit energy that can't be interrupted in only two or three days. That's one reason I don't think you can have a three-day sashin. It takes seven days to break and then recover from this habit body. There's a Chinese saying, the ordinary person is one who values what is far, distant.

[86:59]

and despises or ignores what is near. And Dogen uses this to say we should study the thinking of still sitting. In other words, we should study just what's happening to us. Like the difference between the fourth or fifth day and the first and second day. Now, what is the source of suffering in Sashin?

[88:20]

One thing is, of course, fundamental restlessness. We have a fundamental physical and mental restlessness. We also have a mind that needs to be distracted. No, there's certainly a certain amount of discomfort just from sitting, but a lot of it is restlessness and the need to be distracted. And we discover a mind that doesn't need so much distraction later on in this asheen. A mind that begins to be its own satisfaction. And also, I don't know if this makes sense, but what I would call a homogenized body. Again, this may sound a little obscure to you.

[89:39]

But again, we have to study what's near. And some of you say to me, fairly often people say to me, well, this sounds great, but who can ever do it? Yeah, I understand the feeling. But usually it means you don't recognize how much you've already accomplished. But also, you know, I would say realized Zen practice takes less than half the energy you put into your life so far. You took all the energy you put into university, To learning from your family and your culture.

[90:55]

To learning from your profession. And you put only half of that That's still quite a bit. Half of that into your practice, we'd have some good results. Somehow you think Zen practice should be easier than your profession? Well, maybe your profession is more important, but this is important too. So what I mean by your homogenized body is first we have a lot of mental, we have a lot of karma that's both mental and physical. And we have this, as I said, a mental image, and we have a physical body and a mental image of our body.

[92:05]

And all this is tangled up and holds our body in place. And Sashin directly confronts this. Some genius of the Chinese mentality to create a physical practice that transforms us Psychologically, physically, karmically. That certainly opens us to the opportunity of transformation. So what again, the source of the pain then is also just still sitting.

[93:41]

And consciousness. Consciousness itself is part of the problem. If you go to sleep, you can stay in one place for quite a long time. But if you wake up, you can't stay in place. So consciousness is the problem. You know, maybe as Keizan said, how come it's a clear day? There's no rain in the sky. Why can't you see the sun and the moon? Without the darkness, as I said, we can't see the stars. So in Zazen you need to enter a kind of darkness that isn't exactly consciousness. Maybe a mind that's awake but includes something like sleeping, dreaming mind.

[94:53]

If you can find this mind, a lot of the pain disappears. You can just rest your awakeness in whatever you're doing. I don't say it's easy. I mean, you know, in the beginning of Sashin, I have quite... Oh, jeez.

[95:27]

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