Paul Rutenroschi thought I was signaling something by my raksu and beads, so I changed the signals. And Paul actually gave me this. Hi, Paul. I don't like to plan. I like to see what happens. See now what these signals produce. Okay. Oh, I have a stone, too. Okay, so let's start with, actually in this case, with posture and position.

[01:05]

Now this is a distinction I'm making. But if you, I think it's in the words, but it's a distinction I'm emphasizing. The position of the hands of the mudra is, you know, in Sotoshu, the right hand is on top of the left hand. No, the left hand is on top of the right hand. In Sotoshu, the left hand is on top of the right hand. And your fingers are about maybe to the center of the palm of the other hand. And you make an oval which includes all mudras. But that's just a position.

[02:22]

I'm describing the position of the hands. The posture of the hands you can't really see. And it's the posture of the hands which makes a mudra. I mean, the position of the hands, again, it's just the hands together in a certain way. But you feel when the position of the hands becomes a posture, It affects the whole of your body, the whole of your zazen posture.

[03:23]

And if you're sleepy, it can help keep you awake, in fact. If you can maintain your the posture of your hands. It affects your mind and alertness. And your thumbs just lightly touch. Lightly enough to support a piece of paper. Like a postage stamp or something. Like a postage stamp or some little piece of paper.

[04:25]

But his English was not so good when I first practiced with him. And I thought he said, your thumb should be separated by the thickness of a piece of paper. So I spent about a year and a half perfecting this, where I could just feel a little lightning arc going between this in the space. Quite a good practice, actually. Yeah, but if you're... You can't see the posture, but you can feel the posture of the hands.

[05:28]

I can feel it myself. And it's also the way you practiced heat yoga. Which Nicole Baden recently asked me, please teach me how to practice heat yoga. Because she has this blood disease and her hands and feet are always cold and swollen. And I told her that when Sukhiroshi taught me heat yoga, he also told me it's helpful if it's really cold. But I spent quite a bit of time trying to develop heat yoga.

[06:36]

My wife at the time, through a crisis, developed heat yoga much faster than I did. She was amazing. It was great. If somebody would say, I'm cold, she could just say, okay. She'd take her hand and just transfer tons of heat to the person. Last night I called up my present wife. I only had two. I don't know if I've had them or they've had me, but in any case, I called up Marie-Louise last night.

[07:45]

Just to tell her, share with her what was happening with my... exploring the possibilities of Hotzenholz. And since she prefers that I would just live in Crestown and not come to Europe anymore, she thinks, hey, this sounds good. Okay, so if I can put this bell, let's say it's this vase, I can put this vase on this table. And this vase, I don't think, has much of a posture, but it does have a position.

[09:02]

But a vase which has a posture feels like it's bringing up from the ground and then taking care of the flowers and then showing them to you. In any case, the posture, even the space has a posture too. But the posture of the base can only be felt. It's not its position. So what we're talking about here is the, as I said, the feel of the field of mind. And in the word for it, or one of the words for it in Japanese Zen is mu-shin. And this is mu and shin is mind.

[10:29]

So mu-shin means emptiness mind or non-mind. And sometimes it's called mu-shin no-shin. No is possessive, meaning the mind of non-mind. And sometimes it's called muga no-shin, which means no-self, non-mind. They're all Japanese words, Zen terms, trying to get at something that is hard to name in any language. It's a mind of willingness. In Dzogchen, which is so similar to Zen, it's called open awareness.

[11:46]

Okay. So sometimes it's called a floating mind. An unseized mind. Okay, so what we're talking about here, again, is when we describe the world as it is, as a world of relationships, And not just, it happens to be a world of relationships.

[12:47]

But how do you participate in, actualize yourself a world of relationships? One of the interesting clues, which took me a long time to really get, You know, when I was younger, it was commonplace that mind and body were separate. I think... What was that fat think tank guy who a market in Japan is named after him? Anyway, he... What?

[13:52]

I'm trying to think, is it Pete? No, no. Anyway, he was a big fat guy. He said, all I need is my mind in a petrified dish. I don't need this body. There was a very famous... Herman Kahn. Herman Kahn, a very famous... He and the guy invented the hydrogen bomb. It caused a lot of trouble. I can remember when they were developing nuclear weapons and I said, it's nuts. The whole world is going to have them. They think they can keep them so some people won't have them. Like you can keep handguns?

[15:06]

No. Everyone's going to have them. I gave my high school graduation speech. Everyone's going to have nuclear weapons and there's nothing we can do about it. Excuse me. But Herman Kahn is one of the villains. So, but it was clear to me for various reasons that mind and body are inseparable. And I was, you know, somehow indirectly influenced or soon to be directly influenced by the movement in Germany that started with Kugelhaus and with Charlotte Silver and Elsa Gindler and others in developing a body awareness culture.

[16:13]

All right, sorry. See, I'm being condensed. In the early part of the 19th century in Germany, particularly in Berlin, in Weimar, there was a whole movement of body awareness and psychotherapy related to body awareness, etc. An Esalen Institute, for instance, which has affected Western psychology a lot and Gestalt therapy, comes right out of that movement in Germany. Anyway, So for some reason it was clear to me that body and mind were inseparable.

[17:22]

But we can experience them separately. So much of the early, in the 70s, my way I spoke about this, 70s, 80s, 90s even. Zen practice is to weave the experienceable separateness together. And there's different teachings, different ways to weave the experienceable separateness together. But now, you know, really through exploring the mental posture of you.

[18:33]

Don't speed up when you do the mokugyo. And teaching, trying to teach people how to be doans. and studying details of the tea ceremony, it suddenly became clear to me that really the conception is allowing the mind not so much weaving them together, but allowing a kind of paratactic side-by-sideness, so that the... Mushin also means just to allow the mind to be whatever it is.

[19:56]

In the midst of the myriad things, the ten thousand things. And to allow the body its inter-independence. and allow phenomena its inter-independence. Because there's no way you can separate, as you can't separate mind and body, you can't separate mind, body and phenomena. Maya, I'm playing with these beads of Paul's that he had made from a Hawaiian nut. And I'm sitting on a beautiful platform and blah, blah, blah.

[21:01]

And so the phenomena, there's no way to separate myself from phenomena unless I learn how with the Maharishi to float. So this is expressed in how we do the dawn. The whole effort is how to let the mokugyo hit itself. And Asian instruments tend to be made that you help the instrument play itself. And as there's a vagueness here, is it four spaces or five or six or an infinite number of spaces?

[22:21]

There's always an abstraction. I mean, a vagueness sometimes the instrument does something you don't want it to do and that's the way it should be because you have this concept of inter-independence yeah yeah So you want to hit the bell. You don't want to hit the bell with your mind. You always want it to kind of bounce, to be independent of your hand.

[23:26]

So this is, I think, a significantly different paradigm, concept, worldview. And it's part of the no method of zazen. You establish a body posture which in effect leaves the mind alone. You're not trying to control the mind. In Zen, especially, you're not trying to have phases. You're not trying to do things with your mind.

[24:28]

There's a kind of trust. You're not trying to control. You're trusting the situation. You're trusting the mind. You're trusting the body. And you're trusting phenomena. And you sort of nudge it, but then you let things happen. No, it may not be the best way to do things. It's just our Zen way. Yeah, okay. So it takes some time to get... You can hear this, if you can understand it conceptually. But it takes some time to get used to allowing the mind, allowing the body and allowing phenomena.

[25:38]

The koan, which has the phrase in it, what do we call the world? Dijungs, I think it's number 11, I think maybe. Anyway, it has the phrase in the beginning, orators, no, scholars plow with the pen. There is the introduction, the... And the image of plowing and the ox there with Mayumi's flute playing, I don't know, Empress Bodhisattva. Also das Bild des Flügens und dann das Bild dort mit dem Ochsen und der flötenspielenden Königin.

[27:16]

The oxen is a, usually the image is that it plows, it does something. Bei dem Ochsen gibt es meistens die Verbindung dazu, dass der Ochse pflügt. So we have the ten oxherding pictures. But with the mutual realization of ox and herder, the oxen is just quite free and doesn't have to even have a fence or a tether. Dann ist der Ochse ziemlich frei und braucht keinen Zaun und keinen Halfter. Okay, so, orators, I mean, oxen plow, yeah, scholars plow with the pen. Gelehrte flügen mit der Schreibfeder. Orators plow, oh goodness, I shouldn't say this, plow with the tongue.

[28:21]

Redner flügen mit der Zunge. Ich sollte das vielleicht nicht sagen. But we patched robed mendicants. It means monks. Aber wir flicken roben Mönche. We lazily watch the white ox. Wir beobachten faul den weißen Ochsen. On the open ground. Auf dem offenen Feld. And we don't even worry about the rootless, auspicious grass. Now people, as Dogen says, and me too, who don't know anything about koans think this is a riddle or a puzzle. It's not a puzzle. It's a very clear statement. If you know what's being stated. It's good to know what's being stated first and then read it. Okay.

[29:23]

The rootless, auspicious grass. Grass is the implied cosmogonic question. Why does anything exist at all? So if it's rootless grass, this just appears. But auspiciously it appears. But we mendicants, we're not worried about that. We just lazily watch the white ox on the open ground. And this is called, in the koan, communion with the source.

[30:29]

Koan is like this Muxin mind, is that The basic posture of mind is communing with the source. That's where we live, right? Quell and wig. And communing with the source is just to let things happen. It's not like you're just kind of like, I don't know, taking drugs or something.

[31:34]

Yeah. But it's like my example of awareness when you... tune out, K-O-N-S. You tune in the station of 10,000 things. So you're just receiving. So many more things happen when you just have this openness that isn't framed by consciousness. Now, I'm not saying you want to live this way or you can live this way or anything.

[32:36]

But I'm presenting what's at the center of Zen practice. And saying as lay persons, as adept lay practitioners, we can try it out. We can get homeopathic feel for it. Small doses. Yeah. And if we get a feel for it, it begins to permeate and make everything else an alternative of choice.

[33:36]

And if we get a feel for it, it begins to permeate and make everything else an alternative of choice. In other words, we don't only have the mind we're acculturated to, but we begin to feel we have a choice of what mind we inhabit. Yesterday I spoke about the mental posture of the intention to bring attention to the breath. Well, it takes a while to, as I said, to get attention away from its narrative identity. The continuity of identity.

[34:45]

And get it to the continuity of location. If you can bring it to the continuity of location, really, That simple act eliminates most mental suffering. The Shingon Kukai in the Shingon Tantric School in Japan has a word, kekai, K-E-K-K-A-I, means the offering of incense or the standing in front of the altar.

[35:46]

Is it an originary moment? Can you translate the difference between originary and original? Anyway, original implies there's a beginning. Originary just means you make a beginning. So the Buddhist concept of original mind is a delusion. There's no original mind. There's no origin. We can say there's an originary mind. And that originary mind can be treated as an original mind, but let's not go there.

[37:06]

Okay. But this concept of kekkai as a beginning, I find quite interesting. Because it comes out of a worldview where you're always, every dharma, every appearance, is only an appearance of appearance within your sensorium given duration by saccadic scanning and is always a multiple or a middle So if you're always in the middle of things, how can you keep from being in a muddle? Well, you create beginnings.

[38:25]

And you have a choice of what beginnings you create. And it makes a difference. As we say in English, I got out of the wrong side of the bed. What do you say in German? To get up with the wrong foot first. Which one is the wrong foot? Be careful. Depends on you. I always like it in Germany that you all stand up when you get in the morning. I would like to have cameras in the building. The alarms go off, the wake-up bell, and everyone's standing in their bed. So that's the basic concept, you get up with the wrong foot. You immediately go to the altar to offer incense and stand on the other foot. Anyway, this idea that you have to create a beginning somehow, so each day you create a beginning and you have a choice and it makes a difference.

[40:09]

When the tenzo leaves, I know I've been talking too long. But I have so much more to say. No, I don't know. So when attention is no longer defined by the need for personal continuity in the mind, in thinking.

[41:13]

You can get attention to go to the body. Or you can get attention to go to the breath. And the breath is sort of ready to receive attention. But the body is not so ready to receive attention. So you have to kind of soften the body up so it receives attention. So a lot of Zen practice is how to develop an attentional body. One of the simple rules When you're standing, your ankles are always this far apart.

[42:32]

It's like your fingers are always this far from your nose. It's rather far away with me. Well, not with you. You got your nose punched in. He was a boxer, right? And if you take some little thing like that, or when you step through the door, you always step through on the hinge side. And as I often said, usually you're not taught these things. You're supposed to notice them that others do them who are more experienced than you. But if you do develop the ability to, most of the time, have your ankles a fist apart, it's real simple, you know.

[43:55]

You can do it. You're developing the ability of the body to be filled with attention. And it's like feeling this calm chakra. You're beginning to develop an attentional body and where awareness and attention are merged. In one field of awareness absorbing the 10,000 things, and articulated and expressed by the mental postures you choose to put in the golden wind.

[45:35]

If your mental posture is, I'm such a shitty person and I'm not really very good and so forth, that's what you're going to attract. But if you find you have a compulsive, irresistible mental posture that you're a lousy guy, Then you have to add but I'm really okay. And if you add but I'm really okay Actually, it's quite powerful. This is not just psychology.

[46:37]

It's the concept of the world as myriad relationships that are always flowing through us as phenomena. I'm Tenzo Sama. I'm trying to wind up so we can eat on time. There is no need. Just some noodles cooking. My noodle is cooking. Now, Is your head called a noodle in German, too? Oh, in English, this is a word for head, your noodle. Your noodle is what?

[47:38]

Your noodle is hungry? A different place. A different place. Just German, huh? Is it gender related? Oh, yes. Very much so. Okay. I'm glad I'm learning German. Okay. Okay. So I brought this stone, too. And someone asked me a very practical question yesterday about seeing objects as activity. The kind of question, you know, practical question, it's actually quite... We have to ask, because these things don't make sense, and we have to try to make sense of them.

[48:48]

How do we get used to perceiving things as activities? And why bother? Well, first of all, we bother because they are activities. But we also bother because I think you'll find it makes a difference. But you kind of have to practice with it. Because as I said yesterday, a cup or a glass is an activity and its usefulness is its emptiness or its fullness.

[50:00]

But when we design a kitchen and have to create shelves and all, we're treating it as an entity. The teaching of doing things with two hands is about respecting it as an activity. And feeling it as an activity as you bring it into your body. And relating it to bodily activity. I mean, it's not an accident that Japanese people, Chinese people hold their cups at this chakra. And don't put handles on their cups, usually. Because no handle, it requires you to not do it with your mind, but to do it with your body, and usually two hands.

[51:04]

And you'll then know that the liquid's warm or cool or whatever. So doing things with two hands is to help train yourself and in effect to know everything as an activity. because it's not just that this is an activity and somebody made it and all of that stuff but my looking at it as an activity My perceiving it's an activity. So it makes, when you perceive things as an activity, it makes you aware that your perception itself is an activity.

[52:29]

And if you become on every object which you turn into a subject, If objects become subjects, you are exploring yourself as an activity. and investigating yourself as an activity, develops your own perceptual density. Okay.

[53:38]

And I've been hunting for a word and I use attentional density. And I don't think density is maybe the ideal word. But if you see the world as relationships, myriad relationships and not as entities, It requires a different kind of attention. There's an interesting guy who practices with us in Boulder. And he's known as the zip code juggler. And he's a really nice guy, and he sits every day with them in Boulder.

[54:49]

And he comes to seminars at Creston sometimes. But his routine is, he's the most popular street performer in Boulder. And he juggles. And he's quite good at juggling. But he gets everyone's mind together through the juggling here. Everyone's watching. I've discussed his technique with him. And once he feels everyone's together and he's used the juggling to do it, he says to you, he sees you with a shiny head and he says, what's your zip code? And you say 6704 or something.

[55:50]

And he says, that's outside Detroit. I think it's a little town of such and such. And they're like, how the hell did you know that? And he really often will say, you know, there's a very good Italian restaurant right down the street. So I tried to fool him, right? When he first did it, because I said, okay, I'll play the game. So I gave him my European zip code. And he looked at me and says, it's outside of Freiburg. Maybe if Sun Wu knows him, I'll ask him. Ask him, yeah.

[57:06]

He's uncanny. He studies zip codes, but he gets a feel for people and he usually gets them right. All of the United States and much of the world. This is a different kind of attention. So you just have to kind of train yourself to, like if this stone, you can see geologically, it's an activity, it's been an activity. It's got a nice circle. Anyway, it's an activity. And not only is it a slow activity, I mean, in our scale of time, it's slow, and geological time, it's probably pretty quick. And sitting on my shelf, it's changed a little in the last few years, but not too much.

[58:29]

So, well, we can view it as an entity, but it's more interesting, I think, and more accurate to view it as an activity. But you have to train yourself to do it. You have to remind yourself to do it. Dogen has the phrase Ippogujin, I think it is. which means the total exertion of a single thing. So this stone isn't fooling around. This stone is saying, I'm a stone. So it's totally exerting itself as a stone.

[59:49]

And Dogen's asking you as a Zen practitioner to equally exert yourself to be present. Okay. Okay. And one gets used to it after a while. Things are interdependent and all that. Those are all ways of saying it's an activity. And the reminding of yourself and the practicing of it changes the way your attention penetrates the world. Now let me give you my tree riff. Tree? Tree riff. Which I've done before. But you can't leave, you have to stay. It only takes a few minutes.

[61:06]

Okay. I think it's quite useful to view a tree as an activity. And most trees, if you stand in front of them and give them a little time and this perceptual activity this ma, this intervals, this experience of in-betweenness, intervals. Dharma practice is like feeling the intervals. And feeling the intervals in my speaking. And if you feel the intervals in my speaking, you will feel the intervals in my breathing.

[62:11]

And you'll feel the metabolic intervals that are intermingling with the breath intervals. And even without juggling we can start to feel each other in a more precise way. So you're standing in front of this tree. And in Crestone we have all these sturdy little trees, junipers and pinions. I wish it was Holinda.

[63:17]

I like Holinda. Anyway, so there's the tree. Paul's the tree. And the leaves move. You can see it's an activity. And I often stand in front of trees. I do it every day in Crestone because I get tired walking up the mountain. And what I find quite phenomenal, these dirty little trees, the branches will be mostly still, but one branch will all by itself be moving. I don't know what's saying hello. So as I'm more and more just feel the activity of the tree.

[64:25]

That's what I've decided to do. And I give the tree its own, it has its own space, its own intervals. So I give the tree its space, I find its space. And the movement of the tree is inseparable from the stillness of the tree. Und die Bewegung des Baumes ist untrennbar von der Stille des Baumes. As I often say, the mathematics, literally the geometrics of a wave are its returning to stillness. An ocean wave.

[65:26]

Mathematik oder Geometrie einer Meereswelle ist, dass sie zur Stille zurückkehrt. The wave is entirely described by stillness. The tree also, whatever is going with the leaves and the branches, it's all rooted, literally, in the trunk and in the roots. And you can feel the stability of the roots in the earth and wrapped around rocks and things like that. So as soon as you know the activity of the tree, you know the stillness of the tree.

[66:30]

And the activity of the tree includes the insects and the woodpecker and so forth. And the space, the squirrels, we have these noisy squirrels that talk like mad in Crestone. And they're in the space of the tree. And the space of the tree, which is both stillness and movement, makes me feel my space. And there's no clear line between my space and the tree's space. We're not in some absolute timeless space. At this moment we're both making space.

[67:36]

I'm glad the woodpecker doesn't confuse me with the tree. And So if I know this, if I get to know this with a tree, and you can practice it with trees, and you feel your own activity rooted in stillness, especially if you established the continuity of experience, of aliveness. In the breath, body and phenomena.

[68:39]

And now you find the possibility of establishing another kind of continuity. A continuity within stillness itself. So stillness becomes your continuity. So things are always appearing out of stillness and being absorbed back into stillness. And although you, as someone said here, are never, there's never any Absolute stillness. Returning to stillness is stillness.

[69:40]

So you return to stillness. You don't need a ground of being. The world and all rugs can be pulled out under your feet. Because your continuity is in stillness itself. And this is also the teaching of form and emptiness. Form appears out of emptiness, returns to emptiness, is emptiness and you yourself are stillness you appear like the auspicious grass and you return to stillness and the more you know that in yourself as yourself or as non-self or what I don't care

[70:54]

You invariably start experiencing the stillness of others. You experience their personality and their ideas about themselves and so forth. Their activity. But under that you perceive the stillness waiting to be returned to. But a wave caught in mid-air can't quite return to the stillness. But if you can return to your own stillness, you can often help people return to their stillness.

[72:07]

And this is one way to describe the center of Bodhisattva's practice. And this is one way or another to describe the center of the bodhisattva practice. And she said, each sense becomes separate. And Mahakali said, each sense becomes separate and together. And each sense is separated and at the same time the senses are together. You begin to breathe into this stillness.

[73:20]

And you have this choice. And Zen practice is to choose stillness as our originary point. And on every step, on every thought, you feel the return to stillness. Okay, that's good enough, huh? To finish. And it all starts with a stone. And really knowing it as an activity. So I know that we can wait for lunch a moment for the bell to be rung. lay or monastic, you can cultivate stillness.

[75:21]

And we can continue to work with Dogen's phrase to cultivate and authenticate the 10,000 things by conveying the self to them, is delusion. To allow the 10,000 things to come forward and cultivate and authenticate big self or true self. It's a taste of enlightenment. Is enlightenment. And allows all things to return to stillness. and allows all things to return to silence.

[76:35]

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