One definition of modernity I read recently is that there's a desire or emphasis on knowing what knowledge we realize from experience. I don't know how you say something like that. It can have very different meaning saying it slightly differently. I'll assume I can make the contrast. I'd like to. Because that statement, which much of what our contemporary modern world is and has

[01:03]

has come from that way of looking at things, art, philosophy and so forth. But that... assumes that there's a given world out there that we can experience. That there's a given world out there that we can know by developing our senses and so forth. But Buddhism doesn't make that assumption. Buddhism assumes there are many worlds out there or in here or around about.

[02:30]

It's not that there are many worlds extending out through space and galaxies. This concept of many worlds means many worlds right here, too. And what's extraordinary about human beings is we can have a choice of what world we decide to sense. I mean Zen Buddhism doesn't just assume the world can be known by the senses, but that Also, there's an in-between the senses, which is a vast expanse.

[04:05]

Dzogchen speaks about the vast expanse. It's not knowable through the senses. But it isn't separate from us, but it's not knowable in any usual way. And as we've spoken about during the practice period, Yuan Wu of the Blue Cliff Records speaks about the world as an underlying inconceivable reality. Now this is an idea in some contrast to the idea of Buddha nature. Okay, so between the senses there's a vast expanse which senses don't reach.

[05:19]

And Inclusive of the senses, we still are not just in between, but inclusive of the senses, we still are in an inconceivable reality. So Buddhism says, okay, if that's the case, what do we do about that? What's the advantage of doing something about it? It's hard enough to make a living in this conceivable reality. And of course the conceivable reality is the two truths of functional reality or conventional reality.

[06:35]

And what else did you say? Conventional. Okay. So we do live most of our time in our practical life in this conventional, functional way of knowing reality through consciousness. But Buddhism has, in Nagarjuna and Buddhism since then, has these two truths. We've been speaking about the two truths in practice period, partly because I was asked to speak about it.

[07:48]

And I've been speaking also about the fact that there are no universals. There's no universal time. There's no universal space out there, separate from us. Space is something that's created. We're creating space right now. This space we're inhabiting. Wir schaffen Raum genau jetzt, diesen Raum, den wir bewohnen. Now, one difference, because I'm trying to explore practice period and Sashin and so forth. Ein Unterschied, weil ich Praxisperioden und Sashins und so versuche zu erforschen.

[08:49]

We can discuss in some detail and have seminars about what it means to say there's no universals. Now, I sometimes express that, that there is no outside. Everything is an inside. Maybe we could say it's not a matter of outside and inside, but degrees of withinness. This is very difficult to grasp actually because we have very basic ideas of something is on something, something is contained in something, and there are boundaries. For those of you who are interested or already know, George Lakoff's work in this regard is brilliant.

[09:55]

But the idea that there's no inside-outside boundary, but just different degrees of within-ness is essential to realisational practice. Now, if it wasn't the case in Buddhism, Dogen couldn't say the entire universe is the true human body. He says you practice the way with the body. Er sagt, du praktizierst den Weg mit dem Körper.

[11:20]

Und Dogen sagt Versionen davon ständig. Wollen wir wirklich wissen, was er meint? Oder wollen wir einfach so sagen, ja klar, praktizieren mit dem Körper, ich fahre ja auch mit dem Körper Ski. And then he says to kind of throw a monkey wrench in. Monkey wrench? And I guess it comes from the early days of the Ford Motor Company, etc., when the unions wanted to strike and the assembly line's going on. You put a monkey wrench in and everything falls apart. Oh, okay. A monkey puts a monkey wrench in from the... So Dogen puts a philosophical monkey wrench in here. A monk's wrench. And he says the true human body appears through the practice of the way. He doesn't say there's even a world out there.

[12:41]

He says even the body isn't a given. It appears through the practice of the way. Yeah, years ago when I was in college, I was, I don't know why, but quite moved and understood, actually, somehow, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's so-called epiphany. He was hiking in the walking, people walked in those days places, in the Swiss Alps, I believe. Then he was astonished and wrote about the beauty of the mountains and the lakes, which people hadn't remarked on so much in the same way before.

[13:55]

And suddenly he was overwhelmed by an insight, found himself thrown down on the ground under a tree. Like Buddha under a tree, maybe a little bit. And he wept for half an hour. And realized things he said, I have not been able to express the rest of my life. But one of the things he realized and wrote about was that we humans are better than our institutions. Stifled and inhibited and even destroyed by our institutions.

[15:20]

Stifled? Stopped, shut down. But you read some, like in the Stanford Encyclopedia, it says, yeah, he had this funny experience and he had an insight, and then they tell you his insight. But Buddhism would be interested in his crying and his being under the tree and not being able to speak about what he was experiencing. As the Lankavatara Sutra says, highest or fullest reality can't be known through words or what we express with words.

[16:34]

And this highest or fullest reality or something like that? Is Dogen, for example, saying that true human body appears through Dharma practice? Now this is the Jain sutras and so forth, and weeping under a tree. But it's also simply a possibility for all of us practicing. It's not far away. There's no far away anyway. There's only here. Now, Baba Ramdas, Dick Alpert, wrote a book published by the Lama Foundation in 71.

[18:12]

How was it published? Published by the Lama Foundation. 71, yeah. Yeah, this is recent history. And much of that was funded by Jonathan Altman, who's a supporter of Creston Mountain Zen Center. Anyway, Ram Dass wrote this book, and it was called Be Here Now. And as an inescapable and marvelous phrase. But, and you could put be here now and together before 1971. but all what went into the Lama Foundation which is in northern New Mexico still exists and the psychedelics and LSD and all that stuff that was part of it

[19:36]

And weeping under, you know what I'm saying, no, anyway. So the phrase became real for many people, be here now. Be here now, yeah. Can't argue with that. Why not? Better to be here than somewhere else, I guess. I mean, I hope so. Here we are. But they're admonitory words. I mean, it says here, not there. It's a kind of command. And it says, now, not later.

[20:55]

So do now, do not later. And be means sort of do, do here. Or it means something like become here, become now. But there's no, nothing in the phrase tells you what constitutes here. Aber nichts in dieser Wendung verrät dir, woraus sich dieses hier zusammensetzt. What constitutes now? Woraus sich dieses jetzt zusammensetzt. How can you be now or actually be in what constitutes here? Wie kannst du jetzt sein? Oder wie kannst du tatsächlich das sein, woraus sich das hier zusammensetzt?

[22:01]

Are you all with me? Seid ihr alle noch dabei? I don't know. That was a funny little riff, wasn't it? Das war jetzt eine lustige kleine Umspielung. But I clearly, you know, the whole thing was going through my head and my body during the night last night. Aber ganz deutlich ist dieses ganze Zeug, das ist durch meinen Kopf oder durch meinen Körper passiert als letzte Nacht. So I don't always, I never think about much about what I should say or could say to you. I think about what appears and how can I say to you what appeared. And then I have this trust of the vast expanse in between is probably there is some connection between what appears and here we are. So I find that the time is not too bad.

[23:05]

So I find that what I'd like to do in this Sesshi is use the seven days to bring together at least some of what we've been speaking about in practice period and bring it together in a way that for the practice period participants, but also hopefully bring it together in a way that's useful to, accessible to those of you who are just here for the session.

[24:15]

So what I've just, this little riff, as I said, that I just went through, I hope it will be a background of what we do in the Sashim and it will become more and more the foreground and I could say it another way the yogi ought the yogi our practice wants the yogi to be present at the level of which activity is created.

[25:18]

Or I could say to be present in the present as the present. Oder ich könnte sagen, als die Gegenwart, in der Gegenwart, gegenwärtig zu sein. Das ist meine Art zu sagen, sei jetzt hier. In der Gegenwart, als die Gegenwart, gegenwärtig zu sein. I know prepositions don't work the same way in Deutsch. This one's fine. This one's fine. Okay. Oh, good. Okay. Yeah.

[26:19]

Okay. So we can choose how we are present. We can, and you made a choice by coming to Sashin and sitting around for hours without doing much, to be present in a way you're letting the Sashin help you choose. Well, for most of us, and certainly for me, when I started doing sashins, the sashins showed me a way to be present I couldn't have chosen because I didn't know what the choice was. So even in zazen, you can choose how you're going to be present.

[27:26]

one of the things from the beginning of this practice period we have been emphasizing is when you first sit down awaken the spine in awareness awaken the spine in awareness Noticing the spine, but not thinking about it. Erwecke die Wirbelsäule. Awaken the spine. Again. To awaken the spine in awareness without thinking about it. Erwecke die Wirbelsäule im Gewahrsein ohne drüber nachzudenken. And I also used the word Hishiryo, which means, a Japanese word, which means to know or notice without thinking about it. And this is such an essential yogic skill to develop.

[28:53]

You cannot seriously practice without knowing it. To know or notice without thinking about it. As soon as you think about it, you're delivered into your culture and your language. Okay. So you awaken your spine. You notice your spine. Now there are many ways to do all these various things. I've picked three and a half or 3.5. So to awaken the spine, perhaps by lifting up through the spine.

[30:12]

And lifting up through the spine at the back of the neck and up through the head. Even though the spine doesn't reach to the top of the head, Feeling that you awaken in the spine continues up through the head to the top of the head and more. So there's the spine, the actual physical spine. And there's the feeling of the spine. And once there's the feeling of the spine established...

[31:13]

Wenn einmal die gespürte Wirbelsäule hergestellt ist, das Gefühl für die Wirbelsäule hergestellt ist, dann kann das Gefühl für die Wirbelsäule dort hinein weiterreichen, sich dort hinein ausdehnen, wo die tatsächliche Wirbelsäule nicht ist. Okay, so awakening the spine, not in consciousness, but in awareness, is one. And the second thing is that you bring attentional awareness to your breath. And the word I decided to use in this practice period is you inhabit your breath.

[32:29]

So you really have a feeling of inhabiting your breath. Now again, because I don't know if the German word that translates inhabit is the same feeling as like inhabiting an apartment or inhabiting your body. I bring it up not only because there is or isn't a good translation. But to emphasize my English words and her German words and your... and what's called forth by both words and you...

[33:31]

are still only little arrows pointing at experience which is much wider, deeper than the words. And the whole world much beyond any language, can arise through inhabiting your breath. So that's second. Okay. We've got 17 to go. Don't be patient. It's all right. He was worried, so I seen him. And third, to bring a feeling to the mind. An attentional mind. Or let's say usually I say a mental posture.

[35:11]

Of openness or alertness or ease. Or maybe some, you know, a turning word phrase like just now is enough. Or the ones we use most often, like already connected. Those phrases cue mental postures. And fourth, there's only four, not 17. Or there are four and there are only four and not seventeen. And the fourth, a spatial posture. A mind space.

[36:13]

No, I think you have to play with that to sort of get, the words don't quite call it forth. But here's the four I'm bringing up again. To work with them or notice them without thinking about them, each separately. And to work with them or notice them as they work or function, relate to each other together. So the spine and the breath Our partners. And you can feel how they are siblings.

[37:34]

And in noticing without thinking about the relationship between the inhabiting of the spine and the breath, You start learning many, many subtle things about how our body works in a realisational sense. All I can say it's a Dharma door. You have to find out what's on the other side of that Dharma door. And now how the breath spine awakens the mind. And how the breath spine mind awakens an inhabitable space.

[38:35]

My hands are inhabiting space right now. You are all inhabiting space. I hope by the end of the Sashim we are all just spines. And there's almost no person there. We're practicing the... pathing of sentient beings. Pathing like path? Like path, pathing. We practice the path of the leading beings. So that we feel sentience, but not persons. This should be entering the path of sentient, the sentient being path. In English, sentient just means to feel.

[39:54]

Okay, so sentient being is not a person. I mean, you can understand it that way, but... What? But for a yogi, it's all a feeling, sentient world. And that sentience doesn't have to be shaped into persons. I mean, sometimes it needs to be, but it doesn't have to be. So all you could say, you know, geez, I worked in the kitchen with four other spines. Thank you very much. Don't cut your finger. We'll see you next time.

[41:03]

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