So I and some others of you are noticing the difference between seminars and sashin. And I, of course, also notice the difference between seminars, sashins, and practice periods. And one of the things I miss in not being in practice period with you is I cannot really have much relationship to your posture. Maybe the best thing you can do is, which some of you do already, quite a few of you, is do some formal yoga practice. But just as I've been saying now for... Oh, yeah, for... I don't know.

[01:07]

Quite a while. Nearly a year, maybe. To bring your attention... in zazen and all the time, as much as you can, up through your spine. And you can use that as an initializing, an initiatory experience of finding yourself in the Dharma, finding yourself in practice. You all have spines, I'm pretty sure. And they travel around with you, they go along with you.

[02:09]

So every now and then you can just lift up through your spine. And through the space in the head where there's no spine. Yeah, and then let that flow into the breath and the mind and space. To remind yourself of the mind of the spine brings you immediately into the Dharma realm. It helps if you lift from the very beginning of the spine.

[03:12]

It also helps if you lift from just above the pelvis and then in the middle of the back between your wings. And then at the base of the skull. So you can begin to develop several locations from which you can lift through the spine. Which begin to, hopefully in a healthy way, articulate the spine.

[04:13]

And open up the body all along the spine. But, you know, so if you're here in a practice period for three months, I can notice how you're sitting and over... the period of time we can work on your posture. But in Sashin, I can straighten your posture a bit, but it's not so effective unless it can be done regularly. Let's go back to giving a nice lecture, I mean having a nice feeling. So again, I'm suggesting I'm sort of reviewing a little bit what we have spoken about this week.

[05:24]

So you locate, again, notice in sitting when you have a kind of good feeling, nice feeling. A kind of, you know, delicate feeling which you don't really want to, kind of like to not necessarily stop sitting. Now it's worth noticing such a feeling. And you can notice there's a kind of ease in it often. Yeah, there's a kind of relaxation. Or a kind of satisfaction. And you can... Yeah, kind of Rest there.

[07:08]

Rest there? Oh, that's it? Okay, good. You know, I think we have a... There's a kind of churchy church, like religious feeling that... Feeling too good is kind of dangerous. Maybe it's better to suffer. You're laughing. You must recognize the feeling. And then there's a kind of fear, too. We're kind of like culturally bipolar. If we feel too good, suffering or punishment comes soon after. It's just not true. It's the hubristic bias of our Western culture. Plus, we don't, you know, we have a lot of, most of us have a fair amount of experience with frustration becoming anger.

[08:42]

Or feeling hurt turning into anger. And all kinds of comparative... competitive feelings. And justice sometimes is the enemy of compassion. And forgiveness. But even forgiveness has a kind of softness, but you don't need to be forgiven anything. It's just you can have a kind of I don't know what word to use. Let's just say acceptance right now. So there's a kind of cultural and psychological pressure on keeping feeling good under control.

[09:44]

And I think if you do notice such a feeling, now, just as a Bringing attention to attention develops attention. Bringing attention to feelings develops those feelings. Now we have a lot of pathways already developed for feelings to turn into this, that or the other thing. And usually we don't have such pathways developed for feeling good. Particularly feeling good for no reason. No one gave me a present.

[11:00]

I didn't win any prizes. Why shouldn't I feel good? But you know it feels good sometimes. Sometimes just to be alive. There's no reason it can't feel good all the time just to be alive. Even if you're sick. You're still alive, sort of. I'm embarrassed to sound like a kind of greeting card. Like a greeting card?

[12:02]

Yeah, a good get well card. Wish you were where? I mean, wish you were here. But if you do give some attention to this kind of feeling, you, I think, will find there are deeper feelings just under its surface. Deeper feelings that ask you to be different. Deeper feelings which ask you to be different than you usually are. ask you to suggest to you show you ways to be in the world that are a little different and you know again any kind of Modicum, unit of experience.

[13:29]

Modicum. It just means a small amount. Also nochmal, jede Art von Erfahrungseinheit introduces the possibility to us. Stellt uns diese Möglichkeit vor. For instance, you're reading some poem and you're a poet and it doesn't make sense, but then some poem catches you. And once you have a feel for the voice of that poet, often other poems start opening up. So if you become familiar with a certain kind of inner voice of your own that has satisfaction in the liveness itself. Many parts of yourself and your experience begin speaking to you in that voice.

[14:32]

So I leave that up to your own exploration. And that, of course, is one advantage of Sashin. I can talk a little bit once a day, but mostly you can explore the possibilities. And starting for tomorrow, you have all the time, you have days and weeks of time in which you can prevent me from seeing you. Uh-oh. Why are you doing that?

[15:35]

I want to see you. You might look, I'll be right there. Yeah, I would like that anyway. So you have time to explore these practices, these visions, views, on your own. As your own. Now, several people have spoken to me in Doksan about the idea that the altar is empty. To trace the outline of the void. Tracing the outline of the void. Or again, as I mentioned from Koan 46 of the Blue Cliff Records,

[16:36]

penetrating sound and form. Or discovering the eye of the path, opening the eye of the path. These expressions can be useful to you. Or in this instance you can even say to yourself as you lift through your spine in some kind of articulated way you can say opening the eye of the path and maybe you can feel in the midst of your conventional perceptions, conventional situations, you can also feel the somehow a stillness in the midst of your circumstances.

[18:15]

Yeah, now again, The altar being right there, being simultaneously empty, is a little counter-intuitive. I mean, we can look at it philosophically or dharmically and so forth, but let's try to just be practical about it. Certainly, until you're standing in front of it or offering incense, it's empty of your participation.

[19:17]

And you can have a feeling when you do something like offer incense or stand in front of it for a moment, you're completing the altar. And in English, of course, the word alter is virtually the same pronunciation as A-L-T-E-R, other, alterity or alterness. So there's an otherness to the altar and also a possible completion through your participation.

[20:26]

Also gibt es ein Gefühl von Andersheit, das mit dem Altar einhergeht, und aber auch die Möglichkeit für deine persönliche Teilnahme. The word altar is like alter ego, you know that phrase probably. Ja, also so wie im Deutschen auch die Wendung alter ego. So the altar is not your alter ego. It's your alter non-ego. Sorry. Can't resist these obvious, you know. But there's some fun in it. Okay. Now let's imagine We took everything out of the altar as it was a few days ago or a while ago when we painted it or when we brought it from the previous Zendo. I'm still just trying to create practical ways to play with the idea.

[21:45]

Ich versuche immer noch nur praktische Arten und Weisen mit der Idee zu spielen, zu kreieren. So now it really is empty. It's just tables. Jetzt ist er wirklich leer. Das sind nur Tische. So you put one thing in. It's still kind of empty. It's not right yet. Du stellst einfach eine Sache rein. Es ist immer noch ziemlich leer und stimmt auch noch nicht so ganz. You put something else in and then you put something else in. Dann stellst du was anderes hinein und noch was anderes hinein. It still hasn't come together. It still feels kind of empty. And at some point it sort of comes together. If you're the person who did this, or the several persons who did this, you may still be able to feel it as empty as it was 15 minutes or half an hour earlier. So tracing the void, to make it experiential, experienceable for yourself,

[23:00]

You can just keep trying out various kinds of ways of thinking about it, ways of noticing it. Now, there's also, you know, and the idea of ma is also the idea of proportion. Mm-hmm. And distance means to stand apart. So maybe we need a word like withstance.

[24:21]

Sorry. To stand with. And maybe we need a word like misdance, to stand with. What is your practice of misdance, of wisdom? I said to the soku at the beginning of the session Basically, the soku and the head of the sashin do things together. They do things with each other. And even in a practice period where you're eating in the zendo for three months, The Soku just gets it down, when to come in with seconds and so forth.

[25:35]

Now, the Soku no longer needs signals from the Eno or the Abbott or whoever it is. But still it's being done with, even though it's no longer explicitly with. And the head of the Sashin, or practice period, is also involved. has a little different perspective, can see when people are finished and so forth. So whoever is doing it, whoever is leading the practice period or Sashin, is doing it with everyone else who's eating and so forth. So here I'm emphasizing this word with.

[26:50]

Okay. So when, if the altar is empty of my participation, and it's completed with my participation, then we can start trying to notice withness or something like that. Now, So I've been trying to, you know, I've been kind of like exploring, how can I say this? So I tried out somatizing distance.

[27:50]

Or interior distance. In other words, if if exteriority is an outfolding of interiority, and again, these are kind of clumsy way to say things, but we need some way to explore it's all inside. So if you do create a sense of interiority through lifting through the spine, and feeling you're opening the eye of the path, That also might phase into feeling that exterior space is actually interior space outfolded.

[29:09]

if you can catch the different feeling there and feel its bodily or somatic aspects you start living in a different world you start living in a world where it feels everything is being touched and is touching. You're sort of somatizing distance or space. So now we also have the concept of a mandala. So let me, I think mandala is the easiest word to use. So the altar obviously is some kind of mandala.

[30:25]

Okay, but there's a space at which you feel part of the mandala or when you step back you don't feel part of it. And to sensitize ourselves to this, we bow when we pass in front of the altar and so forth. And during kin hin and meal serving, we don't bow as we pass the altar. But if I'm doing the jundo in the morning, I acknowledge both this Buddha and the other Buddha. So there's a kind of mandala that reaches into the space. And everything is like that, actually. If you have this feeling of being in front of an altar, And there's a certain point at which you feel you're a participant.

[31:49]

Back here you don't feel, but here you feel you're a participant. Now, that's space you can measure with a tape measure. Well, the Mandela reaches out here to four and a half feet, but four feet, five feet is gone. But that depends on you, your mood, sensitivity, the situation, etc. But there's a feeling. And an altar that's well thought through, designed, has a wide reach.

[32:49]

So that space begins to have a presence or bodily aspect. So distance now becomes presence, or again, I don't know, sometimes like a kind of liquid almost you're in the midst of. No. An altar is designed to give you that kind of feeling, ideally. But if you know that feeling, and we have a practice when we're in a practice center, of bowing to each person that we bow to, meet or pass by, etc.

[34:06]

So there's a kind of withness to the space. You're coming towards something and you begin to create a space where there's a with-together feeling. Can you say the last thing again? At a certain distance, you begin to feel with the other person. Yeah, and the distance is part of it. Standing apart or standing with is part of it. Und die Distanz ist Teil davon, das entfernt voneinander stehen und miteinander zu stehen ist Teil davon. If you bump into them, this isn't exactly with, that's against. Wenn du in sie hinein rennst, dann ist das nicht das, was mit gemeint ist, sondern das ist gegen. So there's a kind of space, distance is a kind of...

[35:10]

not measured by a tape measure or ruler, but measured by a certain kind of feeling. And so there's a kind of density to space, or intensity, density. Yeah, I mean, I get closer to Paul and the space gets denser. I mean, that doesn't mean dumber. In English, it also means dumb. You know, he's dense. But he's not dense at all. German means drunk. Drunk, yeah, he's not drunk at all. So when I start feeling that density, he becomes an alter. So the same feeling I have when I'm in front of that altar, I can have the feeling of bowing to the altar called Rosenblum Roshi.

[36:22]

Yeah, and I see Jonas all the time, and I say, ah, this is a really nice altar to bow to. You're sitting in the office during lunch, and I come in, and oh, hi. And he's actually quite a bit more lively than this Amida Buddha. Yeah. So I bow to the altar of each of you. Thank you very much. We're in the staff section.

[37:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_70.03