I'm always touched by the sheer amount of work and preparation it takes to make a sashin work. Yeah, I'm always amazed, impressed, and grateful for the that the residents put this together. Yeah, and the senior practitioners who come to Sashin, I think not only because they want to come to Sashin, but because they know their presence helps them. in the more subtle organization, presence of the sashin.

[01:01]

Yeah, anyway, to have this building and somehow make it all work, I'm always... Yeah, really grateful and amazed. And then we can just sit here in this space and talk with each other and practice together. Now I suppose I should try to say something that ties up what we've been talking about. Is that possible? So maybe I should start with the history of the tie.

[02:04]

I did look it up, as I said I might. I did look. The tie? Oh, I think the tie. The tie, yeah, yeah. It goes back to Roman and Chinese emperors and so forth, but the modern tie supposedly comes from Croatia. So it actually goes back to the Roman and Chinese rulers, but the modern binders, the modern clips, probably come from Croatia. And in English it's called a cravat, and in German a cravata. Cravata, yes. And that comes from Croatia. That means it's some sort of French version of croat. Ah, and the cravata and cravat, that's a French version of Croatia. So supposedly in the 1630s some Croatian mercenaries arrived in Paris to, you know, fight a war for the French king.

[03:17]

And the French were all wearing white lace collars. And the Croatians had ties. And they looked so dashing that... Dashing? Anyway, they looked so dashing that the French thought, hey, so they started imitating them. Okay. That didn't tie much up. So we started with them. Well, we had sweaters, remember? Now we have ties. And we had cookies. A couple of people have said to me, you know, the lectures were okay, but that sweater one, I don't know.

[04:32]

Yeah. But it was... For me, it was my attempt at an example of a surface of attention. And one of the things I was curious to talk about was curiosity itself. Etymologically, curiosity is related to care, caring for, curing. Yeah, curing both in the sense of healing and also in the sense of finishing as you cure meat or something like that. And the most Americans at least, the word curiosity first comes into their vocabulary as

[05:37]

in the expression, curiosity killed the cat. Now, do German cats die in this way, too? No, not. So only English, New Zealand, Australian and American cats die of curiosity. So curiosity was always presented as a kind of like, you shouldn't be too curious. But I think it was Emerson... who is one of the shapers of the American mind, Ralph Waldo. It might have been Thoreau, but I think it was Emerson who wrote over his door, Whim. Do you know that word?

[06:58]

To do things on a whim, to do things just because you feel like it. Because in the end, when you come down to it, Why do we really do things sometimes? It's just a feeling. I'll do that. And maybe we don't trust, that was Emerson and Thoreau's idea, that Really, we should trust our whims. So this relates to just trust what you notice, what comes up.

[08:03]

And try to interrupt the choreography of habit Yeah, like you just put on the sweater, you don't really feel your way into the sweater. Here we are again with that sweater. So there's a surface inside the sweater. We're not talking about surfaces. We're talking about the the territory that one notices. I find if I see a photograph or see something on television, My eye will keep going to a particular aspect of it, and I try to look at the whole thing, but my eye goes back to a particular aspect.

[09:13]

So something's making a decision that brings my eye to just what I happen to notice. So I'm trying to speak about trusting or exploring the trusting of noticing. As a kind of stream of noticing. And we started out this with my speaking about in almost 10 years no one's noticed a few people only a few people have noticed that I do this dumb thing and put the mat under my sabaton.

[10:29]

And there's other examples so it's just one example of what do we notice and what do we not notice. And that led me to kind of wonder about what is the mind of noticing. And what is the process really of choice and activity in this world? What tiny actions is it built up on? Okay. Now, you can trust noticing often in much the same way you can trust intuition.

[11:49]

So I've tried to find, during these during this session, I've tried to find my way with you into mostly non-conscious mental activity, mental and physical activity. Yeah, as a Und ihr werdet bemerkt haben, zumindest die, mit denen ich schon lange praktiziere, dass ich nicht weiß, worüber ich sprechen werde. And Judita, being the director, tries to put me on the spot, what will be the titles for next year's... I'm not next year yet.

[12:54]

How am I supposed to know? But recently, I've been actually... Following the titles pretty carefully. You've been translating. I should actually use them. Proof of that. Because I've got to start somewhere. So we started this time with the bamboo mats. Since I didn't have a title. Next year I'm going to do these winter branches. People say, are you going to do a winter tree next year? A winter trunk? Winter branches. Which is the idea, you know, that...

[13:55]

A branch looks dead in the winter, and in spring it blossoms. Or it may wait several springs. But given the right circumstances, this lineage blossoms. So I'm looking forward to, with all you dead sticks, see if we can rub together and make some fire. But I think I will try to be more thorough than I can be in a series of lectures like this. And I'm afraid those of you who decide to come, you'll have to listen to what I want to say rather than my trying to figure out what you want to hear. Because mostly in my seminars I'm guided by what I feel you want to hear or might need to hear for future doubts.

[15:15]

So there's a process. Maybe part of the way to tie up these lectures is to talk about the process of Yes, trying to find something to say. So I don't want to think my way to what I talk about. So I need a wider context. Mm-hmm. That wider context is usually zazen. Not that I would think during zazen. No. In fact, I try to pull any intentional thinking or even intentions back away.

[16:39]

And I try definitely, after no thoughts about, did I have to give a lecture? But the context knows I have to give a lecture. Let's say the body knows I have to. So, surprisingly, things pop up. Surprisingly, sometimes they don't. Then I'm sitting here waiting for the pop-up. But I've been doing this a long time, so usually they pop up. And it's something I wouldn't have thought of. It has a sense of truth, like intuition. And And most important probably it has a feeling associated with it.

[17:52]

Which means the body is associated with it. So we could say it's a kind of bodily thinking. Thinking is not the right word, but yeah, you know what I mean. So then when I speak with you, Or before or after, because it's just a process. I'm not really thinking, but I'm staying with the feeling. Because the feeling reaches farther than process. more deeply into our activity than thinking. So that led me to start thinking about the material stream, the relic stream I sometimes call it. Yeah, because we're sitting here in the relics of Suzuki Roshi.

[19:07]

Not exactly his ashes, but physical things he handed, passed on to me and others who practiced with him. We're sitting here. What I'm doing here, I learned from Sukhiroshi. So we're continuing, actually continuing something, but finding our self perhaps most uniquely. We're continuing something traditional, but simultaneously finding ourselves uniquely. So in this attempt at a review, I began to wonder what What is the stream of noticing?

[20:17]

And it's clear that the stream of noticing is influenced by concepts, shaped by concepts. So we used the example, I used the example of the concept of mix it in primarily mix it in the eating. So we can see the attention stream of cutting vegetables, heating water and all that stuff is influenced by the concept. Okay, so then, what I'm trying to say is that, you know, you know, we have these ideas, James Joyce and earlier, the stream of consciousness and so forth.

[21:19]

Okay, but what constitutes the stream part, the liquid part of this stream of consciousness? What are the banks of this stream? Now, okay, so Buddhism says yes, there is some kind of stream of attention or successive moments. What's the best way to give? substance, depth to this stream. Don't let it be simply a mental stream. Make it an activity stream. But activity of mentation as well as the physical activity. and the activity of noticing.

[22:50]

But of course, that's not it. If you're walking along a path or driving a car, you have to notice. Or you fall down in this pond. So this is just what human beings are. We do have to pay attention, give attention. But we're often thinking about something else. But we're often thinking about something else. The absent-minded professor walking along, thinking about something else, he falls in the pond. A Zen monk is not supposed to be an absent-minded professor. Do you have that image of the absent-minded? Oh, yes. But supposedly, what town did Kant grow up in? Immanuel. Immanuel Kant? Königsberg.

[23:59]

Supposedly they set the clocks by his noontime walks. And he never left, I think, he never left the city. Yeah. He never got journeyed or traveled. Oh, really? Arthur Whaley never went to Japan. That's interesting. Yeah. He said, I don't want to spoil my dream of Asia. Arthur Whaley said, I don't want to spoil my dream of Asia. Okay, so Buddhism says more intentionally bring your attention into your activity. Now that opens, that's another seminar, but that opens a non-textual memory more like a pool of water than a book.

[25:03]

Just a little footnote here. The Alaya Vijnana, sometimes it's translated as Something like the unconscious or a kind of storehouse. Or imagined as if it was textual memory as our memory tends to be. This actually is the much wider context of a kind of pop-up menu, like fish jumping out of a lake. You don't even know the fish is there, but some fish you've never seen before pops up.

[26:09]

Yeah. You're good. But isn't that what happens in dreams? Fish swim into our dreams. Where the heck did that fish come from? I've often said if you work on koans and put your body into it, finally the koan takes the shape of a really funny hook. What the heck is that hook for? And that's not going to catch anything. And sometimes we say fishing with a straight hook. Working with corns is fishing with a straight hook. Okay, but then... You're sitting with some friends talking, and suddenly, right in the air, no one else sees it, a strange fish swims through the air.

[27:32]

And this straight hook, something goes, catch it. Ah, that was what the koan was about. So when you work in a corn, you're developing a straight hook which will catch an unknown fish. That's another thing we didn't have time to go into. More into this alive or dead. But stay with that. When you look at anything, alive or dead, isn't this a version of the Diamond Sutras? generate a thought, blah, blah, blah.

[28:34]

Okay, so if we take it, that Zen practice, Buddhist practice, is to bring attention to activity. Okay. And that attention is shaped by concepts. That stream and attention. Then what concepts you introduce... Now you could say, let's just be pure and natural and truly Zen and not introduce any concept. But your attention stream is chock full of concepts.

[29:46]

Chock full? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have to have... That's called, we say, you know, this old... A turtleneck full of chock. No, no, it's probably a very old one. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. Okay. So... So you have to have antidotes to the concepts you already have. And you have to have wisdom concepts which do clear the stream. But Sukhirashi used to say, dragons die in pure water. Dragons like a little dirty water. There's nothing to eat in clean water. So we use the food in the water, the the concepts in the water, to bring in antidotes or wisdom concepts.

[31:11]

All right, so let's go to the Diamond Sutra. What's the most basic concept you bring into? However many beings there are, in whatever realms in which we can imagine being, any conceivable form of being, Form of being. Born from the egg, born from the shell, born from the water, born from the air or born spontaneously. Without or with form. Okay, so now we're introducing this concept into the attention stream.

[32:23]

It's obviously a subtle version of the Bodhisattva vow. Okay, now, what is the most basic vow we all have? We've vowed to stay alive. Some of us lose that vow, and after a while, then we go to a therapist. It's true. It's very true, yeah. Or they go to a doctor, and they've got all kinds of problems, which... They've lost the vile to stay alive. So that's what I tell Sophia. The first job is to stay alive. Okay. The... This... set forth with this thought, as the Diamond Sutra presents to us, however many beings there are, in whatever realm

[33:45]

beings conceivably could exist, is only the vow to stay alive. But to stay alive with everything. And to realize everything is our aliveness. So that subtle wisdom form of the vow to stay alive enters the mind stream. Do you understand? Togan has a line. a poem which is simply black rain on the roof.

[35:13]

What does he mean? He doesn't say In the dark of night it's raining. He doesn't say rain on the black roof. He says black rain on the roof. Now, if I say this, it's going to sound awfully zenny. But he means rain that calls forth no memories. But what he means is rain that Keine Erinnerungen hervorruft. Es ist auch wunderbar, wie Regen Erinnerungen hervorrufen kann. Ihr könnt es jetzt fühlen. Aber es gibt hier auch ein Jetzt jenseits von Erinnerungen. Wir müssen lauter sprechen. Louder sprecken.

[36:30]

We'll do it. We'll try. Thanks. Okay. With and without form. So already now we have a tension stream that's has concepts in it, or form in it, but also without form. Now, I could speak about that, and what it means to say with and without form. Partly it's a kind of Nagarjuna effort to cover all possible categories. But more than that, there are momentary configurations But you can't call form from which everything emerges.

[37:41]

So it's also being. I didn't arrange this. It just popped up. Okay, so let's talk about the Kanzayon chant. The most common mistake we make here and in Crestone is we start out the Kansion chant slowly. We start it out slowly so that we can speed up. So it becomes boring and predictable. It should be a surprise that it speeds up.

[39:00]

Es ist müdend. Maybe it won't speed up this time. So what have we got there? I know I'm going to run out of time, but I'll try to say a little more. What we have is a concept, a future concept, which, as Dogen says, sometimes the future, the time moves from future to past. So here's a concept that's going to speed up, travels into the present, and slows us down in the present. Sometimes, of course, we aim toward the end.

[40:03]

But as a habit, it's a kind of delusion. When I'm going toward the altar, or you if you're the doshi, you step back. It's very difficult not to have physical habits present in your activity. The echo, which the doan does in the middle of the meal chant, we finish chanting and the doan says something.

[41:03]

And we have our hands up. The latter part actually is more of an echo, and everyone puts their hands down except the doshi. Und es ist mehr ein Echo und jeder nimmt seine Hände runter außer dem Doshi. 25 years ago or so, I decided that I got tired of trying to teach people when they put their hands up, so I stopped doing it. So we all keep our hands up. But almost every meal, 25 years after I stopped doing it, I start to ball forward and I pull back. In other words, everyone bows, and I'm usually the doshi. The doshi-roshi. I'm usually the doshi. And I would bow with everyone and then bring my hands back up like during an echo.

[42:05]

I haven't done it for 25 years about. every meal if you look closely I go because the physical habit from 25 years ago is still in my body I can still ride a bicycle too um So when I'm at the altar, my body knows it's going to go around this way and up, etc. And that, if you look closely, that's in my movements. But my practice is to interrupt those movements. Because I don't want future plans in the present.

[43:12]

This would be a non-conceptual activity stream. So both are present. That's a kind of... braid of wisdom. A good example yesterday was the activity of the bird and the concept of the bird, or entity of the bird. So the person doing the Kansayan chant, the dawn, should be as much as possible, I am never going to speed up. You're creating an antidote to your tendency to speed up. And then, Yeah, you speed up.

[44:21]

But, okay, I want to... Anyway, Sukhiroshi, I learned to, of course, be Doan from Sukhiroshi. No, it's great. I did it for two or three years straight. I was the only Doan. So, Sukhiroshi, Inigo, you go Maka Anya. Like that, right? You don't have to translate. I didn't. It'd be great if you did it. Okay. Okay. I went up to Sukhiyoshi and I said, at what point do you start speeding up? He said to me, I don't speed up. He's a Zen master. He tells me he doesn't speed up. Okay. The next morning I watched him. The next morning I noticed him. Well, I didn't argue with him.

[45:44]

I just wondered about it. So I started when I did the Heart Sutra. I didn't speed up. But as everyone starts chanting together, It looked like I sped up. Because as soon as everyone together, a certain energy carries the whole situation. But my intention is not to speed up. There's no concept of speeding up. And I said, watch me do it. And they are waiting. I can see the concept waiting to speed up. This is a basic mistake. Can you pull any future concepts out of your present action? It makes you in the present in an entirely different way.

[46:52]

So of course the concepts are there and of course you can also find space Where they're not there. With form and without form. Walking walks itself. Hearing hears hearing. Breathing breathes itself. Okay, thank you very much.

[47:45]

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