Well, thank you for accepting Steve and Mark and myself. And we'll try to respond by doing things like cooking at least sauerkraut soup once during the Sashin. which we've added to the menu in Crestone because of so many German members, participants. So both of us though, Europeans and Americans, are mixed up in this strange thing called a saschi. And watching the instruction last night and hearing it in the dining room of the orioke instruction,

[01:07]

Reminded me of all the problems I had at the beginning and all the resistances I had to this stuff. I was a person who in high school, they didn't put my picture in the yearbook because I refused to wear a tie. And in college, they wouldn't let me eat in the dining room because I wouldn't wear a tie. Now I'm wearing the biggest tie possible. At some point I sold out. So how did it happen? I don't know. Sashin is an extremely simple practice.

[02:57]

And extremely effective if you can stick through it. But I still think if you know something about what's going on, we're liable to have more of you give birth or be reborn in the Sashin. Sashin is simple the way natural childbirth is simple. Sashin is simple in the sense that natural birth is simple. You don't need a hospital and all the complications of a hospital in order to have a baby.

[04:11]

But if we have the knowledge of Western medicine, would you like to sit up there? What do you mean, would you rather sit in the aisle there? No, no, it's okay there. But if we have the knowledge of Western medicine, we have more successful births, even if they're at home. So it's in that sense that I'm going to try to say something about Sashin. In other words, Sashin works without any explanations from me. But I think it works better if you have some idea of what this is about. Now, although you may not need the complications of a hospital for natural childbirth, and I've been present at quite a lot of births, including my own two children, and in some senses it feels like an extraordinarily simple, wonderful event,

[05:42]

Am I talking about this because of you, Ludgard? She's signed up as one person and there's three of her. She didn't put her two twins to be born on the waiting list. Are they sitting okay? Are they moving around or anything? No? Okay. I wish I'd done my first sashin. In sutra, do you say in sutra? In English is a word meaning still in the fluid. although it is a very simple experience feels simple and it's not complicated it's extremely complex it's taken the whole of this cosmos to produce a birth

[07:22]

And to produce a simple practice like this Sashin has really taken many, many people in Indian culture and Chinese and primarily Indian and Chinese culture to produce this practice. And I'm always discovering, rediscovering this practice. So I think what I feel like talking about this asheen is some of the things that I'm still working on and perplex me. But first let me go back to a basic insight or decision of Indian culture. Indian culture decided that waking mind could not know the world, could not know reality.

[08:49]

And that's pretty obvious when you think about it, because obviously another dimension of our knowing the world is our dreaming mind. And waking mind can't know dreaming mind. Und je mehr man jetzt versucht, diesen träumenden Mind kennenzulernen, in gewisser Weise ist das möglich, aber je mehr man versucht, umso mehr entschlüpft er. And there are certain psychotherapeutic processes at different schools which grasp or touch certain dimensions of dreaming mind, but not all of dreaming mind.

[10:11]

So... Waking mind can't know reality, whatever that is. And dreaming mind can't know reality. Because dreaming mind doesn't know waking mind. Okay. So then there's a third state, deep sleep. Non-dreaming deep sleep. Now it was thought by Indian culture, Indian yogic culture, that non-dreaming deep sleep was the closest we came to reality. And non-dreaming deep sleep is basically affirmative, non-discriminating state of mind and being.

[11:16]

But it's not known by waking mind. So non-dreaming deep sleep can't be known by us in any usual sense. So these Indian guys who were thinking quite seriously about their world and our world in effect, decided that then we needed to have a fourth state of mind that combined deep sleep, dreaming and wakefulness.

[12:19]

And they decided in the very early tradition, thousands of years ago, they thought that one way to know this mind was through psychedelics, drugs of various kinds. And it seems that the phrase psyche and soma, it seems that soma refers to actually a psychedelic material, probably a mushroom. And this actually is a Buddhist lecturing stick. A flowering branch. And the end of it, though, is the mushroom soma, a psychedelic mushroom. So this remains in Buddhism as a symbol of this more inclusive mind.

[14:02]

But yogic traditions in India, long before Buddhism began, but the stream out of which Buddhism began, Thank you for translating all this. Made a decision that drug states of mind have their own limitation that like waking, dreaming, and deep sleep have. So this sashin practice is a direct heir of that attempt to create a state of mind that includes waking, sleeping, and dreaming. Now, I think that's worth giving some thought, each of you giving some thought to

[15:05]

Do you want to know yourself? And do you want to know this world? And what can be known of reality? And do you agree that some state of mind other than waking, sleeping, waking, deep sleep, and dreaming is needed? Now, if you make that decision, then you make the decision to cultivate your life. And this is where the idea of practice arises. Practice is the idea of cultivating your life. Now, Asian culture, a pervasive and maybe dominant idea is that life requires cultivation.

[16:51]

Or practice. That life isn't natural. In other words, this fourth state of being, can't say it's a state of mind, this fourth state of inclusive being, you're not born with. Okay. But that's not quite right to say. It's a state of being which is always present and actually you are always accessing, but we don't notice it. It may be noticed by children more. But children don't have the developed awareness and consciousness that adults do. So they actually can't notice it to the degree to which an adept can notice it.

[18:21]

A Buddha does not have the consciousness or awareness of a child. They may have a childlike consciousness and awareness. And in fact, as the child grows older, virtually all cultures teach the child not to notice this fourth state of being. And Buddhism is a teaching about how to notice it again. Okay. Yeah. That's what I should do. Can I come back to that?

[19:54]

I'm afraid if I respond to that I'll get too much off the track. But you may not notice that I'm on a track. Anyway, what I've said so far is fairly simple but quite important from the point of view of practice. Okay. Now... Sashin is kind of difficult to do.

[21:08]

And it can become as difficult as your capacity for difficulty is there, both in a positive and negative sense. And I'm finding by teaching in Europe that people have different difficulties with Sashin than people in America in general. And that may also be because it's the difference in the way I'm teaching here, which is not staying in one place and so forth. But I'm always trying to understand the difficulties people have because that's the strength of practice.

[22:16]

I mean, the very limitations that I felt growing up in Western culture that I couldn't exercise myself fully in Western culture. Of course, that was arising from streams within Western literature and so forth that I was responding to. It wasn't just arising out of my genetics. In other words, in any culture that's changing, particularly like Western culture, there are challenges to the culture within the culture. So those challenges within Western culture that I was responding to, which led me to inadvertently in some ways to study Buddhism,

[23:33]

Those, shall we say, for the purpose of this conversation, those limitations of Western culture which led me to study Buddhism and Asian teachings, I now understand are the exact strengths of Western Buddhism. And it's the very area where Buddhism will find other potentials that haven't been developed in it. Because a culture develops most when it meets challenges or whatever that it can't find definitions for.

[24:49]

So when you're presented with an idea that you can't find words for or cultural resonance for, it makes you and the language and the culture change. Just as science advances when a scientist sees a fact, something that seems to be a fact that he can't explain, he or she can't explain. Now, what I'm talking about here is not Asian culture. I'm talking about Buddhism. I'm talking about the elements of Buddhism that have been in Japan, China, and India. They also may be very much a part of Asian culture, and I may use Asian culture as an example, but really I'm talking about Buddhism.

[26:36]

Or you could say maybe that Buddhism is a positive virus that infects cultures. Right now you may feel it's a negative virus. Okay. Okay, if you are... We need structures in which to live.

[28:09]

Wir brauchen Strukturen innerhalb derer wir leben. This is a lay Sashin, not a monk Sashin. Das ist ein Sashin für Laien, nicht für Mönche. So you're not entering the Sashin from the way monks would, from a schedule which is almost like a Sashin schedule every day. You're entering as lay people coming from the structured situation of your lay life. And, for instance, we create in the schedule time for you, if necessary, to take a nap. In a monastic schedule, there would be no time scheduled for naps.

[29:17]

What? In neither schedule are naps exactly allowed. I'm explaining this for several reasons. First of all, if you ask somebody about the schedule, there's no time, I mean, there's no part in the schedule that says zazen, walking, meditation, meals. There's no little place that says nap. Because if we put that in, you'd think you had a right to take a nap. And you'd feel that if you were asked to do something at that time, no, no, this is my nap time.

[30:32]

So we say no naps are allowed, but we schedule time in which, if you want, you can take a nap. And even in a monastic schedule where naps are not scheduled, if a monk or a monkette takes a nap leaning against a tree for three minutes, that's okay. And I've seen that. I mean, I've done it in monasteries in Japan. You suddenly are leaning against a pillar for a minute. The point is you have to figure out on your own when to do it and how to do it and how to make one minute count.

[31:41]

So in this kind of schedule where You have people coming from lay life, you have to make enough breaks so they can make the adjustment into sesshin. And maybe by the sixth or seventh day, and if you are still here, you'll find that you don't need a nap. In fact, a nap may rob you of energy. I just had a moment's fantasy of doing a Sesshin so difficult that, you know, the seventh day I'm sitting here by myself.

[32:55]

I don't even have a translator. But if the Sesshin was that difficult, I would have led you out of here in the third day. Myself I would have left. Okay. Oh, boy. I mean, oh, girl. Hmm. Okay, the more you're defined by the structures of the situation you came for, the more you'll find the structures here horrible.

[34:10]

Or another possibility is your structures in your everyday life are a bit flimsy or not satisfying to you, and you adopt the structures of Sashin as the way it should be. Neither is very good. And the point of zazen and seshin practice is to free you from structures. And the point of the structures of Sashin are to alter your usual structures.

[35:14]

Now, if this was a monastic Sashin, we wouldn't ring two bells, we'd only ring one bell. Because the sashin schedule should be just subtly simpler than the daily schedule in terms of the sounds and the way it's done. And that's really because big changes often arise from small shifts. A tiny shift in attitude can change your life. For instance, when I first started practicing, I was working in a warehouse.

[36:27]

And I used to go out someplace for lunch, usually by myself, and walk there and walk back. And as I was walking back to the warehouse, I was crossing some railroad tracks. And I threw a cigarette package or candy wrapper or something on the ground. And since I was in charge of this warehouse and was always sweeping it, it just struck me, no one will sweep that up. And as soon as it struck me no one would sweep it up, and yet I'd thrown it down there.

[37:31]

I realized I was making a distinction between outside and inside. And I looked at that piece of paper and I realized there's no outside and there's no inside. I picked up the piece of paper, and it changed my life. I mean, it's nothing. It's a small thing, and it's a small thing to everybody, but for some reason I shifted on that small thing. And then I threw it down in the warehouse where I'd sweep it up. No, I didn't. Okay. Now, if I said that... What I want to talk about today will take about four hours.

[38:55]

So I only have 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And I think it would become more painful to sit here listening to me for four hours than to do zazen. You'll probably stop after a little while. So we often say something like, I have no time. Practically speaking, we have that experience. But that's defining yourself from outside. You only have no time in comparison to other people's time. From inside, you are time.

[39:58]

You can't have no time because you are time. And from that point of view, Sechin is a vacation, a wonderful vacation. Because from that point of view, the structures of Sechin anchor you enough to have all the time in the world. and anchor you outside your usual script your usual structures and anchor you in such a way that this anchor is made really made of something in between iron and sugar And if you increase the heat of awareness, the sugar melts, the structures melt, and you're quite free.

[41:19]

Now, it would be too idealistic, I think, to say the point of sashin is to teach you how to exist with no structure. Let's say several things are happening. One is Sashin in Buddhist practice should allow you to strengthen your outer structures. To see and strengthen them through seeing the boundaries and limitations of your outer structures. Und sie zu stärken heißt, die Begrenzungen und Grenzen des äußeren Lebens zu sehen. So you know them not as an identity, but as a tool. Sodass man sie nicht als Identität, sondern als Werkzeug sieht.

[42:33]

Which functions as an identity, in which you suffer through as an identity, but still ultimately it's a tool. Und man funktioniert durch sie als Identität, und man leidet auch durch sie im Sinne einer Identität, aber letztendlich sind sie ein Werkzeug. And then practice is also to create interior space and interior structures. Now a 200 kilo male, muscular male is quite stable. Usually, anyway. But if he stands on one leg with a foot up and his arms crossed in a yoga posture, he may not be so stable. Now Shiva is shown, isn't it Shiva is shown standing on one foot with a whole number appearing around him, her?

[43:53]

Okay. To stand on one foot in a yoga posture like that, if you've ever done it, requires a breath stability. And that breath stability requires an undistracted mind. If you start thinking about things, you'll fall over. So the stability of breath body mind that is apparent in the posture of standing on one foot, say with your arms behind you or whatever, is another kind of stability than the 200 kilo male has.

[44:55]

So, And we don't have a word, at least in English, for that different kind of stability. And there are some people who are quite frail-looking who you can't push or move. They're more solid than this 200-kilo guy. Now, in Chinese culture, you'd say that the person is full of qi, which translates loosely as energy, but it's not energy in any scientific sense. So let's talk about it as a stability, stillness, but I'd rather say stability, a stability of the breath, body, mind.

[46:20]

Now, here we're using the word body in a special sense, but This breath mind has a greater stability than the physicalness of 200 kilos. So in a sense, it's more your body and more stable than your physical body. Now the sense of the Shiva statue is not that Shiva is dancing. Some people say the world is dance. Some people say the world is dance. And that's one way of looking at it, and that's true, but this is a special sense of dance. In this sense, Shiva standing on one foot in this aura of stuff around him, her, the whole world appears.

[47:36]

It means if you locate yourself in the inner stability of the breath body, a new world appears. Now as Ulrika said to me the other day, don't you think something like this maybe, don't argue with how I, she said something to me like this, don't you think that a shaved head is now a anachronism in this day and age? Or may not be necessary. What? You don't like my haircut? My hair don't. But I saw it, it started me thinking.

[49:08]

Why do policemen wear uniforms? And soldiers. And why do businessmen wear and affect uniforms? And why does Ulrike wear earrings? It's the same question, my shaved head and Marika's earrings. See? Why do we dress up to go outside? And the rules are so powerful. If you dress pretty funny when you go outside, you feel it. Okay, now in Chinese culture, one of the most important elements in the Confucian sort of the big things is ritual. And it's one, I can remember studying it in college and I kept thinking, this is the hardest thing to understand, particularly since I was so anti-ritual.

[50:28]

Now your atoms and your molecules, the molecules and atoms of you, move in a highly articulated space, creating the space as they are articulated. Now, I can't go, because I don't want to take too much time, I can't go into this in much detail, but I want to give you a feel for what I'm talking about. Now, there's two kinds of ignorance in Buddhism. There's not evil in Buddhism, but the big bad guy is ignorance. In Buddhism there are two kinds of ignorance.

[51:38]

There is not the so-called evil in Buddhism, but Buddhism, but the great evil guy, that is ignorance. Now, let's not get involved. You don't have to get yourself involved in the mental dialogue that you know there's evil in the world and how can Buddhism not recognize it? This is a matter of definition and Buddhist culture has decided to create slightly different definitions, but they cover the territory. Okay, but different definitions make a difference. Okay, there's two kinds of ignorance. One kind of ignorance is to not see the consequences of your actions. Through, it's usually expressed, through the obfuscations of greed, hate and delusion.

[52:46]

Now, The other ignorance is to not see the nature of the world. Okay. Now, this is generally said, and shorthand for Buddhism, is you perceive the world as existing and you don't, inherently existing, and you don't see its emptiness. But it also means not just that you don't see emptiness but also that you don't see form. Because as we chant every morning Every day, form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

[54:09]

So, when you don't see form, means that you're seeing the world at a low energy level. Or from a lazy level of mind that generalizes. And so it actually takes less energy to see the world as it is, but to break through the way we usually see it takes a period of more energy. Okay. So the sense of it is And now this is what I'm struggling with too. So I don't know if I'm going to make this very clear. The best I can come up with is it's a way of seeing articulated physical space.

[55:12]

And that leads to subtle physical space. But first you have to see articulated physical space. Okay. Now, again, one of the basic decisions that Buddhist Asian cultures made, which we didn't make, is they see the complexity of the culture produces the complexity of the person. You can see that in MacArthur's decision in Japan to try to get the Japanese to shift away from characters into an alphabet. And the Japanese and Chinese would have too said, if you simplify our language, you simplify us.

[56:32]

We want a language which takes you 15 years to learn because you'll be a different person than if you have a language which takes you five years to learn. And since this culture, Buddhist culture, also sees that the reality is not mind or body, but body-mind, even more than mind-body, body-mind, That the grammar, the logic of the language, there's also a grammar and logic of your physical activity in life. And that's where the orioki and this way of eating comes in.

[57:57]

And I can remember how struck I was when I first learned this. This is a handkerchief, I'm sorry. When you put this on your lap, you put it down so that the hem part is up. And the crease is folded toward your lap. And the crease is folded toward your lap. And instead of just picking it up from the top, which seems natural, you do this extra step of reaching underneath and lifting up and folding it.

[59:02]

So it really struck me, I remember learning it, to reach underneath and lift it up. Now, the Buddha held up a flower supposedly to an audience of many, many people. And only one person in the audience, according to the tradition and the myth, saw the flower. And that was Mahakashipa, who was considered the first ancestor in Zen. And as Thich Nhat Hanh says, telling the story is when the Buddha held up the flower.

[60:24]

If you hold up a flower, you expect someone to see a flower. But this is also, to make it a little more complex, seeing the flower in articulated space. Maybe we could say rather poetically, awakening the flower of your inner space. Now, this morning, you probably noticed in the first period of Zazen, the birds were having their morning symphony. In the second period, they were not singing as much. But it's not just that the birds were singing that you heard. It's that after about ten minutes of zazen, usually people shift to hearing differently.

[61:26]

So that even if, and you're telling Zazen has to have a certain length of time before these kind of things happen. And even if the birds weren't there, you would have heard a world of sound happening in a different way than you usually do. So we really shouldn't speak just of mindfulness. We should also speak of hearingfulness. And seeingfulness. Or hearfulness maybe. Okay, now the last thing I want to point out is what I'm talking about is by looking at this little statue.

[62:55]

Now, you can't see it very well from almost anywhere you are, but I will tell you what is going on. Now, this is Manjushri. And Manjushri is the figure that is usually in a zendo, a Zen Buddhist room like this, and not the Buddha. Usually Manjushri is in zendo. Manjushri is the figure that is usually in a zendo, a Zen Buddhist meditation room, and not the Buddha. Now, what is obvious is this fellow has got this big sword here. And this sword is cutting attachments and so forth.

[64:03]

But it's harder to see that in this other hand, the Manjushri, the Bodhisattva, is holding something very tiny. Okay, what it's holding is a very, very tiny little worm, which actually, if you look carefully, mixes itself up with these kind of robes. which the robes really sort of turn into clouds and the thing that she is holding is actually the stem of this lotus flower and on the lotus flower is sitting a sutra or a teaching

[65:04]

A book, and out of the book is blooming a flower. So the teaching here is, and this, if you look at this, you can see this guy, I use guy for both male and female, this guy is wearing jewels and headdresses and, you know, he, she's pretty far out. Yeah, and he, she is not a monk. Monks don't wear jewelry and headdresses and pile their hair high on their head and so forth. This is an ecstatic layperson like you. and the sense is this hand is cutting entanglements cutting the structures of usual identity and from something almost invisible between the fingers of the other hand

[66:27]

A flower opens, which is the teaching. So this is the sense of what I called articulated physical space and articulated subtle space. And you can see that the jewelry on this fella actually disguises the chakra points. Because the lay person should disguise their chakras. So you have an articulated body space and outer space and subtle space all in this statue.

[67:37]

And when you're in that space, touching your fingers together, the whole flower of Buddhism, of Buddha lands appears. Okay, so I don't want to burden you or glamorize what we're doing here. But what we're doing here is quite harmless. We're not polluting the environment too much. Less than if we were probably on the highway. And we are each of you trying to produce this guy inside you. So this guy can appear now in Sasheen. This male-female ecstatic lay person.

[69:02]

And when you go back to your daily life, not to replace your daily life, But to become substructures or in-between structures that inform your daily life. And the genius of Chinese Buddhism And the teaching of Taoism and Confucianism, which preceded Buddhism, was to create a rich everyday life which absorbed the spiritual life and manifested the spiritual life. But first of all, to know, to do some practice, some cultivation, which allows you to know this way of being that includes waking, deep sleep and dreaming,

[70:24]

that knows the world in such a way that at first requires quite a lot of energy from you and the Sashin schedule is meant to push some of this energy into you But it doesn't work unless you can also take a vacation within it, if you can also relax within it. And then through that relaxation, which is also a joy, To allow that to turn in to the sort of undercurrent within your daily life.

[71:30]

So the secret of Sashin is to do it and to find a way to relax within it. Okay, I'm sorry I went into such detail, but I barely get started, but thank you very much for your patience and for Ulrike's translation. Thank you very much. Okay. Now I'm trying to study, observe what I find myself teaching you.

[72:41]

And maybe Mark will be able to, at the end of the session, say if it's much different than teaching in America. And maybe Mark will be able to, at the end of the session, say if it's much different than teaching in America. I'd like to ask you a survey question first. Mark and Steve are only hearing this talk once in English, right? And David, I guess you hear it in German and English, but you're the only English-speaking person who hears it in German and English. And do the rest of you hear it in both English and German, or do some of you really only pay attention to one or the other? I mean, do some of you only listen to it in German? You basically only listen in German.

[73:50]

What? He said she helped to translate it for us. Oh. So mostly in German you listen to it. But most of the rest of you listen to in both English and German? Okay, the reason I'm asking is because I notice that I don't make things as clear in English when I'm being translated. I leave some of it up to you. And I definitely leave emphasizing.

[74:55]

I would talk about something a couple of different ways in English, but since you're already hearing it twice, I only talk about it one way in English. Also, wenn ich nicht übersetzt werden würde, würde ich manche Dinge noch etwas mehr betonen oder deutlicher machen. Aber da ich ja sowieso schon übersetzt werde und ihr das zweimal hört, mache ich das nicht. It's funny when I go back to Crestone, because when I first start teaching in there, I wait always. I say something and wait. Nothing happens. Maybe, Mark, you could repeat it in English for me. When I go back to Crestone, I always wait a few seconds for the translation. Maybe, Mark, you can just repeat it in English. Oh boy. You see, I'm acutely aware of your seriousness as apprentices or students and as of your potential.

[76:16]

So I'm perplexed sometimes or surprised by the things I'm drawn to talk to you about. Which are actually, when I think about it, pretty boring for me to tell you about. They're not actually boring to me, but they're boring in the telling. And I know, you know, like Mark and his wife Lynn started practicing in Santa Fe, coming down from Albuquerque. And in effect, I related to them in a way which said, if you really want to know more about this stuff, you better come to Creston.

[77:33]

Because there's many things I can't teach you, so you have to come to Creston if you want to learn. Laman Pang lived, what, 1,500 years ago or so. He took all his possessions after hearing the Dharma, put all his possessions in a boat and all his money and sank it in the river and then started practicing. And Mark and Lynn almost did that in the Rio Grande. But I don't expect you to do that.

[78:46]

And though in some sense of it, if you understand the feeling of that and the being free of your possessions, that's good. Anyway, one of the big differences in practicing with you is that I can't say to you, come to Crestone. So I'm led to try to tell you about things that I know are useful in lay practice. But are kind of dumb to tell you about. Yeah, and to have it make much sense. What do you mean? It's kind of dumb to tell you about these things and And to tell you in any way that makes much sense.

[80:05]

You don't have to translate it. You see how dumb this is getting. She can't even translate it. So one example of this is when you have the sutra card. And people are collecting them, picking them up at the end of the service or meal. In general, if a person is collecting it, you hold it so you can read it. And you pass it to the other person so that they can read it. And I feel real dumb telling you these things. Of course, if there's a lot of people and it's a big hurry, it may be easier for you just to pass it to them without this gesture.

[81:29]

But I suppose technically, if I try to explain this, you might call it linking. So that, for example, one thing I do when I am driving, as I may have mentioned, if I see a dead animal on the road, I always give a little bow. And it's often been very strange for my passenger, you know, they say, what are you doing? And Brother David and I, Brother David reminded me the other day when I saw him that we were doing it together driving across the United States and there were so many insects hitting the window and so many dead rabbits.

[82:41]

So we just kept it continuous. He'd take turns. Now it's your turn. I look like an erotic religious fanatic. Oh, that's... And just now when Steve came in to get me, I gave him a match to light the incense. So he didn't have to climb through my desk to get to the matches. But he climbed over there anyway and lit the incense from the candle instead of from the match.

[83:54]

Because he thought it was more respectful to the incense to light it from a candle. So you see how neurotic we get. You don't want to... So I could ask myself when I'm driving, why don't I just acknowledge the dead rabbit or whatever it is, whatever creature in my mind? Well, this whole thing is part of a practice that I'm going to try to explain a little bit. Basically it's the practice of seeing the world in Dharma units.

[85:18]

You do and experience everything in its separateness. Right now I'm sitting here. I raise my hand and put it down. I straighten my back. I inhale. Each thing is like a little separate world that I do. Now, this kind of doing things which you generally pick up by practicing with others, they're not explained, is very characteristic of Zen practice, of Buddhist practice in general. You can see it in people right away. Well, if I just acknowledged the rabbit, the dead rabbit in my mind, I could do that.

[86:41]

Sometimes I do that. When you give a lecture, I had to give a lecture and... Italy recently and there's no way to sit like this so Ulrike and I sat in front of the tables speaking to people. Everybody else sat behind the table. Because when you speak to people, you're supposed to present your whole body.

[87:42]

So, I mean, I used to, when I first started lecturing in non-Buddhist situations, I used to feel funny if I couldn't sit cross-legged. And Martin, who probably remembers since he organized several conferences in which I spoke, they often arranged strange tables for me to sit on top of and things like that. Everyone else sits behind the table. I climb up on top of it. And actually, when I first start climbing up, I think, this is ridiculous. But once I get up there, I feel fine. But after having done this long enough, I now, without sitting cross-legged, can convey the same feeling, or pretty close to that, just sitting in a chair.

[89:15]

But it's still pretty hard to do it if you're standing at a podium, just your head speaking like a bust. If you've ever noticed, Buddhas are always presented as statues with their whole body. Only in museums and western homes do you see a head of a Buddha's head. Yes. In America, it looks like most high school principals never had bodies. There's a lineup of their heads in high schools. And in fact, my librarian I used to go to in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has a head of Goethe, just his head.

[90:42]

Anyway, there's this tradition of engaging the whole of you in each situation. Now, again, as I say, this is not usually explained. It's just presented. And you learn it or don't learn it through its presentation. But this is an experiment for me to try to tell you something about it. So if you Just acknowledge it in your mind, that's one thing.

[91:47]

And if you acknowledge it fully enough, you can express the whole full lotus posture even though you're sitting on a chair. But that ability is realized through the practice of first acknowledging something in your mind, then bringing your attention to it, and then naming it, and then engaging yourself in it in some way. And then implicating yourself in it. Now, engaging myself, for instance, in a dead animal, I see it, a dead animal, and I say, oh, it's a rat.

[92:58]

And then I say, aha, it's a rabbit. Then I physically engage myself in that recognition which I brought my attention to and then named. And then so I do a bow, I do something, that's my physical engagement. And then implication, the sense of implication is that you are part of it, you're mixed up in it. I'm also driving and may run over a rabbit. And the implication is the compassion side of it. Mm-hmm.

[93:44]

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