So what we're trying to do in our Zen monastic choreography is to create a situation where we're just together. Outside of likes and dislikes. And outside of our usual habits. And of course the meal is set up, it's not a cafeteria style. It's set up so we serve each other. So when we come in together and then we bow and then we separate and serve each other, we're actually building this sangha body. Beyond whether we like each other or not, some kind of sangha body starts to appear. And we begin to be filled with our shared nature.

[01:13]

Not the nature we know from ego of likes and dislikes. But some deeper nature. Sometimes it appears like there's a big storm or a flood or something. Everybody feels some common humanity or something like that. But life is a constant storm, so we ought to feel this all the time. In any case, our practice is to open us more to this shared nature. And it's thought that the more we come to know this shared nature beyond likes and dislikes, It gives tremendous power to our practice.

[02:45]

And some deep joy and satisfaction. And to realize fully our humanness, we need this power of our shared nature. This is why the basic vow is to be in accord with all sentience. This is the vow to realize our shared nature. So maybe a good thing to do in your practice.

[04:04]

As I said, find yourself in each physical act. See if you can let your mind sort of just sink away. Like sink into the sand of the body, like a wave or something. Between alienation and friendship, no difference. On the ancient fully blossomed plum tree, the southern branch owns the whole spring.

[05:08]

It also does the northern branch. Thank you very much. Let us, in the same way, bring back every being and every place to the true service of the brotherhood. Shud-do-moh-hem-seh-yam-dom Satsang with Mooji Utsudhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobhobh

[06:37]

The way of the Brunei is unsurpassable. I pray that it may be fulfilled. Satsang with Mooji

[07:57]

Why are you acting like this? Why are you acting like this? Why are you acting like this? Allayu shen, jesu vi'o keshita tenma tsora'an. A'ayun tat'o nara, v'etren'en'a, v'olk'o nara'a. Fit'n'sich'a a'ayun tat'o nara, v'etren'en'a, v'olk'o nara'a. Fit'n'sich'a a'ayun tat'o nara, v'etren'en'a, v'olk'o nara'a. Fit'n'sich'a a'ayun tat'o nara, v'etren'en'a, v'olk'o nara'a. No matter which way and how you look at it and how you look at it, I believe the truth is that I get half to that far. I think I'll start Doksan tomorrow.

[09:41]

I usually start on the fifth day, but I'd like to get to know you better. Even though we're already connected, it's nice to make some connections. So if I start tomorrow, it means I'll have time to see some of you more than once. If you want, I mean, you're only forced to see me once. Yeah. I heard some rumors that, um, I started some rumors that someone said the last Sashins were too easy.

[10:48]

It was reported to me that they think I started the rumors because the Dharma Sangha CIA has been unable to find who could have possibly said such a thing. I wouldn't have been able to find out who really started this rumor. Yeah, and I didn't start any rumors. And another rumor I heard was that I'm getting old. And when you get old, you want to become tougher because you're getting weaker. Might be true. But I think when you get older, you get younger and you go back to the days when things were tougher.

[12:05]

But anyway, seriously, we'll have to see. The thing that concerns me is, is there enough time in the breaks for... the toilets because we have less than 40 or 50 toilets. But I'm impressed. You're all doing quite well. And the day is the same length. We just shifted things around a little bit. But you don't want to go back to, you know, if I really go back to the sashins I started with, you don't, maybe you'd like it, I don't know.

[13:08]

Yeah, I mean, for one thing, there were no Zabutons. There was a Zafu, but you sat on tatami, and tatamis are like concrete when they're new, especially. I remember it very clearly. At some point in Tassajara, Sukhriya asked me to sit on the altar. And to give the altar definition, each place, Sukhiroshi's and mine, and I don't know, Katagiri Roshi maybe? Each head up. had a Zabuton to define it. And the Zendo had a jealousy attack because they were quite angry that I got a Zabuton and they had to sit on it.

[14:23]

I thought it was very strange because it just went with the place I had. So I remember I couldn't take it down and I didn't know what to do, but anyway, I survived. In any case, there were... We had no Zabutons and there were no 30-minute periods at all. There were mostly 40 and occasional 50s. And as you heard the story, there were always, almost every Sashin, a few periods, at least one or two, that were an hour and a half to two hours. And I feel, you know, rather than I'm being tough, I feel maybe I'm not...

[15:24]

Maybe I'm not being strict enough. Some of these periods are in Sukyurish, this biography of Sukyurish. The longest one was two and a half hours. And it's the first really long one that I ever sat through, too. And only Grand Petya and I sat through the full two and a half hours. A friend of mine named Graham Petsche. Graham Petsche. And he always sat through them. So I don't know how I sat through it, but I did. But I teased him afterwards because he leaned forward once like that. Okay. He was much stronger in those days.

[16:44]

Yeah. But it was possible because Sukhiroshi rang the bell. We didn't ring the bell. So he's very forgetful. And he'd wander in and look at the schedule and wander out again. Because he'd go do things. We'd hear him go downstairs or upstairs. Sometimes we'd hear him coming down and we'd think... We'd hear him open the door and look in. And I think you all know how long five minutes can be. Yeah. I've told you about this before, but I was reminded of it because I had to edit this book.

[17:59]

I don't feel I'm being very successful in trying to talk about what I'd like to talk to you about. Maybe I should just give you Zazen instruction and that would be enough. But one of the things I'm talking about certainly is to trust your body. I'm trying to give you a feeling for that. I know. I tried to fit into our schedule next year. Sometimes I say Charlotte Silver was my first teacher. Perhaps, actually my first teacher might have been a Sufi or Muslim in Iran when I was working on ships in the Near East.

[19:18]

Anyway, he inspired me with the perfection that's possible in a human being. I still feel his presence. And then some years later, when I was 24 or 25, I don't remember, I met Charlotte Selver and Sukhiroshi at the same time. And she's now 98. She is now 98 years old. She doesn't see much anymore and has never heard much.

[20:38]

Gérald and Gisela, you've met her before, isn't that right? No, ten years ago. Ten years ago, when she was only 88. When she was only 88 years old. A spring chicken. Gérald and Gisela have already met. Yeah, so I'm not old yet. I don't like these rumors. You have me tottering around. This is actually when I leave the room, I pull it out. It only looks like a Zen stick. So we went to see her at St. Ulrich a few months ago, right? So she's... She is willing to come here and lead a seminar or something with me or on her own.

[22:02]

And we've been talking back and forth on the phone. But finally, we cannot figure out any dates. And I was willing to give her one of my seminars in June. It's the only time she can be at St. Ulrich where she's been. It's just south of Freiburg where she's been every year for many years. She lives in California now. But she comes to Germany for a couple, I don't know, six weeks or two months every year. Every year she says it might be my last, but then she really wants to come again, so here she's coming.

[23:11]

So she asked me, because I would like to introduce her to you and you to her, She's going to be at the St. Ulrich from the 21st to the 27th and it's pretty hard for her to change her routine. given her age. So she asked me, please invite my students to come to St. Ulrich next year, from June 21st to 27th. Maybe you have to go to the whole thing, maybe you can go to part. So I'm mentioning it. And she's a teacher.

[24:13]

Her name is Charlotte Wittgenstein, her maiden name. And... She actually studied in Berlin in the 20s, I guess. In any case, she started, she's really, her and her teacher are the source of this movement called sensory awareness. And you know, you might find it a little boring to, because, you know, it's hard to get a feel for her at this time, probably, but she still has people who study with her regularly. But she gave me a feeling for something. Her language is extraordinary.

[25:13]

In simple things. For example, the first time I met her, I've told some of you this before. She just said when we were going to stand up instead of saying stand up she said come up to standing. And I guess I noticed her and I heard her And for the first time in my life, I think it was, I didn't traverse a mental space, I traversed a physical space.

[26:23]

Instead of going from point A to point B, I went through hundreds of points to come to standing. And I guess I felt her do the same thing, and it caught the feeling. Now, I could ask myself, what made me hear that differently and not just do my habit? And I don't know what it was that made me do it differently and not within my old habit.

[27:26]

Yes, the habit of just standing up. Once you know the world is round, it's fairly easy to observe it. Even from this observation tower here. But certainly if you sit on the dock or you're ever on a boat, it's only about 13 miles, and I think it is, and ships disappear below the horizon. If you watch a ship disappear, having been on ships a lot, it's very clear they disappear from the bottom up. So it's clear.

[28:33]

It's not distance that's hiding them, but just they're not disappearing in the distance. They're being hidden by the curve of the earth. So it's quite interesting that so many people for so long thought the world was flat because they thought the world was flat. I mean, millions of people thought it was flat when it's observable. It doesn't take special scientific instruments. It's observable that it's not. And we think we live in a container. And I think that's almost as big a delusion as the world being flat. A world of mental space.

[29:48]

Yeah, I mean, if you do this, you know, this little game. You take your hands and you put them like this. See, I can still do it. Oh, how young. And then somebody says, move such and such a finger, and you say, oh, God, I can't do it. Well, that only means you have a mental image of the body. Your body is a mental space. Otherwise, you could do it very simply, because you're... this finger remains the same. It's just now on the left side instead of the right side. Let's see, where is it? Yes, reversed. It looks like it's reversed, but it's not. So a little thing like that makes it very clear that we... are trying to move our mental body, not our physical body.

[30:58]

And our physical body remains the same, no matter how much you pretzel it. So if I touch this? Another way of looking at it is that I'm actualizing the table, the table platform, and the platform is actualizing my finger. This is a cane, you know. If that's the way I use it.

[32:13]

And for New Year's, it's one of those party favors. You know, that blow out those paper things. Or it's... you know, a back scratcher. That's originally what it was, a back scratcher. And because it reaches anywhere, it means it's a wisdom staff. So, this is what, this, this is what What this is, is the use I make of it. So I'm always actualizing time and space. What I'm trying to do is suggest that yes, maybe we need two natures. One nature that lives in this container of time and space.

[33:28]

And one nature that knows there's no time and space. It's only the actualization of moment after moment. Each moment you grasp time and space. If I use this as a Zen stick, I grasp all time and space comes together and makes this a Zen stick. Only mentally is there a container here. And this mental body you have is also a kind of shield. Again, when you see that, it's your mental body you're trying to function through. And this mental body dominates the senses.

[34:37]

So Sashin is trying to break you out of this. So you just sit there. And open yourself to what, shall I say, somatic intelligence. I have a little notebook I keep. And before I give a lecture, sometimes I write down what Dogen said or something I want to remind myself of. So I'm now in Notebook 51 on page 87. So I wrote down page 87. But then I started to think, well, this is the third day of Sashin.

[35:55]

And I looked and I hadn't written 87, I'd written 83. Hmm. So, before I thought about this as the third day, something made my hand write 83, even though I was thinking 87. I mean, I think all of us have had this kind of little experience. I'm typing. And I'm typing the word mind. But later on, a sentence or so later, I'm planning to type, I hadn't thought of it yet, but I know I eventually typed the word wind. And then I look and I see that I've typed the word wind in the first place where I meant to type mind.

[37:02]

So again, I'm saying, which I've said many times, there's some kind of somatic intelligence, imminence, It is much faster and far-reaching than our consciousness. It's symbolizing this Buddha by these circles. And if you look at this Buddha, he, she is very concentrated. There's the circle of his head and the shoulders and the robes and so forth.

[38:06]

These are circles which expand outward and expand inward. But that kind of experience is where everything's centered. Each of us is center and actualizing time and space. You can't be out of time. You can only say in a very comparative mental sense, I have no time. Because you are the actualization of time and space. This whole room which we see mentally is actually infinite numbers of time and space being instances of time and space being actualized.

[39:19]

Good. Sounds good. And we have the window open. And it actualizes the wind. What is the wind? The wind is actualized by the cold air off the Rhine. By the ocean currents in the Atlantic. The wind is constantly being actualized. It's actualized when it hits the French coast. It's actualized when it hits the hills, mountains here of the Black Forest. And it's actualized when it comes in the window. So... There's no permanent wind out there.

[40:28]

The wind is constantly being actualized. You think, oh, there's a wind out there that's coming in the window. No. Yeah, you can think of it that way, and the weather report tells you it's like that. But the wind says, oh, isn't it fun to come in the window? It's much nicer than blowing over the Atlantic. For the wind, it's the same. Coming in the window, blowing over the Atlantic, you know. Going into your lungs. So somehow we need to slip out of the container into the center. Where you are never lost. You're always settled on yourself.

[41:36]

Actualizing yourself. Grasping time and space. Maybe that's what I wanted to say. At least it's closer. Thank you for your help.

[42:05]

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