As I spoke about this pause for the question, what is it? And how this makes a spatial pause. A spatial moment. And I think if you continue practicing, you'll find out how important the spatializing of experience is. So this pausing, this spatial pause for the question, what is it? is a seed for many later more developed practices. Okay. I feel that what I'm doing and what we're doing must be pretty good. Because I'm very impressed with your practice.

[01:20]

And I feel very supported by your practice. And I seem to be able to see most of you at least once a year. But still, this whole thing of how to create an adept lay sangha is a real challenge. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just trying. So when you speak to me like you did this morning and tell me what happened in the small groups, etc., It's very helpful to me to sort of get a more great, graduated, and layered feeling for how we should proceed in this, in developing a lay, adept practice. Which I think is the major difference between Asian Buddhism and Western Buddhism.

[02:41]

But we don't really know if it's going to work. I started the practice period... last September. Last January. In my mind I do two practice periods in a year. January. Was it only January? Anyway, January. I started with a statement of Tien Dong Ru Ching, Dogen's teacher. practitioners of the 90-day practice period form the structure of true practice and carve a cave in emptiness. It's a great statement known by itself.

[04:07]

Whoa, okay baby, we're ready. Okay. Practitioners of the 90-day practice period. Form the structure of true practice and carve a cave in emptiness. And then he said, please complete these two things. And the whole emphasis of Ru Jing and Dogen is really you form true practice in the 90-day practice period. And really the implication is it can't be done otherwise. And, you know, it may be true. Or at least one version of true practice. And it does seem like the Dharma Sangha in Europe is, at least those who are willing to take care of Johanneshof and make it their life, have all practiced at Creston.

[05:42]

But I'm still very impressed with your practice as I am with those who practice at Creston. And Suzuki Roshi was committed and I continue his commitment and my own feeling. Adept lay practice must be possible. And as I pointed out before, he himself felt, even though he grew up in a temple, he still was somehow also a lay person. We could say that practice period represents an external renunciation.

[06:56]

For 30 days or for 90 days or three months, you say, my highest priority is practice, not my family, not my job, not my health. That's not like renunciation of a Catholic monk where it's all your life. This is for three months to see if you can actually put everything aside except what happens through practice. But as I said yesterday, there's also what I would call an internal renunciation. When you recognize that what you call you is primarily formed by your family, your friends, your culture.

[08:13]

And you take that you away from society and make it your own you and you practice in a kind of space free of social and psychological considerations. And so maybe the internal renunciation is more fundamental than the external renunciation, or they can work together, of course. And maybe with the internal renunciation you can really feel that like I take my wedding ring off when I sit. You do not traditionally wear wedding ring or jewelry while you're sitting.

[09:22]

I've lost it once because of that. I had to get another one made. Sometimes I miss it, but it's a symbolic but real gesture that I'm not married when I'm sitting. I'm not a social being. But after Zazen, if I can find it, I put it back on. Or if Marie-Louise is about to come into the room. Okay. So how, you know, in China they have this idea of the Confucian and the Taoist.

[10:30]

And you're the Taoist when you take a couple of years off because, or time off because your parent died or because you're retiring or something. But you're a Confucian and an administrator or whatever in the middle period of your life. Administrator, you mean like have a high job or something? No, administrator just means you work in an office or take care of something. Yeah, but the idea is actually more subtle than that. The idea is more that you're simultaneously a Taoist and a Confucian. Like perhaps as I said yesterday, you look out the window and you're a Taoist.

[11:33]

You look back at your desk in your confusion and you're confused. And my confusion practice is more like that. And you know, even if you knew the Buddha, and even if you were related to the Buddha, here's this glorious, wonderful Buddha, and boy, his younger half-brother said, hell, I like my girlfriend better. So Buddha's Ashwagosha has written a long poem about Nanda, the Buddha's younger half-brother. And he had this beautiful wife.

[12:35]

And he just said, this is a hell of a lot better than the monastery. And it took him a long time to decide to become a monk. Yeah, if the Buddha can't even convince his younger half-brother, you know. Partly the point of Ashwagandha's poem, as I understand it, It's really to respect lay life and love life as well as monastic life. And luckily, we can marry as long as we take our wedding ring and our zazen. Okay. So... We could also say the subject of what I've been speaking about this weekend is carving a cave in emptiness.

[13:53]

Sorry, give me one second to find a good word for carving. So when you pause for the question, what is it? This is a small little cave of emptiness.

[14:53]

If you can feel that little cave in emptiness, which is separate from society and the definitions of yourself through others, With that kind of path mind, perhaps we can actually carve a cave in emptiness and form the structure of true practice. Okay, now we have a few more zazen instructions. Okay, so let me speak about, let me say that another basic zazen instruction is to count your breaths.

[15:59]

Okay, now, of course, when you count your breath and it's positively stated, like the other three don'ts, don't move, don't scratch, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Well, To count your breaths is also to not invite your thoughts to tea. Or let's say not to invite your friends to a sewing party. Because counting your breaths is a little like the breath is the needle and the attention is the thread and you're sewing mind and body together. So to bring attention to the breath, it is also a way of concentrating the mind.

[17:13]

But you're concentrating the mind by embodying the mind by weaving or sewing mind and body together through the needle and thread of breath and attention. Okay. So why the other most, along with don't move, why the other most basic instruction? We could say don't move is to transcend body and mind. Or don't move is a way of dropping off body and mind. So the dropped off body and mind is one of the minds of zazen. And the practice of counting your breaths is the body mind of zazen. Okay. That clear?

[19:03]

OK. And as I've said, there are many fruits of transformational fruits of having attention on the breath. And again, as I say, it's possible to do it. It's realizable, etc. If your intent is clear and deep enough. And you've got the rest of your life. Sure, it's a snap. It's what we call a no-brainer. A no-brainer means it takes no thought. It's easy to do. All it takes is intent. All of this stuff is a no-brainer.

[20:20]

Remember that the don't invite your thoughts to tea is just six little words. Remember that the don't invite your thoughts to tea is just six little words. Now the next basic posture of zazen is what I call uncorrected mind. Now in uncorrected mind it means whatever appears, you let it appear. Now, in all of these practices when you're starting them they're all about the same. But when you've tried each of these for a year or two You begin to feel differences between them.

[21:30]

For example, to not invite your thoughts to tea is to treat your thoughts like guests that don't belong in your house. And you keep not inviting them to tea and eventually they go away. They have a certain pride and they feel treated terribly. I'm not going to stay around here. But when your uncorrected mind is more you let whatever appears appear and they're like family members. And you don't know why exactly they're in your house, but they're in your house and they're family. So we could say uncorrected but examined mind. So uncorrected mind is a practice in which you trust whatever appears

[22:49]

You accept whatever appears and you accept it as sort of belonging to you part of the world but at the same time you're rather a detached observer. A little anecdote in just to change the I lived in Japan, my family lived in Japan with this extraordinary woman who lived to be over 100, Nakamura Sensei. And she was the number one, this is just an anecdote for the heck of it, She was the number one wife, number one daughter of the number one wife of a Tokyo lawyer.

[24:03]

Who had four legal wives and three non-legal wives. This is quite a guy. He must have read the tale of Genji too often. Anyway, he traveled between seven households. He had to be rich enough to set up seven households. Each was servants and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And he traveled between the houses in a palanquin. It's one of those things you hold in your shoulder.

[25:08]

And she said, you know, I would have liked to have loved my father, but I never saw him. When he did visit her house, they all had to be on the droka with their heads down as he went by. Okay. I don't know why I'm telling you this, but it's just fun. Okay. Just look at the different kinds of lives we have in this world. So we... I'm leaving out parts I'm fast forwarding the tape yeah and so she ended up being living in the house that I inherited from Gary Schneider that's what you know

[26:27]

She was great. She really became a teacher for me and a friend and grandmother and she lived with us for decades and came to America with us. She had been married to one of the heads of the the president of the largest Japanese bank and she didn't like the way she was treated as a wife and she left. She was one of the first women to go to university in Japan and she studied and read Proust in French. So one time while we were in this little house where she lived upstairs and we lived downstairs, a young woman showed up at the door who was something like the third daughter of one of the non-legal wives Or rather, I think the granddaughter, or the daughter of a daughter of a non-legal woman, well, she really wasn't allowed in our house.

[27:55]

I thought it was perfectly fine that she would stay with us for a while, but no, she had to sleep in the kitchen or something on the floor and she had to wash outside in a sort of bucket. These rules were so deep that she just had to be treated differently. Okay, well, so that's sort of how you treat the thoughts. In an uncorrected mind. Some sort of family member, but you don't remember how you relate. Yeah. I mean, isn't that the cousin of my third... Alright, so uncorrected mind, in the posture of uncorrected mind, I think it's best to keep the eyes lightly closed.

[29:22]

as long as you're able to not have closed eyelids trigger sleep so lightly closed and then whatever appears you just let it be And you develop one of the basic yogic skills non-interfering observing awareness. You're a kind of detached observer. That isn't kind of in question. What is the What's observed, the observed is you and the detached observer, that's, you know, you can explore all that.

[30:27]

And you can sort of play with shifting the detached observer to a third cousin. You're sort of like a sociologist. I'm not really involved. I'm just studying all of you. But maybe sociologist isn't the right word because maybe you're a mentalologist. Or a mindologist. So you're really uncorrected but examined mind is the way you study the mind. It's in a more advanced practice how you deeply look into cognition. How you deeply look into the way thinking and emotions arise.

[31:47]

Now at first it's just a practice of uncorrecting, of not correcting. And you enter more and more into the field of mind. And the field of mind which has its own cohesiveness or integrity. independent of the contents or what appears. And now you have the overlap of the instruction, don't move. Because now your deep experience of not moving is coincident with the field of mind which is the detached observer. And now, like Akshobhya is called the immovable. So an Adi Buddha, the deepest sense of a Buddha, the quality of such a Buddha is called immovable or imperturbable.

[33:17]

So through... The practice of uncorrected mind is one of the ways you realize immovable mind. So the practice of uncorrected mind is the most basic in terms of... Well, all of zazen practice is rooted in don't move.

[34:26]

But once that's a given, Then most of adept practice for whatever your life is, the length of your life is, is the practice of uncorrected but examined mind. Okay. And, you know, you begin to, I mean, you'll find out for yourself, but you begin to be in a space which often has a color to it.

[35:31]

And the tone and color of the space. And how things appear. And how vividly and so forth. And how far away they are in the space. And how you can bring them forward and bring them into detail and move them around and so forth. With this mind you can study how the mind works. what appears, what doesn't appear.

[36:34]

And associations arise. Sometimes things just appear. Sometimes they are associated with things. But the associations can be paratactic or narrative. Narrative means they're connected with some sort of story. Paratactic means they're just side by side. And if you have a scientific or philosophical bent, This is extremely satisfying to find yourself in the midst of mind feeling and observing it functioning. Well, I've never expressed, explained or talked about uncorrected mind so much.

[37:37]

Look at what you guys have done. Okay. That's enough, don't you think? It doesn't change the clock. So I can say one other teaching. Have you ever seen the northern lights? Or movies of the northern lights? They're fantastic.

[38:40]

They play, particularly if you're on one of the poles, they play all through the sky every night. And sometimes it's shades of green, shades of one color. Sometimes it's mostly white. We see them occasionally at Crestone. Have you ever seen them at Crestone? And I remember once, and I don't know how the heck my father knew, but when I lived in Indiana when I was a little, when I was, you know, a boy, And Indiana is pretty far south to see the northern lights.

[39:44]

The reflections off the ice, which is melting. Anyway, somehow my father knew that there was going to be this extraordinary northern lights display before it happened. I don't know how the heck he knew. So he said, tonight we're going out behind our house with our backyard golf course. We lived next to the first tee. To the next tee? First tee. Tee is when you tee off. OK. Yeah. Not green tea.

[40:45]

Anyway, and balls used to bounce off our house all the time. Yeah. I used to collect the balls and sell them later. I never hid them from the golfer, though. Okay, so he said, let's go out on the golf course. We went out on the golf course, which is a big space, right? And the whole sky was like a jukebox. Jukebox? Juke means to zigzag. They don't have jukeboxes anymore. They have jukepods. I don't know. Anyway, so... Okay. Now I've spoken obviously often about like how you bring a phrase like already connected to each percept.

[41:56]

And now there's many fruits of bringing already connected to each appearance. What you can also bring, and I don't know how to describe it exactly, a more elaborate, a more complexly articulated wisdom to each situation. To each appearance. Okay. Now, let me put that aside for a moment and speak about non-dualism. Non-dualism is such a basic idea in Buddhism. And in various ways, the idea and the possibility informs our practice.

[43:13]

But in the context or mandala of this particular seminar, I would like to say that you can't think non-dualism. you can't mentally grasp non-duality. Because to think it or grasp it mentally is dualistic. So you can only feel it. And so in many ways, in many practices, lead you into a kind of letting go of thinking and you just feel the world. And the more you can sort of step away from thinking and step into feeling, then the world can feel interconnected.

[44:29]

And the more you're familiar with that, that feeling, you're acting within a non-dual field. Okay, I don't want to say more about that. Okay, so let's go back to the northern lights. Okay, so we can know intellectually that everything is interconnected. And we can see instances of that. And we can practice entering into it through a phrase like already connected. But now I want to suggest that you can take the feeling of interconnectedness and interpenetration as a kind of non-visual image.

[45:50]

A feel for the world. Okay. So there's a very charming and articulate blackbird that loves to sit on the back rail of our apartment in Freiburg. Yeah. And it's such a beautiful bird, and I love its singing. And the idea of four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie is really in Congress. It's so in Congress you know this is a political statement about things in England at the time. 420 Blackbirds is really about some sort of political situation in England. That was a flippy-dote, I mean an anecdote.

[47:19]

So, it just appeared. A family member. So this blackbird I like very much. He just stands there and he's just about as far from me as you. Yeah. And you know, if I stand there more in awareness without thinking, And I've discovered at Crestona, if I approach animals, the deer and others, with awareness rather than thinking, the animals don't run away very quickly. Okay. So if I stand there and kind of just feel this blackbird, and sometimes I make reassuring little sounds to him.

[48:46]

I don't really know. And when I make these, I hope, reassuring little sounds, he kind of coughs his head in. And he'll stay a long time, five, ten minutes, and then he goes off somewhere and then comes back. And I have a real specific experience, something like, we're all part of, and this is, you know, words, But the feeling is more interesting than the words. We're all part of one kind of being. And this being as becoming becomes the blackbird and becomes me.

[50:04]

And though I can't see the connection, I can feel the connection appearing as the blackbird and appearing as me. I can feel being appearing as the black bird and appearing as me simultaneously. Now, I mean, we humans have this extraordinary consciousness. which is able to do such extraordinary rational thinking and so forth. But from the point of view of Buddhist practice, awareness is even more extraordinary. An awareness joined to consciousness is the dynamic duo. But what I find is the blackbird and the bear and the deer have an awareness that is at least as developed as mine. And when I see a bird using a twig as a tool to open a seed and then go through another level and finally eat something from a tree,

[51:32]

Their awareness sure knows a lot. So when I'm with animals, not that often, but we, you know, I'm an animal, what do you mean? I'm good friends with an animal called me, or Gissel. Gisela. Okay. So... You understand the concept.

[52:48]

That being is actually manifest, it's one being, sort of an interrelated being, manifest in these various ways. Now, the way you take a phrase already connected. you take this more complex, non-visual image, this feel, and you practice seeing it all the time. So when I look at you, if I practice this, I feel one being that I'm part of appearing as Richard, appearing as Gerhard, appearing as Gelinda. And I practice that. And this is considered a fairly advanced practice.

[53:49]

But you have learned now to take on, like I take on a phrase, I take on this image, this wisdom image. And it becomes a kind of play and dance like the northern lights of being appearing in you, appearing here, pulsing and moving in the room. In other words, it's a kind of, you know, I make it up as an idea first because I know it's sort of true. And then I practice it by entering into this play and dance. And the sense of a shared awareness is a big part of it when it's animals and people.

[54:57]

And you find, I find myself, what words shall I use, in the splendor and poetry of being. Okay, is that enough for now, before lunch? One. See if I get another one in there. Let's sit for a moment. Is the mind a space of the Sazen?

[57:43]

Is the mind a space of the Sazen? The same as your body or different from your body? Is it within or without or everywhere? Does it have a Light color or is it just clear? This is to study the mind.

[58:25]

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