Neil, as translator, we can go almost anywhere. The German just goes. And then, you know, he could be my bodyguard, too. Oh, yeah. I'd love to... I'll protect you. Yeah, you will. Thanks. Furious and students. Uh-huh. Okay, so, let me say, I've talked recently about noticing the distinction between self and other. And it's most vivid often when you are thinking about another person. Or talking with another person. Your mind is saying, oh, they're that kind of person and I'm this kind of person.

[01:02]

It's true, everyone knows you're two different people. But why is your mind abiding in the distinction? So you notice your mind is somehow... making itself sick and strong, and I don't know what you think you're doing, but we think we're doing something interesting by making the distinction between self and other. So when you notice you're doing it, have a little phrase, no self, no other. If you say it purely enough, sometimes the other person appears in a bright light.

[02:18]

This is just practical antidotes. It doesn't mean you... Still there's self and other, but you're developing a mind that's not always caught in the distinction. This is a basic teaching in Buddhism. Don't abide in the distinction between self and other. And inside and outside, same. You notice you are thinking outside, inside, no. I've often told the story of when I, on these railroad tracks, threw down this piece of paper, this cigarette packet, And I went into, started into the warehouse where I was in charge of sweeping up the warehouse.

[03:31]

And I thought, In the warehouse, I'd sweep it up. Why did I throw it down on these railroad tracks? Because I think it's outside. And I realized this is a false distinction. So I picked up the cigarette packet and I threw away the distinction between inside and outside. And ever since then I see everything as a big inside. Now, these kind of changes help. Because, as it says, our consciousness is separated, is not apart from... uncontrived pure awareness.

[04:46]

But we experience it as apart from because of these contrivances of this distinction between self and other and inside and outside. On a practical level, these are real distinctions. But they're not real distinctions at the level of wisdom. Okay. Now what I want to say when I'm trying to get to it here I don't know if I can make the point, but memory is the shape of human space. Now we're back to the matrix of enlightenment is the accumulated impressions stored in the repository consciousness.

[06:08]

Now two people told me experiences they had. Something pretty simple, but... One woman remembered a time when she felt clearly the sun on her neck, warming her neck. Now, why does she remember this for so long? So she sometimes tries to recapture this feeling. Or we might, if you're practicing, try to come into the source of the feeling, not just recapture the feeling.

[07:11]

That's what this koan means, that the scale is not on the pan, it's in the balance arm. So what is the source of this kind of experience? But anyway, I would say that this person remembers this experience because it was a moment free from self. I would say that this person remembers this feeling because it was an instant free from self. There's just the sun on the neck. And this sense of pure fact of this is still in her memory.

[08:19]

And someone else had a dream they told me about where there was a hallway filled, I think this if I can remember, hallway filled with water. And they knew they had to go through this long hallway. And they couldn't imagine how they could hold their breath long enough to get through this hallway. But they intended to go through, so this intention was so strong that they filled their lungs with as much air as they could. entered the hall, and then she found she could breathe underwater. This is, you know, we have dreams like that sometimes. But this is very much Adenoble.

[09:50]

I can't interpret it for her, but in Buddhism we would say this is the experience of entering true interiority where you think you might not be able to function, breathe, and you find you can breathe. We think we can only live in this outside kind of consciousness. And we create an inward consciousness that's really just a version of outward consciousness. And we're always wondering if what we think privately is related to how it relates to what other people think, etc. And we think it's inward, but it's really just a version of outward consciousness.

[10:57]

But true interiority feels like so different we might not be able to breathe or live in it. Okay, so let's go back to this sense of physical space and mental space. Most of us live in mental space. Just obvious. To live in a physical space is, it's more elastic. In physischen, excuse me, sorry, we have this distinction between physical and physisch and physikalisch.

[11:59]

Physical? Physical. Körperlich. Körperlich. Physisch? Physisch. Sollen wir physisch sagen? Gut, physisch. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, and even in English this distinction, I don't know if anybody would know what I meant if I said physical space or mental space. They wouldn't understand it. I think we are only taught to notice mental space and when we are in physical space we don't know it. So the Buddhist sages have tried to teach people in Asia too, physical space. That's like picking up the setsu and picking up the space.

[13:03]

And that's like the little aboriginal or South African girl seeing each object as a particular space, not something in a container. That's like, as someone reminded me, you know, the way we do our straw mats for the meal. We fold them in threes like that. And at Crestone, where we have Goza mats, we open them. In Creston, where we have these big mats, we open them three times and fold them again three times.

[14:15]

And this is a big mat, and then we put our bowing, our Zaphos on it? No. One reason this is done as a characteristic of Zen is because it's a single gesture. To open it, to shut it. It's a single gesture. And if you fold it again, it's just another gesture. I'm sorry, a little suture. Now, if you fold it in fours, it's one, and then it's really your mental space. And when you undo it, you have to do two gestures. You have to do this one, you have to find the edges, do this one, and you have to do that one, and you're involved in mental space. Mental space, you have to think about how to undo it.

[15:17]

Physical spaces, all of it just opens up into each other and closes into each other, etc. Yeah, so when we teach somebody a little thing like, everybody, when they put your bowing mats down, you have to do this and that. Zen is so very, very... Okay, but we're teaching people to feel the space of the mat and open the space of the mat. Now, since I won't be at this point again to try to say this, I'm going to keep your legs a little more longer in the vice. Perhaps pure uncontrived awareness will rescue you.

[16:28]

Or you can just change your position, that's fine. Everything is allowed. Okay. Now, our esteemed Jisha and Tanto and director, Gerald Vashida. You have that many hats? has been asking me to speak about the five skandhas. Now the five skandhas are a ladder into pure uncontrived awareness. And I've taught it many times. So you should all know it by heart.

[17:46]

So that you let yourself out of consciousness into the associative consciousness. into pure perception and then into feeling and awareness or form as awareness. Okay, now In contrast to the way it's often taught, I put emotions in the category of perception, not in the category of feeling. And I've been trying to find a way to say something about this distinction between feelings and emotions for 20 years.

[18:48]

So let me try this way. Emotions are a kind of perception. And they exist in a different memory space than feelings. The more you live in physical space, you're free from the contrivances of self and other. And obstructions of inside or outside. And your memory space then is, we could say, more feeling.

[19:53]

When you live primarily in mental space, your memory space is emotions. And you don't find yourself feeling things, you find yourself emoting about things. So you don't feel distinctions, you self-organize distinctions. So you feel this is about me or it's not about me. Or you feel a little angry at the way the food was served to you.

[20:53]

You just notice that your emotions, your feeling space, takes on emotional coloring. So if this space is primarily a mental space, you don't feel the elasticity of everything moving together. Of lined up and Coming out of alignment and talking to each other. Of the cow lifting his or her head to see the horse go by. Everything is always lifting its head. In physical space. So the very matrix of your impressions, repository of impressions, comes alive as either emotion or comes alive as a kind of pure feeling.

[22:19]

So the importance of teaching that you begin to live in physical space changes the whole way which memory is the shape of your space. And then makes it possible to see the contrivances of self and other inside and outside. And then these small experiences that come through the memory of physical space, like the sun on your neck, Flow into your activity as embryonic enlightenment experience or seeds of enlightenment. And then the repository of all of your accumulated impressions

[23:44]

truly are the matrix of enlightenment. When then you can see things in both without birth, Without extinction. Then you truly can feel, see the Buddha. Yeah, okay. Thank you, friend. May our intentions be the same in every being and every place and urgently with the true service of the Buddha's path. Shuddho muhen se dhiyaranyo

[24:56]

Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Die führenden Wesen sind zahllos. Ich gelobe, sie zu erretten. Die begehrten Dämonen sind schlicht. Ich gelobe, ihnen ein Ende zu bereiten. Die Dämonen sind grenzenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Der Weg des Buddha ist unübertrefflich. Ich gelobe, ihn zu erreichen. Želžen milion ova, jak ósema dvojnjoj o koto katasi,

[26:37]

Wae ma ngen ngon chi tu chi soro kwa to e tari Nero, Aquaman, Norei, Oshin, Jetsun, Yoh, Deshi, Tateyama, Tsuran. I have no choice but to follow the path of the Lord. I have no choice but to follow the path of the Lord. Now that I can see and hear and remember and perceive, I believe I can learn the truth of the Tartageta. Well, I'd like to speak from inside your sasen practice, but I have to speak from outside here.

[27:59]

Because this sashin, like each sashin, has its own particularity. And remember, we started out with this statement of Dignaga's in the 6th century that Perception is cognition or knowing without conceptualization. Perception. Wahrnehmung ist... Cognition. Kennen und Wissen ohne Begriffsbildung. And I suggested that you try to perceive without conceptualizing. See if you can leave your perceptions within the bandwidth of the senses.

[29:15]

Now, when I'm saying these things, I'm trying to compost our knowing. Without all the stink that sometimes... Yeah. And this theme of, of course, of Our relationship to our thinking, our identification with our thinking is the main theme of Zen practice.

[30:17]

But it's something we have to... We can't think our way to. We have to kind of edge our way into it. Our attention has to be straight and clear, as straight and clear as possible. Although I said last night the vent does not hide the straight. Yeah. So even if we look at ourselves carefully, we can see even in the ways in which we are bent, we can see the straightness of our intention.

[31:24]

So if we don't have a kind of movie, kino you say, movie version of Zen practice, cut from books and so forth, Got obtained from books. And since we don't have many examples of Zen practice, let me say something about what I think the course of Zen practice is. Course. Yeah. The core is okay too. So at first you are doing your practice. Doing Zazen.

[32:40]

And you understand the basics. But there are some and many, in fact, aspects of practice that are counterintuitive. Yeah, or something like that. And so those things, we hear them, but we don't know quite how to make sense of them. Like Dogen's, think non-thinking. You can think about that, but you know, it's... How do you think about thinking non-thinking?

[33:47]

Yes, so the phrase I can do. Okay, you say so, so you put it somewhere. So maybe it bothers you or itches you or tickles you occasionally. But usually it's composting somewhere. So many things like that, they go into your background mind. And you develop various levels of a background mind. A mind that observes and is more stable or detached. That runs continuously under your foreground mind. And you're generating a background mind when you concentrate on your breath or repeat a phrase, etc.

[35:04]

So in various ways this background mind begins to absorb the teaching. And you begin to act after a while from this background mind with a real understanding. But you don't understand what you understand. Or you don't... You know what I mean? You act through an understanding, but you don't consciously understand. And initial practice, the first few years, is often accompanied by insights, good experiences, even occasional enlightenments. Or at least changes, big and small changes you can feel in your life.

[36:17]

And other people notice too. But then comes the long, dull, Boring period. What my friend of mine calls the flat learning curve. You make some progress, then it's just you go on. Nothing happens much, it even goes down. And this is the greatest weapon of the ego, boredom. I'll bore you out of this idea of practicing. I think you all know this experience. The ego has other weapons.

[37:43]

Making you think you might go crazy and so forth. But boredom is probably the most powerful. How can you be bored when you're the most extraordinary being on the planet? The whole universe, you're the pure product of the universe. We know that when we have a baby, but we forget it as we get older. And then you sit there on your board. Maybe we should put you back in a cradle and rock you a little. Oh, I'm okay. So, but the second thing is, it's like some kind of veneer or plywood, expensive plywood, very well glued together. But this second period is like this glued wood in small slices.

[39:00]

plywood with layers of veneer with NASA's space program glue and they had it in ancient times too and these layers just won't separate So then you need what Dogen calls never leaving the monastery. He means, again, continuous practice. That's all, what you just, you have some, enough faith to have continuous practice. And it begins to, you know, poke up some of these layers of veneer. And it begins, you begin to soak, soak through some of the glue.

[40:15]

And then you notice, you know, yes, I'm actually with my breath all the time. It just becomes so natural, you hardly notice that that's what you now do. Or certain koans there. Oh yes, of course. Or, what do I do? Actually, I guess what I would call what I do is thinking non-thinking. And then you're at the stage of being ready to clarify this which has really been embedded in your background mind. And that's commonly not sooner than ten years after you start to practice.

[41:39]

I'm sorry to tell you. But that's discouraging to those who have been practicing only two years. And it's especially discouraging to those who've been practicing 20 years. This was supposed to happen 10 years ago. I remember I said something to Sukhiroshi... about, you know, how long it took to practice, and he said something like, well, in two years you realize something, but I saw a kind of invisible wink.

[42:42]

I knew I was in for trouble. Yeah. Now this period of after 10 years or so, or obviously sometimes more, it can be quicker, but you know, something like that. Let's be realistic. You've got 30, 20, 30 years of habits. You're introducing new, fundamentally new and fundamentally basic habits to yourself. It takes time for those things to work into and around your other habits.

[43:51]

And then you begin acting from these new wisdom habits. But now to make it clear, So you begin to make it clear exactly how the skandhas work in you, for example. How the various teachings interpenetrate. And as I said before the service yesterday, You go from an inventory or list to a vocabulary. You begin to, as I said, notice the various ways the mind functions and so forth.

[45:18]

But first it's a lot of separate observations, a kind of list. At some point it starts to being a vocabulary which has a syntactic reality. You begin to see how these things work together. Now that is a good point to be with a teacher. That's when the teacher and you clarify that this makes sense. That it makes sense in your own personal way and it makes sense in the traditional way of looking at it. And then also teaching helps because you begin to clarify these things in your practice with others and teaching with others.

[46:27]

Teaching for yourself. Teaching as a teacher. In that sense, teaching is an essential part of practice. And it's a process of sharing and also developing practice. and awakens many aspects of the teaching. To make a few things clear awakens clarity in many aspects of the teaching. Okay. So that's generally the progress, I would say. And this is something like 10 to 20 years of continuous practice. But after 10 or 20 or 30 years, Yeah, things are clearer, they're more resolved, you feel more at ease.

[47:52]

But it's been a path on which you can't say any one part is better than the other. And the present path is enriched by the whole of the path. And you couldn't quite explain it to anybody what this path has been. Because it's come out of your own sincerity. The conditions of your own life. Maybe again, the forest is the bird's path. And one bird can't exactly explain to another what the path through the forest was.

[49:01]

Okay, so we have Dignarga's statement that perception is knowing without conception. Then we have somebody like Guishan's answer to Yangshan. Now, Guishan's Yangshan, they were both great guys. At least from what I know of them, they seem to have been. And I've often always found Guishan particularly, and put both of them, very rich and rich resources, provisions, ancestral provisions. Yangshan was quite exceptional from an early age and visited many of the

[50:04]

pop teachers of the day, of all time, in fact, like Matsu and Baichang. Then he was, as they say, fully enlightened under Guishan. and stayed with Guishan for 15 more years. And the first three years, Guishan had Yangshan herd buffalo. One of our neighbors would let one of us be the Scottish cow herder. You're not too busy, Peter, are you? You could become the Scottish cow herder. He makes the eleventh picture. Anyway, Yangshan asked one of these wonderful questions.

[51:46]

What is the abode of the real Buddha? It's like, again, what is the pure body of reality? Someone told me this is like the pure body of reality is like a melodic phrase of Bach. I like that. Because it has this bodily quality. So what is the abode of the real Buddha? And there was Siddhartha and there was Shakyamuni.

[52:53]

What is a real Buddha? How is Siddhartha a real Buddha? If the Buddha is real, where does he or she live? Here we are all practicing Buddhism. There's this wonderful guy on the altar. What is the abode of the real Buddha? And Guishan said, knowing the subtlety of thoughtless thought. I'm just telling you what our tradition says. It's the same kind of theme of Dogen's and Dignaga's. What is the he says knowing the subtlety of thoughtless thought Return it to the light.

[54:09]

Return it to the radiance. This is this, each of us has a clear light, as Yuen Man said. Return it to the radiance. until thought itself is absorbed. And until there's no distinction between phenomena and mind, this is the abode of the real Buddha. So again, I bring up this statement, this teaching of Yangshan and Guishan. To really seed our background mind.

[55:13]

With a little Dharma rain. And maybe it can begin to give us some feeling of how we enter simply our zazen practice. Coming away when we have the chance from identifying with our thought. And let me say just as a practical matter, when you're doing zazen, I always say just uncorrected mind, just accept what's going on. But you want a mind that can accept. So if when you're sitting your mind is kind of dark and muddled, it's too dark and muddled even to be distracted.

[56:35]

Then it's good to brighten your mind up. by finding some alignment or energy in your posture bringing your attention to your exhales or to your wisdom phrase and then when your mind is brighter and able to accept then practice just being open to whatever is there And if you have this sense again of perception without conceptualizing, You'll begin to have this sense of actually the effulgence of mind.

[57:52]

Effulgence means another word for radiance. A flowing forth, effulgence means a flowing forth, a flowing forth of the mind in brightness. And Guishan's statement begins to make sense. Now, okay. Non-dualism. This is another overall theme within Zen practice. Nondualism is first of all to begin to find yourself free of that glass between you and others.

[58:54]

And non-dualism is also to be free of distinctions like inside and outside. And non-dualism is also the practice and then the realization that like right now when I'm looking at you, everything I'm seeing is in my mind. And we know this. It's obvious. It must be so. That's the way our senses function. But to remind yourself of it regularly is wisdom. Because how many people are here?

[60:06]

40? 38, okay. So, I mean, if I don't remind myself of that, I think there's one room here and 38 people. If I remind myself that all of this is... You're out there, but all I know of you is happening in my mind and body. Then the same has to be true for each of you. So there's 38 rooms here and one body. Or 38 rooms and one kind of subtle body finding itself. And when we remind ourselves of that, we can begin to be able to act more in this subtle body. So this is more evolved dualism.

[61:21]

And this is also the subtlety of thoughtless thought. This is a knowing you can precipitate with a certain amount of thinking, but basically it's a knowing that's not in the realm of thinking. You can breathe it. You can feel it. And here we come much more into tangible non-duality, which is the feeling that everything is also your body. Excuse me, the second part?

[62:24]

It's also your body. So we talk about not the pure mind of reality, but the pure body of reality. And the Dharmakaya is the body of the Buddha as space. So this is again why I'm trying to find some language for bodily space. Maybe bodily space is better than physical space. We could say corporal space, but that sounds like either a corpse or somebody under a sergeant. We could call it corporeal space, but it could also be like the English name for a corpse or like a bat.

[63:40]

So maybe I could talk about somatic, we're trying to find some words here, somatic intelligence and bodily space. Yeah, okay. So what, I mean, what do I mean? What do I mean by bodily space? Well, since Buddhist culture is like... feels it is... is a yoga culture, there is this bodily emphasis on the body. So I'm trying to give you some, the word Dharani for instance. Dharani is an incantation or spell.

[64:43]

that produces a good result. So one of the Dharanis we chant in the morning is a Dharani to free us from adversity or disasters. But the root of Dharani, like Dharma, means to hold or retain. So it means more to secure the good. So it means a kind of memory, a bodily memory. So when you're in a culture like that, they tend to do everything possible with the body rather than the mind. This is no example, but it's a little tiny example.

[66:10]

Since I'm an American, this is when I play cowboy. I'm actually pretty good at this, but I know. As a kid, I could bring the other kids down. Anyway... So if you have this rope and you put it around your waist, right? When you take it off, you just put it away like this. And that's, you know, it's a little, that's real simple. Actually, it's quite difficult to explain to a newly ordained person how to do it. But it's really simple. And you have much more complicated ones where you put ropes around yourself and ties your... And the way you put the okesa on and off, it's a similar kind of body thing.

[67:16]

When you're taking it off, you have to do this. Normally no one sees that. You look like little red riding hoods. And you put the two corners together and then you go like this. And then you use your whole body to do it. And if you try to figure it out, it's quite difficult. And your body learns how to do all this. She didn't expect me to disrobe. He probably didn't expect to see me at the top. If I put it on again, you do it with your body. Thank you. Enrobe together.

[68:45]

I'll shave your head. No. He's worried. No, no, I'm not, but other people are. And the Oriyoki and Origami are all similar kinds of body, where you enter the world through the body and about body knowledge. Ori... Ori... Origami is paper folding, which Gisela is quite good at. And you notice there's all these cranes around him, sitting on the Buddha and all. And Uchiyama Roshi, the Roshi at Antajis, from an origami folding family, and he in fact invented some new origamis as well as being a Zen master.

[70:11]

And would you repeat the name, please? Uchiyama Roshi. Uchiyama Roshi. And those of you who've received a Ketchum Yakua lineage paper, the way they're folded together in the envelope is a kind of origami. This is the product of a body culture. which says remember with your body not with your thinking. It's a little bit like you might not ride a bicycle for years and then somebody gives you a bicycle and you might teeter a bit but basically your body remembers how to ride a bicycle. And in this way your body also begins to know states of mind.

[71:14]

And you have to get there because the mind knows. The mind is not subtle. It knows good, bad, indifferent, you know, a little better, and so forth. But say the gradations of taste of, say, wine, Or a good cook's ability to taste. There's not words enough to explain those gradations. But the body can know them. And the body can know the taste of mine.

[72:21]

And the body can remember them. So the more, again let me give you another example. When something's passed to you, like in the oreo bowl, your served food. If somebody hands you the bowl, they say the soup. You just put your bowl in. And you get the soup back. And you put it down. That's a mental space. You've just gone from this point to that point. Physical space, someone gives you something. And you say, oh, thank you, and you bring it to yourself. And then, that's a motion, that's one. Thank you, like a little kid, you give something to a little kid. Or, you know, when you throw something at the wastebasket, it's almost going to miss.

[73:37]

And it's going to go under the rim, and you go, and it goes in. This is a basic body intuition that there's a connection between us and the environment. And you can watch basketball players do it. And then it goes in. Not when I do it, but... And I think that's why we like things like darts and stuff like that, because we can feel our body going along with dart. Here we have, of course, this wonderful book by Herigel, is that how you pronounce it? Zen and the Art of Archery. Herigel. Herigel, yeah. That's this wonderful book by Eugen Herigel, Zen and the Art of Archery. So the bowl is passed to you and you bring it in.

[74:45]

And you usually shift so you're holding it this way. And you put it down with this hand paying attention. And the person who does that naturally is more in a physical or body space than a mental space. And if you practice perception without conceptualization, you're developing a bodily space in the same way as you develop a background mind. And background mind and bodily space begin to merge. So like the person remembered the warm sun on their neck from And you can enter directly into it.

[75:58]

So it's a bodily memory. And so the more you have bodily memory, you can enter directly in meditative states. without going through the process of counting your breaths or whatever you happened, you know it with your body. So you can go directly into these good qualities So it's a kind of Dharani or spell that secures the good. So that's why, again, this non-dualism is connected with a feeling that the environment is also you. Now, I'm trying to find a way to, in this Sashin, I've been trying to find a way to speak about what I've been speaking about for half a year or a year now.

[77:32]

of how this sense of a world in which there is no outside, of this world of phenomena is also us, and how we again hear the insentient teaching. Now again, let me say that this space that you see in front of you is basically memory. And there's practices which you can do to take away memory. If you do, everything turns to darkness. There's nothing here if you don't have memory. to make associations.

[78:58]

So this is black lacquer poured into black ink. And all this comes back into brightness. So what you see is memory. Now, is that memory mental memory or bodily memory? If it's bodily memory, if these practices we do, or yogi, etc., etc., bring you more into a bodily memory, A Dharani memory, you know what, you can answer the question, what is the abode of the real Buddha? you find yourself living in the same Buddha house or Buddha field.

[80:16]

And the good qualities of your life and the good qualities of your friend in the Sangha's life and of our lineage of and of wisdom ancestors begins to mature in us. So all of this is part of this germ of a teaching we see in Dignaga back in the 6th century. Perception is Knowing without conceiving. So return your thoughts to the radiance of mind. And this is not some exceptional magical thing. Just bring yourself back to your breathing.

[81:37]

Bring yourself into alignment with yourself and the world. Find yourself more and more deeply at ease. Mm-hmm. sometimes dissolve this distinction of inside and outside. Feel yourself at least sometimes free of this such a strong self and other distinction. Have this as a continuous practice. continuous intention and this way all our practice will mature and we'll mature together individually and as a Sangha.

[82:57]

I think this is a great hope for each of us and a great hope for our society I think too. I would hope that our society can, in various ways, move in this direction. Our very young society. I think we're at the beginning of, as in Creston I spoke a lot, beginning, very beginning of what is culture and civilization. Thank you very much. May we, according to our intentions, equally penetrate every world and every place.

[84:05]

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