Imaginal space is everywhere. Das Potenzial und die Dynamik des Imaginationsraumes ist überall. And I have to use, as obvious, I keep pointing out, I have to use English words. So I'm not saying imaginary space, that would be unreal space in English, but imaginal space, imagined space. Your innermost request is an imaginal space. And democracy or whatever is an imaginal space.

[01:09]

And when I bow here, I'm entering an imaginal space. I bow to the Buddha three times in this case. And ideally, each time and more and more, I step up into the Buddha. And our Orioki bowls are the same. They're designed to allow you to enter the imaginal space of the Buddha. The bowls are designed also to not let much small talk unless you drop something.

[02:25]

Yeah, they wouldn't work in a cafe for a long discussion. So the main bow is the Buddha's skull. So you have the Buddha's skull in your hand. And now we're going to eat, you say, we say now we're going to eat with Buddha's bowls. It means you feel the potential of Buddha. as an ordinary person and as you, eating from these bowls. So this is a kind of tantric, really tantric aspect of Zen practice, which is hidden in our rituals, but not made explicit usually.

[03:41]

So I just bowed here in our mutual space. Feeling I stood up into the Buddha. In our mutual space. And then I came over here to sit down. And I blew my nose. And I thought, is that a very Buddha activity? He did have a nose. He probably had to blow it. So this potential field of the Buddha is a part of how this whole practice center has been developed and evolved.

[05:07]

So each of you can step up into, sit up into the potential, potentiality of Buddha realization. It's near at hand, near at body. It's not back in the past. Please don't think it's back in the past. That will really limit your practice. All the potentials of Buddhism and enlightenment to human capacity are here in each of us. Now I mentioned spatiality yesterday.

[06:17]

And I don't think I, maybe you don't know really what I mean, or at least I have not made really clear what I mean. And again, I don't know another word I can use but spatiality. And for me it's a pretty accurate word. As long as it's not too glued to our usual sense of space. So in order to... This morning I thought, how can I... say something about speciality.

[07:24]

And I found that, you know, I had to come up with a lot of new definitions. If I'm going to create a feel for this, what I mean by speciality. You know, if you're doing calligraphy or drawing with a brush, It's very dangerous. You can make a mess. You can get too much ink on your brush, or it's too dilute, or it's too dry. And the touch of the brush to the paper is affected by the view in your mind as you do it.

[08:46]

I remember a calligraphy teacher who said, when you first bring the brush toward the paper, Ich denke da an einen Kalligrafie-Lehrer, der mal gesagt hat, der Moment, in dem du den Pinsel aufs Papier setzt, I feel like you've just opened the door and it's spring. Now that's certainly an imaginal space. But it can actually in a real way affect the brush. And learning to feel how your views feel the world. It's at the center of yogic practice.

[09:47]

So this calligraphy teacher said, when you feel like you've opened the door and it's spring and you're going into the spring, And with that feeling, you bring the brush against the paper. And then when you get to the end of the latter part of the kanji, the character or the letter, And you're pulling the brush away from the paper. You place in your mind the view that a friend is disappearing into the distance. Da setzt du in deinen Geist die Sichtweise, als ob ein Freund in der Ferne verschwindet.

[11:09]

So you're sort of reluctantly saying goodbye to whatever you calligraphed. Und dann hast du so ein Gefühl, als ob du wieder Willen auf Wiedersehen sagen musst zu dieser Calligraphie. So the views you have in everything you do, your mental views, your mind views, influence what you're doing, for sure. But also, how you're holding the brush makes a difference. But of course it also makes a difference how you hold the brush. So when you do this and you hold this view that it's going to be spring soon and so on, but then someone comes into the room and says, hey, you have to hold the brush like this and not like that.

[12:14]

So you change the way you hold the brush and spring jumps through the door. So we have to look at these, here the body, how you hold the brush and how your view mind is viewing. So to approach this way of speaking today, I just sort of make a distinction between what I'm calling view mind and bodily mind. So when I'm here and I'm speaking, I need to speak to your view mind, your habit mind. Your individual mind.

[13:32]

And I also have to speak to our shared mind. Now, that's two minds I need to speak to. And I need to speak also to your potentially enlightened mind. Now again, trying to use words to kind of suss out some feeling. Suss out is an interesting word because it's a short form of suspicion. Okay, well then... Herauskitzeln?

[14:34]

Ja, herauskitzeln. Okay. Suss out im Englischen ist ein interessantes Wort, weil es eine kurze Form für das Wort abholen ist. In other words, you have a suspicion. There's more there than is obvious. And you suss it out. So I would say I need to speak to our individual mind, our shared mind, and our maybe prescient enlightened mind. Prescient means anticipated. In other words, in my mind is... is prescient.

[15:44]

It's already sort of appearing, but it's not quite present. And I think actually that causes psychological problems in people. Some people live in the feeling of a feeling for a mind, but they're not there yet, and that creates a tension in them, and sometimes an arrogance too, because they can feel it, and they want it, and they don't know what it is, and then they feel a little anxious, and you know, you know what we're like. For example, that someone can live with the feeling, with the felt knowledge about a enlightened spirit, but they haven't quite arrived there yet. And then that can cause a tension in them, or maybe even an arrogance, because they know that it's there.

[16:48]

And maybe then act as if they had it, or it can cause fear, and you know how we are. And then I have to speak to that anxiety, too. And then, too, I have to speak to your habit body. Your usual body. And I have to speak in addition to your zazen body. and also the potentially realized body. I feel these as different topics woven into my sentences. And I have to speak to you with my view mind, my conscious mind. And I have to speak to you with zazen mind.

[18:01]

And I have to speak to you within the potentiality of enlightenment. And I have to speak to you correctly with the body. No, I'm explaining this not so much to explain the expectations or conditions of having to give Zen teachings. Did I find it necessary, required that I speak to these three minds, three bodies, and so forth? but rather because I find it necessary to speak with these three spirits or these three bodies.

[19:21]

I speak to these because they're actually present in each of you. I feel them present in each of you. Or in the imaginal space in which I'm speaking, they're present in each of you, and even that imaginal space can be awakening. So there is enlightenment, which is a shift in views. And it happens, you know, sometimes suddenly. And sometimes incrementally. And incrementally is little suddens. And those little suddens are supported by practicing with others and in sesshin or practice, ongoing practice period.

[20:49]

Because we are again practicing individually and together. One of the geniuses of Chinese practice is how they brought the together into Buddhist practice. So if I say to you, develop the habit, if you can, bring in the habit of saying yes to everything initially or say welcome to everything. Here I'm speaking to your view, your view mind. Which is also to say, you already have views. with which you greet or reject everything that appears.

[22:08]

Maybe most of us with ordinary, usual consciousness have a comparing mind. We immediately compare or we have a preference or like or dislike. I need so much help. So that is, I'm suggesting you bring this view into the initial activity or habit of view mind. And if you can actually start Always.

[23:22]

It's now a new habit. The first reaction is always acceptance, welcome, yes. And discrimination comes second. Well, yes, I'll go to the movie, but no, I won't. Sorry. But after a while, that acceptance gets wider and wider and even begins to elude the discriminations. And such little shifts in view begin to lay the groundwork for shifting from comparative consciousness to accepting awareness. Now if I say to you, bring attention to each exhale and each inhale.

[24:31]

I'm not really speaking so much to your views. I'm speaking to your physical habits. I'm speaking to your noticing. And that noticing begins just the habit of noticing the inhale and the exhale. Not only begins to synchronize, as I said the other day, all your bodily rhythms, It also creates a little wheel inside you which exhales and then inhales and exhales, inhales, and that wheel gets bigger and bigger and begins to include all your space.

[26:07]

And that lays the groundwork for eventually the spine being where the energy body comes alive. You're not happy with your translation? Did you actually say the spine gets bigger? Because that's what I say. Well, maybe it gets a little longer. No, I said it becomes the basis, mind work, or body work, rather, for the energy body.

[27:14]

I said that too. Well, good. She just adds something. I have had translators in the past who began telling their own philosophy. And I often didn't... It's all in German, so I don't know what they're saying. I just wonder why it's so long. I'm practicing acceptance, you know. And while View mind changes, as I said, in increments or suddenly. And of course affects your bodily mind.

[28:16]

Inseparable. But when we're emphasizing the body, the bodily changes are gradual there. They're re-rooting. Re-rooting. And a change in attentional awareness or subtlety. For example, every moment is unique. No. If you don't know that, if you don't experience that, and you can know it but not experience it,

[29:18]

Your yogic skill at noticing is somewhat deficient. So that's one of your measures or stages in your practice. And this is one of the standards of the levels in your practice. When you simply find the moment you need. I mean, you don't... It just is. And it is, and you feel it that way. Even to the extent that you're every walk to work or every drive to school or something like that, even if it's the same, each moment is actually...

[30:43]

Experienced as different as you make. Is experienced as you make. Yes, and this is, let's call it a yogic bodily skill that is part of the gradual enlightenment of the body. Now, I have to stop in five minutes and I haven't started speaking about spirituality. And so I've been involved with redefinitions, new definitions. You know that sometimes Zazen practice, bodily mindfulness practice, does changes.

[32:05]

And noticing and accepting those changes is part of practice. And not making too much of them is part of practice. Oh, I had that experience. Someone else hasn't. This is not too good. It interferes with, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So you just notice. And one of the things we may notice is things become more vivid. And at first you notice things are more vivid, but you've had that experience before. And at first you don't, so you don't at first make much of it.

[33:18]

But then after 10 years, after a while, you notice more vivid, more often. And then after 10 years of practice, or let's say after a while, you notice that things become more frequent, more vivid. Things are just more vivid all the time. And more precise. And you can also help that along by doing each thing precisely. And you can also support that by doing everything you do more precisely. Each exhale, each inhale, each step. Because basically you're getting the kind of experience that allows you to step into immediacy.

[34:28]

Because in a way, the body has to be ready for, the bodily mind has to be ready for stepping into immediacy. Comparative consciousness cannot step into immediacy. So your comparative habit has to give way. As soon as you compare, you're out of immediacy. So not only do things become more vivid and precise, often there's a kind of light or aura or a little glow that accompanies everything.

[35:36]

And at first you may brush that aside. Oh, I don't know. I remember that when I was in love. But I'm not in love. I don't know what that is. But if you have a certain stopped feeling and allow the world to stop a moment and notice this vividness or this kind of glow that things have, These are all aspects of a feeling of ease, inner feeling of ease, are all aspects that arise through bodily practice.

[36:44]

Yes, especially tomorrow. Ha! yet creeps this petty pace tomorrow and tomorrow yet creeps this petty pace is that alright my British friend there Dennis is in another world oh dear thank you very much May our purpose be equal to that of every being,

[37:51]

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