This is a little bit unusual. Normally I'm not sitting in front of this, I'm sitting behind it. However, here I am. I was sitting in my room I don't know, maybe I felt like I was a prize fighter or something, getting ready to suit up, going into the ring. Not really. Actually, I was trying to remember just how it was that I got to my cushion, the chance and so forth. So I chanted to myself what we just chanted.

[01:01]

Which I've chanted quite a few times. But nothing like a little change of perspective to make things new. And I listened to it, maybe a little more closely than I had before. In those rather, I don't know, spectacular words about endless kalpas and so forth, it talks about the dharma.

[02:11]

In these rather spectacular words, in this verse where kalpas and all kinds of things are talked about, there is also the talk of dharma. And it struck me that it takes a little something to suspend our workaday life and jump into this scene. I mean from dealing with our boss or customers or whatever to an unsurpassed penetrating and perfect dharma. We've come from

[03:15]

far and wide by train, I don't think anybody by foot, car, to come into this kind of half of a chapel. dressed in dark colors and chanting mysterious things. It could feel a little strange, even for those of us who've done it before. And frankly, it's taken me a while to get used to the form of something that I always thought of as formless.

[04:31]

And I really have, probably I only could have done it, or to the extent that I have done it, with Baker Roshi. It was great good fortune when I met him and with his completely open hearted encouragement I've continued and somehow deepened into this path of Zen. So in this chant it talks about

[05:33]

seeing and listening and tasting the truth of the teachings. Right away this is different from what I think many people consider religion. It's so sensual. And it also talks about remembering and accepting. Which may be harder to approach.

[06:54]

Baker Roshi's teacher, Suzuki Roshi, once was walking with some students in the mountains of California near Tassajara Mountain Center. And if any of you have been there, I know some of you have. These are the mountains near Big Sur, the mountains that go right down into the oceans. In the winter, it rains like it rains here. Maybe even more violently. And in the summer, It's like an oven.

[08:08]

So in these mountains, the vegetation is an interesting mix of big trees and desert plants. And one of those plants is called yucca. It's like sharp swords growing out of the ground. Or perhaps it was agave, which is a little bit even more formidable plant. Anyway, Suzuki Roshi found or picked up a leaf of yucca or agave that was dried and frayed like a brush.

[09:13]

And miraculously, or somehow, he also had some ink. Somebody had some ink. And Using this yucca leaf, dipping it in the ink, he made a character. On a piece of paper. And that character is the character that appears on the cover of the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Which, as a matter of fact, in our new Zendo, we have that original drawing, calligraphy.

[10:33]

In our new Zendo, there is even the original drawing. The character is Tathagata, which of course is a Buddhist term with many meanings. What Suzuki Roshi said about this character at the time was that Tathagata is the body of the whole world. Which is a kind of a strange phrase, the body of the whole world. So in this chant, it talks about

[11:34]

Tasting the truth of the Tathagata. Tasting the truth of the body of the whole world. So we've chosen to enter into the Sesshin. With all of our ideas about it and perhaps fears about it or confusion about it, but in any case we've all managed to get here.

[12:56]

Which is actually quite an accomplishment. It's not easy to interrupt our workaday lives to do something like this. And this entering into the sâshin or entering into the teachings is a passage that can be felt, I think, bodily. Certainly this is a physically demanding practice.

[13:59]

This is not just sitting around talking about metaphysics. The body of the whole world. Entering into the body of the whole world, entering into the body of the teachings. den Körper der ganzen Welt betreten und den Körper der Lehrer betreten. I had the good fortune last fall to take my first trip to Asia.

[15:07]

Ich hatte das große Glück, im letzten Herbst meine erste Reise nach Asien zu machen. I entered into, for the first time, a Buddhist culture. After living and practicing in Crestone for some years, this is basically what I do at this point. And of course, the USA is not a Buddhist culture. Of course, Germany is not a Buddhist culture. So sometimes I think we can feel a little alien.

[16:15]

Strangers in a strange land is the famous novel of the 70s was entitled. Ja, Fremde in einem fremden Land, das ist der Titel dieses berühmten Romans in den 70er Jahren. I think it's safe to say that not all of your families and spouses support you a hundred percent in this practice. They may even fear for your sanity. And they may all seem very, very far away at this point. So it was It was quite an experience to walk for three and a half weeks in the mountains of Nepal.

[17:44]

Asia is a very, very different world from where I came from. And after a few days of walking away from roads, away from telephones, away from machinery, walking back into a pre-industrial world, I might as well have been walking into Manjushri's temple that we heard about in one of our koans. A temple or a world that was seemingly produced out of thin air and very, very different.

[19:11]

And a world that really felt like it was made of thin air and that felt very different. And as we walked north into really the foothills of the Himalayas, the symbols and atmosphere of Buddhism began to be felt. In the high passes the wind, I think, always blows. And on those passes, blowing in the wind, which always blows, are streamers of flags, prayer flags.

[20:23]

And all along the trails which have been traveled for I don't know how many hundreds of years, there are piles of money stones. These are stones that have been carved in the famous mantra of Tibetan Buddhism, OM MANE PEMI HONG. And on huge boulders, this mantra has been carved and it's covered with moss. The Tathagata is the body of the whole world.

[21:50]

During that trip I met a Tibetan monk who invited me and a friend to take a little side trip to his small temple. And I think it was the brightest remembrance that I have of that trip was this walk into the night with this Tibetan monk. We had been for several days at a large festival that brought people from all over the nearby valleys and people from Tibet as well.

[22:55]

And this monk was obviously a person of some He obviously was respected because he played a prominent part in the festivities. If any of you have seen a Tibetan festival, with the horns and flags and everything, it's just pretty much the most far out thing you've ever seen. It's a magical

[24:20]

strange and magical world that they create. So we had been at this festival for a few days, and when it ended, we accepted the invitation to go with this monk to his monastery. It was about three or four hours walk we were told to this small temple. Which was okay. I mean, we'd been walking for weeks. But it was late afternoon by this time. It was quite clear that we were walking into the night.

[25:38]

Which is okay. I mean, we had flashlights. So we left the festival and walked, began descending into one of the deep valleys of Nepal. With this monk were two of his students who were young boys about 10 years old. And as is customary in Tibetan festivals, you're given white katas or scarves to wear.

[27:06]

So these three monks had their white katas around their necks. And these two kids were, I think, quite glad to get out of this religious convention and just run down the mountain. So they just took off like rabbits. I mean, they were just gone. And by now the sun is down behind the mountains and it's dusk. And the monk who was in his fifties

[28:09]

settled into a very fast walking pace. Kind of like how we do K'in Hint. He had his arms sort of in his little bag. It was all that he carried and his robes. With his white kata around his neck. So we, my friend and I, picked up the pace and just tried to keep this guy in sight. The kids were gone. And it's getting darker. And we're just going down, down, down, down.

[29:30]

And we're just going down, down, down, down. And then we're crossing a rather large river over a kind of miniature Golden Gate Bridge. And if you walk out in the wilds, when it starts getting dark, your eyes become not so reliable, so your ears get bigger.

[30:34]

So crossing this river with just the white waves underneath, it was just all sound. And somewhere just up ahead was this white scarf just quickly moving along. By this time the kids had waited for us all and we all started walking a little bit closer together, although still quite fast. By this time, I was determined not to bring out my flashlight first.

[31:48]

I was just curious how long this would go on. By now it's just dark. So that all I can see of these guys is their white katas. And I'm having to stay quite close to one of these little kids because I can barely see his white tennis shoes, which is helpful. And I began to wonder if This guy had some sort of infrared capacity for sensing things in the dark.

[33:23]

I mean, this was not a city street. There were drop-offs and things. I realized this was the way to his temple, but he couldn't remember every rock. The Tathagata is the body of the whole world. So we just walked in the dark in the mountains of Nepal.

[34:30]

And eventually we did turn on a flashlight. They never used a light. And we arrived at this small gompa or temple and we were given a nice hot meal. And just before I crawled into my tent for the night, I heard this monk chanting. It was quite cold.

[35:48]

The wind was blowing and it was quite cold. My friend and I had all of our alpine gear on and down and hats, everything. And he was just out there in his robes, flapping in the wind, doing some kind of circumambulation of his little temple. At every direction of the four directions, he would send some chant off into the wind. There was something about it that just really pierced me like a little warm arrow.

[36:53]

And here we were, you could see from his place some very high, snowy Himalayan peaks. And the sky had all the stars that a sky can have. And here was this monk just basically happy to be home. I mean, it wasn't really a monastery. It was just him and these two kids.

[38:09]

In the morning, he walked with us down to where we could pick up a trail to meet with the rest of our party. And in the morning, I could see how he lived on this mountainside. All around he had planted fruit trees and flowers. And if any of you have been in Nepal, you know that it's a land that is actually suffering under the pressure of human beings.

[39:26]

And it can be quite shocking to travel in that country. You can be kicking through trash half the time on your trail. I'd gotten used to it pretty much by this time, but he did something that I hadn't seen anybody do. As we were walking, he was just picking up little pieces of paper and trash And just sort of humming and singing his mantras and with this kind of gliding gait.

[40:33]

And there are people all around every corner in Nepal and obviously people were glad to see him. He was a very, very friendly guy. So we left him Crossing another bridge, we left him on the other side of the river and he waved and then he just disappeared. And we went on and eventually met up with the rest of our group. So sitting here, we're entering into a kind of different world.

[42:03]

Or maybe we're just sitting in the same old world, but something's a little different. The Tathagata is the body of the whole world. Thank you. Well, it's nice to see all of you. Have you been here all this time? I may not have appeared to be in the Sesshin, but the Sesshin was sure in me.

[43:08]

Some of you thought, I guess, that I was languishing in that room behind the altar with a high fever. Because I got a very nice note this morning saying, I presume you're sick and I hope you're getting well or something. I wasn't sick, but it made me feel much better. I think... I thought somebody must have told you why I wasn't in the Sesshin till now, but I guess they didn't. But the more or less half of you who were in the Koan seminar, I presume, understood.

[44:09]

Because I mean I should explain just because it's courteous but also I'm trying to kind of fathom what it means. Which is, I mean, I'm sure you're bored with it, because I've been talking about it for four years, but anyway, I sent my book off in the mail just today. I'm sometimes bored with it, too. But Federal Express came and, just like Ulrike was doing just now, picked it up and is winging it off to New York. They guarantee, I guess, it'll be there Wednesday morning. Maybe they could wrap me up and send me.

[45:35]

Because the contract requires it to arrive Wednesday. So for me, this is early. Yeah. So... I actually haven't been writing the last day or so, editing some, but mostly I've been doing the logistics of trying to get it together. The little inkjet printer I have is quite nice, but it's made for correspondence, not manuscripts. And it struggled for five hours last night to turn out 358 pages. Just doesn't seem to have memory enough to do big chunks.

[46:36]

And it would run out of paper and run out of ink. And run out of memory. So I had to keep languishing over the machine until five in the morning last night, feeding it various things it needed. And then it would say sometimes, I would try to take a nap and I'd hear beep. And I'd say, printer not responding. And then it would say, do these things. And I'd do them and nothing would happen. And then it would say... Then the screen would go blank and it would say, unknown quit for unknown reasons.

[48:02]

That's how I feel sometimes, unknown quit for unknown reasons. Then I have to bring it all back up into, you know, functioning again and start over. It was actually kind of interesting. I had to do that two nights in a row because the first night we had to make a copy that we could paginate and get the page numbers for the table of contents and everything. And Ulrika did most of that. Anyway, I sent off about 100,000 words, which is a book of about 280 or 300 pages. So it's going to be too heavy and big for any of you to buy.

[49:19]

My guess is we'll shorten it or make it smaller in the next month or two. Anyway, so it's... I've got a few things to do, but it's more or less finished. And I only found out, I mean, I've been sort of working on it for quite a while, but I only found out how to do it about a year ago. At least I think I found out how to do it. About a year ago, the text opened up somehow and began telling me what to do. Of course, as you can imagine, it's some relief to me.

[50:33]

But mostly it's a strange thing I don't quite know. This is really based on the first five years of my teaching and my practice with Suzuki Roshi. So I wonder if it's going to affect me in such a way that I don't have to teach that anymore. I can tell you to read it, or at least I will feel free of having to teach it. Because so much of what I did then and is in the book is how to establish Buddhist mind in a Western person, in a Western context. The book has a lot to do with that.

[51:35]

So maybe I don't have to be so concerned when I teach anymore about establishing the teachings in a Western context and a Western mind. I don't know yet. Anyway, although most of you or a lot of you didn't know you were helping me, thank you for helping me. And letting me work yesterday and this morning. And I'm very grateful for Randy letting me do it by giving me lecture and And I listened to the lecture on tape today. And it's a kind of perfect Buddhist lecture. I'm very grateful for you, Randy. Now, I didn't set Randy up to do it.

[52:52]

It happened sort of by chance. But sometimes I have the feeling that Tsukiroshi used to set me up to give lectures. To set up somebody. Are you translating? To, it means like to create a situation which... I know what it means in English, but it's so hard to... You never set someone up in German? Well, I hope not.

[54:00]

Anyway, he would do something like, it'll be clear when I... He would do something like accept an invitation to give lectures at a university somewhere. Usually pretty far away. And then he'd ask me to go with him and help. And then the last minute he would say, I don't feel so well, I think you should go and... But Roshi, what shall I say? Oh, say anything you like. It's all right. And then they slowly got closer to home. They went from Oregon to Stanford to the Unitarian Church in downtown San Francisco.

[55:08]

And each time it gets more difficult because one of the hardest transitions is to practice with people and then start giving lectures or teaching with the same people you've been practicing with. And I think it's a real cusp in American and European Buddhism. Because we tend to accept Asian teachers and we don't tend to accept Westerners too much. And disciples, you know, it's... Usually we try to... We have such a critical atmosphere in listening to them often, it makes it hard to even give a lecture.

[56:14]

It's one of the reasons Sukershi actually sent me to Japan for four years, so we could make a transition. I guess, I mean, every time I've seen it, there's always some people who feel not supportive, but pretty critical. At least I've seen it in the groups in America and also when I first started giving lectures. People didn't know if they should chant in the beginning, you know, all that Dharma business.

[57:16]

And I didn't give lectures anywhere near as good as Randy's. So I needed a lot of support. To feel free enough to say something. And I guess we feel, why that person and not me? Or unconsciously we're saying something like that. But none of us, there'll be no Western teachers unless we learn how to support each other in developing practice. So I'd like to be able to have someone, a student, a disciple of mine, come and lead a sesshin and have the same number of people come out of the feeling of practicing together.

[58:28]

But I don't know if it would happen. That would be the ideal situation. Now, I really appreciated Randy introducing to us this Nepalese Tibetan monk yesterday. At least on the tape, it felt like he really came into the sashin. And... And Randy repeated a number of times the kind of practice, Tathagata, the body of the whole world.

[59:37]

So I thought it might be good for me to talk about this practice of Tathagata. Of thusness. Of the alchemy of fuzzy logic. Or the alchemy of fuzzy edges. No, I don't know what I'm... I mean, this is just images. So you bear with me a few minutes. Mm-hmm. For most of us, again, we have to be a little more specific in lay practice.

[60:44]

But for most of us, when I say that I mean the tradition of practice, we don't do much else. And if you do like this monk did in effect, and Randy does too by a lot of walking practice, then you do like Randy does too, Tai Chi. You begin to have a... kind of elixir that comes into your body and into your relationships. Now, elixir, you have the word in German? It means a medium for medicine. Kind of liquid or fluid in which you put a medicine that allows the medicine to go into the body.

[62:04]

It also means a medicine that cures all ills, but I understand that to mean it cures all ills because it's the basis for all medicines. And it also means the philosopher's stone, which changes a baser metal or a common metal to gold. So the philosopher's stone is an alchemical, alchemy, an alchemical idea. So this, a word like elixir has a lot of the territory of practice in it. It also means in its Greek roots, serene, clear, calm.

[63:11]

And the secret of what I'm talking about today, in effect, is a kind of Buddhist inner alchemy. I guess the only word I can use for it is relaxation, and physiologically it is relaxation. Now, again, if you're just practicing your traditional way, you don't have to know much. You just do zazen, you walk, you stay in a kind of rubbing physical contact with the phenomenal world and the people around you.

[64:22]

And I think Randy presented the basic feeling of this in both the feeling of his lecture and what he said yesterday. And you repeat something, like Tathagata, the body of the whole earth. And repetition, or being able to stay with something in a repetitive way, is closely connected with the ability to relax in a deep way inside. And that little transition we go across when you yawn or sneeze or go to sleep or in sexuality or when you go into zazen There's a consciousness shift.

[65:47]

Not only to different kinds of consciousness, but to a more subtle level of consciousness. And part of practice would be to study these transitions in a sneeze or a yawn or sleeping or even sexuality. And the most, I mean, probably going to sleep is the easiest place to study it as well as zazen itself. It's a kind of relaxation which produces a different mental content. It's a kind of change in mental content which produces a relaxation. And when you actually are physiologically sort of joined with that state, you feel pretty relaxed most of the time.

[67:05]

Your body is relaxed from inside. And you can usually relax from inside. And your hands and feet tend to stay warm. I mean, these are actually measurable physiological things that go with this relaxation, which somehow also produces warm hands and feet. And produces a warmth, too, and compassionate feelings. accepting feeling of the world around us and the people around us. And that relaxation inside in this compassionate feeling in relationship, accepting feeling in relationship to others and the world is part of the alchemy of this practice.

[68:16]

Now, Darmakirti said that all, what did he say? All knowledge, all human activity proceeds from knowledge. But he meant not intellectual knowledge or borrowed consciousness knowledge, but knowledge of mind itself, how we exist in mind, how we exist in the world. The actual experience, that thusness, that the tathagata, that the pulse of coming and going, is the body of the whole world. Which, as Suzuki Roshi did, and Randy told the story, plucked a yucca, dried yucca leaf from the mountains and used it as a brush.

[69:31]

And then became the cover of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. But he also gave this little calligraphy to me as a way of introducing me to the practice of Tathagata is the body of the whole earth. And because it was so wonderful to get this gift from him and this practice was so central to me, I asked the publisher if we could put it on the cover of the book. Because I felt that it was actually the inner elixir, substance, teaching of the book.

[70:52]

Now, one person left the Sashin this morning And I think without betraying your confidence, I can say a little bit about his leaving. And I'm bringing it up because it seems to be in pretty deep or significant contrast to what I'm saying here in this talk. Randy and I spoke with him. I think this is the first time he's been to a Sashin or a Buddhist retreat. But he told us he has this problem in every retreat.

[71:53]

And it's well known in the other situations where he's done retreats, which these states of mind and experience come up, which take precedence over this immediate reality. And I told him that if he couldn't make this present reality the strongest reality for him, then he should probably leave. And this seems to happen to him only in retreats, as far as I can tell. Now, I bring this up also because I think his experience can help us. Because in a way, I'm talking about an inner alchemy where you melt the structures of identity.

[73:28]

So, this is only possible if you really can establish this immediate present situation as your anchor. If you really have this reality and you can bring it back into focus at any time, then you can explore yourself very deeply. And if you don't use ego and the structure of self to locate yourself, a comparative mind, if you're not making comparisons, how do you locate yourself? In a way, what you do in a sashin, and one of the things we're practicing, is externalizing our skeleton in our perceptual fields.

[74:36]

You're able to locate your mind and rest your mind in your sense fields. For me, just now as I'm holding this stick, Suzuki Roshi gave me. Yeah, or I'm located, anchored in my crossed legs. In the physical feeling of my backbone. But not exactly just my backbone from inside. My backbone is feeling how it is in this room. And the touch of my fingers together.

[75:48]

And if I'm eating with the Yoyoki, each of the bowls, the process of eating, the physical presence of the bowls, both in my hands and in my eyes, and as a force in my own body field. So the first step in this process is this relaxation and the transition into a transition you begin to know into a a deeper grounded feeling state of mind which doesn't have much conceptual thought and going with that you anchor yourself in your immediate sense fields

[77:13]

In the world as it actually is appearing to your eyes, to your legs, to your body, to your breath. Because this sheen, when you enter it, again, as Randy pointed out, is a kind of alchemical cauldron And it seems strange to... Sashin seems like a strange place to relax. But really... If you can't relax in a sashin, it's very hard to do a sashin. So getting through a sashin is a proof either of craziness, endurance or relaxation.

[78:34]

And I love it that you're all full of crazy wisdom and endurance. Und ich liebe es, dass ihr alle so voll seid, dieser verrückten Weisheit und Ausdauer. But I hope mostly you can do this Sashin just because you're so profoundly relaxed on your cushion, you couldn't care whether the bell rings or not. Und ich hoffe jedoch, dass ihr am meisten jetzt also dieses Sashin durchsteht, weil ihr so tief entspannt seid, dass es euch völlig gleich ist, ob die Glocke erklingt oder nicht. The Glocke erklingt oder nicht. If you... If you get even a taste of that, it can change your life, really. Is this a sashin? Oh, is this a sashin? I forgot. Who are all these people? Maybe as I say, it's early Alzheimer's.

[79:35]

So your breath is kind of a philosopher's stone. A yogi stone. or a yogini stone. And if you keep bringing yourself, allowing yourself to be absorbed into your breath, I think you may discover a state of mind that permeates your practice and relaxes almost as if it were outside of your body. It relaxes your body into this field. Okay, this is lesson one in the practice of the Tathagata as the body of the whole earth.

[80:56]

Maybe tomorrow we'll have lesson two. But I think you've had enough for now. As usual I'm so touched and moved by the pleasure of the gift of your consciousness in my own personal alchemy. I feel each of you has an elixir which I am enjoying.

[82:01]

Your intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[82:33]

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