I want to taste the truth of that Agatha's words. Well, about half the people, maybe that's an exaggeration, but quite a number of the people who, persons who've come to a doksan so far, have spoken to me about the fact that they feel there's too much talking going on in the Sesshin. And it's... In general, I feel we all follow the rules of Sashin quite well and follow the schedule. But that one rule, we don't seem to follow very well. And even some of the group leaders, I've seen people say, are talking quite a bit, which makes it hard for them not to.

[01:07]

Not to talk. Group leaders? Who's the head of the different groups. And someone told me, two people told me, three people that Ruth spoke about it in the sender yesterday. And two or three people told me that Ruth also spoke about it yesterday in the sender. You know, from one point of view, it's just a rule, and there's no reason to give you more explanation than that. But, you know, to the particular style, to the silence of a sashin, which makes it a little hard to follow. Because the rule is don't talk but talk if you want to. Or if you have to or something like that.

[02:20]

So it makes it a little more complicated to follow the rule. And... The Tenzo Sama himself spoke to me about it. And I guess all of you know Tenzo means cook and Sama means extremely honorific. And we thank him and everyone in the kitchens for the delicious food. And Erich said to me, that a certain level of conversation, he feels, is necessary not only, I think you said it this way, not only to get the cooking done, but also to have an atmosphere which is productive to do the cooking.

[03:45]

And I think that's true. I mean, how do you modulate that? In other words, if we were practicing, if we'd been here for months together, it would be fairly easy to cook in the kitchen without much talk. but of course you know it's just this week so it's we have to you know a lot of communication has to happen but also we need to as I said yesterday the world maybe to imagine the world as an infant or a musical instrument or a lover cooking is a way of touching the world touching people And so the state of mind with which you cook, with which you are in the kitchen, will be in the food.

[05:07]

And Mahayana Buddhism is not very Protestant in feeling. And, I mean, the view of Mahayana Buddhism is something like, well, if you're poor and you don't have food, then eat poorly. But if you have food, don't pretend you're poor out of some moral reasons or something. The sense was to share. In Japan, the sense was to eat at the level of the average person But to cook everything very well and so forth. And mostly they grew their own ingredients. And they also had always two cuisines. One cuisine for guests and and one cuisine for the abbot sometimes, and one cuisine for the daily life of the monastery.

[06:55]

And the guest cuisine is about the best food you can possibly have in Asia. And the guest corn is probably the best you can get in Asia. It's a Chinese vegetarian cooking. There's a restaurant which, to show you the extreme of it, there's a restaurant in Kyoto which specializes in serving this food. And if you want to eat there, it's a minimum of $1,000 a person. And that's because it's so labor-intensive. So we had, those of us who went to Japan a couple of years ago, had a meal with a little bit of that flavor at... And the feeling is to take each vegetable and prepare it as simply as well as you can.

[08:17]

And it's like the carpentry. You should be able to do very quick ordinary carpentry and you should be able to do cabinet making and go back and forth between the two. So the staff asks, the kitchen staff, crews ask me, like they did at lunch today, where I volunteer, I don't know which, what did I think of the meal or whatever, you know. And for me, each meal is like a poem. You know, a poem is complete and it has its flavors. But you can always write another poem, a poem that you feel better about. So I don't really know the complete system of Chinese vegetarian cooking, but I believe there's 12 flavors and colors and textures and a whole panoply of things you have to coordinate in a meal.

[10:12]

It's like a musical event. But in general, what you want to work with in sashimi meals is distinct different flavors in each bowl. Different colors. Different textures. And of course, a difference in overall kind of statement between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And in Sashin is when people eat the best. The most effort and the most effort to have plenty of food is in Sashin where you need the energy. And then, which is hard for us, how do you eat the meal with one bowl with a spoon and one bowl with chopsticks and so forth?

[11:32]

But even if we have a fairly simple system I just mentioned, you could all your life get better at making meals for Seixin. And commenting on it is not really about criticism. It's about commenting on a poem, a painting or something. And then there's the nuance of the feeling of the sashin and the different kind of food that's needed on different days. My feeling is... this makes life more interesting to have it, there's no end exactly, you know, there's no way to do it and then you do it that way.

[12:54]

It's a language you get better at. And I mean to give you An example, just the people who worked at the Tassajara and San Francisco kitchens developing vegetarian food in the 60s. Doing it over and over again. And not having simple broth, you know, not able to add chicken broth to everything or something like that. You really had to work with the vegetables and expand the range of vegetables available. When those same cooks opened a restaurant in San Francisco, It was immediately considered one of the ten best restaurants in the United States.

[14:13]

And the top cooking cook of England flew to America to come to the restaurant, her first visit to America. Elizabeth David, and she flew to San Francisco and was driven to the restaurant at lunchtime for her when she landed. And this really came out of nothing other than trying to develop sashimi meals and the monastic meals, really. So we're expecting a lot of you, Eric, when you open your restaurant in Vienna. None of us went to cooking schools, we just paid attention to details. So I think you have to, if a certain relaxed atmosphere is necessary in the kitchen to produce good food, and that takes a little bit of talking, that's okay.

[15:38]

But in general, in sashin, you want to, as much as possible, not talk. And the rule is also not to read things. Now what you're trying to do here is you're trying to change the source of response. So I thought that since so many people mentioned it to me about the talking, I would speak a little bit about the practice of the mouth. And the image I had when it was mentioned to me was of carrying an empty suitcase. Okay, so... As we talked and spoke about and mentioned in the koan seminar, Vimalakirti's silence has nothing to do with a mystic silence or a joining with oneness or something.

[17:06]

It's merely a not speaking. And leaving the mystery of possibilities open. Not the mystic mystery of oneness, but the mystery of potentialities, possibilities. Because you're not joining oneness or something like that, you're joining a... a world in which you never know exactly what's going to happen.

[18:09]

Now... Like our face, our mouth is one of the most acculturated parts of our body. And in the koans where it mentions somebody paused or there was a moment and then so-and-so spoke. That pause is usually an accurate representation of the way someone speaks when the source of the response is not from the conceptual mind. So, again, sorry to keep coming back to the body and the importance of the body in practice, but you practice with your mouth in much the same way you practice with your hands.

[19:14]

So it's a little bit like, it's not that you're forcing yourself to be silent, but rather you let your mouth be at ease the way your hands can be at ease together, your lips or your mouth is at ease together. And sometimes to make an inner connection, you have to break an outer connection. So we tend to respond to the world with our mouth quite immediately. Speaking, eating, so forth. Smoking, drinking a cup of coffee. But the feeling in Sechin is to take a week and see if you can let your mouth relax.

[20:53]

Give your mouth a vacation. And it doesn't mean you're not responding to things, it's just you're responding in a different way. And some people say that your tongue is connected to your heart. I don't know, but in any case, you want us to change the way your mouth is always responding from the conceptual mind. It reminds me of, you know, like if you have a mosquito and you just respond really quick like that, that response is one kind of response.

[21:58]

Then there's the kind of response where you, oh, I guess that must be a mosquito walking around. Or is it my imagination? Or maybe it's a fly. Now, is that the third time it's bit me? Should I slap it or not? Somewhere there, okay. That's a different kind of response. You're responding from a kind of space. In this koan, Ulrike said, you know, I think everyone's had, sort of, she said something like, I think everyone may have had enough of koans.

[22:59]

I try to take her advice. But once you're in the grip of a koan, it's hard not to talk about it. You know how you'll be walking along and something will happen and you start singing a song about it. You don't know where the song came from, but a song comes up. And if you feel relaxed enough, you... you have a repertoire of several thousand songs which can pop up according to the time of day and the autumn weather, whatever. And this comes from the body somewhere, these songs. And koans are a bit like that they're written As if they were a kind of song which then you start singing in situations.

[24:22]

So once I start on poor old Judy's finger, you're going to have Judy's finger, you know, the rest of the session, I'm sorry. And if you cut one of them off, I've got another one. And I can always stand up armless. So you're not going to get rid of Jyoti, I'm sorry. Anyway, Confucius said, the master of sources lives outside convention. So, where are the sources? How do you become master of the sources? And how are they outside convention? Your mouth is one of your main conventions. It's always saying conventional things. So somehow you want to break the connection of the way the mouth usually responds.

[25:38]

So you practice as much as... That's why the rule is not absolute silence. It's respond through your mouth differently. I took it as absolute silence when I first started doing Sashins. And Suzuki Roshi would come up and speak to me and I'd write him a note. He was charmed, I think. He laughed. I remember my wife bringing me my laundry and I wouldn't speak to her. And she left weeping empty-handed because I had laundry.

[26:40]

So after two or three sashins, I learned that if Sukhreshi spoke to me, I could speak, but with the feeling of silence. You begin to have a feeling of silence and you can speak without disturbing that feeling. And part of the problem with speaking is that speaking immediately moves you into graspable emotions, graspable feelings. And so when you speak, you're definably involved with naming. So the question is, how do you start peeling the names off things? How do you stop thinking in words?

[27:54]

How do you stop talking to yourself in a kind of subconscious gossip? An endless kind of subhuman voice that goes on commenting on everything arising from the conceptual mind arising, bubbling from the conceptual swamp. You've got to somehow Get the source of speaking out of your conceptual mind.

[28:59]

So pretend your mouth is in a mudra like your hands. A beautiful little bow like a heart. So when someone comes to speak to you, you think to yourself, do I really want to disturb my mouth mudra? I'm feeling so much calmness and silence in my lips. Why is this mosquito talking to me? Should I slap this mosquito or not? Should I speak or not? So if there's that little pause like that, the person speaking to you is suddenly in a different space, even when you respond.

[30:05]

And if you can really find the subtlety to speak without disturbing the feeling of silence, you've begun again to have a sense of silence. living with, practicing with non-graspable feelings. And also it's just a relief to put down the burden of having to respond all the time. And this is a kind of suitcase, you know. It's not that you put your suitcase down. It's that you take everything out of the suitcase. It's actually a kind of magic suitcase.

[31:07]

A magical suitcase. So, you know, and Sashin also opens up our wounds Many of us, I think, notice that we feel wounded at a very deep level. Going back sometimes to childhood, sometimes to just the abrasive way we have to live. And often we have to live with people in a work situation where there isn't deep respect for each other. And although you may be tough and used to it, still at some level there's a kind of disillusionment going on about our human life.

[32:15]

And it becomes wise to not be idealistic anymore. But this is actually a kind of wound we carry. And being able to stay with that wound and not distract yourself from it with the usual way we respond to things. And sometimes the reason we find excuses to speak about something is because it distracts us from our wound. But that wound is part of Part of emptying ourselves.

[33:35]

Without being panicked, you want to be able to start emptying yourself. Emptying the world. Really letting things be. Accepting just the way you are. What is that phrase, bring us your poor, your weak, your downtrodden? I forget. Anyway, Sashin is like that. Sashin says, bring us your poor, your downtrodden, your weak. Because Sashin accepts us just the way we are. And it's a part of our wound also to finally want to be accepted without qualifications. You don't have to be anything special.

[34:51]

You just are accepted. And Sashin accepts you in that way. Sashin doesn't have much choice. You don't have time to take a bath. You aren't purifying yourself. In your little cushion area, all kinds of things are going on this week. And each of us, each of us personally, and the cushion and the room, accept you as you are. And you can start accepting yourself as you are. And doing that is beginning to... What you're doing when you accept your wound, your situation, whatever it is, you're actually creating a kind of psychic container. And you're making your container bigger.

[36:08]

You're making your capacity for experience wider. And so you're not just accepting more what has happened to you, you're increasing your ability to accept what will happen to you. So a wound is a kind of space, a kind of opening. And so accepting our woundedness is also emptying ourselves. It's like this magic suitcase. You can put things into it, but then when you open it up, they're gone. Sometimes you open it up and there's a staircase in it and it goes into dreamland or into Buddha land or something.

[37:13]

It goes into Buddha land or dream land. You can take your dream bear with you. Or sometimes when you need something, really need something, you open the suitcase and it's there. And this kind of feeling, this inner, again, as I said yesterday, this feeling of being all of one piece, comes from unloading your suitcases. Probably the image of throwing your suitcases away is not quite right. It's unloading your suitcases. You're not throwing your mouth away. Your suitcases are there, ready for you. But you're changing the source of response. And the response begins to come from kind of this inner space of you rather than your conceptual mind.

[38:41]

So, I mean, I'm I don't know if I'm describing this very well, I'm just doing the best I can. Or if these images are accurate enough to be helpful. But the practice of silence in Sashin is definitely, the point of it is to change the source of response. The practice with a kind of feeling of meditation in your mouth the way I explained yesterday, the feeling of meditation in your hands. And I'm sure all religious traditions, especially the Catholic religious tradition, which practices silence, physiologically something similar must happen.

[39:51]

They must understand it this way intuitively at a physical level. There's a Carmelite monastery just down below us in Creston. And the head of this particular order is a rather famous man named William Creston. Johnson or Johnston, do you know? Girl, do you know what his name is? Anyway, he's sick all the time, so you never see him, but he's written a lot of books. Father William. Anyway, the abbot of the monastery is a woman. Mother Tessa, rather unusual. Mutter Tessa, ziemlich ungewöhnlich.

[40:57]

They have a place in, I think, Nova Scotia too, and up in the mountains above us too. In Creston they have a place up above us in the mountains and in Nova Scotia and the one down below us. Sie haben drei Plätze, also eins unterhalb, eins überhalb von uns in den Bergen und eins in Nova Scotia. And their main practice is silence. In a way, I kind of hate giving you so many reasons for simple practices. In some ways I wish we could just say we practice silence or we practice our mudra and we just did it and discovered it through silence and through the mudra of our hands. And as much as possible, the details of this practice aren't harming anyone. You might as well do them. I can't explain everything.

[42:03]

And also I don't know everything. And sometimes it's taken me years to understand the point of a certain practice. On the other hand, and simultaneously, I'm glad I have to explain. Because I think we understand it better then. And maybe we do the practices with more subtlety. We're in danger.

[44:11]

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