Sometimes I wish I could get more feedback from you on what I've been saying. Sometimes I wish I could get more feedback from you on what I've been saying. At the same time, I know I'm specifically speaking in a way that is intended to not let you give feedback. I think this is funny. It's true. I mean, I believe that nothing I'm saying is hard to understand.

[01:01]

But I hope that all I'm saying, most of what I'm saying, requires some absorption. You can't think it so much as you can perhaps, I hope, feel it. And I hope that everything I say, or at least most of it, needs something like absorption, needs a time to absorb, so that you can't think so much about it, but I hope you can feel it. Because I want to speak in an embodyable way, because that's the only thing that makes practice sensible. I would like to speak in a tangible way, because that is the only thing that makes the practice meaningful and tangible. And I have often had people say to me, you know, when I first came to your lectures, I didn't understand a single thing.

[02:28]

And then sometimes they notice how hurt I am and they say, yeah, but it felt okay. Oh, good. But then later, you know, sometimes many years later, they say, yeah, now I understand almost everything. Now, Dogen supposedly, you know, scholars complain that Dogen never said, gave instructions about what he really means by non-thinking or no-thinking. I'll have to take that as a topic and see if I agree that Dogen doesn't give instructions.

[03:35]

But Dogen certainly would in a teisho with his practitioners. If he was speaking about non-thinking, he would establish a mind of non-thinking while he was speaking. And in the gestural field established in monastic-like practice, This kind of the mind present in the person giving the teisho probably is felt by the persons in the assembly. Although, at least that's assumed, and it's certainly part of giving a tesho, that all the time you're speaking, you're simultaneously embodying, as much as possible, what you're speaking about.

[05:20]

Yeah. I don't have any idea if any of that comes across on audio tape or audio... BF3 or whatever it's called. I'm pretending to be more stupid than I am, but I am sort of... MP3, yeah. I said BP3. I would just, you know... No, it's all right. Pretending to be more stupid than I am. But maybe not pretending. Okay. And, you know, as you know, I'm also, as I'm slowly trying to retire...

[06:38]

I'm actually writing more. And I wonder what I can say in writing. How do you do that in text when you're not physically face-to-face present? I can only make sense of a text by viewing it as an entirely different medium that's not a version of the spoken teisho. I'm mentioning this also because I was reading recently quite a wonderful translator of French primarily. But his effort, what he views, is not to translate the original text into the new language,

[08:10]

But to translate what moves the reader in the original text into the new text. And he speaks about a translation as a new becoming, becoming? In a new language, in the new language. And I think we are, whether we like it or not, we don't have any choice about it, we together are a new becoming of Buddhism in Western languages, in our English and German. Und ich glaube, wir sind, ob uns das gefällt oder nicht, wir sind so etwas wie ein neues Werden des Buddhismus in westlichen Sprachen, im Englischen und im Deutschen.

[09:33]

Yeah, and that's one reason I rather enjoy the translation. I don't know what's going on, but I rather like it. Das ist einer der Gründe, warum ich die Übersetzung eigentlich genieße. Und auch wenn ich nicht weiß, was da passiert, ich mag die Übersetzung. Because what I'm doing right now is I'm translating my experience into English the best I can. Then you're translating and then you're translating. Who knows where there's any reality? But, you know, we have three locations here. The practicing Sangha. This would be meaningless without the practicing Sangha.

[10:35]

That's us. And then we have the gardens. And then we have the garden and the presence. And in my imagined dialogue between Heraclitus and the Buddha, As I'm struck in just my exploring it, how important the garden has been since the earliest times. Not only was the Buddha enlightened under a fig tree, the Bodhi tree, and where there are also banyan trees, and a park.

[11:44]

But also the Buddha's mother decided to give birth to him the story goes at least, in Lumbini Park where there were Salah trees and insects and birds and so forth. And the garden is always conceived of as plants, paths, insects, birds and water. And the garden is always understood as plants, birds, insects, paths and trees. It's part of the emphasis on a... Water, sorry, not trees, but water.

[12:45]

It's part of the emphasis on a... We're always constructing actuality. And that is part of this understanding, that we constantly construct the reality. And so we have the practicing Sangha here. And luckily, through the leadership of Atmar, we have this. Quite wonderful. Garden and water and streams. And insects and birds. And a few too many snails. Thanks to Atma's leadership, we have these beautiful gardens and insects and birds and a few too many snails. And then we have the third location which is the mandala of these buildings. The practice relationship we will develop as we use the buildings.

[13:47]

No, I don't know, but I do know it's the tradition to have these three locations as a basis for continuing the lineage. I'm very happy we together are creating these three locations. And we'll see what happens. You will see what happens longer than I will, but we'll see what happens. And when I say longer than I will, I'm only saying I'm depending on you. Okay. Now, as we know, and it's an imagined fact, the Buddha said to Heraclitus,

[14:59]

Look here, Herakles. This is a really good, wise statement. The stream and the person are simultaneously streaming. But how? As far as I know, you never gave any instructions on how to realize this. So let me suggest that from my experience, we need to create a non-excluding, non-referential, somatic mind.

[16:27]

In other words, we need to have a mind that doesn't think about, but notices. And in my experience, that very phrase I just used now is the way to practice non-thinking. As I say over and over again, you develop the habit you inhabit of noticing without thinking about. Now, to put this in our Western context, William James, the American philosopher of mind, has more or less established the basics of

[17:30]

the contemporary study of mind and attention. And he describes attention primarily as a focusing of attention, a focusing of consciousness. Attention is a focusing of consciousness. And it's a focusing that excludes except what it's focused on. But in the yogic Buddhist tradition, it's the converse. We're creating, developing a non-excluding, non-referential field of mind. Now I'm using these adjectives to give you a chance to practice this, embody this.

[18:54]

And I use this adjective to give you an opportunity to practice and embody it. Can you have a mind, can you notice or feel a mind which doesn't exclude? Or a mind that doesn't reference. And a mind which... accepts everything, is receptive and absorbing. Now, the Buddha discovered, it was his daily discovery, like Vesela, that it is this mind cultivated through zazen, through meditation, which is the only dynamic which can create a direct experience of mind, body, world and self-streaming.

[20:06]

and can locate us, as I wrote, to create a location which locates us. And can locate us, as I wrote, to create a place which locates us. to discover a way that we are located and simultaneously, located and simultaneously embodying, reciprocally embodying the world phenomena and your own experience. einen Ort zu schaffen, der, wo wir wechselseitig und gleichzeitig the world, and what else?

[21:21]

Reciprocally embodying the world and yourself. Die Welt und uns selbst wechselseitig und gleichzeitig verkörpern. Now, again, that was a lot of words to get familiar with, but if you take each one, it's... there's a reciprocal relationship to everything you see and hear. And unless you want to believe in a God-like implicit order, It's a parallel but indeterminate reciprocal relationship. We're in a world that's simultaneously parallel but also indeterminate, not exactly coinciding.

[22:26]

Now, again, that's a lot of words. And I think it's easy to understand and scientifically accurate as far as I'm concerned. But how to practice it? I would suggest, you know, we live in a world where there's no single beginning. Ich würde vorschlagen, wir leben in einer Welt, in der es keinen, nicht einen einzigen Anfangspunkt gibt. There's no single middle. Es gibt nicht eine einzige Mitte. There's no single end. Und nicht einen einzigen Endpunkt.

[23:28]

So I think you can practice this by every time you notice something, Like you might say, already connected. I'm suggesting, what I practice with is no beginning, no middle, no end. And I've been inflowing this, inflowing this, I don't know, that's what came out, inflowing this ever since an hour or two ago. I'm looking at you and I feel no beginning, no middle, no end. And it takes away thinking about. So if you inhabit this phrase, you may find yourself in a kind of non-referential samadhi, khanika samadhi.

[24:57]

It's really that easy. And it is in the contrast between what Heraclitus was proposing without instructions and the Buddha is proposing with instructions. To know simultaneously in a non-excluding way the feel of the world interpenetrating you and itself. So I'm giving you words which may give you some suggestions or let you poke around in your own thinking and views. And I'm giving you a turning word phrase that can buy its repetition, can establish this in you.

[26:09]

And I'm giving you this practice of Sashin, which was given to me. As I mentioned occasionally, I had no idea what a Sashin was when I was first started practicing. And I worked in a warehouse, a book warehouse of course. No, it wasn't Amazon yet, but you know. But it was okay. I happened to go by this place when I discovered the sitting there, and I'd gone a few times.

[27:30]

And it had pinned on the bulletin board, Sashin beginning such and such a time. This is my third or fourth day of sitting. And I said, well, I don't know. I saw a guy named Paul Alexander who was an artist I knew was sitting. And I thought, well, I know Paul pretty well. If he could do this, I can do it. I don't know what it is. But it turned out to be a different Paul Alexander. LAUGHTER So I remember, and I'm not a person who swears, right?

[28:37]

But I remember sitting down in this thing and after a little while I said, oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? My gut. Yeah, well... And I told somebody else recently, I was sitting on the altar. Sukhriyashi had me sitting on the altar in Tassara. And by this time I'd been practicing some years, five years or so. And I was in Sashin and Sukhriyashi had left. And I was in Sashin and Suzuki Roshi was gone and had to do something. And I sat there and I thought, am I making this my life?

[29:38]

And I saw hundreds of Sashins, which is in fact, I've done hundreds of Sashins ahead of me. I almost got off it. I almost left. which is what's happened there's been a hundred and each one is you know yeah it's demanding but somehow I didn't get up and my fate was sealed. So I'm very happy to be here with you. So no beginning, no middle, no end. All you are is creating a location.

[30:50]

To various degrees establishing a present. The present as yourself is creating a location. And as you know, there's no location, no beginning, no middle and no end. You know that you are the location that's being created. Within the 3,000 coherences, as I've been speaking about. So once you get the feel of this, you always feel you're within your own power. within a world that's profoundly familiar and inexplicable.

[32:06]

So when you begin to have this kind of experience, as I said, standing by the stream, there's the light on the water there's often insects on the water there's often shadows following the light and there's the currents and the clouds and sometimes this There's such a powerful inseparability of this experience. Which can occur through the turning word phrase or through exploring your views and taking the ones away that don't work.

[33:19]

die durch ein Wendewort entstehen kann, oder indem du deine Sichtweisen erforscht und die Sichtweisen aussortierst, die nicht funktionieren. And sometimes it's a fruit of the sashin, the shortcut sashin. Und manchmal ist es eine Frucht des sashins, der Abkürzung des sashins. And this experience, particularly when it happens in a sashin, Or in a period of intense practice where you're really intentionally bringing attention to an embodied immediacy. This experience can really lodge in us, lodge, live in us, like you are lodging. And it starts, it can... It can lodge fully enough that it sings in our activity.

[34:33]

That it nourishingly waters all of our experience. That it continuously unfolds in all the particulars and the pauses. Somehow it's an experience which is so integrating and simultaneously folded up within itself. that it can be embodied in a way that it unfolds the rest of your life. And as a memory, or as, if you continue to practice, finding ways in all the details of your life.

[35:50]

So this is, the Buddha said something like this to Herakles. As I said, we know this to be a fact. An imagined fact. And it's sometimes a mind that just happens to us, but we're speaking about a mind that you discover inculcate. Inculcate means to embody and cultivate. And sometimes it can just drive us away. But we are talking about a spirit that you develop, that you embody and that you discover.

[36:59]

That was developing. May our intentions be the same in every being and every being.

[37:27]

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