I am about to taste the truth of that Agatha's words. Okay. I won't mention what day today is. And yesterday you may have felt my frustration. And how to point out to you, how to make clear to us that we have to practice with this feeling of just now. Partly I'm frustrated by... Partly I'm frustrated because... What more can I say? And how...

[01:01]

How is it possible to hear what this really means? And also, I've seen so many people in the last 30 years beating their brains out on the present. Do you have such an expression, beating your brains out? It means like beating your head against a wall, you know, and... Saying moo or something like that. And you know, it's about as successful when a cow does it. Yeah. For most people, they just don't get anywhere. Mm-hmm. It's kind of vinyl practice.

[02:34]

Vinyl is that plastic they put on top of kitchen counters. So how to make you hear it? Well, partly certain states of mind enhance the possibility of realization. And certain states of mind hinder realization. So, first of all, I'm trying to teach you those states of mind which precipitate or support enlightenment. And I'm trying to point out the states of mind that hinder realization. Now I should say that enlightenment as a bosom based on an enlightenment which is understood as the ultimate goody is nonsense. Enlightenment experiences are actually pretty nice.

[03:54]

But they're nice when you no longer care whether things are nice or not. So whether they're nice or not, and when that part is emphasized, it's really confusing and a mistake, I think. Practice has to be based on accepting things just as they are. And we don't have a word for it, but it's a kind of non-passive acceptance.

[04:56]

If I say active acceptance, that doesn't sound right. If I say acceptance all by itself, it sounds too passive. So we don't have a word, so I'm saying non-passive acceptance. Hmm. Hmm. Now, to practice with some phrase, and I'm just using just now as it could be any phrase that works for you, symbolically or practically, I'm saying just now. Now, just now, you practice just now, You need to have the feeling of being on top of the present.

[06:11]

Or riding the present. And through mindfulness practices and so forth. Or bringing your mind back to out-breath, in-breath. You're actually again creating a state of mind that's more grounded in actuality. Now, let me again try to make this point about a state of mind. Let's go back to what I mentioned when Tsukiyoshi said that you think it's going to be less painful if you move, and then when you move, it's worse.

[07:19]

Okay, what does he mean? He means that a posture accepting state of mind is quite stable. A pain accepting state of mind is quite stable. But a posture-adjusting state of mind is rather unstable. So when you move, you're not just moving your foot or something. You're moving from a posture-accepting state of mind to a posture-adjusting state of mind. As soon as you decide to move, you change your state of mind. And your posture-adjusting state of mind is much less stable.

[08:22]

And a posture-adjusting state of mind is ready to make a lot of adjustments. And you no longer have the ability to even stand the difficulty that before was not a problem. Now, it is possible to change your posture and maintain a posture-accepting state of mind. But then you have to have some skills at maintaining that state of mind while you slightly change your posture. So I think you can see that clearly that deciding to move your leg or whatever is usually deciding to move your state of mind.

[09:33]

Now, if you have a pillow like Coco has, you don't have to move your legs. Sashin is supposed to be a time of small desires. Reduced desires. But every day that you see that thick pillow... Your desires increase. By the third or fourth day, you really want a pillow like that. And you imagine that Cocos underneath is glowing and bright and soft. And you wish you could feel so soft.

[10:53]

Today we needed two pillows for the doksan room and we considered sawing that one in half. Actually, those are made high in the Alps. By hardworking Swiss. So they can sit on pointed rocks at the back. I mean, I've been practicing more than 30 years and I've never seen such a thing. And maybe afterward, after Sashin, you can tell me where. Hmm. I couldn't believe it.

[11:55]

That's not a cushion, it's a throne. When you first had it, you had a couple of cushions underneath it. I couldn't believe it. I looked over at Coco and he was way up. Hmm. So I'm trying to talk about something that's the least interesting thing for me to talk about. This practice of just now. And also, for some reason, I'm talking about the precepts. And then to confuse the picture thoroughly, I should add uncorrected mind.

[13:00]

Because how does uncorrected mind and the precepts and just now making an effort go together? I don't really know. So that's why I'm frustrated. No, I'll make an attempt to try to describe it. Okay. So when can you trust uncorrected minds? Obviously you couldn't tell a psychopath or a murderer to practice uncorrected mind. So when can you practice uncorrected mind? Well, obviously, when you can trust uncorrected mind or you're in a safe situation.

[14:19]

And a safe situation is zazen. You can't do much harm sitting in a zendo. You can't do much harm sitting in a zendo. And usually the kind of mind that the collected... Sesshin literally means to collect the heart and mind. And when you have a collected state of mind, you can usually trust your state of mind. Now, the more deeply rooted, as I've been talking about, your state of mind is, the more you can practice uncorrected mind.

[15:29]

Now, if you're in borrowed consciousness, Most of the time, you simply don't have the resources or equipment or opportunities for realization. Unless a large stone fell on you or something. Because borrowed consciousness Unless you have some sense, say, of impermanence, a physical feeling for impermanence, you won't have the sense of a deep present. You need a state of mind that sort of pries open the present. Or prize past pride, you know the word?

[16:46]

Like you pry open a can. Yeah, so that prize open the present. Or prize the present free of the past and future. Now, I'm just trying various words, like inclusive present, deep present, because you need some feeling for the depths of the present. If you're in borrowed consciousness, your present is very thin. If your present is eaten up by the past and future, you have a you have a very thin present.

[17:51]

Now, The word precept literally means, and I just will cover some topics and we'll see what happens. And I don't know what word you use in German, but precept in English means something that takes hold of something in advance. The pre is obviously before and sept is to grab. Well, there are There are three main ways to study the precepts.

[19:20]

But before we study the precepts, in a way, you have to study your own precepts. In a general sense, we can say precepts are when you come to the commitment to practice. And the commitment to practice is already, feels like something different than uncorrected mind. No, I'm not trying to knock Or lessen the power of uncorrected mind. Ich versuche hier nicht die Kraft von unkorrigiertem Geist zu schmälern. Or the openness of it. Oder die Offenheit davon. And it's actually, uncorrected mind is also a process of relaxation and effort.

[20:28]

Relaxation and effort. Und unkorrigierter Geist ist ebenfalls ein Prozess von Entspannung und Anstrengung. Now, initially, it's good to just study your own precepts. What rules do you have that you live by? Because you already live by certain rules. So it's good to study the rules we already have. And in every level, our expectations, so forth. Now, this koan twice uses the phrase to thoroughly examine to thoroughly study everything.

[21:35]

And it says, having thoroughly examined everything, you come to the point that there's nothing to seek. So you can't just force on yourself some sort of philosophical idea or religious idea that there's nothing to seek. It has to come through thorough study and examination of how you actually exist before you can come really to the realization that there's nothing to seek. And as we spoke about yesterday, it's in the lived body that there's nothing to seek.

[22:39]

So again, I would say there's three areas of study of precepts. I mean, four, if you count how you already have precepts. But the first is, in three, the first is the practical precepts of how you live in your present culture. And you need certainly some rules about how to live in Europe in 1993. What you should be well aware is different than Europe 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago, and so forth. So these are rules you accept, but they're practical.

[23:57]

You try not to get your identity too mixed up in them. And the second area of precepts is you need ego-taming precepts. This is rather different than your culture. Of course it's related, but it's rather different. So in ego-taming precepts, you have to somehow deal with the various sicknesses of the ego. Fear. Endless comparisons. Addiction. Hate. Self-hate. Destructiveness. Attachment. Delusion. Confusion.

[25:16]

Greed. Now, your culture gives you a good feel for these things, but really living by the rules of your culture is quite different than taming your ego. An uncorrected mind doesn't mean you don't have some responsibility to tame your ego. You need some kind of strictness with yourself. Otherwise you'll eat too many cookies. Oh dear. We need to turn the ego back toward self in the large sense. Now let me say something about self and the observer.

[26:29]

This is a constant and difficult question. I found various ways to talk about it over the past. Let me say that, in my understanding and experience, the ego is only one identity of the observer. Now when you say I know I am breathing in there's an I that knows you're breathing in and breathing out. And after a while, there's not much I that knows.

[27:32]

But there's still a knowing that you're breathing in and breathing out. And that knowing doesn't have much of an observer, but you still know you're breathing in and out. Now you could say, oh, that's still I and so forth, but really it's different. It's an I kind of beginning to merge into the background. If you want a question, it'll pop back in full force. But you can let it merge back into. So there's knowing without a sense of I. Now, also, when you practice and you get so that you can maintain an underlying mind, there are various experiences you have of the observer and the observer disappearing.

[28:57]

For instance, you may feel inside yourself a big room or a big space or a field. And you can, depending on your state of mind, you can clothe that space Openness with various kinds of walls or fields or no boundaries. And you can stay steady and watch such a space. So what's watching the space? And then you can, at that point, you can move and watch the watcher watching the space.

[30:09]

And what watcher is that? When you look carefully, the space has bent around and the space is now watching the watcher. So the point is, we can have various ways in which a state of mind can reflect on itself. It's just part of the complexity of being a human being. And because you have more than one state of mind, each state of mind can observe the other. And that observer isn't necessarily an ego or anything. It's just an observer. So part of the precepts, the ego-taming precepts, are precepts which also acknowledge this deep sense of an observer.

[31:17]

And the disappearance of the observer. So these precepts should acknowledge that the observer appears and disappears and only sometimes takes the form of ego. Okay, now the third area of study of the precepts are our manifestations of enlightenment. In other words, an enlightened person will probably behave this way.

[32:20]

And so if you want to be enlightened, you can behave like an enlightened person. It's true. It's called enactment. And much of Tibetan Buddhism is based on enacting states of mind that are enlightened states of mind. So now, ideally, we'll come to one set of precepts. that serve as an expression of enlightenment and simultaneously serve to create states of mind that support or precipitate enlightenment. And precepts that also simultaneously support, tame the ego.

[33:29]

And that recognize that the observer isn't always the ego. And third, precepts that also allow you to live in your society at a particular time. Now, precepts also acknowledge that we, as I said yesterday, share surfaces with the world and with each other person. So the study in Zen, the study of the precepts, comes after the koans. Because after koan study and enough realization, I like enough realization.

[34:31]

I'll have three kilos of realization, please. Sorry, we only got a gram or two today. A gram's enough for me, thank you. So after koan study, there's enough realization and enough softening of your states of mind. And it's, you know, you can hear realization in a person's voice. There's a kind of softness or welcoming quality to the voice. That maybe caresses the deep present. It isn't a voice that rushes into the future or the past.

[35:57]

Nor out of the past. And all of you, I think in Sashin I notice your bodies and your voices are, your eyes even are more in the deeper present. And I'm sorry. I really am genuinely sorry this practice hurts so much to get you into the deeper present. And if there's any other way, I would do it. But if you can, don't try to recreate the feelings or insights or experiences of Sesshin. But remember them with your body. Ah. So when you have these, what shall I say, softer states of mind, more deeply grounded states of mind, states of mind that nourish you, that caress you, you actually feel taken care of by your own state of mind.

[37:34]

And you've learned, as I said, not to stray too far from those states of mind, and you always know how to come back. In those states of mind, you have the resources to unfold the present. To practice with just now. And to really see the precepts for your ego, for your culture, and for practice. And to really see the precepts To support your commitment to practice yourself and with others. This is possible. Just now. The flower-raising consciousness is always ready to be picked up. Any flower will do.

[39:12]

Any person can do it. And the smile arising consciousness the smile arising consciousness is always waiting to be smiled. Any smile will do. Maybe next session we can all have cushions like Coco. But we'll have to raise the ceiling. Thank you very much.

[39:50]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.28