Several mornings since we've come together. Several mornings since we've come together. Since we've begun practice period together. I've gotten up from the place in the zendo where I sit. And I've walked through the Zendo making some suggestions about posture. And even when I don't make an explicit suggestion, simply standing behind you and feeling your posture. Selbst wenn ich keinen expliziten Vorschlag mache, dann stehe ich einfach hinter euch und spüre eure Haltung.

[01:09]

Manchmal wird es verstanden, als ob ich die Haltung korrigieren würde. But my feeling is I'm not correcting your posture. I'm accepting your posture. I'm as best I'm able in a moment to join with your posture. And sometimes a suggestion comes up. A little forward, a little back. Chin in more slightly. But basically my feeling is together we're saying yes to your chin, yes to your shoulders, yes to your back.

[02:12]

Aber im Grunde genommen ist mein Gefühl, dass wir gemeinsam Ja zu deinem Kinn, Ja zu deinen Schultern, Ja zu deinem Rücken sagen. And together finding what this is. Dogen says, from morning until night, allow things to come forward and reside in mind. Lasse zu, dass die Dinge hervortreten und im Geist verweilen. And then he says, and allow things and mind to function together as one whole. Und lasse zu, dass Dinge im Geist zusammenkommen und gemeinsam als ein Ganzes fungieren, gemeinsam als ein Ganzes wirken.

[03:23]

Morning until night. Von morgens bis spätabends. He doesn't say all the time. It's not all the time. Es geht nicht um die ganze Zeit. It's just each now. Each now is morning and night. Sondern jedes jetzt. Jedes jetzt ist morgens und bis spätabends. And he says allow. Und er sagt lasse zu. This is a receptivity. This is a saying yes to our chin and our shoulders and our back. It's not allowing all the ideas we have to settle in and reside in mind. It's allowing each appearance. It's allowing each appearance.

[04:24]

It's an invitation. It's an active engagement with each arising. And it's not just coming forward, but it's settling in mind. Mind and all things mixed together as one whole Geist und alle Dinge miteinander vermengt als ein Ganzes. Saying yes to each arising in our life. Ja zu sagen zu jedem allem, zu jeder Einzelheit, die in unserem Leben auftaucht.

[05:30]

Giving our life to each thing that appears and comes forward. Unser Leben jedem Ding zu geben, das auftaucht oder hervortritt. jedes Mal, wenn die Hand die Schale berührt, jedes Mal, wenn die Schale die Lippen berührt, jedes Mal, wenn ein Freund unserem Auge begegnet, unserem Blick begegnet, So how do we practice with such an idea of yes, establishing yes? Gene and I have a friend in California. Got up one morning and he decided whatever was going to happen, he was going to say yes. He went out to mow his lawn.

[06:43]

And he came inside. And the phone rang. Picked it up. And a voice on the other end said, Do you do yard work? Well, Matt just came in from mowing the lawn, so he said yes. And even though it's clearly the wrong number, the person who's a woman said, well, would you come and do my yard? And Matt said yes. And they arranged a time and he went to, he put his lawnmower in his shiny new Lexus car.

[07:44]

And he parked it a little down the street from her house. He didn't want her to see the car. And she said to him, how much do you charge? And he said, well, what do you usually pay? She told him an amount and he said, yes. He mowed her lawn. And she was pretty pleased. So she said to him at the end, would you come back next week? He said yes. And he did this for several weeks. And one of his neighbors happened to be holding a fundraising event for an environmental organization. And he lived in a very nice neighborhood and it was a fancy cocktail party and you pay a lot of money to go to such an event.

[09:09]

And he saw the woman who he was doing yard work for at the event. And they very politely said hello. And then she rushed over to the host of the event. And she said to him, what is my yard man doing at your fundraising event? And he said, who are you talking about? And she pointed to Matt. And he said, you see the big house across the street? That's his house.

[10:22]

He's the president of a management consulting company. He's not a yard man. And she went up to Ben and she said, we have to talk. But what's it like if we decide to say yes? An initial mind of yes. Yes to each experience. Allowing our experiences to come forward and settle in our mind. Often our tendency is to say yes to what we agree with. What we like. What we hope for. What we long for.

[11:37]

And we tend to reject what we don't like. What's difficult for us. What's unpleasant. What calls forth our difficulty. But this kind of yes, the kind of yes that says yes to your chin, says yes to your shoulders. It's not in the realm of what we like or don't like. Any kind of preference pulls us away from where we may actually find ourselves in this moment.

[12:38]

Going to be someplace else, some better place, someplace that feels just right to us. Any kind of rejecting rejects where we are. Simply how we are is not good enough. Practice is to set aside any idea we have of practice and to settle together in this moment. It's to proceed with a mind which neither grasps at something good nor rejects something bad.

[13:41]

fortzufahren, weiterzumachen mit einem Geist, der weder nach dem Guten greift noch das Schlechte ablehnt. Sondern sich hier niederzulassen. Ohne irgendeine Vorstellung oder eine Anstrengung für das Hier. but simply with an openness and a willingness to say yes to what's here. This is to enter without taking a step. This is continually to locate ourself in the midst. In the midst of the experience we're having now, day and night, simply reside in mind with things and make the mind and things one whole.

[15:13]

Stepping into here is what Baker Roshi calls a no other location mind. There's no other place to be. Es gibt keinen anderen Ort an dem man sein kann. Day and night continually entering here. Tag und Nacht fortwährend ins hier eintreten. How do we do this? Wie machen wir das? We may say that breath is The front door of practice. Means to settle in a sensorial immediacy of each moment.

[16:18]

In a sensorial continuum. A medium of being not simply thinking. So bringing attention to breath. Breathing the world in. breathing in, allowing these things to come, these appearances, arisings, to come forward and reside in our mind. And mixing them with the mind of each moment as we find it. And then releasing that which we found. The next breath.

[18:03]

If we continue to relate to experience simply through our thinking, Elaborations can be seemingly endless. So we establish an intention in our thinking we talked about in the group yesterday. Establish a what? An intention in our thinking. But we ripen it in our bodily awareness. We don't ripen it in our thinking. To ripen our intentions in our thinking just creates more thinking. To ripen our intentions and our awareness changes our breath and changes our body.

[19:17]

And changes our attention. Intention or attention. and changes our attention. And as we're able to physicalize mind and rest and mature our attention, As it begins to... be the entryway for our experience, not our ideas about what's happening.

[20:26]

We can begin to choose a state of mind. The other day Roshi mentioned to me, it's like a muscle that we develop. This muscle of attention. So the default position becomes the way that we are creating space together. Rather than some idea of practice. It's not that idea of practice isn't useful.

[21:32]

It's just a tiny piece of the picture. So practice is to set aside our ideas of practice and settle in this mind that we're establishing together in each moment. As we receive it, as we hold it and as we release it. This is, we may call it, a perfecting practice.

[22:36]

Perfecting in the practice is continually aiming at practice. And this saying, yes, it's not about agreement. It's about a physical receptivity. It doesn't mean that mistreating a child is okay. We accept that. That's not what acceptance is. It means we accept the initial arising of the mistreatment and then we make an intelligent decision to do something about it. But the decision is made from this this entering the medium of being.

[23:56]

It's contextual and situational. Not based on some theory or idea of good or bad. These are perfecting practices because we're continually saying yes to our chin. We're continually finding our shoulders. Continually receiving our back. Our knees.

[25:03]

And it said there are five perfecting practices. First one is perfect time. It means morning until night. It means just each unique now is the best time to practice. And perfect place. We may love this place. But it really is the perfect place to practice. Because it's where we are now. And perfect teaching. Not grasping, rejecting anything. Continually structuring practice and carving a cave in emptiness.

[26:25]

It's just enough teaching. And perfect teacher. Each meeting with one another, we can, as we're open, learn from each other. In every encounter with each other, we can learn from each other when we are open to each other. And through our contact, we can be nourished and draw good out of it. And the fifth is perfect student. It means each of us is the perfect practitioner. For many this is the hardest one to accept. Part of saying yes is accepting that there are some things that aren't so easy to accept.

[27:37]

It means to be able to accept what we can't accept. Can we accept that? Proceeding with a mind that neither grasps nor rejects. How wonderful we can practice together. Thank you very much. May our sight be the same in every being and every place.

[28:43]

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