It seems it was hard to get you all to come inside. Yeah. It's such a beautiful day, maybe I understand. Especially here, I guess it's newly spring. Hmm. But now there's nothing I can say that's more interesting than such a beautiful day. Unless I could get you to bathe in your own inner sunlight. That would be my goal, but probably hopeless. Hmm. The other day I was, well first let me say that I think I've been doing sashins now sometimes as many as six a year for 35 years.

[01:11]

You can see it's a hopeless practice if I've done that many. I've enjoyed most of it, though. Anyway, I've never done two sashims this close together. I think I just finished one a week or... Two weeks ago. So did Mahakavi and Christian and Ruth. I don't know who. I guess that's all. Maybe it's our eighth day in Sashim. But what's funny about it is It feels like a continuity, but there's something strange about it. Suddenly the schedule changed in the middle. The schedule is lighter feeling than Creston. I begin to think, it must be too easy here for people. And then my bowl, I have a different eating bowl and

[02:24]

Doesn't feel right, I don't know. But I would like to continue the lectures I started in Crestone, Sashin. You know, I was thinking... of speaking this year in Europe about bodhisattva practice. And I did start that in the practice period at Crestone in the Sashin too, but I find I have to talk about Buddha practice, not just bodhisattva practice. The other day, as I started to say, I was in a little jet lag. I flew here one or two days ago, two days ago, I guess. And I spent the first night in a pension.

[03:44]

I'm almost old enough to get a pension actually. In English, pension means something you get when you're old and feeble and the government pays you. So anyway, I was in this pension, and I like to, when I have nothing to do and nobody knows me, I like to sort of eat real slowly and have, they can't believe it, I bring a stack of six or eight books, you know. I have one or two items on my plate and a big stack of items beside the plate. In Buddhism, there's the four kinds of food. One is actual food you eat. And then are the kinds of food of contact with the world or reading or looking at things.

[05:08]

So anyway, I've stayed in this pension before, and the old lady knows me. And old lady, she's probably younger than I am. But anyway, I'm feeling old today for some reason. Anyway, she always sticks me in a corner by myself. I don't know whether it's because I'm a foreigner or because I have a stack of books beside me. And everyone looks at me a little strangely because I... I am strange. Everyone else is talking, of course, in German, and I'm sitting there asking for tea or something.

[06:28]

And I read a few sentences in one book and a few sentences in another book and eat my rolls. And I'm reading all these books about Buddhism. And I think and I'm thinking about how does the Buddha ideal work in us human beings? And here I'm taking an ideal from twenty-five hundred years ago. And I'm sitting in this pension and all these other folks, I don't know what their ideal is, but probably it's not from twenty-five hundred years ago, or at least it's not a Buddhist ideal.

[07:36]

Now, although Kant, Immanuel Kant, says that human beings need an ideal to give a standard by which to develop axiological values. Excuse me, who was that? Immanuel Kant. Maybe you've heard of him? I'm sorry. I don't say it in proper inflection and shit. You said human beings need an ideal to give them standards to develop values. To develop values. He says you can't really be a human being without an ideal. So I'm wondering, is this true? And if my ideal of a Buddha, does it make me different than these other folks in the pension?

[08:50]

But isn't the idea of a Buddha, for example, if expressed in the Diamond Sutra, to have no idea of a person, a lifespan, an identity, etc. ? No idea of a life span or a person. So if I have an idea of myself or a Buddha, then I'm not a Buddha because I'm not practicing Buddhism really because I'm seeing myself as different than these other people. So if I see myself as different As not different, then what am I doing reading all these books?

[10:17]

I might as well just have breakfast with these folks and say guten tag and so forth. How can I be not different and also have this different ideal? Well, my own feeling is that each of those persons either functions partially through an ideal, or they function through the absence of an ideal, which is not so different than functioning through an ideal, but missing the ideal to function through. Okay. Now usually a sesshin, and I'm sure it does for most of you, is some contrast between the life you had yesterday and the day before and then to today.

[11:19]

Because I've been recently in practice period in Sashin and it's not so much of a contrast for me. It just feels like a different day. But how do I make the transition with you. from your regular way of seeing yourself to sitting here in the Sesshin and working with a Buddha ideal. Because what I would like to do during the Sesshin is make us feel that Buddha is a realizable ideal.

[12:46]

That would be remarkable if we could do that. The first thing I noticed when I came here, got out of the car, is I was immediately affronted in a positive sense by the sound of so many birds. And I guess that's a quality of this ponded house distiller. And even the dogs in the night and those motorcycles, there's some blissful quality to the sounds for me, particularly when I'm in Sashim.

[14:16]

And so I settle into the particularities of this place and this Sashim, different from Creston. Mm-hmm. Now, Zen is the unity of vipassana and shamatha practice. That's one way we can understand it. Now, vipassana is called special insight or inner seeing or insight. Okay, now, what, so, and all of Buddhism can be understood really through this vipassana-shamatha relationship.

[15:33]

And let's call shamatha meditative stabilization. Or a meditative equilibrium. And that's what one of the things for sure we're trying to do in Fashin is to come to a meditative equilibrium. Now, what are the ingredients we have here? What ingredients each of us have to work with? Sitting here for seven days. Well, obviously we have our body. And we have our mind. And we have phenomena as sensate, sensual phenomena.

[16:46]

The motorcycles, the dogs, the birds, the sound of our voices. Yeah. pressure, the physical act of sitting, and so forth. And so you have experienced phenomena. Kant, Mr. Kant says, again, something like, or his philosophy is something like that through reasoning we can make, turn what we experience, phenomena as experienced into understanding. Through reasoning we can turn experienced phenomena into understanding. This actually is, if we understand this in a particular way, could be a statement about Zen practice too.

[18:03]

So we have our mind, and we have our mind, wherever it is, I don't know, our body, And we have phenomena. Now, is this an exhaustive list, a complete list? No, not really. Because we also have time, change, interactions, accidents, and things. That's an ingredient that's, you know, old age, sickness and death. So time is also one of these ingredients, the fourth ingredient, you could say. And fifth, we could have the interaction of others.

[19:17]

What happens? Through the person sitting next to us or across from us or when we think of our friend or family. So other people are an ingredient. And sixth, that's five, right? Sixth would be mystery. Something we don't understand. Or the way all-at-onceness or allness can work through us. It may feel like guidance from the other side or something. Anyway, there's intuition or mystery or synchronicity.

[20:21]

There's factors that we can't explain that function through us too when we are in a certain kind of openness. And seventh and the last ingredient in my list is teaching. And it's probably not the most, or it's not the most essential, not the basic condition, but it's probably the most important given the basics. Es ist nicht an sich vielleicht die wichtigste, aber wenn man die anderen als Basis sozusagen Zutaten nimmt, das ist vielleicht doch der wichtigste Zutat. Even if someone says, just act natural, that's a teaching. To hear that and to think, oh yes, I'll act naturally, that's a teaching.

[21:26]

Then it's pretty hard to act natural anyway, so that's another teaching. So what is teaching? It's the accumulated wisdom or practices of the past. Language is a teaching because it's an accumulated wisdom, observation of the past. So one of the ingredients of your life is not just body, not just mind, not just phenomena, but teaching about how we are right now.

[22:29]

As soon as you have your mind plus a thought, you have a mind plus teaching. As soon as you have a body plus a posture, you have teaching. Or phenomena or sensate impressions. And I say something like, there's blissful feeling with the dogs and the motorcycles even. This is teaching. Or the sensual impressions. When I say, there is a healing feeling when the dog bathes at night, then that is also a teaching. So what is the Buddha?

[23:33]

The Buddha was a historical person. We're pretty sure of that. But we've never met him. Maybe to some extent you meet him through the example of living Buddhists. But really the Buddha is a teaching, a doctrine. The only way you're going to know Buddha is as a teaching. A teaching is a... sequence of sentences that in Buddhism are logical and experienceable. So the Buddha is a series of sentences that are logical and experienceable. So the Dharma is a doctrine, not a dogma, in the sense that a dogma is based on belief and authority.

[24:47]

But a doctrine in the sense of some sentences there. You can say that somewhere in Buddhism it says the whole sutra is actually just one long sentence. So I'm going to try to give you some sentences which I hope are the Buddha. Hmm. Now, you know the word, do you call poetry verse in German? Do you use the word verse? No? Verse. Yes. Oh. And poetry. Yeah. Yeah.

[25:47]

Okay. Verse means, in English, to turn. What distinguishes poetry from prose, really, I mean, when you look at it first, is the turn of the line. That was a long... I said this much and you said... I know I'm just teasing you, it's all right. Anyway. So, anyway... And poetry is about, really, where you break the line.

[26:48]

And verse means, in English it just means just one line. It comes to mean the whole of poetry, but basically it just means one line. So it means to turn or to bend. And it means particularly to turn inward. And it also means, like in the word versus, two things against each other, it actually means to turn inward to an equal value. And with verses it also means to turn inward, so to speak, to a equal or to the same value. Unique practice in Zen is this use of language called Wado, or turning word practice.

[27:55]

If you turn a phrase inward to the source of language, or to the source in yourself before language. So it's meant it's language used to transcend language. So I'm saying this because if I'm going to give you some sentences, I would hope that during this session We could find some sentences, so you would find some sentences surfacing in yourself. That you can turn. And you can pay attention to the pause.

[28:56]

And you can let yourself disappear in the pause. You say, I mean, the phrase I probably use the most is, just now is enough. And you have to, just now is enough, and there's a pause, and you have to kind of disappear into that pause. Or even into every just pause, now pause. Is pause. Enough pause. Okay, now the most common example I would give, and I've said it so many times, but I'll just repeat it again, is if you concentrate on this, and you develop a concentration on this, until you're one-pointed,

[30:57]

You have generated a state of mind of one-pointedness. That's not too easy to do, actually. But it can be done. You can imagine that. Okay. Generating that object, now if I take it away and you stay concentrated, And I ask the same question again. What now is the object of concentration? Mind itself is the object of concentration. Or concentration is the object of concentration. And technically that's defined as samadhi. Samadhi. Yes. Samadhi is mind concentrated on itself. Okay, so now your mind is concentrated on itself.

[32:16]

It has an object of concentration, which is itself. And now you can bring this pencil back up into that field of concentration. And from that field of concentration you can examine it. And that's called insight. Or vipassana. Or inner seeing. Seeing from a state of concentration. Now, to develop that seeing Based on the state of concentration, you first have to realize meditative stabilization. So now you're all in the next seven days, and probably by later this afternoon, all going to realize meditative stabilization. Yeah, it's possible.

[33:22]

You let yourself settle into your body. Out of your mind. And out of the four-walled prison of like and dislike. Most of us I mean, it's so common for us to react with, I like this or I dislike this. And then we add to that which one we prefer or how we prefer or how we control it. And then we personalize it. It has to do with us. And if you see yourself doing this, I'd advise you to change.

[34:29]

Just notice, when something is perceived, it's your first reaction, whether you like it or dislike it. Or you care whether it pertains to you or not. Or you want to control the outcome. You have preference about it. If those four are almost an automatic way you perceive, you, at least in Buddhist terms, have a deluded consciousness. And practically speaking, you're in spiritual trouble and also psychological trouble. And I'll tell you, it is such a habit most people don't even realize they're doing.

[35:32]

You've got to increase the neutral space. Where you neither like nor dislike. Whether it pertains to you or not is not too important. You don't care about the outcome. Then one of the ways we're trapped is by morality. We're taught to care, and we should care about how it affects people, how it affects the environment. To some extent, you have to not care. I know that's very difficult to imagine in a highly moral society.

[36:41]

Yeah, I mean, burn the light a little bit longer. Just to notice that you feel uncomfortable wasting energy. Use one extra piece of toilet paper. The world is not going to flush down the toilet. It'll be all right. I mean, at least until you don't care. then you can be quite careful. But as long as you care, you're trapped in like, dislike, what's right, wrong. Really? I mean, you want to get to the point where you don't care whether you live or die. Unless you have kids.

[37:55]

But... I mean, if you're going to live, please live fully. But what's going to happen when you die? Well, first of all, it only takes less than a moment. It's timeless. As long as you're living, you're living. When you die, it's timeless. Death takes no time. So it's no big deal. As long as you're suffering, you know you're alive. And what's going to happen when you die? You're just not going to see anything in front of you anymore. Big deal. I mean, you know, it's great to see things, but if I close my eyes now, it's not that terrible.

[39:03]

And if I keep them closed forever, it's not that terrible. And if I open them up again, it's great. It's just no big deal. The big deal is all kinds of touch, feeling. The actual fact of it is no big deal. So it's important not to care. And yet compassion is based on caring. And caring, I think, is based on likes and dislikes. Caring is based on likes and dislikes. No, I had that, but caring is not the word, I think, in German. Oh, I don't know. To care about somebody.

[40:04]

Yes, it's perfectly well what's meant, but the word in German isn't quite there. The word, the same. So, So I like people, practitioners, who have likes and dislikes, actually. Because if you don't have likes and dislikes, you'll never become a caring person. If you're not a caring person, you'll never become compassionate. If you're not compassionate, you'll never become a Buddha. So it's great to have likes and dislikes, but don't get trapped by them. Develop more neutral space in which caring and likes and dislikes can function much more powerfully.

[41:25]

Win whether you like or dislike makes a difference, not just as a habit of perception. So this neutral space of neither liking nor disliking is a condition for developing meditative stabilization. You can't get hooked into every thought, feeling that comes along. You've got to loosen these things up. And as you develop physical and mental pliancy, It's technically called.

[42:31]

As your objects of perception aren't grabbed so tightly, you begin to stabilize yourself in your body and in your breath. In fact, and then when objects of perception come, they feel lighter and brighter. Even more like bubbles. Yeah. And what's happening then? And sometimes, as you will know from Zazen, I'm sure all of you know, your body disappeared. You can't quite locate your body. Or it feels extended in space.

[43:32]

Now, what's happened when your body disappeared? I mean, your body hasn't disappeared. I mean, if I'm sitting here, I look at you, you may feel your body's disappeared, but you look pretty much the same to me. Though I can actually feel the difference if that's the case with you. And it makes my body start to disappear. So there's a communal quality to this disappearing body. But again, what's disappearing? So there's a communal quality to this disappearing body. But again, what disappeared? Your body hasn't disappeared. The object-carrying continuum has disappeared. Okay, because when we are... What body does that?

[44:48]

First of all, the distracted, deluded body does something. The body you see from the outside. The body you see as if in a mirror. The body you see from other people's points of view. the outside, seen from outside body, outer body. That body does zazen. And as you develop meditative stabilization, what happens? That body as seen in a mirror and by others, borrowed consciousness, tends to disappear. And you begin to know your body from inside, which cannot be seen as a shape like in a mirror. And at the same time that's happening, you're dissolving the continuum that holds objects.

[46:30]

I'll try to make this clearer, but right now I can't say too much more about it. I mean, if I hold this pencil up again, when I'm seeing the pencil, I've created a state of mind that carries this object as a continuum. And it will tend to see everything else as an object. because the mind is shaped by the objects it sees. Now, if I establish this mind concentrated on itself, it doesn't carry objects anymore. An object can appear in it, But it's very tentative.

[47:52]

It's not real firm. You don't like or dislike it. It's just there. So what's disappeared is the continuum of object-bearing continuum. As soon as that happens, you begin to have a feeling of bliss, of softness, like a feather touching your skin. This is This sense of bliss is a sign that you're realizing meditative stabilization. And this meditative stabilization is also accompanied by or a manifestation of an object-bearing continuum has dissolved.

[48:54]

Now, I'll try to stop in a moment. I want to say, you know, I've mentioned before this old pre-Buddhist Indian idea that we have this waking mind, dreaming mind and non-dreaming deep sleep. And non-dreaming deep sleep is understood in early and pre-Hindu understanding as a time of joy that you forget. Every night you are in a state of bliss, but you forget it, just like you forget your dreams. And you remember some dreams, but it's sort of an effort, and not all dreams are remembered.

[50:28]

And why are dreams not remembered? Because dreams wake up into a consciousness that doesn't support dreams. Or only partially supports dreams. And you have to jiggle yourself back into the dream mind to let the dream come back into present. The syntactical object-bearing consciousness. Syntactical syntaxium. And this object bearing consciousness, this world as seen in a mirror, does not support bliss. So we forget it. This bliss wakes up into a deluded consciousness.

[51:42]

And your Buddha nature is always waking up into a deluded consciousness and you forget about it. So meditative stabilization is to open you to this bliss waking up in you. This basking in your inner sunlight. Now we could say the four noble truths from an ordinary consciousness. Are there suffering? And there's a cause of suffering.

[52:48]

And because there's a cause of suffering, there's freedom from suffering. There's an end to suffering. And there's a path to realization. From the point of view of vipassana or special seeing or inner seeing, The first noble truth is there's bliss. There's a condition of bliss. And because there's a condition of bliss, this bliss can be interrupted. And so there's an end to bliss. And there's a path to remedy. Now this second way of looking at the Four Noble Truths can only be understood from the point of view of samadhi.

[53:50]

Because we can logically understand that there's suffering and there's a cause of suffering. But we don't logically understand there's a condition of bliss. Even if I say it, we don't know how it works. So seeing the same thing from the point of view of a concentrated meditative stabilization, You see things very differently. The first noble truth would not be that they're suffering. The first noble truth would be that they're blessed. And when you take a walk in Kenyan as you did this afternoon, And there's the phenomena, the birds, the water, the walking, the smell,

[55:02]

There's some blissful quality to it. This is your opening yourself to this basic condition which is already blissful. So I would like to In this sashin, I would like us to allow the Buddha nature and the blissfulness that's in us to allow it to awaken. This is a step toward recognizing this doctrine, teaching of the Buddha. That is one step to realize and recognize this doctrine of the Buddha.

[56:14]

As Buddha. So really it does begin by just being able to sit here. Just being able to follow the schedule. Without a lot of likes and dislikes. Without preferences. Without trying to control the situation. For one week, give up those prison walls of preference, personalizing, liking or disliking. Likes and dislikes, personalizing and preferences controlling. It's not going to kill you for one week.

[57:16]

We'll feed you. You'll get almost enough sleep. Your days of experimenting with the world are over. Now start experimenting with the Buddha within you. So see if you can be a week without too many preferences, personalizing things, likes and dislikes. And you open yourself to this body of meditative stabilization which receives the bliss which is our natural condition. Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being.

[58:48]

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