Well, I want to continue to talk about Buddhism in a fairly basic sense. What, if you do this practice, what do you find? And what helps you in that process. Now, of course, you must be discovering that Sashin particularly is almost always a kind of purging. Purging? A little bit like, you know, when you first, one instruction for when you first hit zazen is to rock back and forth and to breathe out two or three times strongly to get rid of the stale air in you.

[01:28]

And sometimes during the Sashina it feels like there's about seven days of stale air in us that comes out over the week. It's probably good that we open the doors and windows during the Kinhin. How much twisted history is floating around the room on the stale air? So into this purging, which it's good to just let happen, let whatever comes up, come up. A friend of Ulrike's wants me to give a talk to horses next week.

[02:43]

About beginner's mind. See these horses. It's not really to horses. It's to people who want to ride horses. Children who ride. Oh, okay. We're all sitting on white buffaloes in here. So in this letting come up what comes up, you're also attempting to see if you can move toward clarity. And the first place to find that is in your posture.

[03:45]

And we tend to, you know, want to, you know, you don't have to shave your head but tie your hair back or have your face clear. And as much as possible, have every part of your body feel clear. Your arms are a little separate from your torso. Your elbows out a little bit. And your hands, each one, you know, first one and then the other clearly placed.

[04:53]

And most important that through your backbone you feel clear. And as much as possible, of course, you're trying to sit straight. And our certain kind of strength is discovered through just being able to find a relaxed and yet straight posture. A kind of strength actually that will help us in our ordinary life too. So you come to feel a kind of clarity in your spine and openness to the energy that moves in our body.

[06:19]

Now what do you do with the, you know, it's one thing to work with a certain clarity in the body, but what about clarity in the mind? Now here you're not trying to work with or measure yourself by what's reasonable. Or what makes sense. Or what is shared with others. Rather you're trusting a feeling of clarity. Now, it's not a simple clarity of everything in order. There can be clarity even in chaos. Or you can be clear you're very mixed up.

[07:36]

And that clarity is quite good, you know. See, am I mixed up? I didn't say, my God, did I? Maybe I did, I don't know. Sounds different in German. Oh, maybe. So, as I said yesterday, there's this energy of attention. And you can bring attention to what you're doing, of course, in your body and in your whatever comes up. And this attention helps this process of clarity.

[08:46]

Now the traditional, you know, the word Zen comes from jhana, and the traditional four jhanas are commonly taught. And they're not taught because practice exactly happens the way the jhanas are laid out. But it gives you some way to check up on your practice, to measure your practice. And to feel okay about what happens. Now, the first jhana is generally, again, jhana, jhan, zen, or the root is the same word.

[10:20]

The first jhana is characterized by examination and conceptual thought. But mainly examination and analysis. Now in the midst of this allowing in Sashin this purging to occur, You're still trying to sometimes see if you can stay with your breathing or stay with your posture itself as an object of meditation.

[11:21]

And the more you can stay with something, the easier it is to practice this first jhana of examination and analysis. For here I'm not just examining my hand, which stays in place, but I'm examining maybe the feeling inside my hand, which moves around. It's not so difficult to concentrate on my hand, but more difficult to concentrate on a feeling that moves around with our breaths and thoughts. So if you want to study yourself, though, know yourself, you need to have this ability to look at yourself with some steadiness.

[12:35]

So the first jhana is this time of examining and analyzing what comes up with a certain mental stability. And the second jhana, it's rather curious because you wouldn't think of it, but examination and analysis begin to be replaced by a kind of joyfulness or bliss. And that's actually a subtler way of both studying our self and purging our self. And in the second jhana it's usually thought the ability to be one-pointed really becomes a capacity you have.

[14:04]

And the third jhana, this joyful feeling is mostly absorbed into equanimity. And the... And you've gotten now not just the ability to concentrate, but the whole body is still. And one way of practicing with this stillness of the inner movements of the body is to practice with your eyes being still.

[15:22]

As is well known, your eyes move around in dreams. So in a way, you make the more still you are, the more your inner consciousness isn't absorbed in movement, but becomes more available to you and clearer. And the fourth, Jhana, is joy and examination and analysis have gone and joy and bliss have gone and there's just equanimity and clarity. Doesn't mean you're going around then locked into a permanent state of joyless equanimity.

[16:28]

It just means that this is one way when you notice a difference in practice. Sometimes there's a different way in which you begin to feel things and find a clarity in your mind and body. So you don't have to be worried when an examination is replaced by bliss or there's no bliss or whatever. These are different things that happen sometimes, more or less simultaneously. But this is a way of saying too or pointing out that there's a territory, a topography of interior consciousness It's not described by arms or nose or face or something, but rather by overall feelings that characterize this consciousness, either joyfulness or equanimity or something like that.

[18:21]

And a growing inner calmness and peace. That's a settled feeling. Which doesn't mean you still don't, especially as you're developing this practice, don't have problems. But it means you can look at them with more detachment and clarity. But by detachment I don't mean separation from, but an acceptance without feeling either dominated or fearful.

[19:30]

Now, coming back again to giving attention to attention. Maybe in English we can say it enough. It's clear in German. We attend to attention. I shall try. Yeah, the... Like you attend class, here you are attending attention. So attention jumps around. Now I'm suggesting this is a way you can practice with attention. Attention jumps around and you can let it jump around.

[20:48]

You don't have to force it to stay on whatever its light was shining on. But you make whatever it shines on, you make clear what it's shining on. Okay, say that for some reason you have a pain in your shoulder. And for some reason you notice the pain in your shoulder. So you just make the pain in the shoulder very clear as long as the attention is on that. And then the attention might move to feeling like a strap or some pressure under your arm. And then it might move to your cheek. You start feeling a relationship between your pain in your shoulder, your cheek and under your arm.

[22:14]

And then it seems like, perhaps if this was your left shoulder, it feels like your attention is working over your left side. Seldom switches to the right side. And it moves around your cheek and arm and so forth. Or perhaps after the meal something's caught in your tooth. And this brings your attention rather in an external sense to your mouth.

[23:19]

And you don't notice your painful leg for a while because there's something in your tooth. And then you go back to your leg. And your leg is hurting more because you're paying attention to it. Sometimes my leg hurts for no reason that I can figure out. The circulation is working, it seems. It's not asleep. No damage is being done to it. But it continues to hurt for some weird reason. I can't figure out what's wrong with it, except it's in a rather odd position.

[24:23]

I begin to feel it's like an urban dog that wants to go for a walk. Sometimes I think I should put a leash on my leg, take it for a walk. But then I have to say to my dog leg, the walk is later in the afternoon, please go back to sleep. So you anyway notice a difference when the tension is brought to your leg and when it moves somewhere else. Now, if you practice just attending attention, and you let the attention lead you where it leads you,

[25:39]

Und ihr lasst die Aufmerksamkeit euch da hinführen, wo immer sie euch hinbringt. And you do this attending attention every now and then during the Sashin. Und während des Sashins praktiziert ihr das jetzt ab und zu an der Aufmerksamkeit teilnehmen. You may find it leads to unexpected places. Dann stellt ihr vielleicht fest, dass sie euch zu unerwarteten Plätzen führt. or subtle feelings or relationships that, if you don't act on them but just feel where it's going or what it's lighting up, are some feeling of power or clarity. You know, in koans, there's a kind of one paragraph shines on one thing and then the next paragraph shines on something else, and often they don't seem related. And what's in between the paragraphs is more or less in the dark.

[27:09]

Well, there's a quality like that when you attend attention. The attention shines on this or shines on that, and there's a lot in between in the dark. And if you just stay with this, you begin to feel what's in the dark, between what your attention lights on. Now this practice, doing something like this, is a way of developing one-pointedness.

[28:12]

It's a way of concentrating not just on your breath, but on attention itself. And sometimes we visualize the body in practice. And here we could call this a visualization based on the body. Because this attention lights up and you can almost see the feeling of your cheek or arm or some quality seemingly inside your body, inside your consciousness.

[29:24]

So by just following, attending attention, you're beginning to develop a certain clarity and one-pointedness. An ability to examine your interior consciousness and to some extent feel in the darkness a kind of analysis. Now as this ability develops, it begins to be replaced by a kind of joyful, calm feeling. And then this is another somewhat different way of studying, but one that you couldn't come to unless you meditated and developed a certain degree of one-pointedness.

[30:39]

You're changing the atmosphere in which you're practicing by these practices. Sometimes you can direct your attention by saying in the midst of this, changing the level entirely by saying, like, what is this state of mind? And that sometimes throws us into the field of mind itself as the object of attention. And you can even ask the question a second time, what is this state of mind?

[31:48]

And you're into a bigger field of mind behind the first field. Surrounding or including the first field. And then to make a field of mind like that, whatever successive stage, an object of concentration is another development of one point in this. So you can study various fields of minds themselves through this clarity or equanimity or one-pointedness that arises through practice. Now, often institutionalized teachings become very nice fancy doors. And you open this very attractive door and you find you're in an extremely small, narrow room.

[33:10]

And sometimes the more institutionalized the teaching is and the nicer the door, the smaller the room. Sometimes it's just a wall. You open the door and there's a wall there. And sometimes there's some new teaching or something quite interesting and it's a nice door. And you go in and it's quite a nice room, but there's only one room. And most of Zen Buddhist practice is pretty much like that.

[34:17]

It's a pretty good door, but you get inside and there's only one room. But if you really want to practice, you have to notice some awfully teeny doors sometimes. Then first of all, if you can see them, then you open them, then you still have to take Alice's tea. Or a mushroom. I didn't want to say that. Or at least you have to be able to sense the different ways in which we find our size and space in interior consciousness. So sometimes you go through one of these little doors and there's various kinds of rooms and sometimes there's a long, narrow hall even smaller than the door

[35:31]

And you go down it and you find its hall is mostly caved in. And you have to do some excavation. But what's nice about it is you can feel that someone was there before, just caved in. At least somebody's been along this. The earth is not too packed down. So from practice and study and the koans, you feel, hey, someone's been down here before, but it's been a while. And you do some excavation which is in some mixed space somewhere between dreaming, waking, sleeping and clarity. And this excavation is really involved with clarifying your states of mind.

[37:01]

And if you can suddenly open up this hall, you're into sometimes many rooms or a very big space or almost another world. So this excavation can't be done without tools. And the tools are being able to hold the hall in place mentally. To have the pick of one pointedness. So this way of discovering what we are, who we are, is helped by two processes mainly.

[38:26]

One is to just let whatever happens happen, let it don't interfere with anything. And the other is to develop the tools to be able to not interfere but look clearly. To develop two kinds of concentration or clarity. One is to look at something and the other is to stay with the looking itself. So this is a description of the basic shamatha practice and the excavation and clarifying of interior consciousness. So I think I'll take my legs for a walk.

[39:41]

May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[40:16]

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