Thank you all for being here in the Sesshin. And I think I'll probably start Dokusan tomorrow. I look forward to meeting with you. Jan, I enjoy your work. It's not the right word, but this meeting with you, which we call a lecture. And I would like to be Real clear for you, but, you know, I'm not. I'm sorry. Maybe we'll get there, but I don't know. Now that I have some feeling, I'm trying to figure out how to talk about it. And I can spend hours or half an hour or more trying to just think of one word.

[01:25]

What word should I use? Then... Poor Christian gets just seconds to choose a word. I'm so sorry, Christian. So maybe we can start with the... What are the topics here? We started with just sitting here. And speaking about gathering the mind. We started just with what the word Sashin means. But also I brought in a koan. But koans you could call tales of jishas and anjas.

[02:40]

Maybe some of you don't know what the jisha is or the anja is. The jisha is the teacher's or abbot's we could say religious assistant. He or she takes care of the incense and doksan and things like that. And the Anja is more a personal attendant. And the Anja takes care of making tea for visitors and laundry and things like that. The robes and so forth. We don't have an Anja here, but we have a Jisha anyway.

[03:45]

Or a part-time Jisha, full-time director and part-time Jisha. When you look at these stories, you have to recognize that who was present for these stories? When it says a monk asked, it almost always means the Anja asked. And when it was a visiting, you know, Kolbrunner or the mayor of Gross-Herzschwand visited us the other day, And such a person asks a question of the teacher or the abbot. Who hears the question? The Anja. Because the Anja is making the tea. So, actually in a monastery that Jisha and Anja's job are considered the best jobs.

[05:23]

If you want to pursue the Dharma. And the Anja and Jisha, if they don't, use the job to pursue the Dharma, the job gets changed. So these jobs are for pursuing the Dharma and putting up with the abbot's eccentricities. So we don't just have the word sashin starting out here. We also have what happens with the Jishya and Anja and so forth.

[06:41]

Because the Jishya and Anja is meant to represent the Sangha in their Dharma questions. So we have some discussion that arises from the sitting together. And what have the topics of our discussion been? Well, I mentioned the decision to stay alive. Well, What are the aspects of that decision?

[07:53]

Well, first from the practice point of view, it's the decision to stay alive for no reason, except that you're alive. From the standpoint of practice, it's the... If you decide to stay alive so that you can be successful or accomplish something, you're going to have trouble later. Oh, it's great if you accomplish something, but... That's not deep enough reason to stay alive. We stay alive because we happen to be alive. Isn't this strange? What is this called?

[08:53]

And Socrates is the first person probably in the West to make this statement. this true philosophy clear. Philosophy which is about Living experience. Not about knowledge. But living experience in the midst of not really knowing what it is to be alive. Now that's as far as I understand that was Sakri's fundamental point in that

[09:56]

is fundamental to Buddhist practice too. Maybe the only difference is that we sit. And sitting may make the whole process different. To inhabit this posture. Get used to it. Now what are some of the other topics? I talked about, again, gathering mind. Sitting in the midst of whatever's here. and trying to take away the painted skies, the categories of self-referencing, the modes of knowing and so forth.

[11:21]

And that's the kind of excavation which isn't too easy. This kind of effort is really helped by sitting. Because sitting helps us sit outside our consciousness. And then we can start sitting outside of consciousness, we can start getting a look at our categories of self-referencing. And our habits of identifying. And we can begin to lessen or even dissolve those categories and habits. They pop back up in consciousness. Yeah, because that's part of the structure of consciousness.

[12:52]

But in what let's call awareness, they can dissolve. So we've made this decision to stay alive. Trusting Staying alive. Having faith in staying alive. Now I don't think this means staying alive at all costs. The other side of staying alive is the willingness to die. But to stay alive in the midst of not knowing what aliveness is, really, But having faith in being alive. It's a kind of leap, a kind of weird leap.

[13:56]

Yeah, I'm alive. I don't know. I don't know how I got here. Mom and Dad had only a little bit to do with it. Yeah. And, uh... So, I'll trust this being alive. While I have faith that just being alive is somehow... Well, sufficient is one word.

[15:00]

But it's also a constantly opening Constant, I don't know, if I say too much positive, it's like painting a nice sky. Yeah, I don't. Language doesn't let me say what I want, because language always implies reasons and consequences, and I want to say something that isn't in those categories.

[16:10]

Sprache lässt mich nicht sagen, was ich sagen will, denn sie impliziert immer Gründe und Schlussfolgerungen. Und ich möchte etwas sagen, das außerhalb dieser Kategorien liegt. It's just part of us, this intent to stay alive. Es ist einfach ein Teil von uns, diese Absicht, am Leben zu bleiben. Then we can ask ourselves some questions. Und dann können wir uns einige Fragen stellen. I suggested, don't you feel some fundamental question hidden in your aliveness? But you don't want to think yourself too, but maybe you can feel it. Then you can ask yourself questions like, what drives my time, my experience of time?

[17:20]

What drives my identity? What keeps me thinking about myself in certain ways. What gives me a certain sense of time, before and after, and so forth? Now, one of the... Yuan Wu, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records, main points in practice is to come to a mind where there is neither before or after, or here or there. Yeah, now we're at the center of Zen practice and Zen wisdom, Buddhist wisdom.

[18:41]

It took me five years to notice this question. Zhaozhou could have said something like that. Yeah. Now, I spoke about relaxation. That was another topic. Yeah, this sense of no here and there and no before and after. It's also a way to Describe this relaxation. Or to stay alive just because you're alive is a kind of relaxation. I'm alive while I'm alive. And now I'm I'll be dead when I'm dead.

[19:58]

Whatever that is. Yeah, my former father-in-law said just before he died. Pretty ordinary remark. He said it was okay before I was born. I'm sure it'll be okay after I'm dead. I've never reached the end of that statement. Yeah. So we have relaxation, we have gathering mind. When I look at your posture, I try to see not whether so much whether your posture is good, but whether it's relaxed.

[21:06]

Yes, and then we had gathering mind, And we're sitting together to support the gathering of mind. Trying to open us, our body, our mind, it's somewhat scary to open yourself to this gathering mind. Sometimes it hurts like a toothache in our chest. Or in our heart or stomach. Almost as if The mind is waiting, but it's too painful for it to come out.

[22:24]

Now it waits, the mind gathers, it waits outside of consciousness, I said. Mind gathers or waits outside of consciousness. Doesn't wait outside of noticing, though. Through our capacity to notice, we've created language. And language has created ways of knowing. And knowledge and consciousness gather in that structure. But mind, where is it?

[23:39]

Is it inside that, outside that, surrounding that? Aber der Geist, wo ist er? Ist er innerhalb dessen oder außerhalb oder umgibt er es? It must be everywhere. Er muss überall sein. But it wouldn't be in the structure of our... Yeah, the structures of consciousness are the structures of our habitual way of noticing. Habits of noticing. So the key to the practices I'm speaking about here is to notice without thinking.

[24:44]

Going back to Samantabhadra. Who sits on an elephant. A very strange elephant. Because it has six tusks. And the six tusks represent the six paramitas. And it also represents the six senses. And that's an interesting teaching itself, how the six senses and the six parameters interrelate. We probably won't get there in this session. But it's a reason to come back. Okay, the six tusks, this represents the elephant's way of reaching into the world.

[26:02]

But the elephant is not attached to the objects of the six senses. This is noticing without thinking about. Sensing without creating the world of that particular sense. Seeing a visual world, having visual sensations, but not creating a world based on knowledge, memory, etc., visual knowledge, memory. So again, with this kind of distinction, we're at the center of yogic practice.

[27:05]

Now this decision to stay alive, actually it's a vow to stay alive. Which we can develop that vow, but it's initially also a vow. And that vow to stay alive takes the form of attention. Sorry to keep going back over this. To stay alive without, just for the sake of staying alive, is again a kind of relaxation.

[28:23]

Is a kind of relaxation. Okay. But staying alive is also a kind of attention. And what we attend to is who and what we are. So what the vow to stay alive for most people becomes a form of self-referencing. I will stay alive. Greed, hate and delusion are forms of staying alive. They're forms of attention. We can give greedy attention, etc.,

[29:25]

As I said, when I mentioned, spoke about this, tried to speak about this in Zurich, I mean in Luzern. And I said, the city you see, or this neighborhood, these farms are forms of attention. It can be selfish attention or less selfish attention. And here you are at the basic, place of the Bodhisattva's vow. You vow to stay alive. Staying alive is a form of attention. What are you going to give attention to? Too much selfishness, greed, hate, delusion, etc., make us sick.

[30:54]

We may not notice it, but if you start to sit, you'll probably notice it. Yeah, and most of us have a mixture of altruistic intentions to stay alive and selfish intentions to stay alive. And they function in different spheres. And usually the selfish one has priority. This kind of conflict causes This kind of conflict causes conflict. So the decision is, what are you going to give attention to? Yeah, you can see if you sit zazen and give attention to consciousness.

[32:05]

One kind of mind arises. If you give attention to breath, breath mind arises. Attention is the spark. The ignition. Yeah. What generates a mind, a mind-body, is attention. Sustained attention. I've been trying to find the right word. Maybe... attentional awareness or intent awareness. Any way you say it's all right. Okay. And I said, we make pathways.

[33:50]

Two or three days ago dream, we hardly, it's almost impossible to remember yesterday's dream. a dream of two or three days ago, it's very difficult to remember. But something connected with a physical act is quite easy to remember. Yeah. So we make pathways, physical, mental pathways. And sitting zazen makes physical, mental pathways. This ability to be in the midst of any and each situation. And eventually with relaxation.

[35:07]

And two and a half thousand years and more of Buddhism has said the best way to get there is through sitting meditation practice. You can't think your way to these pathways. And Vasubandhu says an attentional moment, a moment of attention, is one or maybe two milliseconds long. One or two. My stopwatch is not that good, so I don't know for sure.

[36:11]

But it's something like that. And each one can dart off. And yogic skill is to begin to bring these attentional moments into a sustained attention. Moments into a sustained attention. And body and mind, faith, all have to cooperate. We can begin to direct this attention to what we're doing. We can feel the structures of our personality, etc. We can feel mind moving around those structures, not caught in.

[37:26]

Usually just attention just flows through those tubes. into our personality habits, before we know what happened. We find ourselves doing things and we look back and say, Whoa, the Bodhisattva was way back there. Yeah, but then eventually we feel ourselves in the midst of this gathered mind. And we can decide, we can vow. We can just make a practical, selfish, kind of selfish decision.

[38:27]

We can make a practical or kind of selfish decision. We feel better when we feel grateful. So in each situation, let's look at the aspects for which we're grateful. So we let this attention This intent awareness. flow into gratefulness for being alive. And it took the form of this immediate situation. And this isn't some goody-two-shoes kind of... Do you know that expression? Goody-two-shoes. Goody-two-shoes means... a little girl with very nice clean shoes and she does everything what her mommy wants her to do.

[39:54]

Could be a little boy too. So far Sophia isn't as goody two shoes as we'd like. So this is something fundamental, to choose gratefulness. To choose acceptance. Yeah, to choose generosity. Now we're in the middle of the six parameters. To choose learning from each situation. To choose patience. To just be able to be in the midst of.

[40:57]

and to choose noticing without thinking, transformation of the ordinary into the unique. To choose the dharma instead of karma. So you've transformed the vow to stay alive into Samantabhadra's vows. Into the vials of the Bodhisattva. If you can stay alive, others can stay alive.

[42:11]

We're that connected. If you can realize bodhisattva practice, others can realize it. You can't? It's more difficult for others too. We have this choice, this kind of choice. And the choice is powered by knowing it's inseparable from every other person. And it's realized through intent awareness. Okay. Thank you very much. Vielen Dank. May every being and every place in our sight in the same way...

[43:29]

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