My intentionally being aware. Bringing that awareness up into my body and mind. Bringing the awareness up into my body. And then letting it dissolve. Not only dissolve, but disappear. So I feel everything is zero for a moment. And from that zero I look at the next perception comes in. That's the practice. Doing something like that is the practice of merging with emptiness. That's a more active and deeper practice or a more mature practice than just not grasping at things. Okay, so, but still, even though this is such a good practice, he can even say it's still not enlightenment.

[01:18]

That's quite a big compliment. Yeah. So then he goes on to give us a second practice. We could say these first two are kind of instruction or practice, not grasping things, merging with emptiness. Now he says, notice that each sense generates a field. And all the fields interact with each sense. And when interacting, they also merge.

[02:18]

Okay, they also merge. Right now when you're looking around, you have an emerged awareness. Hearing, seeing, smelling have all come together in a single kind of field. Okay, but we don't see it as merging. Through practice you see it as merging. And you participate in its merging. But then you can also participate in letting each field sort of rest in itself. It's more when you have the experience of everything in its own place. And the smell of the flower is very particular and almost independent of the flower.

[03:24]

So here we have, so this is giving you a practice noticing this. And noticing that forms are basically different. We're not talking about only a mental world. Forms are basically different. Yeah, if you as a human being don't merge these, everything is at rest. It's you that put them together as a world. The butterfly might put them together different. Yeah. German butterflies smetterling Yeah flutter flutter Okay, and sounds are basically different and pleasant or harsh So this has returned us to

[05:10]

to ordinary consciousness. So this first part, you have the mind of the great sage of India. The spiritual source shines clearly in the light. The branching streams flow in darkness. Okay, so now to get anywhere directly toward that we have to practice. And we have to practice with the way we know the world. How our mind grasps at things. How we can reverse that process. How we can see how the senses generate the world.

[06:21]

As Member Pessoa said, I'm older than time and space. Because I am consciousness. Because I am conscious. Things derive from me. The whole world is in my sensations. So here, to have this experience that the whole world is in your sensations. Things derive from me, grasping things. Yes, but if you don't do that, they remain in their own states. And what happens when they remain in their own state? What happens when we remain in our own state? Yes, forms are basically different. And things are likable or not likable.

[07:38]

Now darkness is a word for merging upper and lower. Here upper is the forms and sounds. And lower is merging with principle. But here you're trying to create a mind of simultaneity. A mind that doesn't have to merge. A mind that doesn't have to merge. that can leave everything in its own state, that can simultaneously feel them as emptiness and simultaneously feel them as form. Light then, which here means wisdom or enlightenment, Das Licht, was hier Weisheit oder Erleuchtung bedeutet, is an expression for being able to see this all at once.

[09:00]

Ist ein Ausdruck, für das man das alles auf einmal sehen kann. And now here we have the third practice. Das ist jetzt die dritte Praxis. Before gross elements return to their own natures. Die vier Elemente oder groben Elemente kehren zurück zu ihrer eigenen Natur. Like a baby nursing on its mother. part of dissolving the constituents, is to feel your body, the solidity, its fluidity, motility. Heat. But here it's just, let everything be. Don't let all of this form into even a body or a mind. You kind of have the experience.

[10:03]

This is not science here. It's just the experience. I have the experience of stuff sitting here in this chair. Ich habe einfach die Erfahrung, dass irgendwelches Zeug hier auf dem Stuhl sitzt. I don't make the stuff into me. Ich mache dieses Zeug nicht, ich performe es nicht in mich. I let the stuff just be me. Just be, be, be it, be it, be stuffed. Ich lasse dieses Zeug einfach Zeug sein. Yeah, I might be a stifed bear. Stuffed, stifed. Ein ausgestaffter, stifed bear. Yeah, and, you know, I let the... But at the same time I notice the warmth, the heat of consciousness of the body. I notice the pliancy, the movement of the body. And also I see things, And I hear things.

[11:21]

But I don't make any of this into anything. So here we say the leaves spread from the root. The whole process also then can be reversed. And as I said this morning, there's a reversal and you can see the roots from the leaves. Now, we have an experience of a given world. Even the given world is actually generated when you look carefully. but when we have a but practically speaking we're born into a given world where they're generated by our culture and parents and friends and so forth A shared trance that shapes our body and mind.

[12:49]

In every culture, though, it feels given. It feels like that's the way it is. That's the way things are. So we look at the leaves. The given leaves of the tree. Autumn now, almost autumn. And so we look at the leaves of our culture. It's not so important what culture we have. Just look at how we know the leaves. Don't just Look at the leaves as given. Look at how we know the leaves. Look at the way consciousness works. now through looking at the leaves looking at the world through the way consciousness and awareness work go back to the roots the whole process must return to the source

[14:28]

Yeah, now noble and base are dull or keen. Wisdom or mundane are only manners of speaking. When things are reversed and returned to the source, The darkness is a kind of light. The light is a kind of darkness. But don't think of it, don't conceptualize it as darkness or light. Refrain from conceptualizing it. Feel the light in darkness and the darkness in light. The dawn returning to darkness.

[15:41]

The evening returning to light. But if you conceptualize it, if you just happen to do that, this isn't philosophy. If you conceptualize it, you return to selective consciousness. So refraining from conceptualizing returns you to the source. And light and dark are relative to one another. It's integrated as forward and backward steps.

[16:45]

These really separate forward and backward steps. And in this translation they have, you don't have any sense of returning to the roots. They don't even have the line, the whole process must return to the source. Which is the essence of the whole practice of the Sandokai. And it says light and dark oppose one another.

[17:48]

It's not, it's not, it's their, their, their. Relative to one another, versions of one another. All things in this function have their function. Maybe we stop right there. Yeah, you know, it's wonderful to practice with you guys. And I don't know why, but, you know, it's some kind of good combination of us. So it's... you're letting me go a little farther out than I usually would.

[19:05]

And I apologize for that. Because generally I can't do that unless there's a good supportive feeling among each other. Yeah, and sort of if sometimes the group's too big, there's two or three people who are, there's a kind of darkness around them, and you can't, then I can't speak to the whole group. And then Marie-Louise makes such an effort to be accurate in coming up with the words close to what I'm saying. And that helps. And maybe coming off antibiotics, as you know.

[20:08]

But I hope that, like this morning, I didn't get a little too far out. But in any case, it's a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Can I turn this off? Good afternoon. Sorry I'm a little slower than usual today. But I didn't have a car to get up here, I'm sorry. But actually, our work leader went beyond and the call of duty as the usual work leader.

[21:29]

And drove us to Hamburg in a gathering stow. Then with a hand on one map, And one hand on a map and the other hand on the steering wheel. He drove us through some strange way back to the freeway, to the Autobahn. And two rather nice things happened. As we were driving, Marie, he kept asking, what kind of car do you want? Maybe I'll help you get a car. I know all these dealers and they give me deals, you know what I'm saying, right? So this work leader really is unsurpassed. So... Yeah, so we asked Marie-Louise what kind of car she'd really like.

[22:49]

Since we now have to think about how to get a car. And still can dream. And she said, oh... If we could afford it ever, an Audi A4. Yeah, so we get to the car dealer place. I mean, the car. And they said, first good news was they said, ADAC will pay for it. The rental, at least. And then we said, what kind of car? They said, an A4. Ha, ha, ha. So we drove back together, right? Okay. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, the car, yeah. We can't say everything at once. Okay. So is there other... This is our last chance for discussion.

[24:07]

Is there anything anyone wants to bring down? I mean bring up. Bring over. Bring under. Bring through. You don't have to translate all that. It was nice hearing people talking out in the garden and stuff today. Mm-hmm. Nothing? I mean, there's no... Come on. We had a nice discussion in the garden And it was about intensity of practice And we got the insight That we have to determine the heat of the practice ourselves.

[25:25]

We first had a discussion, always lay people, it's much too difficult and all these things happening outside there. Hans Joachim Semkin was in the group and is a new practitioner. Okay, so then we decided in this tension of these different people, we decided all this is kind of sort of rubbish. It's not the outside things which make it happen. It's you, yourself, you have to determine what you want. And that I thought was very nice to see that. Yeah, I'd say the intensity is, turning up the heat is not so important. The single most important thing is the conviction, the intention.

[26:27]

The more you can come into a conviction and intention that you are going to do this without fail, that's the most important. As I said the other day, it's a kind of alchemy of faith. But a faith in somehow things as they are, as they is. A faith in the possibility, or even if there's no possibility, the necessity of doing this.

[27:34]

There are several stages for me in this decision. And it occurred in strange ways. One of the most, maybe, the one that was made perhaps the most clear. I had this friend who I really liked. and he decided to move we both moved to California about the same time and he decided to move back to the east coast so I said I'd drive him to the airport but first as a little goodbye party I'd take him out to dinner In those days I particularly was quite primitive socially.

[29:05]

I've always been, particularly when I was young, a kind of loner. In college they called me El Darko. So I didn't know what you were supposed to do to celebrate. And I always used to hide myself, usually in the corner of cafeterias and read. So I thought, well, I'll bring him out to a... Maybe you go to a nightclub. I thought, I didn't know what that was. So I saw new in North Beach in San Francisco that there was a kind of Spanish flamenco nightclub bar. And I had no idea, you know, I didn't even know if I could afford a drink in there, let alone, you know, to go in in this dark place.

[30:23]

But I tried to do something special. So I said, let's go there for dinner or something. And he said, where? But we went in there. And we sat having, I guess, a beer or something, I don't know, and eating something. And we were just talking. And suddenly he said to me, Dick, you know, if we really knew what we were doing, If we really had the courage just to do what we should do, we'd just practice Zen all our life and not do anything else. And I was kind of thrilled that he said this.

[31:31]

Because maybe we'd remain friends and do practice together. And one of the reasons I practice, actually, is it's the best way to hang around with people. And I... You get to sit around with people a lot and you don't have to buy drinks. You don't have to talk much. So anyway, it seems an ideal way of life for me. So when he said that, I felt, yes, he's right. And I almost felt a big iron door.

[32:34]

I felt like a big iron door just came down right behind me and cut me off from the rest of my life. And everything I'd ever thought about doing, if I had thought about anything, you know, was just cut off. So we finished and I left and we went to And I called him in the morning to say I was coming over to take him to the airport. And I said, it was really nice of you to... It was great what you said last night. And I said, I agree with you completely. And he said, what did I say?

[33:34]

And I said, you said about Zen and then he said... I don't remember anything. He didn't remember anything. But the door had come down in my life. So I took him to the airport wondering, what happened? But he was certainly a catalyst for my decision. And our friendship was part of the catalyst, but, you know, Okay. So the intention to do it, which is also part of this idea of merging with principle, is most important. The other 100% of that is to just do it.

[34:40]

It's not about intensity, it's just to do it. Sometimes it becomes intense. And sometimes you feel a need for intensity. But the just doing it is what's Most important. Okay, something else. We also spoke in our group of what this whole week has changed in us. And I then told him that I had made a king today.

[35:42]

What king? Outside king, you mean? Yes. That for me, in many ways, this was really new. And it was so that I've seen things in a much more oppressive way. And not usually like seeing nature as something romantic. So that was something very special because we stood somewhere and we just looked some direction. and looked at the grass and then we turned around and there was this kind of forest and it kind of sloped down a little and for me it was like as if for the first time seeing something sloping down

[36:51]

And this, I thought for me, this was something like being without intention, but it sounds positive. Without conception, without intention. And then I noticed when the intention-conception kind of came back again. That's right. I think so. I think that's right. The strange... Discovery, that it's possible to have a non-conceptual mind, turns everything into a surprise. Yes, and the slope down is actually different from any other slope down.

[38:14]

And you feel yourself falling forward down the slope with your feet stopping the fall. You can feel the energy, the slope in your body. It's funny, huh? Something so simple. Yeah. Yes. We were discussing other days in the group, and for me, sometimes it was really good to speak with others. I think this is being old and nourishing and comforting. There's a complete feeling of interest, of widening of views, and sometimes I felt like leaking out, and I thought that's like a disorienting life. Life? Edge? Life, yeah.

[39:18]

Like outside discussion? And I was thinking about it, what makes speech nourishing, good, and what does it make not so good, maybe. And in the same way, how can I listen that I feel nourished, and how can... Yeah, that you can say. Deutsche Bitte. Yes, we have always discussed in the groups, and it is also noticed that sometimes it just feels good and interesting, and you get a new perspective and feel nourished and complete, and that sometimes it has such an influence, as it is in everyday life, that you get a feeling that energy is swimming away from you, you realize that it is over, as you said yourself, yes, a little bit. Actually, I want to know how one can speak and listen to the out-licking that has a quality to it. Yeah. Well, there's no... The only way really to learn non-leaking is by experience.

[40:20]

There's certain, I mean, virtually essential yogic skills. One is one-pointedness. The ability to rest your mind on anything and it stays there. Another is non-interfering observing consciousness. And the third is to know that edge where you don't leak. Now your practice doesn't begin when you have these skills. And practice is certainly partly just simply learning these skills.

[41:52]

And practicing can be extremely fruitful, even if it takes 10 or 15 years to learn these skills. But practice begins with a new thoroughness when you have these skills. I think one of the... Main ways to learn non-leaking is in the day or two after a Sashin. You have accumulated some kind of power and energy in a Sashin. And very quickly you begin to lose that.

[42:54]

And you notice it Often you lose it when someone asks you about Sashin. Strangely, if you try to tell them how good it was or convince them, you leak the most. You probably would leak least if you said, it's a waste of time, it's nothing anybody wants to do. Then you see also how you're engaged with things, and the engagement makes you leak, or you can keep a kind of intactness. So that's just simply something you can begin to feel.

[43:55]

Once you can feel it, you can find a way to speak and act without leaking. So when that happens like in your discussion group, you immediately notice when it starts to happen. And then you immediately experiment a bit. What can you do with your body and voice and so forth that you kind of feel intact again? And one of the secrets is to feel a kind of silence in what you do.

[44:56]

The one who's not busy, you know that koan, right? The more you feel the one who's not busy in the midst of activity, you don't leak. Or as well as, you know, as I point out, as well as feeling silence in your activity and speech, or just feel your breath in your speaking. For some reason the mind which touches sound or touches breath while you're speaking, tends to nourish you rather than leak. When you're speaking, it kind of loses contact with breath or sound or body.

[46:09]

Your energy just spews out in the words. If you lose contact, then you start losing energy. Now, a lot of this practice has to do with a new kind of energy. Which is also part of the Sandokar. And I haven't spoken about it yet, but I probably will today. Okay, thank you for... It's wonderful what each of you has brought up. It's good you don't know the word I've heard.

[47:20]

Ah, a real adapt. And it also made very clear which were our different aspects of practising in our life. I thought it was quite interesting for us to see how different it is and how important each character is in the way that each one is practising. Each person is, you mean by character, yes? No, how the composition of a person makes a specific practice. Oh, okay. For me it was very amazing how in the discussion about enlightenment and about how teaching or learning can be, it came out how actually each individual character, each individual person, differently with the learning,

[48:30]

That's true. We each have to trust how practice happens to each of us. And be subtle enough to see the opportunities that come up through accepting ourselves as we are. Without having too many ideas. For some reason I think of the story that's Sukershi, something about Sukershi. Someone came up to Sukhiroshi.

[49:39]

And he was very serious about practicing the right way of understanding, practicing. And said to Sukhiroshi, when a tree falls in a forest, And there's no one there to hear it. Is there any sound? Gibt es da ein Geräusch oder ein Klang? And Sukershi said, it doesn't matter. Und er sagt, es macht überhaupt nichts. So much for one of the main questions in Western philosophy.

[50:39]

Und so viel zu einer Hauptfrage der westlichen Philosophie. Doesn't matter. Okay, so let's look at the poem. Shido, by the way, was quite an iconoclast. What's that? I don't even... Oh, okay. I gave a talk the other day about building, right? But that's... Different.

[51:44]

Very different, yes. Oh, then you have to tell him about your word yesterday if you want to make a joke. My word yesterday? Can I make a joke? Of course you can. Can I stop you? Go ahead. Oh, I knew that this is a very important word in my world. It's a street sign. A whole village. What did I say? Was it consciousness mouth? And then later when I translated, he said, then he said, ah, then it's consciousness, or no, perception mouth because of perception mouth. Yeah, yeah. Come here. When he was young, that's all right.

[52:58]

When Shido was young, he caused quite a stir in his village. Because in his village they practiced some kind of sacrificial stuff and they would sacrifice an ox. And while they were starting this and built the altar and everything, he came and he simply as a little boy, dumb boy, knocked down the altar, grabbed the ox and took it to a field and freed it. Can you imagine trying to do that in your village church? I mean, the whole village would be, yeah.

[54:02]

He must have had quite a lot of power as a kid. So already he had this sense of seeing through his culture. And also, you know, while he was called... Why Matsu said, beware of the slipperiness of the edge of a cliff. That's where he lived. He built a hut for himself. Next to a temple. But on a rock sticking out over the edge of a cliff. He lived in this little hut. So it was called Monk on a Rock. It sounds like a dessert or something.

[55:04]

Monk on a Rock. Monk on the Rock, yeah. Hello dear Shido, here we are. Okay. So right in light there is darkness. Don't conceptualize it as darkness. Don't try to see it as darkness. And in darkness there is light. But don't react to it as light. Light and dark are expressions of each other and relative to each other.

[56:06]

As inseparable as forward and backward steps. Now, forward and backward steps refers to the tathagata, the coming and going. And it's a formula for one of the main teachings in the Blue Cliff Records, the Hekigyan Roku. So it's a main formula for this... Oh my goodness. Heikki Ganroku. Yes, Heikki Ganroku. This Shilpa, which is central to Zen practice. This gathering in a way And granting way.

[57:09]

With a movement toward darkness. A movement toward light. And which through your practice, all movements, distraction, is subsumed into this movement. leaking and not leaking now here's another sense of leaking It's the first case in the book of Serenity points out. Serenity in German. The Buddha doesn't leak. The Bodhisattva leaks. Compassion is a form of leaking.

[58:10]

To take your friend to a Mexican nightclub is a form of leaking. But ideally... the leaking of the bodhisattva is still rooted in non-leaking. So this forward-backward step emphasizes not some philosophical yin and yang, but the parallel simultaneity of it. And the movement, again, into inward less distinctions. Which we can identify with darkness. Like a moonless night sky. And the movement into light. Into more distinction.

[59:11]

Okay. Now, this Sandokai. tries to give us a new sense of actually the practicality of light and darkness. So this immediately speaks about light and dark and says don't conceive of it as light or dark. But just feel it as a movement. You yourself become the movement. Du selbst wirst zu dieser Bewegung.

[60:17]

And again, it's not talked about a pendulum or something like that. It's like walking, forward and backward steps. Und es spricht eben nicht davon, dass es wie ein Pendel ist, sondern dass es einfach wie Schritte sind, also wie Laufen, vorwärts und rückwärts. So it's your movement. Es ist deine Bewegung. And again, these stories are always trying to bring us back to recognize our own movement. in our own body, not some special ecstatic experience, but in our own body, these teachings, in ordinary things. Like I say, you know, we have all these teachings about the Dharmakaya and the space body and all that, right? And as I say, that's no difference in not being able to find your thumbs together in Zazen. You think that's so important? Well, I can't find them. But you know, it's easy to find your thumbs in ordinary consciousness.

[61:36]

It's not so easy to find your thumbs when you're in Zazen. Where the heck are my thumbs? I think one of them is in Munich. We can bring it back there. Where is it? It's not that far apart, actually, but that far apart. Ships passing in the night. And finally you find, oh, there it is, yeah. And after a while, you know, where are they? Well, when you lose the sense of your body's boundaries, even if it's only expressed in your thumbs... You're close to that experience, losing the sense of ordinary consciousness boundaries and feeling a big wide space. You're close to that experience, losing the sense of ordinary consciousness boundaries and feeling a big wide space.

[62:40]

So notice the subtlety of your own experience. From the point of view of practice. Like how you wake up in the morning or go to sleep. The feeling in forward and backward steps. The feeling like if you go jogging where you don't want anybody to interrupt you. You really have to concentrate on what you're doing. Even though you're in activity there, it's an inward turning. Okay. So like forward and backward steps. So now they brought this whole poem back to a simple physical activity. Fold all this teaching of light and darkness back into a simple physical image.

[63:59]

And then open that up again into all things have their functions. And how do we know what the function is? It's a matter of how you function, of use. What's appropriate. What's appropriate. Yeah. appropriate situation. How do you know it's appropriate? No philosopher can tell you what's appropriate. Again, it's one of those things you simply have to know and feel. You feel it in your body. You feel it like a box and cover joining. You know if you're trying to cook.

[65:14]

And you know you open the drawer perhaps where there's pots and pans. And you find a saucepan. And you're trying to find a lid. There's about seven lids in there. And that doesn't fit. And then suddenly one fits. You know what that feels like. It's like that. Yeah, it's... Got a little advertisement here. I don't know if I can do this, but the idea of completeness is extremely important. And related to what you said about leaking, nourishment is the other side of that.

[66:21]

Not leaking develops into a feeling of being nourished by what you do. So we're looking for in our own experience ordinary experiences ordinary feelings that reflect or something deep. Or to integrate in some way. Which? That integrate in some way. Maybe small, nothing important. But when you feel it over and over again, that makes a big difference in your life. You open yourself to the joyfulness of life.

[67:23]

Okay. So just imagine if everything you do doesn't deplete you. Everything you do tends to make you feel nourished. You're not really so tired at the end of the day. You tend to build up energy. Instead of accumulating karma, you accumulate energy. And this sense of completing is really important.

[68:27]

It's a little bit like there's a kind of the four marks, right? Something appears. And then there's a kind of duration. And then dissolution. And disappear. And then something else appears. The ocean and the... And what you get if you begin to have a spiral. A sort of things appearing. Having a duration. and kind of dissolving, and to disappear, and then it starts again.

[69:32]

So there's a completion, but an openness. It's a completion, and with the disappearance, it's not a simple completion. It's a kind of completion with openness. So the circle often represents this in Zen teaching. Because things appear, it's kind of like a circle. And the Genjo koan, as you know, means simply Dogen's main teaching. To complete that which appears. genjo means to complete that which appears so it's again like this moment not yet come moment it needs you to complete it and the effort to and this is also a kind of energy to be ready to act

[70:57]

So you're present to the situation, not as outside you. But to... completing in yourself. Dogen talks about the passage of time. But not the passage of time like outside you. But the passage of time through you. You yourself are the passageway of time. Mm-hmm. And everything feels like it's passing through you.

[72:15]

We have some feeling with it. And that, that, the entry to that is the practice of completion, which is also the practice of inner penetration. We have these ideas like interdependence and interpenetration. Wir haben diese Vorstellung von gegenseitiger Abhängigkeit und gegenseitiger Durchdringung. Aber wie praktiziert man das? The secret of practicing interpenetration, acting through interpenetration. Das Geheimnis, die Durchdringung zu üben or to train,

[73:18]

The practicing inner penetration is to have this sense of a circle, the sense of completing a circle, or completing that which appears. It's almost like you complete something, bring it into you, And when you release it, everything interpenetrates. And from that interpenetration, the next moment arises. This is the practice philosophy you're teaching. So in this genjo koan, koan is understood in this context as the particularity and totality of everything at once.

[74:29]

This is interpenetration. To bring everything to complete that which appears Knowing everything is simultaneously particular and all-at-onceness. Again, it's like Munman Roshi's statement about respecting... And Sukhiroshi, at the end of this first chapter, section speaking about self-respect, in the process of completing that which appears, you make the particular particular. you draw the liquidness of all at once of all possibilities into your own presence into your own living making it your particularity

[75:53]

And then release it again. Now, that's an exaggerated description. But it has to be exaggerated to be said in clumsy words. But if you take the image that is at the center of these words, you can feel this completion, completing going on. Again, I'm sitting here with you. I have some feeling for each of you. And I was sitting here together. And I'm trying to say something. And I try to pull that into some words.

[77:13]

And I try to complete it in some words. And it's a kind of target. I can feel the target. I don't know if the words stick to the target. I sort of pin the tail on the monk. Don't you have a game yet called Pin the Tail on the Donkey? You don't have that game? You have a donkey, and you give the kids a pin and a tail, and they walk around in the dark, and they try to clean it up. Oh, okay. Oh, that's what kids do in America. Yeah, we have nothing better to do, you lot. We're just too sophisticated here. We have simple games. Anyway, they have a donkey and it's played at every birthday party.

[78:23]

And you blindfold the kids. And then you kind of walk around and you pin it on your friend, you know. It's called pin the tail on the donkey. When you get a little older, you play spin the bottle. So I said pin the tail on the monk. But it is, I'm trying to pin, trying to bring some feeling I feel here into the words. It doesn't quite complete, but I release it. And then I try it again. And if it gets too serious, I make a dumb joke. So I'm right now practicing completing and releasing.

[79:38]

That movement is more a part of what I'm saying than thinking. So I'm actually practicing what I'm talking about, but it's hard to talk about it. Die Zeit fliegt dahin. So you can feel when box and cover join.

[80:41]

Ihr könnt also spüren, wenn die Schachtel und der Deckel sich treffen. When it feels like things are suddenly complete. Und es fühlt sich an, als ob ganz plötzlich die Dinge vollständig sind. And as I spoke this morning about like arrow points meeting. Und ich habe heute Morgen darüber gesprochen, es ist wie wenn sich zwei Pfeilspitzen treffen. This merging with principle, this intention to practice. The whole world supports this. The Buddha puts his hand down, touches the earth and the whole world testifies to his practice. Hearing the words, understand the source. Don't make up standards on your own.

[81:47]

I should do it right, you know. You should do it in the context and see what happens. This way you'll learn to understand the past as it meets your eyes. How can you otherwise know the way as you walk? Wie kannst du denn sonst den Weg kennen, wenn du auf ihm gehst? This is not about far or near. Das hat nichts mit fern oder nah zu tun. Life span, old or young. Lebensspanne oder alt oder jung. Forget about ideas of far or near. Vergiss alle Vorstellungen von fern und nah. In this fundamental way of being, all at once, not far or near. In this fundamental being, there is no far or near. Your friend isn't in San Francisco over the Tussauds Mountains. In the fullest way, your friend is here.

[83:00]

When you really get that, I mean, I've never felt separated from Suzuki Roshi. And sometimes he does appear in dreams. And it's very nice to talk with him. But even though that's different than, you know, and it's different now than when he was alive, I simply do not feel separated from him. Separated or separate. and when he died and I was with him at the moment he died and I was with him every day in the weeks before he died I mean yes it was sad it was painful

[84:09]

Basically, it was very clear. It was his time to die. He knew it was his time to die. Well, just accept it. It was his time to die. I didn't wish he wouldn't die. I didn't wish he would die. I didn't think about it. It was his time to die. And he knew it was his time to die. And he took responsibility for it. And he knew it was my time to live. And he expected me to take responsibility. So I was just with him during the time. And I knew it would be pretty soon my time to die.

[85:28]

And that would be my responsibility. But if you're confused about these things, everything blocks your way. For those of you willing to study the mysteries, Don't waste time. Okay. Let me say something about energy. I'm trying to talk about a dynamic, a process. To say everything changes is to say everything is in movement.

[86:32]

We can understand no-notion mind or non-conceptual mind as less distinctions. And we can identify less distinctions with darkness. So how do you function in the world when you make less distinctions? This is called a kind of darkness. And it can be experienced as darkness. Again, to give you one of my own experiences in this. There are two I could mention. One, I mean, I tried to practice as if San Francisco was a monastery. I knew I needed the kind of concentration and support of a monastery.

[87:46]

But we didn't have a monastery. We hadn't founded Tassajara yet. So I just pretended San Francisco. I said, what the heck? San Francisco is a big monastery. Often foggy. Full of foghorns. Maybe they're temple foghorns. So I had this feeling. One time I was walking on the street and I know exactly the spot on the street. I can't remember exactly now what my thought preceding this experience was. But I was concentrating and practicing mindfulness and working with the phrase, Without even knowing the phrase, keeping to the one.

[89:01]

I was trying to engage all my energy and thoughts into a point all the time as I walked along. You have to do a little thinking as you're walking along the street because otherwise you might get hit by a car. Oh, dear. Okay. And... So I suddenly thought it just occurred to me. And it's funny how a thought can make a difference. And it's interesting to look at the fox koan from that point of view. How answering a question wrong can condemn you to 500 years as a fox. That might be quite interesting on your resume.

[90:14]

What did you do for those 500 years? I foxed it out. But I just had a thought. And my thought was, what if there were no thoughts? What if there were no mental formation? It was like two in the afternoon. And I swore to Buddha. And I was standing there and suddenly it was utter darkness everywhere. There was no light. It was just dark.

[91:15]

And I stood there and it was dark. And then I thought... This can't last forever or something like that. And then it was light again. So strangely again, these words aren't just a kind of philosophy. It's a form our actual experience takes. It's a form that can take in a real experience. And the other experience was a little more dangerous. I was coming home from work at the university and for some reason came down University Avenue. Going up on the curve of the ramp under the Autobahn.

[92:19]

And I thought to myself, I'm still scared of something. I'm still scared of going crazy. Or I'm scared of what I don't understand. There's still some fear of me. Fear of some unconsciousness or darkness. And so suddenly on the curve of this ramp, I thought I'm tired of having any fear. And I said to myself, enter the darkness. I don't care what the consequences are.

[93:21]

Enter the darkness. And everything became dark. Again, luckily it didn't last too long and I kind of feel a But since that and a few other experiences, I've never felt fear again. So these, you know, when you get into this language, And you practice with this language and the images that are the source of these words. The experiential source of them. We can even say primordial sources. Basic ideas of light and darkness. And the word wado, which means turning word.

[94:23]

has two meanings. One is to turn a word in the stream of consciousness.

[94:43]

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