I like these front row seats here. That's where Peter put me when we visited the clown performance in Basel. The clown was practically in my lap. He was in the lap of the person next to me. And Coco was supposed to meet us, but we couldn't find him anywhere. In English we'd say, we looked for that clown everywhere and couldn't find him. But here he is in the front row seat now. Yeah. Now I assume you came here of course to have some solitude or intimacy with yourself.

[01:11]

But I also assume you came here to study real Buddhism. Yeah, I'm not greeting card Zen. Or some idea of what religion should be like. Now, when we come to a saschin, we become a new person. We resist it the first day or two, but then usually we give up. Sometimes we even start liking it. So I'm going to try to work with two or three things. One is Gerald asking me yesterday after lecture what I meant when I said this inner science requires the larger context of religion.

[02:41]

It's not so easy to answer, but I'll try, of course. And the other thing I'd like to work with is, you know, I gave you this statement last night after the hot drink. And if we just take one line of it, if you enter by Manjushri's door, All conditioned things, earth, wood, tile, stone, help you awaken your potential. Now, what the heck could that mean?

[03:50]

If you want to enter by Manjushri's door, that sounds good. I mean, none of us have met Manjushri, but let's assume we might want to enter by his or her door. Yeah, we know Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom. So it sounds a little scary, but better than most doers. Das klingt etwas gefährlich, aber vielleicht immer noch besser als die meisten anderen Tore. Okay, let's go in. Also los, hinein mit uns. And what do we find there but all conditioned things? Und was finden wir dort anderes als alle bedingten Dinge? And what are the examples? Earth, wood, tile, stone? Und was sind die Beispiele? Erde, Holz, Ziegel, Stein? Inanimate objects?

[04:52]

How are they going to help us awaken our potential? And what is awaken? And what potential? Now, if you're going to take Buddhism seriously, as I said, and not greeting cards in, you've got to look at a statement like that, each word, and take it seriously. It either means something or it doesn't. And I think most of us, when we study Buddhism, we kind of skip over a sentence like that, saying, maybe that's poetry. But we don't see it as a document of inner science as specific as chemistry. So maybe we need to go much slower. We spent With the sutra that is the first paragraph of the koan about Bodhidharma in the Blue Cliff Records.

[06:21]

The introductory words I've called the sutra because we spent some time here on it and Crestone we spent a good part of the practice period. Yeah. So although I'm not known for going slowly in lectures, I tend to put a few too many things in them. I ask you in your practice to go slowly. to really take one thing at a time. It's only in this way that many things open up to you and awaken your potential. And the third thing I'd like to consider is Again, this question of imperturbable mind.

[07:35]

And you have to get used to this contextual use of words. Like mind. Which can mean so many things. As can Dharma, Karma, Buddha, Bodhisattva. They all mean many, many things. Each one can mean everything. Actually, it makes me think of, again, going back to my two favorite little people who aren't here, Paulina and Julius. Physically little, but in lots of ways bigger than all of us together. I still feel, I'm still awed by the miracle of language that every human being virtually can learn it And a child can learn it, an infant can learn it.

[09:03]

And yet, where is this wisdom that's in language carried? My own feeling is it's carried in the context of the words. In fact, as studies have shown, if you don't have a context for a word and a lot of associations with it, you bring more to a word than is on the page. And each word carries a context with it. So I think that if you become more sensitive to the context, then the wisdom that's in language that's been put there by human beings begins to come out.

[10:12]

And this wisdom is in us, in our own language. And a practice like Sashin and Buddhism and Zen is trying to release the wisdom that's in you. Now, since directionality is the most powerful and determinative aspect of mind, since directionality The ability to have a direction is the most powerful and determining aspect of mind. Hence intention.

[11:13]

Ideas have an inordinate power over us. Now, I've said a lot in that last sentence, but let's poke around in it. We have this mind. We're talking about mind in this practice period. And it appears in many ways. We've discussed the aspects of mind in the past. Again, one of its aspects is mind has movement and direction. And that direction allows us to have intention.

[12:30]

I intend to go over there. I intend to move my hand. I intend it and my hand moves. Fantastic. As I've said, mind over matter. True. Yeah. And that's intention. I intend to do something and mind becomes my hand and my hand moves. But this capacity of the mind to have direction which then translates as intention you're following me stagnates often in ideas okay what the heck do I mean I've said in the past, recent past, that one of the most obstructing ideas has been that body and mind are separated.

[14:06]

Okay. That's an idea that body and mind are separate. And most of us think we're more sophisticated than that now. That was a few decades ago that people thought that. But I bet if I could look at the functioning of each of your of your thought structure, there's implicit in it that body is separate from mind. Now, here we are. I'm sitting here. I guess this is something called me sitting here. And part of me could be described as body.

[15:30]

And it's been giving me, it's always presenting me with an immense amount of information. And my mind, which I identify traditionally anyway with the witnessing, the witnessing aspect of mind, Mostly for many centuries hasn't listened. Mostly for many centuries the witness hasn't listened to the body. We've gone through centuries of thinking the mind is separate from the body. Even though every moment is filled with information to the contrary. But the idea is more powerful than the information.

[16:43]

And I can see each of us coming into Sashin, and no matter how painful the Sashin is, no matter how difficult we made the schedule, At the end of the week, your ideas are intact. I mean, these little flimsy ideas, they are more powerful than centuries. of information. So one of the main things of adept practice is to develop the ability to see ideas. There's a poem of Rumi's.

[18:10]

I can't see if I can remember. Your body intelligence is always with you. Your body intelligence is always with you, even though you may not be aware of its working. even though you may not be aware of its working although if you do something against your health although if you do something against your health your intelligence will eventually scold you Your body will eventually scold you. How wonderfully intimate is this intelligence? It's neither in front of you nor behind you.

[19:21]

Neither to the left nor to the right. Yet your finger is not separate from its movement. You wake and your fingers fill with meanings. You wake and your fingers fill with meanings. But consider, what about the jewel lights of your eyes? But consider the jewel lights of your eyes. How do they work? We human beings love coverings. The universe has many weathers. That's quite a good poem, don't you think? We human beings love coverings. And ideas are coverings and we don't listen to our body scolding us.

[20:24]

And the ideas are such cover-ups, and we don't hear how our body criticizes us. So I'm just right now trying to sort out some particularities in the use of the word mind. As I said this morning, when you get up at 4 a.m. or still dark, you know, and you're nutty enough to come to the Zendo.

[21:38]

You know, we could say this is a taste of imperturbable mind. But a mind that is only present when it's When a mind that's only present through circumstances is not a mind. It's a mental attitude or state, but we wouldn't technically call it a mind. Now, there... Oh, I'm sorry, everyone. to go into such detail, but again, I want to show you what this language of Buddhism has been going on for 2,500 years for a reason.

[22:46]

It's so much work to learn it, you're not going to forget it. And then you're going to try to give it to someone else because you had to suffer so much to learn it. So it's lasted 2,500 years. Okay. A mind in the sense that I'm using it has the qualities that it persists and it's homeostatic. It persists, it's homeostatic, and it's self-organizing. Okay. Simple example again. When you wake up in the morning and you don't want to get up, that's an example of homeostasis.

[23:49]

Ein einfaches Beispiel, wenn ihr am Morgen aufwacht und ihr möchtet nicht aufstehen, das ist ein Beispiel für homeostasis. The mind of sleeping wants to continue. Der schlafende Geist möchte einfach weitermachen. And the alarm goes off. Und der Wecker läutet. And the alarm becomes a telephone ringing in your dream. Und der Alarm wird zu einem Telefon, das in eurem Traum läutet. And you're not interested in receiving any calls at this hour, so you... Don't answer. That's an example of the self-organizing aspect of mind. It reorganizes the alarm into a telephone ring. Okay. Now, so, if you get up in the morning and you struggle to get to the Zen door, you beautifully, easily get here.

[24:54]

However, that quality of imperturbable mind is not a mind in the sense I just defined. You're so wonderful as a translator. Probably as soon as you get here, you start thinking about something else, you start falling asleep, etc., Where did the imperturbable mind going? It was neither self-organizing nor homeostatic. It's gone. Gone, gone, gone beyond. If I want to look at a and know that their imperturbable mind is there, one way to tell is, is their mudra perfect?

[26:06]

Now, this is true for all of us, me too. You start out with a nice mudra. as fast as the sound of the bell dwindles away. The mudra and you have gone into, you know... And if you think that's natural it means you think body and mind are connected. You think, of course, if I'm falling asleep my thumbs fall asleep too. But this isn't necessarily the case. If you install imperturbable mind in your body, which is one of the things we're trying to do in practice, you can fall asleep and your mudra remains pretty good, if not perfect.

[27:32]

So we're... Okay. This could go on for a while. I'm sorry. I'll just stop at some point before Nico and Gerald get the chainsaws. That's so much for that lecture. Okay, one obstructing idea is that body and mind are separate. Another obstructing idea is that body and mind are one.

[28:54]

Eine andere beschränkende Idee ist, dass Körper und Geist eins sind. If you have either idea, it will thoroughly interfere with your practice. Okay, so what's the third possibility? Body and mind is not a... is a relationship that can be cultivated. Okay. That's better, and that's how I usually say it. But it still suggests that body, that mind is relating to body. And that's not precisely accurate.

[30:01]

Remember, one of the givens of yogic culture is that all mental phenomena has a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. So it's really not a relationship between mind and body. It's a relationship between It's a relationship between a mind-body and a body-mind. If you really want to relate your mind to your body, you have to awaken the mind of your body.

[31:06]

Now I'm being more precise. Does it make sense? Okay. The right said it makes, does the left side say it makes? Okay. Okay, so it means that your body can have a mind that scolds you, as Rumi says. When you do something against your health. Your body has a mind that can be separate from your mind. This is two different uses of the word mind, but, you know, okay. When we talk about the hara, You know, what we're talking about is the best location in which to get a feel of the body as mind.

[32:36]

And the best location to root that mind. And you can see it in the way, for instance, Japanese dress. We dress primarily, we hang things from our shoulders. Die Art, wie wir uns anziehen, ist hauptsächlich, dass wir etwas von unseren Schultern hängen lassen. Das Kleid einer Frau hängt von ihren Schultern. Auch die Anzugjacke eines Mannes hängt von seinen Schultern. But both monks' clothes like this and ordinary dress of people is built so it comes as you tie a band around your waist and your clothes come up from there and down from there.

[33:43]

They don't hang on your shoulders at all. That's one reason the collar is made so it sits up. One of the difficulties of Japanese sewing is this collar doesn't lean against the neck and shoulders. It sits free. As Gerhardt is doing. But Kokos, it seems to be against his neck. It's okay, but in Japan, all the collars would be loose. There's a space there. And those small differences are about the sense that the clothes are supported here and they lift up and they're quite free and not hanging from the body.

[34:51]

And designing clothes like that then allows you to feel, and you can do it in Kenyan, feel like you're walking from here. You'll find your legs work differently. Now, you don't have to walk like some Japanese person. I don't care. Mm-hmm. Nor do you have to have kimono collars. It's about developing a sense of this as the location of the body-mind. You can locate it somewhere else if you'd like, but you're not being traditional.

[35:55]

Plus, it's hard to find such a good location somewhere else. I said I wanted to consider three things. I haven't gotten even past one yet. Well, I said we'd go slow. Now, our hands, as is implied in Rumi's poem, our hands are the most noticeable physical presence of the mind.

[37:17]

And also the tip of the tongue, for instance. I find it totally amazing that your tongue can find a sesame seed somewhere and carry it carefully in between the tips of the teeth and release it. This is an amazing precision. So we have these yogic teachings that are part of what we do. One is the mudra of the hands. And the other is the main mudra in our practice of the feet. Which is always to keep your ankles the distance apart of your fist.

[38:20]

Somebody put something about keeping the hands, feet parallel or something. That's not what I mean. And this is not a rule to be observed like that. Das ist doch nicht eine Regel, die als solche befolgt werden soll. Although we could have a little game. Every time your ankles are not that distance, you give a Deutschmark to the neighbors or something. Wir könnten natürlich ein Spiel daraus machen. Immer wenn eure Beine nicht, eure Füße nicht so weit auseinander sind, dann gebt ihr den Nachbarn einen Mark. We just sign something and then we'll go around and check, you know, collecting the Deutschmarks. Irgendjemand würde dann herumgehen und das prüfen und die Mark einsammeln. Or Canadian dollars. Yeah. Now, when you can do it while you're doing other things, it means you've installed your mind in your body.

[39:43]

We do all kinds of things like that. So two of them in Zen is this sense of keeping your ankles that distance apart during kin hin, during standing, during service, etc. And your mudra, a particular way, in all stages, if possible, of your zazen. So if you fall asleep, your mudra remains good. It means you're... This is a way to start discovering imperturbable mind. Your physical body is beginning to teach you imperturbable mind even though you're feeling sleepy.

[40:57]

You see this in wild animals all the time. You can't find wild animals are not alert. Wir können keine Tiere finden, die nicht wachsam sind. Even ducks with their head way down in their feathers turn backwards. You know, one eye looks around, what's going on in there? Sogar die Enten, wenn sie den Kopf ganz unten zwischen den Federn haben, dann schaut immer noch sein Auge vor und fragt sich, was ist da los? And you'll discover, more often in Sashin than other times, that you can be basically, even visually with your eyes closed, awake during the night. So the room feels like a clarity. This is the presence of imperturbable mind. Crystal-like imperturbable mind. It's not still mind, it's not calm mind. And we learn this discover this imperturbable mind first of all through the body

[42:18]

And that's the reason for things like this mudra and feet to help us learn this. And if you, when you fall asleep, if your mudra collapses, it means you've got no separation between your body, mind and your body. mental mind. And so it also means you haven't really woven mind and body together yet. Because still your mental mind is dominant. When your mudra doesn't collapse, your body-mind has its own strength, independent of your mental mind.

[43:29]

So, again, one of the signs of a person who hasn't woven body or mind together is when their mudra collapses when they sleep. So, I'm sorry to give you so much detail. But I'm trying to make sense of this practice for you. That's a language at least as developed as the grammar of German or English. Well, more developed than English grammar, probably less developed than German grammar. Yeah. Now, just one last thing. I'll give you a little story. Yeah. You know, we have this sense of place I'm talking about, which you can develop.

[44:41]

And you can develop this sense of place so it actually is a kind of power. And you can almost push it against people. Or other people can feel it. And as I said, it's more powerful than the witness. And the witness gets very stale. Stale? Stale, like stale bread or something. Sure. So, you know, sometimes the witness is hanging around and feeling lousy. And the sense of place says, well, why don't you, you know, freshen yourself up? Don't you know you're just a figment of this person's imagination?

[45:48]

But the sense of place says, I know where there's a cool breeze. A very fresh breeze. So the sense of place takes the witness and puts it in your breath. And then the witness feels, oh, this is really nice. Such a refreshing breeze is coming and going. And the witness begins to feel much better. It still thinks it's permanent. And the problem with the witness is it always is tending toward permanence. And it thinks it's you. But our body has its own intelligence.

[47:04]

And sometimes this sense of place makes the witness move and it refreshes the witness. So we can work with ourselves in this kind of way. refreshing ourselves, even in Sesshin. That's more than enough for today. Thank you very much. Mögen unsere Absichten gleichermaßen das Wesen und jeden Ort durchdringen, mit dem Warenverdienst des Guter Eges. Schubert, Jochen, Sey, Amando, Wala ma la [...]

[48:08]

I promise to save you. [...] Let the blood run dry in your ocean, just so you can see the day my soul runs.

[50:16]

I know that you are tough enough to bring me down to court, but when I die, what? This is probably one of the thousands of years that God puts me to sleep. Now that I can see it on that mirror, and I know that God gave me time, I believe it is the rightest time of my life to die. Good afternoon. Guten Tag. I heard there was a meeting of people who are new to Sessions.

[51:28]

And I heard that among the many possible topics, one predominated. Which is, you probably haven't guessed, but it was pain. Yeah. So the Tanto, from the milk of his kindness, has asked me to speak about pain. But if I flap my lips, what difference does it make? Yeah. You know, there's an advantage to long sitting.

[52:38]

And it takes... And to learn long sitting in a short time is painful. You have to accept there's an advantage to long sitting. And perhaps you have a taste for warrior mentality. Of course, certainly we're shaped by what we've encountered. In our culture, we don't encounter enough difficulty until it's forced on us. And then we're surprised when suddenly we're sick or someone else is seriously sick. You know, and See, if you do the Zen way, you don't have to, unless you want to do both, you don't have to do a hundred thousand bows.

[54:06]

You don't have to do complicated visualizations. All you have to do is sit here and suffer. Yeah, sorry. That's the end of my talk on pain. Well, maybe I can say something else. And, you know, when I hear it, I know, of course, but when the Tanto tells me, it hurts me too. I don't want to make you guys hurt. What is the source of the pain?

[55:08]

The answer is fairly simple. The unmoving body. Why is that painful? You do fine during eight hours of sleep. But if you're, as I've said often, if you put your arm in one place and you tried to leave it for eight hours while you were awake, you'd be pretty... you'd have a hard time after about an hour or two. Oh, shit. What does that tell you? It's the kind of mind that's in the arm that's hurting. And it's certainly true, if you can change the mind that's in the body, much of the pain goes away.

[56:35]

The reason the unmoving body hurts is because of the moving mind. I mean, we're physically very restless. And we're mentally very distracted. The ego thinks a good meal is distraction. Ego is a distraction eating, you know. What's that little computer game? Pac-Man. Pac-Man, yeah. This is a distraction-eating ego. And it gets real hungry unless there's not a big dose of distraction.

[57:39]

Now, There is, of course, you could be, you know, you have to distinguish between what's harming you and what's just hurting. But if it's not harming you, what's the problem? I mean, your system is giving you a warning. This looks like it could be harmful, but you know it's not, so... So really, if you're not doing something that's harming you and you can get past the restlessness and the distraction you discover another kind of mind. And it may still be discomforting, but it's not the same.

[58:50]

It's almost like there's two chairs. And they're both in the same place. And one is real sharp and hot. Every place you sit, it cuts you or burns you. But if you can find some other way to sit in the same chair, suddenly it's quite comfortable. I'm sure even if you believe me, you don't care. It still hurts. Yeah, I know it hurts me too, you know. I won't tell you how much though. I don't want you to think it's easy for me.

[59:52]

And I don't want you to think I'm brave. So there's pain, actual pain. I like the koans, they say, pain and itching, they refer to. And they only say that for meditators and monks. Because most people don't think of itching as a big problem. But sitting, there can be times when itching is quite a problem. As your kind of way your energy works changes. If your mind can become more unmoving,

[61:04]

So let's stay with what's become the main topic of this Sushin lecture. Imperturbable mind. Two, I think... Herbert Günther translates mind as indestructible potential creativity. And he says that's the essential meaning of mind in Tibetan Buddhism, and it's also exactly the same in Zen.

[62:21]

This indestructible human potentiality or its accessible face in us, imperturbable mind, is only realized sometimes through being perturbed. We discover how to be imperturbable through being perturbed. So sashin is designed to harmlessly perturb you. I mean, if it didn't bother you, it wouldn't perturb you. And then you'd realize only sometimes bothered mind Do you really want to realize imperturbable mind?

[63:38]

Which is the mind best for studying, observing oneself? Then you learn it most powerfully by being perturbed. until you're imperturbed. And, you know, my worry is actually these sesshins are too easy. There's only four 40-minute periods. There's seven 30-minute periods. I mean, that's a breeze. There's no 50-minute period. And no stretch of long sitting.

[64:39]

And even our practice periods, Sashin, now have a work period. Because we let people come from outside the practice period, and no work period, Sashin, is pretty hard on... on unprofessionals. But it's great, it's really wonderful to be in a sesshin where from early morning straight through to lecture in the afternoon pretty much there's uninterrupted chance to stay with something. But you have to develop the skill of sitting. I'm afraid in this kind of Sashin we have now, there's too many interruptions. Okay. But it is a wonderful feeling when you can, what can I say, sit past the pain so it doesn't generalize and flood you.

[66:15]

You feel there's this big field and you feel some information coming. And you can say, shall I translate that information as pain or shall I let it be? And that choice to translate it as pain or just, oh, it's... is imperturbable mind. It may be painful to get there, but it's a tremendous psychological strength. Can you imagine a life in which nothing, really, you feel everything, but it can't really destabilize you or upset you?

[67:17]

You can no longer harbor ill will or hang on to anger at somebody. There's no mind that will sustain holding on to such things. So this is a gift Sashin can give you. I'm sorry, it's... It's initiation by fire. Yeah, well, not the very big fire, a small fire. But a small fire still burns. Anyway, I apologize. I'm sorry. It's painful. Someone else mentioned to me, well, by the way, I'll start doksans tomorrow morning and we'll see what happens there.

[68:43]

I look forward to meeting with you. Whenever I start doksans, I wish I'd started them sooner because I'd like more time to see you. But before I start doksan, I always like just being in the sashin and not starting tomorrow. Yeah, but anyway, I have to start tomorrow. Now, someone else said to me, I should emphasize that we should do one practice. Yeah, and also part of that is I give you so, as people say, I present so many things it gets confusing. I can't win. It's painful.

[69:44]

I present too many things. I'm sorry. But my feeling is just like I'm not giving you guided meditations. So I don't want to just present one practice. I want to give you a choice. I don't want to make the choice for you. You have to let your own, let's say, authenticity make the choice. Ah, yeah. Um... So my job, as I feel it, is to present a picture of practice to you.

[70:56]

And I present a picture so you can get a feel of this realm of Buddhism, of practice. And I also try to present the picture so that practice computes for you. When you're engaged in a practice and you find yourself, well, why like this or why like that? The answers come up. Und wenn ihr in einer Praxis drinnen seid und ihr euch fragt, warum mag ich das, warum mag ich das, dann kommen die Antworten einfach hoch. Because I've tried to give you a picture which you can debate it with yourself. Denn ich habe euch ein Bild gegeben und ihr könnt selbst mit euch darüber sprechen.

[71:58]

And perhaps most important, I try to create a picture that will rub you the wrong way. Rub you the wrong way? Show you the mistakes? Show you the mistakes? Rub you the wrong way means something happens or someone does something that gets on your nerves or bothers you. Against the grain, yeah, like against the grain. Like that. Because if you don't see where practice doesn't make sense, you won't know what practice to take up. So that's what I meant by you have to choose through your own authenticity. In other words, I try to present enough that you come to the conclusion, you feel, I don't get that.

[73:02]

If you feel that deeply enough, that's your one practice. And then you stay with that until you resolve it. Now, one practice, since we're, again, staying with a few themes here, one practice I worked with, I would say that I perfected my mudra during the early 70s. Now, it slipped a lot since then, but it was pretty good for a while. I don't think there are many people in the Western world who could say they spent the mid-70s perfecting their mudra.

[74:16]

Yeah, during a couple of years like that, you could learn a great deal of Tai Chi, for example. It might be much better. But it's no big deal that not too many people could say this because not too many people are doing what we're doing. But why would I spend so much time on my mudra? Well, as I've said to you before, one of the first instructions Secursi gave me was to put my mind in my hands. And I was genuinely bewildered by that. I had no idea how to get my mind into my hand. So that stayed with me. And then ten years or so later in the

[75:17]

early seventies, I began to really find the presence of the mudra a challenge. This is what I mean also by choosing one practice, something as simple as working on your mudra. I would describe us human beings as on the one hand having an extremely subtle intelligence.

[76:53]

On the other hand, we're not too smart. And what I mean by we're not too smart is that We can't handle many things at once. It's like the study of phone numbers. You can't have phone numbers that are too long or people can't remember them at all. We can remember most people's seven things grouped in one or two different ways. But we're very subtle in the way we think about things. That's true in everything, gardening, science, etc. But we need to keep it fairly simple to let the subtlety come out. That's one thing I mean by we're not too smart.

[78:15]

And the other is, once we get in a direction, we stay stuck in a particular direction. And that's what I meant yesterday by talking about the amazing power of ideas in the face of pain or centuries of Information to the contrary. Centuries of information to the contrary. Now, the reason I'm saying this is that we are very good at managing or actuating or manipulating symbols. But what we've never learned to do, at least in our culture, is to manage or manipulate or actuate modes of mind. Our language is very subtle, but it all occurs in one mode of mind.

[79:28]

And we're very good at it. But what Buddhism is trying to show us is that there's various minds, language is one of them. And you can develop a language of minds that have their own grammar, have their own way of functioning together. And these minds have doors. And sometimes one mind leads to the next mind. So there's sequential minds.

[80:31]

You can't know this mind unless you know these two previous minds. That's what Buddhism's all about. And I think 99% of Western Buddhism itself doesn't know that. Most Western Buddhism is not taught that way. I won't discuss why that's the case or why it's not so obvious to Asian teachers that that's what Buddhism is about, but that's another topic. Now, if you want to learn what I... I'll do the best I can with language. This language of minds, you need somewhere to start. Mm-hmm. That's what I'm always talking about, a language of minds.

[81:41]

Imperturbable mind is a generated mind. You're not born with imperturbable mind. It's something you create. Like a tennis player might create a particular kind of mind that allows them to play tennis at a high order. That tennis player wasn't born with that mind. You're not born with imperturbable mind. We could say to some extent you're born with waking mind, or we could say you're born with original mind. So there's some minds we're born with which we develop. And there's some minds we're not born with but we generate. Practice is first of all about recognizing that. And then make a decision to generate those minds.

[82:58]

Oh, yeah. Am I talking Greek to you? Am I making any sense? Bodo? So the thing that traps us in particular minds are ideas. So you have to begin to develop the ability to see ideas as the boundaries of minds. Or ideas as forcing a directionality on a mind.

[84:09]

Now, mostly these things aren't spoken about. Because if I say that, it's like, oh, the Asians are so subtle, they don't have to have these things spoken about. They may be, but that's not the point. The point is that they know what to look for. For instance, Rarely is anything like stand with your feet this far apart pointed out in Asia.

[85:09]

I would say that I could walk in the Zendo for 50 years in Europe or America. And if I didn't point it out, no one would notice it. Virtually no one. But if I was in Asia, it's almost the first thing that would be noticed. It's not because they're more subtle. It's just because that's what they look for. And in fact, they would pay less attention to the words and more attention to what the body is doing. So you can communicate and teach a tremendous amount by simply changing the way you stand or walk or something like that.

[86:13]

So we don't look for those things. It has to be pointed out so we notice it. I conveniently forgot my watch today because it was set wrong and so I don't need to know the time. And Henny said to me earlier that she came all the way here from Canada so she hopes I give long lectures before she goes back. So if you have any complaints, you can bring them to me. Yeah, but don't worry, I'm just kidding. Not kidding, I don't have a watch, but... Okay.

[87:25]

And we are not, in a similar way, we are not alerted or sensitized to noticing a language of minds. So I will try to give you some feeling for it. And as I said, we're very subtle, but we're not so smart. But once this is pointed out, You're not going to be behind some guy who happened to be born in Asia because you will have your own subtlety in exploring this. And I think potentially in a fresh way.

[89:00]

Because I believe a lot of Asian Buddhists have forgotten this And they just do Buddhism as a teaching, not as an exploration. Okay, so let me try to feel my way into this a little bit with you. I would make a distinction between, for the sake of trying to talk about this, Between becoming familiar with yourself, intimate with yourself, and studying yourself. And we're doing all three of those things in this issue.

[90:05]

Sorry, I forgot one. Familiar, intimate, and study. Okay. But What time is it? Quarter to five. What's time? Okay. I'll stop soon. There is a tradition of giving Zen lectures so long that people are so exhausted finally, they don't know what's going on, they can't hear, and then you can really pour the stuff straight in, because they have no resistance. You beat people into vulnerability. But I'm too kind.

[91:13]

Okay. Okay, say you're sitting. And you have... Oh, you're working on your mudra. And you notice that working in your mudra is not much different than like holding a coin or something during your sleeping. In other words, can you create a physical awareness that extends through various states of mind? So you're sitting and you've got your mudra in a certain way. And you try to place in your mudra this imperturbable mind. The mudra is just going to stay there forever, no matter what happens.

[92:37]

And then you watch your mind. Suddenly an image comes up. And then after the image comes up, you check your thumbs and you see they're floating out somewhere in your mind. So, oh, that's what images do. So then you bring it in. And then some other kind of story comes up. You get interested in it, and then... Deep stories are mudra deflators. Or you get tired or whatever. You can begin to observe, you can use the mudra to begin to generate a mind that can observe two minds at once. You can begin to use the mudra as a way to generate a mind that can observe two minds at once.

[93:48]

Okay, then you can begin to pay attention to the kind of mind around you, that's surrounding you. Now, there's only three things here.

[93:54]

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