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Opening Envelopes to Enlightenment
Sesshin
The talk focuses on Zen practice during a sesshin, emphasizing the exploration of personal and cultural experiences in relation to Buddhism. Central to the discussion is the metaphor of "opening envelopes" as a means to transcend ordinary experiences and achieve enlightenment through disciplined practice. It contrasts the cultural exchange between European exploration and Asian introspection, suggesting that contemporary practice extends traditional Buddhism, and encourages practitioners to discover spiritual insights through engagement with breathing and awareness.
Referenced Works:
- "Book of Equanimity" or "Book of Serenity": A classical collection of Zen koans, referenced for its practical utility in exploring spiritual awareness through breathing techniques.
- The Heart Sutra: Mentioned in the context of understanding the practice of the five skandhas and eight vijnanas, which are linked to the conceptual framework of mind and body in Zen practice.
- "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Suzuki Roshi: The section on breathing is likened to Koan 3 in the Book of Serenity, discussing the metaphor of a swinging door as a means to enter sacred space.
- Poem by Hanshan: Used to illustrate the process of letting go of past attachments, akin to the practice within a sesshin.
Key Figures:
- Gary Snyder: Cited for his comment on how Japan received Buddhism, illustrating the talk's theme of cultural exchange and evolutionary practice in Buddhism.
- Dogen Zenji: Quoted regarding the realization of manifold dharmas and satori, which is a significant reference for understanding Zen enlightenment.
- Hakuen Zenji: Mentioned in the context of inverting the eight vijnanas, highlighting traditional Zen teaching practices.
AI Suggested Title: Opening Envelopes to Enlightenment
It's nice to see all of you. I sometimes think you're a little crazy to be here. I'm glad you're here, though. And we have a crippled translator. Rumpelstiltskin. She put her leg through the floor like Rumpelstiltskin. Isn't that a German story, Rumpelstiltskin? Sometimes I actually wonder whether it's so useful to you for me to teach Buddhism. It's really not so hard.
[01:02]
But it requires a kind of third eye. Or to say it in plainer language, a little bit different way of looking at your experience. And that's the hard part, to come to the little bit different way of looking at things. So anyway, sometimes I wonder, is this going to benefit anyone or help you? All you're going to do is sit here and your legs are going to hurt.
[02:04]
So anyway, I often wonder, should I continue doing this? But then I like all of you so much. But I don't know any other way to see all of you. So it's a kind of selfishness on my part to get a chance to see all of you at once. I didn't say egoismus. Selfishness is not egoismus. Egoismus, okay. Okay. Anyway, it is especially nice to see you and to see Frank again.
[03:10]
And there's a good possibility Frank may come to Creston Center this summer or winter, right? Yes, January. Yeah, good. And Frank has to come to Creston Center in January. And it's good to see you again. You want to come to Crestone too? It's nice to see you here. Just a few days ago I was, two or three days ago, near Heidelberg where there's a large quarry with wonderfully cold water. I was on a very hot day swimming. And almost on the next day it became cold. And when I first arrived here last evening, I looked at you, and most of you have suntans.
[04:29]
It looks like you've had a nice summer. Driving up here as it was getting cold, I was thinking that although we like summers, We need fall and winter. I think probably you can feel some kind of satisfaction in your body at it getting colder. And I hope you can find some of that satisfaction in your sitting in this session. I think there's six, about six new people who haven't done sessions with me, with us before. And I sometimes wonder if it's, well, since most of you have done Sechin before, it makes it easier for the new people to see what's going on.
[05:56]
But at the same time, I sometimes wonder if it's maybe not a little easier when most people are new and you're all trying to figure it out together. We already lost one person this morning. who left quietly with his suitcase and didn't speak to anyone. And maybe some of you weren't far behind. And this was a person who assured us that the one thing he was going to be able to do was to stay through the week. But sometimes our mind changes. You know, someone Gary Schneider once said that Asia, Japan, got the message of Buddhism.
[07:35]
Gary Schneider once said that Asia, Japan, got the message of Buddhism. Gary's a poet, a friend of mine who's practiced and studied Buddhism in Japan for a long time. Anyway, Gary said, yes, Japan got the message, but they didn't entirely open the envelope. I don't know if it's quite true, but it is true that you can't entirely open the envelope. We'll keep opening the envelope. And there are many envelopes. And this sashin is a kind of envelope. And I hope that you can, by just doing the sashin, And following the schedule as exactly as you can.
[08:54]
To the minute. I hope that within that you can open the envelope. Sometimes it's necessary to stay very still and to limit yourself in order to even see the envelope. I just came from just a few days ago I was in Japan with ten people including my 28-year-old daughter and her husband. And it was a joy to be with her and I also needed her help because her Japanese is a lot better than mine.
[10:04]
Anyway, we studied, the group of us studied three or four koans together. Quite a lot less formally than we're doing here. It was so hot and muggy that soon we all came to know each other quite comfortably in our underwear. So we had eleven people for three weeks sitting around in their underwear, much of the time studying koans. And I didn't have to put on all these robes and straighten them and everything. And I think it was a useful way to try to study Buddhism.
[11:17]
And I think this is a useful way, too. Anyway, coming from Japan to I was thinking about the difference, the genius of the two civilizations. And it struck me that one of the things that's characteristic of what I would call at least the genius of Europe, is the sails of the sailing ships that allowed America to be discovered. In the 15th century, Italians and the Portuguese and the Spanish and the Dutch and the Flemish, others, all were developing little different kind of sailing boats.
[12:33]
And they each learned from each other. And a way of navigating using the North Star and the compass, too, occurred about the same time. And Ptolemy's text of the roundness of the world was also rediscovered. Anyway, as a result, Europe, different countries in Europe built sailing ships that were successful enough to go around Africa to Asia and to go to what they thought was going to be Asia across the Atlantic.
[13:41]
And you must be able to imagine the astonishment that took some decades to recognize that they hadn't discovered Asia, but the whole land out there to a continent south of North America that no one knew was there. So I see that Europe, part of the genius of Europe, is this diversity of Europe, of being divided up into separate countries that influence each other. China had one kind of sailboat or sailing ship and it never went very far and didn't have many influences that changed it.
[14:47]
So I would say that Asia developed a culture of perhaps we can say great stillness and depths. In which the past shines in the present. And Europe developed a culture with much more diversity and which looks forward all the time. And I'm using this example, saying this, because I think that we will discover a Buddhism, a kind of new land of Buddhism that Asia hasn't discovered.
[16:09]
And that Asia will also discover. So I feel, what I'm saying is that I feel your practice is extending Buddhism. Even though I'm trying to teach you traditional Buddhism, I also think that we are extending Buddhism. And this is really just a fact of historical circumstances. Now, I would like each of you to, in this session, to die a little.
[17:21]
I think as you were coming here, you may have felt that time stops a bit when you come to Sashin. You wonder how you're going to get through the week, or what it'll be like on the other side of the week. And I feel the same way. I mean, if you feel anything like me, who have done well over a hundred Sashins, I feel that way. So still, a day or so before Sashin, I feel time slowing down. And a different kind of attention to details begins to occur. And I think you should cultivate this feeling and let yourself enter a kind of stopped time.
[18:37]
And Hanschan says in a poem, I've been here so long, I've forgotten the road from whence I came. So for this week, I'd like you to forget the road from whence you came. And as I said, let yourself die a little. In the sense of being able to let life go by a little. Let let go of life. At least a little. Now, in the time we had in Japan, we looked at the first few koans in the Book of Equanimity or Book of Serenity.
[20:17]
And my feeling at least was we made some progress in getting a feeling of this kind of language this kind of language which reveals ordinary language as spiritual language. And we talked a little bit about the difference between presenting koans in a sashin or lectures and working with them with a few people going through word by word. So one of the koans we partially did was the third koan in the book. I just presented it a little bit.
[21:37]
We went into the first and second and a few other cons in another con in considerable detail. But the third con, we just looked at it fairly quickly. but i found myself although i as i said i just we didn't get into it we just looked at a little bit i found that my practice body maybe that's a good word my practice body began working on it sort of And the few days I had in Heidelberg or Schriesheim, I could feel, suddenly realized I was working in this koan. Representing the koan to myself in my own experience.
[22:41]
So anyway, I've decided that at least to some extent I'm going to present some of the issues of this koan during this today and maybe other times during the Sashim. And at some future time you can look at the whole thing if you'd like or we could Xerox it and give it to you after the Sashin but not during. Now this koan The third koan in the book brings up the practice of breathing. And it says specifically, if you don't understand, realize the basics of Buddhism, you won't have the situation, the conditions that allow you to realize the mystic path.
[24:27]
So this koan says, Well, someone asked Prajnatara, why don't you recite the scriptures? Why don't you study the sutras? And he says, breathing in, I don't dwell in the realms of body and mind. Breathing out, I don't get caught in myriad circumstances.
[25:30]
In this way I'm reciting this scripture hundreds of millions of times. Breathing in, I don't reside in body and mind, in the realms of body and mind. Breathing out, I don't get caught in myriad circumstances. Hmm. I think that makes some sense to you, probably. This is not the chemistry of breathing. This is not, he's not describing, Kohn's not describing ordinary physical breathing.
[26:33]
Hmm. There are, shall we say, three levels of breathing in practice. One level of breathing is ordinary physical breathing. which supplies the chemistry of our staying alive. And the second breathing is the breathing of awakeness or awareness. And the third level of breathing is the breathing that awakens the breathing of the subtle body and the winds.
[27:42]
Now, when he says, when the koan presents Prajñātāra's statement, this is mostly a teaching device, we don't know if anybody ever said this exactly in this way. When he says, I don't dwell in the realms of mind and body, he means specifically the way in which the body is understood, mind and body are understood as joined in Buddhism. Which is through the practice of the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas. And the fields of consciousness. Now this spring I spent quite a few of the seminars going through the eight Viṣṇyanas.
[29:29]
And last year I spent quite a bit of time in a number of seminars on the five skandhas. For those of you who attended those seminars on the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas, you should know that it's this body of the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas which is breathing. So if you have been practicing since last year in the spring with the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas, I would like you to bring that practice up for yourself again. in this sashin.
[30:38]
And if you don't know much, don't have much sense of the practice of the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas, It's not necessary for you to understand those or practice those in order to participate in the Sashin and these teachings. But you should know that in Zen practice It's expected of you that you'll find out what those are and practice them. Whether I present them to you or not, you'll find out and practice them. And you know that they're in the The Heart Sutra we've been chanting in English, German, and Japanese.
[31:56]
And we chant those five skandhas and so forth, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no impulses, and so forth, as a way of introducing you to really the expectation that you'll study them. So what I'm trying to say is that if you're going to go on in practice and not just use Zen as a kind of well-being practice, which is important in itself, But many of you come to Sashin, I think, seeking for some special insight or enlightenment experience. And a Sashin can give you some insight or some kind of turning experience.
[33:06]
And you may feel, if such an experience comes to you, that this is Buddhist enlightenment. But if it occurs within your own psychology, in your own story, it's some experience, part of your psychology, but it's not Buddhist enlightenment. It may include, may become part of your Buddhist realization but realization is much more likely and certainly in the Buddhist sense If you study how you actually exist.
[34:29]
And part of this breathing practice is to study how you actually exist. So I don't want to take too much more of your time this afternoon. But I'll briefly talk about breathing and awareness. Now the word Buddha and enlightenment and awareness in Sanskrit all have the same root. And B-U-D-H it is. And the sense of awakeness and awareness has a much wider meaning in Buddhism than it does in English or German, I'm pretty sure.
[35:34]
Now, the physical breathing, the chemistry of breathing, creates the possibility, the conditions of clarity of mind and create the possibilities of being awake. But the second kind of breathing and awakeness is you wake up in awakeness. You wake up in consciousness. And you wake up to consciousness in a wider sense in which we almost can't even call it consciousness anymore.
[36:52]
The word consciousness doesn't fit it exactly. Now, one of the things that happens in Sashin, which you all noticed, is how we enter the mysterious auditorium of sound. Sounds begin to have a kind of quality of speaking to us directly when you're practicing zazen. And this is such a prevalent fact, pervasive fact of Zen practice that we should notice it. It is like you enter a kind of auditorium. And the curtain of thought goes up.
[38:13]
And you begin to have a feeling of the phenomenal world speaking to you. Now this feeling is important to cultivate. And if you've been practicing 10, 20 years, say, this habit of living in the mysterious auditorium of sound really begins to change you. So the stage goes up or the curtain goes up on a rather different world.
[39:14]
Now, part of this ability to reside in this mysterious auditorium of sound arises from your breathing. Now, say you're walking along a street. And you've begun to have the joy of being able to practice in the moments of your daily life, not just in the zendo or in zazen. And it is a joy and a relief when you don't have to go to the zendo to practice that it...
[40:18]
presence of practice is with you all the time. And you can begin to feel yourself waking up in awakeness. Now, one of the meanings of Awareness in Buddhism is that it takes hold of. That it penetrates, takes hold of, recognizes, knows, understands. understands not through cognition, but awareness itself understands. Now the golden thread of this awareness is breathing. Now the thread that you begin to bring this into your presence is breathing.
[41:35]
Or we could say it's a kind of pump. It's a kind of pump, maybe. So you're walking along and you bring your presence to your breathing. And you begin to feel each cell of your body come alive. You begin to be filled and as each cell of your body comes alive you begin to be filled with awareness. So in the Sashin I hope in your walking around and in your work and in Zazen practice you can begin to let your breath do its spiritual work.
[43:14]
And you can try not to interfere with it too much. Try not to hinder it. Just bring your attention to it. Cooperate with it. And this then is what this koan means about letting your breath be the scripture itself. So if you can wake up in awakeness, the envelope of this sashin will have many Buddhas in it.
[44:16]
Thank you very much. I'm trying to trap you actually. So that you can find your freedom in a meter square. If you can come to live quite happily for one week in one meter, that's quite good. Almost nothing can happen to you. Now you may think that if you realize this practice, you will appear in the world as a personage like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, or Thich Nhat Hanh.
[45:26]
But probably you won't. But you may realize this teaching. And you may appear to yourself. And if such a person as His Holiness the Dalai Lama realization must be that he appears to himself. And if he has some thought, oh, I need to be the Dalai Lama, that's not so good. So it's best if you don't have any such thoughts of the importance of realization or being a Buddhist. Realization means you are just able to live in deep satisfaction.
[46:37]
You may not be always satisfied with yourself or with the world, of course. But those are thoughts. And where you actually live, you live like a baby. Or with, we say in English anyway, to sleep like a baby. Do you say that in German too? No, not quite. Like a child. Now Dogen Zenji has a statement.
[47:42]
When you use manifold dharmas, through, let's, how's it go, when you, when manifold dharmas arise and are realized through yourself, that is delusion. But when you realize yourself through the arising of manifold dharmas, that's satori. Now, I will try to make that statement a bit clearer. And I will try to speak to you about these things in the way that's characteristic of teaching Zen.
[49:02]
In other words, Zen is really presented not as a conceptual system, but as an experience which you can investigate. In other words, Hakuen Zenji, who is the most famous Linji school, Rinzai school, Buddhist teacher in Japan, said, invert the eight vijnanas. And when you bundle the four wisdoms,
[50:03]
The three bodies are realized. Now that doesn't mean anything to almost anybody. But it's characteristic of the way Zen is taught, actually. And it assumes you know what the three bodies are, the eight vijnanas and the four wisdoms and so forth. Then he expresses them in a way that doesn't make any sense. Unless you realize it, unless you understand it from inside. So Zen practice is, a lot of it is presenting something to yourself in a certain way till you realize it.
[51:29]
So, ideally, it's a good practice for lay people. Although, again, most of the teachings have been traditionally carried in monasteries and in practices like the Sashin. Still, if you find out how to practice in your daily life, Zen is an ideal practice. Now, last night I asked you what was the price of rice in Leipzig. I suppose I could have asked you, what's the price of a Trabi in Weimar? But this is the fifth column of the Shoyaroku. A monk asks, what is the great meaning of Buddhism?
[52:45]
A question you might be asking yourself. Not sure there's a great meaning or any meaning at all. So the teacher said, what is the price of rice in Jiu Ling? And that's such a kind of almost corny Zen answer. I thought I should give it to you last night. What is the price of rice in Leipzig? That's good. I like the sound of that. So I will be talking about that koan too during the next day or two.
[54:13]
And it's quite hard, by the way, in the middle of the dark with everybody on the floor to translate what I say at hot drink time. So on her first experience root when I said no interpretive root I didn't mean root and I think she translated it something more like no certain root Which is good. You can work with that too. Both will work. But no interpretive route is almost the opposite meaning. Because there's no interpretation, it's extremely certain. Okay, so I'm still trying to present this stuff to you about breathing.
[55:38]
Now, when you say breathing in, not dwelling in the realms of mind and body. Breathing out, not caught in myriad circumstances. Okay. This is, again, not the chemistry of breathing. Bringing a particular attitude or feeling to your breathing. And not dwelling in the realms of mind and body doesn't mean, in English you could mean either, but it doesn't mean the realms of mind and body.
[56:47]
It means the realms generated by mind and body together. But if you just take the phrase, not dwelling in the realms of mind and body, and you breathe with this phrase like a mantra, an attitude that is mixed with the air of your breathing, Not dwelling in the realms of breathing in, not dwelling in the realms of mind and body.
[57:58]
Sorry to keep making you repeat these things. But you have to kind of get a physical feeling of it, not dwelling in the realms of mind and body, breathing in. Now, This morning I kind of probably offended some of you by pushing you to get you to walk faster in Kinhin. But I don't know how to get you to go faster sometimes. But also it's a maybe bad habit that I got from practicing in Japan for a long time.
[59:07]
Because all actions are taken physically first in Japan and mentally second. So you don't invade another person's space by touching them, poking them, etc. You do by how you speak, but not by what you do with your hands. Now, most of you are familiar pretty much now with the way of eating with these bowls, the yoyoki. And the small details of posture and so forth. The hands are again, the arms are parallel to the floor. And the hands turned up slightly.
[60:30]
And when your hands together in zazen, your thumbs are touching lightly. At least in that classic mudra. And your thumbs shouldn't be pushed up. Or ideally not lying asleep either. The more subtle your practice begins, the more you notice these things make a difference. When I'm sitting and I haven't had much sleep in the last week or so, when I'm sitting and I'm sleepy, if my posture changes only slightly, there's immediately a channel switch or a content switch.
[61:36]
of my what's occurring. And if there's a content switch, it'll change my posture. And the longer I practice, the more clear and precise this is. So anyway, we try to get you familiar with experiencing yourself in detail. Now, I often speak about space. And I want to speak about it again because to look at this koan in terms of where it's going with breathing, I have to talk about how we experience space.
[62:52]
Now, let's take this room. We would say it's a room. But from the point of view of practice and the way Asian culture would look at this room, it's actually several rooms. If there's no one in the room, it's a room known from that door. And it's also a room that can be known from that door. And it's a room meant to be known also from the altar.
[63:53]
And it's a room meant to be known differently on that wall where the windows and light comes in than on this wall. Now, if you were an architect, you would actually think of, a good architect would think of this as several rooms and design it that way, but make it look like one room. Now it's a convention of our language and a convention of our way of thinking to think of this as one room. Now, I would like you to try to get out of that way of looking and thinking and feel that this is several rooms which have the name of one room.
[64:58]
Now, when you walk into the room, immediately there are quite a few more rooms. There's the room from wherever you're standing, the room to your right, the room to your left, and so forth, front and back. And when two people enter the room, there's suddenly quite a few more rooms. There's the room between you and the other person and so forth. Now, I often say that in Buddhism you have to begin to experience the way in which space connects as well as separates. Now, I would like to say that in addition that we can talk about what at least I would call in my nomenclature fractal space.
[66:31]
And it's just a word I've adopted from a sense of, from fractal geometry. But, okay, within this room, there's a unique space which is around me. Now, I have some connection to Petra over there, who's in her unique space. And each of us has taken a seat, which is your seat and the Buddha's seat. And this is the first koan in the book of Saranti. But actually, the way in which space connects my unique space is connected to Petra's unique space. is through your unique space and your unique space and etc.
[67:51]
So there's no idea here of one space that we're all in. Each of you is a space. Now, this is very close to spiritual space in the West. And it's much that we have lost sight of in our ordinary culture. Religious people, saints, Jesus, and so forth, are portrayed with halos, nimbuses, because they're in unique space.
[68:53]
Now, in a From a Buddhist point of view, this isn't just a fact of some saintly person, but it's a fact of each person. But saintly people often realize sacred space. The word sacred in English means dedicated to a single purpose. Now, when we were in Japan, one of the things that I thought was valuable, practicing together in Japan,
[69:58]
was because of the way Japanese culture has developed in actually a pretty isolated way, one of the most isolated cultures in the world until recently. It's maintained an ancient sense of sacred and primordial space. Primordial and yogic space. And that's why the traditional culture has not used chairs, because they want you to sit in a meditation posture in all your activities. And when you enter a Japanese house, traditional house, there's different shoes for different parts of the house.
[71:08]
And different brooms for different surfaces in the house. And this is respected very carefully. If you took a broom that's meant for a wooden floor or the kitchen floor and used it on the wooden floor or the tatami floor, people would get a jolt as if you'd slapped them or something. then this isn't because they would think it was bad magic or a bolt of lightning would come through the roof if they used the broom on the wrong floor. But if a traditional Japanese person is in a hurry, They'll use any broom to get something done.
[72:32]
They'd have no problem about that. But they do it in ordinary circumstances because there is a very deep sense of the importance of practice in the culture. Now I'm using Japan as an example, not because I think Japan is great or not great, but because it has retained certain primordial elements and it's a very Buddhist culture. So the sense is that each space is dedicated to a single purpose. And you can't recognize that purpose just in your mind. It has to be recognized in your physical activity.
[73:56]
So you recognize it in your shoes, in your lack of shoes, in your brooms, and so forth. So... So you don't have in Japan a sense of Japan as one space. And you can't have a government which governs a totalitarian space. You can have a repressive, totalitarian-like government, but it has to govern as if there's many tiny spaces, not one space it's in charge of. So there's no sense in Buddhism of a generalized space that we all live in.
[75:26]
So you don't use dharmas yourself. You let dharmas arise and you realize yourself through the arising of dharmas. Okay. Now this sashin is full of lots of things that you are supposed to do. And what I see in your practice is a lot of you are caught in doing what you're supposed to do. And in Kenyan this morning it felt like some of you were walking like you were supposed to walk this way or something.
[76:26]
And again, given all the supposed to's in this session, I can understand that. And some of you walked as if this is the way you wanted to walk, that's all. I like that better than walking the way you're supposed to walk. But there's another way too, which is, what is this walking asking of me? Aber eine andere Möglichkeit ist noch, was fragt diese Art des Gehens mich? Instead of having an idea of how Kinhin is supposed to be, or walking meditation, you say, what is walking meditation asking of me? Und anstatt jetzt so zu gehen, wie von einem erwartet ist, fragt man einfach, was oder in welcher Weise spricht jetzt Kinhin zu mir?
[77:39]
That's a little different. Das ist etwas anders. And these little differences in attitude make a difference in your freedom and how you do things. And these tiny differences in the settings give you a great freedom in the way you do things. So if you're doing Kenyan and Kenyan asks you to do a little suddenly dance, a little cry, that's okay. And if you're doing Kenyan and Kenyan suddenly asks you to do a little dance or a little cry, then please. We can film it, you know. as we dance through the zendo. In other words, when you come into this room, the zendo, you don't come in so much the way you're supposed to be in the zendo, but you come into the zendo with the feeling of
[78:40]
what's the Zendo going to ask of me? Now, Heidegger argues that the word logos was only half understood by Western culture. He says we tend to emphasize Logos as experience, action, discourse. Discourse, yeah, thinking, discussion. And he says that there's a root, I don't know, I don't know Greek, but he says that in the word there's a root of logos, which means what lies before us. What is coming into presence. Or letting things order themselves.
[79:59]
Now this is much closer to Buddhism. Then requires a kind of trust in the world. And a sense of the world as intelligent and beingness. You know, really, instead of giving talks which last an hour, I had to give talks that last 15 minutes, then we'd take a break for a while and then come back for another 15 minutes. What I'm saying is pretty simple, but it's a bit demanding, I think. It takes some intensity. So maybe we can rest just a minute. Suzuki Roshi talks about breathing as a swinging door.
[81:26]
And his section on breathing in the Zen mind, beginner's mind, is a kind of commentary on this koan number three in the Book of Serenity. And this swinging door is as you breathe in, it opens one way. And as you breathe out, it opens another way. And each is a unique space. Now if you look at a cathedral, a western cathedral, it has this sense of sacred space for sure. And it has several different kinds of rooms all put together to make the rooms of the shape like a cross.
[82:48]
And even the upper part of the cross where the altar is is often even a different kind of architecture than the rest of the building. And there's different altars in different parts of this one room, which is many rooms. Now, Zen practice is trying to get you to live in this kind of sacred space as well as in usual space. And it's thought to open up first through your breathing. Now, if you're walking along a street somewhere and you hear laughter from a faraway house, you may feel left out or a little lonely.
[84:08]
Or some memory comes up of some incomplete relationship or some friend you miss. Now, if when you feel these things, it means from a Buddhist point of view is you're not, you haven't located yourself in the sacredness of your own space. Now the more you can find your own presence through your breathing, So you awake up, wake up within being awake. And you feel the world wake up.
[85:23]
Mm-hmm. Now this will start to happen, you'll begin to have taste of it in practice as you begin to be able to stay with your breath. And through your breath begin to create an interior space in which you live. And then when you have this kind of more developed interior space, the laughter you hear from a distant house happens inside you. Now all I can say is that this isn't a It's a kind of practical fact.
[86:40]
It's not a practical fact. But it is a practical experience. It's how you can find your existence. Mm-hmm. Now I don't think at this point I can say more about it than that. I'm trying in various ways to give you a feeling of this. This breathing which this koan says awakens the jewel in the clusters of being. We could say it's sutra box breathing. Sometimes I say this is your treasure box as part of your chest. So this is Schatzkister breathing.
[88:00]
That you feel your treasure box starting to open up. And everything you see is a treasure of your treasure box. Doesn't mean the world is different. It means there are many worlds. And you, through practice, begin to live in more of the worlds. And you find how to live in your own world with ease and clarity. So we sit Sashin.
[89:02]
With a great deal of discomfort. And these rules about how we eat and so forth. But in that, sometimes you may feel at ease. That feeling you should notice and cultivate in your treasure box. Thank you.
[89:54]
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