Yeah, thank you all for coming. I'm not sure you'll always be thanking me during the Sashin. But I'm thanking you. If we're in a dream, the assemblage of the dream is very important. The assemblage of the dream is inseparable from the dream. What I mean is all those things that are put together to make the dream.

[01:02]

There's no background to a dream. It's all foreground. If there's a wall in the dream, the wall is part of the dream. It's not a background, it's part of the dream. I mean, if you have similar dreams to me, at least, it's something like this. Mm-hmm. So a dream is an assemblage of stuff. A situation, an environment. Yeah.

[02:09]

And what happens in a dream? I think first of all is the presentation of the assemblage. You find yourself suddenly in a situation. And second I think what happens in a dream is the assemblage shifts. The wall that was there is now sort of bleachers, you know what bleachers are? Things you sit on like at a basketball game or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, it makes some kind of, from scene to scene, the assemblage shifts. So that's part of the dream. That's what's happening in the dream.

[03:11]

And then the third thing that's happening is the glue that holds it together. You know, a single dream is held together by a kind of glue. that holds your attention. And it goes from situation to situation. If you wake up or say the phone rings or something in the middle of the night, suddenly it's not in the glue and you might lose the dream. But mostly the glue stretches from scene from situation to situation. It's a kind of silent music in the dream. A silent partner, part of the dream.

[04:29]

I mean, the glue doesn't announce itself. Maybe the assemblage announces itself, but the glue that holds it together doesn't announce itself. So it's a kind of silence in the dream. Yeah, and the fourth thing is, you know, there's events, there's people, things like that often happen in dreams. Mm-hmm. And the people, the events are, people often stretch the glue. They feel, it feels like they could jump out of the glue, out of the dream. Now, why did I tell you that? It's because I feel Sashin is sort of like that.

[05:51]

I think there's some usefulness to feel the horizontal mentality of a dream. To feel a situation has the quality of a dream. Not the unreality of a dream, but the realness of a dream, where the entirety of this assemblage is the dream. Where there's no background, there's nothing off stage. There's silent partners, like the glue.

[06:52]

But it's all on stage. It's all foreground. And for me, sashin is like that. It's all foreground. And we're here in this room. As I said this morning, this funny room at the end of a long journey. Sort of in the center of Europe and in the southwest of Germany. Yeah, it's an odd place for all of you to come to. Yeah, and then there's this room in the building which is sort of down at the bottom of the building But you have to come upstairs to it usually.

[08:10]

At least from the old part of the house you come down and then you have to step up into this room. So the funny way this room is placed... The two houses, two buildings, three buildings sort of lead into this room. And then the room is suddenly outside with all these windows. It almost doesn't belong to the building anymore. It belongs to the outside. And the outside comes into the room. Maybe we come into the room too, I hope. And again, for me, this sashin is... All of us together are the assemblage of this sashin.

[09:27]

And it's pretty predictable what will happen. Most of you will still be here at the end of the seven days. Actually, it's nine days. It's the day we arrive and are aiming toward the Sashin. And the first night we often sleep with a kind of glassy like sleep, waiting for the bell at each moment. Perhaps a glass we're waiting to see our reflection in. Yeah, and then there's the seven days of Sashin. And then there's the ninth day in which we, in a way, are filled with the Sashin, looking back at the Sashin.

[10:58]

Yeah, so we have nine days here together. In which we, maybe like bees, are making a kind of honey glue. That will stick us all together. Or anyway, some kind of sharing, silent sharing happens. and at the end of this journey to this room where we sit down and wait for nothing and there's this golden Buddha I think some of you may be shocked at how gold the Buddha became I was a bit shocked.

[12:14]

Yeah. Gisela's, one of her first reactions was, where's the old Buddha? But at least we can take comfort in knowing that this is the way the Buddha was meant to look. Somebody discovered that gold on wood makes an extraordinary surface. Wood is beautiful by itself, but it was carved... with the intention of being gilded. And it's funny, gold is something like a little precious and something too special. But there's some kind of inside quality to it.

[13:27]

I think that's why rings are so often gold. A gold ring almost moves inside our body. We tend not to take them off. And I think when you get used to this Buddha, it starts moving inside you. There's something personal about it. Almost as if there's a potential golden Buddha in you. As I think there is. Yes, so at the end of our journey here, there's this funny back room opening into a garden. With a golden Buddha.

[14:32]

And where, as I said this morning, each of you is the sacred place. In this place where, which is sacred, I hope, because we can discover our own sacredness. And this is something I mean. And I know it's possible. It's hard to say exactly what I mean, but I know what I mean is possible. it's hard to say exactly what I mean but I know what I mean is possible and if you even have a hint of this intention within you the sacredness of each of you will come out

[15:44]

Because it's waiting to come out. It's calling to you to recognize your own sacredness. So we can sit here until it appears. And if you have some intention or faith in it, it's more likely to appear. But of course if we're going to arrive in this room we have to arrive in ourselves. So now that we're here for these days sitting together You can let yourself settle on yourself. Set your attention on yourself. Set your attention on your breath.

[16:53]

Yes. Settle down into yourself. As love can settle down into you. You know, love is one plus one equals one. When love disappears into a kind of silence of implemented love. Sounds OK to me. So it's much like the love of the sangha and teacher and disciple.

[17:54]

It settles into a kind of silent mutuality. So in the Sashin we some kind of, maybe we don't feel love at first, but silence and love are closely connected and as we become more silent together a kind of acceptance even we could say love begins to appear And this acceptance and love is a kind of glue which begins to make us feel connected with everything. But we have to have some intention to get this process started.

[19:29]

We've arrived in the room with the Buddha. And now we have to arrive in ourselves. And as we arrive in ourselves we can feel the new worlds that surround us. Because we bring our old worlds here. Yeah, and of course there's an implicit sense of a new world. Even in these old worlds we bring here. We bring here and sit down in the midst of. And I want to introduce you to a new world.

[20:33]

A new world that's bigger than Buddhism. More basic than Buddhism. A world Buddhism fits into. A world you don't have to be a Buddhist to know. A world that can be basic to you. There's this Chinese poem I've mentioned a couple of times. Misprized by Buddhism. Misprized means you use the line of the poem in a way different from what it was intended.

[21:35]

So this poem I mentioned a couple of times recently is, she says she's not in love. But the bracelet on her arm is three sizes too big. Aber das Armband um ihren Arm ist drei Größen zu groß. In a Chinese poem, the way you read a Chinese poem, you can feel it sliding around a young woman or old woman's wrist. Und wie man ein chinesisches Gedicht liest, ist, dass man fühlt jetzt zum Beispiel, wie dieser Armreif auf dem Arm einer jungen Frau oder alten Frau herumrutscht. Old women fall in love too, don't they? And you can feel it. She has to keep, you know, opening her hands so it doesn't fall off.

[22:51]

And there's a lot of space, you know, between her wrist and the bracelet. So reading a Chinese poem, it's written to be enacted. Each one is like a stage direction. Yeah, and so in a Chinese, the way Buddhism uses this line in koans and so forth, is to suggest how a person is in love with practice. With practice. Or in love with the world, which makes you want to practice. But it looks like you're just participating in ordinary society, as usual.

[23:54]

Going to your job and so forth. But people feel, what's something this? But they can't see the bracelet, you know. But something the world feels three sizes too big. Yeah, or something like that. And, you know, love is... As I've said, the institution of marriage is different in different cultures. But probably in every culture falling in love is pretty much the same. So this poem of the bracelet has the feeling of original mind or falling in love. There's something basic about being alive that's not cultural.

[25:32]

So really, when we come to a sashin, we're sitting down. The feeling is to sit down outside our culture. Outside of old worlds. And so, yeah, but how can there be another world here? I mean, here we are, we're all here, more or less sharing a similar sense of the world. Yeah, but can there be some kind of new world flowing through the room? Or flowing through our own possibilities? You know, I think so. And as I said, I'd like to introduce you to your new world.

[26:54]

And I have to say, not only a world more basic than Buddhism, but I'd also like to introduce you simultaneously to a Buddhist world. and which the whole world can fit into. And I'd like to look at it that way because it means if you do feel a new world, you can practice find yourself, mature yourself in this new world. So again, how can I possibly introduce you to a new world? Yeah, yeah, I don't, you know, this is not something that's possible.

[28:12]

Because it's your new world. Here we are with these, you know, flowers, wildflowers in all the fields. It's a springtime feeling. We speak of the sky of spring, the sky that makes everything bloom. And at some point, there must be points in your life, once or twice if you're lucky or more, when you've actually been in springtime. It wasn't just a few pretty months. Something actually you found yourself in a new world called springtime. Yeah, but this is your world. I can't introduce you to this. But probably you were introduced to it through something particular.

[29:35]

Maybe like a particular flower or a particular embankment of flowers. Yeah, an embankment just means a... Yeah. Or perhaps a person. Or perhaps because you've finished your Abitur. You know, or something, I don't know. But something particular. So maybe I can introduce you to something particular. But first we have to settle ourselves on ourselves and come into some arriving here Yeah, arriving.

[30:49]

The useful way is to arrive through setting your attention on your breath. And you give your thoughts, you know, a pretty big pasture. And they'll take a while to settle down. Not just one period or even one day. But like the local farmers here, they have these portable fences. That they move around to concentrate the sheep or horses grazing. Or the Scottish cows.

[31:53]

Bulls. Yeah. It's funny, they think their whole world is this little spot and pretty soon it's no grass and then they get moved to another little world. And you can do that with your thoughts. Give them a pasture, but change the fences every now and then. And maybe make the enclosure a little smaller all the time. And at some time you start to disappear into the silence of yourself. And the horizontality of this world kind of moves in and out of us. Yeah. You know, a Zen teacher was asked once, there's lots of these, you know, a Zen teacher was asked, yes, once.

[33:07]

Mm-hmm. How do you express silence? Funny question. How do you express silence? But it's an astute question. And the teacher said, well, I don't express it here. And the teacher said, I don't explain it here, or I don't express it here. I don't express it here. That always reminds me of the, I think I've told you, of the story of a friend of mine, Ron Eyre, doing this long interview for a time for a television BBC program.

[34:07]

And it reminds me of the story, I think I've told it before, of a friend of mine, Ron Eyre, who did an interview for the BBC. And one of his interviews was with a Hasidic rabbi. who talked intensely for an hour, the hour of the program. And finally, Ron said, you've talked so intensely, beautifully, but is there any silence in your practice? And he said, oh yes, but we don't talk about it. So here we have this, and Ron ended the program right there. So we're all left with what he didn't talk about. But here this monk says, how do you express silence?

[35:19]

And so the teacher said, I don't express it here. And so the monk asked then, where do you express it? And the teacher said, well, last night at midnight I lost three coins under my bed. Now what about that dream? Please settle yourself on yourself. Thank you very much. And thank you for translating.

[36:19]

To be given the glory of salvation, to be given the glory of his resurrection. To be given the glory of his resurrection. To be given the glory of his resurrection. To be given the glory of his resurrection. I'm sorry. She will change the world.

[38:48]

She will change the world. She will change the world. She will change the world. It's probably more than a thousand million in Calipers for certain, knowing that if you see one like me over here, you're going to buy me a car, because I will be the one that is the target of the fire. This is Sashin, and if anything, Sashin is about your physical posture.

[40:26]

So we should give some attention... Maybe I should give some attention to our posture. Yeah, and someone asked, I believe, Gerald, I've met with people who are new to Sashin here, And no one asked about pain. That's something new. But someone asked what the word Sashin means. Well, it means very simply to gather the mind.

[41:30]

So how do you gather the mind? Well, you gather it in your posture. And we gather it by this tradition of practice, this sashin. Which means it's easier to gather our mind, strangely enough, If we gather it with others. Yeah, and I guess someone asked why we sleep so little. These are questions I have to answer all my life, over and over again.

[42:37]

And in a way, I don't know the answer. I can say something, you know, of course, after all these years. But really, the sashin itself has to give you the answer. No, I'm speaking during the Sesshin, it seems, about silence. Silence in the sense of what is not said or cannot be said. And there's a silence of the Sashin that we're all embedded in. And this silence, this depth of surface, is carried in our doing things together.

[44:15]

And carried in the way Sashin makes you carry yourself. So that, you know, perhaps sometime in Sashin you will feel, as I said this morning, what you might call, what I called, normal mind. or a mind you wish was your normal mind.

[45:17]

Now I lost my... Now... Now say that... In Sashin you do come to a... bodily feeling of mind, that's particularly refreshing, and that really you do feel things are as they are. Things are just normal, just normal. Yeah, does that mean you have to stay in 52 sessions a year? Well, I would almost say that if that's the only way I could realize normal mind, I would stay in 52 sessions a year.

[46:22]

Because mind is my location. But the challenge is, of course, why is knowing the taste of normal mind, when we're in usual circumstances, why is normal mind not there? That's a, you know, I suppose we could say that's a koan for you.

[47:41]

Which is solvable. You have to believe it's solvable. You have to have a sufficient taste of normal mind, though, to believe it's solvable. So what I'm saying is, you know, I suppose is that Really, for most of your questions, it's best to just trust the Sashin, have faith in this ancient practice. Yeah, but then you might say, oh, this is not, how can I trust something that's so Japanese? Or Asian at least.

[48:47]

Or Buddhist, you know, after all, I'm a Christian. But I think if you realize normal mind, it's not about Asia or Buddhist or Christian. But I think if you realize this normal spirit, then it is not about Buddhist, Asian or Christian. I would like to be able to speak to you in some way that spoke to the inside of your practice.

[49:58]

I have confidence that probably the Sashina as a whole can speak to the inside of your practice. But I don't know if I can, but I keep trying. Okay, so let me come back to the posture that gathers the mind. It's a rather complex idea, actually. You've all had the experience of being on a train. Then you put your book down, say, on the desk table, a train table. And then you pick it back up in some village north of Freiburg.

[51:10]

But you don't really have any experience of picking up your book north of Freiburg. Because by the time you've found your place and started to read, you're already several villages north of that. So the table itself is a place. So this is commonplace for us. But I wish it wasn't commonplace. Because... Well, I think of a friend of mine who started to practice through an enlightenment experience.

[52:32]

I like this example because it's so simple and obvious. He grew up in New Jersey. He went to college in Michigan. He got there and he found everyone had an accent. You know, this happens to everyone in Europe. I mean, I go to Zurich, I can't... No, I don't know what anybody's talking about. No, I don't know anyway. I don't want to offend the Swiss, but it does sound like they've got an extra two or three tongues in their mouth. At least I can sort of hear the German sounds, but the Swiss sounds I can't figure out.

[53:41]

Anyway, so he went to Michigan. He said, boy, everyone here's got an accent. And then the second day he realized, I have an accent. And like that he experienced boundarylessness. He experienced a freedom from views. Er hat diese Freiheit von Ansichten plötzlich gefühlt. He didn't know anything about Buddhism. Er wusste überhaupt nichts über Buddhismus. But it led him to start to practice Buddhism. Aber es hat ihn dazu geführt, Buddhismus zu praktizieren.

[54:43]

Now this is also a koan. Also das ist auch ein koan. Why does an experience of noticing that you also have an accent so everything is an accent Why does it make one person have a realization experience and not everyone who notices they have an accent? I mean, we don't need Buddhism. You just have to be engaged in the actual world. How do we sufficiently engage ourselves in the actual world That the infinite possibilities of realization are present.

[55:48]

The infinite possibilities of realization are accessible. At least one or two of them are accessible. So what can I do to get you to be engaged in the actual world such that the actual world turns you and you turn the world? Now that's what I'd like to do. Because it helps me too, you know. And I hope it would be useful to you. So I can stop now and say, please find this way to be engaged.

[57:03]

Now, I think of a line from a Bob Dylan song. Not all... Does everyone in Europe know about Bob Dylan? I find many people don't hardly know who he is. But his song... Mama, you're on my mind, I think it is. The beginning of it is. Perhaps it was the color of a sun-caught fly. Und da heißt es, vielleicht war es die Farbe einer Fliege, die von der Sonne erhellt wurde. That's like a Kishanic moment. Das ist wie ein kishanischer Moment.

[58:21]

One sixty-fifth of a finger snap. Ein fünfundsechzigstel von einem Fingerschnalzen. Perhaps it was the color of a sun-caught fly. that uncovered the crossroads that I'm standing at. The crossroads I'm standing at. Now, in the Middle Ages, European Middle Ages, if someone riding in a carriage through Regensburg on the way to Luzern picked up a book to read it,

[59:25]

He would think he really picked up the book in Regensburg. Because we are coming in Europe, we're coming out of a culture that really believed in localization. That space was an actual location. And there was a hierarchy of spaces. Yeah. Sacred, profane. Celestial. And everything had its place and was in place. As I've talked to you before, mentioned before, there was no idea of speed.

[60:36]

The word speed meant success. As in the expression, Godspeed. Wish is a way of wishing you success, not a way of wishing you in a fast train to God. Speed came along with trains, actually. And the word place related to plaza, plan, plateau. Und das Wort Platz verwandt mit Piazza und Plateau und so weiter.

[61:42]

Pancake, flat cake. Pfannkuchen und Flachkuchen, also Fladen. Yeah, floor. Und Boden. It meant a place where you dwelled. Und das bedeutet echt ein Ort, an dem man wohnt. And God could find you. You knew where you were. Galileo among others changed all that. Suddenly space was infinite. The whole medieval world dissolved its sense of location. And space extended it. Nowadays we have some different kind of space. Some kind of position. But not proximity. but not something that is close.

[63:00]

And you can, for example, call these catalog companies and they take the order. And then you ask, where are you? And then they say, oh, I'm in Miami. And then you call back to correct your order and you say, where are you? And then you call back to correct your order and you say, where are you? And they say, well, I'm in Seattle. It doesn't make any difference where they are. What's important is the simultaneity, not time. Time is almost now one of the games of how things are arranged in space. These are big differences. We still have a kind of... I mean, we still have some dimensions to space.

[64:01]

Inside, outside. Public, private. And we have, you know, and the public is where we feel watched. It's where we want to be famous. It's where we want to be known. It's where we measure ourselves. This is all in our minds. I mean, there's no public-private. It's some kind of creation we've made in our mind. Yeah, it's a kind of fantasy of should. A fantasy of ought. Yeah.

[65:25]

No, it's okay. It's the way we live with others. But does it exist here in your zazen posture? If it does, you'll never settle on yourself. So as soon as you notice that somehow when you're sitting there, something more real is out there, how you measure yourself through others, you cannot settle yourself on yourself. Yeah, you can't find composure. I think composure is a good word. Yeah, composure is like composing music.

[66:32]

You put something together. In zazen, you compose yourself. And you compose yourself in a succession of nows. Time has been desacralized. Zeit ist entheiligt worden. Sacralized like made sacred, made unsacred. Entheiligt worden. Sacred means dedicated, simply put, sacred means dedicated to a single purpose. Heilig meint im einfachsten Sinne to dedicate himself.

[67:36]

dedicated to a single purpose. Like in a Christian world, time is dedicated to salvation. Time is dedicated to how we achieve something through stages. And I think really when we look at it, time is no longer sacred, certainly not in the way it was in the Middle Ages. It's the Christian world which has made the whole world count time from the birth of Christ. No one else had an idea of time starting and being a progression. It's an idea we made, we Westerners made.

[68:50]

It's been a powerful idea. We have the idea of progress and so forth. So it's a productive idea. But it's not a productive idea for enlightenment. In enlightenment we're talking about a kind of way, a kind of location, a kind of Location you cannot speak about in relationship to time.

[69:55]

Now, really, you have to start thinking of, I don't know how to put it, a succession of nows. There's no accumulation from now to now. Yeah, there is accumulation in one way of looking at time. Fundamental time or mythological time where there's a kind of sense of truths being always present. And I wish I could slow down time for you. If we were farther in the mountains, farther up in the mountains, like where the two of us got lost the other day in a hailstorm, So it could be way up there where there's about ten miles of forest.

[71:12]

And no paths. And all the bread crumbs you dropped to find the path were eaten by birds. That's why I like Tassajara. It was in 350,000 acres of wilderness. Then when you hear a cicada, I never know that thing. It sounds similar.

[72:13]

When you hear a cicada, it seems to last an eternity. You seem to open up into a kind of space. And here we come, you've taken this long journey and you've come here into this room. And you come around the corner. And then further around the corner is this golden Buddha. Which what they found about what? How much percentage of old gold is left on this? I guess two thirds or more. Okay. So 60% they found the old gold and two coats on the front and one on the back. So he uncovered the antiquing over the old gold.

[73:23]

And he replaced where the gold had come off with, I love it, two cuts. Found in a sunken Spanish galleon off the coast of Lucerne. You can see nothing I'm telling you is real. You come around the corner and the Buddha is sitting in a closet. In fact, it used to be a closet. When we moved into the building, this was where they kept all the chairs. So we took all the chairs out and put one important seat in there.

[74:48]

For the golden Buddha. But you know, a closet originally meant a small room for prayer. It was a place of secrecy of what you didn't talk about. That's the space under the bed where this teacher lost three coins at midnight. Where is that location? How can you compose yourself to open this The extraordinary intimacy of each of you.

[76:13]

I'm sitting here in the room and I feel the whirling worlds in each of you. You look like just dark outlines here and there in the room. And yet, something from inside of you, immense, is happening. And if there's no location except where you put the book down on the train table, when you put the book down on the train table, You've made a location.

[77:33]

As the whole train has made a location. The train is something you ride in. It's something that passes by Freiburg. It itself is composed of many parts. Mm-hmm. How do you put yourself down on your seat? Your zazen posture is not something you do. Nor is it some kind of sloppy naturalness. Your mudra is the face of your mind. Nothing. Nothing. It's not just some sort of natural, sort of comfortable way to sit.

[79:03]

It's not. No. You can do that at home. And it's not a martial arts either. It's not some special thing you're doing to your posture. So how do you negotiate? Suddenly posture is not so simple. It's not something you do, but it's something you make. You make and then let the posture happen. You let the posture make you. You let the posture itself gather your mind.

[80:06]

Now, There's so many small distinctions we can make. But let's just now speak of the feeling of verticality. Vertical and horizontal. And there's up and down. Yeah. Now, are these real? Are they symbols? No, they actually arise. We can use them as practice concepts.

[81:09]

But they arise out of our own physical experience as standing creatures. Of our own physical experience of being standing creatures. This is especially true in Germany. Because in English world we wake up In Germany you stand up. All over Germany people instantly stand up in bed. And there's a difference. We stand up when we wake up. We are horizontal when we sleep.

[82:21]

Classical painters and contemporary painters love to paint picnic scenes. Because it's scenes in which you can show people who are friends horizontally. And, you know, when you put things on your shelf. Just notice what you do. You'll tend to put important things rather high up on the shelf and less important things on the bottom shelf. And you won't take something important to you and put it on the floor, probably. So these are not real differences in the cosmic sense. But they're real differences in the way we live our life.

[83:27]

So verticality is actually... something quite subtle in our life. And surprisingly, it's important. Sitting, if you practice sitting and you keep lifting through yourself, you're vertical and lifting into an inner verticality, If your verticality is important in life itself, if you're sitting vertically, And you lift into an inner verticality.

[84:37]

It keeps you young. I don't think most doctors know this. But it does. When you get old, you start to slump. And if you actually practice simple things, like lifting through your body, actually I'm quite sure of it, and I know it's the custom understanding in yoga culture, keeps you young. Not forever young. But younger. So when we sit, again, we lift into a verticality. And you find comfort and relaxation in that verticality.

[85:54]

You find comfort and relaxation. But you don't force yourself into verticality. But you keep opening yourself to the verticality that wants to be there. And you learn how to compose your body so that the verticality can be expressed. You find some mysterious path through your body that I can't explain. A mysterious path in the midst of your organs. In the midst of your bones and muscles.

[87:05]

And in the midst of endless emotions and associations. And associations. And your... Your mudra is part of that. Each part of your body is quite precise. And the preciseness and clarity of the mind is inseparable from the preciseness and clarity of the body. And especially from the vitality of the mind. So in Sashin, you're exploring how you gather the vitality of mind, Through the vitality of your posture.

[88:22]

And we don't, going back to why we sleep so little. I mean, traditionally in this Sashin, with this schedule, you get more sleep than in almost any Sashin I've ever done. And I'm sure it's not enough for some people. But we usually ring our consciousness around, ring our consciousness around with a protective sleep. We surround our consciousness with a kind of protective sleep, like a protective ball around our consciousness. And when you need a productive consciousness, this is good.

[89:29]

But we're trying to find another kind of consciousness. that penetrates ordinary consciousness, that penetrates sleeping as well, that gathers the mind that gathers the mind thank you very much

[90:09]

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