Good afternoon. I'm very happy to be here in this sacred place. Well, the Zendo-Johanneshof, that's a sacred place. But I mean particularly that place we create by doing Sashim. I just, as several of you know, because we were accompanying each other through northern Germany, I just did two seminars in Hannover and Kassel and then a lecture in Göttingen. Yeah, I think it went well.

[01:01]

I had a good time and it felt good. And... Yeah, I... And in that situation, you know, I did... Uh... Uh... I mean, my mind is saying perfectly, but I don't mean perfectly in some good sense, perfectly in that it fit. Perfect in English means also to fit, it fits well. It fit as well as it felt like it fit. Linda, I felt I was trying to speak through consciousness and through consciousness. Through consciousness to the practice that people do.

[02:24]

And through consciousness to the experience we could have and also do have. And in the Hannover seminar, I don't know how many people were there, 60 or 70 or something like that. Yeah, anyway, and most of the people, almost everyone, I've been practicing with for a long time. Yeah, from a few years to more than 20 years. So there were some hundreds of years of shared practice in the room. This makes a huge difference.

[03:24]

It really allows... Me to speak, it allows us to be together in a way that's a miracle, a kind of miracle. You can't buy that experience. I mean, that it exists at all is amazing. So, you know, yeah, with all that experience, shared experience, the seminar ought to go pretty well.

[04:27]

Yeah, and as I said, it felt perfect to me. But I was looking forward to coming to Sashin. It was in Sashin I, you know, my feeling is, oh good, next week I can disappear. Yeah. And, uh, And if the seminars were perfect, this is more perfect. I don't mean to compare, but for me it feels that way. Because here in Sashina I can speak to our immediate experience. Not experience we might have or have had.

[05:43]

What experience we can have and may have in this sashin. Now, the first thing Norbert Janssen said to me, Janssen, Janssen, Janssen said to me when we got there, because, you know, when I got to Kassel, because there the meeting was mostly with psychotherapists, I think many people bring flavor or aspects of Zen practice into their psychotherapeutic work Try as Norbert, what do you do?

[06:54]

He says, well, I want people to feel what they're doing. And he said, well, most people think what they're doing. So I said, well, what do you do? And he says, well, I get them to... I ask them to stand up. And then I ask them to step forward three steps. He didn't say this, but it sounded like he was asking them to join the army or something. Step forward three steps. Step forward three steps. And then he would say to them, close your eyes. Close your eyes and step forward three steps.

[08:03]

What's the difference? And he said it's quite different when they step forward in the dark. And then later in the seminar, Angela, his wife, brought up that she was thinking of going to a Tibetan practice where they lock you in a closet. No, you're in a room for seven days in the dark. I think she said lock, but I immediately wondered who had the key. Yeah, anyway, but she said lock. Something like, but I decided maybe Sashin is darkness enough.

[09:15]

I'll go to Sashin. Sashin is a little like, it should be like walking in the dark. And when you're in... When you're doing kin hin, but all the time, it's good if you can have the feeling that the floor might not be there. Walk as if the floor might come up to meet your foot. This is actually a traditional way of practicing.

[10:16]

Can you hear us back there in the corner? Do you want to hear us back there in the corner? No? Okay. Yeah, and then Christoph Buchfink, is that how you pronounce it? Christoph, he brought up that he, when he's working on one of his theater pieces, and he wants to discover something that's outside of consciousness, and find out what these puppets and the kids will do, he imagines not what's in front of him, he imagines what's in back of him.

[11:19]

He imagines the feeling of sensing what's behind him. And it's a kind of, yeah, a kind of darkness. He says, once I get a feeling for it, then I take it and pull it around to the front. And since both, since Norbert and Angela, Christoph all started speaking about darkness, I said, well, there's what I'll start speaking about in Sashin. Because really, Sashins ought to be done as if we're, yeah, maybe in darkness.

[12:33]

And the conversations with them made me think about the movie. Have any of you seen the movie from South America, The Elder Brothers Warning? Yes? No? No? Yes? I guess not. Well, I should get it for both centers, and we should look at it. Nowadays, we could probably have it by tomorrow. But I won't. Don't worry. I'm not going to tell you. But it's a movie about, I think, a German documentary. I don't remember, but 1992. 1992. So 14 years ago. And they call themselves the Kogi, which means the elder brother.

[13:35]

And all of us are the younger brothers. And they live in the mountains on the eastern coast of Colombia, next to the Caribbean. They live in these mountains which are between 3,300 meters and 4,500 meters. And they were successful in avoiding the Spanish conquest. So they seem to be the only indigenous people in South America that have kept their identity over the last 400 years.

[14:51]

And they think of these mountains on top of these mountains as the heart of the world. And they finally, after the last decades, up till 1992, they decided they found the heart of the world melting. They were one of the first warnings about global warming. Anyway, the mountains had less and less snow on them, and the rather tropical, I think, semi-tropical forests below them had less and less water.

[15:55]

And they decided something's going wrong with the heart of the world, and it's the younger brothers who are doing it. Yeah, and why I'm mentioning this is because I was very impressed with this film when I saw it years ago. Because they picked, I don't remember how it works exactly, but they picked some children to be raised in the darkness. And they're brought into caves and brought up for years in utter darkness. And they're trained to be the shamanic leaders of the Kogi.

[16:56]

So at some point, I don't know how many years, five or ten or fifteen years, something like that, an amazing number of years in utter darkness, They come out when they're about 18, I guess, and then they're the leaders. They're sensitive, you can imagine, sensitive to the world in ways most of us can't be. So they're educated. It's not just darkness. They're educated in the darkness. This won't be a mind shaped by reading. Well, none of us are going to, you know, go lock ourselves in a cave for any length of time.

[18:21]

But Buddhist practice and Sashin are, you know, not so different if you really make use of the time. Make use of the space. No, I mean, the traditional schedule we're following does a lot of the work. We can kind of trust the schedule. You get up at a certain time and there's food and, you know, there's bedtime eventually. But don't just, please, don't just depend on the schedule and the sangha to make sashin for you. I would like each of you to promise yourself and promise each other that you'll stay out of usual consciousness as much as possible.

[19:37]

Out of the social body as much as possible. So there'd be ideally, really in a Sashin there should be almost no talking, occasional pointing. And I usually accept that you need to talk when you're working and in the kitchen and stuff. I mean, but when I did my first sashins, the whole week I would not say a single word. I remember my wife brought me some laundry during Sashin and I didn't speak to her and she started to cry. Yeah. It wasn't serious. But I don't, you know, I don't, I mean, I don't know, I don't press it, but really, you know, it's okay to have some kind of talk when you're working, but ideally, it's just a kind of pointing, yes, no, I'll do that, okay.

[21:32]

Well, Maybe it's that I'm getting older, so I think I have to be serious. Yeah, I mean, let's say... This is, I think, the only second Rohatsu Sashina I've ever done in Germany. Isn't that right? Maybe, or at least at Johanneshof. Because I'm always in America this time. I don't know. Maybe I'll never do another rohatsu here. And maybe we have two or three sashins left together the rest of our life. Maybe with some of you, there'll be ten.

[22:37]

Yeah, but there's a limited number. And at some point, I want you to really take advantage of sashina, not piss it away. Oh, excuse me. What do they do on television, right? Okay. So, you know, just do your normal sashin. Sashin is normal? Anyway, just do your normal sashin. Or you can kind of also see if you can really stay silent.

[23:44]

At least non-discursive for most of the sashin. All of the sashin. I want you to fold out of your social body into something else. And if you speak to someone else, recognize that you're robbing them of their non-consciousness. Yeah, and as I said this morning, you know, we're sitting here. Yeah, it's a location. We've got three feet by three feet or something like that. Yeah, ideally the feeling is you're just, that's where you are, that's where you're alive.

[25:04]

And you have to get up from it to do qin hin and get up from it to go prepare lunch or dinner, etc., And it's a relief to get up and stretch your legs. But it'd be great if you could feel that you're being pulled back to this square. But it would be great if you could feel that you are being pulled back onto this square. And this here, what do you call it here? Try calling it something.

[26:06]

You can try calling it, it's me. I mean, see what parts of it you can name. There's my personal history going by. Yeah, there's some thoughts. But are any of them me, or is it more than me? What is it? So, you know, you can use that phrase I often suggest, no place to go and nothing to do. And see if you can have this feeling of no place to go and nothing to do. And every time you have a thought, To go or do, catch it with no place to go, with nothing to do.

[27:29]

And you can call it here or you can call it near. Does it have boundaries? Is it a territory? Is it a territory of being? Ideally, you're not going to think about your life. You're just going to wonder, what is this? Is it a territory of being? Of non-being? Does it fall into categories of being? And sometimes it can feel a little bit like you're getting sick. Because one of the most common times, and maybe sometimes few times, our body really takes hold of our mind is when we start getting sick.

[28:51]

And if you really get sick, you have to sometimes give up and say, okay... You can define me, buddy. I'm sick. So sometimes we go over a kind of bump or through a little dip. Into being sick. Or into having the body take hold of the mind and start shaping it. And when the body starts taking hold of the mind consciousness kind of dissolves. This is, yeah, this is, yes, zazen mind, starting in the territory of zazen mind.

[30:02]

Yeah, and what we want to see, if we can find ways to sustain this, And we're sitting and we're not sitting and even when we're sleeping. And seven days of it is barely enough. But seven days of it can be the beginning of a new life. And notice what's the difference between, notice the differences without thinking about it, zazen mind and usual waking mind.

[31:05]

And zazen mind when you go over the bump or dip, through the dip of going to sleep in zazen mind. And how far does this non-conscious awareness reach into even the sleep of zazen? And when you actually go to sleep, In bed, can this non-conscious awareness continue while you're sleeping? This is... This is just you. It's not even... It's not Buddhism.

[32:06]

It's just you. This is... Not you. It's... This here that we occupy. But notice it to just be alive without thinking about it. To find the depth and extent of being alive without thinking. This is Buddhist practice, Zen practice. And this is the point of Sashin. Thank you.

[33:24]

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