since we don't have so many people as in a Sashin, and we have the Taisho lecture platform here, and the real voice in the mother tongue is way over here, It would be good probably that some of you next time, especially Pauline, came over and sat in here. So we could center it a little more. Because I feel like I'm in a tennis game, you know. So there's a point to practice period. Of course, many points. And I... So although this is not a practice period,

[01:01]

And I think it's important to keep that clear. At the same time, it's an experiment to see if we can realize some of the points of practice period. Because I know you want to develop, advance your practice. So we have to experiment, see how we can do it in a fundamentally lay life. You can hear Beate back there, okay? Okay. Now, of course, I know this is an experiment for each of you to take time out of your regular life to come here.

[02:31]

So it's an experiment for me in what forms work. And it's an experiment for the place in how practice develops here at Johanneshof. Because this kind of longer period of practice embeds deepness and embeds practice in ourselves. but also articulates and deepens the practice of the place.

[03:32]

Just as a sashin does. And we developed the practice at Tassajara from, first of all, extending a sashin feeling to three months. But a practice period isn't a sashim. And when you discover the feeling of a practice period, you extend that into the sashim. Now I'm discussing this not just to inform you about traditions but to inform you so we can practice together. As we could say, as daily practice is to occasional practice, Sashin is to daily practice.

[04:53]

And practice period is the Sashin. Yeah, but this is not a practice period. Somewhere in between. So what are we doing? Yeah, and I want you to understand it as well as possible. Because if we understand it together, we will develop our own practice and the practice of the place. Okay. So one of the points of practice period is three months. One fourth of a year.

[06:17]

And really, with the arrivals and departures, it's more like one third of the year. And the schedule and the way of life is supposed to interrupt and be different from our usual way of life. In a practice period, I'd say it takes two or three weeks until you discover the rhythm of the schedule and the place. And three or four weeks or more before you've... I don't know... discover the feeling of the whole Sangha body, the whole group.

[07:36]

Now we have a word in English that's in train. which, like a lot of words, adopted partly from science. Entrain is something like, in science, a lot of particles suspended in a current, say, moving together. Nora, in the word I used the other day, a colloidal suspension, meaning held in a space together.

[08:48]

Not an invisible connection. Okay, so it's a little bit like we call when the grandfather clocks, is that what you call them in German? We call them pendulum clocks. When the pendulum clocks in a house all start swinging together. Or somewhat like women in a college dormitory begin to all menstruate at the same times. I'm sure it happens to men in a college dorm room too.

[09:58]

It's just not noticeable. Now is that kind of, and we call that entrainment. That's good enough. We can use that word. But like two runners or two bicycle racers together can go faster than one by themselves usually. Also zum Beispiel, wenn zwei Leute joggen oder Rennradfahrer zum Beispiel, wenn die...

[10:58]

So there's some kind of metabolic entrainment. So why is it, what happens? Is this because of the physical location of the place, like it might be for the clocks? Or is it because of the group of women? Or the group of men and women? And how long does it take before this entrainment occurs?

[12:02]

I don't know if any studies have been made, but a group of women enter a college or a university within how many weeks before they begin to menstruate together at a somewhat similar time? And, you know, there's this word we talked about some... not so long ago when Marie-Louise was pregnant, quickenings. And what were the quickenings you felt? Do you remember? You could just say. May I say what quickening is?

[13:19]

Yes, please. Yes, butterflies. And you go to a doctor and you say, you know, I think I'm pregnant, doctor says, oh, it's too soon to tell. But a few hundred years ago, when a woman felt quickening, this quickening, it was announced all over the, so and so, the whole village knew. And it was, you know, a fact, not waiting for doctors to tell you. So at what point in a practice period do we feel the quickenings of a Sangha body being born? Is it something we can notice?

[14:33]

Of course, but maybe we don't notice it, but we can. Is it something, I've been doing this a long time, is it something that I notice? I think so, actually. Some stirrings or quickenings, we could say some feeling that some kind of metabolic entrainment is happening. Yeah. Or dharma entrainment.

[15:41]

So a practice period of three months long is that length because it takes some length of time like that. No, I'm watching. Sophia mostly hasn't played with other kids. Kids play together in a fierce and friendly way. I remember once walking across the yard, the college campus, when I was in college. And it was this beautiful autumn sight of some whole bunch of five-year-olds or four- and five-year-olds running around throwing leaves. Laughing and having a good time.

[16:50]

And if you look more closely, they were stuffing leaves down each other's throat and back and things like that. It was a hierarchical war going on underneath the humor and fun of the leaves. It was a hierarchical war going on underneath the humor and fun of the leaves. So anyway, I'm watching the kids and Sophia for her first time really hanging out with kids. And she starts relating to me differently. I can see she's trying to feel what kind of space she has within the field of the other kids. In a more subtle way, something like that happens in practice period.

[18:02]

Some wider Dharma body begins to stir in us. It may not quite fit our body. And you can't look for it. Because there's no category in which to look for it. Because it's not in any of the categories you're familiar with. It first requires, you know, really settling down in yourself. Yeah, settling down in yourself and coming into a stillness.

[19:05]

being absorbed in stillness. Actually, even if you do several, quite a few full practice periods, that's not so easy to come into. Even if you do several three-month practice periods, that's not so easy to come to. But maybe if you've been very tired and you need to take a rest, and the ache of tiredness begins to melt when you first get to sleep, Und dieser Schmerz von Müdigkeit, der beginnt da zu schmelzen, wenn man jetzt zu schlafen beginnt. And it kind of hurts and feels good at the same time. Das tut so weh und trotzdem fühlt es sich gut an, also beides gleichzeitig.

[20:22]

The kind of ache of our ordinary life begins to be absorbed into stillness through practice. Wenn dieser Schmerz unseres täglichen Lebens irgendwie in diese... And this isn't in the category of understanding or emotions or feelings exactly. It's the stirrings of some new kind of body coming alive in us. Maybe like a blade of grass blooming. Or a field of grass opening. Or, I don't know why these words occur to me, but a sunny day on the... cheek of the wing of a bird.

[21:34]

So that lots of this sense is not in categories we can look for. Through some very long experiences, through some very long experience, you're entering a version right now of the oldest ongoing institution in the world. There's no nation state or university that's lasted as long as this Buddhist monastic tradition in a continuous way. So we're trying to find some way to enter it together.

[22:49]

So, and some of you are only here for five days or so, something like that. So that's why I said it's maybe like a relay race. Or a relay sit. If you can begin to feel it, you can pass it on to the next practitioner. And perhaps this whole month can have a development. Into the Sashin. So, we have Again, since we can't look for it in any category we're familiar with, we have these little customs that we do.

[24:11]

For example, when you When you meet somebody, you, as the instructions suggested, you stop and bow to each other. If possible, you actually stop for a moment. Also wenn es euch möglich ist, bleibt wirklich für einen Moment stehen. And you have a feeling of the physicality of the earth. Und dann habt ihr dabei ein Gefühl für diese Körperhaftigkeit der Erde.

[25:13]

And immediately you kind of like stop thinking of what you have to do next. I was just in Wien with Cathy and Norman Fisher for four days. And after the first day, Cathy said that the problem with Vienna... And after the first day, Cassie said, the problem in Vienna is that wherever you are is more interesting than where you're going. Just where you're standing is kind of great. Why should we rush to the museum? So there's some kind of feeling like that. Why? We don't have any place to go. We just stop and bow.

[26:14]

And kind of lift your body-mind feeling up through your hands and then offer it to the other person. It might seem silly to some of you, but it's probably the most ancient custom in our practice. And then in the meals, we eat together in a certain way. Not in the way we're used to. And traditionally, we would eat food in a way that we're not used to.

[27:32]

And I don't know how much to emphasize this traditional way of eating, what the food is. You don't know the food or you don't know how much we should emphasize how we conceive of the meal. Mm-hmm. You know, I was really struck by it this morning when we started passing honey down the tables. I thought, honey, oh, that's all.

[28:37]

And then I thought, I can't be some monster Zen teacher who says you can't have honey. But the basic idea is take your food out of the ordinary sense of like and dislike. Even the gamacho was added by us Westerners. Yusuke Roshi used to say, you should chew your food and bring the salt out. Not by adding salt. And there's a tradition of a home food.

[29:47]

Which is in all three meals, and certainly in the breakfast meal, is always the same first bullet. Maybe for us Westerners it should be mashed potatoes. I would like that. Yeah. But we vary it. It can be some kind of cereal or something or rice. Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, we like to go to bed in the same bed every night, usually. It'd be disconcerting to every night have to be told, oh, tonight you sleep in this bed and tomorrow night you sleep in that bed.

[30:57]

So there's that feeling like, oh, it's nice to just have the same food, the same food, the same bed. The same chanting. The same chanting in the morning. Yeah, like that. But I don't know, I don't want to be a monster Zen teacher. But maybe we could do without the honey. But strangely, I know these things make a difference. It might look like asceticism or something, but it's actually a kind of spareness.

[32:03]

or simplicity, which takes you out of the categories of likes and dislikes. It can be quite tasty, but it's not necessarily you decide likes and dislikes. And we trust the cook I remember once I was working with some Japanese people and building a building. And the whole line of Americans was passing stones to the master carpenter. And we were handing him the stone saying, do you like this one? Is this a nice one? And he would take any stone you gave him. Ugly or beautiful.

[33:43]

So once we realized he was going to take any stone we gave him, the ascetic choice passed fast down the line because the first guy knew that whatever stone he picked up was going to be the stone used. So the whole line came alive with making the choice of what stones were passed to the master carpenter. So there's that feeling too, we're at the end of the line and we just trust what the kitchen has given us. And I see some of you dump gomashu on everything without even tasting it first to see what it needs.

[35:04]

So anyway, sashin and practice period and this practice month, is made up of a lot of little details that we come into together Yeah, not so much for the feeling of what we want to do or don't want to do. But just for these five days or these 30 days, we'll just do this. You know, it's better than prison. And I'd suggest you each choose something that you need to work on. See, maybe it takes a day or two.

[36:17]

See if you can name it. Maybe you get easily annoyed. Not just during the practice month, but other times too. Or maybe you think you're an inferior product. Or maybe you feel you're a superior product. Or maybe you're impatient. You notice what kind of personality habits you have which bother you and bother others.

[37:24]

So maybe it's like I'm easily annoyed. Then you try to find some phrase. First you just try to Notice every time you're annoyed. Maybe in your zazen you try to exaggerate this annoyance. Maybe then try the second day or third day you try to see if you can feel How could I not be annoyed?

[38:26]

And not suppress your annoyance, but feel a wider field in which the annoyance occurs. Note this is a central part of the practice of mindfulness. To take some particular thing and try to work with it. And if you can resolve or get an insight into or some space around, some particular thing that actually is of importance to you, And of importance in your relationship with others.

[39:47]

To actually find the means to really see it and even perhaps resolve it. At least to accept it. It's a big step in moving your whole practice. And moving more subtle things that we don't usually notice. So some such existential or psychological approach within the absorption of practice and settling down into yourself, settling into this meditation posture, in this form of life, practice form of life,

[41:10]

A new realm of being and something beyond being begins to awaken in us. Awakens in us. Awakens in us. And in the bigger. Yeah, anyway. Sorry. It's all right. And it's sort of like, where are we located? Because we're not talking about ourselves as a place now. But as a location. A location always being located.

[42:12]

Are we located in this building and in this room? Of course. And we're also located in our own feelings, emotions, habits. Yeah. But we're also located in a wider sense of a wider being with each other, this particular group's being. We've self-selected ourselves. And it's too early in the year to start throwing leaves at each other.

[43:31]

But there will certainly be some period where we start feeling the presence of each other. Do you remember what Sukhiroshi said about practice period? In practice period we should be together like milk and water. Even more intimate than that. Because we're all good friends. It takes time actually just to be good friends. Because we're all good friends and share Buddha nature. So the forms of a practice month or practice period are an ancient way to discover or...

[44:42]

Open up. How we share Buddha nature. And isn't that the theme of this first week? Isn't that Buddha, Dharma and Sangha? Something like that? No? Well, that's what we're talking about now. Was that last year? Oh, I'm already on. I think it's good for this year, too. And awaken each other. Thank you. Chanting Chanting

[48:38]

Thank you. Thank you. You're right. [...] Isn't it cold right there in the window? Not? Okay. Yeah, I have these wonderful problems.

[50:26]

Like, how do I practice with you? Teach something during this relay race of practice month. Relay sit. So, I mean, if we could have really stuck to the 10-day units, it might have been better, I don't know. But some of you come in and leave and then hopefully pass on your realization to the next person. Yeah, I hope you arrived with a lot of realization, you know. But I don't want to give introductory talks.

[51:37]

And I want to give talks that are based on each other. And perhaps hopefully develop something. I don't really know how to do that with the group changing all the time. But there could be worse problems. This isn't too bad a problem to have. Yeah, nice to have Dharma problems. And then too, you know, in a practice period, again comparing this month to a practice period, people come to a practice period and they expect, oh, now I have three months with the teacher and so forth.

[52:49]

And then they get there and they find they have less connection with the teacher than they had in a seminar. The teacher seems to be paying no attention to you. And it's kind of true, in a practice period you kind of leave everyone alone. What the teacher is waiting for is some new kind of relationship that might emerge. And if you're expecting any kind of relationship that you are already familiar with, the more you look for that, the more you'll be left alone. Yeah, I can seem kind of tough or unfriendly.

[54:21]

But it's a kind of, I understand it, experienced it with my teacher, it's a kind of compassionate waiting. And if the teacher really takes you seriously, he makes it difficult for you. He puts you in a room, you share a room with somebody you really can't get along with ever. If you can't solve that kind of problem, you can't really progress in the Dharma. Or at least find some way to, you know, make a relationship with this other being. And the lectures are actually, yeah, in a whole practice period, of course the lectures are different.

[55:39]

As I've said, you're more dealing with the brush strokes in a painting than the content of the painting. The notes, a few notes of a piece of music. A piece of music that's discovering itself. And then, you know, as I said, again, there may be not many more lectures in three months than there are in a practice week or something like that. So really the thing is a few things have to settle in and work in you.

[56:58]

So I'm giving you, so I'm going to try to give lectures where the coherence, if there is any, will be found in you. And a few things that might settle in you and work in you. That means you have to do most of the work. And that main work is Questioning. Finding a way to ask questions.

[58:03]

As I've said, all of Dogen's teaching, all of his fascicles of this, can be found, can be understood as responses to one basic question. Why do we practice if we are already enlightened? But then that question, whatever our fundamental question is, and that's a huge discovery if you can come to it. Takes the form of little questions. Little brush strokes, maybe.

[59:14]

A few notes, one note, maybe. So everything in Buddhism is what? That basic teaching is that everything changes? And everything changes in relationship to each other. That alone you have to kind of ask yourself questions about. And you have to resolve your practice to the point where you're sure that's the case, that everything changes in relationship to change itself. If you only think that's true part of the time or in some ways,

[60:25]

Ways in which you don't accept that or don't really acknowledge that. Just to that extent, your practice will be stuck. Because all the practice opens from the active acknowledgement of that view. Okay. So our theme I discovered for these first three weeks Is body, speech, and mind. I remember now choosing that topic. Last year it was Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. What could it be next year?

[61:49]

Blue, green, and yellow. Blue, green, and yellow. So, body, speech and mind. We have to start out with a question. What is a body? Now, if everything changes, The teaching is, what changes do we notice? How do we notice change?

[62:50]

What kind of mind holds still enough to notice change? Dharma means the kind of mind that holds still enough to notice change. Okay. And what relation, what... Interrelated changes are most useful to notice. So everything, part of the teaching that everything changes is everything is interdependent.

[63:52]

Also eine der Lehren ist, dass alles gegenseitig abhängt. Yeah, what aspects of interdependence are most useful to notice? Welche Aspekte dieser gegenseitigen Abhängigkeit sind am nützlichsten oder hilfreichsten zu bemerken? Okay, so one of those teachings is very, very basic early teaching is body, speech and mind. Why? Then you have to ask yourself a question. Why were these three chosen? Why not just body and mind? A great deal of Contemporary science is trying to understand the relationship of body and mind.

[65:03]

Buddhism emphasizes really body speech and mind, not just body and mind. No, you can ask yourself the question. And, uh, yeah. Yeah, you have to ask yourself the question. At least, you know, there's no progress in the teaching if you don't ask yourself the question. Also, es gibt überhaupt keinen Fortschritt in the... Progress in what? In the teaching. In der Lehre, wenn ihr euch das nicht fragt. Yeah, and I'm going to keep emphasizing this because I'm only giving a couple of teshos every five days. Und ich betone das, denn ich werde nur zwei teshos in fünf Tagen jeweils geben.

[66:10]

Those who came the other day, you get an extra one. And I guess I do join one seminar a week and you have one monk week and one seminar I don't join. That's right, huh? In one week you come and in the other one you don't. No, in each week I do two teishos and one seminar I join and one seminar I don't join. That's three out of five days. It's not too bad. Yeah. But still, this is going to work if you bring questioning into your practice. And some of you have a Irreducible habit.

[67:21]

To think about it. And you think, well, maybe there's other ways to approach it than thinking about it, but I'm going to think about it a lot first. But Buddhist thinking is mantric thinking. You don't think about it in the usual way. You just keep presenting it to yourself. Body, speech and mind. Body, speech and mind. What's this have to do with me? Am I a body, speech and mind?

[68:27]

You know, we're always walking along self-referencing ourselves. reflexively noticing. So we're always walking along in a state of self-referencing. Self-referencing? Do I like or dislike this? Does someone like or dislike me? Has somebody really got such and such ideas about me? Forever. So now maybe we can substitute body, speech and mind for self-referencing. You interrupt this habit with the presence of body, speech and mind.

[69:28]

No, you kind of Breathe into it. That's the words. I don't know. You have to start somewhere, so start with the words. Yeah, and then after a while you can settle on body. And mantric thinking means you keep holding it in front of you. Trusting that the deeper thinking that surfaces in meditation will surface, maybe will surface. But you can't think yourself to the surfacing.

[70:31]

You have to relax yourself to the surfacing. And to have a certain faith and patience. It's a kind of appreciative knowing or presence, or a kind of realizing presence. An awareness that realizes things but doesn't think things.

[71:46]

For most of it, it appears as occasional intuitions. Or insights that pop through the surface of our usual thinking. Yeah, like sitting in a car while somebody's in the grocery store and something pops up. But practice is to kind of like dip under that thought sheaves, thought surface, To relax enough that you don't have to have intuition pop up.

[72:52]

You're more like floating in a kind of field or sea of insight or intuition. A kind of realizing presence. And this does, it's a strange thing. For a while you have to give up your usual kind of social self. Yeah, and that's what a practice period is for. A time when you can give up your usual social self.

[74:07]

Self-referencing self. And so forth. And the senior practitioners sort of wait for that to appear before they start relating to you. Now, realizing this in any full way is pretty advanced, mature practice. But as a, you know, Zen always aims at the mountain top. And so the teachings are, assume this development.

[75:13]

So the teachings assume this development. And so the teachings are presented in ways that you only can partly understand them until you have this maturing of your practice. So we're trying to create a situation in this practice month too. Well, you can just immerse yourself in the schedule. Much isn't your usual schedule. If this is your usual schedule, we should try to make a special schedule for you. It should rub you the wrong way, at least to some extent. But then you just do it.

[76:27]

This is a really wonderful way to break the habit of self. So you just do it and it requires a lot of patience to come up. So in the end, if your heart's beating and there's enough air, everything is fine. You need something? Not me. Anyway, some feeling like that comes up, finally. So this entrance into the schedule, the trust of each other, which should start with the trust of the teacher, which is necessarily easy,

[77:43]

And then you extend that trust to the people you're practicing with. And then you extend that trust to your difficult roommate. I get some kind of wider feeling. As I always say, we usually can accept babies pretty well. Particularly if they're not ours. Sometimes ours get on our nerves. Okay. Philip Whelan, my disciple and Philipp Wellen, mein Nachfolger und mein Schüler, ist vor kurzem gestorben.

[79:04]

And as I mentioned in the seminar that Norman Fisher and I did recently, I had to consign his body, commend his body to fire. There he was, beautiful Philip, my old friend. Rather purple-faced. What an extraordinary thing to do, to have to push this man in a cardboard box into a tube roaring like a 747 jet engine. What a thing.

[80:07]

What a thing. The whole complex, extraordinary life he had. Now it's this kind of stuff that looked like him. Is this his body? Not from the point of view of Buddhism. That's not his body. Looked a lot like him. Didn't act like him. I've never seen him that drunk. Push it into the fire.

[81:07]

And then, as you know, some of us watched the smoke. But from a Buddhist point of view, his body is what made him alive. That's what... We have to have a new definition of body now. If we're going to speak about body, speech, and mind, this is the body that's in action. A body that produces karma. A body that produces relationships. Yes, and relationships to speech and mind. And what are those relationships? These are the questions you have to ask.

[82:27]

And ask them in a mantric-like way. See if you can suspend your thinking. What is this body? How do I notice it? Yeah, let's start with noticing it in Zazen. Is it a leaping acrobat, as Dogen says? Yeah, is it a dove's wing? Mm-hmm. What is it? When you're sitting, ask, what is this body?

[83:34]

Sitting is the best place to ask the question. I watched Sophia, of course. begin to discover her arm. I talked about it last year. First, if it touched me, it just was by accident. It was almost like her consciousness or awareness was trying to reach into her arm. Es war beinahe so, als ob ihr Bewusstsein oder ihr Gewahrsein in ihren eigenen Arm erst einmal hineinreichen musste. And after a while she could get her arm more or less where she wanted to direct it. Und nach einer Weile konnte sie dann den Arm mehr oder weniger dorthin bekommen, wo sie ihn wollte.

[84:35]

So she could direct attention into her arm. Und sie konnte dann eben schon Absicht und when she could actually communicate attention through her arm and receive attention through her arm. But she still couldn't do much with her fingers. And slowly her mind began to bloom in her arm. And bloom in her fingers. And her fingers began to be very precise in how they can do things. Now that blooming of the mind and the body is the body. From a Buddhist point of view.

[85:46]

That's the mind or that's the body? That blooming of the mind in the body is the body. That blooming was gone in Philip. And blooming is happening in Sophia. And really awakening that blooming is each of our practice of body, speech and mind. That's practice and Yeah, that's our practice of body, speech and mind. Now there's a ritual in Tantric Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Tantric Buddhism.

[87:04]

and implied in the practice of the Eightfold Path and the extension of the Eightfold Path and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness In which you purify the body through the four or five elements. Now, what is that? What's that about? Yeah, I mean, you know, I've just... Again, this is a little bit... Don't give you just a taste of this teaching. Yeah, what is this body? It's also the elements. Earth and water and fire and heat and air and space. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and we share that with the phenomenal world.

[88:27]

We share that with the macrocosm. You know, with the universe or multiverse. And, you know, if it rains, the rain goes into the ground. Yeah. If the ocean is always ocean, the ponds are always evaporating into the sky. The water disappears into the sky and returns as rain. Buddha's teaching is often likened to some gentle spring rain. So what is this purification of the elements, through the elements? You know, you notice that you share the elements with every other person and with the world.

[89:29]

And the more you can feel that sharing, this solidity and this solidity is not so different. Something happens, it's a little bit like the water evaporating into the air. And the more you feel this fundamental connectedness of whatever this is with everything else, strangely, this emphasis on the elements makes your body more subtle. Some sensitivity occurs through finding yourself similar to the elements.

[90:57]

And they almost start to return to you. There's practices that you kind of breathe them back in. And absorb them, holding your breath for a minute and letting them absorb. You breathe the earth element back in through sight. You breathe the space element back in through sound. You breathe the air element back in through touch. You breathe the fire element or heat or movement element back into form, form as an activity.

[92:36]

And you breathe the water element.

[92:59]

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