And within that attention span, he pays attention to this or that or whatever. Now that attention span would be a signless state of mind. The attention span is sometimes about this word or what's going on out the window or something, but... It allows things to come in it, but it itself is silence. Do you understand what I mean? Now, part of what a sashin practice is, and more specifically the three-month practice period, is three months of working with an attention span. Now, the schedule is different than usual life and in lots of different ways out of your usual habits.

[01:14]

So that what does give it continuity is you're bringing an attention span to the activity. The schedule is demanding enough that there's a lot of detail and at the same time you're a little bit sleepy. And to do the detail you have to kind of find an attention span even in the middle of the sleepiness. Now to hold this attention span without concentrating on something But to hold the intention span in an open sense is a meditation skill.

[02:30]

Of beginning to know signless states of mind. I'm trying to speak about this so it's commonplace for us and not something philosophical. Yeah, when I was in Boulder the other day, I did a seminar with the Boulder folks who come to Crestone quite often. As most of you probably know, Boulder is the college town just north of Denver.

[03:36]

And I suppose, along with San Francisco, it's the most Buddhist city in America. There's been a lot of, mainly Trungpa Rinpoche, but there's a lot of Buddhist groups and Buddhist practitioners in the Boulder area. So this young man who's a friend of mine came out from New York for the seminar by chance. And he was living, he was staying with a friend rather far away up a canyon, you know, about an hour walk from where the seminar was. And since he didn't really have transportation, a couple times I drove him so he didn't have to walk back to where he was staying. And Boulder is, if you don't know it, is...

[04:51]

Mr. Outdoor Towne. Yeah, and for those who don't know, in Boulder you live mainly outdoors in the fresh air. It's the only place I've seen cars going along with kayaks, skis and bicycles all tied to it in various positions and people in the car with backpacks on. So I don't know how you drive with a backpack on, but I've seen people do. So anyway, this canyon is a canyon protected because it has a big eagle nest. And sometimes it's a bald eagle and sometimes it's a golden eagle. It's a big nest, so I guess it's a big job to make it so that eagles share it in different years.

[06:18]

Successively, not at the same time. I don't know whether they go to a nest estate office or something, a real nest office and figure out who's going to stay in it this year. But in any case, so I'm riding along with this guy and he says, you know, what do you suppose the eagle does in the evening after he's finished his day? Don't you suppose he gets bored just hanging around the nest? It's a rather interesting idea to see this huge eagle sitting there. Looking with his, you know, super eyes down at somebody's television set, you know, in that house.

[07:20]

Yeah. But, you know, I don't know. Of course, I don't know what eagles feel. There seem to be a lot of hotels and pensions called Adler around here. Are there any eagles around? Are there some, no? What? Only in this creste. Oh, in the creste. Well, anyway, it's an interesting idea because we assume that if you're not distracted, you're bored.

[08:30]

Or we assume if you don't have something to do, you look for something to do. Or you go to sleep. But, again, I don't know what animals do, but my feeling is that they don't have this problem. I know there should be six noble truths, not four. The first noble truth is there is bliss. And the second noble truth is there are interferences with bliss.

[09:34]

And the third noble truth, which is the usual first noble truth, is those interferences are experienced as suffering. And then the fourth noble... Oh, I get lost here. The fourth noble truth, which is the second noble truth, is that there's a cause of this suffering. Now, it wouldn't make sense if the first noble truth wasn't there is bliss, that there was a cause of suffering. Because if you take the cause away and the suffering away, what do you have? Just a neutral kind of blah state? This wouldn't make any sense. Suffering is better. It's because there's a cause, because there's also a causeless bliss.

[10:57]

And then the fourth... Fifth and third noble truth is that there's an end of suffering. And the fourth and sixth is that there's a path. So I don't know about animals. But I know that animals don't... My understanding is animals have signless feeling states of mind.

[12:01]

They don't have our cognitive capacities. I think they have more cognitive capacities than we think. But they clearly don't have our cognitive capacities. And I'm sure that makes them happier. Now, I really treasure our cognitive capacities but I think we have biased our civilization too much in that direction. And I think our cognitive capacities would be more pleasurable and probably effective if they were more infused with joy. Among the alternatives, this is the better choice.

[13:07]

Unless you prefer suffering. So I imagine myself anyway, the ego eagle, if I sound a little bit newage or new age, is quite blissed out in his nest. Now, I don't really know, but I do know, I'm trying to give you a suggestion, that the alternative to thinking about things and doing things is not necessarily some neutral, blah state of mind. And this, what we call non-referential joy, arises through signless states of mind.

[14:13]

So let's take a break in a minute, but let me finish with going back to something a couple of years ago I spoke about, I think in Munster for sure. Which I called, I think then, the three pillars of lay life. And one would be a personal growth. Personal understanding. And that in our society at present time is mostly understood as psychological work. And the second pillar of lay life would be the achievement of security and answering the call of your generation. Because your generation and often the generation older than you asks you to do the work of the world.

[15:41]

And this is the way we achieve a place in society and sometimes social power and security and so forth. So we could say there's personal work and societal work. And these are necessary to develop ourselves and mature ourselves. And to do our own work. And the third I called then the model of no model, which I don't think is very helpful for anybody. But what did I mean? Well, if you're standing at the North Pole... I think it's cold up there, isn't it?

[17:02]

Maybe the South Pole is more likely. Let's say you're standing at the South Pole. More people stand at the South Pole. So you're standing at the South Pole. Even have expeditions you can go if you want. You're standing at the South Pole and all directions are north. Mm-hmm. All directions are north are a failure of the system of coordinates of latitude and longitude. In other words, the system of latitudes and longitudes does not work when you're standing at the South Pole, because all directions are north. Well, if you practice meditation, And come to know signless states of mind.

[18:10]

You will come to the point where the coordinates of society don't work. Where all directions seem to be the same direction. Or no direction. And at this point you are really on your own. And practice should bring you also to this point where you're truly on your own. And then you don't really do your work anymore, you do our work, contradictorily it seems, but that's the way I would put it. So this is a good point to take a break. Yeah, so maybe 20-some minutes or so. I was doing some...

[20:54]

the founder of our immediate lineage, said clearly, speaking about a woman looking in the mirror, said clearly she sees her face. There is no other reality. Clearly she sees her face. There is no other reality. But unavoidably she mistakes the reflection for her face. But unavoidably she mistakes the reflection for her face. Now this is one of those somewhat perplexing but moving, able to move us statements. Clearly she sees her face. There is no other reality.

[22:19]

But unavoidably, she mistakes the reflection for her face. Now, what is he talking about? Is it of any importance to us? Yeah. Now, we can just look at it in a simple sense. You're looking in the mirror. And mostly we don't see the glass even, unless it's dirty. But we're not so aware we see the glass. We mostly notice our face before it. But maybe you hang up pretty towels so you can see pretty towels reflected in the mirror too.

[23:27]

But in any case, you don't see, you see, maybe you see the glass and you see reflections. But you don't see the silver behind the mirror. You don't see the silver that makes the reflections possible. The silver is completely hidden in the reflections. disguised as reflections. In like manner, your mind is completely hidden in the objects that you see, the objects of mind. You can know the silver is there, but you can't see it.

[24:30]

And you can know the mind is there, but you can't see it. Now when you look in the mirror, you see, clearly, you see your face. There is almost no other reality. You see your cheekbones. But your cheekbones aren't what's looking in the mirror. Nor is your nose or your shoulders. Yeah. In fact, it's not your eyes that are looking in the mirror. What's looking in the mirror can't be seen. You can see your physical eyes and face and so forth, but really what's looking in the mirror can't be seen.

[25:47]

So Dungsan is pointing this out. But unavoidably she mistakes the reflection for her head. Unavoidably, we mistake what we see for reality. It's exactly the same. But it's very difficult for us to get our mind around it. Yeah. This is just an anecdote. I'm not making a point. Some scientists were studying lions. And I guess lions sleep mostly during the day. So all the scientists are observing these lions sleeping.

[26:48]

But for safety's sake, the scientists are sleeping inside a fenced enclosure. And then they noticed that the footprints of the lions were standing a long time at night looking over the fence at the sleeping scientists. Of course it's different, but maybe we think it's more different than it is. What are those scientists? Yeah. Now, we tend to think... Well, there's another phrase I've used often from a koan. Hold to the mind before thought arises. I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago and it doesn't always do what it's supposed to do.

[28:22]

Poor thing, you can't see anything. You can see the sill of it. Okay, you all know this. If you don't know it, there should be a parallel seminar going on about this silly stuff. I've often talked about the three minds of daily consciousness. You don't have to look at this. Okay. Borrowed, secondary, and immediate. Now, immediate again, just to refresh us, is if I'm just looking at you without thinking about it.

[29:37]

And secondary consciousness is I look at you and I notice that you're younger than I am. Still younger, darn it. And then I look at you and I don't know your birthday. And I have to be told your birthday. And so that's borrowed consciousness. It comes from our culture, from elsewhere, etc. It's important and useful, but it's not rooted in the present situation. So it's rather depleting energetically in comparison to states of mind which are nourished by the present situation. Okay.

[30:44]

Now, I want... That's the most sophisticated excuse for forgetting my birthday. It's the most public way to get back at me. I've broken into a sweat. Well, you know, I wasn't present. Okay. So, now, immediate consciousness is also probably one of the basic ways we can practice with a silent state of mind.

[31:58]

And you can learn to rest in an immediate consciousness without having an observer of that. And it's actually a kind of physical state. It's a physical relaxation. Mm-hmm. Okay, so, and sometimes this is talked about as direct perception, not just looking at the flowers, for example, or a person, without, with a knowing, but not a knower. Now, all awareness and All awareness and consciousness are knowing states of mind.

[33:07]

This is not some abstract philosophy. If you're alive, awareness is a kind of knowing. Okay. Now, but this knowing, this signless state of mind is not like a billboard with nothing on it. How can I, how can I say? Now we think, we imagine that a signless state of mind might be like a blank billboard because we are not familiar with having non-referenced states of mind.

[34:21]

Okay, say that you're doing meditation. And you are using now your more subtle mind refined through the breath to explore your body. Okay, so what do you see? Well, you can begin to have a feeling for your arm, your muscles, your lungs, and so forth. And I've spoken about this before. And part of practice is to explore your body, get familiar with it from the inside, As if your mind was a little flashlight attached to your breath.

[35:37]

And you could explore your body. Now, you might think, and it will be the case, that perhaps your kidney looks like a kidney in an autopsy. And you will, or in surgery or something. And you may have a feeling for various organs of your body. But at some point you might find that there was color permeating your body. Or a kind of sound. No, this actually might be your kidney. No, why? Why? Or at least if we try to make up a reason why.

[36:47]

Because your kidney isn't just this organ, it's actually all its functions. It's everything it does in the body. And this can't be seen because it's a process, a function. But when you're more familiar with signless states of mind, it can be seen as color or sound or something. It depends on the person. And you might shift and you see another organ, but then it's... something else, another way of seeing it, it doesn't follow some kind of simple idea of an image. So a signless state of mind can open you to another way of seeing. Now, I suppose we could think of again consciousness or awareness as a space or liquid which is given structure by

[38:10]

Parents, caregivers, and so forth. Friends, school. And as I said, the big changes, the big event is probably for us, reading. Now Ulrike finds, and maybe you could just say it in German, that after being eight years out of school, that your students don't think so rigorously or hold thoughts in their mind. Maybe you could say something about that? Yes, as you said, my experience is, after I returned to teaching after so many years, that in general children have lost the ability to express themselves in the language and the attention span. Thank you very much.

[39:32]

So to do, and you imagine this as far as you could guess, it might be television. And to do the kind of thinking that Borica expects these young, bright kids going to university in sciences to do requires being able to hold the thought and examine it, and they really can't do it as well as they used to. Yes, and what you expect as a teacher, of course, when you want to send a child on the path, that it just continues and maybe research something more precisely, that it really takes a thought and can keep it in the field of attention and look at it from different sides.

[41:02]

So reading gives us an ability to think and to examine our thinking. And I think that's true. It's And it's such a useful tool that, I mean, it's a powerful tool that our society has very strongly emphasized. Now, there's an interesting difference with which is also very, very emphasized in Asian countries, China, Japan, etc. But their language is visual, not symbolic, in the same way.

[42:04]

So it actually functions in the brain differently. And there is also an important difference, for example, in Asian societies, where the language is simply much more visual, and it simply works differently in the consciousness. Now I'd like to say something about language in Shakespeare. Excuse me, but what I want to emphasize is that we take language for granted, more or less, and that we all are making it and talking it and doing it, right? But Language is also something we've created and sometimes one or two people created. Now, in English, I believe, you know, I'm not an expert in these things, but I believe there's a very big difference between English before Shakespeare and English after Shakespeare.

[43:06]

Now, I don't remember exactly, but Shakespeare had a vocabulary of 30 or 40,000 words. I mean, other contemporaries who were writers, I can't remember, Ben Johnson or somebody, they have vocabularies of 8 or 9,000 words. And that Shakespeare made up lots of words. I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of words that he made up. Some disappeared and some... And he also was particularly good at bringing Latin cognates to bringing Latin and French and German aspects of the language together.

[44:21]

So what we have here, Shakespeare and the King James Bible was the other big influence on English. In other words, your vocabulary, unless you're trying to win a spelling bee, your vocabulary is a reflection of your ability to make distinctions. If you have a big capacity to make distinctions, you'll learn a lot of words for those distinctions. And if you have a capacity to make distinctions where there aren't words for, you'll start creating words for those distinctions. And if you don't make many distinctions, people can tell you words, you forget them right away because they don't fit into the kind of distinctions you'd make.

[45:39]

Now here we have a person who... for some reason, was extraordinarily gifted at making distinctions. He may have made distinctions beyond the capacity of anybody else who's ever spoken English. And so he stretched the envelope of language. So all I'm doing by mentioning this is I want to emphasize how much language is a cultural artifact and may be even of one or two people. Now, we all are working in the fields of language, but it's like a farmer working.

[46:42]

He may be farming a field, but he's not changing agriculture. And Shakespeare extended English beyond what anyone else has extended. So this signless state of mind is not like the blank billboard. But like the entire landscape in its macro and micro aspects in which the billboard arises a sign, a mirror. So this dream I might have had in which I positioned my mind during the night so I could hear you now, hopefully hear you even while I'm speaking, we could call that a dream, but we could also call it primary mind

[48:08]

using a dream-like mind to express, to function, to do something. Likewise, this mind, this waking mind, may be something my primary mind, I imagine such a thing, is doing here. And this is not the real mind. This is primary mind functioning in this mirror. I'm not trying to drive you crazy. I'm trying to get you to look at how we actually exist. Clearly she sees her face. There's no other reality.

[49:23]

But unavoidably she mistakes her face, the reflection for her head. Dung Chan said it much better. But at least there are some people who also said something similar to what I'm saying. So if I need an outward anchor for what I'm saying, I have Dung Shan and some others. Nanyuan says, before, meaning before realization and before he was anchored in mind, It was like I was living by the light of a lamp. Before it was like I was living always by the light of a lamp. Now I'm making a distinction between inward and outward, or inward and interior.

[50:27]

Because one of the characteristics of what we call inward consciousness is that it's outwardly anchored. In other words, my thinking is inward. It's my private thoughts. But if it's too different from what I see, I think I'm crazy. If I can't communicate it to you, I get nervous. So if I start having thoughts that Shakespeare didn't have, or you, or something, I start, hmm, I'd better go see Ralph for a while. Yeah, Ralph or Peter, I better talk this through with one of you guys to get my outward anchors properly anchored in an agreed upon reality.

[51:52]

Where the coordinates are known. Anyway, it's cold here. It's the South Pole. There's no coordinates. So let's get back in familiar territory. We can live in familiar territory most of the time. All the time. But some of us somehow find ourselves in unfamiliar territory. Or you start meditating and you begin to find there's a threshold where you can't anchor your reality anymore outwardly. And the big shift is when you anchor mind in mind and not in outward reality.

[52:58]

And So Sangha is in the truest sense those who anchor mind in mind. Not with reference to what things look like or what other people say or language. Now how do you know you're not crazy? One reason is you don't suffer, you feel blissful. If there's a lot of suffering and dissonance going on, you might be panicked, but still, probably, maybe you're off base.

[54:10]

But you begin to know this also because you begin to know mind as also a physical state. And when mind is also a nourishing physical state you don't have to worry so much about where it's but whether it's outwardly anchored or not. It doesn't mean if you're looking out these windows, you don't see bamboo and a statue and stones. It's just how those things interact with your mind is different. They act more, I don't know how to say, they interact more at a level of feeling states or non-graspable feeling states.

[55:17]

And they don't interact through words and things. They interact more energetically with you. They push at you or pull you. So this kind of mind not immediately actualized through signs, marks, knowers. It certainly sees things and knows things. But it's not anchored in those things it sees. It's not confirmed just by those things it sees.

[56:36]

It's anchored and confirmed by the experience of mind itself. Okay. Okay. Now is this far out? Is this far in? It may sound far out, but actually it's not. It's actually the way we already are. And we come to it by thinking about our self and our world less.

[57:38]

And getting to know the world more through, well, one gate as immediate consciousness. Another gate is breath. Now, so let me go back to breath practically. You're again bringing your attention to your breath. And I'm talking about attention, but behind it is always intention. Attention does the work. But intention keeps you at work. Intention keeps you.

[58:47]

Attention does the work. And intention does the work. Or keeps you at the work. Yeah. So that if you have a deep intention to eventually be inseparable from your breath, If sometimes you're not too attentive at it, it will happen through the power of intention. So the most important thing is to make your intention firm. If you decide to do nothing else the rest of your life, this will be a great thing. I mean, I hope you have a happy family and you keep your job and things like that. In addition to those things, if you want to do this spiritual work of Buddhism, you make this intention firm.

[59:51]

To right now and eventually to bring to join intention and breath. to join attention and breath. Okay, now one way of joining attention to breath is to name your breath. This is an exhale. This is an inhale. This is a long, slow breath. This is a short breath. And you're getting in the habit of doing that. One of the big things you're doing that is you're getting in the habit of naming impermanence. Normally, you're naming trees and rocks and houses.

[61:12]

Usually, you're naming rocks, trees, buildings. But you're making a big shift when you start naming things that disappear right away. Naming your exhale. So that's one way to bring attention to your breath is by naming. And this naming can be extended to, now I'm a talking person. Yeah, now I'm a looking at Mahakavi person. And that person disappears and I become a looking at Ulrike person. Even if I don't know her birthday. June, July, anyway.

[62:24]

I hardly know my own birthday. I wasn't there either. Really, when I was a kid, I was four or five, and people would say, what's your name? I'd say, Dick. They'd say, what's your birthday? I'd say, how old are you? I don't know. Maybe I'm just a slow learner. Another excuse. But I remember going home to my mother and saying, Why does everybody ask me on my birthday? What am I supposed to know this for? I always think I was five or six at least before I knew my birthday. I didn't even know where my left hand was. I knew that I had a mole here. That was my left hand. Even now when I touch it, oh, this is my left hand. Yes. So I started out with a signless state of mind here.

[63:32]

What did you say? It's also called being stupid. But... So... So you can also count your breath. And generally we count our exhales. And you're counting your exhales to ten and you start over again at one. Now this is another way of bringing attention to your breath. Now the third important way to bring attention to your breath is by visualizing an oval.

[64:39]

Imagining your breath is in an oval or a circle. Und eine dritte wichtige Art, die Aufmerksamkeit zu seinem Atem zu bringen, ist, dass das so eine kreisförmige Bewegung ist. Ich habe das früher erklärt, aber ich tue das noch einmal zur Auffrischung. Und ich weiß nicht, ob Neil eine Auffrischung benötigt. Ich glaube, er hat es schon hundertmal, mindestens zehnmal gehört. Aber ich habe jedenfalls eine nötig. So you imagine that your exhale is coming out in an oval or circle outside your body. And as it's coming out, you feel like you're pushing down in your lower belly. And that feeling of pushing down is actually, of course, pushing your diaphragm up.

[65:44]

And then when you release, it feels like your breath is coming in from down below. Now normally, or usually, initially, you're taught this. so that you will have a stable way of breathing even when you become very concentrated because if you breathe with your chest and with moving your chest you tend to stop your breath when you become concentrated. For instance, a watchmaker might stop to do something very minute.

[66:49]

So when we become concentrated, there's a tendency to stop our breath in the upper chest. If you do that, you can have some nice mapo, various hallucinations and things, because you change the oxygen content in your brain. But you don't want to do that in zazen too much. So ideally you want to have your breath just develop a very stable way of breathing without your torso moving much. A parallel to learning how to bring attention to your breath, you also take an inventory of the way you breathe. Just get used to noticing how you're breathing when you're feeling this emotion or that emotion.

[68:03]

Or when you're in this or that kind of activity. Or just before you go to sleep or just when you're waking up. It's very useful actually to develop an inventory of familiarity with the various ways you breathe. At the same time you are stabilizing this in zazen practice. You're letting yourself breathe the way you breathe, but you keep bringing this visual image to your breath. And it's quite useful because you're not interfering with your breath, because by holding a visual image, your breath can still breathe the way it does, but the visual image begins to have a penetrating influence.

[69:23]

You see, you can hold the visual image separate from the breathing and just allow your breathing to occur. Okay. So you're taught to do this, beginning early Zazen instruction, so that you will have a stable way of breathing. And if you become very concentrated, sometimes, it might happen occasionally in Sashin or something, you might breathe only once or twice or thrice a minute. Now, if you can do that and your heart doesn't start to race, it means you become quite calm. Because if you have mental activity, which uses lots of energy, And if your breath slows down, then your heart will compensate by pumping more.

[70:49]

So you want to get used to so heart and breath and mind all settle. And this image of the breath in this oval helps with this process. Now there are other reasons why generally you discover why this oval is useful. But I will say some of the reasons. The main one is that this is an access to refining your breath and discovering your subtle breath.

[71:54]

Now, it's called your subtle breath, but it's really not breath, it's mind. It feels like breath, so we call it subtle breath. But in fact, it's attention that's been refined through the breath and now this oval as you breathe exhaling as it comes in you feel it also coming up your backbone as well as up in your lungs And this visual oval expands now to being a second larger oval that you feel through your body and comes down your front.

[72:55]

And this oval can become very big and include everything. So this simple oval you learned to stabilize your breathing becomes a subtle pathway for refined attention. A refined attention and energy we call the subtle breath. Okay. Now, what have you done here? We're still just bringing attention to our breath. But now you've brought three different kinds of attention to your breath.

[74:07]

The attention you bring through naming is different than the attention you bring through counting. And the attention you bring through following is different than counting and naming. Now, I didn't mention following because it's part of counting, I mean part of this oval, but I'll mention it now. Now, I imagine most of you are counting occasionally, but mostly you follow your breath. And following is, although following usually works, is most successful when we become somewhat skillful at counting our breath. Now all of you know, almost all of you know, that the period in which you can't count your breath, which I call counting to one, is very fruitful.

[75:29]

And simply it's another example that zazen mind, which is neither waking nor sleeping mind, doesn't know how to count, even though our usual mind does. And in the process of teaching Zazen mind, which is like a different kind of liquid to count, again, doing such a simple thing, you're doing something quite big. You're cooking your karma in chicken stock instead of beef stock. The zazen mind is a different kind of mind.

[76:45]

And you know very well if you throw something in chicken stock it's different than when you throw it in beef stock. So during this period of time when you can't count very well even past one or two you're actually all these things and associations if you're coming up are getting restored. And you want to be patient with that and not force counting upon it. But eventually it becomes possible to count. Then it becomes more possible to really follow our breath. And eventually breath becomes again non-conscious. But now it has the invisible rider of attention always with it.

[77:52]

And whether you're speaking or acting in the world, now this invisible rider of attention is present with body and breath. And the more you get used to that and just following, It becomes quite a conceptual effort to count your breath. It requires several energy units to sort of push an attentiveness up into the upper part of the body where you think your toes are down there. into counting the exhale. You can really feel the degree to which to create this observer which then counts requires much more energy than just following your breath. And when you really follow your breath your toes are everywhere.

[79:22]

They're not down there. Maybe they're up there. In other words the perspective of the observer becomes everywhere. Or we more and more feel like that if we don't try to know we feel like that. That's why in so many koans there's phrases like, not knowing is nearest. Or Dung Shan is asked, what body does not fall into any category? And he says, I'm always close to that. Because a body that does not fall into any category is signless. So he has to give a signless answer because it's a signless experience.

[80:45]

So he can't say, oh yes, I know that, it's great. He says, I'm, yeah, fantastic. He says, I'm always close to this. And we are always close to this. But it requires a kind of subtle not noticing. A not noticing which also stays present. Holding to the mind before thought arises. Before I knew this it was like living in the light of a lamp. And before I knew it, it was as if I were living in the light of a lamp. Let's live for a few minutes in the sound of a bell. A few minutes before one.

[87:14]

And it's really a lovely day. Almost like a pre-spring day. So I don't know what... We have lunch from 1 to 2 or so, should we come back together at 3? So we have a little time to take a walk or a rest or something. Is that okay or should we make it at 3.30? 3.30? 2.30? Four? 3.30. I'm for enjoying the day, so let's say 3.30. These two guys were hollering at me. And was the break after breakfast... after Zazen and before breakfast, too long, or was it okay this morning?

[88:28]

Anyway, we have to think about it for tomorrow morning, what kind of schedule we have. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I hope you all enjoyed the extra half hour that Hans and Ralph got for you.

[89:29]

Anyway, it's... Did I get the names right? Hans and Ralph? I think so. We got my birthday wrong. Anyway, it is certainly a lovely day. And we should enjoy this situational happiness. But again, you know, excuse me for sawing on the same bone, but situational happiness arises because of basic happiness. Situational happiness gives us a taste of the capacity we have for happiness and bliss. And it arises from knowing again these having a feeling for these signless states of mind.

[90:54]

And your meditation experience will open up when you open yourself to what we're calling, a kind of code, signless states of mind. I realize we haven't had any chance for discussion yet. I'm sorry. But I guess I have a feeling to get this elusive but really not hard to understand idea out. We have a tendency, you know, to want our mind to be simple and practice to be basically simple. And it is if you put energy really completely into your breathing practice or into your turning word practice.

[92:13]

But, you know, we don't... I mean, if I say mind has certain this and several gears, you think, oh, God, I don't want to hear... But if you have a four-wheel drive vehicle, you have no problem. You've got low four and you've got medium four and then you get regular four and so forth. And then the fifth gear has the highest gear, but it uses less gas. I mean, you all know all this. But you all probably spend more time driving than you do following your breath. So it's really largely a matter of becoming familiar

[93:15]

A certain kind of relaxation. Coming into a physical and mental trust of yourself. And that in itself must be a relief. Okay, so let's go back and see if we can look at...

[93:55]

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