Since we're doing this together, not only doing this sashin together, gathering and touching the mind together, we're also developing this sangha center, sangha practice center together. And except for the Sashin that Atmar did quite a while ago, Ikkyoroshi, using these two rooms together and so forth, this last Sashin and this Sashin are the first time we've concentrated on developing how we use the two rooms.

[01:01]

And it was more apparent in the last sashin, because we're really getting started. When do we bow? And in the last sashin it was even more obvious because we really started with asking when we should bow down and so on. In the last sashin we had the servers go down parallel to the far end and then turn around and start serving. But it was kind of theatrical. They should have had a uniform and swords. It is a kind of choreography. You know, it's interesting that for me, these things we bow all the time, is that gassho, the kanji for this bow, is hand whispering.

[02:28]

So I'm always whispering to you guys a lot. And I always whisper a lot to you. Yeah, and again, since we're doing this together, I think one of the starting points is the vision of a practice center I inherited from Suzuki Roshi. He not only showed me his practice, and in effect made me show mine to him, It was hardly practice in the beginning.

[03:32]

Mine. But he also made a decision to show me institutional monastic practice. So we started together Tassajara. And I found it, as most of you know it, transformed the Sanghas practice and mine. So last evening in Boulder, Colorado, at early evening, they had a not too often Dharma Sangha board meeting. And I knew I probably should participate.

[04:36]

But I decided to participate only if I happened to be awake at 2.30 or 3.00. So I didn't set an alarm. I just... And darn it, I woke up at 2.30. So we had a long phone conference meeting. Christian was part of it. And, you know, the Boulder... Dharma Sangha is, I decided I didn't want to be the effective head of it.

[05:41]

I thought it should be on its own and do what it wants to do, but I wanted to participate with it. I find my role as an effectual, I hope, effectual. leader of the Sangha, something troublesome but necessary. I find my role as... Effectual means to have effect? Yeah, to be effective is effectual. Yeah, I don't...

[06:41]

Anyways, so when possible, I try to be anonymous and not a leader and out of sight. But I'm stuck with, joyfully stuck with Crestone and Johanneshof. So there are developing the Sangha there. And it's primarily a communal Sangha and not a monastic Sangha. So the vision I inherited from Suzuki Roshi is Sangha practice centers are not part of society. They're sort of like think tanks or research centers or laboratories.

[08:01]

And I definitely see what we're doing as a kind of research center. Yeah. A classical music orchestra doesn't want to only play what's popular. It wants to play what they think is good music or sometimes new music. where the Max Planck Institute wants to be responsive to society, is supported by society, but also wants to be free of political and commercial influences.

[09:04]

Like we don't trust tobacco and oil companies sponsored science. So anyway, my feeling is much like that. To be separate from society, but within society. But this is a communal center in Boulder. Now I will show my age. They want a Facebook page. I hardly know what Facebook is.

[10:05]

And I do not want to be known on Facebook in any way. I want to be known only by face-to-face meetings, no other way. As you might have noticed, although you wouldn't have noticed I get asked all the time, but you might have noticed I never publish articles in Buddhist magazines or anything else. I have no interest in being known by people I don't know. I just want to be known by you. Okay, so I had to... participated in the meeting and I said, well, yeah, if you want a Facebook page, it's a communal center, why not?

[11:15]

But go ahead. I think my daughters have Facebook pages. I guess, but they don't ever mention it to me. Anyway, that's what I meant. I'm showing my age as well as my social ineptitude. But this vision of A place within but separate from society is essential to my sense of how we develop. Bob Thurman, who was a friend of mine at college and was the first Western disciple, I think, of the Dalai Lama.

[12:20]

He's a professor of Buddhism at Columbia University and the father of Uma Thurman, who's a movie star. Anyway, he wrote somewhere that Buddhist monastic institutions are sort of think tanks disguised as religion for the social convenience and support. Jedenfalls hat er irgendwo geschrieben, dass buddhistische Klöster so etwas sind wie Denkfabriken, die unter dem Deckmantel der Religion getarnt sind, um soziale Unterstützung zu bekommen. They'll have an imperial gate which the emperor will never go through.

[13:33]

Too busy to worry about. Yes. It's really like A.H.G. has a... It is too big to escape. But anyway, it has gates for monks and people and stuff. And then up in the woods, an imperial gate which nobody ever goes through. It's really like that. A.H.G. for example, and it's huge, has all kinds of gates through which the monks go and so on. And then, a little further up in the woods, it also has a emperor's gate through which no one ever goes. Yes, so anyway, I want to continue this laboratory or craft practice center with us. Who? With us. No. This is really terrible.

[14:40]

He doesn't, excuse me, they are laughing about my crafting. He didn't want me to say Handwerkskunst anymore. Well, I said I don't like the word too much, but if there's no choice, I guess we have to say it. Yeah, Handwerkskunst, Praxiszentrum. And since I much of the time don't know what to do, I asked Atmar this morning on the way to the Zendo, what should I do? And he said, it's always good to talk about the four marks. So I guess I'll reprise the four marks again. Okay, it's not a mentated description. It's more like stage directions.

[15:44]

Yeah, my mother, my mother, how did she get in here? My mother, for some reason, liked to change the furniture around in the house. You can see how English is a dialect of German, mother and mutter. Yeah, anyway. So she would, several times a year, she'd change all the furniture around. If she could have afforded it, she might have bought new furniture. I don't know. But I'd come home several times a year. The couch would be in a different place. A different room. And my bed would be in a different location. So if I was going to do a stage play about my family life, and I was the director,

[16:52]

I would say to the actor, Enter the room as if you don't know where the furniture is going to be. When you open the door, the couch may be blocking the door. And even if the furniture is all in the same place, feel like, ooh, how surprising it is that the furniture is all in the same place. So this is how you practice with the four marks. The four marks are basically receiving and releasing. A dynamic of repetition. So you receive the room, oh, it's the same, or it's different, then you release.

[18:08]

Yeah, so the four marks are a teaching of momentariness. And you want to bring that into your body. Now the brain works through assumed continuities. The body works through the pulse of life. In German it's the same word, Puls. See? Which etymologically goes back to beat and throb of the heart. And in English it came to mean vitality or life energy, the pulse.

[19:12]

So the body really functions through a pulse. And you get things into the body through repetition. Okay, so... Practicing with receiving and releasing on the inhale, exhale, or whatever you want, whichever you want, is part of that. So, you know, for me these things, you know, I'm not... I find it's useful to do them very mechanically. I take a little time and I look at something and I receive it and I release it.

[20:31]

Or I hear something and music does it on its own. A note appears and then it disappears. And musical notes are built... are by definition dharmas. So anyway, I apply this to every now and then, and as I say in a homeopathic way, I apply it for a while when I first sit down at my desk or something. Now here we're working with the craft of practice. Now, there is nobody in Japan is going to explain things this way. Because they think it's only useful for monastics to know this.

[21:38]

And you learn these kind of things by doing them with others. So there's many things I learned from watching Suzuki Roshi carefully. His body, his breathing, his breathing while he talked, how he stepped into rooms and so forth, which he never explained. I just watched. And then he noticed if I noticed. And if I noticed, then he did other things. But until I noticed too, he didn't do other things. bodily things. This approach to craft from Buddhism is what has made Japan such an incredible craft rooted culture.

[22:40]

How the fibers of paper are understood in a way that each piece of paper they make by hand is different. wie die Papierfasern zum Beispiel verstanden werden, dass sie das so machen, dass jedes Stück Papier anders ist. Yeah, now we're sitting and eating at the tan of the meditation platform. Jetzt sitzen und essen wir an den tan der Meditationsplattform. With a ma board or eating board. Und da gibt es dieses ma-brett oder es-brett. And the custom in a... when you're eating on the tan, is the cloth of your orioki hangs down the front of the tan.

[23:58]

Yeah, it's not like when you fold it on the floor and you have to fold the front edge under. So some people are noticing that and some people are not noticing it, or some people are deciding, I'll do it my old way. Yeah, so I'm trying to, by explaining this three marks, four marks the way I am, No, why did I say three? Is because we all disperse to our lay locations. So I talk about these things in ways that you can then, I hope, if you want to, practice them in your lay life.

[25:09]

So in this homeopathic or even acupuncture-like practice, of receiving and releasing on each percept, and the receiving and releasing on each percept changes the percept into a dharma. So Buddhism is the teaching of Dharmasm, and Dharmasm is when you know each person as being received and released. This is one of the centers of this yogic craft. And from various centers within this yogic craft, filaments go out in all directions connecting to other teachings.

[26:14]

I always find it funny yesterday I was in my robes and every now and then in this very catholic neighborhood Somebody thinks, I meet one of the farmers or their wives. I guess their wives are also farmers, huh? Yeah. She grew up in a farming family. And then I feel, oh well. They live next door. They've got to see me looking like I don't know what. And I have my shoes with white straps. Sort of high-heeled wooden shoes. And I say, hi, how's the baby? And then I say, hello, how's the baby?

[27:32]

I don't know. They like us, I think. They gave us the piece of land next door. So you practice this receiving and releasing on each person. And then sometimes it's good to add breathing. If you have a few moments. So you receive and release on maybe a full inhale-exhale cycle. Yeah, and that would be the second stage, to join and train breathing to receiving and releasing. You know, these Thai statues of Buddhas or monks or Buddhas walking, you know,

[28:56]

doing kin hins, a kind of kin hin. It's all about doing things slowly till you find the pulse which embodies them. So first I would say receiving and releasing on each percept. And then adding breathing, inhaling and exhaling. And the inhaling and exhaling begin to create boundaries or shape the percept. And all of these things begin to create brain pathways or neurological pathways. And they don't happen by understanding, they happen by repetition, the pathways.

[30:14]

And then I think it's kind of good to add feeling as the third stage. So as you breathe, inhale and exhale a percept, sight, sound, you feel that whatever you're looking at, feel it coming into you bodily. Feel yourself releasing it. Somebody might say, really, I care so much about my baby. So if you say that maybe and you feel that, the word care has that feeling in it.

[31:31]

And if you just say, well, I don't care to do that, the word care doesn't have that feeling in it. And if you say in English, I don't care, or I don't care, then this word doesn't have the feeling. Yeah, I mean, Frank Sinatra was such a world-famous singer because he really practiced feeling each word he sang, intentionally feeling each word he sang. Frank Sinatra was such a world-famous singer because he really taught himself to feel every word he sang. Okay, and then I think, so you've added, you begin to... to identify appearance as a percept that's received and released. Then you add the pulse and unit of an inhale and exhale.

[32:34]

And then you add feeling. So you really use the breath to create feeling, physical feeling. And then I think it's fun to add loving. So you have a sensual relationship to sensorial percepts. You love the shade of your land. Now, not many people love their lampshades. But if you practice with... Look at that lampshade. Wow. Yeah, like that.

[33:47]

And it does, I find, it makes you more positive in the world about things. Yeah. So there's repetition. And there's this pulse of repetition. And the pulse of repetition can also be like Linji, sometimes I take away the foreground, sometimes I take away the background. And all these alternatives, absence, presence, begin to embody the pulse of phenomenality begin to transform phenomenality and the assumed continuities of consciousness

[34:55]

Into the bodily pulse where you're now tailoring the seams of seamlessness. Excuse me, transform it into... Just say, now you're tailoring the seams of brained... brained... brained seamlessness. So, dass du dann den... I always try to give her something hard to do. So, dass du jetzt beginnst, die Nähte zurechtzuschneiden, die Nähte des... Okay. So there's various pulses you can play with.

[36:05]

Absence, presence, or presence and released presence. The presence of a leaf and the less presence of a leaf. Or a tree, because you're actually functioning in pulses. And you use that and you develop, you get so you can feel into the space of the world. As if the space of the world was within you.

[37:13]

So, Linji is saying, sometimes I take away the surroundings, sometimes I take away the person. This is all part of this stage direction, practice for realizing the Dharma. Yeah, one last example. One of the best examples, I think, actually. It's useful for us. Of interiority. is going to the movies I mentioned this the other day and as is well known even studies have been made of it people, even men cry in movies more than they do in life And the occasional man will confess in an interview that he cries in movies. Poor guy. And it's usually described sociologically and psychologically, et cetera, because they're in the dark and no one can see them and they feel freer to cry.

[38:36]

And I don't think that's the real reason. That's a convenient reason. The real reason is the movie is an experience of interiority. Der echte Grund ist, dass der Film eine Erfahrung der Innerlichkeit ist. Where else does it happen? It only happens, it's not happening in the theater, it's happening on the screen and in you. When you feel things much more powerfully when they are actually interior, which they actually are. And I notice it at concerts too. If I went to a concert of Gisela's, I would probably start crying.

[39:42]

You're there and suddenly you're all interior. And I know that South Indian dance consciously tries to develop bodily yogic movements that create interiority so you feel the dance very particularly inside. What happens when you feel things As an exteriority. It's umpired by the seamless brain consciousness. It's normalized by our conditioned consciousness. conscious world.

[40:52]

So that's how most things happen. You might want to cry, but the situation normalizes it in a way that it's not appropriate to cry. But in an orchestral performance or a play or a movie? It's happening as an interiority. And the context is not the brain-seemed seemliness. There was a pun. Und der Kontext ist dann nicht das vom Gehirn zusammengenähte Scheinbare.

[41:56]

But the context is your associative mind and your allyic mind. Sondern dann ist der Kontext dein assoziativer Geist und dein allyischer Geist. So the interiorized music or play or movie calls forth interior dimensions of mind that aren't called forth otherwise. Less called forth. Yeah, I just saw the... What did I see in Vienna? The battlefield of... The Mahabharata.

[43:02]

Directed by Peter Brook. Thank you. And it was wonderful and... Really powerful. I like Peter Brook. As a director. But when a break came, there's rustling of the program and things like that. I'm still in the interior of the play, so the rustling of the program and people getting up to go to the toilet or whatever, all happens in an interiority. And so if the interiority continues, then I think, oh yes, I could, maybe we're supposed to leave now or something.

[44:06]

The importance of such an experience is if you re-body it, remember it, give it members in your body. And in a similar way, if you re-member or re-body the experience of non-conceptual mind in Zazen, And you can more and more bring it with you as an inner stillness. Then you more and more find it possible, I think, to bring this interiority from the background

[45:08]

into the foreground more and more often. I was trying to be shorter today, but I didn't succeed completely. Thank you very much. Why does the mind play the same role as every other being?

[45:54]

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