We're at the edge of something here in practice that I would like to see if we can explore a little bit. But let me say a few other things as preliminaries. One is, I could say, when it's hot, we have cold soup.

[01:01]

And when it's cold, we have hot soup. And I could say, we don't really need to know anything more than this. Ja. Yes. That attitude, if you really have that attitude deeply, you don't need to know any more than that. But also Dogen says... The most important single thing in your zazen posture is that your nostrils be right.

[02:05]

Where's the edge between these two things? What does Dogen mean? What do you think, King? Oh, boy. Yeah. So I want you all to get your nostrils right. I want you all to get your nostrils right. It's actually quite hard to do anything about your nostrils. Are they okay now or is it better this way?

[03:07]

Good translation, very good translation. Okay. Sometimes your teacher communicates to you with his nostrils or her nostrils. And you stumble right past. And sometimes we stumble right past our life. So sometimes we stumble into our life. And we live that mistake. the rest of our life. And after all, it was right. You know, I do this practice. Someone said to me, maybe five days would be a good length of time for a sashimi.

[04:29]

Or six is really quite long enough. In fact, I find that sixth is the hardest day, so we should probably stop with five. And it's never occurred to me. I never thought of that. Zuky or she used to be worried sometimes. Actually, he didn't tell me that he was worried. He told me he told his wife that he was worried.

[05:30]

He said, it was interesting, he said, I told my wife the other day, I'm afraid you're going to do two things too much your own way. And since he didn't tell me directly, he told me that roundabout way. He gave it to me just as something to think about. And then he said to me, but my wife said, oh, he's just like me. So it will be all right. And he looked at me kind of, hmm. But actually, you know, maybe his warning I took too much to heart.

[06:51]

I actually feel quite free to change things if I have no doubt at all about it. But for the most part, I'm so grateful to be able to do something that's not in the realm of my personality. That I don't have to figure everything out, whether it's right or wrong or productive or not or useful. Dass ich mir nicht überlegen muss, ob es richtig oder falsch ist, oder produktiv oder nützlich. I've inherited this, so I just do it. Und ich habe das geerbt, so tue ich es einfach. And sashins are seven days, so I do seven days sashins. Und sashins sind sieben Tage lang, so mache ich siebentägige sashins.

[07:54]

I actually have some idea of why they're seven days. Und ich habe auch eine gewisse Vorstellung, warum sie sieben Tage sind. But that's not the reason I do them as seven days. I do seven days just because that's the way it's done. I'm sorry. You could have all been doing six-day sashins. If I wasn't so mule-headed. So I think she agrees. And I've really, I mean in the end I do this practice to honor my ancestors in the practice. And I don't think that's some sort of Chinese, Japanese attitude I've adopted.

[08:58]

As they say, I respect the sweating horses of the past. This is a pretty sweaty day today. And we're each in our stalls. But by, for me anyway, by just doing it, I have learned so many things. So I leave it up to you guys to change things.

[10:06]

I'm too old-fashioned. Old-modish? Okay. Ah. So we go over this edge a bit. It's a little different way of looking at the world. And It's not obvious, but it's definitely not taken for granted in our culture.

[11:26]

So anyway, I'm talking about the sense of a deep present. Or maybe we could say a complex presence with a kind of serious pun between present and presence. Because, you know, if... Is it Heisenberg who pointed out that you, the experimenter, changes the experiment? In any case, in Buddhism, this mind-body relationship is also a mind-body-world relationship.

[12:36]

But I don't want to talk about it philosophically. I'd like to talk about it from the point of view of practice. Now, Again, someone mentioned that this sense of the consciousness that produces a smile is always waiting to be smiled. Or the flower-raising consciousness is always ready to be picked up. So you could look at it and say, is this some sort of permanent entity that's there to be picked up?

[13:38]

No, not at all. It's just trying to find a way to speak about something. Like the last seminar we did was, please bring me six flowers. So this is based on a, I used this, some of you know, based on a story about Harry Roberts. Actually Robert, actually Robert Spott. And you could answer, you know, someone, if you're, in this case, if your teacher said to you, please bring me six flowers, you might answer, this flower is already here.

[14:55]

That's, you know, a way of speaking. And it's a way of speaking in which there's no comparisons. In other words, we're always talking in terms of here and there or do something, etc. How do you speak in a world where it's already done? Like in this koan of last seminar, the World Honored One says, ah, this is a good spot to build a monastery.

[15:57]

And Indra, I don't remember, picks a braid of glass and says, it's already done. Established. No, it doesn't mean there's a monastery there. It means that what the monastery, if we tried to explain it, it's the lived body of both. Whatever it is that a monastery is, on one level it's buildings, and it's another level how you live your body. And so that's established now, not in some other place. But it's also just a way of thinking without comparisons.

[17:08]

And it was interesting to me, it was in this Native American medicine tradition. And where they're so involved with medicine plants and power plants. But in that case, when Robert Spott, when somebody asked to be his disciple, he would say something like, well, okay, please bring me six flowers. And as I told the story, if you went somewhere to get the six flowers, you weren't accepted. If you just reached down and picked six blades of grass, this is sufficient. Und wenn man sich einfach gebückt hat und sechs Grashalme aufgehoben hat, dann war das ausreichend.

[18:18]

Oder wenn man gesagt hätte, diese Blume ist bereits da. Das ist ein Wacherschüler. Der nicht denkt oder sich damit beschäftigt, ob er gut genug ist oder nicht, der ist einfach da. And is there time and space? He doesn't know about time and space. Or going to get something. Or preparing. It's just here. Shall we do it? Yes. This attitude is needed to realize enlightenment too. So I can give you some of these peculiar statements our ancestors said. Dogen. Dogen said,

[19:20]

The most important thing in zazen is that your nostrils be right. And that your eyes be clear. Then source will be realized and explanations understood. And capacity and actualization will be equally realized. Okay.

[20:07]

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