I don't know how explicitly I said yesterday, although I intended to be explicit. Zen is not so much a teaching itself. It's a teaching about how you can teach yourself. And the teaching depends on its continuation, depends on your teaching yourself. So I'm, you know, with the people I practice with closely, I'm always trying to, if I have time, you know, part of it's just time, trying to see how much they're how they're practicing these things themselves. And creatively and flexibly.

[01:02]

Now again, the statement from the Sandokai The myriad sense objects all have their merit according to function and place. Now, the Sandokai is interesting because it's commonly chanted in honor of Shido because it's one of the definitive texts in the Soto lineage. But it's seldom taught except during transmission. Because, just take the one statement I said.

[02:26]

The myriad sense objects each have their merit. According to their function and place. Circumstances. Okay. Now let's go back to the cafe construction project. I like cafe construction. Okay. So I gave you five ways to practice this construction and deconstruction. Now what's important in a teaching like this? And I took it out of the monastic context by, in a sense, by calling it a café.

[03:36]

And the secret of practice is not monastic practice. That gets the ball rolling, so to speak. But the degree to which you innovatively and circumstantially can establish a daily continuity of practice Now, we're not just talking about doing zazen once or twice a day, but a daily, a continuity, a wisdom continuity inseparable from your day. Now I'm talking about transmission Buddhism.

[04:41]

And I'm speaking about that because I want these places to continue. So some people have to need to make it the continuity of their life if these places are going to continue. Unless they just continue as a nice institution. Okay. Okay. So, now, if you do try out this café construction project, I mean, once very seriously is sufficient.

[05:47]

Sufficient if you... really discover this is the way the world is. Because what's important here is that it's a discovery of the way the world is. Okay. No, it may take, you know, two or three tries or 50, I don't know. You'll get bored after 20. Or maybe five. Okay. But because what can also happen, which is, when you first experience it, quite bizarre... The constructing and reconstructing and deconstructing of the cafe can deconstruct you.

[06:56]

And you can suddenly find yourself as if all the parts of yourself are not joined. Somehow I think of a Macintosh box. Because they're sort of quite complicated. And they're very Buddhist, you know, the way he did the packaging and packaging and the instructions come straight out of his practice of Buddhism. But anyway, the boxes are quite nice and you can imagine the designer who had all the different parts and he could

[07:59]

draw them separately and then imagine how they'd all fit together like an origami. So sometimes I have the experience of walking around and the whole world is like a box. with all the parts separate and it's no longer a box. Yeah, and I'm walking along in this box. It's not a box. And I can feel that it can be put back together, but I'm not entirely sure. And I'm also disassembled like that. I don't recommend it. But if you can handle it, it's great. Because in the middle of this disassembled feeling this bright field, as I said yesterday

[09:09]

The world presses into you within the spaces. And you can put it back together and then it's in the box. But you feel differently about the contents or what's outside the box now too. So what are you doing here? When you do something like this. You're exploring the nature of mind. Now in this situation of the parts of me or you are all dispersed and not put back together, what's your location?

[10:31]

Well, again, not abiding anywhere, give rise to mind. So mind is your location. But mind is not a location organized according to the physical objects of the world. Okay, now the 10,000 sense objects have their own merit. They don't have their own entity-ness. They don't have their own identity. They don't have a consistent identity. They only have an identity or merit, not even identity, merit according to function and circumstance.

[11:48]

It means you're not in a world that has any normal continuity. Now, do you want to go there? Why don't we call it off? Because how are you going to go there? I mean, you've got a life to lead. You don't want to bother with this stuff. But still, you came here. I don't know. Maybe I should present it. Okay, so now the Samdokai is taught when you are with practitioners who live this discontinuity of the physical world and the continuity of mind. Das Sandokai wird gelehrt, wenn du mit Schülern bist, die diese Diskontinuität mit der physischen Welt und der Kontinuität mit Mind leben.

[12:56]

So I don't chant the Sandokai because I don't think anybody is ready to practice it. Und ich rezitiere das Sandokai deswegen nicht, weil ich nicht das Gefühl habe, dass irgendjemand bereit ist, das zu praktizieren. Maybe I'm just getting old. Aber vielleicht werde ich einfach nur alt. And impatient. Und ungeduldig. Yeah. So if the world only exists, the sense objects don't have continuity as entities. They have a continuity according to function and place. I mean they have merit or existence according to function and place.

[13:57]

It means you need to establish your continuity within the field of mind. Now, you can also, and I, you can also establish a continuity in the body points. The flow of the... cheekbones, the feet, the hands, the palms, the top of the head. So this gives you some way to establish continuity. And what I asked you yesterday, and by implication I've been asking throughout the Sesshin, is that you practice, discover, play with discovering continuity. Now, if you do that, and I see the group doing it,

[14:59]

Because if we're doing it in a group this big, I've already gone well beyond the bounds of what's usually taught. But to go further, I have to see you individually or together practicing a certain kind of continuity. But if you practice, because by practicing that continuity, The teachings that flow from that, then we can talk about. It's like there's much I could say about the CAFE construction project. But what I'd like to see, and again, it's probably not possible in the way we practice together, if 10 or 30 of you really had practiced the cafe construction project for some months, then we could all go to the next step.

[16:31]

Now, why is this nature of mind, which I've decided to call it, or I can also call it world corresponding mind? Because what the overall, you know, there's enlightenment, there's freedom from suffering. But even more basic than that, Buddhism is about how things actually exist. They don't exist as entities. Can you enter into a world, an entity-less world?

[17:34]

An entity-less is a synonym for emptiness. It's one of the biggest and most numerous doors to emptiness. Okay, so now let's go back to the field and the particular. So more and more through practice you learn, discover how to establish continuity. The experience of the field of mind and the field of mind as a continuity. Okay, now, one of the things that happens, and some of you have alluded to it, is when you establish the field of mind as the way

[18:41]

the way you know the world and you don't have the discursive bridges from one thing to the next and the discursive bridges always lead you back into consciousness so if you get in the habit of Holding or staying within, and holding and staying are important yogic concepts. Also, wenn es dir gelingt zu halten und darin zu bleiben, und dieses Halten und Darinbleiben sind wichtige yogische Konzepte. Holding and staying within the field of mind. Also, es zu halten und darin zu bleiben in diesem Feld des Minds. Thinking changes. Thinking becomes a flow of insights.

[19:54]

A flow of intuitions. And because it's arising from a different place than rational thinking. It's arising from A deeper intelligence. A divining rod intelligence. Which is, you know, to divine really means not God, but to sense out like a divining rod. A divining rod intelligence embedded in the world. Embedded, I don't know, maybe implanted or instilled within the world. So when you... are in an entity-ridden mind.

[21:04]

Written in this case means everywhere. You only know what fits into the entities. So we've taken this black box of entities apart. You've established yourself in the field of mind, which is a mind not only related to your past experience and karma and so forth, It's a mind profoundly engaged in circumstances. In English, circumstances, what surrounds you, stands around you. The world as it actually exists More and more, as you discover the ability to stay within the field of mind, and what I'm calling now a world-corresponding mind, the

[22:27]

There's no word, numerosity. That's a combination of numerous and numinous. I don't know. Numinous means something like divine. And numerous means many. You see, the way my mind works, I wake up in the middle of the night and I say, numerosity. And I think, where did that come from? Oh yeah, numerous and luminosity and... Oh, okay, now I go back to sleep. Again, the brightness, the clarity of the world appears in its momentariness.

[24:00]

In this field of mind. And so that whatever is happening to you is implanted in the world in a new way. I mean, your world views let the world in according to their views. And our experience of self. Self is an interface of the world, and self allows the world in through the self, and we enter the world through the self. The self is like a window or an interface. And how you experience the self allows you to enter the world.

[25:02]

And how you experience the self allows the world into you through the self. Now, if the self is not your inner self with the interface with the world, if the self isn't even in the window, and there isn't even a window, there's just the world and... the cognitive mentation of recognition. So I think I'd better stop. I don't want to get farther out. But you can see, I'm just trying to give you a picture that you can make this shift.

[26:06]

So if you get in the habit of this mental posture of the field of mind, and as I say, even held in the back, And this back and front thing and light and dark is quite important because it's also related to the idea of the backward step. Okay. So, you know, I said the other day, I can only teach what can be taught. But I can't teach what can't be taught. And it's up to you, much of it is up to you, what can be taught. For example, I mean, again, I guess I'm getting old and

[27:09]

my time's running out. But someone asked me, could I say something about the three bodies of Buddha? And I've already said enough to allow you to work with it. But can I say more? And when I was asked I thought I can't do this. What I see is a lot of people socializing, talking, laughing. They're not establishing the continuity which would allow me to talk about it. And the next step, and many of this teaches, depending on you creating the mind, which allows the next step to happen. I'm not, you know, I don't think I'm getting stricter.

[28:34]

I probably should. But the rule is we don't talk in Sesshin. Except necessary things. Or perhaps hello, greetings. Or Katrin, how's your toe? But not conversations, social conversations. Sesshin, you want to establish a non-social continuity. Yeah. So I hope I've been clear enough these six, seven lectures now.

[29:37]

To give you a feel for the mental posture of the field of mind. And the possibility of establishing this as the continuity of mind. Because if everything's changing, it's up to you to establish continuity. And it's not you continuity, it's the field of mind continuity. And the field of mind is the nature of mind. And the nature of mind reveals the nature of the world. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[30:40]

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