I always admire courage. Yeah. Anything on your... Anything on your... Chucks, I can't think of the word. Chucks. Yes. You said that it's a property of any kind of the mind, that it's homostatic and self-organized. My experience is that the destructive mind or the competitive mind is much more homostatic than the mind or the original mind. The question is, does it depend only on that the other one exists more longer in me?

[01:07]

That's a habit. I didn't say they're all equally homeostatic. I just said they had this quality. I didn't say that all minds are equally homeostatic, but I said they have this quality together. So it's, yeah, this is why we practice. Why intention and so forth and effort and vitality are all necessary because our habits are very Karma is very deeply ingrained. Basically, practice is more powerful. But your deluded mind has been in training longer. It's been training since birth, so it's quite robust.

[02:14]

So you bring this amateur into the ring. He's stronger, but he's not as well trained. Otherwise, you couldn't change 30 years of habits with two or three years of practice. But, I mean, no matter how hard you practice, it's small compared to unambivalent intentions. It's how clear your intention is that really makes practice work. Strong practice with weak intention will take years to accomplish. But a deep intention, even in a few months, can be transformative.

[03:28]

One or two more, perhaps. comments or something, and then I would like to say a little something about zazen. Yes? It's about zazen, actually, the posture. Sometimes it's such a minute shift in difference, so tiny, tiny, tiny, and the world looks completely different, so to speak, that it almost seems to me like within that posture there's, I don't know, a hundred postures possible, or something.

[04:40]

Yeah. Deutsch? Yes, of course. I can do it for you. . And sometimes I find myself wondering which is right. Oh, I'm sorry you wonder. Well, I've never sat in the same good posture. I've often sat in the same bad posture. But if my posture feels right, it's always slightly different than other times. Okay.

[06:02]

I teach zazen as the practice of uncorrected mind. I should refine that a little for us now as our practice has gotten so much better. Uncorrected mind means a mental posture of not correcting your mind. You don't correct the mind. Uncorrected mind is a little like a... you know, what is it, a culture in yogurt.

[07:10]

The attitude of acceptance is like a culture in the mind which cultivates the mind. I can just see you leave you. What was it? Well, you told me that You make your mind into yogurt. He's gone over the edge. He used to be an American. The first thing people said to me when I came to Germany, they said, what's the difference between America and Germany? No, American yogurt. I don't know.

[08:13]

One has a living culture. You settled us. It's your fault. Anyway. It's a little maybe like Dogen says, the moon in the water. The moon, it doesn't get wet, nor is the water broken. And yet the water is transfused with light. So if you bring this uncorrected mind into your sitting, our mind and body will be filled with light.

[09:22]

You might not notice it at first, but it's happening. So we can say perhaps that, maybe we should put it, although you practice uncorrected mind, this is to let mind correct itself. And like most things, this is easy to say, but quite hard to do. But basically, the only correction you want to do is in your posture. And you want to leave your mind alone. And the attitude of acceptance is this culture. An attitude of acceptance so wide that it even accepts bad zazen, distracted thinking, whatever.

[10:43]

And there are many problems right at this point to really have this wide accepting mind because many aspects of our personality, boredom, fear, etc., come in at this point. But if as the basic posture of mind, again, we have a tendency to think whatever you hear is what you should do all the time. No, this is the basic posture. Within that you can follow your breath, you can concentrate on a phrase, you can do all kinds of things.

[11:45]

But in computer language, the default position is uncorrected mind. Uncorrected mind is this mind of very wide acceptance, which anticipates the mind of absolute acceptance, a way-seeking mind. You are beginning, you can think of it as like an ocean with lots of different currents. And in this pure water of Zazen, illuminated by accepting, by the attitude of acceptance, a current of way-seeking mind begins to appear. Now, mostly what happens is

[12:57]

the more you can leave your mind alone, and gently and eventually completely, and if not completely, at least change the direction. So the mind tends to... identify itself with itself or with body phenomena or breath. Because again, the three territories or four territories of continuity are phenomena, the body, the breath, or the field of mind itself, not the contents of mind.

[14:15]

Now you can take refuge in those and that as continuity rather than thought as continuity. A realized person is a person in Buddhism who does not find their continuity in thought. Quite simple. They find their continuity in body, breath, phenomena or the field of mind. Or in the all-at-onceness of all together. Now the more the mind is going in this direction, and the mind will tend to of itself go in this direction, as water tends to find its lowest point, we can say that mind has a kind of gradient.

[15:28]

And the gradient, you understand? Slope. A slope is a gradient. Okay. Gefälle. Okay. Oh, you're all my teachers, but I don't learn very much. The mind has a... Gradient. Toward concrescence. Concrescence means to grow together. the mind tends to grow together. It tends to enfold. It tends to move toward the more inclusive. For example, going from the contents of mind to the field of mind is going from toward the more inclusive.

[16:53]

This is the basic thing you want to happen. And it will not happen, really, as long as you are tied to thought as the definition refuge of continuity. And I think this is a brilliant vision. And it's also characteristic of why in Zen we don't have guided meditations. There's no metta, M-E-T-T-A. practice like in Vipassana Buddhism where you have various things you do in your meditation to develop compassion.

[17:54]

There's nothing wrong with doing this. The reason we don't do it in Zen is because the vision of what Zazen is is slightly different. So maybe we could call Zen META practice instead of METTA practice. So könnten wir Zen M-E M-E-T-A, Metta. Also im Unterschied, wir könnten deswegen Zen Metta Praxis nennen anstatt Metta Praxis. Metta mit doppelt T. Das ist ein Sanskrit-Termin für diese Art von Praxis, Metta, Meditation.

[18:57]

Don't worry. Cool, cool, cool. The door, the key, is this uncorrected mind or mind of acceptance that you hold to. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't have teachings. We just apply them in our everyday life rather than in our tzazen. Now, again, nobody does everything all the time or any one thing. So if you want to do metta practice sometimes, fine, go ahead. I chanted Namo Mirabutsu for a year.

[20:01]

In Zazen and walking around Namo Mirabutsu. This is a different school. This is pure land school. But I remember I asked the guru, I said, Pure Land is, you know, I'd like to understand Pure Land School better. Can I chant Namo Amida Butsi? Okay. Namukye Butsu is a little different, but Namamida Butsu. Namukye Butsu is fine. Nam-moh-ho-renge-kyo, you know, I tried too with... I used to chant that with Herbie Hancock. Yeah, he's a Buddhist. And I don't know if this should be on the tape.

[21:03]

Okay. So sometimes we do, and you may, as I said, part of early practice is recapitulating your life karma. All this occurs in zazen, much of it. And you don't interfere with it, because uncorrected mind means you don't try to clear your mind either. You let the mind clear itself. That's why your intention has to be very deep. If you want excitement or results, you should try a different practice. Because you have to have the patience of never having results.

[22:31]

If you have any intention inkling, you want results, mind will never take care of itself. You'll always interfere. This is one of the very points that make Zen practice so hard. So few people have the character or willingness or whatever it takes to just say, okay, all my life I'll sit here and, you know, whatever happens is fine. Life is short, zazen is long. This kind of point is what makes you an adept Zen practitioner.

[23:36]

You're just patient with this gorgeous thing you are. You need this big trust mind. Not measuring yourself, now I have to teach, or now I have to do this, or now I should look pretty good, I'm 35 years old, I better have some results. I'm just sitting here in the corner in my black robe and nothing ever happens. This way we become deeper and deeper. And mind begins to, as I said, enfold. grow together, become more and more inclusive, and finally has no boundaries, fills our interiority, reaches to everything.

[24:54]

And as I said, this vision of Zen is That we don't know what this mind is. We don't know what enlightenment is. We don't know what the possibilities in this world are. So this is also natural wisdom at the far end of the development of Buddhism that we want to leave Buddhism behind. Buddhism is not the truth. It can't tell us what life or the world should be like. We don't know. Even in consciousness in Buddhism, there's some kind of evolution. So then you can ask, why did... these Tang Dynasty folks, why were they so much smarter than us?

[26:08]

Why were they so much more realized? And there's no question in my mind, I would say that these guys Realization surpassed anybody I've ever heard of alive on the earth today. This is my observation and belief. So how can I say we're still evolving? Well, we have to look at the definition of what Buddhism is. Of what Zen is. It's a multi-generational. In other words, teaching is an external memory. Like language is external memory. No one human being could create German in one lifetime. German is a multi-generational creation.

[27:26]

Buddhism is a multi-generational creation. It has developed over generations. And it's also mutually realized. In other words, my realization depends on your realization. No matter how talented or smart I am or whatever I've got or how good Suzuki Roshi was as the teacher, still, whatever realization I have in any real sense depends on you. I cannot be independent of you. I need all of your energy and all of your realization if I'm going to have any realization.

[28:41]

So what these Tang Dynasty folks did is they created ideal conditions among themselves for mutual realization. Perhaps like scientists help each other even in competing. And athletes help each other. This is a practice of realization in which it requires the Sangha. So what's great about Tang and Sun dynasty Zen and Buddhism is the way in which they created a Sangha of mutual realization.

[29:42]

So in our primitive way, we're trying to do this in Johannesburg. In the Dharma Sangha in Europe. And in the development, too, of Western Buddhism in America and Europe. So there's this big Sangha which covers the West and Asia too. But that Sangha will only come to realization through the powerful realization of individuals and smaller Sanghas. People who know each other well and commit themselves to a mutual practice.

[30:55]

This is the vision, the manifest, is manifesting the vision of to be in accord with all sentience. This is a manifestation of compassion. You can't walk around with some generalization of compassion. Compassion only means something with you. And with you. And with the person you don't feel comfortable with. If your compassion doesn't extend to the person you don't feel comfortable with, there's no real sangha. And that energy of mutualization, it will not be present.

[31:55]

So compassion is also the expression or manifestation of the energy of mutual realization. So given that, Buddhism says, Zen says, we don't know where we're going, though, still. But with big trust mind, we trust where we're going. That's why Zen emphasizes way-seeking mind. It's a form of trusting where we're going. To trust this body and mind which you are. If you're not going to trust that, what are you going to trust?

[33:08]

Where does it start? It's not easy to truly trust body and mind. And then your friend and phenomena Now there's other practices to attune yourself, align yourself, nourish yourself through finding way-seeking mind. But I've spoken enough. Thank you very much. Can we sit for just a few minutes? And then we're supposed to have had lunch 15 minutes ago.

[34:12]

Thank you. Thank you very much for the intensity of your presence. For the clear bell of our common mind. Can we say that half an hour after lunch and cleanup we'll have the ceremony?

[37:40]

So it'd be nice if there was a little space between the cleanup and the ceremony. So if we eat and clean up, then let me know, and then we can start about half an hour after the cleanup. I'm looking forward to doing the ceremony.

[37:59]

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