There's lots of instances some people have more experiences than others. Now the question of whether that's already there or not, or we generate it, is actually an important question. I would say most, the average Zen teaching is based on the idea that's already there. That the original mind or some pure mind is there waiting for us to discover it. I think that's maybe useful pedagogically to some extent. But I think it's wrong. And in the end, when you base a practice, in other words, you have to have a conception of the world.

[01:01]

How it exists. What the mind is, what enlightenment is, and so forth. And teaching is based on that conception. And the conception of uncovering is just too simple. We're not uncovering the truth that's already there. We're generating the truth. Now you can see that you have this long body experience like with the telephone. More often with your daughter or your son or a close friend than you do with somebody who's calling to sell you a washing machine.

[02:21]

Oh, I knew you were going to call. I really wanted a washing machine. So there's a field that we have that we generate with another person. tends to be non-local. We can't explain it, but it seems to be the case. Or Rupert Sheldrake, he has this idea of morphological fields. He's an old friend of mine. He's a wonderful guy. And he did this film of a woman and her dog. Do you know about the film? Well, he put a camera on the dog and he put a camera on the woman.

[03:33]

And the woman went off shopping and she did various things. And after about, I don't know, an hour and a half, she said to her friend, maybe I should go back and... you know, see how my dog's doing. And here's the dog some miles away somewhere in England. And the dog goes... And then when the woman actually decides to go home, the dog actually goes up to the door and waits. But not all the dogs in the whole neighborhood get up and wait for him. Only her dog got up and waited. So it's clear we generate the field. It's not there to be discovered. Yeah. Even does a dog have its owner's nature?

[04:36]

It's an old Zen question. All right. Now, there's one understanding of, we should stop soon, one understanding of a Buddha field is that we live in this infinitely complex cosmos. And each world system has a Buddha. And those world systems are not just all out there somewhere, they interpenetrate this world system. Now this is a kind of mythology. It's a kind of mythology that everything was this big once and blew into a big bang and it all turned into the universe.

[05:54]

That's a kind of like... It's pretty close to mythology. But if you do, it's interesting. So we're in this world system. And what's the Buddha for our world system? The Buddha for our world system? Well, it's Shakyamuni Buddha. But it's also Maitreya Buddha. And what's the sense of Maitreya Buddha? It's an interesting idea. Because it's not like we're going to get ourselves in such a mess Buddha is going to come and rescue us. I mean, some of the conservative Protestant ministers in the United States Fundamentalists, they don't sound much different than fundamentalist Muslims.

[07:09]

They're saying, it was in the newspaper, that God has pulled back the veil and struck at the World Trade Center because of all the abortions. That's Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. I know, homosexuals. Because of homosexuals, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a whole bunch of things, God is punishing us. And other people say, if it gets really bad, God or somebody will come and save us. But Maitreya Buddha is not going to come and save us. After we save ourselves and don't need him or her, he'll appear.

[08:13]

In other words, the idea of Maitreya Buddha is that when we create a Buddha field, a Buddha will appear. When we somehow find out how to live together enough, we generate Buddha. And Maitreya Buddha is the name of that Buddha which will be generated will discover it through our own practice and way we live with each other. Of course, just when you do zazen, and you feel not the usual sense of boundaries.

[09:20]

This is a Buddha field. And when you join with others to practice, this is a Buddha field. This seminar is a Buddha field. It increases the possibility of a Buddha appearing. If you have the courage to recognize, You can imagine it's possible. If you can't imagine it's possible, then the Buddha field is weak. And there's no really reason you should be practicing Buddhism unless you can imagine the possibility of a Buddha. Not somewhere else, here.

[10:31]

So each of us, our practice is to make it possible that a Buddha might appear. And to recognize that even among ourselves, some of the qualities of Buddha are present. Okay, let's sit for a few minutes. You can recognize that this is a Buddha field. And you can lessen your comparative self. Fearful self. And at the same time not be afraid you're going to lose yourself. You can let yourself be drawn by the magnetism of practice.

[11:35]

Magnetism of Buddhafield. At the same time to feel that space where everything is center. It's a big space and you're not cut by anything. As I said, it's a wide, soft feeling.

[12:49]

And you can let this define you more. And recognize it as something essential in your own nature. You wouldn't even feel it. Recognize it if it wasn't part of your nature. Capacity of your nature. Capacity of your nature. and the quality, capacity of a Buddha.

[14:00]

You can know this as more your own potential. Your most intimate potential. Also we can say it's a Buddha quality. Knowing this we widen the experience of the Buddha field. And we likewise become wider. White, joyous and soft mind.

[15:43]

Amen. and this morning.

[17:29]

And somehow I want to continue with what we've been speaking about. But first does anybody want to bring something up? But first does anybody want to bring something up? I was thinking about impediments or obstructions to what you said and I found that implicitly there was or is this idea that when something is expanding or something is unfolding or when you create something which hasn't been there before, that it sort of pushes or shoves other things away, that there's place, room, or space for everything at once is an idea which is sort of strange or isn't yet common.

[18:49]

This is a field as a sign of obstruction. Can you start again? A little slower. Yeah. Something unfolds, something unfolds, something is created. It's a little early in the morning for me. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Try again. Something unfolds. Yeah. Something is created. Something expands. Sounds good, yeah. But I found in looking into myself that there is the implicit idea that when something new is created or when a space is created, when something unfolds, that something else is sort of shoved or pushed away, that it's not so common to see it as that there is room, place, space enough for everything. also the new things which develop. You don't want to lose anything.

[19:53]

No, it's just... You don't want to miss anything. Sorry. When I put a glass here, I have to put this away. I understand what you mean. But you want both the glass and the cup. I want to get rid of these instructions, that's all. I realized that this idea that something is created, or something is conceived, or something is created, there is such an unconscious, not so conscious thing inside, but I wanted it to be clearer, that something else has to disappear or deviate, that there is no room for everything at the same time, or something like that. That was what I thought, that one should have such an enclosed idea. Yeah, okay, so you asked the question rather philosophically. So, but I understand, do I understand it correctly that the obstruction is thinking you're losing something by, when it's replaced by something new?

[21:01]

Not quite. Not that. It's not about losing. It's about not being room enough or place or space enough for everything at once. Can I answer? Mm-hmm. I don't know exactly if it really fits, but I had an experience yesterday, when I work with this kind of field consciousness, and in opposite to my normal consciousness, when I concentrate what the person says to me, is that in this kind of field consciousness my memory works differently.

[22:03]

So if I come back in my memory to this kind of field consciousness, I can remember every detail, very precise, of a group. Not just what the person who directly spoke to me said, but I can remember Yeah, basically everything that is in this room, what the people wear, I mean, quite unimportant details even. It's all, it's kind of all at once, very precise there. And so, I don't know if that fits, but for me it was interesting that Normally we are trained as children or in our culture just to concentrate on the important things. So when a person speaks to you, you just remember what the person said.

[23:07]

But there's a consciousness that works quite differently to that. And it's... gives much more information, even if we think that's not important information, but it creates this field of awareness that just functions quite differently. German, please. I was just thinking about what Neil said. If everything is done at the same time, you lose something. And I don't know exactly if that's right. But yesterday it became clear to me that when I wasn't so aware of the field or concentrated on it, it became clear to me in the remembrance of it that the memory is also very different from what normally works in our memory, so that I can see from a group

[24:12]

When a person spoke to me, I could not only remember what this person said to me, but I could also very precisely remember the whole field, also in quotation marks unimportant details, clothes or hand movements of different people or facial expressions, so that everything was in a certain way present for me at the same time. And it occurred to me that my normal consciousness didn't work that way and my memory didn't work that way either, Yes? For me it was a kind of fundamental difference whether a Buddha field is filled or created.

[25:31]

Uncovered or created, yeah. It makes a tremendous difference in my consciousness and my ways of looking at things. It may sound a little exaggerated, but it sounds revolutionary to me. Revolutionary to say it's created, not uncovered. So, the traditional, common consciousness, which I also brought with me from my own biography, which is so religiously perhaps also colored somewhere, sometimes it happens that there is something out there,

[26:43]

My traditional consciousness, which is also dyed or colored by theological ideas, is that there is always something outside there, and like a little bee, I can buzz there and pick a little honey from the water field or something like that, but it's out there. Yeah, let's leave that, because Martin has something similar. That's a separate question than what you two are bringing up. So, anyone else to the point that Neil and Beate brought up? Well, I suppose that... Well, let me say first again, I don't think I... I don't think I really got across what I would have liked to have yesterday.

[28:03]

Maybe I... Maybe it... Maybe more got across than I expect, than I've seen that it feels like. But... Because it's a, again, it's a, it's a, it's like there's about 10 things here, all of them are familiar, but only one of them, if you move it slightly, do you understand, does the situation open up? So, yeah, oh yeah, sorry. I thought I was answering your question, so I didn't expect you to speak to me and... But I think first of all probably where it's about getting familiar with this sense of a field.

[29:18]

And that you carry it with you. And you intentionally establish it. Now, at first, excuse me, it does represent a kind of change. And it may feel like you're excluding some things. And whether it's what you meant or not, the feeling that you're losing something or excluding something by changed consciousness, is an actual problem.

[30:29]

But usually, because you can go back and forth, in the beginning you do go back and forth, And the back and forth is a kind of refuge because you can go back to your usual way and try this new way. And also the back and forth is part of the dynamic of enlightenment. And also this back and forth movement is the dynamics of enlightenment.

[31:30]

Because you go... You have some realization or some experience in meditation, etc. And then you lose that. And then you go back to it. And that process is a kind of builds energy. And it can break you. So you're going from the Imagined world to the absolute world. Then pretty soon the imagined world turns into the relative world. And you go from the sense of an unconditioned world to conditioned, unconditioned, relative, absolute, that kind of understanding. And that process of going back and forth isn't just delusionary, it actually helps you break through.

[32:34]

But as you get more familiar, you find out there's enough space for everything. Funny way nothing's given up. But in another way, you give up the way you used to care about things. And when you really recognize that you've spent 20 years caring about things that aren't important, That you recognize somehow in your body wasn't important. It's like sometimes people kind of weep for days because you lose what you used to care about and that's somehow A deep sadness to lose what you used to care about.

[34:09]

And it's also true that these seemingly small changes are pretty big, actually. Particularly when they're stabilized and when they continue over time. But one of the funny things, as Beate says, you do memory and how you're presently aware change. So, You know, for instance, if you're with a group of people in a restaurant who are, some have been practicing for a little while and some have been practicing for a long time.

[35:17]

And two or three rooms away there's some kind of music going on and the Beatles are singing Sunday, Sunday, isn't there a song like that, something like that? So you're sitting with these people, and you say, in the middle of a conversation, you say, oh, yes, but I thought it was Monday. And most people don't know what you're talking about, but two or three people say, oh, yes, but Sunday, Sunday. The more experienced meditators tend to know what was going on in the whole environment and not just be stuck to the one thing. Without a problem, just notice.

[36:20]

Now the question about uncovered or generated. Martin? My question or my feeling would like to bring in is also about the Buddhafield being uncovered or created. that I have made the experience that I have been discovered by this Buddha field, that I have created it. In the rare occasions where I had experiences here, which I call the experience of the Buddha field, I had the feeling that I was discovered from the Buddha field.

[37:43]

It's true that I brought some effort into it and I had some intention before. But the moment there was this kind of shift to consciousness, it felt more like, oh, here it is. It came to me, I had done something, but then it was like, oh, suddenly I was beginning to be something which has always been there. That was my feeling. Of course it takes, I realized also it takes a certain energy of holding or balancing or staying in this state. It's rather difficult, but it means some capability to stay there. I had the feeling at that moment that I had done it on purpose, that I had sat down before, that I had done it on purpose, that I had done it on purpose, but at that moment when the origin of consciousness came, I had the feeling, yes, there it is somehow.

[39:11]

I didn't have the feeling that I had done it, but rather that I had been discovered by it. Computing that, I would even say, um, it seemed, uh, it seemed ridiculous to do it back then. to create something wonderful as the space of connectedness. It's like that. Not something I can create. Don't underestimate yourself. Okay. So, just a minute. Did you have something to, did you finish what you were saying before?

[40:11]

Good enough? Okay. Yes. You're speaking to this point. Yes. In the Buddha legend there is a point, when the brother decided to overcome the suffering, where it is described that he remembered his childhood, where he was on the land with his father and there was a feeling of continuity, a feeling of unity or conciseness. And that was a motivation for him to go this way. In the legend of the Buddha, when he sort of decided to tread on the path, he remembered in his childhood there was a situation or a time when he was sort of in a unity with his father. With the whole field? which included a feeling of bliss.

[41:15]

That's what he remembered then. And I have remembrances in my childhood, in those situations too, so that I can sort of... I feel that there's something about the Buddha which is similar to mine, my experiences. I think these remembrances, if not a conscious but a sort of subconscious reason that I choose this path. I hope so. or something that can be discovered, that is present and can be discovered, or whether you really have to create this buddha field, so to speak, where is the connection there?

[42:23]

And so my question is, isn't there something given, something which can be discovered or unveiled, or really is it created by us, by me? Oh, yes. Yes. I want to get before the question which the others pointed out. Why do you want to do that? Yeah, go ahead. Is it to the point, more or less? All right. Because I haven't quite understood what is the Buddha field. And how do I get there?

[43:30]

Is that your question? Oh yeah, okay. Okay. There's no question that experiences often feel like it was already there or we uncovered something. And that feeling is... supported by our basic cultural view. That somehow the world exists separate from us. Now, that's the very point at which you're either a Christian or a Buddhist. Now, when people say, oh, all religions are the same and you can practice Buddhism and be a Christian, I don't think it's true.

[44:50]

All religions aren't the same. There isn't one truth. If you think there's one truth, then you're a Christian. Then you better figure out what that truth is and get on with it. Okay. doesn't mean a Christian can't make use of many Buddhist practices. And vice versa. Okay. But the sense that something... that the world exists separate from us or there before us is a theological idea.

[45:59]

And if you believe that, it's virtually the same as believing a God is there before us, which created us. I mean, it may make a difference to a scientist or a believing Christian, this distinction, but to a Buddhist, they both fall into the same category. But if you really immerse yourself in the first noble truth, which is suffering, which is change, actually, That everything, everything, everything is changing. And change changes within itself. So in that change, there's both suffering and hope. So the second noble truth is there's hope, there's a cause of suffering, and there's an end of suffering.

[47:26]

Okay. That doesn't mean if you do immerse yourself in that fully, you still may have experiences of uncovering And still may have experienced the Uncovering. But it makes a difference, but you'll understand the Uncovering somewhat differently. And it really makes a difference in how you teach.

[48:30]

Now, this is actually a... I'm very clear about this point, by the way. Very clear. But I have a book here in my room, Miletus, by a man described as the most famous Chinese Zen master known in the world. I have two or three books for P.S. because they were published recently. I'm interested in how he describes ordinary everyday Chinese Zen practice. Yeah, and he's probably an enlightened person, he seems to be. But his pedagogy is clearly based on uncovering. But in my opinion, he's simply wrong. But it's a pedagogy that works up to a point.

[49:41]

I think an image you can hold is a good part of the image of the Big Bang. is the big bang doesn't occur in space. It makes space as it opens up. And we're making space all the time. Now, it's very useful, it's helpful, well understood, that it's helpful to use sound to enter a field. So if I want to enter the field of this room, there's various ways I can shift to that. So I'm driving here.

[51:06]

And I'm talking with Paul and Marie-Louise and the baby and so forth. And background mind and field consciousness kind of is in the background. And the background mind and the field consciousness is a little bit in the background. And I drive and so on. But it's because I've been practicing a long time, it's still there. I'm still even driving in that kind of field. But when I come here, I have to shift into a more pronounced field consciousness. So one thing I do, I can... hear the sounds of the kids and people walking upstairs and a bird and it generates a field.

[52:09]

Was it there before I felt it? I connected the dots. If it was there before I generated it, then infinite possibilities are there before I generate it. And that's the same as saying you create it. Out of infinite possibilities, there's none unless you create it. So there are infinite possibilities, is what change means. Virtually infinite possibilities, but situationally located. as they used to say with typewriters before there were computers.

[53:13]

It would take a person typing all the combinations on an ordinary typewriter something like 286 years of 24-hour days. And I don't know if that's right, but maybe a contemporary computer could do it in a few minutes, but still. But still, in any even small situation, there's an immense number of possibilities. But also in a very small situation there is an immense number of possibilities.

[54:14]

Then, once you establish a field, like with sound, That's a kind of mind that I can transfer that field to the group. To us here. Now I thought maybe I'd gone far enough with this field thing and I should change the topic to some particular teaching. But it's so important, the five ranks, what's considered the highest teaching in both Rinzai and Soto is the five ranks, and five ranks is nothing but what I'm talking about.

[55:27]

Okay. But the five ranks, unless you're pretty advanced in practice, mature in practice, seems simple. So it's not taught really until people are pretty mature in practice. But then there's always new people, see. Teach me the five ranks. Okay. So actually it was for a long time a secret teaching, so you couldn't ask about it. Okay. Okay, so if I try to review this in some way,

[56:48]

I start again from something simple. What this situation is, is what we perceive. For us it has no other difference. It has no other reality than what we perceive. And We can perceive it in a variety of ways. And you have a choice about that. How do you make that choice? How do you even have a choice? You don't have a choice unless you can experience the moment. The moment is where the trivia is. And as many of you know, I use the word trivia because it means three roads, trivia.

[58:03]

Each road is a fork. Each moment is a fork. The road that comes, two choices. As you know, we have a saying in Zen, when you come to a fork, take it. Or leave it. Take it or leave it, yeah. It's nearly the same. Okay. And the four really is whether you're open to Dharma or you're open to karma. If you choose usual mind, you're open to karma. Yeah, if you choose Buddha mind, I don't know what we're going to call it, you're open to Dharma.

[59:18]

Okay, so how do you experience, how do you slow your consciousness down enough to experience a particular moment? What is a particular moment? How long is a particular moment? That's sort of up to you. It's up to your experience of what is a moment. So first of all, as I said, you should at least know that each moment is unique. And not repeatable. It's also good to know that a moment

[60:20]

Is its own time. Or is something not measurable. You can die in a moment. Your life can change in a moment. A moment can cover your whole life. Or end your life. Now this relates to the sense of knowing, as I spoke a little bit in this seminar, a tiny bit, that each of us is in his or her own time. So I spoke about a moment as something unique. Okay, I'm also speaking about a moment as a kind of time.

[61:51]

Okay, now in this sense, I would like the feeling of time to arise from you. So you have a feeling of being able to be in your own time. And what is your own time? Well, it's your heartbeat, it's your breathing, it's your metabolism. You are time. Your life is your time. Your lived time is time. This bell has its own time. Each thing has its own time. Even this. So You can't separate time from the extensions of physical objects.

[63:07]

So you are time. But not everyone's time. You're your own time. Now, what I'm suggesting in this sense of a Buddha field is you have the ability to hold your own time independent of other people's times and independent of clock time. dass ihr eure eigene Zeit haltet und auch aufrechterhaltet, unabhängig von der Zeit anderer Menschen und auch unabhängig von der Urzeit. And you learn to arrange your time in relationship to other people. So I try to play with this with Sophia. She's definitely in her own time. And I'm definitely in my own time. And sometimes they don't coordinate. It's a very different idea of what's gonna happen.

[64:23]

So I try when I even lean toward her to lean into her time and not bring my time kind of right into her face. And if you have a feeling that you can approach animals differently too, dogs, things like that, you know, a barking dog. If you get in the dog's time, you can approach a dog very differently than when you're in your own time. Sukhiroshi was especially good at that. A number of times I saw in the 60s quite crazy people in our building in San Francisco. Sometimes crazy just because they were crazy and sometimes crazy because they lived in the 60s.

[65:42]

And even sometimes moving around with a knife or... And, you know, Suker should come in the building and we're all kind of like, what do we do with this guy, you know? Sukhirashi would just walk right up to the person, stand right beside him, how are you today? Oh, I'm feeling so good today. Wouldn't it? You know, there's a difference in height. Wouldn't it? Let's go outside. Oh, that's a good idea. And he walked in the door, opened the door, and said, have a nice day, and closed the door. But I mean, it's like he could see the time where there is no danger in this person. So each person has their own time.

[67:17]

You have your own time. You always take your time. And you don't unify your time with other people's time. You might synchronize it, harmonize it, mesh it together, but you don't unify it. Rarely anyway do you unify it. You don't want to sacrifice your own time. It has to be pretty important to do it. So that means this experience, if I'm talking about this aspect of what I'm calling a Buddha field,

[68:27]

You always have a feeling you're in a slightly different time than other people. And you go out of your time a little to be with a person and you bring them into your time a little bit. And if you want some kind of intimacy with a person, you know? They think they may not realize they're in their own time. They think they're in the general time of Sunday morning, etc. But if you look closely, you can see they're in their own time. And you can step up into their space or time.

[69:37]

So one aspect of this Buddha field is that there's a kind of time dimension rooted in your own time. How you're ripening, how you understand how you're breathing, how your heart is beating, and so forth. I think that's enough for the first part of this morning. Yes? The question of timelessness, I would like to address that. There is also the question The question of timelessness I would like to hear something about and this is this idea that you can live timelessly and may live timelessly.

[70:43]

Yeah, and sight loss disappeared from Berlin, huh? Yeah, it seems so. There used to be a center called sight loss and I guess it had its time. Maybe we can speak about that. So I see you in half an hour. To say hello again. You know, I can say something like this sense of uniqueness. The uniqueness of each moment. It's something like feeling each moment cut loose from the previous and the succeeding moment. Yeah, but how can we have some such experience?

[71:57]

But I'll bet you... How do you say that in German? I'll bet you. I'll bet you. I'll bet you that... When you felt particularly happy or free, it's actually a moment that's somehow been cut loose from the preceding and succeeding moments. But how do we in the ordinary course of things How do we... Do you know the word to course?

[73:04]

They say Avalokiteshvara courses is actually the way it is. Heart Sutra. How do we Of course, in each moment. My fatherly responsibilities are being held. In the topography of each moment. Or the landscape. Now I spoke about the timescape in a sense of each moment. But we can say Buddhism is Dharmasm. And Dharma means to, in the simplest and deepest sense, means to

[74:06]

live through each individual moment. How do you even experience a moment? They just go right by. One of the most basic again is your breath. We can speak about something like a breath moment. Let's take moments away from, I don't know, some kind of idea and just... What are our brief units of experience? One is our breath. And one of the practices, Theravadan practices in meditation is to feel the breath on each nostril. Now, the advantage to that kind of practice is you really begin to have a finer gradation of experience than just a breath, because it's real short, a touch on the nose.

[75:42]

And you really, most people, unless you do some practice like that, don't notice that we are constantly shifting from one nostril to the other in our breathing. And one nostril relates to one side of the brain and the other nostril relates to the other side of the brain. You're in a slightly different mind depending on which nostril you're breathing through primarily. And you can emphasize the difference and explore it for yourself. And of course you can start feeling the little space of melting at the top of a breath and at the bottom of a breath. The top of a breath melting and the bottom of a breath melting are somewhat different.

[77:19]

And you can let yourself sort of disappear in either. And it's a slightly different moment. It's a moment though. It's a moment. Yeah, let's go. It's a moment. It's a moment that can be Much shorter than a breath. It's a very small part of a breath. But you're refining and defining your experience of a moment. A physiological moment. And then there's psychological moments.

[78:31]

It's good in practice, though, to really start trying to root yourself in physiological moments as a base rather than psychological moments. You see, the moment is the seed of a Buddha field. The moment, whether you recognize it or not, is the seed of usual field or Buddha field. Or maybe let's not call it a Buddha field because it's not a Buddha field until there's a particular content in the field. Or just the... But it's also the case that if you just experience... as a field, you can realize enlightenment in this way.

[79:42]

But that enlightenment still is not a Buddha enlightenment until it's in the context of Buddhist practice. Yeah, there's non-Buddhist samadhi and non-Buddhist enlightenment. So maybe I should just say a field or something like that. I don't know, it's such a strange word, a meadow. Maybe I should just say a field. It's a personal word. Maybe a meadow. Maybe a moor.

[80:45]

A moor that lights up. I don't know either. A swamp? No. A swamp, better not. Now one way to notice a moment is actually through the way we use language. Through the way the body engages in language. For example, if I just say, well, la-da-da-da-da-da, yet if, at that if, there's a pause.

[81:54]

Yeah, and you wait for something to happen. If it's going to rain, There's a little feeling there and there's a space of what's going to happen. We could say that space is a moment. There's actually a certain power in it. If. Or say you're thinking of asking a question. Or making a statement of some kind. And all ears and eyes are upon you. It's funny that makes a difference if just one person is listening.

[82:56]

But you want to say something. And there's a kind of welling up toward what you're going to say. But there's a kind of resistance too. And if you're psychologically somewhat weak, you have ideas like, is it going to be smart enough? Am I going to embarrass myself? Am I going to reveal who I really am? Everyone's going to see I'm not so good as I want them to think I am. So if you have that kind of psychological weakness, you don't ask questions. Or make statements. Yeah, but we all have that some kind of psychological weakness like that. And sometimes it's just a kind of resistance because you have a responsibility when you speak before a lot of people.

[84:19]

So it's not just negative, it's also a kind of responsibility to speak clearly and well. And if you can shift from am I smart enough to I want to be responsible and say something, then it's a similar resistance, but it's much stronger, you're much more powerful. And then you have to push through that resistance. So some kind of statement comes out. But that moment where you're resisting and you're going to be revealed... And yet you release and you say something.

[85:31]

That's also a moment. It's a moment where there's some kind of power. A power of vulnerability and a power of acting. Yeah, but if you know that power, it's also there in your thinking. You're thinking about something. There's a tendency to think about it in the usual way. But you have some intuition. You want to go somewhere where you haven't gone before. There's a line I've been in. Always liked in E.E.

[86:46]

Cummings' most famous poem, probably. Somewhere I've never traveled. Gladly beyond any experience. Somewhere we've never traveled gladly beyond any experience. And you were not talking about the one who yearns to travel, but the one who travels. And travels beyond the familiar experience. Even in your thinking, there's this kind of moment where there's a shift into not knowing and just the usual knowing.

[87:56]

So we can begin to get a feeling of of the potentiality of a moment. And when you use a mantra, a mantra is to bring a phrase or a word into the physical world. And as almost all of you know, Zen uses ordinary phrases in a mantra-like way. And one of the most common, we come back to often in the Dharma Sangha, is just now is enough.

[89:03]

But, okay, Just, you don't say just now is enough. Just is a moment. Just this. If I hold the bill, this. Like you're in a court case and you're presenting some evidence. This bell used to hit the poor monk. This bell. Just this. So the word has some power. Just. Yes. Okay, just now.

[90:17]

Now has a, stops, now. Now. And is, has all, is connective, everything is. It's the shift from each to every. Yeah, it's the shift that brings the phrase into you. Die Verschiebung, die den Satz zu euch oder in euch herein bringt. Is it enough or is it not enough? Is es genug oder ist es nicht genug? So, just now, okay, but then it goes, oh, it's not enough or it is enough. So, is has its own power.

[91:20]

Gerade jetzt ist es, ja, oder ist es nicht genug. Und dadurch ist dieses ist, hat seine eigene Kraft und Stärke. Then if you come to enough, There's some disappearance there. Some relaxation. Enough. Enough is enough. So if you want to work with a wado, which literally means the power at the source of a word, means the energy that's there just before you speak. So it's sometimes called the head of a word or the source of a word. So if you're saying the words in your mind, this is not not what we mean by practice.

[92:33]

Feel each word rooted in the body and in energy. From now maybe you're getting a feeling of how you can identify in yourself a moment. And then to bring that knowing of what a moment is into your own power, into empowering yourself. Such a simple thing. The resources, the possibilities that are available to us in just ordinary being alive. Just... Genau jetzt.

[93:46]

Now. Jetzt. Is. Ist. Enough. Now, when you start saying it, when you start working with the phrase, You say it aloud for a while to yourself. Till you really get the feeling and the energy or the power in the words. So that each word is a moment. And then... if you're saying it silently, you still feel that in yourself. And it's almost like a theater piece. You enact it. It's acted. It's actualized. And when it's actualized, it has power to, as Martin says,

[94:48]

Let the Buddha field discover you. Your wide boundaries call you.

[95:02]

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