Excuse me for not being with you this morning in the Zendo. But today, but today or tomorrow morning or sometime, I have an absolute limit when I have to finish a festschrift. I don't have to, in America I always have to explain what a festschrift is, but here I don't think so. For Michael Murphy. Also heute, oder ich weiß nicht, vielleicht morgen früh, ist mein absolut letzter Moment, wo ich meinen Beitrag zur Festschrift von Michael Murphy einschicken kann. So they want to present it to him on his 80th birthday, which is pretty soon. Und die wollen sie ihm an seinem 80. Geburtstag überreichen, und dieser Geburtstag ist ziemlich bald. This book they're putting together.

[01:01]

And, you know, how do you write a festschrift? I don't know. Particularly someone you know as well as I know Michael. How does the right hand write to the left hand? Yeah. And is it, should it be a violin or, a violin, a violin, a valentine or a goodbye? I mean, at 80, you know, I'm not 80 yet, but it's all getting close to goodbye time. Also, mit 80, ich bin noch nicht ganz 80, aber es ist, alles kommt dieser Abschiedszeit schon sehr nah. And long goodbyes. Long goodbyes? Lange auf Wiedersehensabschiede. Yeah, I mean, anyway.

[02:05]

Oh, now I got it. She's too young to understand. Oh dear, okay. So anyway, I'm not going to tell you what I'm writing. But he went to India and it changed his life. And he started meditating. And he meditated in much of his first adult decade, his 20s and into his 30s. Really, eight hours a day. I mean, it's as natural to him as sleeping. I've seen him sit down in his house and, you know, workmen come and they put a ladder up over him and they start working.

[03:18]

And I think he worked as a bellhop in the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco when he wasn't meditating eight hours a day. But he has a vision of the world. There's no reason why we shouldn't be friends. And so he took his family summer estate on Big Sur. And he invited everyone he thought might have something to say to come and talk. As some of you would know, Fritz Perls lived there for some years, many years.

[04:24]

Gregory Bateson did, many people did. Esalen Institute. Oh, I didn't say the name of the place. You said, oh. Yeah, that helps, I guess. Yeah, yes, yeah, I'm sorry. Fritz Perl said to me once, I didn't know him very well, but he said to me once, I'm the Zen master at Esalen. I said, oh, really? And Fritz Perls said to me, and I don't know him very well, but he said, I am the Zen Master in Iceland. So what I'm talking about also is I don't know, the biological aspect of practice.

[05:37]

If we are going to take the one suchness of mind and body, then How is the body, you know, really we have to take account of how the body participates in this singular suchness. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And this is so interesting to me, I almost can't talk about it.

[06:42]

And because it's so interesting, I think maybe it's boring to you. I don't know why. What I think is interesting should be boring to you, but probably is. Und weil es für mich so interessant ist, denke ich, dass es für euch langweilig ist. Wieso soll das, was für mich interessant ist, für euch interessant sein? Okay, let me speak. I'm still talking about these two guys, Da Wu and Wen Wu, standing next to each other. Now, again, let me go into a kind of craft that really is pretty much limited to monastic practice. a kind of craft pretty much limited to monastic practice.

[08:00]

And I'm trying to speak about the drama of worldview shifts And the ordinariness of momentary shifts that are occurring all the time, which have an equivalency. Because I decided in looking at this koan that I ought to bring you as much as I could into what I'm fairly sure is the world, the experienced worldview, the experienced world of these two fellows. And again, this is in the light of trying to understand our human interactive life.

[09:19]

And I'm not emphasizing better or worse, but the different. Ich betone hier nicht besser oder etwas schlechteres, sondern anderes. And what can we learn from these differences? Jean-Luc Nancy, a French philosopher, I enjoy reading. Jean-Luc Nancy, ein französischer Philosoph, den ich gerne lese, says, being is always being with. Sein ist immer Mitsein, mit etwas, mit jemand. Being is always we. Sein ist immer wir. I mean, right, simply now I'm speaking. You didn't create this language. The language is something we share.

[10:33]

This is being with. Also, ich spreche hier. Wir teilen eine Sprache, die habt ihr nicht erfunden. Das ist dieses... But really, what is being with, being with oneself, being with others, and being with phenomena? Now, we have to bring the paradigm and daily experience, the need for privacy and individualism into our practice life. Okay, that's all right. Yeah. Being with phenomena, oneself and others. It's been the particular emphasis of Buddhism and yogic culture.

[11:42]

But we can only go there if we also respect our need for individual or personal privacy and a sense of ourselves as individuals. Okay. Now, as I've spoken about, I always say, because I hate to repeat myself, but I do it anyway. As I've spoken several times recently, for instance, in monastic life, or in Christown, we take a board, wooden board, and wrap it with cloth, and we clean the eating board, meal board, in front of the a Zazen place.

[12:49]

And when we get to the end of the eating meal board, As many of you know, some of you know, you stop and you lift it up and bow and then you do the next meal boy. This stop is not different than Dawu's stop at the end of the case. And it's not different than the larger sense which this experience of the one who's not busy functions.

[13:52]

It functions within the larger experience. Okay, so when I go to the altar, I walk up to the altar. Yeah, that's what I do. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I've been there before. And I get up there and I say, where am I? Hi Buddha. And I take a mental, physical posture. Influenced by the altar and the Buddha. And my spine and Buddha's spine is lined up.

[15:10]

Yeah, I know what it means. Okay. And in each of this always, excuse me for coming back to pause for the particular, et cetera, in each of these there's a pause. This is a kind of biology of mind and body. You build this kind of pause in yogic practice into everything you do. Du baust dieses Anhalten in der yogischen Praxis in alles, was du tust, hinein ein. You're always stopping and starting. Du tust immer anhalten und wieder weitermachen, anfangen, anhalten, anfangen. Which is equivalent to or resonant with, for instance, perceptual psychotic scanning.

[16:12]

Not psychotic scanning, that's another problem. Psychotic scanning. So you're always, you know, actually putting together a picture from scanning. Psychotic. Okay. Okay. That's the fact of our relationship. It's so fast you can't consciously perceive it. But you can feel it. Okay, now, and you feel it in the context of the world's disintegrating. Diverging. But this moment there's a scene though.

[17:14]

And you feel the convergence of it. Now let me just stay with that for a moment. You feel the convergence of it. Now we don't have the subject-object separation. We just feel the convergence of it. And a kind of perceptual symmetry, mind percept symmetry occurs. You know, I stopped. Am I getting too far out? Shall I stop? But I'm going to go on. You're stuck with it. So a kind of symmetry occurs. When I look over here, actually, I'm not only looking over here, I'm breaking that symmetry.

[18:19]

Interrupting that symmetry. This is a fact. And that's an experience. It's experienced. Experienceable. Richard. What? I've lost it. And if I can't feel it, maybe nobody can feel it. Okay. Okay. She's happy. She says she can't follow what I'm speaking about and so maybe everyone can't follow it. That's what I was worried about. Don't worry. It's not a language thing. Yeah, I know. So let's just continue. Yeah, well, I'll just do the best I can and if it's too much or too little... Or under the top? Okay. This sense of a symmetry which is interrupted is experienceable.

[19:37]

Okay. And I could go into how practice leads to this being experienceable. Okay, but let me stay with the convergence of the moment. And so the moment... Whatever appears, appears. And it appears in the degree to which you're able to be still and your sense is functioning, etc.

[20:39]

It also appears, we could say, as six objects. In other words, one of the things you practice is seeing the world through the six senses, including the mind, as six objects. You don't simply smear them together. Unify them immediately. You feel the color. You feel the sound. You feel the tangibleness, the touch of it, etc. And you see the concept of it. And I see the flowers outside the window, past Uli's head.

[22:01]

And there's color and there's movement. And there's Marie-Louise's voice. And there's the concept of the flower. All those are present. And you can experiment with like taking the concept away and just having the flower or emphasizing the color or its movement, etc. Now, if our practice is pointing at the mind, investigating this mind and body, A Buddhist yogic education goes on for a long time.

[23:02]

But it's not tedious. But you notice how you notice, and you break that noticing into its components. The five skandhas are about how you break into components the experience of consciousness. The six objects is how you break perception into its components. And you experience its components. So if there's a convergence, the convergence is also of the five skandhas and the six components of perception and so forth.

[24:17]

Now you don't have to break this down. Five skandhas. Yeah, there could be six. So you break this down, you break things down into their, break things up perhaps, into their components. Yeah, not a lot. A few times. If you do it a few times, and you do it carefully, a few times. I used to do it at the breakfast table with the flowers around the breakfast table. Yeah, and after a while, it just becomes kind of part of perception. Okay. Okay. So now I'm back again with this convergence of appearance.

[25:36]

Now, when you experience this convergence of appearance, what else do you experience? You experience the space in which it occurs. Okay. And that is actually the fifth jhana or the first formless jhana. And as I spoke at Rostenberg about it. It's very close to the word Raum in German, which I guess means room as well as space. So you experience the space which allows things to appear.

[26:39]

You feel the space of the appearance and the space that's created by the appearance. Objects, there's space between objects and there's the space created by objects. And you begin to feel your own space, your lungs, the breathing, the space of the body. It's there in that space. It's part of that space. Okay. Now, What is the basis of that space that you experience?

[27:59]

Well, it's mind. This experience of space as the condition of appearance is in itself rests in consciousness, in mind. The basis of the space is mind. Okay, and that's the second formless jhana. Now you jumped all over this stuff. I didn't translate. Oh, really? Yeah. I jumped all over this stuff. Okay. I'll let you jump all over it for a while. Okay, thanks. Okay. That's too bad. So I can't recall it. Well, what you said was good enough, though. Okay. I thought. Okay. Is this as difficult as it sounds?

[29:03]

Are we doing okay together? Okay. I'm having fun. I don't know. Wow. Okay. So. Okay. So. Now, that's the second jhana, second formless jhana, that mind is the basis of space. This is not physics, it's experiential, it's an experiential territory. Now, the third jhana is contingency, the third formless jhana. Like a contingency plan?

[30:03]

Yeah, like a contingency plan. We're having a world view shift here. She's a firefighter at Crestone, and she's been up since early in the morning checking the fire, which is fairly near Crestone. There's a fire of about 5,000 acres. That's 2,200 hectares. And it's about, I'd say, 12 or 15 miles from Creston, from the Creston Zen Center. And it seems to be... They keep saying it's contained and under control, and it probably is, but every day it's about 1,000 acres bigger.

[31:09]

And so far, no one thinks it's a direct threat, but it's a little scary. It's huge flames. I've seen it on the news. It's burning from the sand dunes up over the mountains to the other side. Yeah, and it's... I'm not too worried, but I'm, of course, monitoring it. Mostly through her, because they're sending her the information. Yeah. Oh, contingency. Yeah, and... As a firefighter, volunteer firefighter, they have contingency plans. Oh, contingency means simply in this case, it could be otherwise.

[32:12]

Okay, so you have a situation, a scene in front of you. And you can see that it occurs, that you're also perceiving the feeling, knowing the space of it as well as the particulars of it, the six objects of it. And one of the recognitions that comes through the practice of the six objects Und eine der Erkenntnisse, die durch die Praxis der sechs Objekte entsteht, dass dir nur diese Stücke des Kuchens bekannt sind.

[33:14]

Es könnte auch ganz anders sein. So you feel the... the perceptual construct, you feel the space and you feel it could be otherwise. And fourth, the fourth formless jhana, is it It might not be perceived at all. Non-perception. Okay. So that's that part of this morning's talk.

[34:15]

Whatever it's called. Whoa, we're running out of time. Okay. Indian dance, South Indian dance. In South Indian dance, if you've ever watched or seen it or seen films of it. I'm always embarrassed to imitate it, but anyway, somebody puts their hand out. And then they turn their head to the left. And then they turn their eyes to the right. And then they raise another arm. Those are all these pauses. And each one is held.

[35:24]

It's not a flow exactly. It's a series of mudras, a series of mental, physical postures. So the mudra is made, then the head is moved and held, the eyes are turned and held, everything is held for a moment. I would like to say, I'm not saying we, well, I will say, I'm not saying we should live this way. We're just walking around like a movie stopped over and over again, you know. But I'm saying, not that we should, but we could. And you may not notice it, but I'm convinced that I live that way. I stop as much as I start. Ich halte bestimmt so oft an, wie ich anfange.

[36:47]

Okay. Okay. Now, when you begin to feel the pulse of situations... When you begin to feel the pulse of situations... And I would... I would say, I mean, Eric Erickson, not Erickson, Milton Erickson, probably, my guess is, was a master at this somehow. Okay, now if you go, say that you're in Kaufhof. There's a large number of people around the counter. There's a sale. And everyone's pushing this way and that way. But actually if you can feel this stillness in yourself you can feel the stillness in each person but it's not really recognized.

[38:05]

And it's not just a physical stillness. There's also a cognitive opening and closure. Now, if you feel in yourself cognitive open and closure. You're not just thinking continuously. There's an appearance, appearance, appearance, receiving, releasing, receiving, releasing. Also, wenn du in dir selber dieses kognitives Öffnen und Schließen spürst, es ist nicht so, als dass du die ganze Zeit laufend denkst, sondern es ist ein Empfangen, wahrnehmen, empfangen. One person can change the whole feeling of the crowd.

[39:08]

If you can feel that ma point, that point at which the stillness is coming together, you can start acting within the stillness of movement. This is a basic yogic training in Zen, particularly for ceremonies. Where you get everyone to participate. But it's going on all the time. Okay, part of monastic life is to learn this. So mental postures are, the unit of a mental posture is a physical ritual.

[40:12]

The unit of a mental posture is a physical ritual. The unit of a mental posture is a physical ritual. And again, let me give you the most easy to easily accessible example. Also, lasst mich das am einfachst zugängliches Beispiel geben. The bow. Die Verbeugung. Okay. Now, Jean-Luc Nancy says that being with another is an abandonment of one, an exposure, an abandonment of oneself to another. Jean-Luc Nancy hat gesagt, mit jemand zusammen sein ist ein Verstoßen

[41:15]

It's a wonderful, noble idea. And in Buddhism, it's the bow. Okay, so, you know, again, we emphasize it to some extent here, and I don't, you know, have to do it, but if you want to, that's it. So the bow starts down here. You bring your hands together. Bring it up through your chakras with the heel of your hands. Und ihr bringt es durch eure Chakren mit der sozusagen Ferse eurer Handfläche nach oben. Bis ihr beim Herzchakra seid. And there is a little stop at each chakra. It's not noticeable, but there is a little feel stop at each chakra. Und da ist ein klitzekleines Anhalten bei jedem Chakra. Das ist nicht ein wirkliches Anhalten, sondern wie ein Again, typically, you're teaching yourself to activate, actualize the chakras with each bow.

[42:34]

Okay. And when you have your hands at this chakra, there's actually usually a noticeable stop. Then you lift your hands up into shared space. It has to go somewhere, so the rule is it's the distance of the tip of your fingers to the tip of your nose, that distance. And then you don't bow like that, you bring your body forward. And you disappear, you abandon yourself in the bow into the mutual space. And you could call that a Sambhogakaya bow. Because you're not in the bow emphasizing your personality, etc.,

[43:41]

You're emphasizing your body as chakras, which is the Sambhogakaya bliss body. Usually, I don't know. I don't know. Okay. And then... In effect, if the other person is there, there's a kind of unity of this, let's say, of a kind of shared Sambhogakaya body. Okay. Now if you do this, if you practice it, even without knowing about it, it starts happening in this way.

[44:55]

So the bow we do, passing each other, is, yeah, you can say it's a ritual and you do it as a ritual. But it's also an opportunity to abandon yourself into the space of the other. And even if you don't, the other person doesn't know anything, it's still for yourself. It's a wonderful feeling. Yeah. Now, since I'll never speak about it again, are you willing to have another five minutes? Legs up. Heads up. Okay. I just want to do my thinking about California and so my Silicon Valley psilocybin riff.

[46:24]

I have my sax here. The not-so-secret history of Silicon Valley is to an amazing degree rooted in psychedelics. The founder of Sun Systems, Steven Jobs, Steven Wozniak, they're all into psychedelics. Sun Systems, Steven Etwas and Steven Wozniak. And the two Steves were also involved with Buddhism and practiced with Kobunshino.

[47:31]

And we say, I mean I've told you the story often of Sukershi saying, what he noticed in America is we do things with one hand. And we say, and that's what Suzuki Roshi always said, what he notices in the West is that we only do things with one hand. The mouse and the GUI, the Graphic User Interface. The mouse and this Frank GUI in German. Graphic User Interface. Interface. And the Ethernet. And the laser printing all came out of the Xerox laboratory at the time. And Chester Carlson, who invented xerography, who I knew was the main funder of Tassajara.

[48:36]

And it's the Xerox laboratory in Palo Alto. which developed, as I said, the Ethernet, the mouse, the graphic user interface, laser printing and so forth. And when I read, you know, and I And as some of you know, I did the first and only LSD conference in the United States in the 60s. And I happened to be at Harvard when Leary and Alpert and Andrew Weil and now the food guru and all were there. Leary, Alpert, Metzner, Andrew Weil.

[49:48]

This was all about a perceptual shift. And what's interesting to me, particularly, some of it is the fact that I use the computer in the way Steve Jobs would like me to use it. Marie-Louise uses it the way it's productive and fast, which is an architect, they do it with the keyboard. But the Buddhist Elfman comes in to do it with two hands and to use visual icons as well as, so you don't think all the time, you're using visual icons and then shifting to thinking. But anyway, what I started to say, what particularly interests me,

[50:52]

is that a number of the Silicon Valley pioneers said, it's psychedelics which made me realize everything could be otherwise. Everything was turned upside down and I had to rethink everything so I came up with some software. And that's the third formless jhana. Really? And And that it could perhaps not be perceived at all, or there's a mystery in perception itself, is what other of these people said. That it's not perceivable.

[52:12]

That we're only perceiving part of the pie. Which is the fourth formless jhana. Which brings a kind of mystery into the situation. So, now I'm not suggesting you all at the break have psychedelics, though there are some out on the table. This was all part of a worldview shift, actually closely related to Buddhism, which has changed the world we live in. Yeah, it's not just the progress of science. It's worldview shifts brought into and expressed through looking at science differently.

[53:15]

Die entstanden sind dadurch, dass man die Wissenschaft anders angeschaut hat. So my opinion is, Da Wu and Yun Yan have changed our world. Deshalb ist es meine Meinung, dass Da Wu und Yun Yan unsere Welt verändert haben. Because the way they thought about the world is much of what happened in Silicon and California at that time. Northern California. Well, I could say something else, but to leave it at Da Wu and Yun Yan have changed our world, this is good enough. Now I'll try to be more together tomorrow. Thank you. Coordinated? Oh, well, I'm never coordinated yet. Thank you.

[54:56]

Thank you.

[54:56]

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