Dogen said, the word now does not exist before continuous practice. And we have the phrase that Dick Halpert, Baba Ram Dass and others in the Lama Foundation in northern New Mexico thought up, be here now. Yeah, and so we can... open it up a little by saying, how can we be so here becomes a now?

[01:27]

How can we be So here becomes now. Wie können wir sein, sodass hier jetzt wird? Now, we could say that this phrase, as I've extrapolated it, reflects that Buddhism is... Zen is, let me say, Zen is at its most fundamental level a process of embodiment. So most of us live in a primarily mentalized world.

[02:29]

And what Zen practice is asking us to do is to live in a continuously embodying world. A world that embodies you in which you embody it. Okay. So, we have to start somewhere. I mean, and it's like our discussion. So let's just start with what I've emphasized in the past, that to train ourselves to develop the habit of seeing everything as activities and not as entities.

[04:04]

No. Why I could say to see everything as impermanent instead of as entities. In permanence is probably a little more accurate way of saying it than activities. But impermanence is a concept and is an abstraction. Your automobile, your car, is impermanent.

[05:06]

But you don't notice it every day. Oh, it's more impermanent today than yesterday. I mean, that's not the way we see things. Yeah, it's not until your tooth that you realize how impermanent it is. Yeah, okay. So... It's easier and more effective, I think, in terms of developing this craft of practice, is to see the car as an activity. I can't say that without remembering. I used to go to Ireland fairly often. And before the EU, Ireland was really poor.

[06:14]

And with the rules about divorce, you couldn't tell who was married to whom or lived with whom and whose children were what, etc. It was complicated. And this one guy, he bought a car and driven it home and put it in the backyard and it never moved again. And he couldn't afford to get it fixed or move it. So he pasted travel posters on the window, and the radio worked, so he'd sit in there and listen to the radio and look at the travel posters. And that was the time of the song.

[07:30]

I just called to say I love you. He was listening to that all the time. Okay. So the car was no longer an activity in the usual sense, but it was still an activity. Yeah. Okay. So how can we... How can we... We can understand impermanence, but how do we practice impermanence? Wir können Unbeständigkeit verstehen, aber wie können wir Unbeständigkeit praktizieren?

[08:30]

How do we make it our experiential existence? Wie machen wir das zu unserer erfahrenen Existenz? Well, one way is to use the phrase to pause for the particulars. And again, what I'm going toward here is from various directions to see the world as appearances. And to see the world as appearances is to see the world as Dharma. And from the Yogacara, a simple equation, Dharma is an appearance, a unit of appearance. So after you've developed stillness, a certain calmness, a centeredness in your body, your location as the non-self-referential breath,

[09:49]

You want to begin to include the world within your sensorial field as dharmas. And that requires a conscious intention to do it. Because consciousness wants to show you the world as more or less predictable entities. That's how it functions. So you have to find an antidote to the world as it's been presented to you culturally and the world as presented to you through consciousness itself. So you need to find some way to...

[11:20]

interrupt the continuity of the world, the assumed continuity of the world. So, Hans-Jörg, for example, this to pause for a particular is a phrase that sticks together and works for me and seems to work for some other people. Also Hans Jörg, diese Wendung für Einzelheiten innezuhalten, das ist ein Satz, der für mich funktioniert und der auf diese bestimmte Art zusammengesetzt ist und der auch für einige andere zu funktionieren ist. And it kind of has a physical dimension. Und der hat eine körperliche Dimension. If you take to pause for the particular as a mental posture And whenever, in any way you can, when appearance has a particularity, you pause for that particularity.

[12:35]

It's an antidote also to change blindness. I first really noticed the difference was in the morning, generally on the breakfast table, there was some kind of little vase with some cut flowers in it. And I would have some sort of porridge Pea porridge hot, pea porridge cold, etc.

[13:56]

And a tea or something, and there'd be these flowers. Okay. And when I began to notice breakfast happening in little micro-slices, Als ich begonnen habe, das Frühstück in Mikroabschnitten zu bemerken, I saw that the flowers were actually moving in the vase. Vielleicht sollte man sagen Mikroscheiben. Da habe ich gesehen, dass diese Blumen sich tatsächlich in der Vase bewegen. They're cut flowers, but they're drinking water and, you know, sometimes, and you look back. One petal is slightly different than it was before. But the habit of seeing continuity, normally I just would never notice that. Yeah. So, I mean, that became interesting to me.

[15:00]

Every breakfast I would... I'd see if I could notice how many times the flowers actually slightly changed. Three or four during a 20-minute meal or something. So even the cut flowers in water and sunlight are slightly different all the time. And if I didn't pause for the particular, and sometimes I pause for the pause and allow the particular to appear, I wouldn't notice the world in this kind of detail.

[16:14]

And the more you get used to it, the more things, again, like like change blindness, begin to become less and less. Once I even saw a little gorilla come and shake the vase. He was really little, but he was... You think I'm kidding? Well, sort of I'm kidding.

[17:15]

Amazing when change blindness stops what you see. Now, the Genjo Koan. I translate the title of the Genjo Koan, which is the the most classic of all the fascicles of Dogen's writings. I translate Genjo Koen to mean, as I said earlier, to complete that which appears. Knowing that appearance is simultaneously infinite and particular. And as I think I said earlier, it's usually translated as universal, but that's not a good translation. Now I think a simple way to understand what I mean by infinite is no matter how many things there are, you can always add one more.

[18:38]

Or you can always take one away. So anything Any grouping of units will be always slightly different. It's never an allness. It's never a wholeness. There's no wholeness. It's always changing. And some enlightenment experiences are an experience of profound oneness. Yeah, but don't theologically extrapolate that to the world is one.

[19:43]

No, it's your experience is oneness. From the point of strictly speaking from Buddhism, there's no oneness or wholeness. It's an infinitely changing that we can only find how to function within. Aus der Perspektive des Buddhismus gibt es keine Ganzheit oder keine Einsheit, sondern es ist immer unendlich und im Wandel begriffen. Und wir können nur herausfinden, wie wir darin funktionieren können. As soon as you say unified field theory or oneness or wholeness, you're really assuming something like God. And the basic insight of Buddhism is we're absolutely on our own together. Okay, so we have to find some way to function in this complexity of the two truths.

[21:05]

And I've already said, please establish a spine-breath spatial location. That's kind of home, literally home base, which links the two truths. One is the way we need to function in the world as if things are at least momentarily entities, predictable entities. Now, are the two truths exactly as I'm saying? How do I know? I'm just a guy. And a gal. Okay. But it is useful to define the world in these two ways, because they open us up to two different ways of functioning which enhance each other and give a

[22:50]

a depth to the world which seems very close to how things actually exist. Give a depth to the world which enhance each other and give a depth to the world which is close to how things actually seem to exist. So, in the midst of this, we have to interrupt some of our conscious and sensorial habits. Because, as I said earlier, if you see things as entities... And how can you help but not see them as entities?

[24:15]

It's the way the world is defined in language and experience and so forth. But seeing these things as entities reifies seeing things as entities. Because entities are remembered, stored as essences, as generalizations too. So it's not just insights and worldview shifts that exist prior to perception. The whole predisposition of our culture exists before perception.

[25:20]

And... And... your whole screen of memory exists before perception. So you see your memories of the object, that's how you identify it, in experience and in language. Also siehst du deine Erinnerung, dein Gedächtnis von den Objekten und so erkennst du sie. Also gehst du durch und lebst in einer wunderbaren Welt der Erinnerung.

[26:21]

fog of memories. And for some reason, creative people and artists and some scientists and so forth, they'll get glimpses through this fog and they see things, look, it fits together differently than I thought. Now, earlier Susanna said that, you know, sometimes she thinks you have to go from crisis to crisis or something like that. It made me remember in San Francisco when Isan Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey and I both wondered what the heck is going on because lots of gay people living around the Zen Center building were sick with the flu and then dying.

[27:43]

I mean, like in weeks. It was a couple of years later before AIDS was identified. But Issan started the first, I believe, hospice in San Francisco at least for AIDS. People who had AIDS who were HIV positive. But what was interesting is, When you got a diagnosis of AIDS, of being HIV positive, in those days, it was taken as a death sentence.

[28:50]

It wasn't always, but almost always. And what was interesting, because I was very involved with helping set up the hospice and everything, is most, very large percentage were just demolished by the diagnosis. But a large percentage, I mean sometimes maybe it seemed like half of people, actually it turned into a kind of enlightenment experience. They suddenly just accepted it, accepted their life, looked at what was happening in a way they never had before.

[29:53]

Die haben das auf einmal einfach akzeptiert, haben ihr Leben akzeptiert, haben sich angeschaut, was da passiert, auf eine Art und Weise, wie ihnen das zuvor nie möglich war. So, this is an extreme example, of course. Das ist natürlich ein extremes Beispiel. But it was an extreme example that happened big time in my life in the 60s. Aber es war ein extremes Beispiel, das in großem Maße in meinem Leben stattgefunden hat in den 60er Jahren. Yeah. And... So it's well recognized that sometimes crises can lead to insights and enlightenment even. And you can see in a lot of artists and philosophers, they've gone through, Nietzsche and others, some kind of huge crisis which allowed them to open up. Und man kann das bei vielen Künstlern oder auch Philosophen sehen, zum Beispiel Nietzsche, die durch riesige Krisen gegangen sind, die es ihnen ermöglicht haben, sich zu öffnen.

[31:09]

But Buddhism says, well, that's true, but do we really have to get AIDS? Aber der Buddhismus stellt sich die Frage, ja, das stimmt, aber müssen wir wirklich AIDS bekommen? Do we really have to be two-thirds crazy? Müssen wir wirklich zwei Drittel verrückt sein? No, simply complete that which appears. I'm not kidding. If you practice something like to complete that which appears, you notice appearance and then you act within that appearance. It's not passive. So you feel, and it's a feel you develop with more and more particularity. Das ist ein Gefühl, das du mit immer weitreichender Detailgetreuheit entwickelst.

[32:26]

And as you feel for appearance, visual, oral, non-graspable feeling, etc., You're not just passive. You let it appear and feel like you complete it in yourself. It is your experience, actually, because you're the person sensing it. But you give it a completeness. And it's a little artificial. There's no boundary that, oh, now it's complete. It's your intention here to develop like maybe playing music or something.

[33:29]

Your intention is to find the note, musical note, the note of each moment. And complete it. And release it. And releasing is an intentional act. In the layering of continuity, there is your own saccadic scanning, which no one noticed until this French guy just put a mirror up and watched his eyes when he looked at things. And the world at atomic and molecular levels is changing.

[34:31]

But you are deciding it's complete now and I release it now. And you may well do this, and it's useful to do this, within some kind of pace related to the breath and the heart. And you're establishing a kind of singing along with the phenomenal world through the breath and your heartbeat and your own metabolism. And you establish something like a singing with the world of phenomena through your breath and through your heartbeat.

[35:44]

And again, you're not a dragonfly. But the world is coming into a metabolic field with you. So the world is existing as dharmas. It's whether your eyes are psychotic scanning or whether it's molecular or whatever, it actually exists in lots of little moments. Because it's all overlapping, it looks continuous, but it's not actually continuous. And you are through the wisdom of practice establishing your own metabolic relationship to the world. and you establish through your own wisdom in the practice your metabolic, in German I almost want to say, physiological, metabolic relationship to the world.

[37:13]

This is a process of embodiment. I mean, it goes beyond most people's ideas of embodiment, but it is basically a process of embodiment. So, parallel to the concept of the Dharma, you are intentionally generating the noticing of a Dharma, by linking appearance to a physical act, to pause, And a mental act or mental posture by completing that which appears and releasing. Now, when you're an experienced practitioner, You can see people's realization right away.

[38:39]

Each step they take is a separate unit. Each breath they take is a separate unit. You almost feel they disappear between breaths. but it's not something you can fake. You got it? Understand? Versteht ihr das? Verstehen. And time then becomes Now. Time becomes lived time, the medium of your existence.

[39:47]

I've often said, you can't have no time. I have no time for this. But you are time. It's actually crazy to say you have no time, because you are time. Ich habe das oft gesagt, du kannst nicht sagen, ich habe keine Zeit, weil du Zeit bist. In Beziehung zu anderen Menschen oder ob du ins Kino gehen kannst oder so, hast du vielleicht keine Zeit. But it's more, I don't know how you say it, well, we don't have the time, but you are time, so you always have time. So a realized person doesn't get flustered and things like that because... I am time, what the hell? So, Dogen again said, the word now does not exist before continuous practice.

[40:49]

By continuous practice, he means something like completing that which appears and releasing it. And then the durative moment of each pause, of each particular... That duration is your own embodiment. So now you're living the medium of time. It's lived time, not time out there somewhere on a clock or something. And now you live the medium of time. This is not external time, not primal time, but you live this lived time.

[42:09]

Okay. Now. Now. When you find yourself in the feel the field of lived time. with a wider knowing than consciousness and this wider knowing than consciousness is also entered through the continuous repetition of noticing without thinking.

[43:12]

Now I mean This is rather advanced practice. And the secret of it is, and the depth of it is, is you develop the ability to make it sequential continuity. now does not exist before continuous practice. So when time itself becomes the medium, means and medium of your existence, Wenn Zeit selbst das Mittel und Medium deiner Existenz wird, dann kannst du zulassen, dass du dich in dieses Medium hineingibst.

[44:33]

And how we know things becomes different than when it's primarily a cognitive process. And so just as we have this pure indication that the person with blind sight knows something about the world, but it's not conscious. Wir haben da diesen reinen Hinweis, dass ein Mensch mit Blindsicht etwas über die Welt weiß, aber es ist nicht bewusst. As I said, Tiresias and also in the high Andes, A German person made a film years ago called Elder Brother Speaks.

[45:35]

It's a very touching film. I'm sure it's a documentary. And they noticed that the high Andes are drying out and they're blaming the people down below. And they notice, like all shamanic cultures do, when a particular child has shamanic potential. And then they isolate those kids in caves. I mean, not they live together, but they live in darkness until they're 18 or something like that. And strangely, growing up in darkness, they become the seers for the culture.

[46:47]

So it may be that doing something dramatic like that opens you to a knowing that isn't consciousness. I... I... I don't... You know, you want to sit down, do Zazen and get a little calmer. That's great. But I feel that my... youthful age. My doctor says he's going to continue to be my doctor for at least another 15 years. He's awfully optimistic. But I feel at some point I should start teaching, showing you what Buddhism is really about.

[48:02]

If enlightenment and bodhisattvas and all this has any meaning... It's about a transformation of how we exist in the world. And it's rooted in little experiences like completing that which appears. Yeah, so I wanted to go one step further, but we don't have time. So, Zorro is on his horse going over a cliff. Do you know the mark of Zorro? And he was one of those, when I was a kid there were short movies that occurred before the main movie.

[49:17]

Als ich Kind war, da gab es immer diese Kurzfilme, die vor dem Hauptfilm gezeigt wurden. Vielleicht hat das dazu beigetragen, dass ich Zen praktizieren wollte, weil er immer seine Peitsche benutzt hat, um dieses Z zu zeichnen. would end with something like his horse going over a cliff and you had to see next week what actually happened. There was usually a little ledge the horse landed on or something. So what I tried to do in this weekend is bring ourselves to the point where we could see the transformative difference in really seeing everything as activities and making it our activity and not as entities.

[50:33]

Now, there's a next step I wanted to go to, which is that when you really get it that change, change is changing, nämlich wenn du das wirklich kapierst, dass Veränderung das Verändern verändert. And you're able to be in the world of simultaneously change happening at a level which is beyond change blindness and all that stuff. You begin to know the world in a quite new way. And that's within the possibilities of our Being here in a way that makes now the medium of your existence.

[52:05]

This is all us. It's not separate from you. Thank you very much. Vielen Dank. Oh, did I go too far? I don't know. Thanks for translating. Thank you.

[52:43]

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