Earlier today you mentioned that the Western view is the mental, and the Western Buddhist view is the physical. This morning you mentioned that the Western view is a mental view, and that Eastern Asian view is a body view. Yeah, more like that. Yeah. that challenged me or shocked me a little bit. Oh, I'm so sorry. Because I thought it was the other way around. Yes, because what we also had as a topic between the three of us, the Western world is permanently dependent on the material and the material is physically measurable or tangible. Because the Western world constantly refers to material phenomena and wants to measure materiality and wants to make it graspable and so forth.

[01:12]

My personal experience with meditation and Buddhist view is that matter presents itself more and more as a spiritual space, a spiritual appearance. And my own experience from meditating is that the material world shows itself more and more as a mental appearance. And so I thought, okay, so Baker Oshie wants to provoke us so that we investigate. Yes, I do. Yes, that's true. Okay. In fact, I do see that even our western vision is always just the idea of the matter. So that we are really actually in a mental field, we are constantly thinking about the idea of what we see and expect.

[02:18]

And I can see that in the Western view, we actually always move within an idea of materiality. So we constantly move in a mental field of what materiality is. And the eastern axis from what you've presented then is more like with the physicality here is where I begin in order to perceive or to explore. You've reversed your own position in the process of what you said. Yeah. But it's just this kind of discussion that I think we need to do.

[03:20]

The materiality and materialism of the West doesn't change my point of view, but it certainly is a big part of the West. It's been a profoundly effective way to develop and manipulate the world. But it's left us our own materiality out of the equation. But what was left out was our own materiality, our own matter.

[04:22]

Yes. Except which was also proven that the observer just through his or her presence has an effect on the outcome of an experiment. Yeah, a certain experience. And that's very recent. I know. And that was a shock to scientists. Yeah, but that's where it gets nearer. Yeah, Joseph. Anyone else? Yes. In the conversation before, on the one hand, I thought, okay, oh dear, this is a big bucket we're opening. Bucket? What? A barrel. A barrel, okay. And a different connotation, barrel and bucket. Okay. And then I can wonder, how do I encounter this?

[05:50]

What's my own experience with it? For example, I've never really been wondering about, I've never been interested in whether Buddhism is a religion or not. But rather I stuck with Zen practice through this approach that I am getting a suggestion for practice and then I just do it. Of course, you often come out with many things that I could then confirm exactly what, for example, Dugenthal said or what Roshi said.

[06:59]

And that for me was important because I feel that is without a dogmatic approach, that's without dogma. And then, of course, the result is oftentimes that through practice I can confirm what you are saying or sometimes what Dobin is saying. Then comes the question, which instrument, if that is science, which instrument do I examine something with? How do I research it? But then the question arises, if it's a science, what instrument do I use to explore, to investigate? And then I thought, yes the instrument here is still sitting and not doing anything. from a different worldview, which opens up, but which is not fixed. And so I have the feeling, I can deal with these things.

[08:04]

And when I approach it from this non-interfering perspective, from this non-interfering mind, then it's like a new world view opens. And then I have the feeling, OK, from here I can explore these very questions. This is good. You haven't wasted all these years. Oh. Yeah. So I'm asking the question, is Buddhism a science and not a religion, or also a science? Is Buddhism a science and not a religion, or also a science? And I don't think we can completely ignore, or not at all ignore, the fact that for most people, Buddhism, if you look at an encyclopedia, it's classified as a religion.

[09:14]

And what's the fellow who wrote the book The Ego Tunnel named? Thomas Metzinger. Thomas Metzinger. Maybe some of you have seen the book. There's an organization called the Mind and Matter Society of Mind and Matter founded by a physicist friend of mine and I'm part of it. And they did one of their experimental experiments exploration meetings at Johanneshof Quellenweg a few weeks ago. And Thomas Metzinger was there. And he's a, I guess, he himself is classified as a philosopher and maybe psychologist.

[10:16]

Or just a philosopher. And he's a very smart guy, and I liked him a lot. Even if he'd been dumb, I would have liked him a lot. But it's nice that people you like are smart. Now and then. Okay. He really, he was very hesitant to come to the meeting. Because he really does not want Buddhism and meditation practice to be a religion. And he's communicated with Steve Batchelor, who's a good friend of mine. about forming a secular practice center. What would a secular practice center be? For me, if secular also means

[11:30]

within a secular approach, a scientific approach is okay, and he quotes scientific studies all the time. Then Johannes of Quillenweg for me is already secular with a scientific approach. So I've been in kind of internal discussion with him since, and I've written him something, but I haven't said it yet. But I, so maybe by calling it, if I call it a science, it's clearly the word science is implicitly in contrast to religion.

[12:58]

Since we implicitly or explicitly always think of Buddhism as a religion, most of us If we call it a science, it makes us rethink that. Then we have to start defining religion in terms of science and science in terms of religion. And maybe neither works. Maybe we're back in the framework of indeterminacy. And Andreas didn't remember how determined I am about my indeterminacy.

[13:59]

And he announced the end of the break. Can't hide behind bosom. So, because I really want to practice indeterminacy, so I actually do not like to give an end to the break. I just like to see what happens. And going back to my comment about the word high, meaning yes or hear you, Probably not even Japanese would agree with me. But if they didn't agree with me, they'd be wrong. Because it really is a kind of indeterminacy.

[15:34]

Sometimes I watch NHK, because they have some wonderful programs now and then about tea bowls and lacquer and stuff like that. But the commentary drives me nuts sometimes. You know, they show you something like this. And then someone says, this is a flower arrangement. And then the other person says, yes, this is a flower arrangement. And then the other person says, and we really find it beautiful, don't we? Oh, yes, and we do really find it. It's acceptance, acceptance, acceptance, and I'd like a little differentiation.

[16:41]

My first insight into that was when I got a pen, a ballpoint pen, And I looked on the clip and it had written very carefully, clip. It's like this is human. Okay. Maybe it's a fallout from the practice of indeterminacy. A fallout.

[17:51]

That's a fallout. That's a fallout in German? Yes, that's a fallout in German, because you know everything that goes down. Okay. And maybe it's something like the fallout of the word indeterminacy? Because everything's indeterminate, they're constantly confirming that there's something definite there. Flowers. Oh, yes, there's flowers, and we all agree. Weil alles unbestimmt ist, müssen Sie immer wieder festhalten, dass da etwas Bestimmtes da ist. Ja, ja, hier sind Blumen. And I think if you listen carefully to Japanese... I'm going to Japan for three weeks in November, so I'm amused by what I'll find. Im November gehe ich für drei Wochen nach Japan und amüsiere mich damit oder freue mich darauf, was ich da vorfinde. Ich glaube, wenn man sorgfältig zuhört. Dass es da wirklich diese Pausen gibt. Dass in diesem Hai so eine verdeckte Pause steckt.

[18:52]

An acknowledgment is a kind of yes. But if I... Can you give me your glass? If I pour... Do you mind if I pour a little of this water in there? It's perfectly pure. Pretty pure enough, anyway. Okay. My body knows that I have to pour that rather carefully, and it will go into the other glass if it's near enough. And this seems so obvious. Why mention it? Because This is an example of how our body knows how things actually exist.

[20:12]

We actually continuously exist in relationship to gravity. And our body knows that. But our body doesn't know that we constantly live in relationship to indeterminacy. But Buddhism, Buddhist teachings function around getting the body to know how we actually exist in terms of interdependency, indeterminacy, etc. So the Japanese language has the fact of indeterminacy built into it. So by speaking Japanese, which is incredibly vague actually, not like German at all, incredibly vague, it teaches indeterminacy, shows indeterminacy.

[21:39]

indeterminacy. I know a young Japanese woman, new, 70 now, a young Japanese woman who sort of lived in my family in Japan for a while. And her mother was a rather grand Wisconsin lady from Minnesota, I think. And her father was a Japanese, but a born-in-America Japanese. And he was a top lawyer in Japan on international patenting and stuff like that. And she'd grown up from infancy in Japan. So she spoke Japanese completely, right?

[23:04]

And there was a hurricane coming at one point when I was in my Kyoto house. And I wanted to know if the hurricane was going to hit Kyoto. Ordinary rains in Kyoto are like being under a fossil. And hurricanes can really be incredible. My daughter was on, she's now 57, is that right? Something like that? 53? I don't know. She's a wonderful person. I don't know her age. And she was walking to school, and this cinderblock wall, just as she passed it, just fell over in the rain. Because the foundations were undermined. I mean, it was a high wall, but this wall. My daughter, who is now 57 or 53, I don't know exactly, but she is a wonderful person, even though I don't know her age.

[24:07]

She went to school when we lived there, and there is this cinder block... And I saw that same rainstorm, I remember, a manhole cover, you know, a big metal manhole cover, flew 10 feet into the air from the water underneath, pushing it up. That's an ordinary rainstorm. So I said to this Japanese woman, I can't think of her name right now, is the hurricane going to hit Kyoto or not? And she listened very carefully and finally she said, well, I can't really tell you because they discussed so many possibilities.

[25:17]

And then she said, hmm, I can't really tell you because they discussed so many possibilities. So I thought, you can't listen to the weather report and tell me whether the hurricane is coming? No, I'm sorry, the Japanese is like that. So one of the questions we have here is how to build the teachings that arise from actuality, the activity, activality of all-at-onceness.

[26:21]

In a realizable and an embodyable way. Yeah, I mean, maybe it would be better to call this a empirical craft. Of course, handwork doesn't really, but an empirical craft is closer than maybe science or religion as a name. now I knew if you were back in the late 50s I guess it was I knew a pure mathematician at Berkeley, UC Berkeley.

[27:52]

He was a good friend of mine for some years. And he was the first person I'd met who approached the world as I was discovering to approach it through Buddhism. And he was trying to solve problems which had never been solved before or yet at least. So all he could do was fill himself repeatedly with all the information known about this problem and other attempts to solve the problem and then just hope for the best. And the only thing he could do was to fill himself completely with all the information that was known about this problem and to fill himself with it again and again and then just hope for the best.

[29:14]

Because there was no solution that anybody knew or that nobody had yet over some centuries solved many mathematical problems. No, there are many mathematical problems that haven't been solved. And he picked one for his thesis to try to elite approach. And all he could do was embed, ingrain, embody himself in everything known about the problem and just see what happens, like in front of a grocery store. It was in front of a grocery store that Edwin Teller

[30:16]

while his wife was in shopping, saw how to develop a hydrogen bomb. It's not such a good example of what we want to do in Buddhism. Very impressive. At least that's what he says. There's no way to prove that that was true. But that's what he says. And we do have hydrogen bombs, so now the Koreans, North Koreans do too. It's crazy. I gave my high school graduation speech about this. I said, if you develop nuclear weapons, in high school.

[31:48]

It is nuts of us to think that everyone else isn't going to get them. Not only the good guys are going to have them. I talked for five minutes and sat down. Okay. So we don't really understand ourselves. And it's hard to understand ourselves. And it's hard to know how we function. But we have to bring our attention to something. And I can remember when I first started practicing.

[32:50]

You wander into Buddhism and you don't know what the heck you wandered into. And you read this and that. In those days, in the late 50s, early 60s, most of the stuff that was translated was Theravada. And I read, you know, you should feel the breath going in one nostril and out the other nostril and stuff like that. And you should direct your attention to the experience of the nostrils. And somehow I concluded that this was quite old-fashioned. That Zen was more advanced than this, more modern.

[34:04]

Yeah, but now I don't agree. Again, let me go back to breathing before we end for this day. So what I'm emphasizing by implication and explication today is that I'm really speaking about your noticing, not your breathing, But your inhale. And your exhale. Now this is spelled out pretty clearly in I think the third koan in the book of Trinity. But it's presented as a kind of sideline tale. Side story.

[35:22]

But it's a side story in the sense it's really saying this you should already have mastered. If you're going to be practicing Buddhism. Now I think we really have to remember historical context. When these koans, for instance, were compiled primarily in the Sun dynasty in China, books were a rarity. Printing and books and magazines, if you had a few books, this was rare. So if it was a book, you read it as if you were going to memorize it, and in fact memorized it.

[36:28]

So reading was a form of memorization. And you really... knew these texts, the few texts there were, you knew very well. So that the koans assume a deeply ingrained knowledge in the practitioner that we don't have. There was no speed reading at that time. You can just imagine if it's a big accordion, it takes time to even open, you know. Okay. So what I'm suggesting for us now, looking at the depth of the basic teaching,

[37:45]

As you have all the equipment you need, you each have a nose with two nostrils. I can verify that. I've been checking that one out. Yes. And rather pretty noses for the most part. And they have two nostrils. So that's all the equipment you need, plus lungs and so forth. So now all you need to do is bring attention to each exhale. And the attention to each inhale. And to the bodily movements which accompany each exhale. And each inhale. And if you can develop the attentional and to do this fairly regularly.

[39:09]

And to do it, first of all, you can really develop the skill primarily through meditation, through Zazen. And you develop this skill, you're actually neuroanatomically bring the body into the pace of the breath. Now, one thing, one of the eightfold path is right speech. And often Buddhism is divided into body, speech, and mind, or body, speech, mind. Yeah, and this isn't just speaking. This speech is code for all the ways mind and body mutually are expressive. So right speech is actually, and assumed to be in yoga culture, in-breath speech or embodied speech.

[40:26]

And it's understood that what you speak will be more likely right or correct or truthful. If your speech flows within the pace of the breath. And I think it's the case, at least it's my experience, and I've been doing this long enough, that what I'm speaking now is inseparable from inhaling and exhaling. And if my speaking and mentation and activity is entrained with the breath, then it begins to entrain the brain mind with the breath.

[41:51]

So the simple act of bringing attention to Breathing, each inhale and each exhale. And developed in the intentional continuity, even if it's not always continuous, the intentional continuity of this breath. each heel breath practice. So the mind Your speech becomes more, as again, truthful even and believable when it's entrained with the neural anatomically, I'm using that word, through the breath.

[43:29]

now this point of feeling the sensation at the nostrils which I dismissed as being old-fashioned And now I find it's actually a practice of developing a focus of noticing. We are a very complex and most complex event we know about biologically. And yet how do we bring attention to this Complexity that's beyond any easily accessible attentional identity.

[44:37]

That's beyond? to bring attention to this some easily noticeable aspect of this complexity. Okay, so. The nostrils is one of those points. And there are other body points. So during the day when you're in front of grocery stores or apothecas or walking along or whatever you're doing, now newly tailored in your Dharma body, You use the sensation of the nostrils to feel yourself bodily present in breathing immediacy itself.

[45:47]

And you'll find later, perhaps, or you already know, that sometimes there's other body points, like you might find the middle of your forehead or the top of your head begins to be a presence during the day and you've developed these attentional skills to stay present with a feeling here, a feeling here, a feeling here, the chakras, which then affect the whole kind of body you are living in the world. And maybe you already know that, or maybe you discover that there are other points like, for example, the point between the eyebrows, or the point on the forehead, or here or here, other points, the chakras, where you develop the ability to stay attentive and present throughout the day.

[47:07]

And that changes with what kind of body And the ability to stay present with a continuous focus. One of the ways early Buddhism established to discover that and learn that was the sense of the breath at each nostril. So you may tailor and analyze and discover the bias and grain of the cloth of this dharma body. In the process of sitting. But to have a dharma point or something that during the day allows you to bring that newly tailored body

[48:09]

Yeah, something like that. Into your activity. So let me say something for Drew and for all of us about the infrasubjective and intersubjective. Intra, not infrasubjective. That would be a new one. I have to think about that one. Intrasubjective. Intrasubjective is obvious, right? How we're dressed, how we're talking, etc. How we feel about each other and within usually linguistic forms. But what happens in the Sashin and what happens more physically and dramatically in a 90-day practice period is people begin to feel an inner body, a mutual body, a mutual resonant field

[49:40]

a shared body which is a mutual resonant field. And Buddhism says that also has to be educated. Und der Buddhismus sagt, auch das muss ausgebildet werden. And we could say, excuse me for bringing up politics, that Trump is a good example of the uneducated, intra-subjective field. Und wir könnten sagen, und entschuldige, wenn ich hier politisches anspreche, wir könnten sagen, dass Trump ein Beispiel für den ungebildeten Körper des intra-subjektiven Feldes ist. Because Bannon and Trump in their gross bigotry and narcissism, excuse me for being political. Unable to accept differences than your own.

[51:01]

Sometimes before she's going to translate, she says, are you going to use any words that I might not know? There's a false etymology, supposedly false etymology, how do I know, of bigotry being blamed on over-religious Normans who kept saying, by God. and it became by God. Bigot. The Normans who settled England. The Normans.

[52:33]

Normans. [...] Norm And supposedly you can't herd cats, but you can herd cows and you can herd humans. And the military training is about how to herd a bunch of people so they're willing to be killed with their friends. During the 60s and all the anti-Vietnam War protests, there was a big sign saying, join the U.S. Army. Visit foreign countries.

[53:41]

And meet interesting foreign people. And kill them. America's still doing the same damn thing. Drones. And anyway, within this intrasubjective mutuality that allows us also to be herded There are potential tsunamis of bigotry, racism, hatred waiting to form a wave. I think Nazism was that kind of tsunami.

[54:48]

But it was intra-subjective. And you can see it in the North Korean troops, all marching together. You think they're smart enough, but they're not. Well, it's interesting, when they march, they don't only just march in all this step. They actually pump their chests in patterns, too. So Buddhism's view is we're not only an intersubjective society, but an intrasubjective society, and that intersubjectivity has to be realized, and the realization of that is called enlightenment.

[56:06]

That's a kind of advertisement. And a press release. And we can discuss it tomorrow. Thank you very much.

[56:38]

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