I want us to be a Sangha which explores the teaching. And not a Sangha so much that follows the teaching. Because I think a Sangha which explores the teaching is most likely to transmit or pass the teachings. Exploring the teaching is to make it our own, not something we add on, but something we've made our own. So while I'm speaking about all these things, trying to for myself explore, as you heard, the worldview shifts that are I think necessary to enter into the teaching deeply.

[01:21]

In that regard, in some ways, imaginal space, I imagine myself walking with you somewhere in some city, etc. And, of course, it's also an imagination of myself walking along the street. So it's in that regard that I, last night, in the evening, hot drink, suggested those turning words, wados. And I suggested also me.

[02:27]

Some way to kind of break down this... separation we feel between us and other things, us and other people. Yeah. So what I practiced with for a long time and still do implicitly is anything I see, a physical object or a person, I say, well, that's also me. And when I see lost or incompetent or ill or bums on the street, Or anywhere.

[03:38]

I always think, there but for a gene or two go I. oder inkompetente Leute oder was auch immer, dann sage ich, hier bis auf ein oder zwei Gene gehe ich. Das bin ich bis auf ein oder zwei Gene. And I also suggested just now arriving. Und ich habe auch vorgeschlagen, gerade jetzt ankommen. Or just arriving. Oder einfach ankommen. Or you could say just. And everything you see, just. Or in any experience of a perception, you say thus. Or this. Of course, you may do it in English and you may do it in German. But when we do that, We're exploring the word outside of language.

[04:56]

Yes, it has a certain focus within its linguistic context. But if you say thus, we have some idea of what thusness is in Buddhism. But if on every occasion, interior occasion, exterior occasion, you say thus, You are beginning to develop the meaning of the word. And you're physicalizing the meaning of the word. And you're continually re-contextualizing the use of the word.

[06:19]

And I think of that in relationship because I think I should speak about samadhi. And the Abhidharma is a wonderful flowering of the teaching, articulation of the teaching. But Often it's off base. And you can tell when it's off base if you've explored the teaching and not just followed the teaching it presents. You don't assume it's true. You assume it may be useful.

[07:20]

I'll find out. So in order to speak about these four postures of Zazen, I felt I had to say something about Samadhi. Well, if in the Arbidharma kind of style you try to generalize the experience of Samadhi so that it fits into various contexts... you lose touch with what the word really could mean. For the eightfold path, the eighth path is a concentration and often defined as samadhi. But the samadhi that arises through practicing right livelihood, right speech and all of that stuff,

[08:43]

Is not discovered by what Samadhi means generally in different schools. It's... discovered by practicing right livelihood, right speech, etc. And through the discovery of the intent practice of the first seven of the Eightfold Path, Then, ah, yes, I see it comes together in this eighth called concentration or called samadhi, but it's an experience particular to this context of practice.

[10:01]

Then you can have the feeling, you say, ah, yes, now I can see how these seven come together in the eighth, which is called concentration and samadhi. But then this experience has something to do with the practice of the first seven paths. And unless you come to feel... experience the Samadhi of the Eightfold Path, you won't be able to transmit the Eightfold Path as a teaching. And it will be a useful list, but not a transformative list in your own practice. So, imagining you in wherever you live, you know, etc., I think of my friend Akash. You practiced here a lot of years ago.

[11:19]

And you two were practitioners together a lot of years ago. And your father dropped you off here. In the parking lot. And your father dropped you off here. He's an engineer, right? In the parking lot. And I was left with the burden of taking... And I thought, what courageous fathers. He had no choice. Did you give your father no choice too? Absolutely not. Oh, he had a choice, huh? He had no choice. Oh, he had no choice. I see. Okay. So these choiceless fathers, I mean, no, I don't know. But even though you disappeared at some point for quite a long time, I've actually all this time felt some kind of connection with you.

[12:31]

Not in any way that you should come back. That never occurred to me, really, because it's your decision, not mine. But enough of a connection was established through those years that I felt that connection remained. So with all of you I get to know, I'm always trying to imagine what worked for you in your context as practice. And practice works most powerfully when you define yourself through practice and not through your society, culture, family and so forth.

[13:39]

We also define ourselves through our culture and family and so forth, but practice works when the most Determining reference is a Dharma practice. Okay, so I'm exploring why I have decided to emphasize Zazen as the development of four postures. Can you say that again?

[14:43]

that I've decided to express Zazen posture as four postures. Okay. Yeah, and the first is, I think, pretty clear to everyone, a physical posture as you see yourself within your sense field. Yeah, and that's important. And the fine-tuning of your physical posture is quite important. And you're, I mean, you're doing simple things like folding your left side to your right side and the right side to the left side. Und du machst da einfache Dinge, wie dass du die linke Seite zur rechten Seite einfaltest und die rechte zur linken. Jedenfalls wenn du im vollen oder im halben Lotus sitzt.

[15:53]

Und die Schwierigkeit, wenn du im Caesar sitzt mit deinen Füßen nach hinten. If you have to do it, it's better than nothing. A lot better than nothing. But if you're going to do this as a lifetime practice, it's good to learn some kind of half lily or half lotus or full lotus. Half lily is a posture that nearly kills you. Because lilies are used in funeral ceremonies in America. I practiced the half lily most of my life. My right foot used to stick out behind me. I don't know.

[17:03]

I have very inflexible limbs. I have very stiff limbs. Okay. So, really, did something, as Sukhya used to point it out, something strangely profound happens over time when you mix up left and right. Our experience of front and back, left and right, is very determinative in how we locate ourselves. But one of the direct experiences of emptiness is when you experience that you are no location. Not only you have no location, you are no location. Sometimes it can be a little scary.

[18:11]

You're in zazen and suddenly you don't know where you are. What zendo? Whether you're facing into the room or out, you don't know. And if you don't panic... and leap off the tan, it's quite wonderful. And you just settle into it. Actually, you don't need to know where you are. You only think you need to know. And you can disappear into that not-knowing. And simultaneously that not-knowing can become an actual experience, physicalized experience.

[19:12]

Because what we're doing in Zen practice and Buddhist practice, particularly Zen practice, we're trying to accumulate, we're trying to discover actual experience, what actual lived experience is. What we try to do in Buddhism, and especially in Zen Buddhism, is to discover the actual experience, the actually lived experience. And often we can go through a day with very little lived experience. We're all thinking about this or that. So Zazen practice, daily meditation practice, gives you a chance to extend the territory of actual experience, increase the territory and kind of actual experience, And turn habitual experience, usual experience, sometimes into a new kind of actualized experience.

[20:39]

Again, a kind of small enlightenment experience sometimes. Mm-hmm. Okay, so the samadhi of the eightfold path, using the categories of the eight paths, you can, and exploring those categories, you discover a certain kind of samadhi. And in Zazen, when you suddenly, for some reason or something, you know, it's gotten beyond pain that you can accept, so you've just given up. And suddenly some kind of disappearance of everything happens.

[22:06]

That's another kind of samadhi. And it's a mistake to think you can take that experience and move it into the category of the Eightfold Path. Es ist viel interessanter, wenn du beginnst, eine Art Topografie der somatischen Erfahrungen zu erforschen. I said tomography too. Tomography, oh. I said topography and tomography. And what is tomography? Tomography is like the surface, and tomography is a medical term for inside, like with a cross-section or something. Okay. You don't have to say it. I just wondered if you'd translate it.

[23:09]

No, I haven't. Okay. Also die Oberflächenbeschaffenheit und den Querschnitt von somatischen Erfahrungen. Yeah. I mean, I can't understand your translation, but I can hear the difference between tomography and topography. Just to show that I'm alert. Yeah. Yeah. So when you do this simple exterior posture, physical posture, folding your legs together, left and right, left over right, etc. And somehow even your arms kind of lose their left and rightness. And what you're also doing, of course, is you're folding your heat.

[24:24]

If this is a column, like a sleeping bag column. When you fold your legs together and they're over each other, not separated by pants, trousers. You're folding your heat together. You're creating a column of heat here. And the heat is a big part of... You can read in the Prajnaparamita Literature they talk about heat and peak and so forth the heat is of opening to the we don't have a word for it, but the energetic body the almost electric body If you're sitting and you're in this column, the column itself turns into a samadhi.

[25:30]

When everything feels as if it fuses or melts together. And then this becomes a an experience that's part of your yogic experiential vocabulary. So through this experience, this columnar experience, somatic experience, you've added an experience an actual experience to your inventory of actual experiences. Like if you say, just now arriving, or just now is enough, or just now,

[26:55]

So wie wenn du sagst, gerade jetzt ankommen oder genau dies oder gerade dies ist genug oder einfach nur gerade jetzt. And suddenly everything disappears and just now is all there is. There's no other location in mind. Und plötzlich alles andere verschwindet und gerade jetzt alles ist, was es gibt und es diesen Geist, keinen anderen Ortgeist gibt. That's also an actual experience that becomes part of your experience. yogic inventory. I don't know how else to say it. So a preciseness in the articulation of the physical body is a big part of practice. Now there's the shift to what I call the physiological body. Now it's the evolution of the physiological body which most neurologically, or something like that, transforms us. And I think within the paradigms of our culture, it's useful to make this distinction between the physical body and the physiological body.

[28:38]

Now, I can only say so much in the time I have. So everything is shorthand. And it's also coded so you can do it on your own if you're going to explore it. The four postures of Zazen are codes for opening you or gates to open you to exploring your practice. Die vier Haltungen des Zazen sind sowas wie Tore oder Öffnungen, wenn für... Are openings for? Exploring your Zazen posture, your Zazen practice.

[29:54]

Tore, um deine Zazenpraxis oder deine Zazenhaltung zu erforschen. since you suggested I follow my doctor's orders. He was just in Samadhi. My doctor tells me to drink these things. Okay, I would say there's four, you're going to hate me for this, four domains of the physiological body. Oh, four and four make eight and sixteen and thirty-two and yes. Okay. The first would be the experience when you have a visualized imagination of a physical experience.

[30:56]

I mean, that's the opening. What I mean by that is simply as I said the other day, you feel, feel, see your breath, your inhale coming in and physically rising simultaneously. Now that's code for exploring your interior body with a kind of Dharma flashlight. The Anapanasati Sutra says, know your body from the soles of the feet to the crown of the head.

[32:19]

From inside. And some even say your toenails. Well, we know what our toenails, I mean, look, okay? It's cold, right? We know what our toenails look like. Mine are getting farther and farther away from me. They used to be quite near, but now they're getting far away. Okay, so I know what they're like, but do I know what they're like from the inside? So the simple suggestion, know the body from the soles of the feet, or the toes, to the crown of the head means awaken the chakras.

[33:25]

This is the crown chakra. If you're doing transformative practice, not just well-being practice, you do this, you do this interior visual, kind of visual work. And my experience is it's a main focus of two or three years of practice. I've had 56, so I have a few extra years to give to this stuff. I remember I asked Suzuki or she, something about the length of time it would take.

[34:32]

I said, can we really realize this practice? He was in the front seat of a car and I was in the back seat. He turned around and looked at me. I said, can we really realize this practice as dumb Westerners? I didn't say that, but I sort of implied that. If you give enough years to it. I didn't say how many. And in my mid-twenties, I thought that meant two or three years. That seemed like almost as long as college. But it's lovely that it's a lifetime practice. And even if you don't do it for a while, it's part of the years of practice.

[35:46]

Okay, so you get skillful at bringing a kind of visualized... You feel interior experiences and your organs... and the organ as a system, blood circulation, etc., as a kind of identifiable experience. And you develop this inner visualization, and you feel your organs, and the organs as a system, for example as a circulation system, and so on. It's a kind of visualized... Now, I say visual. It's not an eyeball experience. But it feels like that you can separately articulate interior experiences. Aber es ist so, dass du dann getrennt voneinander innere Erfahrungen getrennt voneinander artikulieren kannst.

[37:06]

You can feel them as separate and you can feel them as located. Du kannst sie als unabhängig voneinander oder als getrennt wahrnehmen und auch als ihren Platz haben. And that location is has a kind of visual quality. I wonder, have you ever discussed Dorothea with Frieda? Does he have an inner visualization feeling? Have you ever discussed it with him? He feels his inner feelings, but he doesn't make it consciously in a visual sense. But when he's walking down the hall and can't see, he kind of can feel the length of the hall and when to put his hand out and there's going to be a door there.

[38:15]

Yes, he can feel. Yeah. So has it felt successional in feeling or is it a kind of inner... Does he visualize in some way the hall? No, not so much. Visualizing, it's more. Yeah, okay. I know. He went through training so that he can feel the words, for example, without using his hands. He can feel the words. Oh, that's great. And he went through training for blind people to feel that. And he's practicing that. Right. I know I used to, in my 20s, sometimes, because I wanted to develop an inner seeing, I would sometimes put on music and sometimes not put on music. And I would literally run around the house, dance around the house with my eyes completely closed until I could just feel the space and not bump into anything. This is not in the eightfold pattern.

[39:19]

Yeah. And my sense of it, it's not eyeball visualization, but it's a kind of imaginal space that you feel as space. That's my experience. So you develop a skill at this until you feel You feel your interiority. So that's the first of the four physiological bodies.

[40:20]

Okay. And now it's time for something else. Goodbye. Thank you.

[40:43]

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