You said before we should look at ways to... how we should proceed. I always found it very good when we had a text as in... winter branches that we could study and work with before we came to the city. I found this very productive when we had a text with the winter branches that we could study and work with before we came to the city. So are you suggesting that I send a text out or just pick a text like a colon before the next, if we have a next? Yeah, I'd love that. Okay. All right. From my point of view, we could stay with this text, which we now have halfway through.

[01:02]

And I also find it always good when you read a text over and over again and then deepen it and don't start with something new. So my suggestion would be to stay with this text, We Are Only Half Through, and also the... Are you speaking or is he speaking? I'm speaking. He translated himself. And also by repeating reading a text, there might be an effect of deepening and getting more acquainted with... Yeah. I could read it out loud and you could translate it. Or maybe people understand English well enough to... My English is not good enough. Oh, okay. Me too. Me too. Well, we could try one paragraph if someone will give me a text.

[02:19]

No, I want you to translate from what I say. Yes. He says yes, but he doesn't mean anything. Okay. So I guess the failed translator over there, I mean the tired translator, Went up to the beginning of page two, is that right? We could also have the made-up word sounding rather the same.

[03:41]

Embodiment instead of embodiment. And Bodhi means awakening and enlightenment. So the earliest, as I understand it, written texts in China of the Prajnaparamita text. Part of it is answering a question of why do we have Buddha statues. Okay, and the sutra goes on to say

[04:43]

that I guess we're not having supper, the cook is back. That's not what the sutra said, is it? Yeah, the sutra said no supper because there's no cook. All right. And so it's an examination of the desire to make a statue as part of practice. So the sutra says and the commentary on the sutra says or implies that making the statue is a process, an exterior process, which actually is simultaneously an interior process of trying to make a Buddha in yourself.

[06:12]

This is why it's good to have me read a text because I start saying something entirely different. Michel Foucault said that writing writes writing. And this is really true. That you start to write and writing leads you into writing. In other words, the medium through which you communicate exists in communicative territory which only is opened up through the medium.

[07:34]

I first noticed this, and I've mentioned a few times before, when Trudy Dixon, who was my co-director, disciple with Suzuki Roshi. And she helped me put together and edit the Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. In those days, tape recordings and things were sort of just starting. So she would send me a letter, and sometimes she would send me a recording. So I would get a letter from her about her situation.

[08:57]

She died when she was 29. And it was interesting to be with her. I moved to Japan. before she died, but I was with her a lot of the time when she was in the hospital and things. And when she was speaking to me, or her husband, sitting beside her at the bedside, She would speak to me within the medium of the presence of myself and Mike, who drew the fly in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. In the medium? I myself am a medium.

[10:17]

So she's speaking to me, so I become a medium which she's speaking into. Okay, so she would speak to Mike and I, Sie sprach mit Michael und mir über Dinge wie, dass sie das nächste Jahr nicht erleben würde und wie man sich um die Kinder kümmern sollte und solche Dinge. And someone else would come in, a friend or another family member. And suddenly she's speaking in their medium, and in their medium she's not dying, but in my medium she's dying. So they immediately started talking about what they were going to do next year. Because the conversation was about being alive and the conversation with me was about being dead.

[11:20]

Because the conversation was about And when she was in the medium of being alive, I'd sit there and listen. I'd say, she's not going to be here to go to Mexico on a vacation next year. But she actually believed it while she was speaking it. And when she was in this medium of being alive, I thought, she won't go to Mexico next year and make holidays there. So when she'd send me a letter or a tape, when I had moved to Japan, because Sukiroshi asked me to go to Japan in 1968, I would immediately often respond to her

[12:29]

or respond to her letter. So I would respond in handwriting. And then, immediately, I'd respond with a typewriter. And then after that, I'd respond on a tape recorder. And each time I wrote something almost completely different. In handwriting, I wrote one thing, and in typewriting, I would write different things. So the medium of handwriting has its own handwriting writes handwriting, has its own text built into it. So hat das Handschriftliche, einfach das Handschriftliche als Medium in den Text hineingebildet.

[13:55]

Okay, so this is also relative to if you practice, if your memory is based primarily on consciousness referenced experience. Basically your memory becomes variations on cultural memory. then your memory is fundamentally cultural. Yes, cultural. Because your consciousness is primarily formed culturally, not through zazen, but through culture. Okay, then your memory is fundamentally cultural because your consciousness is formed through culture.

[15:02]

Okay. And when you get used to practicing over a while, some months or years, noticing without thinking about... And you begin to have an embodied... a bodily memory not that didn't pass through consciousness and this bodily memory you could even speak of as a somatic memory When you enter that memory, or somatic memory, it's an entirely different level of experience than conscious cultural memory. And it's the memory that appears more in dreams.

[16:08]

And it's why dreams are sometimes quite odd, because they're not cultural anymore. Yes, so it becomes a kind of... Why you can have teaching dreams. I noticed four kinds of dreams. Ordinary dreams. Lucid dreams in which I participate. And... Maybe I've forgotten.

[17:17]

Anyway, so we could say somatic dreams, teaching dreams. And then what I call to myself deliriums, dreamliriums. and what I call delirium or dream-lirium for myself. So they are delirious and there is a lot going on and sometimes they turn into empty dreams. Why do I have these kind of experiences? Well, when you practice long enough, you begin to change how consciousness and memory and awareness function. how consciousness and memory and awareness function.

[18:32]

And it's a kind of clarification process, like making butter out of milk or something like that. Yeah, so what happens is you begin to have a more complex, layered consciousness which you have different kinds of participation in. Am I getting too far out or is this okay? It's okay. All right. Too much of a gap, sorry. Practicing zazen. and developing a bodily stillness which is present at red lights.

[19:40]

And green lights too sometimes. Is is not just an addition of stillness to the way you function. It's like you can, and the thing that popped up just now, it's like you can use milk to make butter and cheese and so forth. Quark, yogurt. Yeah, in Germany you make quark, and in America we make cottage cheese. I just... You don't have to translate that. Okay. But it is a process, a kind of alchemy, a kind of alchemical process in which stillness begins to clarify layers of consciousness and awareness that are part of our existence.

[20:51]

Have you ever wondered why idiot savants can do things you can't do? Why idiot savants? Who's that? What was the term in German? You can say to an idiot savant not much of an idiot something like Will 2024, July 3rd, be a Wednesday? What day of the week will it be? And they'll go, it's Wednesday.

[21:55]

That requires immense rapid calculation. This requires very fast calculation. But it's all, that calculus and mathematics is all in each one of us. It's just that the idiot savant has access to it, which we don't. So you could report to somebody, somebody's, your uncle asks, what the heck was the seminar about? And you can say, well, Baker Roshi recommended we all be Asperger's and we be idiot savants.

[22:58]

Not bad. You won't find many Buddhist groups where this is the recommendation. Okay. Now, when a plant... If you analyze botanical forms, there's a tremendous geometry in how the leaf is formed, how the flower is formed. And you can analyze the geometry that makes the plant a certain way. So... So... Often I will read something and they'll say, well, Cezanne painted this, but it's based on mathematics of a V and there's various things that I am quite sure that Cezanne didn't sit and sort of figure out.

[24:18]

Well, the mathematics in this form like this and there's the Riemann, you know, that mathematics is built into him and he paints it. So the plant, which is creates extraordinary geometrical forms is not sitting and thinking, well, I think when I get bigger, I'll plan this. The geometry's built into the plant. Am I getting a little too crazy here yet? Not yet. Okay, we'll go a little farther on. It's all in the text here, you know.

[25:20]

So what I'm saying is that when you begin to free yourself through the alchemy of stillness from cultural consciousness, you begin to have access to dynamics that are part of embodiment but not accessible to consciousness. Also, wenn du dich beginnst durch Stille von kulturellen Begrenzungen zu befreien, then, when you begin to... The alchemy of stillness, which isn't just an addition, it's an exponential or alchemical event,

[26:26]

And code for that is in Buddhism omniscience. Because you start knowing things that no one knows quite how you know those things. Okay. All right. So, in these early sutras and commentaries about the making of a Buddha, So the desire to make a Buddha statue, like that one there, and the ones up in the Tibetan Nepalese statues, which I find mind-blowing every time I do zazen or duksan,

[27:32]

in the duksan room. And I really like the gold leafing you did on the stand. This morning in duksan becomes the desire to make a Buddha in the external world is parallel to, you have to feel something in yourself. Now, in some Asian traditions, a Buddha statue the sculptor, the artisan, works with a supposedly realized person who approves of the statue after it's made.

[28:49]

And only after the approval of a realized person can you sell the statue or give it away. In some Asian cultures, the person who makes the statue works with someone who is realized. And only after the recognition by the realized And many statues have in them the ashes of the previous owner. Like I have several statues, which if you shake them and if I open them, I know there's the ashes of the previous owner are in it. So the question is, and you only want statues that are alive in some way, that affect you, when you stand in front of them, they affect your body. And Suzuki Roshi, one instruction Suzuki Roshi gave me was never buy a Buddha.

[30:21]

Unless the person is also at least partly giving it to you. So there's a number of cities, San Francisco, New York, Vienna, Zurich, which know me as a tough negotiator for the price of a Buddha. And they say to me, I can't make it that much lower. And I say, well, I don't say it out loud. But Tsukiyoshi told me, I have to have the feeling you're partly giving it to me before I buy it. And I really have followed that rule. I don't just buy a Buddha until the person wants me to have it.

[31:25]

And then I'm into persuading them to want me dead. Did you get the instruction right? Usually it works. Look at all the Buddhas we have. So they say something like, I can't really go that far down, and I don't say it out loud, but inside I think, well, I should, this is a part of it, that you want to give me this Buddha statue. And I try to convince people that it is their conviction. Yeah, so this is called walking your talk or something like that. Yeah, das nennt man dann, walking your talk. Ich halte, was man sagt. Oh, halten, was man sagt. Yeah, okay. All right. So, the example, the sort of beautiful poetic example given in the commentary on this sutra

[32:37]

is that in the bamboo, you don't hear the song of a flute. What did you say? Forget it. What was it once? It was translated at House Distilla about... Karma Biding? Karma Biding. No, that was in Berlin. Ashtray? What? Something about it. It was your answer. It was your uttering statement of Paul wasn't going to wash the ashtray in the garden, Your Honor. Oh, yeah. Well, that one wasn't mine. Okay. Anyway, so the commentary in the koan says it takes the artesian to turn a piece of bamboo into a flute.

[33:44]

And it takes the musician to turn the flute into a song. So the analogy made is that you make a Buddha and you turn the song of Buddhism into your own experience. So that's partly what I meant by embodiment. But that's not so visible in the text. That's why you need me to read the text. Okay. I think everything else has been clear.

[35:16]

So why doesn't somebody tell us something about what your experience is in practice? Or maybe it's time for dinner. Yes, it's time for dinner. Is dinner at six? Yeah. It's exhausting having to, you know... Having to make it tiring out a translator.

[36:22]

I think he didn't translate what I said. Well, you're doing good, though. All right. So let's sit for a moment. So this sense of a medium of practice. Also dieses Gefühl für ein Medium der Praxis. So I've been exploring for decades the medium of speaking in your presence.

[37:26]

Und so habe ich über Jahrzehnte das Medium in eurer Beisein, mit eurer Präsenz zu sprechen, untersucht und erforscht. And I've accepted that the medium of speaking in each other's, within our shared presence, is okay to record and then it's listened to in another context entirely. And the medium of the context of listening to it on your own you can listen to it several times.

[38:30]

And you can't listen to this several times unless it's recorded. And in the early days, Sukhiyoshi didn't let himself be recorded. He said, I want, basically said, I want to speak in a way that it's recorded in you and I want you to listen in a way that it's recorded in you. And he said, I want you to listen in a way that it's recorded in you. And there are studies and, you know, approaches in Buddhism about how you're a listener so that it is recorded in you.

[39:37]

And Trudy Dixon had somehow this power. We could say to her, And Trudy Dixon had this ability. You could ask her, can you remember what Suzuki Roshi said last Wednesday evening? And she could write it down like from a tape recording. And you could say, I don't mean this Wednesday's lecture or last Saturday's, Sunday's lecture, but last week's Wednesday lecture, she could do that too. But if you went much further back, she couldn't do it. But at some point we started, as you all know, the story, etc., we started recording.

[40:43]

Mm-hmm. And we started recording because people had little tiny tape recorders after a while and they were recording secretly. So we started recording. Now I just found out from... that he took a trip bicycling over the I'm completely impressed bicycling over the Alps and he recorded it with a little video camera in his helmet but he promised me he's not going to bring one to lecture But if enough people were sitting with little helmets recording me while I was speaking, maybe we would start making some video recordings.

[42:04]

But so far, I have not... I've decided over and over again, possibility came up of should I be video recorded as well as audio recorded. And so far, basically, we've said no. Because I want to keep at least some things for the medium of the practice center that can't be transported outside the practice center. Yeah, so... So far, and I think from my point of view, it's been the right decision to have our face-to-face teaching at a practice center and not transportable or etc.

[43:24]

So in short, what I'm saying here is that the step door is in, There's a step door. Doorsteps. There's trap doors in, step doors in, and doorsteps in. Okay, there's doorsteps in. is also underneath it a question of what medium should we use for the teaching. Practice city centers, study groups, being here like this in Writing out the teaching, because writing reaches into different places than speaking does.

[44:45]

And I think when you're listening to an audio tape, for instance, in a car, you're also driving and you're only half listening. A half-listening may be another kind of hearing. So for me, these are all this kind of exploration of how to continue our Sukhirushi lineage. For me, these are all research on how to continue the line of Suzuki Roshi.

[45:40]

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