Okay, let's bow to each other again, dear Nicole. Yeah, hi everyone. I'm wearing this raksu because it's called a raksu in Japanese. Because it's a statement, a tradition that one doesn't speak about a Buddhist practice unless without acknowledging that you're not speaking your own truth, but you're also speaking the truth of an overlapping generational lineage.

[01:08]

And I agreed on this Sunday talk to speak about this present pandemic and Zen practice. And the main thing I can say, if I'm really going to try to give you a feel for Zen practice, can make a difference in how we function in this world.

[02:12]

And the only, I think the only emphasis that makes important, that makes sense, is to speak about impermanence, anicca. And I think the only emphasis that really makes sense here is to speak about impermanence, about anicca. But what's the big deal about impermanence? We all know there's impermanence. It's the Buddhist... The concept of the Buddhist teaching starts with the four ennobling truths. And the fourth of the four ennobling truths is the Eightfold Path. And the Eightfold Path starts with, the first path is right, or perhaps completing, views.

[04:01]

And the first view of the Eightfold Path right views of the Eightfold Path is impermanence. But we all know things are impermanent, so how can this be the pivot for all of Buddhism? Well, I guess, you know, it's because we're all using the same words, and behind the words are similar concepts, and behind the concepts are actually quite different assumptions, but it's hard to sort those out. It takes a little bit of time.

[05:18]

I think the problem here or what happened here is that we all use the same words and behind the words as well as transparency are about the same concepts. But behind the concepts are actually quite different views and it takes a while to really get that clear and sort it out. And I think for me to try to distinguish between fundamentally assumed impermanence and probably assumed impermanence is the distinction I have to make somehow. Okay, so basically I didn't say much, but I did say somebody who views impermanence as fundamental would view not only the hands of the clock changing, but the face of the clock changing, and the table changing, and the floor changing, and the planet changing, etc.,

[06:30]

So what I said, and Roshi, maybe let me catch that sentence that you said when I got muted. Let me say that sentence too, because that was important. So I think the distinction that I have to make here is the distinction between a fundamental view of transience and a Yeah, now that is a... seems extreme or exaggerated that you'd be surprised that the face of the clock remains the same while the hands change.

[07:38]

But really, when you are completely Assume impermanence. Permanence surprises you more than impermanence surprises you. Now, I'm sorry this sounds kooky, but I can remember I felt, hey, something's changing or my practice seems to be working when I turned on the water in the morning and I would be surprised that water came out of the faucet.

[08:50]

And I remember another time when I realized something's going on here that's different since I've been practicing. Shoji Hamada, who was a national treasurer, national treasurer, no, national, Japanese national treasure potter, came to California in the 60s. And he led a pottery workshop in San Jose, I think. Anyway, from that workshop, somebody gave me a Hamada cup.

[09:57]

And I remember I used it regularly. It was a nice cup, nice to hold and nice to drink from. I used it for tea and coffee even, I suppose, in those days. And my daughter Sally, who's in her fifties now, is then, I don't know, three and four and stuff like that. And she knocked it off my desk and it broke into numerous pieces. And I surprised myself by not being concerned at all.

[11:19]

It was just, well, now it's meant to be repaired. And I was surprised myself that I didn't think about it at all, that it didn't bother me at all, but I saw it and thought, okay, now it's something that needs to be repaired. It wasn't made of stainless steel, so obviously it could easily break. It was meant to break and probably, yeah. So I kept the pieces and at some point got it repaired and I have it here in Hotuan next door. It wasn't made of metal and then obviously when it falls down, time breaks and then you have to repair it. And I still have the cup here with me in Hotuan. I was very careful with it, but I guess I used it with the expectation and willingness to have it broken.

[12:26]

Yeah. In America, the standard height for stair riser is 7 inches. In the USA, the standard height for stair riser is 7 inches. And the standard height for door knobs is 36 inches. And the standard height for door handles is 34 inches. Yeah, and you don't want to, in the dark, in a hotel room, be fiddling around for where the doorknob is.

[13:28]

Your hand knows where it is. And when you, for example, stay in a hotel, you don't want to look for the door handle at night in the dark, but the hand should know where it can expect the door handle. Now, this just sounds totally normal. It's to standardize things. You know, we can say that the four ennobling truths, the first is the truth of suffering. In other words, if you don't have a staircase, there's a certain degree of suffering in trying to get to the second floor. It sounds like I'm making fun of the four ennobling truths in Buddhism, but it's really kind of this simple. It sounds like I'm making fun of the four noble truths and Buddhism a little bit.

[14:45]

But in the end, it's really what's meant. It's something that's relatively simple, or something that's so simple. Recently, three of my closest friends have died from falling. And as many of you know, in January I fell on a step in a gas station parking lot and broke my right arm, which was rather incapacitating for a while. So the second ennobling truth is that there's a cause of suffering. Okay. So, and the cause of suffering can be no staircase.

[15:53]

As we did, by the way, here in Hotzenhaus. I'm looking now at the staircase that we didn't have, and now we have it, and we couldn't get down here easily. Yeah, that's true. And Matthew built it for us beautifully. It's a wonderful staircase. And it's a transition space meant to feel like a transition space. So because there's a cause of suffering, there's no staircase. The third ennobling truth is, okay, we build a staircase. And because there is a cause for suffering, or for every suffering there is a cause, and if you identify it, for example, okay, we don't have a staircase, then the third noble truth is, let's build a staircase.

[17:00]

And we standardize the stair rising dimensions so that if you want to run up the stairs, your body can run up the stairs just to... out of unconscious or non-conscious habit. And so the The fourth ennobling truth is that there is a path to freeing yourself from suffering. Like build a staircase which you're less likely to fall on and has standardized risers.

[18:18]

Yeah. Okay. But this standardization and the building of staircases assumes, has assumptions. Now, one assumption is that the future is more important than the present. That may not be obvious at first, but let me continue. Das ist jetzt auf den ersten Blick vielleicht nicht offensichtlich, aber lasst mich da mal weitermachen mit dem Punkt. Und darin steckt vielleicht auch die Annahme, dass ein körperliches Gewahrsein weniger wichtig ist als ein kognitives Bewusstsein.

[19:22]

And so, in contrast, a Zen yogic culture, if I exaggerate the difference, might make the staircases unevenly spaced, as sometimes actually is done. Because the assumption in Zen yogic culture is the present is more important than the future or the past. And because the assumption in a Zen yogic culture is that the present is more important than the future or the past. There's this parallel nature and nurture emphasis

[20:45]

Traditionally, our culture, Western culture, has emphasized nature more than nurture. And yoga cultures emphasize nurture more than the nature. And to complete this relationship of nature-nurture, yoga cultures would add circumstantiality. You're not just...

[21:48]

Who and what you are isn't determined just by nature or by nurture. It's also determined by the circumstances you face and how you face those circumstances. I used the example the other day, the other Sunday, of to throw the I Ching, or you throw the yarrow stocks in a very complicated way, 50, holding them in the hands and having your eyes closed part of the time and so forth. I spoke about it last Sunday or the day before, that you throw the 50 sticks in the I Ching in a very complicated way. And you closed your eyes and so on. So this, the I Ching and the throwing of the yarrow stalks, is based on the conception that circumstances shape you maybe more than nature or nurture.

[23:12]

And this I Ching, or this idea of throwing the sticks, this is based on the assumption that the circumstances may even shape you even more than the born and the raised. And so that going up this, for an exaggerated image, going up the stairs is a, at each moment, even each step, the yarrow stalks of circumstantiality are being thrown on the stairs in front of you. Das ist ein überzogenes Bild dafür, dass du, wenn du eine Treppe hoch gehst, dass du vielleicht sogar bei jeder einzelnen Stufe, mit jedem einzelnen Schritt so etwas machst wie die 50 I Ching Stäbchen, der Umstände so wie neu wirft.

[24:24]

So let's use another extreme example or metaphor. In Germany, diesel cars are much more common, unfortunately, for the environment. Anyway, much more common than gasoline cars are in the United States. Diesel cars are more common in Germany than in the United States. In Germany, diesel cars are much more common than in the United States. And the center in Europe has both diesel cars and gasoline cars. And sometimes we put the wrong fuel in the car. Only you do that, actually. Oh, no. You and Paul Rosenblum. Okay, you tell the two Americans, but don't tell on us. I mean, you're supposed to be neutral.

[25:28]

Sorry. Also, manchmal gibt es Leute, die in die Dieselautos ganz normales Benzin reinfüllen. And it is a nuisance. Anyway, so this is a small difference which can make a big difference. Das ist so ein kleiner Unterschied, der einen großen Unterschied machen kann. And if you tried to put gasoline in an electric car and then smoked a cigarette, it might make even a bigger difference. Und wenn du zum Beispiel versuchst, ein Elektroauto mit Benzin zu tanken und dann anfängst, eine Zigarette zu rauchen, dann hast du vielleicht einen noch größeren Unterschied. So let's imagine in this extreme example what I'm calling a hover car. Do you know what hover means? Like a helicopter hovers. Well, yeah, like Marty McFly, a hoverboard. Oh, yeah, like a hoverboard. Yeah, that kind of idea.

[26:30]

And for this example, let's imagine we had a floating car. Yeah, so I'm imagining this car is in a future world where everything is really impermanent. And you could drive from place to place in this car. But in this car, in this future time, or whatever, another kind of time, there were no highways. And so you had an experience, something like maybe the California fires and Oregon fires, which are going on now horribly for people. And equally bad for the planet, the fires in Brazil sometimes and Australia too.

[27:36]

genauso schädlich für den Planeten sind zum Beispiel die Feuer in Brasilien und manchmal auch Australien. So let's imagine this hover car when the driver sat in a good Zazen posture. Jetzt stellen wir uns mal vor in diesem Schwebeauto, wenn der Fahrer in einer guten Zazen-Haltung sitzt. This is crazy. I'm sorry to be so crazy. When the driver sat and there was a real lifting through the spine, it's almost like a little propeller appeared above and the car would hover above the present. So let's imagine, and I'm sorry that this is such an odd example, but that you sit in a very good position and there is an upward-oriented feeling through the spine that even feels like a propeller coming out of your skull and the car is floating over the present.

[28:51]

And you wouldn't be using a global positioning system. In GPS, you'd be using a PPS, present positioning system. Okay. And you don't use a geographical navigation system, but a present navigation system. So when the present positioning system was functioning, you could know how to proceed through the fires ahead of you where there were no highways, but there was a passage that could only be understood by hovering over the present and reading the I Ching of the present. Wait, you're hovering through the fires. Yeah, okay, I think I basically... You're hovering in the present. Yeah. And the present is giving you the information you need to go through the fire. Okay, thank you. Which should... which I've had this experience fighting the Tassajara fire the first time.

[30:10]

So the emphasis in this yogic worldview rooted thoroughly in impermanence, fundamental impermanence, is you don't want to imagine a future based on past performance, past precedence. So you want a future based on the experience of the present. So you want a culture which emphasizes a worldview, a view of the past, present and future, a view that emphasizes the present, uncovering the present as the basis for the future.

[31:38]

So in this yogic worldview, The bodily awareness in the present is more important than cognitive consciousness. What did you say? The cognitive what? that the bodily awareness is more important than the cognitive consciousness.

[32:56]

But the assumption there is that cognitive consciousness is based on bodily awareness and bodily awareness is open to more ways of knowing than just cognitive consciousness as being the definitive way of knowing. But the assumption here is that the cognitive consciousness is based and reconnects with the physical being, that the physical being takes up much more information from the present than the cognitive consciousness alone. So Zen yoga culture wants to increase the attentionality required by the present So what a Zen yogic culture tries to do is to increase the attention that one needs to meet the present. A yogic culture tries to increase this attention. Yeah, I mean, in simple things you see this difference like a regular coffee cup in the United States has a handle and the handle, if you're right-handed, makes you drink in a certain place.

[34:10]

The matcha chow wons, the matcha teacups I have, for instance, I've shown you both now and in the discussion. It's not entirely clear where you drink from and what edges of the rim make the mouth feel best in drinking the tea. You have to discover that. It's not predictable. So a culture which assumes impermanence wants to create a present which requires the attentionality to deal with impermanence.

[35:13]

You want a present which requires attentionality Which can deal with impermanence. Okay, can deal with, thank you. So I've almost already exceeded my time. So the lecture is impermanent and I'll stop now. No, I'll continue. All right. So we need something that interrupts our brain survival modalities which try to create a predictable world.

[36:47]

And we want a practice which interrupts syntactical thinking, which treats the present as just a bridge between past and future. And we also need a practice that interrupts syntactic thinking and that is the kind of thinking in which the present is only felt or understood as a bridge between the past and the future. And we want a practice which interrupts naming, which naming tends to move cognition into predictability. We know what that is. So if we're really going to know impermanence, we have to interrupt

[37:53]

naming and syntactical thinking and the assumption that the present is just a bridge between past and future. And all of that and more including increasing the physicality of awareness in the present, can be done simply by the phrase, just this. All das kann ganz einfach durch den Wendesatz genau dies erreicht werden.

[39:26]

But you have to use the experience and the yogic technique of the hua dou, of settling into the phrase until it's a bodily presence. But you have to use the experience and the ability, namely the ability of the Wado practice, the turning word practice, that you leave this term, exactly this, in a way that you leave yourself in a way that this sentence becomes a physical presence. And it helps to realize that these are mini worldviews. So just this is a mini worldview. And it helps to understand that these sentences are so mini worldviews.

[40:31]

Exactly this is a miniature world, a miniature worldview. Yeah, so you're interrupting the whole flow to a past-based future by just using a phrase like just this. Du unterbindest den gesamten Fluss von einer Zukunft, die auf der Vergangenheit gründet, einfach indem du diesen Fluss unterbrichst durch diesen Satz, genau dies. And you really have to repeat it regularly, [...] because you're interrupting embedded worldviews that are bodily embedded. Because what you want to achieve with it is nothing less than that you cut through all the worldviews that are written in us physically, embedded in us physically and cognitively through many layers.

[41:38]

And it's helpful to know that we can change, we can transform, that transformation is possible, which gives you the power to make use of your bodily, neurological, and neuronic brain plasticity. And it also helps to know and to believe that it is possible for us to change. We can transform ourselves. And if you believe in that, then you can use your neurological, your physiological plasticity. So you have to develop the habit of attentionality where at every percept, as often as possible, without criticizing yourself for failing, you say just this. And then you have to train your ability to pay attention, so that you really, in every moment of perception, and without you criticizing yourself for it, if you don't do it often enough or if you forget it or something, in every moment of perception you say to yourself, exactly this, exactly this.

[42:55]

Yeah, so when my Hamada cup broke, oh, just this. When I broke my right arm, I looked at it and it was flopping around. I thought, well, just this. Call an ambulance. It was like, oh dear, it's okay. Arms are meant to be broken, I guess. And hearts, too, sometimes. Als ich mir den Arm gebrochen habe und der da einfach rumhing, da habe ich gedacht, okay, einfach so oder genau so, genau dies. Und ja, es war wirklich so. Manchmal werden Arme halt gebrochen und manchmal Herzen auch. So just this unnamed things interrupts naming, unnamed things. And we want to unfold the enfolded present.

[44:01]

The present is kind of sheathed in a tube of past, present and future. And it takes some time to dwell in the And it takes a certain amount of time until one can really dwell in this biological present. The lasting present that is generated by living. And to know, to uncover, to discover how to uncover the present takes time and skill.

[45:39]

And it requires stillness as well, bodily stillness, cognitive stillness, as well as movement. Und es bedarf der Stille, der körperlichen Stille und der kognitiven, geistigen Stille. Und braucht aber auch die Bewegung. A certain stillness hovering in the present. Wie ein gewisses Gefühl von Stille, das in der Gegenwart schwebt. Yeah, so again, if you just use a phrase, we could also use this-ality instead of reality. You could use this-ality. You could use this very moment. That's up to you. But the simplest is just this.

[46:43]

And now your voice broke for a moment, but can you say something? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now? Okay, but I can translate. You don't need to repeat. I'm fine. Also, du kannst auch so ein Wendewort benutzen, wie zum Beispiel eine Kombination von dieses und Wirklichkeit, also so eine Dieslichkeit oder so. Oder du kannst genau dies oder du kannst sagen nur dieser Moment. Was auch immer du da für dich benutzt als Wendewort, das ist an dir. You know, to play with a word like reality and turn it into this-ality is a way to break the habits of cognitive knowing and so forth. So... European diseases decimated Native American tribes when Europeans first arrived on the continent.

[48:09]

And so we can expect with globalization more globalized pandemics. And if you keep expecting the world to be the way it was, a status quo, a normality, you're going to suffer more than if you say, okay, it's all up for grabs. And you can really develop a detachment from the way you want things to be with a simple phrase like, just this, just this, just this. Your new mini-worldview, transformative mini-worldview.

[49:34]

And you can, with such a simple sentence, like exactly this, or simply this, simply this, with such a simple sentence, you can let go of a real, a real detachment, And if you really practice it with attentionality, you can begin to feel, you can feel the various embedded, inherited worldviews shifting and dissolving. which can turn an ordinary person like myself and you too into a warrior willing to face these impermanent futures. Thank you very much, Nicole, for translating.

[50:55]

And thank you for being patient with our technical problems. Danke fürs Übersetzen und danke für eure Geduld mit unseren technischen Problemen. Thank you. But I think we can expect technical problems and be surprised that it works at all. Aber ich glaube, wir können einfach mal davon ausgehen, dass es technische Probleme geben wird und uns wundern oder überrascht sein, dass überhaupt irgendetwas funktioniert. I'm so happy sitting here with all of you. Ich bin so glücklich, hier zu sitzen mit euch allen. All right. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you.

[51:53]

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