What I'd like to try to do is separate identity and self. And I'm taking identity to mean what you feel the same as. The word identity in its roots means something like the same place. I feel identified with this place. So I would like to separate identity and self. Now let's take one of Dogen's statements. Which I have to mention a number of times over the last few years.

[01:11]

It's one of those phrases that I think we really have to come back to our whole lifetime. The continuous practice which actualizes itself. First of all, What is continuous practice? And what is continuous practice which actualizes itself? There might be continuous practice which doesn't actualize itself. These are very recursively recursively defined statements, recursively articulated statements.

[02:22]

In other words, the continuous practice depends on the definition of actualized itself, and actualized itself depends on the continuous practice. And now we have a couple more recursive. The continuous practice which actualizes itself is your practice just now. So now, it's not only continuous practice, Your practice just now, not somewhere else and not tomorrow. One sentence further. The continuous practice which actualizes itself is your practice just now.

[03:41]

The now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self. Okay. Is your practice just now? But it's only your practice just now if this now does not belong to the self. I think this is one of the most useful statements in all of Buddhism. The now continues practice does not originally belong to the self. that now continuous practice does not belong

[04:46]

Now, my friend who I was just speaking about, his now originally belonged to the self and presently belongs to the self and he's incapable of having a now which doesn't belong to the self. So any practice that goes beyond well-being, Dogen would say, is only possible if the now does not belong to the self. Now that's enough for a lifetime. You can stop. But I'll go on for another 15 minutes and I tend to follow the schedule.

[05:55]

And I don't know how to say this. I've never said these things before. You may think I have, but I don't think I have. But this morning I shaved. In a way, I don't think I've ever shaved before. Ha, ha, ha. It might be the case that I just don't remember. But you know, shaking has been done since you were 16 or 17 or something. Kind of a habit, and the territory of your face doesn't change that much over 50 or 60 years. Well, I find it more amusing, and I did a better shave, but changed the way I shaved. Every now and then.

[07:19]

So today I had a completely new way to do it, and it was... But could I possibly, in the millions of times I've shaved, not shave that way? I think I have never shaved that way. Okay. I've used them one more. At what? This is not true. This is not true. One of the strategies of self Again, just to separate identity and self.

[08:41]

Okay. And you want to... You want to shift your sense of location. If I say this too simply, it'll be too obvious and not understandable. Too understandable. You want to shift your sense of identity to situated immediacy, creating eternity, immediacy and situated immediacy, immediacy which can become a sight.

[09:55]

If I have the feeling, I hope it stops raining. And then it stops raining. But question, I hope it stops raining, dissolves. It has to be raining for the question, I hope it stops raining, to have any basis. It has to stop raining. I hope it stops raining can only have a basis as a question if it's raining

[11:10]

The question, who am I, dissolves if your identity is situated immediacy. If situated immediacy is the primary way you locate yourself, You feel located. The question, who am I, has no basis. because the question who am I needs the past and the future and so forth as a basis. It doesn't mean the question doesn't have relevance to a zen adept. It just is a rather flimsy question. Now, situated unease.

[12:49]

Now, as you heard me say very often, but to get ourselves on the same page, The most accessible but one of the most difficult ways to generate situated in me is to have your attention Always on your breath and body.

[13:49]

And to, if you don't mind, to run the riff on that. Okay. Very easy to bring your attention to your breath for a short period of time. Very difficult to do it for a long time. And very difficult to do it. Continuous practice which actualizes itself. Very difficult to do it continuously. But you already do something similar continuously. You almost always know what your posture is. Often, much of the time while you're sleeping.

[14:59]

And once you're awake, pretty much all day long you know what your posture is. So you've already learned. We teach children how to bring continuous attention to their posture. It's one of the most essential things we learn. And it's different, like in sport. native Japanese from genetic Japanese, and so forth. How we bring attention to our posture is cultural.

[16:02]

Not only cultural, because we all get legs and arms. Wie wir unsere Haltung auch beachten oder welche Haltung wir einnehmen, das ist ganz klar kulturell. Es ist nicht nur kulturell, weil wir alle haben Arme und Beine usw. Having been up all night packing, completely jet-lagged, put me down on a moving walkway and I'll open my eyes and I'll tell you whether I'm in Europe or in America. Also komplett jet-lagged, den ganzen Tag lang gepackt haben, People have told you Europeans, that doesn't mean Americans, I don't tell. Or if there's occasionally in the black forest walking an English couple, know from a distance it's English and not Germans.

[17:21]

Germans sort of walk with a sideways way of awareness and English people stride. Okay, so our stances may be different. So I usually bring attention to our stance, our posture. Yeah, naturally without effort. It seems that. So we can say that we have a continuous practice of bringing attention to the posture, we all know.

[18:32]

And it seems effortless and natural because we don't have the experience of bringing attention to our posture, but in fact we are. Why is it so difficult to bring attention to water? Right. Now, at least within our culture, I would say the primary reason that it's so difficult to do something continuously, which is so easy to do for a short time, because as most of you know, ist, wie die meisten von euch wissen, weil wir unsere Kontinuität selbst im Denken begründen.

[19:48]

Identity is established in our self, which is part of conceptual consciousness. And we feel lost or crazy or disoriented if we cannot establish self-continuity. or a location. So what is the medium in which we establish the continuity of self? The medium is primarily conceptual consciousness. Not only, because dreams can be a medium of the self, but quite different than acquiring So one of the strategies in Buddhism is to shift

[21:01]

the medium of the self. Or shift how we identify ourselves away from the self and consciousness. two are situated in medias. And that is characterized in rather cartoon-like images and symbolism. where a guy is hanging by his teeth from a rope from a branch that's breaking while there's a tiger underneath or something like that.

[22:11]

Yeah, and what do you do? There's a flower there. Do you pick it? Yeah. This is situated immediacy. We can say, while you're alive, you're alive. As long as you're alive, you're alive. Even if you know you're going to die in four weeks, as long as you're alive, you're alive. Dying in four weeks is a comparative thought. It's the self located in you know If you're really located in a situated and needy situation and you're nourished and reinforced through the amnesia, the idea that you are going to die in two weeks is rather flimsy.

[23:27]

In that sense, there's no death. As long as you're alive. You're dead as long as you're dead. Now, none of us will be completely free of Completely free of... He's happy. No one is completely independent of, you know, past and future and all of the embodiment that's carried... But it doesn't have to be the primary reference point.

[24:49]

And the more you feel, you know, what they say in America, we say, the kids say, sticks and stones can break, you know, when somebody's giving you a hard time saying, you're a big sissy and you're tearing a vine in. And you're supposed to say like, sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. Now that may work when somebody says you're an idiot and you know you're not. But for most of us, names can hurt us. I could say we're born in situated immediacy.

[25:51]

And the obstetrician better know that. And we die in a situation immediately, nowhere else. But in between, our stray into imaginary worlds. in vorgestellten Welten. Zen would say, that situation immediately ought to continue from birth to death. And that's practice. Many of us can create an emergency through our whole life.

[27:01]

By never having a cup of tea. By being busy all the time. That's creating an emergency where you don't have to look at what is the situation itself. That's creating an emergency to create a state of emergency by never being able to calm down und untersuchen kann auch das situationsgebundene Selbst. We distract ourselves or hide ourselves from the situated community. Wir zerstreuen uns selbst und wir verstecken uns vor dieser situationsgebundenen Unmittelbarkeit. Now we're supposed to have lunch in a few minutes. Und wir sollten in ein paar Minuten Mittagessen haben. So let's start. Lasst uns also aufhören. We can start again.

[28:02]

And we can then start the songs. Thank you. The breath is not this location in the breath and phenomena is not the only way to practice and realize situated immediacy, but it's one of the most accessible. Also, auf den Atem zu sich konzentrieren ist nicht die einzige Möglichkeit, um diese situationsgebundene Unmittelbarkeit zu schaffen, aber es ist sicherlich die schwierigste.

[29:06]

This is the best access. I would like to point out the attention. Look at this work. It's a solar clock. And now there are five minutes left. That's 12 o'clock, not 1 o'clock. It's exactly these two up here who are doing it. You say this is a sundial? Yes, because you see, now it's just a little moment, but it's what I thought, yeah? It should be, it's cool. If you divide, it should be exactly the middle. Yeah. Well, I tried to stop for one second. No. As crazy as that. That's great.

[30:01]

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