So I'd like to start with a small thing. When we, yeah, say, during the night, hear a rainstorm, rain on the roof, rain outside. Sometimes there can be a certain satisfaction to that. Maybe you sleep better. Or while you're awake you enjoy hearing the rain. Now, that's not about understanding the rain. It's about It's a kind of satisfaction. Or an acceptance and absorption of the immediacy of our world.

[01:11]

But there's also this satisfaction of understanding something, grasping something. The acceptance of that? There's also, in addition to what I just said, there's the satisfaction of understanding something. Of understanding something, of grasping something. And often I think too much of our mental world is guided by, shaped by wanting to understand things, wanting to grasp things. And in between we feel a sort of dissatisfaction by not grasping things.

[02:23]

Or we're just occupied by a stream of thoughts. Now, what I'm suggesting is that... I'm just trying to find some example that we all might share. The satisfaction of hearing the rain. which is not understanding, it's a kind of acceptance or satisfaction. But it's also a knowing. And it's a knowing that's also close to love. Loving your child.

[03:34]

You don't understand them or grasp them. It's just something satisfying to see them alive. Most of the practices of Buddhism are aimed at a result in this kind of satisfaction. A kind of continuous flow of satisfaction that proceeds from all things coming toward you and cultivating and authenticating. There is also the punctuation of insight, understanding, grasping something. But it's a punctuation which is in the field of satisfaction and and enhances the satisfaction and arises from it.

[05:00]

Can you explain punctuation? What? Can you explain punctuation? Punctuation, like a period? Like a period, okay. So eine Instanz, die aus der Zufriedenheit, die aus dem ganzen Feld der Erscheinung hervortritt und darin liegt, also wenn du etwas Einzelnes verstehst. And I want to say something again about what is a city. Because we have this figurative sense that we've used for city and... and how we've used the word city and mountain. So for me, Arthur Rimbaud's poems, many of them, he's basically a city poet, many of them specifically entitled cities. And here he is, I don't know, 18 or something, writing this.

[06:09]

I'm an ephemeral, do you want me to hold? I'm an ephemeral and not too discontented citizen. Ich bin ein vergänglicher und nicht allzu unzufriedener Bürger. He's ephemeral and he's not too discontented. Er ist vergänglich und nicht zu unzufrieden. Of a citizen of a metropolis considered modern. Ein Bürger einer Metropole, die als modern betrachtet wird. Considered modern because all known taste has been evaded. has been evaded in the furnishings and exterior of the houses, as well as in the layout of the city. Here you would fail to detect the least trace of any monument of superstition. Morals and language are reduced to their simplest expression at last.

[07:21]

The way these millions of people who do not even need to know each other manage their education Their business and old age is so identical that the course of their lives must be several times less long than that which a mad statistics calculates for the people of the continent. And from my window, I see new specters.

[08:26]

Specters are like ghosts. And from my window, I see new specters rolling through the thick eternal smoke. It's rather different in French than English and German. Our woodland shade, our summer night. New furies, humanities in front of my cottage. New furies. Furies, the amenities are the furies. New furies. In front of my cottage. Death without tears. A petty crime howling in the mud of the street. Petty. Petty crime. Petty crime. In the mud of the street.

[09:34]

What strong arms. What lovely hour. Will give me back that region. Whence come my slumbers. and my slightest movements. And if you don't mind my wasting the hour with reading things to you, Every time I go somewhere, you have your book? We're a team.

[10:37]

254. It's the page. It's 299. I think it's the same pages. Every time I go somewhere, it's a vast journey. A trained trip to Cassis tires me out as if this short time I traveled through the urban and rural landscape of four or five countries. I imagine myself living in each house I pass Ich stelle mir vor, ich lebe in jedem einzelnen Haus, an dem ich vorbeifahre. Each chalet.

[11:38]

Jedes kleine Schlösschen. Each isolated cottage. Jedes isolierte Landhaus. Whitewashed with lime and silence. Weiß gekalkt und in Stille. Happy at first, then bored. Zunächst glücklich, dann gelangweilt. Then fed up. It all happens in a moment. And as soon as I've abandoned one of these homes, I'm filled with nostalgia for the time I lived there. And so every trip I make is a painful and happy harvest of great joys. Great boredoms and countless false nostalgias. And as I pass by those houses, villas and chalets, I also live the daily lives of all their inhabitants. living them all at the same time.

[12:58]

I've created various personalities within. I constantly create personalities. Each of my dreams, as soon as I start dreaming it, is immediately incarnated in another person. who is then the one dreaming it and not I. Well, for me, both what Rambo does and Pessoa says is characteristic of the city. And if I try to describe in a few words my feeling of the city, which is also my feeling of where the city path is located, for me the city is what I would call the solace of complexity.

[13:59]

the complexity that both Rambo and Pessoa refer to. And somehow it's satisfying to, solace means to enjoy and to be consoled by. To be absorbed into this complexity. Into the houses, into the people in the cafes, etc. I mean I like the French use it particularly the flaneur which means to stroll to stroll about and it really began to be used when you had street lighting in Paris

[15:20]

Because until there was street lighting at night, people weren't on the streets at night. It was too dangerous. But the flaneur is one who strolls at night in the crowds, but somehow is absorbed anonymously into the crowds. And Baudelaire is the preeminent poet of the flaneur. And I know, I remember I used to especially love this wandering in Kyoto, which has so many people in it. You can't believe how populated Japanese cities are. But there's also, in addition to the solace I feel in the complexity of the city,

[16:38]

Just below the soulless complexity, soullessing complexity, is a sort of saturation of suffering. You know what a bog is? A bog is like, it's not a swamp, but it's bouncy and it's full of water and water comes up at your stand. And what is it? Okay.

[18:05]

I wish I could get you all to ask questions the way you're willing to come up with words for Bob. Right below the respectability of the city and the order of the city, there's a kind of bog of suffering. I can barely say these things in English. I don't know how you manage in German. Anyway, what?

[19:10]

We have this flaneur as a verb. We have it in German. We use it flaneering. Flaneering? Yeah. Okay. Let's go flaneering sometime. I'll bring my fishing rod. We'll see if we catch a poem. Okay. Okay. Anyway, right below this respectability, there's a kind of bog of saturated suffering. Yeah, not everyone leaves their broken dreams back in their apartment when they come to the café. And the more you can let yourself into the layers of interdependence among all of us, You feel the damage so many people have.

[20:20]

But somehow it's also all, for the most part, contained in the order of the city. But sometimes it feels like you're swimming in a sponge. Yeah. The practice of the bodhisattva is to have the strength to feel into this and live it with people. So this is also the city path. And true, there's the controlling self-satisfaction of the persons who, of the culture and the people who control the the forms of our society, whether they know it or not.

[22:12]

Which even as a voting individual you can do very little about. Yeah. Now, Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, two poets. Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, zwei Dichter. And Yeats. Yeats. Yeats in German? No, Yeats. In Irish, it's Yeats. Yeats. Yeats. And Yeats was a, Pound considered Yeats the greatest poet of the 20th century at the time. And they... Yates said his dream of mankind, of his early, excuse me, his dream of early manhood, he said was false.

[23:12]

His dream was that there was some... His dream was that the modern nation could somehow come to a unity or harmony of culture. Er sagte, sein Traum war, dass die moderne Nation irgendwie zu einer Einheit oder Harmonie der Kultur gelangen könnte. And he realized, he said that that was a false dream. He said that maybe a few people could do this. And then he said poetically, and wait for the moon to turn the century.

[24:14]

Okay. So they had what was called the Reimer's Club. And finally just Yates and Pound decided to activate this. And they went to a place that Yates had called Stone Cottage. And they spent three winters there from 1913 to 1916. Thinking through poetry together. And Hans-Peter Dürer told me once, the physicist, that he and Heisenberg sat at a kitchen table day after day bringing intuitions of physics together and doing the calculations afterwards.

[25:31]

And Yates and Pound tried to do the same thing. And in many ways it is said they canonized, made the canon of modern literature. But in English. But their poetry eventually went different directions. But what they did is what I would call the mountain path. They said, we can't do this in the distraction of the city. Hans-Peter told me that he and Heisenberg couldn't do this in usual circumstances.

[26:40]

They just had to be together, face to face, every day, all day. And this isn't about the monastery. This is about what I would call, in a wider sense, the mountain path. The mountain can be a kitchen table. Or a cottage on the edge of a forest. At Sukhi Rishi once, as Zen Center developed, and it was a historical moment when forces within the culture and society itself helped form the Zen Center, And it began to be rather busy. And Sukhiroshi, it was his idea to found Tassajara. But he also didn't want to do too much institution building.

[28:05]

And one time he said to me rather, why are you making Zen Center so big? And another time he said to me, maybe just you and I should go to New Mexico for three or four years and just be together because, you know, he was worried about succession. And he thought I was so obtuse, I would need several years alone with him to understand anything. But I encouraged him to we continue with the Zen Center because I said this will be the basis in the future for the lineage to develop. And it was clear to me that although it's critical, I didn't know Japanese Buddhism in the beginning, because I'd never been to Japan in the beginning of my relationship with him.

[29:23]

But it was clear to me, because he always spoke about it, how discouraged he was with Japanese Buddhism, which led him to come to the United States. Beginner's mind can mean to start again, start the game over. Matisse sometimes destroyed current work so he could start again. So beginner's mind is also the singularity of an interruption. And he felt that somehow Buddhism needed this interruption in himself of coming to the United States. But still, despite knowing, or at least feeling so much from him about his discouragement of Japanese Buddhism,

[30:48]

it was also clear to me that he was produced by Japanese Buddhism. And it was clear to me that there were no lay lineages had ever survived. It was monk lineages which had survived, in fact. There had been great lay teachers. And the larger Sangha, which is mostly lay people, support the monk Sangha. But historically, the transmission of the lineage has only been articulated through monks over generations. So when we started Tassara, I said to Sukershi, you know, you shouldn't be the only priest.

[32:10]

I'll mock. I'm willing to be ordained. So my own life is woven back and forth between this city path and monk's path, mountain path. And very sweetly, Heinrich, next to my chair in my little room upstairs, put the book of Rumi right beside where I was sitting. And I borrowed it for a moment. And I opened it. And it says, back into the reed bed. He says, time to ignore sensible advice. Time to untie the knots of our culture.

[33:28]

The knots our culture ties us with. Cut to the quick. Quick means in this sense the center, to where you really live, the quickness. Like when a woman is pregnant, there's a quickening that she feels, and then she knows she's pregnant. So to cut to the quick is to go to the center. Cut to the quick. That would be good enough. Okay. Cut to the quick. Does it have a feeling of stabbing or something? Yes, of cutting, cutting, cutting, yes, and cutting what is most at the center of living.

[34:36]

So he says, cut to the quick. Put cotton in both sentimental ears. Go back into the reed bed. That's like Philip saying to go out without only the clothes on your back. Yeah, let the cane sugar, which is also a kind of reed, let the cane sugar in your spine, for sure, let the cane sugar rise in you again. No rules or daily duties. Those do not bring the peace of silence.

[35:44]

Sometimes the rules and daily duties of a monastery don't bring the peace of silence. So rooming, I would say, is describing the mountain paths. Now in this mountain path, city path, kind of folding together, what practices can I suggest that you can bring into your city path? well I think the most useful one is the uses of phrases already connected just now is enough I'm always close to this not knowing is nearest

[36:51]

To pause for the particular. These phrases gather your mind into the immediacy of your living. And are interruptions, negations or interruptions of our usual thinking. So you think just now isn't enough. You say just now is enough. Because you have no other choice other than now. So make now enough. Or as I practiced, as you know, no place to go and nothing to do.

[38:07]

This is a basic practice of negation. Every time I had to go somewhere, I'd think, no place to go. I still went places. Every time I had to do something, I said, nothing to do. And then I did it in a big space in which there was nothing to do, but yet I did things. So using these antidotal wisdom phrases can be at the center of urban practice. Now, I mean, our life is urbanized.

[39:21]

I suppose that Facebook, I only know the word, I don't know what it's like exactly, but I suppose that Facebook is some kind of global face-to-face effort. And YouTube and so forth. And now you can have your coffee machine at home and you can buy your books over the Internet. In any case, it's a kind of global urbanization process. Yeah, how do we find our way in the midst of this? I think that you want to keep bringing your attention your attentional patterns into these wisdom phrases.

[40:34]

Now, many of you may remember Sukhiroshi's statement in the epilogue of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Reality cannot be caught. by thinking and emotions. Reality cannot be caught by thinking and emotions. Moment after moment, watch your breath. Moment after moment, watch your posture. Or feel your posture. And then he said, this is your true nature. If I was working on Zen mind, beginner's mind now, as I did years ago, I might have changed it to this is your true practice.

[41:44]

To avoid the problems with true nature and Buddha nature. But in any case, He said, this is your true nature. And then he said, there is no secret beyond this point. How can it be that simple? I think on the city path, if you incubate this attention to your breathing, And a continual awareness to your posture. Of the yogic aspects of posture. A posture, when you bring your attention to your posture one way, it fills you with health and lifts you up. And so I would say, to make it simple, bring attention to the breath and to the spine.

[42:59]

And feel the mind of the spine. And the spine is also a mind. And so that's a practice of mind as consciousness. The use of phrases is a practice of mind as consciousness. And the use of phrases is a practice of mind as consciousness. The use of phrases, wisdom phrases, is a practice of mind as consciousness. And bringing attention to the breath and to the spine is a practice of the bodily mind.

[44:07]

Now if we want to complete this or further articulate this city path I think we also want to bring have a practice of phenomena as mind And the word phenomena actually means things as known through the mind. Okay, so let's make it more explicit. So here I'll give you again, as I have in the seminar, the practice of spatial and perceptual immediacy. I mean, when you first sit down in zazen, you bring attention to the posture and sitting and how your back is, etc.

[45:26]

At some point you shift attention to attention itself. And that's the moment in which zazen starts. If you observe yourself going to sleep, There's the moment in which sleep takes over and you know you're going to sleep, but you can still be aware of it. And as I often say, it's a very similar shift. But now your spine and your posture is lifting you into another mind than dreaming. But it can be very similar to dreaming. Aber das kann dem Träumen sehr ähneln.

[46:55]

You have the play of associations which is also the essence of creativity. Auch da spielen die Assoziationen die ja auch die Essenz der Kreativität sind. So this shift to attention itself dieses hineinverlagern in die Aufmerksamkeit selbst is a shift into a kind of spatial immediacy. And that spatial immediacy is not just available through zazen. As Tara has found through this practice of interruption or negation, you can suddenly find yourself in a spatial immediacy. When time flows out of the clocks into space itself we feel the silence of space itself and all things arising within this silence arising within this space And the space is what you experience and the silence is what you experience primarily.

[48:23]

And the sounds and the objects float in that space. Feeling that would be the city path or mountain path or the path. And incubating that more and more in the flow of your activity. is the maturing of Buddha mind. And let me give you two other senses of this process of negation. If this isn't a little bit too much, let me try. If you negate the object closure,

[49:25]

In other words, we're in this room. And there's windows and curtains and people and stuff. And it's a closure established through objects. And when I spoke about, as Nico mentioned, how you do a service in the Zendo, the Buddha Hall, Oh, what you're doing is you're offering incense and so forth. What you're doing is you're offering incense, when you're offering incense and so forth. You're trying to create the mind of the Buddha. And offering that mind through the offering of incense to the Buddha.

[50:46]

As the Buddha statue with its chakras and so forth is offering you. So this way of kind of interrupting knowing where you're going. becomes an interruption, or what I would say, a negation of object closure. And you're suddenly in a space where there are objects, but it's all transparent. And the space folds into you. Can space fold? Yes, it can space. Experience shall be experienced. Space is folding into you. You carry that space to the altar offering. And then you come back and you carry it and you keep offering it continuously.

[52:01]

Now there's also object negation. Not object closure, but object negation. Interrupt naming or interrupt discrimination. wo du das Benennen oder die Unterscheidung verneinst, unterbrichst. And then the space opens out from you, it folds out from you instead of folding within you. Und dann entfaltet sich der Raum aus dir heraus, anstatt dass er sich in dich hineinfaltet. Yeah. I'll let you explore these differences. Diese Unterschiede lasse ich euch erforschen. This is also possible, quite possible in the city path. And I'm two or three minutes early. Sorry. So why don't we sit for a couple of minutes? And you can translate it.

[53:01]

Where's the sound going? Come back. Moment after moment.

[54:48]

Just watch your breath. Just watch your posture. Incubate this. Answer the talking of the world with wisdom phrases. Find yourself in a circle or sphere of awareness. Find yourself in this sphere. This sphere or circle of immediacy. dieser Kreis oder diese Kugel der Unmittelbarkeit ist sowohl der Weg der Stadt wie auch der Weg des Berges.

[56:15]

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