I'm surprised at myself that I haven't suggested or even insisted that we switch to chanting entirely in German or English. Ich bin selbst überrascht davon, dass ich bisher noch nicht vorgeschlagen habe und oder sogar darauf gedrungen habe oder darauf bestanden habe, dass wir nur noch auf Englisch oder Deutsch rezitieren. Nearly 60 years ago when I started, I wouldn't have imagined I'd still be chanting in Japanese. But for me, it's a kind of honoring our lineage and tradition. And it's a kind of... It's recognizing that we're in the midst of something still new to us. And it's a way of tuning ourselves to... each other and in this vowel-based chanting tuning ourselves within each other.

[01:27]

Just trying to do this with you, I end up trying to create terms which are Dharma doors or entries for us into this practice. Sometimes I make them up and sometimes I use Japanese words. And one word I've been using and will continue to introduce is kekkai. So in a conception of allness, of no beginning, then everything is a beginning.

[02:51]

If you just could bring that one concept, it's a familiar word, beginning, but bring that into your experience, everything is a beginning, this would be transformative practice. And the word ketgei then means when you know you've made a beginning or something has made a beginning for you. And we have to make a kekkai soon for Vicky. If she's going to be Shusso. Where is she? There you are. Ah, hi. Um... Yeah, and she's three quarters from another sangha and one fourth from this sangha.

[04:17]

But that's good. Myokrimo, she even said to me the other day, maybe we should merge our sanghas. And I said, well, I don't know. Nice idea. But we've got three mergers here already. Non-Brexits, no. Three mergers. non-leavers. And, you know, we don't announce the shusso entering ceremony and all that stuff until the practice periods get underway for a while.

[05:20]

Because at some point, we're not planning. We know that we probably... We'll have a Shusso, not always, but sometimes. But we wait until the practice period feels settled and the person who will be Shusso, in this case Vicky, feels also well located in the practice period. We wait until it feels like the practice period has come to a halt and also until the person who will probably be a chasseur, in this case Vicky, also has the feeling of being firmly located. And this is your third practice period? Here?

[06:23]

Oh, thanks. When you did the first one we kind of wanted you to stay. This is your third practice period here. Yeah, and so we'll go take this under consultation and decide something. Now, I could easily say, if you're... Yeah, why not? If you're practicing in a Newtonian universe, you're not doing transformational practice. It may be well-being practice, but not transformational practice. I could easily say something like, if you live in a Newtonian universe, then you don't do a transformative practice. Then you might do a practice with which you feel better, but not a transformative practice.

[07:30]

So we may be able, and I hope we can, practice without a sense of the universals of time and space. Which as a dynamic is effectively a theological idea because it creates a space outside of everything else. Yes, the effect of believing in God or the effect of believing there's outside time, universal time and space, basically the same. And the fact, right, F-A-C-T, the fact of believing in God.

[08:42]

Yeah, okay. The belief in. Yeah, okay. Also der Glaube an Gott und der Glaube an eine externe, an externe universelle Raum und Zeit sind im Grunde genommen das Gleiche. I think all these light shapes need to be cleaned. Excuse me for changing hats for a moment here. Yeah. But what I recognized laterally is that to... Well, first taking for granted that there's a universal time and space is a problem. But taking for granted also that experience occurs in the unit's delegated as authentic in our culture is also non-transformational.

[10:07]

That was a hard one. I won't use the word delegate. But given, we take it for granted as a given, but it's actually only given, it's delegated, it's given to us as with authority. I use the word delegated, but in principle I also mean something like as given, as if it is given to us by an authority, that it is so. And when I first got onto that was when Suzuki Roshi said at some point during a lecture, just a little aside, in the early 60s.

[11:17]

Someone said something like, my stomach is upset. Someone said something like, my stomach hurts. And Suzuki Roshi said, sort of a little sotto voce, we don't say my stomach, we just say stomach. And Suzuki Roshi said in a very soft voice, yes, we don't call it my stomach, we just call it stomach. And I first took that as, I first understood it, well, yeah, who else's stomach would it be? At first I understood it as, well, of course, whose stomach should it be otherwise? So it was a kind of simplification, getting rid of a useless word.

[12:21]

But I caught myself because I thought, he usually speaks in energy units, not informative, descriptive units. I'm using the word unit, really, cruelly, because my friend Eric Martin, who was a friend of mine in college and died recently, Ich benutze das Wort Unit, Einheit, hier auf eine ganz komische Art und Weise, weil mein Freund Eric Martin, der seit der Universitätszeit mein Freund war und jetzt vor kurzem gestorben ist. He would say, you know, this unit, and I would thought, well, it's kind of unusual that he would speak that way, but so first I resisted it, but now I'm using it to honor him, poor guy. So Sukhiroshi spoke in energy units.

[13:29]

And so I thought, probably what's the energetic field of my stomach? And then I asked myself, what is the energetic field when I say my stomach? No, no, it's clear that your stomach might be so. But when we say my stomach, it means myness is also upset. Now, I'm just making what I consider a real distinction here. So if you say, I have a stomachache, it really involves the I-ness of the stomachache. Weil wenn du sagst, ich habe einen Magenschmerz, dann beziehst du damit wirklich die Ich-heit in diesem Magenschmerz mit ein.

[14:46]

But if you just say stomachache, okay, so what? I'm fine, the stomach aches. Wenn du einfach sagst Magenschmerz, dann kannst du sagen, mir geht's gut, der Magenschmerz. And that's often the experience we have of, yeah, somehow there's sickness here, but I'm fine. Now, we have the Japanese Buddhism uses the word Nen, N-E-N, like the Nenju ceremony. And it's translated as thought. And we think of it when we hear it translated as thought, that it means a stream thought. But it doesn't.

[15:52]

It means a stopped thought. Or it means a thought unit. Now, I'm trying to find ways to say this in a language which doesn't inhabit this yogic world. For example, they have words, phrases, which mean extinct thought. Oh, good. Zum Beispiel haben die solche Sätze oder solche Wendungen, wo es heißt ausgelöschter Gedanke. It means that you have a thought, you have a mental formation, but it doesn't go anywhere.

[16:54]

It just stops. And then it disappears. It's extinct. You can feel the difference in a simple statement by Sekirushi's famous, don't invite your thoughts to tea. So we could say that means something like the the mentation don't invite the don't invite mentation is different from the the tea thoughts discursive tea thoughts But we say very commonly, and I point this out often, don't invite your thoughts to tea, and we don't stop and say, what kind of thought is it that doesn't invite other thoughts to tea?

[18:01]

We know basically what it means, but when you thought about it, think about it, then about it. I have often pointed this out. If you say something like, don't load your thoughts into tea, then we should ask ourselves the question, what kind of thought is it that doesn't load other thoughts into tea? This is something we normally don't think about or don't mention. So, you know, they have phrases like, which mean paratactic thoughts. Paratactic, as most of you know, it means two things that are beside each other, but not causing or related to each other. And there are also terms for something like paratactic thoughts. And paratactic, as most of you know, means two thoughts or two things that are next to each other but are not necessarily related to each other.

[19:21]

There was a film technique developed by Eisenstein Where you put two frames together, they're different. So the audience has to decide, why are those two frames next to each other? So Nen thoughts can be thoughts that are just beside each other with no connection. But we don't, we just think mental formations of thinking and thoughts of thinking, etc. So that's the key to this other term I've used recently in addition to kekkai, hishiryo.

[20:27]

And it's translated as non-thinking almost always. But it actually means stop thinking that you don't, stop thoughts that are not thought about. So I translate it as so that we can practice with it, noticing without thinking about. Okay, now if you start yourself noticing and having a trust that noticing is a kind of knowing, I say con-noticing sometimes, Yeah. So that we could now we're somewhere in attentional thoughts and not conscious thoughts. so that we can sometimes be in attentive thoughts and not in conscious thoughts.

[22:15]

And this is Buddhism. And as I said yesterday, I haven't written things because how do I write about this taking things apart and putting them back together in a new way in an article in a newspaper or a magazine or something? And the excitement of my life has been being with you, who are willing to take apart your experience and put it back together in new ways, together, with me and with each other. So this is all to say that the familiar word aliveness

[23:39]

That English speakers would certainly think they know what aliveness means. But all words take their meaning from other words which they're either similar to or in contrast. And the operative field of aliveness in English is very different than the operative field of aliveness in Buddhism. Okay, so I'm trying to turn aliveness into a term that is in specific contrast to the term being. What does being mean?

[25:10]

Being basically means continuity. It's in being. I'm being means I'm in continuity. But continuity excludes discontinuity. To maintain continuity, requires excluding everything that doesn't support continuity.

[26:11]

Um Kontinuität aufrecht zu erhalten, muss man alles, was diese Kontinuität unterbricht, ausschließen. We are beings from moment to moment. Wir sind Seiendes. Wir sind Wesen von Moment zu Moment. We are alive in moment to moment. Wir sind Seiendes. In English you could say the railroad, when you make a railroad somewhere, brings towns into being, brings cities into being. Okay. In other words, a city where you stop and get water or fuel across a river or something, a little city develops around the railroad tracks where people cross roads.

[27:23]

So the railroad brings towns, cities into being, into existence. But you wouldn't say, or you'd meet something quite different if you said the railroad brings towns into aliveness. That would mean something like exciting people arrive in town and the town's much more alive because Mick Jagger arrived. So we're not practicing beingness, we're practicing aliveness. And so I can give you a more exact version than my riff.

[28:35]

Again, I'll read something. in large print for my feeble eyes. Once, Sukhiroshi said he always used to forget his glasses. And even when he had a string around them, he'd forget them. And one day, and he used to live upstairs, and he'd go back upstairs, come back down with his glasses. They're in the middle of a lecture. And he said one, you know about my tired old eyes, so you loan me your glasses. And then he once said, you know about my tired old eyes, and that's why you give me your glasses.

[29:52]

Yeah, clearly you mean, we make glasses for the tired old eyes of people like me. And they're really made by the culture, not by... So they belong to the society. So this is a translation of what's called the one-way sutra. I'm not sure the word one is good, but the one-way sutra. by Thich Nhat Hanh. And reading the translation. How does the practitioner meditate on the body from within? So as to realize peace and joy.

[30:58]

In this case, the practitioner meditates on the nature and functions of the body. When he, she examines it from head to toe, and from toes to head, he, she sees that it is composed of constituents. dann erkennt er oder sie, dass der Körper sich aus Einzelteilen zusammensetzt. And this loosens or changes the attachment to the constituents.

[32:03]

Und das lockert die Anhaftung zu diesen einzelnen Aspekten. Further the practitioner meditates on this body in order to see the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air. And she distinguishes these four elements. Okay. So what this is trying to say, we tend to think that there's something like this is saying you notice the constituents of your body. And we don't have in English, which is If it doesn't have God in it, it always has a subjective agent I. So we can't say easily the constituent elements observe the constituent elements.

[33:27]

Yeah, so what we're trying to realize in practice is an agent-free bodily mind, an agency-free bodily mind. But every time you think in yourself, my stomach hurts or something, you are not agency-free. You're reifying agency. So if you're going to do transformational practice, you can't stop saying, I did this and that, but you can put it in a little mental context. quotation marks in your own head.

[34:44]

I, well, sort of I, something like I, I'm sometimes the person who might do this, So when they, when When a horn player in an orchestra listens to the clarinet, the horn player is tuning him or herself to the clarinet. The horn player is not just turning a flashlight of attention on the clarinet. Oh, there's a clarinet player.

[35:47]

No, he or she is tuning him or herself to the other instrument. So when we do the Orioki, we're tuning ourselves with the Orioki. And you must have noticed that when you tune your eating and tasting to the Orioki, the way you eat and taste food is different than when you're at a table meal. Taste you wouldn't accept at a table meal are kind of delicious. Somehow the tuning actually changes the way things taste.

[37:00]

So when you look at a tree, you're tuning yourself to the tree, or to the French horn, I don't care. Now, when I tune myself to a tree, I do it all the time. I don't know what the tree is doing. If I was a little more new age, I'd say the tree is tuning itself to me. But it is clear that plants tune themselves to each other. Okay, so how does the practitioner meditate on the body from within? We have to take this as code for aliveness.

[38:09]

The gyroscope, do you know gyroscopes? No. One of those spinning things that keep a ship upright. Oh, yeah, yeah. must be the same word, you can spin them on a table. Your gyroscopic inner balance is aliveness, not being. So the reference point It's not continuity, but discontinuity. It's the moment-to-moment aliveness.

[39:15]

Now, you may certainly, within certain time frames, have the sense of an I who accumulates experience. In bestimmten Zeiträumen habt ihr bestimmt die Erfahrung von einem Ich, das Erfahrungen ansammelt. So I'm trying to show you how the dynamic of the practice and the worldview frees you from self, not that you sort of take self and you stick it here, put it under your arm, hold it there. What are you trying to do again? We don't see... being free of self as a process, we see it as like we take self out of our situation and try to hide it in our sleeve or something. But then it's like hearing your cell phone buzz in your pocket. Hey, you have a call.

[40:23]

Yeah. So from within means your reference point is aliveness. And the nature and functions of the body is aliveness. And it's from head to toes and toes to head. Now, when it says the practitioner meditates on this body in order to see also that the four elements of earth, water, and fire are to be distinguished, and we tend to read that and say, well, I'm a little more complicated than fire, water, and where's the fire anyway, and etc.,

[41:45]

But this is code for, metaphoric code for, We're all made of the same stuff. So you want to meditate on aliveness in a way that makes you feel the aliveness of all the same stuff, earth, water, fire, and air. Okay, I understand. It's simple as apple pie. like we had an apple pie without a crust this morning so please practice with making your reference point

[43:12]

Moment after moment, aliveness. And practice with the units of... authenticated in our culture. The units of experience like I am. I don't know how you'd say it in German, but in English I would practice with I am sick. I am good. I am here. The I am is a kind of unit, a Western cultural unit. Das Ich Bin ist eine Art Einheit, eine westlich-kulturelle Einheit. And if we constantly have an I Am unit functioning in our experience and taking for granted, wenn wir ständig eine Ich Bin Einheit in der Art und Weise, wie wir funktionieren, drinstecken haben und dieser als gegeben hinnehmen, the dharmic field of non-agent, agent,

[44:34]

non-agentized noticing. Good work. I even understood it. Yeah, I like this. Every moment is an each moment. And you think it's difficult. How can you bother with that? Because it continues. It's a blur. But when you type on a keyboard, each finger has to be a separate, you know, you can't hit two at once. And after a while, it's just quite quick.

[45:51]

Well, each moment, each moment, each moment becomes quite quick, too. And it's the fabric, the tissue of enlightenment. The tissue of space and time or a texture in which you live. Okay, thank you very much. We will be one of the artists who will be our star master in the next phase.

[46:48]

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