Most of you know that more than a decade ago I had prostate cancer. Yeah, and I had an operation and radiation treatment, and if I hadn't probably, I considered not doing it, but if I hadn't done it, probably I wouldn't be here now. Yeah, but it changed me a lot. I really actually think it aged me about 10 years. So I'm 80 now, so I'm... Hmm, I'm really feeling 90. Well, anyway, it has given me the experience of getting younger every year because as I kind of undid the 10 years it gave me, I feel a little younger each year.

[01:16]

But it changed me. The biggest change and the most annoying change for me is that I went from a person who slept, sorry to say so, four or five hours a night, if you may remember, To now, the person who needs, yeah, really, I'm sorry, I apologize, eight hours of sleep. And it's not, if I get less than eight, that I'm just sleepy. I'm dysfunctional. Yeah, we can't go up three steps and stairs without saying, oh my God, I'm glad there wasn't a fourth.

[02:28]

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not that I'm old. It's that I was kept alive by modern medicine. I didn't plan to be old until I was in my late 90s. Ich habe geplant, nicht alt zu werden, bis ich in meinen späten 90er Jahren bin. Okay. But, so now I'm trying to figure out, how can I give the teishos and participate in the practice period, the sashin, and also give the hot drink talks.

[03:40]

So this is also my way of announcing and sort of apologizing too for deciding to not come to dinner last supper last night and sleep for a bit so I could then do the hot drink. So, I mean, I think I intend to keep doing Sashin, so I hope you let me continue to experiment. I mean, the sashin is a configuration. It's a shape that we've made and inherited. Configure means to shape a pattern. Konfiguration bedeutet ein Muster zu formen.

[05:06]

And as you know, I'm always trying to find words in English that no one ever uses that I can try to say something about Buddhism. So I'm using the word reticulation, which has botanical and medical uses. And I asked her, can you translate this? She said, let's try to explain it and see what happens. Reticulation is, I'm using it to mean, what it does mean is a network, a connected, a network of patterns within a configuration. And this word reticulation, as I use it, means a network of patterns within a configuration.

[06:11]

It's maybe the pattern that gives the configuration its definitive form. Okay. So I'm trying to find the reticulation of the sashin that I can enter the sashin most effectively in its parts and still be participating in the whole of the sashin. And I'm looking for the reticulation. I'm speaking about this, as is common for me, as part of the topic that's appeared for this So earlier today when the soku moved the incense burner that Katrin gave us that we use for sukiyoshi.

[07:34]

And I'm sure if I'd been the Soku, I would have done the same thing. And I think if I were Soku, I would have done the same. You're in the middle of the meal service, and you've got this tray for the Buddha, and he looks hungry, and there's no place to put it. So, Sukershi's already eaten, so you just push his incense away. But I was actually physically shocked. Even though I would have done the same thing. The larger configuration of the service has to be taken care of too. So then I had to study stock, my shock.

[08:55]

Stock is like to hunt a deer, hunt something down. Oh, stalk, like a stalker? Yeah. Well, not like a stalker. I'm stalking the Buddha, but not... Yeah, but that's the only celebrity I'm interested in. Das ist die einzige Celebrity, die einzige Berühmtheit, die mich interessiert. Okay. So I realized part of it was in creating this configuration for this altar, I didn't really give enough attention to the fact that we had to put an offering tray on it.

[10:02]

So then I had to ask myself, of course, I felt a little bit responsible that I hadn't made enough space, maybe we should have a separate table or something. But then I had to ask myself, since for me the altar doesn't exist, why do I care what happened? No, what do I mean when I say the altar doesn't exist? Because it's just an arrangement. A configuration. It's the arrangement, the relationship is all that exists. The objects don't exist, they're all going to

[11:03]

be in the dust heap eventually. So if it doesn't exist and there's no way to grasp how it exists except its relationships. Okay. So then I thought, maybe this will give me an opportunity to speak about why it makes a difference. Okay. So, of course the individual objects on the altar have also a relational existence. Die einzelnen Objekte auf dem Altar haben natürlich auch eine Existenz im Beziehungsgeflecht.

[12:31]

They found their way here somehow. Die haben irgendwie ihren Weg hierher gefolgt. The Buddha, the Mita Buddha used to be in a shop in San Francisco next to a restaurant, a Japanese restaurant where I often ate and I used to see it through the window. And I didn't know I was promising it would have a life in Europe, but I must have been. Because she... I don't like he, she, it's so, he, she, it's so clumsy, so I just say she with a long, two H's. And I don't like him, her, so I say him, her.

[13:37]

I've never liked using single gender pronouns. So I've always tried to create multi-gender pronouns. And now it's legal. Multi-gender pronouns are legal. And why does it being legal make a difference? I guess because there's a more thorough sense of acknowledgement. Anyway, the story of how she got here is another story. I'm not going to tell. But anyway, each object there has its own configuration of relationships.

[14:39]

And there's probably a reticulation of each that brings them together in the altar. Don't worry about it. Just say reticulation. But now you need to say what you said after reticulation. That had brought these objects together on the altar. Like when I see that kind of wonderful crummy figure there, Shakyamuni. And instead of this wonderful crummy. Crummy. Crummy means, oh, crummy is not the right word. Funky.

[15:52]

Does that help? Okay. I saw her staring out of a window in Freiburg and I said, hey, there's a reticulation that belongs in our altar. That's before we decided to move the Amida Buddha from the old Zen Dota here. Okay, okay. Now, I'm trying to, you know, you just can see what I'm trying to do. You can see what I'm trying to do.

[16:56]

Find an experiential way to speak about it. The altar doesn't exist and simultaneously, what is its existence then? Or let's put it this way, how does its emptiness and its configuration exist simultaneously? Experientially exist simultaneously. Okay. Okay, so if we're making a food offering to the altar, we're eating and we share symbolically our food with the Buddha.

[18:04]

But the altar is the Buddha. It includes the stand and the tables and the Sukhiroshi and so forth. It's a particular pattern or configuration we've established. Okay, so when the Soku moved Sukiroshi's incense burner... for me it was exactly as if we'd taken the Buddha out of the altar the Amida Buddha and then if we take the Buddha out of the altar where are we going to put the offering tray And then when we take the Buddha down from the altar, where should we put the food?

[19:24]

I'm not crazy, you know. I mean, I don't think so. I'm just trying to get you to, in Castaneda's term, to move your assemblage point. Montage. It's a mosaic, a montage. Is that what you say in German? Montage point. Montage point. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, what is the difference between thinking of the altar as a bunch of objects which can be moved moved easily. You just pick them up and move them.

[20:32]

And we do that all the time. We took them all out to paint in there and put some lights in there, which Mahakavi did and so forth. Friedemann? We haven't entirely eliminated the shadow, but basically it's pretty good. Okay. Okay. So the altar is a particular configuration. That is its only existence. Its objects are not the altar. The relationship between the objects is the altar. Now, why do I keep saying that over and over again? Because if you view the altar as a bunch of objects on tables,

[21:32]

And you might like the Buddha, but not like the incense burner, I don't know what. But that you're separating it into parts. And the relationship that we've tried to produce here is a configuration. Okay, now, if it's a bunch of parts, separate parts, they are outside of you. Okay. You're sort of inside yourself and they're sort of outside yourself. But if you really get in the habit and you have to train yourself to see it only as a configuration and not as, you know, have no, it's only relationships.

[23:07]

then there's no outside. You are inside the altar as soon as you look at it. And you can take this as a test of your practice. If you ever feel outside in any way, you're not really practicing in a mature way. You cannot be outside any situation. If you decide to be outside, that outside is a form of participation. So if you do choose to feel outside, that outsideness is participation.

[24:15]

Okay. So practically speaking, what that means is participation. Every situation is an appearance. And whether you like it or not, you're a participant in that appearance. And what does participation ask of you? Energy. Energy. Every moment is a moment of energy. That's why Zen emphasizes that so much. When you're the Doan, as I've said occasionally, you're using the bell and the mokugyo and the stick and etc.,

[25:16]

They have no reality until you're using them. They're empty. And when you use them, you're not outside using them. You're pushing your energy through the bell and through the Mokugyo and through your chanting into the room. If you're doing anything else, you're not practicing. So you want to get When you sit down, you want to sit down with the bell and the two bells and the mokugyo and the stick and the cushion all as a kind of mandala in which you sit down bringing energy into it and finding energy coming from it.

[26:42]

When you sit down, then you find yourself again, how you sit between the bells, the bells, the mokugyo and so on, and bring in energy there and at the same time feel how the energy comes from these things. Makes life sound exhausting. Oh, God. All this energy required. I'm sorry. From my point of view, I'm speaking facts. F-A-C-T-S. You spell it your way. I'm sorry to say you're not practicing if you don't do it. But, you know, really, I'm trying to encourage you. So in every situation there's an appearance. And that appearance is a configuration. And you are part of that configuration. And so that... that turns you into primarily a form of energy.

[27:57]

Yeah, I mean the word participation actually comes from partaking. And partaking means, in English, of course, capable of being a part of. So every situation, you never feel outside, you feel inside, and you feel, am I capable of being a part of? And of course you are, because you're already a part. You acknowledge that every appearance is a configuration which includes you. now when you really get to live in that live that way there's no outside there's only inside and you're inside and there's no usual you can miss somebody but basically there's no loneliness

[29:18]

You might miss someone, but you're so engaged in the immediate situation, oh, well, they're gone. I don't know. I'm in this situation. You hear a wonderful party going on up the hill, which you haven't been invited to. Well, if you start making comparisons, you're in trouble. But if you look at the sidewalk where you are, it's already more interesting than the party. It sounds like I'm talking nonsense. But if your attention is really engaged in the immediate situation, Paul Rosenblum would come and take a photograph of it. People would want to... It was just a sidewalk, but it's hanging in a gallery.

[30:44]

Aber wenn deine Aufmerksamkeit wirklich... Isn't that true? ...sich wirklich auf die unmittelbare Situation einlässt, dann könnte Paul Rosenblum zum Beispiel ein Foto davon machen. Es ist nur ein Bürgersteig, aber schauen mal, jetzt hängt es in einer Galerie und wird verkauft. Yeah, I mean, lucky he doesn't wish he was at a party or he wouldn't photograph the sidewalk. Or the wall. He's an expert on walls. He's taking this wall-gazing stuff seriously. Okay, isn't that enough for today? More than enough. Yeah, there's a few other things I want to speak about. The space of dreaming. And, well, let's leave it till tomorrow.

[31:49]

Thank you very much.

[32:00]

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