So our mouths, tongue, palate, and so forth, shape these words at the beginning of the teisho. Yeah, and words most of us, the Japanese words, the Sino-Japanese words, we don't understand. Even if we have a translation, we don't know each word. And I forget them. Then we say something in German, which I don't understand, but you do. Yeah. And then you have to try to find out what I'm talking about in English and also make sense of it in German or in your own experience.

[01:13]

So it's a kind of, yeah, kind of actually interesting process. Searching in a language stack for the needle of enlightenment. Do you have that image, the haystack and all that stuff? And yesterday, Nicole, I said inert, and she thought I was saying something else. It's interesting to me that Edelgass, the name was coined by Erdmann in 1898, the same year as Sir William Ransay isolated Krypton.

[02:24]

You don't have to translate that. Thank you. Now, Erdmann and Edelgass and so forth. I mean, I... mention these details because I just have a practice of thinking in details. And I have to look up a lot of the details because I sort of know them. I studied history of science and technology for some years. But I know the details are there. I just have to kind of remind me, remind me, remind myself. Remind me myself. Remind me mind. Anyway, I have to do that to sort of locate the preciseness. Because generalities are the slippery slope to stupidity.

[03:38]

The other side of the coin of mythology. Yeah, okay. You know, we want to notice the little... The little breeze, the little wind that, as Evelyn says, the whispers, the little wind that moves a single leaf while everything else is still. Yes, as I said last night, listen, hear the little noises, hear the little noises. So wie ich gestern Abend gesagt habe, lausche oder horche auf die kleinen Klänge.

[05:11]

And looking south, watch the north star. As I've mentioned before, the English term common sense, something everyone knows. Used to mean a knowing common to all the senses. It was the equivalent of something like a sixth sense. Or intuition. But it's a good example how common sense became a generality. And a knowing which was felt only by a few. A knowing known knowing through all the senses, a bodily knowing, became something everyone knows.

[06:32]

And so the practice, or we could even say wisdom, the craft of wisdom, which leads to knowing what is common to all the senses, was lost in the generality. So I say things like, you know, pause for the particular. And I really mean that. Or pause even, let's say, for the space of the particular. Or stop for the space of the particular. Or become the space of the particular.

[07:51]

These are all examples of the craft or practice of wisdom. Wisdom isn't some big word in a big book. Weisheit ist nicht irgendein großes Wort in irgendeinem großen Buch. If you're really getting it that everything is an activity. Wenn du wirklich begreifst, dass alles eine Aktivität ist. Then wisdom isn't a smart saying like know thyself. Dann ist Weisheit nicht irgendein kluger Spruch wie zum Beispiel erkenne dich selbst. It's an investigation which means step by step. It's an investigation of what is knowing. And what is thy, this kind of old form of you or your? Und was ist im Englischen dieses Wort thy, also vielleicht ihr oder euer, eine alte Form für das Wort du oder dich?

[09:14]

That makes it sound more important. Das sorgt dafür, dass das wichtiger klingt. So we want to get rid of thiness and then we want to get rid of you-ness maybe too. Yourness. And then we want some way to explore our actual experience of self and perhaps the absence of self because you can't experience self unless you experience the absence of self. And then we need a way to experience the self, or our experience of the self, and the absence of the self, because you cannot experience the self if you do not experience the absence. So wisdom is a craft, an activity. It doesn't come easy.

[10:23]

But it comes actually fairly easy by repetition. You need to weave wisdom into the fabricing of consciousness. Du musst die Wiederholung in das Gewebe des Bewusstseins hineinweben. There's no such word as fabricing, but fabrication is a falsehood. But to make something into a fabric, yeah, I like fabricing. I'm always just. I like to challenge her. She does pretty well, though. So the secret here is As I said, not repetition exactly, but re-pointing, pointing again and again within the details of your life, the small winds, the whispers, the teachings we call wisdom.

[11:53]

And this word repetition, maybe not so much a repetition, but a re-showing, a re-showing, that the details of our lives, the teachings of wisdom, like a whisper, I don't know how to put it together anymore, I forgot the last thing. What did you say? The teachings we call wisdom. Yeah, that's good enough. Yeah. And I like the idea of inert. The so-called eight noble gases, which are mostly inert. And Anmar said to me, I was very impressed, said to me right after the lecture the other day, oh, belonging to group 18 of the periodic table.

[13:05]

I said, hmm. But so whatever we look at, it's actually everything is quite detailed and interacting. Interacting. And they're inert, context-dependent, because sometimes they're not quite inert. So here we have... I mean, I will try to say something about practice. Be patient a little bit. So here we are, sitting here in this area. And for a thousand years it was one of the four elements, or five.

[14:27]

Earth, water, fire and air, and ether too in the West. And in fairly recent centuries, someone thought, well, maybe the air is not an element. It's composed of various things. So what did you discover with a Bunsen burner and some glassware? that this air is 0.30114% Krypton. dass in dieser Luft 0,347 oder so Prozent Krypton liegt.

[15:34]

There's Krypton all around here. I mean, very small parts, but it's all around here. We just don't notice it. Überall hier ist Krypton, zwar ganz kleine Teile, und wir bemerken sie nicht, aber das Krypton ist überall hier. And, of course, again, it means the hidden one, Krypton, the hidden one. And as I told you, the planet Krypton was created when I was two years old. And action in DC Comics, what did it lead to? Star Wars. DC Comics. That was the name of the main brand of comic books in America, which inspired George Lucas to develop Star Wars. Okay, und dann das Ganze in den DC Comic Books führte schließlich zu Star Wars, hat George Lucas inspiriert.

[16:34]

He's a comic book fanatic and a huge collector of comic books. Er ist ein Fanatiker für Comic Books und hat eine riesige Sammlung. And Star Wars, look, it's all over the place. Dickie Vader. Okay. So, there's all these invisible things around us in our own consciousness that we don't notice. Like the five skandhas. But let me go back a minute and say, you know, every oil company claims they're green. And everyone likes to copy our... Our culture of generalities likes to cop our terms.

[17:51]

Cop? Appropriate. As common sense was lost and the practice of knowing common sense was lost. I'm sure in a pace of another age, there was a pace in which you discovered a sense common to all the senses. But as soon as Buddhism came into, with any articulation into the West, Like very soon there were the word Samadhi and then there were Samadhi tanks.

[18:54]

And I remember going to fairs which promised me if I'd listen to these sounds or this earphone or something, I'd have an enlightened experience. I said, okay, and I would try it out and fall asleep. And I'm sure there's Samadhi spas somewhere. And there may be even a Samadhi kola. He's sitting on samadhi support. Oh, yes, that's right. Samadhi support. Yeah. Samadhi kola hits the spot. Eighteen dhatus, that's a lot.

[20:05]

Do you remember that verse? Pepsi kola hits the spot. Twelve full answers, that's a lot. You and I remember. Samadhi Kola. Maybe we make a fortune. Yeah. So, someone said to me in Duxan this morning, When you bring the spine and the body points into the foreground, the source sensing consciousness takes a step back. Quellen.

[21:12]

And although she didn't say source sensing consciousness, she said something like that. Now, what a simple thing this is. To just bring attention to the spine and the body point. And to notice that the self-narrative steps back a bit. That suddenly becomes a wisdom, let's say, technology. to get outside the boundaries of self to know what the self of know thyself might be.

[22:12]

And just as soon as you notice, you have the experience of, geez, I bring these body points more into the foreground and the narrative self takes a step back. Wow. I mean, really, wow. And here's a, you know, it's a little crevice, a little opening, and you've, somebody's pulled it open, you say, whoa, this is... entry to what Buddhism means by less self or non-self.

[23:15]

I'm going to go, why not, I ought to go into this opening. Yeah. And one of the three main points of Buddhism is to free yourself from mental and emotional suffering. Well, a self-referencing consciousness is so much a part of our mental and physical, our mental and emotional suffering. Oh my gosh, oh my God, oh my Buddha. Yeah? Yeah. We rehearsed this. She wishes we had. She says, why don't you tell me what you're going to talk about?

[24:16]

Yeah. Here's a chance to come open the possibility of freeing myself from emotional and mental suffering. Here's one of these little breezes that moves a few leaves and not the other, and you think, oh, okay, something's happening here. So it's a big, big step when you notice something like this. Of course, noticing it and actually noticing it. takes developing a stream of attentional awareness, which is rooted in the simple

[25:39]

Mental posture, don't move. And then discovering the sometimes what seems like a lifesaver of the attentional stream that's present even in the midst of quite a lot of sushim pain. And the more you've developed that attentional stream, the more you notice these little breezes, these whispers. The more you notice the sense that's common to all the senses, then you not only notice it, you know it. That's the second step. And knowing it, oh yeah, I just didn't notice this.

[27:20]

I know this is true. Well, these details are it. You notice sufficiently to know it's a possibility. It's true. These details are exactly what it's about. You notice it so deeply or sufficiently enough to know that it's true. And then you have the guts or the bravery or the courage to say, I'm going to practice it. This is where way-seeking mind, Sukhiroshi talked always about way-seeking mind, where way-seeking mind begins to be the dynamic. So way-seeking mind, you begin to weave it into the fabricing of your life. And then you begin to feel it taking hold and then you begin to notice the distributaries, you know what distributaries are?

[28:46]

The river that spreads out in other, not tributaries. Then you begin to notice the consequences of the distributaries or other effects. If the deep intention of way-seeking mind doesn't take hold, Yeah, you kind of, you know, sort of know it, but it doesn't begin to affect and reach into places you never knew it could reach. yet unknown aspects of your life through this open free attentional stream just accepting ready attentional stream

[30:01]

This way-seeking mind. And these body points, which many people have spoken to me about in Dokusan, are, you know, it's not the whole of practice. It's a kind of map. It's opening up a map. Well, it's moving what's the background into the foreground. It's opening up a map for further developments in practice, the chakras and so forth. Und es eröffnet eine Landkarte für weitere Entwicklungen in der Praxis, die Chakren und so weiter. It's getting used, it's helping you develop an attentional stream that's biological or physiological or neurological.

[31:20]

Es hilft dir, einen Aufmerksamkeitsstrom zu entwickeln, der physiologisch ist oder neurologisch oder biologisch. So this attentional stream establishes a kind of bodily equilibrium. And as I said the other day, the word equanimity in common word in Zen practice, the book of equanimity and so forth, also means equilibrium, the bodily balance. And if you want to have a sense of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy, In the character, you feel the spine.

[32:28]

If you can't feel the spine, yeah, it's spineless. And Mumon Yamada Roshi, who was my teacher, Rinzai Roshi, who was my teacher in Japan, What a really wonderful man. I miss him as I speak about him. He was known as maybe the main most accomplished calligrapher particularly for tea ceremony and so forth people. Er war bekannt als wahrscheinlich der Kalligraf, der am meisten gewürdigt wurde, insbesondere für Kalligrafien zur T-Zeremonie und so weiter.

[33:34]

You could spot his calligraphy right away, because not only did it have a spine in it, but he put a sphere in it, space in it. So when you looked at his calligraphy, not only was the spine there, but you could trace an invisible circle from all the black points around the edges. And if you look at scrolls that say Zen and tea ceremony people like. But they And they might have a bird in it or flowers and some bamboo or something around.

[34:40]

But when you look at it, it brings you into a spinal attention because there's a spine right through the middle of the painting. And there's a rather primitive practice, I mean a kind of primitive, in Japanese monasteries where if you're sweeping, say, You start and so naturally nobody notices much. You hold the broom in line with your spine. Before you start sweeping.

[35:45]

And then you feel the spine in the sweep. And they even sometimes hold the broom and then run the finger down the front like that and then they sweep. And this is the most common teaching staff. Called a nyoi. I think this is the one that Suzuki Roshi's son made for me. And It's called a back scratcher because you know. They didn't hit cold streams but not running water or showers. So everyone stunk. I mean, Japanese less than most people.

[36:46]

They wash all the time. The word for beautiful in Japanese is cleanliness. Same word. Okay, so... Well, of course, it's the spine. And here's the career with that experience in the bodily points. Okay. So, practicing the bodily points and bringing Yeah, which is again only a map, not everything. It's a practice which, if you notice, can give you an opening to discovering how to free yourself to various degrees, significant degrees of mental, emotional suffering.

[38:02]

And establishes a bodily mind, attentional stream. And... And establishes kind of equilibrium which allows you to feel the equilibrium in the world itself. If anybody does a study of flowers and snails and trees and roots, there's a mathematics in it. You can study the mathematics of the of these shapes.

[39:10]

So the repetitious, the re-pointing of these bodily points. Turning attention inward flows outward. And opens you to the equilibrium in mathematics, really. I mean, I'm sorry to say so, but really something like that of the world itself. No, I wanted to speak about the five skandhas and we didn't even get there.

[40:18]

I'm sorry. But you've heard me speak about the five skandhas 500 times. But I was going to say something different this time. Such a pleasure to sit here with you. Thank you very much.

[40:45]

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