So, your laughing makes me think you can see me now, finally. Yes, true. Correct? That's correct. Okay. So, we're on, I guess? We're on. Good morning. Good afternoon, I mean, of course. Schönen Nachmittag. I learned so much trying to share this practice with you. And in the process, of course, as I keep saying, I keep realizing there's things that aren't explicable. How do we make it clear? And in the process, as I always say, I notice that there are things that I can't express.

[01:20]

And then the question arises, how can I make certain things clear? Again, as I said on the Tuesday, last week it was Wednesday, but usually Tuesday it will be English-only lecture. Which I gave in a more formal, part of the monastic practice here, way. Yes, I tried to say something about the hua dou, no, not hua dou, hua yen practice of interfusion or interpenetration. which is really about the practice of all-at-once-ness.

[02:32]

And dropping the distinction between subject and object and sentient and insentient. And looking at how we are in this world. And Buddhism is a kind of, you know, something like physics in some ways. And it requires a study and education and an examination of the basis of our experience. And an examination of how we enter into experience. But we also, people, we need some way, some simpler way to simply enter practice into our activity, our daily life.

[04:02]

And we can have faith in the practice, of course, a certain confidence in the practice, but we don't have the opportunity to just have faith and believe in So how can we enter our life in a simpler way than a direct and simple way? I'm sorry, are you saying we, you said both, I think. We have faith and we don't have faith. We can have faith in the sense of confidence in practice. But we don't really have the opportunity to have faith in the sense of just believing in it. Ah, okay. Also, wir können Glauben an die Praxis haben im Sinne, dass wir eine Art Vertrauen in sie entwickeln.

[05:10]

Aber wir können vielleicht nicht die Art von Glauben in die Praxis haben, die sowas ist wie... Wie kann ich das jetzt am besten... So, how can we simply enter into our life in a way that opens up how we actually exist? And Kant has, Immanuel Kant has some concept of something like the principle of expedience, meaning teaching doesn't have actuality for us unless we can apply it to our life.

[06:22]

Oh dear. Immanuel Kant has the principle of, I don't know how to say it in German, the principle of expedience. I don't know the word in English either, to be honest. I don't know what he means. Expedience means simply it's applicable. If it's not applicable, it's just metaphysics or something. Okay, so he has the principle of applicability. How can it be applicable and realisational or actualisable at the same time? And in the first century before Christ, BCE, a practice called Nyan Fu began, was introduced. Im ersten Jahrhundert vor Christus wurde eine Praxis eingeführt mit dem Namen Nyanfu.

[07:45]

Nyanfu is translated in Japanese as Nenbutsu. Und ins Japanische wird Nyanfu als Nenbutsu übersetzt. And for those of you who know something about Japanese practice and also the practice which many people, American musicians, soldiers and others brought back from Japan after the war, Für diejenigen von uns, die etwas über die japanische Praxis wissen und auch über die Art von Praxis, die viele Reisende nach dem Krieg, auch amerikanische Missionare und Soldaten mit zurückgebracht haben. Chanting Namo Amida Butsu or Namo Ho Renge Kyo. Yeah, sounds good enough. And it really is a version for us Zen practitioners, a version of the Guadal path. Für uns Zen-Praktizierende ist das eine Version des Wado-Pfades.

[09:12]

Yeah. So when we, as I've been speaking about last week and other times, if we chant or repeat to ourselves a Wado, a phrase like just this, We're doing it to enter the... intentional content feel of the words, two words, just this, into the, yeah, our daily activity. Then we do this to introduce the intentional content, the intended content of these words into our daily activity.

[10:19]

Saying something like this begins to cooperate with or conjoin with immediacy, the contents of immediacy, the activity of immediacy. To say something like that starts with cooperating with the contents of mediocrity, with what is now, or to do something about it. Yeah, and the most, let's say, the most common is Namu Amida Butsu. Amida is the name for a Buddha, and Butsu is Buddha. And Namu is to call forth, to call forth the name of Buddha. And the most common word is Namu Amida Buddha. And Amida is a name for the Buddha, and Butsu is Buddha. So Namu Amida Butsu means to call out the name of the Buddha.

[11:22]

So this practice which started in India and then became... Maybe the main practice of most people in Japan is calling forth Amida Buddha and calling Amida Buddha into oneself. Also diese Praxis, die da in Indien begann und dann auch zu der wichtigsten Praxis in Japan wurde, besteht im Grunde genommen darin, den Namen des Buddhas hervorzurufen und ihn auch für sich selbst hervorzurufen. And it's calling forth the possibility of a Buddha or the possibility of awakening. So what's happening when you do this? Well, I don't know. I have to kind of find ways to say these things. Most of us spend a great deal of time maybe all our time, in a self-referencing consciousness.

[12:43]

And self-referencing consciousness is a location. It's a real location in the sense that it's where you locate your And a self-reliant consciousness is a real place. It is a place in the sense that it can be something in which you can find your own identity and your own experience. So let's just accept for now, if you can, that self-referencing consciousness is a location. And it's a location through incorporating your experience, your memory and experience and accumulated experience from the past.

[14:03]

And it incorporates your desires and concerns and wishes and wants of the present. And that includes your needs, your wishes, what you need from the present. Incorporate literally means embody, incorporate. It embodies also then the anticipations of the future. So it's a location, self-referencing thinking, is a location which makes use of the past, makes use of the present, and makes use of the future.

[15:31]

And I, for shorthand, for short, I call it a self-time tube. When I'm in a hurry or for some reason or other and go from my tower office room where I live down to the main office or across to the next door building, I'm often in a self-time tube. And when I'm in this self-time too, I'm hardly in the present. I go outside to another building, but still I'm in the self-time tube, let's call it that.

[16:50]

So the challenge of Buddhism from the very beginning is how to get ourselves out of the self-time tube. And the self-time tube can be very convincing because our whole life can be defined through this past, present and future of the self-time tube. Und diese Selbstzeitröhre kann auch sehr überzeugend sein, weil dein ganzes Leben dadurch definiert sein kann. Es kann definiert sein durch deine Vergangenheit, deine Gegenwart und deine Zukunft, so wie sie in dieser Röhre erscheinen.

[17:51]

Also wie umgehen wir, wie kommen wir da heraus und wie umgehen wir diese Selbstzeitröhre? How do we rewire or re-circuit our experience? Yeah, as I said, from the first century B.C., one of the ways Buddhism has tried to do this Wie ich schon gesagt habe, vom ersten Jahrhundert vor Christus an ist eine der Arten und Weisen, wie der Buddhismus versucht hat, das zu tun, ist zu versuchen, dich von dieser Selbstzeitröhre wegzuverlagern. To, you know, the open highway of, yeah, something like that.

[19:11]

It's just an open highway or is there like breath or phenomena or something? Well, if you want to, you can add that. Yeah, I need a noun. Oh, I'm sorry. That was a verb, huh? Okay. Yeah, okay. So if you repeat to yourself something like Namo Minabutsu, And I did this for about a year myself, trying to look at other forms of practice, and it's also a practice which can be part of Zen Buddhism. Yeah, and so, you know, Buddhist practice is rooted in, Zen Buddhist practice is rooted in developing and acknowledging and noticing way-seeking mind.

[20:22]

Die Zen-buddhistische Praxis wurzelt darin, den wegsuchenden Geist anzuerkennen und aufzusuchen, zu öffnen. Way-seeking mind is a necessary dynamic of noticing the way when it appears in your activity. The potentialities of the way, the way, a realisational way, when it appears in your activity. Es ist notwendig, in der Praxis erkennen zu können, wann die Potenziale, die Möglichkeiten des Weges und des wegsuchenden Geistes in deiner Erfahrung auftauchen. So our life is led not through belief, but through a way seeking attentionality. We could say being is a becoming, which is a process with an intent.

[21:51]

And it's a way-seeking mind and an intent to stay alive. It's just built into us. And it's a way-seeking mind and an intent to stay alive. And it's then an intent that opens us into, awakens us into our inner resonance with the world. And how do we open ourselves, then the question is, how do we open ourselves into this inner resonance with the world? And then the question is, how do we open ourselves into this inner resonance with the world?

[23:19]

So when I began to practice repeating to myself, Namo Amida Butsu. I was, when you say just this too, you're also creating a path, a path-awakening mind. The decision to stay alive moment after moment, that decision as a process to stay alive moment after moment is a path. It's a location and a path. So to be the path, to be the person you really want to be at each moment is a path, a location.

[24:29]

Der Mensch zu sein, der du wirklich sein willst, in jedem Augenblick. Das ist auch ein Pfad und ein Ort. So when Suzuki Roshi would speak about discovering your innermost request... Wenn Suzuki Roshi darüber gesprochen hat, dein tiefstes inneres Anliegen zu entdecken... This is part of way-seeking mind and his way of saying, notice, have a feeling for, discover the kind of person you really want to be. This is a kind of way-seeking mind and his way of speaking. And this means as much as develop a feeling for the kind of person you really want to be. So all of the phrases in koans and etc. are versions of the path of being the person you really want to be.

[25:56]

All the wendesätze in koans, all the lehren, are versions of the call, let's say, to discover how you become the person you really want to be. And not only being the person you really want to be, but also the person that is in an inner resonance with others. And in an inner resonance with the world. So when the Huadou teaching of interfusion, etc., emphasizes that grasses and trees are also teaching us the inner resident, are teaching us the Dharma.

[27:00]

When the Huayen teachings, And when Dogen, Zenji says, the earth and... Grasses and trees and walls and fences and pebbles and tiles are teachers. He means when you can drop the dualism of sentient and insentient and subjective and objective. And when you confine yourself in an inner resonance with the fullness and allness of immediacy, whatever appears,

[28:07]

This we could call the path opening mind. So again, my using Namo Amida Butsu was an exercise in trying to explore the use of phrases, the phrasal path, as a path opening, path awakening mind. And this path opening mind is not located through the self-time tube. So one dynamic of Buddhism, Zen, is to really discover and locate the activity of the self-time tube and get yourself out of it.

[29:38]

And understanding how to do that is a big part of Zen practice. But one way to approach it simultaneously and somewhat more simply is simply to replace the self-time tube with the path-awakening mind. So these early practitioners of Nyanfu or Nenbutsu from India and through China and Japan, Korea, We're really developing, creating, developing, evolving this path.

[31:05]

And you can put various things into the path. And developing the path takes a while until it just is a habit that's moving in you outside of consciousness. And then you can put in it, as I've said, just this, or not knowing is nearest. Or with Namo Amida Butsu, you can put into the path calling forth the Buddha in yourself. And it was also used not just for Amida Buddha, it was used for Maitreya Buddha.

[32:46]

And Maitreya, the word Maitreya etymologically is from the word friend. So the friend of Buddha. And the word Maitreya, etymologically speaking, comes from the word for friend. So it is the friend Buddha. And the Bodhisattva of the future, of course, now is not a Buddha, he is just a Bodhisattva. So if your intent is to call forth the Buddha of the future, you're calling forth the Bodhisattva that might be present now as your friend or as yourself. And if you want to call upon the Buddha of the future, then of course you call upon someone, someone who is perhaps right now here in the present, the Bodhisattva of the present, or yourself, as someone who is in the present as your friend.

[34:09]

So in the chemistry of your life, you're putting into the test tube, shaking it, you're replacing self with the Buddha who might be present right now as your friend or yourself. So as part of the chemistry of your life, you're in this glass of reagents, So you're working with the path of the intent to stay alive. And then you're changing that intent, developing that intent to stay alive in the intent to stay alive in a way that awakens the world and yourself.

[35:16]

And then you develop this intention to stay alive in an intention. You're developing that into an intent. you're developing the intent, the path of the intent, built-in path of the intent to stay alive into the intent to stay alive in a certain way. Okay. Also, du entwickelst den Weg der Intention, am Leben bleiben zu wollen, zu einer Intention, auf eine ganz bestimmte Art und Weise am Leben bleiben zu wollen, sein zu wollen, mit der Welt und mit anderen. So Shinran, for instance, who was one of the main developers along with Honen, one of the main developers of this practice in Japan, didn't just say Amida Buddha.

[36:21]

They sometimes said, calling forth inconceivable light. They often not only called out Amida Buddha, but also said to call out indescribable light. Or Shinran's disciple practiced calling forth unobstructed light that penetrates everything all at once. Or Shinran's disciples said to themselves, These words are all kinds of approximations. I mean, Yen thinking is about not everything being just interrelated, but interpenetrating. So, interconnected is one approximation.

[37:24]

Interpenetrating is another approximation. Wechselseitig miteinander verbunden, das ist eine Annäherung an das Gemeinte. Und zu sagen wechselseitig voneinander durchdrungen ist eine andere. Yeah, and unobstructed is another way to say the same. Everything is not obstructing itself is another approximation. Not interfering maybe is easier than unobstructing. I have to find out while speaking. I'm finding out while speaking too.

[38:26]

Also, ohne Hindernisse oder ungehindert, das ist eine andere Art und Weise, sich diesem Gemeinden anzunähern, dass die Dinge sich wechselseitig nicht im Wege stehen. Oder vielleicht kann man sagen, sich wechselseitig nicht stören. And I think there's a phrase from physics, the universal wave function. Yeah, which was somebody ever mentioned it in his PhD thesis and it became a term, universal wave function. Because it's become for me a phrase which is an approximation of the experience I have of the interfusion or unobstructedness of everything all at once. So this practice, going back again to the time before Christ in India,

[39:42]

Of establishing a path of intent within the context of momentary immediacy. namely to establish a path, an intentional path, in the midst of the connections of immediate moments, which replaced self-referencing mind or consciousness, and replaced it with something like this inner resonance with things as they actually exist.

[40:58]

Like unobstructed light which pervades everything all at once. Sowie ungehindertes Licht, das alles auf einmal durchdringt. Oder Buddha of the future, who may be right here being realized. Oder der Buddha der Zukunft, der vielleicht genau hier ist und darauf wartet, verwirklicht zu werden. Or Shinran's, the inconceivable light. We can't conceive of it, but we feel something that we... Inconceivable light is an approximation of something we feel that there's no grammar or words for. Oder Shinran's unbeschreibliches Licht, und wir können nicht genau sagen, wir können es nicht genau festlegen, zu sagen, alles durchdringendes Licht ist eine Annäherung für etwas, wofür es keine Grammatik und keine Worte gibt.

[42:12]

And in the morning service, we say, all Buddhas, ten directions, three times. Yeah, we just say it. You know, it's just something you say, or the Doan says. But it's an incomparable conception. Aber das ist ein Verständnis, ein Konzept von etwas, was jenseits jeglicher Vergleiche liegt. It's a mental posture. Es ist eine geistige Haltung. Oder ein Wado oder ein Nianfu. That there's a simultaneity of all Buddhas. ten directions, which is a mental posture, all Buddha's ten directions, three times, all folded into one approximation of the universal wave function.

[43:20]

I'm sorry, what did the universal wave function do in that phrase? It was an approximation of inconceivable light or unobstructed light which pervades all at onceness. So in this sense, maybe Buddhism overlaps with some Christian mysticism and so forth, because it becomes a kind of belief in what can't be conceived. But physicists have the same problem. Their experiments and their math tells them that there's something going on which is inconceivable in any... language and experience we have of the world.

[44:55]

But physicists and scientists have the same problem. Their calculations and their mathematics show them that something is happening that lies beyond all of our possible descriptions, all of our concepts and beyond our very ordinary experience of the world. So developing this path is also then part of developing a attentionality which just gives attention to everything. Everything is an appearance and a pause. And to develop this path also means to develop a field of attention that simply gives attention to everything, to every single individual. Everything is an appearance and a pause. So chanting or repeating Namo Mirabutsu

[45:58]

It's taught that you can do it slowly. So you say Namu Amida Butsu, and then you stop, you let zero appear, you empty your mind, and once your mind feels empty, you say Namu Amida Butsu again. So it's a way of opening your mind to zero. or opening your mind, emptying your mind to the inconceivable as then being part of your lived life. So Maitreya being a friend, And calling forth Amida Buddha.

[47:28]

Of course made me think of James Taylor, You've Got a Friend. Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call. I think it's clear. Yeah. And I never found out if James Taylor was influenced by, but of course at that time everyone was kind of interested in Buddhism when the song was written, if he was influenced by Namo Amida Butsu calling, whenever you need me, just call me. A few years ago, I was in a Japanese restaurant with my daughter Sophia, who was a little tiny girl at the time, and I think Elizabeth, my middle daughter.

[48:52]

And actually sitting at the counter, James Taylor was sitting beside me. And I knew the song, but I didn't know that was James Taylor. And I knew the song, but I didn't know that it was by James Taylor. And he began to get the Japanese cook, chef, who was very good at cutting vegetables into little shapes, to do some special things for Sophia. And then he made sure that the cook who cut the vegetables into small shapes, that he cut special shapes for Sophia. Yeah, and I noticed there was a certain glow in the people around me, but I didn't know what was going on, but it was sort of nice. And then he got up to leave and everybody said, that was James Taylor.

[49:56]

I said, you've got a friend. And I noticed that there was a certain attraction or some kind of light or something for the people. So let's all practice together. You've got a friend. And thank you, Nicole, for giving me such a friendly translation. It is my pleasure, my friend.

[50:20]

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