Oh, yeah. Now, do I think that we should try to change Buddhism, adapt it, etc.? Yeah, I don't really think so. I don't think so. I think we should try to keep it, at least on my effort, to keep it as traditional as I can. Some people try to add psychology to it and kind of make it some sort of mix. Yeah, but I don't, it's not my idea or way. In fact, I think that you dilute the power of both trying to mix them up. Yet we're talking about new Buddhism, so I mean such a topic.

[01:17]

Zen, so I said, what is Zen? It's meditation, mindfulness and wisdom. That's pretty traditional. Okay, but we do have to translate the teachings into English or German or whatever our language is. And we have to practice it with our particular bodies. And that, translating it into a language is a process of changing it. transmuting it.

[02:30]

That's like alchemy, transmutation. And our bodies, we practice it with our bodies. And I don't think our bodies are some kind of universal body. Yeah, I think anyone, I mean, not that this is such a big difference, but I mean, if you get off the airplane from America, going down the moving walkway, Let's imagine I'm so jet-lagged, I don't know whether I've landed. you know, America or Germany, Switzerland.

[03:36]

If I open my eyes and look around, those are German or European bodies. Those are European faces. I mean, our body is... not only inseparable from mind, it is shaped by mind. So I would say that language and the body, the practicing body, are like a cocoon, which, you know, Buddhism will come out sort of differently. And I think it's best to leave it alone and let that happen. If we do it, it will change.

[04:36]

Wenn wir das machen, dann wird es sich verändern. But if it changes through our doing it and living it, that change will be integrated, obviously, in our way of living and doing. Aber wenn es sich durch unser Tun und durch unser Leben verändert, dann wird das in unser Leben und in unser Tun integriert sein. Yeah, and I would say that's how Buddhism is... transformed from India to China, etc., etc. Now, the Chinese had to make a big effort to get the Taoist language out of the translations. Yeah, and they had to create, I don't know, And a large percentage of the Chinese language was created through introducing Buddhism.

[05:50]

Yeah, 25,000 Chinese words or so of Buddhist origin. And the attempt to make it beautiful and And the translators, one of their objects was to make the language beautiful. Anyway, somehow contributed to creating the tonal system in Chinese language. So you can't just... without some sense of craft and some intelligence and craft.

[06:51]

Allow language and the world views of your culture to bend Buddhism too much to its own uses. We can't allow the language and worldviews of a culture, our culture in this case, bend Buddhism Too much to its own uses. And I think when you use psychology, psychological thinking or scientific thinking as a kind of Trojan horse to bring Buddhism into the West,

[07:57]

The Buddhism starts looking a little bit like a Trojan horse. So what I'm saying, let's use meditation, mindfulness and wisdom. as a way to participate in the metamorphosis of Buddhism in the West. Now, I'd like to, for this purpose, give a definition of the craft of mindfulness. Now, one I mentioned already is that mindfulness is related to attention to the breath. So, a reference point in mindfulness practice is the breath.

[08:59]

In other words, attention is being brought to the breath, to the world. In other words, the attention is being brought to the world. So you have a breath-related mindfulness. Now, mindfulness is wider than just the rhythm, I'm sorry for that word, of the breath, the pace of the breath. But it's one of the two principal reference points for mindfulness. Okay, now what is the other reference point?

[10:20]

It's mind itself. In other words, when you bring attention to an object, you don't bring attention to the object as real. you bring attention to the mind as real. So when attention notices an object, attention is noticing the mind that notices the object. dann bemerkt die Aufmerksamkeit den Geist, der das Objekt ist. So we could say you're bringing attention to attention itself. Also könnten wir sagen, du lenkst die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Aufmerksamkeit selbst. But you're developing the habit of seeing attention point to the mind attending to the object as well as to the object attended to.

[11:27]

Aber du entwickelst die Gewohnheit, dass du die Aufmerksamkeit auf die... When you bring attention to an object, you get in the habit of knowing you're actually bringing attention to the mind attending to the object. So however you get in the habit of noticing this, you notice the object. When you notice an object, you notice that the object is actually being noticed by the mind. Now, the noticing is the object as it appears in the mind, which is as close to something real as we can say.

[12:30]

But all we know of the object or the sound is the way our senses perceive it. Now we can use scientific instruments to deepen our exploration and stretch our senses. And know the object in a way that's independent of whether we think about it. No, I don't know if you can say that much. At least we can look at the object as existing in its own space and not just in human space. But still, however we know it, it's our mind knowing it. And you just get in the habit of knowing the world that way.

[13:57]

So your reference point in mindfulness practice is the two principal reference points. Our breath and the noticing mind. By that I mean the noticing senses as well. So let's maybe say it, you're noticing breath and you're noticing noticing. Now, if you keep those reference points in mind and use your attention to the world, to remind yourself of these two reference points, you're not only bringing basic Buddhist wisdom into your activity, but you're transforming breath.

[15:01]

Because attention infused with breath or breath infused with intention is a kind of elixir. Yeah. I think that's probably the same. Yeah. Yeah, it actually makes you healthier. I'm not making any promises here. I've got this bottle of medicine right here, and it'll cure. When I was a kid, there was an ad all the time on the radio. They didn't have television on. They would say that they sold this medicine really, you know, that would cure everything. And it was called Seritan. Yeah, serotonin.

[16:31]

And that's nature spelled backwards. That was supposed to convince people. I never found it convincing. Just because it's nature spelled backwards is going to cure everything. But if you do infuse breath with attention, not only is there a kind of vitality in that, but there's a kind of awareness or awareness that flows through the body, flows with the breath through the body. All day long it's been trying to turn those raindrops into snowdrops and it just did it.

[17:38]

Okay. Alchemic, alchemistry. Alchemy. Alchemy. Okay, and if you bring attention to noticing itself as well as the object noticed, The more you can do that, you actually change your world views. You slough off. Slough off is like a snake, sort of its skin. You slough off the implicit assumptions that the world is somehow permanent, continuous, etc.

[18:55]

No, I think that's really enough before we have some discussion together in small groups or in one, I think small groups, not one group. But let me go back a moment to Friday's history lesson. Because, you know, in some ways I feel that if you practice Buddhism, you know, you're in some way a foundling. Oh, found, yeah. Moses found in a basket. Maybe if you're found in a basket you become wise. At least the idea is that you're somehow wise. Looking at your culture from the outside.

[20:29]

You grow up in your culture as an outsider. Zumindest ist die Idee dabei, dass du irgendwie deine Kultur von außen betrachtest. Du wächst in deiner Kultur von außen her. And at some point you realize you're an outsider and you discover the power of that. Accept and discover the power. And that's really true of Myogen Sensaki. Some of you may have read Myogen Sensaki. He did the book The Iron Flute and he did Zen. Anyway, some of the early pioneer books I'm saying.

[21:32]

Yeah. Anyway, he was actually found in northern Hokkaido, I believe. Siberia, northern Hokkaido. He was found in northern Hokkaido, I think in Siberia. As a little baby beside his frozen-to-death mother. And there's very speculation whether his father was Chinese or Russian. But anyway, he was brought to... Japan, found by a Buddhist monk, or somehow a Buddhist monk brought him to Japan. He was given to a family to bring up, named Senzaki. I think the Senzaki grandfather was head of a Buddhist temple or something. I think he said to his adopted grandson, I'd like you to be a Buddhist monk, but no one wants to be a Buddhist in Japan these days.

[22:50]

As I said before, Buddhism was sort of over-assimilated. Anyway, he was actually along Soyen Shaku, the guy who went to the Chicago World Convocation of Religions. Not only sent D.T. Suzuki to America, he also sent Njogen Sensaki. And Njogen Sensaki lived in San Francisco right next to where later Suki or she lived when he was practicing in San Francisco. And Niyogen Sensaki, he lived in San Francisco, right next to where Suki Roshi lived when he was sent to San Francisco.

[24:06]

And it's disciples of Niyogen Sensaki and people like Bob Akin Roshi who became Buddhists through Niyogen Sensaki. And you had the New York beat scene become the San Francisco beat scene. Partly because you couldn't get any farther away from the East Coast. And there was a large Japanese and Chinese population there. And it's where I went to look for a Chinese Zen teacher. So I went to San Francisco to look for such a person in 1960.

[25:16]

So, and Gary Snyder, who is a poet and a close friend of mine, And he's the so-called Beat Generation person who was most deeply involved in Buddhism. And he started out sort of a little bit like a foundling. He had German immigrant wobbly parents. Well, just say it and then I'll tell you. Okay. Er hatte deutsche Einwanderer Wobbly-Eltern. Wobblies were a kind of working class communist socialist thing of German origin that was going on in working class America.

[26:23]

But he found that the Native Americans he knew in the Oregon area knew about where they lived. They knew the names of the trees and what they did and what plants were used for what and so forth and the German immigrants didn't know anything. And that feeling of being alienated, but somehow the Indians knew, led him into anthropology and then Zen Buddhism. He went into anthropology because of the Indians.

[27:30]

And so when Sukershi came to San Francisco, he came into that milieu. Which included Philip Whelan, who was Gary's friend and my disciple and a poet. So all these things came together in San Francisco. There was an interest in Buddhism, of course, in New York, Boston, Cambridge, etc., But it was all scholarly. People studied it, no one practiced. So the first people in America at least in the late 50s and 60s who started practicing were in San Francisco. There's a particular confluence of events, of historical events.

[28:45]

Yeah, so I landed in the midst of that. And it was the got off a bus, landed, got off a bus. I arrived with $32. And somebody bought me the ticket. And I didn't want a career. So I wandered around and fell into this. But it was like it was partly prepared for us to germinate. There was a place called the East-West House. Which... Claude Dahlenberg, none of you knew Claude Dahlenberg, I think.

[30:05]

Claude and others lived in, it was influenced by Alan Watts. And Alan Watts used to give talks there sometimes and hang out with the folks. It was sort of the first communal Asian Yogi Western experiment that I know of. And they had their phone number registered under the name of their dog. And right now I can't remember the name of the dog. I used to know. I don't know. Okay. So what questions shall we have in the groups? Mm-hmm. Perhaps some discussion of how to, what I mean by bringing wisdom into your mental and physical activity.

[31:31]

Monastic practice enhances meditation and mindfulness practice. And meditation practice roots mindfulness practice in a deeper mind. But lay practice can develop through bringing meditation practice and mindfulness and wisdom phrases probably into our mental and physical activity. Okay, you can do this as a layperson. Yeah. Now again, it's assumed that the particular mind you can develop through monastic practice is essential for understanding deeply the teachings.

[32:53]

To realize the teachings thoroughly. And Dharmakirti and others all say this. But we're seeing if we can have, as lay people, adept practice. And I would say the key are how we bring these three into our life. Meditation, mindfulness, and wisdom practices. And I'd say it doesn't require a monastery. But it does require organizing your life so you can do it. I remember Tsukiroshi when I first started practicing.

[33:55]

I was practicing, I don't know, for a year or so. One day when I sat he asked me to speak to him and we talked in his office. And he basically said I've watched you get your life in order. I was a lay person for sure. Going to the University of California and working and so forth. But the decision wasn't that I was getting ordained as a lay person or a monk or anything. What he looked for, had I organized my life so I could practice? And when I had, he said, I noticed that you have and now I can start teaching you.

[35:04]

So maybe the question can also be, how can we organize our life so that we can practice? Okay. I turn all over to Atmar-sama.

[35:37]

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