Pretty soon, if I get slower and slower at getting my robes in order, maybe by the time I finish getting them in order, then I'll start getting up again. I won't even have to be zenny and say nothing. I want to explore with you this world we live. And our tools of exploration are actually, I think, for me, exploring our own Western world and exploring the yogic world of practice.

[01:12]

So, you know, here we are, three months together. As I said in the opening ceremony, for many centuries it's been decided that something happens in three months and 90 days. It doesn't happen in two months or in a flash of insight. And it could be said that I received some mind-to-mind, bodily mind-to-bodily mind transmission from Suzuki Roshi.

[02:24]

At least it's something like maybe an equation. Zumindest ist es vielleicht so etwas wie eine Gleichung. And the equation that you keep bringing into your circumstances, and the equation keeps giving you some kind of response. Und diese Gleichung, die bringst du immer wieder in deine Umstände hinein, und dann gibt dir diese Gleichung so etwas wie Antworten. And I'm trying to find ways, together with us now for three months, that we can share this equation so it can continue to be our affectivity in the world. I'm saying instead of activity, affectivity.

[03:28]

With an A or with an... Oh, with an A and two Fs. Okay, you can work on that. Yeah, I will have to. Yeah, I've been gefühlt. Ausgefühlt? I've been speaking about noticing a distinction between activity and entity for centuries now. Nearly. And entity-ness and non-entity-ness.

[04:30]

Now it says in... The beginning of the first sentence of the pointer of case 100 of Shoyoroku. A single word can cause the nation to flourish. A single word can cause the nation to perish. One thing I'd like us to do these three months is to take Buddhism seriously.

[05:30]

It means what it says. Or at least it means what it says in your experience, or if you can experience it. And you have to remember that mostly the speaking of Buddhism is not in words, but in metaphors. So it says, you know, the Suram Gama Sutra was spoken by the great Buddha, you know, from a space above the crown of his head. Now, within the midst, not just spoken from above the crown of his head, but within the midst of his myriad bodhisattvic practices,

[06:52]

Now, is this just a metaphor like the Bodhisattva Sutta, which gets too far out to easily directly experience? But can we get a feel for this spoken from above, the crown of the Buddha's head? Well, first you have to have some experience of the arrival of the crown chakra in your actual experience. Every Buddha, including that one, that one, has this, what's the word, a bump on the top of his head.

[08:27]

Or a flame. Jeder Buddha, dieser hier, auch der da drüben, jeder Buddha hat entweder so einen Knoten, einen Knäuel, einen Knoten auf dem Kopf, oder eine Flamme oder so. Now this is not just kidding around or a kind of aesthetic impulse. Und das ist nicht nur Spielerei oder eine Art ästhetischer Impuls. This is a Buddha, a statue, a Buddha. because it has this bump. So maybe you'll notice that when you actually feel the extended body and this crown chakra, you speak in a way that's different from how you usually would speak.

[09:39]

So that's fairly easy to imagine, or I can say it fairly easily. But within the myriad bodhisattvic experiences of the Buddha or of you, Now we have to ask, what does it mean to be in the midst of, and if the context, the medium through which you speak, the midst of the myriad bodhisattva practices, upstream and downstream in your life? So let's go back to one word can make the nation flourish.

[10:41]

Kommen wir nochmal zurück auf dieses ein Wort, das die Nation erblühen lassen kann. Is this just hyperbole? Ist das einfach eine Überspitzung oder eine, sagen wir, hyperbole? Obsessive or exaggeration or something? Maybe. But maybe not. I mean, first of all, one word, yeah, one word. And there's no nations in those days, so it means culture, pride maybe. I would say it's not just symbolic. It means an operative word, like you find in a turning word or in a wado. And what, for example, in our own culture, what are two such words?

[12:18]

I would say creation and evolution. Creation is a word, right now, as it's operated in our day-to-day belief systems. It's causing our world, our nation, to perish. Now, how the embedded concept of creation is causing our world to perish, I mean, the planet is being killed.

[13:24]

That would take a little time to suss out. But I'm convinced it's true. Inwiefern genau dieses eine Konzept, nämlich das der Schöpfung, das eingebettet ist in unsere Sichtweisen, inwiefern das genau dafür sorgt, dass die Welt zugrunde geht, dafür würden wir ein bisschen Zeit brauchen, um das herauszuarbeiten. Aber wir sehen auf jeden Fall, dass die Umwelt zerstört wird. Now Darwin brought to our attention in a new way the word evolution. Clearly, with evolution, there's no beginning. There's no creator. There's no universal creator space from which things can be created. What the word evolution points out is that everything is creating itself by affectivity, by interactivity.

[14:28]

Now, it may sound like I'm being philosophical, and I'm not, believe it or not. I'm talking about the practical ways we do think, you and I, all of us, as maybe kind of philosophers, whether we know it or not. In other words, if you really accept evolution, then things are arising through possibilities and probabilities. And if they're arising through possibilities and probabilities, they're arising... That really implies there's no beginning, there's only always.

[16:05]

There's no beginnings in always. So I'm suggesting, implying, stating that we should shift from concepts of beginnings in our own life to an alwaysness that we are rearranging, arranging. Yeah, we think of maybe the way we think if we're making something, constructing something. But if we start from always, You know, we have two choices.

[17:09]

There's beginnings or there's always. And I've said for many years that always is the more interesting choice and more fruitful. But how transformational always is as an operative concept, it keeps unpacking. As I said the other day in the Koan seminar, there's no in the beginning there was a word. Starting from zero. Yoga culture assumes we start from infinity.

[18:13]

And infinity is called in koans purity or heaven, things like that. So what does it mean, again, and I think we're trying to look at the words of these teachings in the koans, But that we're not functioning effectively through words. In the beginning there was a word. We're functioning from affectivity. Sorry. where everything is already present.

[19:38]

All the possibilities of words are present. That is what affectivity is? No. But making use of the assumption that all the possibilities are already there is affectivity. You're acting in a way that affects what you do. I should tell her what I'm going to say before I say it, but then I don't know what I'm going to say. Was bedeutet das, dass wir aus der Sichtweise heraus wirken, funktionieren, dass all die Möglichkeiten immer schon da sind, und das Wort effectivity bedeutet, like our little baby practitioner here at this age can hear all the distinctions it's said I've never tested it but all the distinctions

[20:46]

audible distinctions in any language. In diesem Alter kann sie noch alle hörbaren Unterschiede unterscheiden. But by the time she's a year old, like if you're a Japanese baby, we can't, no longer can hear the distinction between R and L that's in Japanese language. So we could say, I mean, if we're trying to get a hold on these things, that the baby knows language as emptiness or allness right now. Wir könnten sagen, wenn wir versuchen uns das klar zu machen, wir könnten sagen, dass das Baby die Sprache als Allheit kennt. And she will be shaped by her living in German and English languages. Sie kennt alle hörbaren Unterscheidungen und sie wird geformt werden dadurch, dass sie in einer deutschen oder in einer englischen Sprache lebt.

[22:16]

So emptiness is a word for the fullness before it takes shape. So in a sense, we could say that all the possibilities and probabilities are present. All the possible words are present. As I said in the Kahn seminar, it's like we pull them out of the heaven of possibilities, how the Chinese think of it, And we hold them long enough to make an arrangement to try to say something. We hold them long enough to make an arrangement that makes some sense. But if we let go of them, they snap back into allness.

[23:35]

So in the koans, the introduction is usually called the pointer, because the words only point, they're not descriptions. But the words are pointers in their homophonic, you know, homophonic, words that have the similar sound but different meaning. Yeah. Like here and here. Oh, yeah. And all of those resonances are present in these words which are only pointers and not limited descriptions. And all these possibilities are present in the words that are just hints, as long as the words are not descriptions, but hints.

[24:41]

So if we're practicing Zen, Koan Zen, we're getting used to, learning how, getting used to using words in their resonant and metaphoric possibilities. And what happens with these, you pull these words out, And they're kind of like playing with each other and saying, well, how's things? This is interesting. And then you let go of them and they snap into metaphors and start telling stories. And when you start playing with them, you get them out and they start talking to each other and saying, oh, this and that is interesting.

[25:50]

And then you turn them around again. And... And metaphors have more information than words. And the example I like to use is that Einstein was of course brilliant at math, but he wasn't that great at math. But he was great at seeing things in a new way, metaphorically, allowing the feeling of things to turn into a metaphor. Aber er war großartig darin, die Dinge metaphorisch zu verstehen, auf eine neue Art und Weise metaphorisch zu verstehen. Er war großartig darin, das Gefühl der Dinge in ein Bild zu verwandeln.

[26:51]

Then he asked mathematicians who were better at math than him to help him work out the math for the metaphors. Anyway, Cohen's yogic thinking assumes that metaphors have more power not only informationally, but more power in their ability to be in residence in our life. Auf jeden Fall wird in Koans davon ausgegangen, dass Bilder, dass Metaphern, nicht nur mehr Kraft, was die Informationen betrifft, haben, sondern auch mehr Kraft darin haben, wie sie sich in unserem Leben beheimaten können. So, what's the statement in the case 100 in the Shogunate? Und was ist jetzt die Aussage in dem Fall des Koans 100?

[27:53]

A monk asked Lang Ya Jiao. He had a Chinese name. And myriad things, everything is originally so or everything is originally pure. And by pure, he really means allness or infinity. Everything is originally infinite possibilities, basically what he's saying. How are mountains, rivers, and the great earth suddenly produced? It's a way of our Western question, why does anything exist at all? Which begs the question, actually, because you couldn't even ask the question if something didn't exist.

[28:58]

But here they're asking, not in the beginning that there was a word, but out of infinite possibilities, and everything is always like this, how does the mountains, rivers, and great earth actually suddenly appear? And here they ask the question not from the assumption that the word was at the beginning, but from the assumption that if everything is basically infinite and everything has always been there, how does it come that suddenly mountains, rivers and the great earth are brought forth? And Lanyer says to the monk, If all things are originally so, infinitely so, how are the mountains and rivers and great earth suddenly produced?

[30:10]

Mm-hmm. He said exactly the same thing the monk said. Not in my version, but in the case. But of course it's not the same thing. It's said at a slightly different time, it's a different person. It's only pretending to be the same statement. And it's also a way of saying there's no beginnings. Your statement's a beginning, monk. My statement's a beginning. Okay. So that's a little riff on this Koan 100.

[31:28]

No. When we hear a phrase like the adept practitioner, the ascetic or the adept, watches over her senses. This is all the mindfulness stuff, right? But what do we hear when we hear that? We hear as if the Observing self. The consciousness, the agency of consciousness.

[32:35]

The boss who knows what's going on. Consciousness is keeping track of what the senses hopefully accurately are presenting. It's an assumption that the senses are the basis for consciousness. And we also assume, for centuries now, most of us, our ancestors, have assumed that there's a special door in consciousness where revealed truth from the Bible or from some universal creator space can come in, whether the senses say it's so or not.

[33:39]

And we have been assuming for centuries, our culture assumes that there is somehow something like a secret door in consciousness that can open and from which then revelations, such as what the Bible says or what the religions say. So through this door, these revelations can then flow into consciousness, regardless of whether the senses confirm it or not. Yeah, that gives us some sort of maybe understanding of all these climate change deniers. They're not believing what their senses are telling them, even if they're hit deep in water, you know. Yeah, or the whole California and Colorado this year had 600 fires at once. Everything in Crestone is put in one building, which we'll try to defend. Because pre-Darwinian thinking, which is still what's operative really, is that, you know, the world isn't made that way.

[35:03]

It's going to last and it's created and so forth. So what we hear when we hear from an early Buddhist statement that we watch over the senses, it's the observing self and consciousness keeping track of the senses. But let me read you what early Buddhism actually says. We almost always hear it in our cultural terms, but let's look at what it actually says. And I'm reading it because I want you to think this is still someone's version, but I didn't want you to think I'm just giving my version.

[36:13]

Whenever I bring out a piece of paper, she wants to see the piece of paper, rather than translating my words, because she thinks the paper's real. It's more reliable. Watching over the senses. When the adept has seen a form with his eyes, heard a sound with her ears, smelled an odor with her nose, tasted a flavor with her tongue, touched a tangible with her body,

[37:27]

recognized a notion, an idea, with his internal sense. He does not cling. she does not cling to outward signs, to secondary features. She strives to protect herself from the object the senses has created. That is far out from our point of view. It's not saying this is all becoming an object of consciousness. It's saying the senses are more reliable than consciousness and beware of the object that consciousness creates from the senses.

[39:01]

That's a revolutionary idea in our culture. Now, if we start to shift to trusting our senses more than consciousness, we have to enter the world through feeling and not thinking. And that takes myriad bodhisattva practices. That takes a long time to shift your habitual moment-to-moment operative thinking. braucht sehr lange, um sein Gewohnheitsdenken von Augenblick zu Augenblick wirklich zu verlagern.

[40:14]

And Buddhism is suddenly not very often taught in a way that requires this kind of shift, because it's just too difficult for everybody. We like our home food, comfort food. So, you know, I could stop now, but technically I have another five minutes. At least if I don't take five minutes to get up. Okay. So maybe what we're talking about here is not intelligence, but something like attentional gents. We think the world needs intelligence and knowing and knowledge and education and the book of truth and things like that to know how to construct the world.

[41:42]

Wir denken, dass man in der Welt Intelligenz und Wissen und das Buch der Wahrheit und so weiter braucht, um zu wissen, wie man in der Welt tatsächlich zurechtkommt, wie man die Welt konstruiert. But the yogic practitioner thinks he needs attention not intelligence attention to let the world to allow the world to create itself with his or her participation. I saw a Japanese artist, Krasin, He was asked, what is the secret of how creative you are? And he said, indecisiveness.

[42:45]

I have indecisiveness and conviction, and I keep exploring my indecisiveness. So we have a world here I mean, if you take a magnet, and there's a bunch of iron filings in the shop on a work desk, and you want to clean up those iron filings, it's very hard to do it individually. But if you take a magnet, you can pull them all to the magnet off the desktop.

[43:48]

And all the filings. And they're called filings and files because it's actually a word for thread because files are threaded together. And it's difficult to thread them together like the jewel with nine bends in the hole. That's another story. Well, we can't pick up every little filing, but we can use the magnet And attention is considered to be something like a magnet. And if you have intentional attention, It draws the threads out of the world, the filings, the threads out of the world, which tend to fulfill that intention.

[45:01]

That's a metaphor. dann neigt diese absichtsvolle Aufmerksamkeit dazu. Sie hat die Fähigkeit, die Fäden oder die Späne aus der Welt herauszuziehen, die die Absicht verwirklichen können. So that's a kind of attentional audience. Das ist so eine Art... attentional intelligence. And I notice it in my robes, for instance. When I was younger, I used to just be able to sit down and all the different layers of my robes went in place and they weren't stuck under my leg and between my ankles and the outfit. My body knew for many years how to function on this interface or metaphase, interface between myself and the world called clothes.

[46:05]

Mein Körper wusste über viele Jahre hinweg, wie er sich verhalten muss in dieser Schnittstelle, oder ja, dieser übergeordneten Schnittstelle zwischen mir und der Welt, die sich Kleidung nennt. We wear clothes to cover the shame of nudity. Adam and Eve and all that. But, you know, in Japan until MacArthur, you know who MacArthur was, right? General MacArthur, who was... I forget that I'm older than most of you. He's a blimey. Blimey. Blimey, a blimey. In Japan until MacArthur, men and women bathed freely together nakedly. Nobody thought anything about it. But a man and a woman alone together in a room fully clothed was dangerous. Or two men and two women.

[47:27]

In Japan, men and women have been able to go to the bathroom alone for centuries without any problems. Nobody thought that they went to the bathroom naked. But if a man and a woman were alone in a room, then this would be considered dangerous. So we dressed in order to cover our nakedness. The yogi and the Japanese and East Asian cultures, Chinese, dress in order to create an attentional skin between themselves and the world, but not separating them from the world. So these robes are designed for an intentional body. And as my body loses its attentional skill with age, And I have to watch when I drive, an attentional skill, which I'm not quite as skillful as I was when I was younger.

[48:48]

I simply don't notice as many things at once as I used to. So when I sit down, my robes get all tangled up. The oriyuki is designed entirely to grasp hold of your attention. One of the extraordinary sights to see in Japan, and often in Kyoto, now and then anyway, is a maiko. Maiko is a geisha in training. And it's a huge effort to get her dressed.

[49:58]

It requires a whole team of people and artisans and everything to make the hair, the hair pieces, and this and that. It takes three or four hours just to get dressed. And then she walks in shoes you can barely walk in. And your whole body has to have a certain posture or the whole thing comes apart. Seeing one walk down the street in Kyoto, it's like seeing a Formula One car on two legs walking down the street. It's actually kind of mind-blowing. You can't take your eyes off this event. Just only about 19, she walks along. Maybe if we see that how

[51:15]

clothes gather attention, we can understand or feel better. Lady Gaga and Elton John and David Bowie, they certainly did it up. And formal dress in the West is also not as elaborate as anything in East Asia that I know, but still exactly the way you're dressed. handkerchief is in if you're where a suit is and how the tie is and everything. It all represents your attention at presenting your attentional skills. Just one more little example. When we see Kim Jong-un, North Korea's super leader, with this Ronaldo haircut.

[52:56]

And we hear the whole assembly of people all applauding like this, all together, right? We think that's crazy. Don't they know what he's saying is crazy? Bullshit? Or something like that? You said a dirty word. Sorry, I'm guilty. But we think applause means, yes, it means praise. But the word applause only means to clap. It's a cultural addition to say applause means praise or appreciation.

[54:09]

I'm sure there are Koreans who look at the way we applause and they say, God, these guys can't get it together, can they? But for Americans, it's actually a little surprising when we see in Europe at a concert or something, sometimes German audience will then all start applauding together near the end. That's not done in America. So for them, clapping means their cultural addition. Their cultural addition means attention, connectedness, attentional connectedness. Whether they agree with Kim Jong-un or not, it's not what they're doing.

[55:30]

They're saying, we are here with attentional connectedness and everyone connected together. And that feels good, probably elating. So they're establishing attentional connectedness, not appreciation necessarily at all. Now the Buddha could never have created, invented a Formula One car. If I write a book, that'll be the title. The Buddha could not have invented a Formula One car. What's the difference between a Formula One car and a Porsche?

[56:36]

Or a Bugatti or whatever. They're designed to go fast. A Formula One car is designed to go fast in the midst of a lot of other fast cars. So if you're a Formula One driver and you're behind another car, your car loses 20% of its power immediately by just being behind the other car. And if both cars have the same power, there's no way to pass the car ahead of you. So the evolving design of Formula One cars is to try to lessen the effect of the cars around you on you.

[57:47]

Also geht es bei der Entwicklung der Formel 1 Wagen, je weiter die entwickelt werden, geht es immer wieder darum, die Auswirkungen, die die Autos um das eigene Auto herum haben, abzumildern. This can only be known by the drivers who experience it. Und das kann nur durch die Fahrer, die das tatsächlich erfahren, gemerkt werden. It can't be known by the original designer of a fast car. The original designer of this fast car does not notice it. The Buddha could not have done this. No one could have developed such a car, except the drivers who are directly in contact with other cars and drivers. So nobody can really design what we're doing except ourselves in the midst of it.

[59:01]

We are now practicing formula Western Buddhism. Please wish me good luck. I wish you good luck. Good luck. Thank you.

[59:30]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.17