I got up at 2 a.m. and worked for three hours. And then I got out of rhythm, I'm sorry. But anyway, I seem to be here. Okay. Doing this, of course, makes me think a lot about what I'm doing, and I'm always trying to sense how it's useful. And when we do this, when I do this, I think a lot about whether it makes sense and is helpful and useful. And what I've concluded is that it would be what I feel like I could say and should say.

[01:10]

I could do better by writing. So I've decided this will be the last... doorsteps in. So I called Nicole in the middle of the night and I said, take it out of next year's schedule. And the next doorstep then is actually in August. But only two people have signed up for it. What? Wayne Moore. Last I heard, there were two. No, it's Wayne Moore. Oh, okay. And I thought they could just be absorbed into the... We're having a city group meeting, I think, too, at the same time, right?

[02:28]

I thought that could just be combined. And the next two doorsteps ends are in... October and November. And that's a little complicated for the practice period. So then a few hours later Nicole called me back and said, well, maybe we could turn the time set aside in October and November into practice weeks. And Nicole called me back a few hours later and suggested that we could use this planned time for practice weeks.

[03:30]

So anyway, but I don't know if that would work in the practice period. From what I hear from participants, the five-day sashin in the middle is more of a disturbance than it's worth. So I have to ask myself, why do I, you know, I've committed my life to face-to-face teaching. And why is that? Why do I feel, it's even unimaginable, unimaginable to me that you could have a realized practice without face-to-face teaching.

[04:54]

And why is that? Well, I guess you can't know horses, cows, dogs and cats without having one. You can't know much about cats by reading about them. So we need some kind of human... I don't like the word human, as you know, but because of the implied and non-human... But we need some kind of mutualized human contact. But before I go any further, maybe you should tell me what you think, because you look a little shocked.

[05:56]

And maybe before I continue, you should say what you think. You look a little shocked. Yes. I'm really shocked because I have my lay coordination with you. You are my teacher and how can I contact you? How can I be in touch with you? It's really upsetting. Okay. No, I said horrible. Oh, horrible. Worse than upsetting. Yeah, okay. Okay.

[07:12]

For me, it's not good either. I still need your hints for practice. And that doesn't work with a text. It's from reading. I need it personally. I need it in a context like this. Yeah, okay. I guess I like positive dilemmas. Dilemmas are... Dilemma in English means a choice between two bad choices. But for me, this is a choice between two good choices. And... So, all right, so let's take what my neighbor brought up yesterday.

[08:17]

And I said that metaphoric, I mentioned metaphoric thinking, which she wasn't present at because she wasn't at the first session. But I find metaphoric thinking a rather complex idea, actually. Maybe we could call it approximatic thinking. Approximative thinking. In other words, you... The basic idea of metaphoric thinking in Zen is that we can't actually know anything. But you can get close by approximating the situation as an image or a metaphor. To understand and practice, in other words, what I'm finding is that at this point, the kind of things I would like to talk to you about require a kind of distillation and a lot of contact.

[10:20]

Like if this group could be together three days a week for the next few weeks, I could maybe get across what I'd like to say. I would come. Yeah, and we'll have to build more rooms under this place then. Because you'll have to bring gear again. So I feel, you know, but lay, we can't. We have genuine, important lay lives. Obligations to children, family, financial situations and so forth.

[11:23]

Family, financial obligations and so on. I mean, Chinese monasteries populated themselves because it was a better way to live than most ways. And most people were out of jobs or they didn't want to be farmers any longer. So they'd at least go to a monastery. They usually weren't very smart, but at least they carried on the work of the monasteries. So just to develop and learn not to think conceptually is not easy to develop metaphoric or approximative thinking.

[12:27]

Okay, so then let's take the situation, you know, okay, Zen. Zen is really the practice of actuality or actionality and not the practice of Buddhism. So Suzuki Hiroshi in those early days, which I mentioned, when he spoke so often about the grasping and granting way, taught Buddhism as useful devices, but devices meant to help you practice actuality, or maybe I can say again, actuality.

[13:36]

I mean, just to get free of the idea that this is actual, most of us don't get there. It's a form of actionality or relationality or actuality, perhaps. But it's not reality. It's not reality. Actuality, relationality. And English simply does not have words for the actual categories in which we experience

[14:53]

in which we can insert ourselves into actionality. So our brain is processing the sensorial information and turning it into a predictive, predictable reality. Also unser Gehirn verarbeitet Informationen über die Sinneskanäle und macht daraus vorhersehbare Wirklichkeit. And it's certainly a necessary tool And it is certainly a meaningful dynamic in which we live, because otherwise we would be run over by trucks or eaten by tigers. So I think the word insert is useful perhaps.

[16:24]

What Sukhirishi was trying to do with the grasping way or gathering in way and granting way is to insert ourselves into actuality. In other words how do we interrupt the brain generated reality. But, you know, I say these things, but I don't think really it's almost impossible to take seriously what I'm saying. And I think if I could write it down sort of little by little, and how that falls into this, and if you do that for a few months, that falls into this, I don't think you're going to get it.

[17:42]

I would say that real Zen practice, now, there's well-being Zen practice. We feel better. Sazen can be, if you get the hang of it, can be really satisfying. But as a transformative practice, it probably takes the kind of attention, daily attention, to be a first-rate concert pianist. Of day after day after day after day practicing.

[18:49]

And I don't see how you do that without a monastic life. And it makes me sad because I really believe in lay practice. I was completely believed in lay practice and was pretty good at it, though I imagined all of San Francisco as being my monastery. But once Sukriyoshi got me to get Tassajara, once we had Tassajara, I realized it's a different ballgame. So I sort of feel I've done as much as I can to bring to rethink Japanese practice in a way that it functions within Western paradigms so that we can have an adept lay practice.

[20:18]

But frankly, I feel I can't do more than that. And the next step, I can probably write, maybe. And I also feel I'm interfering with my successors by continuing to teach. I really would like to just step back and let my successors do everything. For the Sangha to support the successor teachings is way more important than my giving more teachings. So my feeling is I should just quit pretending and just be an old man.

[21:28]

Okay. So let's say that you get a real sense of a prox... What can I say? A proxematic... Thinking. Metaphoric thinking. So that you can look at a colon and immediately see the dynamic of which metaphors push you into, insert you into reality so that it's inseparable from yourself. So that I lost the last part. So it's inseparable from reality. But one sort of basic thing, I mean, you know, as I say, these four tenets, that it's a transformative practice, that you're free of emotional and mental suffering.

[23:17]

One of the first things a teacher looks at Is anybody got themselves free of emotional suffering? Are they still involved with psychological stuff? You teach a person who is free of emotional suffering differently than you teach other people. But so many, so much of what in fact many books about written by psychologists who teach Zen as well and Buddhism about how we have to work with our psychology in ways that don't really recognize you can just stop all that.

[24:29]

And you can just end all of that psychological stuff. But, you know, it's possible to do it. It's possible to feel happy all the time. There's no reason there should be any problem. I mean, there's things, you feel things, you feel things, you feel grief, you feel... One of the powers of being free of mental and emotional suffering is you can feel things completely without being overwhelmed. I don't know. Okay, so let's go on a little bit further. So say that you do develop this sense of metaphoric thinking, which allows you to open any koan and just see right into what's going on.

[26:02]

Because the koans are basically patterns. Once you see the patterns, you see what's going on. Now I'm a little embarrassed because I'm getting too fervid here. Fervid means overly... emotionally engaged. But at some, you know, I mean, what are we doing? At some point I feel like I should really say what we're doing. Or what we could be doing. And, okay. All right.

[27:14]

So you brought up the orioke. So now, and so I emphasized that you don't have to feel the first bowl as Buddha's skull always in some kind of explicit way. But you're metaphorically involved with the metaphorically, imagistically involved with the Oryoki bowls as if they were the same bowls the Buddha ate from or every human being eats from. And one of them is in some sense the skull of the Buddha.

[28:24]

So when we eat orioke, or at any point, it's not just orioke, you feel yourself, you know, you're hungry, you're eating, you know, the food is pretty good or not, but you feel yourself involved in what we humans being do as a hyper-object or as an extended mutual beingness. And yes, you have the shells and you are hungry and you eat from these shells, but you feel... Okay, so you get in the, you feel the extended actionality of eating a meal somehow with everyone. And you feel, sometimes you actually feel that this is the skull of Buddha and sometimes you just note it by bowing before you pick up the bowl.

[29:55]

Now here's the point at which I can't... I don't know how to... go into the next point, except maybe I could do it in writing, but it's hard to do it in speaking. So when you're using the Uroki bowls, You are... I don't know how to say it. Distributing the space of the world. You are lifting the bowls up into your own...

[31:10]

Sambhogakaya space. And you see, Sukhiyoshi said to me, don't sell Buddhism. He said, don't make Buddhism too interesting. And he said, don't present Buddhism in a way that makes people feel they don't understand it, or it would be great if they did understand it. Just present it so you don't point out that you're presenting it. But here I'm presenting it like Well, this might be interesting, but I don't even know how to make it sound interesting, actually. So at some point, the practice in the orioke becomes the same as durative time.

[32:30]

You're in durative time as in the four marks. And you can feel your own durative time like the the orioki is used to awaken a time and space which is inseparable from the people on either side of you and all situations. So I feel There's so many aspects of Buddhism I've never taught because I just don't know how to do it. I don't say there's nobody.

[33:44]

There's a few people. If I say something in a lecture, they come to me in Doksan real quick. Here's my experience of this. Here's what happened. And when I follow it up, this happens, which is different than you said. There's only two or three people in the whole sangha who do that. This is really the reason I stopped teaching in Hanover and Rostenberg and Chautauqua, because I realized I wasn't actually getting across. Chautauqua is Boulder, Colorado. So I think maybe at least I should try I mean, if we all live together, I could do it verbally, but we don't all live together.

[35:08]

Maybe I can do it through writing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can write till the next meeting. Yeah. I would love to read your book. What? I would love to read your book. Yeah, right. Thanks. Well, maybe that's what will happen if I can get it together. I'm compiling a whole bunch of stuff now. And I think my writing is pretty odd. Because I change words and I... Oh, well, luckily it's almost time for a break. I'm sorry. I mean, I don't get one thing now what you said.

[36:26]

I mean, you know, I love when you write. So these are very good news, you know. But you live here, also here, and 12 people have chosen to live here the whole year. Yeah. So there are people here listening to you. Yes, that's true. But we need ten years, not a year. Our society doesn't let many people just do, I'm going to move into the monastery ten years. We had a good, pretty good situation in San Francisco. California, which in my own stupidity got interrupted, but... But I didn't accept anyone to go to Tassajara unless I'd practiced with them already for five continuous years.

[37:39]

And they committed to two years minimum and probably five years at Tassajara. We just can't do that here. And I'm a lousy teacher. Even in that situation, I wasn't a very good teacher. I'm surprised that you say that, or that you have come to this decision. On the one hand, I've been... older, or maybe even old. I understand that feeling of wanting to... to... I've done my part and I want to get out of the way. Yeah, out of the way. But it seems to me that in my personal life, you've planted seeds that have had a tremendous effect.

[38:43]

I feel very much... beholden to you for very wonderful gifts that you've given me through the years. Yeah, it's like having the rug pulled out, you know. Anyway, I am very grateful and I have the feeling that I have received an incredibly valuable gift from you. These are like seeds that rise in me and it sounds as if the carpet was pulled out of my feet. But I can understand it. Well, what I do feel, I do have a sense that I found ways to bring certain kinds of phrases and metaphors into situations which are seeds.

[40:02]

Ich habe das Gefühl, dass es mir gelungen ist, Sätze und Metaphern in Situationen hineinzubringen, die Samen sind. But I feel I've run out of seeds. Aber mein Gefühl ist, ich habe keine Samen mehr. The next stage I would like to get across takes more than just seeds. Und die nächste Stufe oder das nächste Stadium, was ich... I mean, somebody on this planet should do this as completely as possible. And I hope there's lots of people, but I feel stuck with the responsibility of doing this as completely as possible, no matter what. And I have to realize I'm actually not very good at it. But I love practicing with you, so I keep addicting myself to it. So why don't we have a break?

[41:26]

And when we come back, if any of you still come back, I'm just kidding. I've had enough of this. I would like to hear some takeaways. In other words, what have you taken away from these three or four days that is... you know, significant for you personally or in your practice. Und dann möchte ich gerne nach der Pause von euch so das hören, was ihr mit nach Hause nehmt. Also was habt ihr jetzt in diesen drei, vier Tagen mitgenommen? Was nehmt ihr mit, was für dich persönlich oder in deiner Praxis bereichernd und hilfreich war?

[42:17]

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