I feel so grateful to be able to practice with you here at this time. In this century, on this planet. And in this Yohansal, which gives us so many opportunities to practice together. Now, since yesterday, I've had a number of people mention to me the What the heck is the imagined self? Well, here at Yonassaf, we're trying to imagine a self that we can fully live with each other and on this planet. So, yeah, let's assume there's something I'm going to try to make clearer, an imagined self.

[01:16]

The big question then, of course, is how do we fulfill or realize this imagined self? And of course the question, what kind of self are we going to imagine? Well, I mean, when we fall in love, which happens now and then, we imagine ourselves as something delightful and irresistible. Or at least we'd like to imagine ourselves as delightful and irresistible. and we imagine the other person is just waiting for us and of course yeah but assuming all goes well yeah and you get to know each other

[02:35]

And even perhaps get to live with each other or be married. Well, the imagined selves of the two persons encounter a lot of tests. But if all goes well, they survive the test and we live happily ever after. You think this is funny. This is life. I mean, there's 100 million songs on iPod about it. Well, actually, I think most of them are about lost love. Okay. Okay. Well, so you can see the imagined self happens to us.

[04:15]

And when we're an infant or a child, we learn fairly quickly that dreams are different from waking life. Dann lernen wir ziemlich schnell, dass Träume doch verschieden sind von den Realitäten des Lebens. We put our dream experiences, which can be very real, into the context of daily life. And children, often twins especially, create imaginary worlds in waking life. And Sophia... You know, it's now 10, but when she was younger, she used to have active imaginary conversations with her dolls and cows and animals and, you know.

[05:39]

Wooden cows. Didn't seem to matter if I was present or not. There was this conversation going on among these animals and dolls. But after a while, they get absorbed into her inner and outer life. And I think her imaginary conversations are mostly limited now to her living horse. Okay. So our waking world becomes the end-all and be-all for us.

[06:41]

Also wird diese Wachwelt unser einzig und alles. But what constitutes our waking life? Well, cultural, societal and personal circumstances. Yeah, I call it CSP. Cultural, societal and personal circumstances. KGP, kulturelle, persönliche und gesellschaftliche. KGP, yeah. Okay, so, but what does KGP, what does CSP consist of?

[08:00]

Well, it's often delusional. Exploitive. And Buddhism would say, constituted by greed, hate, and delusion. Plus, that is often unscientific. Unscientific. All kinds of beliefs and ideas, you know. Well, here we have to have our beautiful imaginary dreaming worlds further confused by CSP. We want to make sense of the world and the world doesn't make sense.

[09:01]

Yeah. Now, Sukhiyoshi always talked about your innermost request And your innermost request is maybe the seed of an imagined self. Or your innermost request is perhaps the seed of the imagined bodhisattva. But the innermost request doesn't have much chance with the world of CSP. We bring out the little flame of our innermost request and the world blows it out. How can we keep the flame alive?

[10:28]

Through sasen. Practice at Johanneshof. Etc. And so on. Or practice somewhere. Okay. Okay. When we look at the world through our senses, it's immaterial. Yeah, impermanent. And often very satisfying still. The wind, the rain. And yet when we look at the world through our thoughts, we tend to see permanence.

[11:29]

problems, etc. I think they're substantial, permanent. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now the other comment I hear fairly often is that life at Janasofra and at Sushin, etc., has got so many rules. Well, I mean, from the outside it looks like rules. From the inside, I don't see any rules. Yeah. I just see we've pitched our Dharma tent here. Do you understand that, to pitch a tent, to put a tent up?

[12:49]

Yeah. Okay. You know what word you use, I mean, pitch a tent. Okay. So, why do I say there are no rules? Okay. We have our imagined bodhisattva self. And if you're studying Buddhism, studying the sutras, you're confronted all the time with the imagined bodhisattva self. Which, for example, will always establish an even mind with each person met. or will not review oneself as superior or something like that.

[13:56]

I've mentioned to a couple of people there's the practice called maximal greatness. And it's interesting that the kind of seed or core morality in the West. Und es ist interessant, dass der Samen oder das Herz der Moral im Westen is hubris, pride goeth before a fall. But in Buddhism it's actually considered rather important to be proud. Not proud in comparison to others, but proud in comparison to your own effort.

[15:20]

So it would be quite natural and positive to say, I finished my first Sashin. I'm quite proud. Or in Eric Eno's case, I finished my 435th session. Yeah, like that. But you then add, if you're practicing maximal greatness, Yes, but if the Buddha had done the sashin, he wouldn't have even leaned forward once. So you put it in the context of the Buddha would have done it a little better.

[16:22]

Also stellst du das in den Kontext davon, dass der Buddha es immer noch ein bisschen besser gemacht hat? So this Bodhisattva practice is about the mindfulness or mindful attention. Also ist diese Bodhisattva-Praxis geht um diese achtsame Aufmerksamkeit. That allows you to fine-tune your... flow of personality, sensation, and so forth, and sensation. Okay. Calibrian. Calibrate? Yeah. Once a year or so I learn a word.

[17:32]

Just because you know Russian. So you notice the difference when you compare yourself to someone else and when you compare yourself to yourself. And one, you don't feel quite as good. There's less vigor in your aliveness. Or you're out of the middle, into the periphery of your experience. Okay. So pitching our Dharma tent in the midst of our daily life.

[18:38]

First, I mean, what we could say Yohannesov is trying to do is show you a way to pitch your Dharma tent. Now, what kind of, how can you pitch at least some of this tent or a pup tent? Do you have a pup tent? Pup tent is a little tiny tent where only one person can get in it. It's for a pup. A tiny tent. How do you pitch your pup tent in your office? What's he doing always in his pup tent over there? Is anybody in there with him? No. No. But you want your tent to be big enough for everybody eventually.

[19:55]

So what are these rules? If we're trying to fulfill or realize the imagined self of the Bodhisattva, and it can't really be done through CSP, so what's most important then? We have to create something that's most important. Well, since we're practicing Buddhism, the obvious thing is the Buddha. So you make a practice of recognizing the Buddha as the most important thing. So in a zendo, you don't cross in front of the Buddha.

[21:02]

I mean, this is such a narrow zendo that we only apply that rule here. If the Jisha wanted to go on this side customarily, and they were there, they'd go around here. In Creston, where we have a very traditional Zendo, actually, when I went to this pioneer Buddhist teacher's meeting, Altogether, finally, after the week, there are, I don't know,

[22:12]

100 or 150 people there. They weren't all pioneers. There were only 20 of us who were so-called pioneers. And I was surprised to see what people most often said to me. We've heard about Creston. It has a beautiful zendo. I thought that was, you know, I would never have thought that would be the thing people would hear about. I thought they might hear the practice was extraordinary or something like that. No, no. The Zendo's pretty. No. Well, live and learn.

[23:21]

Okay, and when we have the orioke bowls, you know, the big one, the first one, we call the Buddha bowl. And if you have the monk's Buddha bowl, it has no base. Because it represents Buddha's skull. And I'm sure in ancient times people did use skulls as bowls sometimes. So whenever the custom is, and I don't enforce it, how would I enforce it? Whenever you enter the Buddha's bowl or approach it, you bow to it. Whenever you leave it, you bow.

[24:31]

But when you approach or enter, start to use the middle bowl, you don't bow. So there's just these little rules. I call them rules, but for me they're the fulfillment of the bodhisattva self. You're creating a way to relate to the phenomenal and mutual world, personal world, outside your usual culture and so forth. I don't quite... You're creating a way to relate to the world that affirms the potentiality of the bodhisattva self and isn't defined by the often delusional CSP.

[25:41]

or mixed up. So you're fitting a bodhisattvic way of acting and being in the midst of ordinary circumstances. Now, how much of it you do, that's up to you. But within the Zen monastic life, is defined by creating a bodhisattva context. So every time you meet somebody in the bodhisattva context, you bow to them.

[26:59]

And you want to have dharma details which locate you. Okay, so if you come in a door, The custom is you come in on the side the door is hinged or nested with that foot. And when you put your hands, where are you going to put your hands? How do you locate them? Well, we, you have to have some way to do it, right? So let's create a way to do it, that's all.

[28:08]

And let's create a way to do it that resonates with others in the Sangha. So you know that bowing, of course, is a manifestation of the chakras. They start here between the heels of the hands. You call it the heels of the hands? No, we don't. We get our hands and feet confused in English. And you bring it up through the chakras. To this chakra. And then you lift it into a kind of shared space. And your thumbs are usually not pressed but in close. And if you miss your mother a lot, you keep it next to your face.

[29:24]

But if you've grown up enough not to miss your mother, you keep it one fist away from your nose. You'd be surprised how many people when I do Jundo or... Occasionally I'm tempted to move their hand and put mine there. Oh. And your feet, because we need to locate ourselves somehow. And your feet aren't down there, they're actually up by your ears. So your ankles, the custom is, are always a fist apart. And your feet are generally this way and not this way. But if you notice they're this way, you say a Buddha would do it better.

[30:38]

Okay. So you see these are not rules, they're Buddha behavior. Okay. or dharma details. So I should give a few more and then we'll stop. When the oryokis, of course, are nested together, and they fold up and sort of disappear, And they open up. This is a practice of appearance. The practice of the dharmas.

[31:40]

They appear, they have a moment duration, and they disappear. And... For example, in the use of the Oryoki, there's no extra movements. When you start wrapping up, you take the cloth nearest you. If you've used the chopsticks and the second serving has occurred, you can put your chopsticks down on the side and not across the bowl. But if you're not eating with the chopsticks, and then you just decide to put the chopsticks down, that's an extra movement, and you don't do it.

[32:52]

I mean, you're not supposed to, or not the custom. Wenn du aber deine Stäbchen gerade nicht benutzt und entscheidest einfach, naja, jetzt könnte ich ja die Zeit nutzen, sie runterzulegen, dann ist das eine extra Bewegung. And things are, beginnings and ends are not emphasized, middles are emphasized. Und Anfänge und Enden werden nicht betont, sondern vielmehr die Mitte. For example, if the doshi is going up to the altar, he doesn't go up to the altar once the service is going on. At the beginning of a chant, he goes up after it's started, he or she. When the food is brought in, we don't bring the food in with vairacana, we bring it in with samantabhadra. You don't try to make beginnings coincide.

[34:02]

You let one start, and then after it started, you can start a new thing. Because everything is interdependent and in the middle. You're always doing things from the middle, not from beginnings or ends. And you can see at the end of the meal we have a bell and then clackers and bell and it all interlocks. These are all expressions or manifestations, signs for... how things actually exist.

[35:09]

So when you come to your place, you bow to yourself. That just appeared. So you bow to the appearance. And with a kind of gratefulness that it's appeared, somebody made it, and there's the tradition of sitting, and you're benefiting from the tradition, etc. So there's this flow of gratefulness at appearance. And for what we call the sweating horses of the past. Sweating horses of the past means all the people who've done zazen and made zendos and so forth.

[36:23]

The history that we benefit from. Then you turn and face the room and bow to the world and about ready to disappear from it. Yeah. So there's this kind of Dharma details. To fulfill the imagined bodhisattvic self. Mm-hmm. Now, if you, in a regular life, you can't bow to every chair you sit on.

[37:28]

But you can have some feeling of, okay, there can be a kind of stopping. And in general, these Dharma details All have the sense that they appear and then you disappear between the next one. So when the doshi goes up to the altar, the doshi has done it a lot, so he or she knows where they're going probably. But the feeling is you step back and then you, what am I supposed to do next?

[38:29]

Oh, I move to the left, okay. Oh, there's the altar, okay. I like that. It really feels like you get so it feels that way. Okay, so this pitching your Dharma tent is important. Now, how to do that at home or at the office? Well, I don't know. The kind of practices I try... Every time I happen to see a window, I identify with the sky. Or I shift to knowing the world through sensation. I, in a sense, let my thoughts go out the window and I let sensation, the world of sensation, come in.

[39:51]

So every time I see a window, I stop seeing the world through my thoughts and I see the world, feel the world through sensation. I smell the office or the floor. I feel the floor under my feet. This only takes a moment. I mean, no time at all. And every time I use door windows and things like that, every time I go through a door, if possible, and it's not too much of a dance, I step through with the foot nearest the hinge. It always amuses me to see new people doing a little Dharma dance before the door.

[41:03]

And And when I go through a door, I always use it to feel the room and not think the room. So I leave my thoughts behind and I just feel the room and I go and do what I have to do. So I use physical actions. It's not to use doors and windows. I use physical actions to do things with two hands. No one notices that much if you pass somebody their double espresso with two hands or one hand.

[42:11]

They don't notice it, but you've noticed it. Okay. And... And when I meet a person and it's not appropriate to bow to them I usually exhale and feel I am absorbed or disappear into the mutuality. And for sword fighting, samurais, your weakest point is at the exhale. Well, a little more complicated than that, but anyway. Yes. But at the end of an exhale, you're kind of quite weak and vulnerable.

[43:26]

So when I meet somebody, I exhale and feel absorbed and a little fragile, and then I inhale. So that's my secret bow. So, I mean, you can use doors, windows, you can use stairways too. That's tomorrow's lecture. So, doors, windows, hands and breath. And meeting. So you can pitch your Dharma tent anywhere. In any circumstances. Sometimes it's only a pup tent, but you know, it's okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[44:29]

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