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Breaking Suffering: Zen's Embodied Path

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Winterbranches_3

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The main thesis of the talk focuses on the relationship between the twelve links of dependent origination and Zen practice, highlighting the more practice-oriented five dharmas as a means to break the cycle of suffering through mindfulness and insight. Additionally, the talk explores how philosophical teachings, like those of Thich Nhat Hanh, can be transformed into practical exercises in Zen Buddhism, facilitating an understanding of interconnectedness, or "interbeing," through embodied practices.

  • Five Dharmas: An approach from the Lankavatara Sutra, used in Zen to move beyond intellectual understanding, transforming teachings into embodied practice.
  • Twelve Links of Dependent Origination: Discusses its role in understanding suffering and its continuation in early Buddhist teachings versus its practical transformation in Mahayana Buddhism.
  • Four Noble Truths: References are made to these foundational teachings to elucidate the conditionality and emptiness of suffering.
  • Thich Nhat Hanh: Highlighted for presenting a positive framework of the twelve links that promotes mindfulness to block the path to cravings and attachment.
  • Abhidharma: Mentioned as a transitional philosophy within Buddhism that unpacks teachings into practice; Zen schools adapt its practice-oriented aspects.
  • Interbeing: Popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh, refers to the interconnectedness of all things, which is reinterpreted into a practical understanding in this context.

Overall, the talk emphasizes the transition from intellectual to experiential practice in Zen, through personalized embodiment of teachings within mindfulness and reflective awareness practices.

AI Suggested Title: Breaking Suffering: Zen's Embodied Path

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Transcript: 

Thank you for understanding so well last evening the situation of Johannes Wolf. understanding that we need to make some shift in conception. Okay. After I said in Teisho the other day that Hey, how come nobody volunteered in the five ranks? Yeah. One hundred people came up to me and said they'd already done it. Are you physically volunteering right there?

[01:20]

Well, what else do you want? The lowlander has risen to the occasion. Do we get to stand in line now? Okay. She thought I was going to say something else first. Close your eyes. You can open them. You can open them. Apple.

[02:21]

Not a pear. Smells good. I don't know if one is enough, though. I feel I should share it with you, but I really don't want to. A little guilt creeps up, but, you know. I really, no, I really keep it here. Particularly because I do love this type of apples, this type of fruit. I guess I ought to follow my breath. She's following her breath so I get a bite.

[04:03]

It actually tastes pretty good. Okay, but now, how does that relate to the 12? links. Somebody else want to speak to that? You're the first one of the hundred that told me the journey. For me, it's like this 12-linked chain of concessions.

[05:05]

I put this in conjunction with the second of the Four Noble Truths, with the conditionality or the conditionness of suffering, and also, of course, with the emptiness of suffering. Where is the five dharmas I would put together with the third and fourth of the Four Noble Truths? So far as these five dharmas contain a practice, a practice way, a process to break this chain.

[06:36]

Yeah, okay. Okay. Gerhard, do you want to add anything to that? When Adin presented that apple, exactly that happened, what is described in the twelve links as contact. When we find ourselves in the negative or net of suffering of the twelve links, then this would normally go on in the direction of a sensing emotion.

[07:56]

For Adin that was pleasant. She noticed that she liked, she wanted to have that apple. The grasping. The other direction via the ayatanas into consciousness. Namah rupa in between and into consciousness. Lastly, into associations, naming mental concepts. And she suffers, so to say, also what's described as klescher consciousness. And all these points sort of support what is called ignorance.

[09:15]

Because they take for granted a self. which has certain inclinations and connected with that impulsions. And so the whole thing is in this negative circle of the body, And so far all this is included in this negative circle of suffering. Wherefore, as Peter has pointed out, the five dharmas are a way out.

[10:17]

And also Thich Nhat Hanh showed a way out and so far as he pointed out the positive aspect of the twelve links. And Adit pointed out, very well pointed out or showed what she did. And so far as she went into her breath, she reacted with wisdom. and went back to the plane of appearance. And in this realm of the twelve links of conditioned arising, when you want to put a place to it, She reacted with mindfulness at the contact.

[11:46]

And Dignatan also shows in this text and in this representation of the positive aspects of these twelve elements Dignitan points out that in showing the positive aspects of these 12 links, how you get out of the suffering with mindfulness. while with mindfulness and contact and the sensing or the notions, feelings, the path to grasping and wanting is blocked. And he points out that instead of the grasping, the four immeasurables appear or have their place. Kindness, compassion, equanimity and friendliness.

[13:03]

And also the thought that has to attachment is blocked. What doesn't appear at all. And instead that freedom comes to appear. And instead the others are dissolved and wonderful being, what you described as wonderful being appears. And in the other direction what's called Intentions. It doesn't appear. The second link. The second link, yes. Wherefrom the self or avidya is not supported. And in the other direction, valid cognitions come into being so that the kleshas are not supported anymore.

[14:23]

Okay. Go ahead. This way, ignorance is developed into clear recognition. And the self-referential... Intentions are not narrated. Referential thinking? The intentions are narrated. And in that place Bodhichitta appears. which means helping others out of suffering and grounds on compassion, love and... And he describes that the consciousness is being transformed in the direction of wisdom.

[15:57]

mind and body transformed into the nirmanakaya, and the ayatanas being transformed into the sambhogakaya. The other end of the chain, birth and death, are being looked through that they are not end or beginning or end points. And conceptually he points out that the circle of suffering which sustains itself is broken or severed by mindfulness, which is a clear possibility for practice.

[17:24]

Instruction for practice. Thank you. What also the same like the five dharmas do within that shift which is... Okay. The second point seems to be, for me, what was instructed for practice is the change from ignorance to clear insight. There are several possibilities.

[18:31]

One is the sort of the ceasing of wrong views. Or to create right views, which is the first of the 11-fold path. And through meditation. And through meditation, yeah. Okay, well, that's more than enough. Thank you. So you will stay now, yeah? He can be in the next 12... Stay? You mean you can be in the next Winter Branches? If you will stay now. Oh, yes, okay. Yes, Dieter? I think one common thing for me for the five Dhammas and twelve links of co-dependent origination is that they are marks, that they are indices.

[19:39]

And in that respect they have in common to point back or to lead to a mind which doesn't follow the line of, let's take the twelve names, or the line from appearance to associations to consciousness, but to see appearance as appearance, to see name as name, and they point back to the mind that that is not carried along by the process. And that kind of, I don't know how to call that, maybe you can call it awareness, That is the question that these teachings pose. Where is the mind, or how do you find the mind that is able to see appearance as appearance, that is able to notice naming as naming? And that is what they have in common.

[20:46]

Now the five namas are really a practice instruction. Whereas the 12 things that just give you the indices of this is you can notice that step and that bump and that bump. And at every bump you can wake up and turn it around by seeing it as what it is and step back. And the second thing I wanted to report of our discussion of our day before yesterday is that we reached that five, no, not five, two interpretations of the five elements of the teaching of the five dynasties. One was impacted by a dean, and that is that you have appearance, naming, and then proliferation of the discursive memory to go into association, which is the third step of discrimination.

[21:51]

And then the turning point would be wisdom, to bring in wisdom for you to cut that proliferation and come back to... to come back to lesson. The second interpretation is that you have appearance and naming as an automatic process, and then we bring in as a turning point the discrimination between appearance and naming. And that is the turning point to come to a wisdom view and then to come to... And so that is the question to you now, which one, if it's the question between the one or the other, which would you say is conducive? Okay. I don't know if you should say all of that in Deutsch, but you might scale it down and say if you've...

[22:56]

epitomize it. and that it leads to distinction, and that this is an over-finishing or the distinction of the cursive mind, and that wisdom is the turning point, and then we come back to Zohar. The second was the distinction of the turning point, namely the distinction between appearance and naming, Since you asked me a question, maybe I'll respond. rather than hear more at this point.

[23:59]

So we don't lose the question. Um... Um... Always. Okay. The twelvefold links, the basic ideas... are certainly a part of Zen practice. But as a teaching and a practice, it's almost completely ignored in Zen practice. It's assumed as a kind of more intellectual instruction than practice instruction.

[25:23]

Because there are jumps in it, like the jump to birth and death is not a practice jump, it's an intellectual jump. So the eightfold, I mean the twelvefold legs are... generally treated sort of like Tibetan Buddhism treats it. I don't know how they treat it as teaching, but how they treat it as a visual, an image. It's an image of the earth or life devouring itself. It makes me think of the children's Christmas song. You better watch out, you better not shout, you better not cry, Santa Claus is coming to town.

[26:25]

You don't sing that in German? No. We hear it of course. knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Well... The twelvefold path, the twelvefold links, is sort of used like that. You better watch out, you better not crave, you better not do this, or... So what Thich Nhat Hanh has done is a brilliant intellectual practice exercise to add all these other steps. But most of Mahayana Buddhism just says, that's the way the early Buddhists described things.

[27:40]

You better watch out, you better not. Now, as Dieter points out, Five dharmas is a practice. And it takes the basic ideas and concept of how we function from the twelvefold lengths and transforms it into a practice. And as Dieter pointed out, the first practice has to be to see appearance.

[28:53]

So to accomplish that, a dean had us close our eyes. Because if we don't close our eyes, we just see the apple as part of a whole kind of like, it's going to rot, I'd better eat it. If we don't close our eyes. Yeah, just, oh, it's on the table. But to really feel an apple, see it, look at it, you have to actually have some experience with isolating the apple from other things and letting it appear. So if I were going to teach, if we were going to work with the five dharmas as a teaching in a class-like situation, or in a tesho, I would implicitly suggest is that first one has to develop that initial mind which notices the world as appearance.

[30:19]

If you do that, you've already accomplished the five dharmas, you don't need the next four. So we can shorten it even more. However, habit energy will carry us into naming and discrimination and so forth. Why this is a practice... And not an intellectual teaching. Is because you don't have to know almost anything to do it. The teaching is in the doing of it. So if you start doing it. Okay, now. Again, what is doing it? an Abhidharma list which is not philosophy but which is teaching and is embedded in most Mahayana schools.

[31:44]

What is doing an Abhidharma list? What is doing, practicing an Abhidharma list? Okay, now, There's a lot of wisdom. Here, I'm going to turn into a teisho. I'm not careful. But anyway, we're having the discussion. I'm part of the discussion. Okay. What The basic world view assumed in the Abhidharma is that everything is a construct. Self is a construct, etc. There's no intrinsic or innate identity. If it's a construct... When you really get that it's a construct, you're in possession of your life in a new way.

[33:04]

Because now you know you can construct. what your life is. But then you have the problem, from what mind can you construct what your life is? Now we know it's a construct. Yeah, but... What do we do next? Probably the enlightenment experience that allows you to do it. And it is an enlightenment experience when you really recognize the construct and have no doubt about that. That's an enlightenment experience. And that frees you to be really a nice guy and sound good to everyone.

[34:05]

But it doesn't necessarily tell you how to reconstruct or give you a suggestion of how and what kind of world we want to construct. You can only keep pointing out freedom. But you don't point out how to use the freedom necessarily. Okay. So... Later Buddhism certainly, and Abhidharma is the transition between early Buddhism and later Buddhism. So early Buddhism had the tradition of the teaching as a lineage. And they had the sutras and the other forms of teachings from Buddha.

[35:09]

And then at some point they said, let's try to... figure out what the Buddha was really saying. And there were two motivations, a philosophical motivation and a practice motivation. So the Abhidharma is a kind of mix of philosophical drawing out, unpacking the Buddhist teaching as a philosophy. But it also was an unpacking of the Buddhist teaching as a distillation of practice.

[36:22]

Now, the more philosophical side of the unpacking, Zen is a school, and much of Mahayana kind of just said, that's early Buddhism. But the practice unpacking was then developed in many ways in the teaching. And you can see it laid out or at least implied in the early koans, the beginning koans of the Shoyoroku. So basically what I'm saying is, on the whole, Zen, for example, takes the practice aspects of the Abhidharma and makes it Zen practice.

[37:34]

And it goes through the philosophical widening of the Madhyamaka school And it goes through the concept of language and form of the Yogacara school and becomes Zen practice. Something like that happened. That's a real quick sketch. I'm not through, but go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Yes, but this is also possible to find in the Thich Nhat Hanh text. Can you find in the Thich Nhat Hanh? No, I can't find practice aspects in the Thich Nhat Hanh text.

[38:35]

When I read this word and first time I read it, interbeing. And that's a new word for me in German. I know Interbielen somewhere in English, but if I say it in German, it's new. I know Intercity and Interregion. But Intersein is new. And I get Intersein, so I can practice in Sazen. Can I translate that? Yes. Interbeing, I may have heard sometimes, but it reminds me of interregio, intercity, but interbeing in German, intersein, in fact, I haven't heard, and this is a new word for me, and it becomes practicable. It's a new word in English, too. Yes. And I can use this word as a practice, intersein. And then vielleicht noch so ein kleiner Satz, dies ist, weil jenes ist, und dies ist nicht, weil jenes nicht ist.

[39:46]

And a little sentence, this is because that is, and this is not because that is not. And for me this is clearly a possible entry into these twelve stories. And as I read on, And this is a possible entry into these 12 links, and this is where I get a possible access for my practice or within my practice. On the other hand, I am also 100% sure that when I get my Interseine out of this experience, I will never say to these individual sub-points, yes, this is now so and so, and I experience all of this. The philosophy helps me and I can say, okay, these points, these crazy things that come out of it.

[40:46]

Within my practice, I don't get to this point after point after point. of these 12 links but as a philosophical aspect it helps me I can philosophically follow these and develop this but as a practice as an experience I don't experience in such a way And that's what I meant. And now I ask myself, what is an experience of intersein, interbeing, what's that got to do with the five dharmas? or as I really experience, as I feel it, what has this got to do with the five dharmas?

[41:57]

This supports itself, this interbeing, this feeling of interbeing becomes, the apple becomes, within my experience and feeling, becomes... It becomes a dharma when it appears in my mind, when I understand that everything appears in my mind. And this crazy question, when a tree falls in the deep forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Then I would say that there is certainly a sound in the forest, but if I am not near to hear it, hopefully not standing under the tree, but if I am not near, then it has nothing to do with being inter-self. This is a somewhat strange question. If a tree is standing alone in the wood and falling, does this make a noise?

[43:07]

And if I'm there, I'm glad I don't stand under it and don't get hit by it. But if I'm not there, this may make a noise. But that's not inter-B. But there's nothing to do with inter-B. It's not inter-B. That's why I think you said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, yeah. Do you remember that story? Yeah, I know that story, yeah. So it's not a dharma. And that's for me the connection between five dharmas or going into or understanding the Thich Nhat Hanh text. Five dharmas, the five dharmas are... It is a medium or a tool to approach interbeing, the five dhammas. And that's an antidote to the view, this is outside and I'm in here and I feel myself as separate from that which is outside and so on.

[44:14]

That's an antidote. And what I ask myself, of course, is how far should I read such a text and write down all the points, or should I really stay with Intersein and look, maybe I'll come from my experience to a first or second point, or how far is it interesting to know all twelve points, or that's a question that I ask myself in the context of such an education. In the frame of such a general teaching you're teaching us, the question is, shall I write all these five points up or down? Shall I learn them? Shall I stay with interbeing and feel them and eventually probably come to one, probably the second or another of these points?

[45:20]

This is a practice aspect which I question myself. In what way should I proceed? Can you wait? Well, first, did it sound like I was saying that Thich Nhat Hanh's approach wasn't one of practice, it was only one of philosophy? This is what I read once in a while when I read Tibetan texts, that for me it's difficult to find the axis as a practice. To me it sounds that most emphasis is this philosophical construct and not that much like I know it from Zen and your teaching of Zen, get one point and just stabilize that and practice that.

[46:26]

Well, I mean, what I said and I said that Thich Nhat Hanh had created a philosophical practice exercise in relating, creating the 12 positive links. And it's fine what he did. But in the context, and it is practice. Can you say all that or did I? Yeah, I tried to sort it out. Okay, I'll start again. Thank you. What I described Thich Nhat Hanh's exercise in doing this as a philosophical practice. And of course you can take philosophical constructs and practice with them too. So it's interesting that he took the twelvefold links and made it a more Mahayana teaching.

[47:35]

But Mahayana as a tradition mostly ignored this. And said that's an early Buddhist tradition. indoctrination of rebirth. It just explains how craving and attachment lead to delusion and rebirth and suffering and so forth. So it's, you know, you better watch out or craving will get you. You know, I mean, I'm kind of making a joke and simplifying it, but something like that, I guess.

[48:38]

So, rather what a teaching like Zen has done is to take those aspects of the Arbidharma teaching. That can be made into... non-philosophical practices, practices which you need no philosophy. Now, I'm oversimplifying a bit, perhaps, and maybe I have to think about this, but this is what I'm saying today. Now, when I say a practice is non-philosophical, it doesn't mean it's not rooted in philosophy. The five dharmas are rooted in a world view, which is the world as a construct.

[49:48]

There's no outside. It's all inside. And we can participate in the construction. Then at that point we have a very big question. How do we participate in the construction? So the five dharmas is one of the ways you can participate in the construction. Now, I would say that You don't want to look at the five dharmas as a worldview, I mean as a philosophy. I mean even if it is rooted in a philosophical view of the world.

[50:51]

Okay. What you want to do is see it as a worldview though and not a philosophy. Okay. Now, what do I mean by a worldview and not a philosophy? Because a philosophy, obviously, is the basis of a worldview, in a sense, where one comes before, which is the chicken or egg, etc. Okay. By a view instead of a philosophy, I mean you have a sensorial experience of reflecting this view, of actuating this view. Actuating is to activate, it's a way to say to make actual.

[52:09]

Yes, that's wrong. Actuate doesn't mean to activate, it means to actualize. Okay, so if I look at you guys and I, in looking at you, I feel the space that separates us. This is something I said off the plate. If I think of the space as separating us that's a view. It's not a fact. It's a view because space also connects us. Not empty space in some scientific sense, but the actualized space here connects us.

[53:29]

So if I tend to think... if I tend to experience space as separate, that is extrapolated in me to a philosophy or a world view. Then I can build a culture on bridging the space and all that stuff. But if I say space not only separates it also connects us. And even when I experience spaces separating I am actually acting in a space that connects. And when I go a step further and say I can also generate a mind which which knows space connects.

[54:42]

Now, this is kind of a philosophy. But it's actually... more usefully understood, and views that we can see the other side of the view and work with the views. Okay, so a teaching like the five dharmas in a sense floats to the surface of a particular kind of worldview. And if you give this practice to someone, the practice which is based on a particular worldview can be given to somebody with a different worldview. And if the practice is done thoroughly, it transforms the worldview.

[55:56]

Okay. So these are kind of the standards of the development of the Zen school to pick teachings which do this. So, when you practice the five dharmas, what the five dharmas is, is not found by analysis of the five dharmas. What the five dharmas is, is found by doing it over and over again. Then you may find all of the five dharmas are appearance. all the five dharmas are appearing are included in the practice of just simply appearance.

[56:58]

Or you can stop at naming. Because if you only name just like if you only appear you have all five dharmas. If you only name then naming cuts off discrimination. If I say, you know, bell, pitcher, microphone, etc., if I have that naming practice, which is an early Buddhist practice and contemporary Theravadan practice, Naming cuts off discursive thinking. Because naming is not a word. A word fits into the grammar of a sentence. A name stands separate from a sentence. But if in practicing the five dharmas you find your habit energy pushes past naming into discrimination,

[58:17]

Then you can bring in, I mean, I could think the simplest transition point in relationship to the way Thich Nhat Hanh puts it is the four wisdoms. then can man das reinbringen, sozusagen, in dem Sinne, wie das, glaube ich, auch Dignatan getan hat, die four wisdoms, die vier Weisheiten. So if at the point of discrimination, a right knowledge, you bring in the four wisdoms, then you, again, turn this back. Or turn this into suchness. And suchness then would compare in his system to birth and death. Because suchness then is the wisdom of being alive in everything all at once without becoming.

[59:33]

Now does that respond to some of the things you brought up, Peter? Okay, yeah. More than enough. I have to now speak to what you said. Interbeing is also a word that Thich Nhat Hanh has made up in English. Now do you know what the actual traditional word Is in English for interbeing? It's interest. Inter-est. Est is to be. Inter-est is interest is interbeing. So, you know, I find it kind of overuses interbeing, but basically it's a brilliant use of language to practice.

[60:52]

And Thich Nhat Hanh's talent is he knows Buddhism extremely well and he knows it from the point of view of practice. That's what makes him such a good teacher. Now, so your question was, shall I stick with interbeing or shall I introduce the five dharmas or just let the five dharmas appear out of interbeing? This is somewhat similar to, was it you, Ivo, who said you practice mindfulness and it led you into... the eightfold path now that's the way practice is supposed to work at any point you start particularly with basic things like mindfulness if you do it with zazen mind or you do it with the

[62:00]

if possible, the sense of... It's not a container, it's an activity. Let me give you an example of the difference between activity and... and entity, seeing things as an entity. This scroll is an activity. Every object is actually an activity. But we have a habit of saying, even though we're practicing Buddhism, we have a habit of seeing objects as entities. If I say to a Western person, could you move that scroll? I'm going to give, if possible, give him or her instruction. I can tell a Japanese person, not because Japanese are familiar with scrolls, but they're more likely to see it as an activity.

[63:37]

If you see it as an activity you roll it up before you move it an inch. And if you decide to put it over there, if you do not roll it up, you really treat it as if it were rolled up. I don't know. And I see in the Zendo, we move the scroll the Dalai Lama gave me, for instance, sometimes... without rolling it up, and so it's cracked. The surface is cracking. Once you hold it and it does something like this, you get little cracks in it. So if you really know this, you look at something, you say, what is the activity of this?

[64:43]

I'll relate to the activity of this, not to it as an object. This is a big difference in looking. The philosophy may be there, but it's got to be in your way of acting. Okay, so what you want to do with these teachings, the ones that you can do, you can't do it with all of them, You want to embody them. How do you embody things? Well, you do them over and over again. Okay. But that takes a lot of time.

[65:55]

And that's not necessarily what you can do in Zazen. You're just sitting there. So what this whole movement has in athletes to embody teachings, practices through visualization, Mostly, I'm pretty sure you could trace it to one person. You can trace that as a general concept in the sports world today. To one person. And that person is Michael Murphy. And what he did, he was sitting in Spiegelberg's class in Stanford. And he had an enlightenment experience. And he decided to go to India. And then from then on, until he was 35 or so, 33, he sat approximately eight hours a day on his own, just out of pure pleasure in sitting, as a celibate.

[67:26]

As what? Celibate. Yeah. I often stayed with him at night when he had a house. Now he's got an apartment in that town. He only lets about five people have his phone number. So you put the phone beside him. He gets up at 4 or 5, puts the phone beside him, and then sits. And the 4 or 5 people who know his number know not to call before 9 o'clock. So his day starts when the phone first rings. Sometimes he has workmen who come in at 9 o'clock.

[68:27]

I've been there when they have to do something, like put up curtains or something. He just sits there, they're working over him, they've got a ladder up, he just sits there. He's the most naturally gifted meditator I've ever met. He doesn't miss the things he doesn't do during the eight hours because it's so totally satisfying for him to sit. He doesn't think, I'm missing something by just sitting here all day, half day. So... He gives a meditation class in Marin County every two weeks or, I don't know, once a week, something like that.

[69:27]

And every time I talk to him on the phone, he tells me, well, I quoted you again in the meditation class. So now I've decided to quote him in my meditation class. So basically the movie East of Eden, It's based on Michael and his brother. Steinbeck, the author, knew Michael and his brother and based the two characters, James Dean and whoever the other guy was. Michael is the square brother in the movie. And they had a family estate on the Big Sur coast. So once he got this connection through his meditation between the body visualization and the mind,

[70:30]

The thought body, visualization, and the mind. Once he got the connection between those, he turned over his family estate, creating Esalen. Two people to teach and bring forward the relationship between the body and psychology and massage and rolfing, all of those things, mostly gets into our culture through Esalen. It's not something he exactly intended to do. Yes, he intended it, but he just led one thing to another.

[71:53]

And he's a very gifted natural athlete in running and golf. So he... brought all those dimensions into what he did. And he wrote the book, The Psychic Side of Sports, which is now called In the Zone. Some people think he created the word in the zone. Why I went into this tribute to Michael Murphy, I don't remember now. Okay. Yeah. Um... So if you practice with a... Oh, yeah, how to embody something.

[73:13]

So what... Excuse me. Yeah. Embody is a word which I'm not quite satisfied translation. Verkörpern. Was meint ihr? Ja. Ja. Aber es ist ja... When we say in German verkörpern is something you... He is... Verkörpern. The... When he embodies something, then he practically makes a concept out of it. You could say of someone that he's the embodiment of peace or love. Yeah, you could. He's a representative of, but that's a little different than... Yeah, that's what I mean, the little difference. He doesn't get it, it's about getting it into his body, right? Yes. But you want to have the concrete in your body, if you want to separate it.

[74:17]

But physically there is no activity in it. We have to find a word for embodiment that makes it more visible and tangible. When he first got, Michael, last thing about it, when he first got athletes like the star quarterback or something, the 49ers, people like that, when he first got... And I'm not familiar with this... Star quarterback of the 49ers. Yeah, that's what I mean. We've got some cultural problems here. Cultural malfunctions.

[75:19]

Something special. Yeah, it's a guy who... Some guys in American football have half a back, and some have only one-fourth of a back. I'm just kidding. Okay. To talk with them about their experiences, and they would not talk about it until they were drunk. Because they thought it sounded crazy. And then when they were sober, they wouldn't admit they talked about it. But after, you know, ten years later, so now athletes talk about these things very openly. Okay. If you, if an athlete goes out to run a mile, say, And he visualizes every step.

[76:30]

And he runs within that visualization. That's a form of embodying, a way to embody which is more rapidly embodied than simply doing it over and over again. And then you can even visualize that while you're lying in your bed. And that becomes a form of training. Okay, so the Abhidharma has always known that. Zen has always known that. Okay, so it's assumed that what you want to do, and Tibetan Buddhism particularly uses visualization, so what you ought to experiment with, Atmar,

[77:32]

is you work with this term interbeing. Which for you in technical Abhidharma terms is indexed to certain experiences. And indexed to Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings. So it brings that up when you use the term interbeing. And that's what the lists are kind of indexing. So one of the things I wanted to speak about this morning was start up a conversation about indexing, and so this gives me a chance to do it. Okay. So now, if you want to work simultaneously or parallel, with the five dharmas.

[78:58]

And as Alan has pointed out, there's other lists of the five dharmas. But this list comes from the Lankavatara Sutra, which is supposedly the sutra Bodhidharma introduced to China. The five dharmas is not an expandable list as it's taught in the Lankavatara Sutra. expandable, each one leads into other things. It's not understood as a philosophically extended teaching. It's understood as a dynamic that enters you into your experience. So the traditional way to practice with the five dharmas.

[80:11]

Sorry, I'm going over. Is to teach awareness in zazen. And we're saying awareness is more a kind of body awareness. knowing and consciousness is more a kind of mental knowing. So you just get very familiar with the five dharmas in Zazen are in awareness. So they just become categories in awareness. And once you really know them, or have a feel for them, then in your... in the infinitely complex tapestry of micro-moment immediacy.

[81:33]

You tend to notice the threads of appearance, naming, and so forth. Now, so as I said, if I throw this bell to Gerhard, I did a terrible thing once. in the discussion with a professor who was a specialist in Nietzsche at the University of California, Berkeley.

[82:36]

He was talking about, you know, awareness or something like that, so I threw a ball at him with a glass of wine and it hit the glass of wine and all over his suit. We remained friends. But if he'd done it to me, he would have done the same thing. Anyway, I was a smart aleck. Um... So, as awareness can make the calculation or notice the ball being thrown and catch it, Awareness can notice the five dharmas in a way consciousness can't. That's why I suggest you simply learn to count the eightfold path

[83:39]

in Zazen. Because it's a way of embodying it in awareness. Now, in general, Zen takes the Abhidharma lists which can be embodied in awareness and not ones which have intellectual ramifications. So, I'm not going to respond to you, Ravi, but you can say what you want to say. All right. Really, is it another day? They say in Irish bars, drinks are free tomorrow. So, you know, I would try both, Atmar. I'd try embodying the five dharmas and see how it interrelates with your keeping the word practice interbeing present.

[85:12]

Because interbeing and five dharmas are really not different. But something different happens when you begin to take, when your practice is mature enough to take traditional teachings and bring them into, without resistance or, you know, bring them into an embodied awareness. And that's the stage we're in in the winter branches. Okay, thank you very much. Oh, Chris, I'm sorry. Tomorrow's another day.

[86:07]

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