Well, I'm having a good time. I hope you're enjoying the seminar. I had such a good time in the last hour because I was listening both for Baker Roshi's words and meaning, and also I was listening to the translation just as carefully. So this is how, after a certain amount of time goes by, I will be able to speak German. Then you better stay here more. Maybe 50 years. And I don't know how many of you are fortunate enough to have this experience to be able to understand only one of the two languages that are being spoken. Yes, a few of us.

[01:08]

So then you get to hear something that you think you almost sort of understand. Or if you don't understand it, you think, oh, I don't understand that. But I could understand it. Then you hear the German and you don't understand anything. But in a way it's extremely understandable. In other words, because you can't understand it, it's perfectly clear. And it's because you don't understand... Because you don't understand, it's totally clear.

[02:09]

But actually some words begin to emerge because there are so many cognate words in German and English that you can understand some words appear. And this is interesting in itself. Some words become luminously appearing in the German. And I got stuck early on And the word breath. Which is Aten in German. Yes. Yes. And it reminded me of, I think, the title of one of Paul Celan's books of poetry is Atenwende, no? And that reminds me of a book by Paul Celan called Atemwind.

[03:12]

I think in English it's translated as breath turn. I think it's w-e-n-d-e. Atemwende. Atemwende. That's it. So... And just as Pekaroshi was speaking about a phrase that becomes inside the heart and the mind, so while he was talking, the one word phrase Atam Venda became part of my mind. So I guess the word Atemwende is not actually a German word. It's a word created by Paul Celan. Is that right? Yes. Yes. In English it would be, as I say, a breath turn.

[04:15]

And Maybe we could reduce this seminar to this one word, breath turn. It would be an interesting experiment to have a seminar in the only word, just speak for several hours and just say only Atem Wende. Let's do that next year. It would be easy to translate. But the trouble is people would want their money back. But that's it, you know, turning toward the breath. being turned by the breath, being turned on every moment of breathing by the breath, being turned toward our life,

[05:32]

Being turned away from our confusion. Or being turned toward our confusion. And by the breath turning our confusion into another kind of confusion. A more creative, maybe more pleasant confusion. So I was in this way pleasantly confused in the afternoon. It's also the term of the breath. Yes, yes, this is something really beautiful. When the breath turns inside as you are breathing, when the inhale turns into the exhale.

[06:53]

And when the exhale at the end curls back to the inhale. The beautiful, delicious rhythm of the breathing. Wunderbar, what could be better than this? How do you translate that? So every breath itself is a turn. Like the seasons, they say the seasons turn. And then the words that I heard I wasn't reading them on the page.

[08:14]

I was hearing them in the presence of Baker Roshi and Atmar. So there was no way to separate the meaning of the words from the presence of these people that I love. So the words We're given a living presence. Each time words were spoken, there was a living presence in the words. So even if my mind followed the words and their meanings, This was only on one part of my mind, but my whole heart and body was following the presence that gave life to the words.

[09:29]

And since I know Richard and Atmar, And because I know Richard and Ottmar, there is a long past in the presence of the words. And in the case of Richard, so many times of being together and hearing talks over many, many years. So then, as I'm listening to the words, I don't know what time it is. Is it this time or many years ago? It sounds the same. And with Otmar riding our bicycles in Berlin,

[10:33]

And in the Turkish restaurant. And in San Francisco. At the temple. All of this is actually present in the words. And if you listen to the words enough with the breath, with the quiet of the body, All of this is present. So this is really wonderful. Then there is the problem of our mind. whether or not we understand something, trying to understand something, thinking we understand, and immediately when we think we understand, it disappears on us.

[11:57]

Or thinking, this is really intriguing, but I don't understand. Oder zu denken, das ist wirklich interessant, aber ich verstehe das nicht. Aber das ist immer ein Problem, weil es nie wahr ist, dass wir etwas verstehen. Wir verstehen immer. Auf eine Art verstehen wir immer. But isn't it funny how the mind always wants to be the boss? To lord it over everything. And what would happen if the mind were successful in this?

[13:01]

What would happen if we understood Dharma, we understood life, we understood our own life? Then what? This is unimaginable. This is some kind of... built in walls of the mind. The prison of the mind. The prison of language. That we would somehow receive that which we are grasping for. And the closer we come to it, the more limited our life becomes. Until the confinement becomes almost unbearable. And yet, always, over and over again, because of our language and because of the way that thinking goes, we come back to this confinement over and over again.

[14:46]

And we turn sometimes, always, sometimes and always, this tendency to confine ourselves, we even turn that which frees us from the confinement into more confinement. Enclosure. So this is really marvelous. You have to have a real awesome respect for this human capacity. I was really impressed by all the things that Baker Roshi wrote on the paper.

[16:02]

And I had the impression that these were ways of understanding and explaining that he has used before, this is what he said. And I guess that many of you are familiar with these things that he has taught you. But I'm not familiar with them. And he didn't really explain them very much. So I think it would be a good idea if I would now explain them. Because I think if I explain them, not understanding them, I could make them much clearer. Because Because in seeing that written on the board, it was very immediately clear to me what he was talking about.

[17:20]

And it struck me that all the words he used, there we see half of his explanation, also stand for the opposite of the words. So when we hear the word intention, We hear something like resolve. Yeah, like will. I will have this intention. Before I did not have this intention, but from now on I'm having this intention. Like a manufacturer of plastic pipe, I will manufacture this intention.

[18:43]

But actually this intention is a non-intention. Just like the most essential thought is not thinking. So the most essential intention is a non-intention. In other words, it's not something that we produce like a manufacturer manufactures a plastic pipe. Und das ist also mit anderen Worten nicht etwas, was wir herstellen, wie wir ein Plastikrohr herstellen. That didn't exist until the manufacturer decided to make it.

[19:45]

Non-intentioned. frees the intention within us to come forward. So it's more like removing intention than it is like producing intention. Removing confused intentions that block a truer intention. And in the absence of our confused intentions, naturally there's a soft We have the phrase in English, and I don't know if it's the same in German, to pay attention. Is that a common phrase?

[21:03]

Just be at attention. We don't say pay attention. You just say be attentive. Yeah. Well, in English it's as if you have to pay attention. You pay it out. In English it's more like a gift to give attention. Beachtung zollen. Beachtung zollen. Zollen also has something to do with money. So there's another phrase. It's a different phrase. This is what school children will be told by their teacher if they're not paying attention to the lesson.

[22:08]

Pay attention. Das ist das, was man den Kindern sagt, sei achtsam, ja, oder pass auf. So it's a kind of a command, you know, that you should be paying attention. Das ist mehr ein Befehl, du solltest aufpassen. To someone or to something. So there's a kind of economy of attention. And a scarcity of attention. Like money, one only has so much. And nowadays there are so many things trying to grab your attention. The smartest people on the planet are trying to figure out how to get our attention.

[23:09]

Because now everybody knows that following attention comes buying things and money and so on. And this is how we view attention. But following non-intention comes an attention that is not paid, that is only freely given and freely received. And as we were hearing this afternoon in such a beautiful and detailed way, all of this has something to do with the breath.

[24:26]

And this means actually the breath coming and going in the belly But it's the turning of time of things always toward one another. this giving oneself to the ongoing rhythm of living. I mean, everything is Everything is turning on every moment. This is why just to be sitting with the breath To be letting the breath come forth in sitting is such a moving, such a profound thing.

[25:40]

Because to participate with the breath, to give oneself to the breath, is to give oneself to the turning of being on every occasion. Because everything is coming and going all the time. Coming and going, turning in this way all the time. Just like we come and go with every breath. So to be profoundly with the breath is to be profoundly with the turning of being, the turning of living, moment by moment.

[26:44]

And you see how with this comes a quality of attention. That's a giving. And a being given. A being given. And this is, so the body doesn't mean just the body, it means the body, the spine and so on, as we heard this afternoon. The breath waking up. the whole body. But the body is not what's enclosed by the skin. And we know that Anyway, the skin is not a perfect enclosure.

[27:54]

The boundary of the body is soft and the body is always in connection. And if I really listen and I hear a sound of machinery or a bird, If I say it's outside the body, this isn't right. It's not outside the body. If I say it's inside the body, this isn't right either. It's not inside the body. So the body is really the non-body. To limit the body to the ordinary concept of the body is to imprison ourselves.

[29:00]

So the whole of reality coming and going on each occasion. And are giving ourselves to it. and our being given our life by it, is the body and phenomena. So that's my commentary to Bekharoshi's teaching. Thank you. Plastic tubes, I think. Plastic tubes. Then I thought the other one also was wonderful. The four functions of the self. Oh, thank you. It's over there somewhere. And I never heard of this one either.

[30:12]

But I thought, what a marvelous teaching. And because I have no idea what he means by these things I feel especially qualified to comment I feel particularly qualified to comment on this. This is an apophatic remark that ten years have been wasted. And so we see these words and right away one thinks the self as separation. And we understand this right away. And we think, yes, I know what it feels like to be separate. Apart from others, alone and paranoid.

[31:18]

Frightened. Suspicious. Very familiar feeling to me. And this is bad. I don't like this. I'm hoping that Zen practice will cure me of this problem. And then we see connectedness. This is really good. We like this a lot. We will be connected. connected to everything, shooting beams of love from outside and coming into us also. So, isn't that what we think?

[32:19]

You know, we like connection is good. We like this. Separation is bad. We don't like that. So... We hope that we can get as many of the good ones as possible and get rid of as many of the bad ones as we possibly can. Do you think that? I think that. That's how I'm thinking. But this is a hopeless way to think about it. This is like... The doctor gives you good medicine and you make it into poison. Because it's dependent on our separation that we could be connected. If there's no separation, there's no being at all.

[33:37]

Maybe a world in which there was nothing would be perfect. And maybe this world is coming. And possibly for each one of us it eventually comes. But in the meantime, there's being alive. And being alive is being a separate being. And being a separate being is being connected. Whether we know it or not, whether we have a warm feeling of connection or not, That's what being is. So our separation and our connectedness completely depend on each other.

[34:40]

And if we can really understand our separateness and our connectedness, We recognize that these conceptual frameworks are meaningless. Connectedness makes no sense. Separation makes no sense. Then there's continuity. Without utter separation. And there is no connection without non-connection.

[35:54]

in this moment of breathing, of speaking and listening, of creating together these words, The whole past, your past and my past and the whole past of this planet we're living on is here. It's so strange as we travel going to places and seeing such and such a painting made in the 13th century, such and such a building built in the 12th century. What do these things mean? Whose twelfth century? Where is the twelfth century now?

[37:06]

It's in a feeling I have walking into a building now. With a depth of appreciation of this time now. And a joining together of so much now. How do you get from the 12th century to the 21st century? How does a little boy grow up to be a man? And is it the same person or a different person? And Baker Roshi didn't say anything, I think, about context.

[38:37]

But it feels like the wholeness of all of this that I'm speaking about. The inseparability of it. The fact that all these things we're talking about are Music. Die Tatsache, dass alles worüber wir sprechen Musik ist. So one hair pierces myriad holes. So wie ein Haar Myriaden von Löchern durchdringt. When we work with the phrase, we breathe the phrase.

[40:03]

And maybe at first, as we heard from the story of Dogen and Eijo, the phrase comes to our attention because it arrests our mind. It interrupts our usual way of understanding. So we take it in to our breath. And we bring it to our body. And maybe we have a feeling of investigation or interest. Trying to understand. But knowing that we can't understand in the usual way. So trying to understand in some other way. So versuchen wir das auf eine andere Art zu verstehen.

[41:21]

But then there's also a time when we give up trying to understand. Dann gibt es auch die Zeit, wo wir aufgeben, das verstehen zu wollen. And the initial energy of the phrase disappears. Und die ursprüngliche Energie des Satzes verschwindet. Because now the phrase has its own energy in us. weil dieser Satz nun seine eigene Energie in uns hat, dann können wir glücklich sein, einfach nur diesen Satz zu leben. Und wir brauchen nicht zu verstehen. There's a kind of joy in not understanding. Not thinking that there's something now we don't understand and later there's something we will understand. But the simple practice of not understanding. And the joy in that.

[42:22]

Because not understanding is a kind of total listening. letting things come forward. And speak to us. And giving ourselves to the listening to things. So working with a phrase can be like that. A deep listening. So one more Heidegger. Nochmal Heidegger. As we were talking earlier this afternoon, And as we talked about it in the early afternoon, the sentence is a language, an intense language.

[43:40]

And both Dogen and Heidegger appreciate this power of language to turn us in another direction from the way language seems to be turning us. So here is a passage of Heidegger. He says, language speaks. And again, I'm going to paraphrase to make it easier. Language speaks. When it speaks, it calls forth The difference to come. The difference to come. A difference which releases the world. and brings it to intimacy.

[45:01]

And then he repeats again, language speaks. And we speak because we respond to language. And this responding to language is hearing. And it hears because it listens to the command of stillness. So, this is beautiful. Language brings us to stillness.

[46:03]

And has within it the necessity of our responding to it, to language and to life. What is important is to learn to live in the speaking of language. And in order to do this, we need to constantly look and see how to respond. And then he has a phrase that explains how to respond.

[47:19]

And it more or less means to wait. So this is how we learn to respond, to wait. So lernen wir zu reagieren, zu warten. And I don't think he means to wait for something. And I don't think he means to wait for something. But just simply to wait with expectation. But just simply to wait with expectation. Not expectation for something, but in other words an attentive fullness and vividness of waiting. leaning too much forward or back.

[48:25]

Without grabbing or pushing away. Just fully present and attentive. Ready. So I'll end with another poem. Ich beende mit einem anderen Gedicht. With no translation. Ohne Übersetzung. It's impossible to translate. Es wäre zu schwierig. So we'll see how. We'll try another English poem. So far nobody complained about the English poem, so we'll do another one until I get a complaint. So here's another one. So far, no one has complained about it. If I can add, a few have asked me, we will copy the poems and you can have it in the original in English in the next few days.

[49:33]

Poetry is a way, not a topos, in which something appears. It's a sway among a swarm to be hurled from side to side against the language walls that tunnel subversive through what is, as far as it is known, occasioning a gap in mind through which you could theoretically drive a truck. Meanwhile, the dogs bark and canaries tweet. Monkeys propend opposable thumbs. The covering sky won't shake out its stars to cooperate with the head's coolness, the disaster that is human life on earth. That this can be said, imagination blisters in the cauterized night.

[50:41]

is possible only in the reams of paper these hidden significant blotches of ink we twiddle in the dark. I know my fate rests with the embers. Let's take a stretch break and then we'll come back and talk. Thank you.

[51:12]

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