Well, I think we've come somewhere I couldn't have got to by thinking. Yeah, there's no text for what we're talking about. But for me, the text is just being here with you and talking with you. So... What characterizes a member, a practitioner, a Sangha practitioner? What should we call a Sangha practitioner? No, no, no, I'm a warrior, dude. a Sangha body, a Sangha person, I don't know, a Sangha practitioner.

[01:07]

So let me tell you an anecdote I've told you now and then. I was in Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, I was a You know, put together for five or six years I was assistant head of engineering and sciences extension and liberal arts extension. What does extension in this context mean? Extension in this context means it's a part of the university which creates programs for people outside the college, outside the adult education. I was assistant director in Berkeley, in California, in a university. So I was familiar with all the different venues where you could have conferences and meetings.

[02:14]

And it was really, it was my way of educating myself. I fell into this opportunity where if I wanted to know about something, I just organized a conference or classes on the subject. Then I could invite anybody in the United States, maybe even from Europe, to come and teach me. As long as I could talk enough other people coming to come and pay, so the airfares would be covered and things like that. So I had quite a good time for some years educating myself. A few years it was quite good for me to train and teach myself.

[03:40]

So one day I was, you know, rather late in the evening, I went by this building and it was packed with people. And I didn't know. I mean, I heard something. Some guy was coming. So anyway, I walked by the building. Not knowing really, but there were people packed, you know, like 30, 40 deep at the entrance. But since I knew the building and the room well, I went around to the side and climbed in the window. Da ich das Gebäude ziemlich gut kannte, ging ich herum und kletterte durchs Fenster hinein. So I'm sitting on the windowsill and here is this guy, all decked out. Decked out? Decked out it means dressed up in or decked out. It's funny expressions, I'm sorry.

[04:43]

All decked out in the Hawaiian... So there was this man who was dressed in a Hawaiian way, with flowers and so on. With a little beard and smiling and speaking an English-Indian accent. You never know. I didn't know who he was. Of course it was Rajneesh, but I didn't know who that was. I think it was his first visit to the United States. No, it was Maharishi. It wasn't Rajneesh, it was Maharishi. You see how much I know about this. You know the difference. Maharishi, okay. And I had a teacher, the Maharoshi.

[05:53]

Actually, Roshi and Rishi are the same word. It means old teacher. So I... listened to him and I was right near the end. I heard about 10 minutes or something. So then everybody went out and I went out with the crowd. I lived in San Francisco, so I had to go find my Volkswagen and drive to San Francisco. But I suddenly found myself standing right beside the car where the Maharishi was with several people. And they were talking about somehow getting him to Canada.

[07:01]

I don't know how they were going to do it, but they were talking about going to Canada. And suddenly the thought appeared in my mind. The recognition appeared in this mind. He's pretty good. And then I thought, where did that come from? Why did I think this funny little Indian guy is pretty good? But I realized that What I noticed was that without thinking about it, I'd coordinated my breathing with his, and as soon as I felt his breathing, the thought appeared, he's pretty good. And I didn't know I, you know, I...

[08:02]

didn't know I did that until that moment. But I gathered that, yes, from practicing with Suzuki, the Maharoshi Suzuki, I, uh, I, uh, I'd learned to, intuitively learned to coordinate my breath with the person I was with. So, yeah. So I recognized in a way Somebody who had a Sangha body or a practice body. No. But I wouldn't say that he had the same Sangha vision or Sangha mind as... I do.

[09:21]

And when we chant in the morning, and now I'm very happy that we're chanting in Sanskrit and Chinese and English, Japanese and English. Because whatever the veracity of the lineage is, veracity means the truth. Yeah, there is some passing of a certain mind, a vision from person to person through the generations. And we can call that the vertical Sangha or the vertical lineage. And we are the horizontal lineage or horizontal sangha.

[10:40]

And I'm having us chant, suggesting that we chant also the Heart Sutra in Japanese as our habit. Und ich habe ja meinen Vorschlag hin, schauen wir das gewohnheitsmäßig, das Herzüterer auf Japanisch. If you go anywhere in the Zen world, you'll find them chanting this in this way. So if you visit some other group, you'll probably find them chanting this way, and you'll feel, well, I have some connection to the horizontal sangha. If you go anywhere in the world, you'll probably find them chanting this in this way. Yeah, and I think that, you know, it is the case that some kind of way of being alive has been passed through now, you know, technically I am the 90th or 91st generation.

[11:55]

That makes you the 91st or 92nd. Es ist tatsächlich der Fall, dass eine bestimmte Art am Leben zu sein weitergegeben wurde und ich bin, technisch gesprochen, der 91. und ihr seid die 92. Generation. Yeah, but let's be, you know, look at how intimate this is. You may think it's 2,500 years. Well, it's 90 people. Yeah, or some number like that. What is this, about 40 people here? So add 50 and you've got 2,500 years. So if I spend 10 years trying to tell Frank what this is all about, how many years have we got so far? 13. Well, maybe he needs 15. Well, he's doing all right.

[13:12]

So I spend ten years with him, and he spends ten years with you, and you spend ten years with her, and hey, we're back 2,500 years. In the sense that our lifetimes are longer than ten years, but there's this overlap. And this mind, in a big sense, capital M, you don't have the word in German even, right? Capital G, Geist. It's all capital. It's all capital, yeah. It's all capitals. Has in some sense been passed to us. And it's a lineage passed in in some way like our parental lineage is passed in.

[14:25]

You know, there's a lineage passed genetically, of course. But also culturally. You know, I noticed that as soon as I'm in the Zurich airport, these are non-Americans passing me on the belt. Sometimes I'm so tired I've been up all night packing and all night in the plane and I don't know where the heck I am. Well, it ain't America. And when I was in... When I lived in Japan for quite a few years, I would find to my own surprise I would walk up to a completely Japanese person.

[15:45]

I'm thinking of one instance in the local hospital in Kyoto. And I would just start speaking English to him. And he would start speaking English to me. And he said, well, how did you know I spoke English? Because he's Japanese parents living in Canada. Because the language shapes your face. And you can see the English musculature in that. It's true. You know, I'm never going to be able to speak German because I've got an American dish. I can't get the Portuguese out.

[16:50]

Yeah, okay. And what is also interesting is European butts and American butts are different shapes. You can see it from the back. Well, anyway, let's not go into this any further. So we do inherit a cultural and linguistic and familial lineage, but we can also inherit a Buddha mind. And how do we notice a Buddha mind or a Buddha body in another person? So I recognize some kind of practice body in the Maharishi. But can I recognize Practice speech or practice mind?

[18:09]

Practice what? Speech or practice mind? We have the three mysteries of body, speech, and mind. Okay. So I'm not trying to give you a manual of, you know, you can... Look at the man and say, oh yeah, enough I did. Oh yes, this person is a Sangha practitioner. A little questionnaire. Of course what I'm talking about is your own practice, what it means to enter into the sun. And probably most of us, we may have never practiced before, but we come to a place where people are practicing.

[19:17]

Then there's, you know, several people gathered, like now. No, there's just a few people, you know, taking care of the place. But you feel when you come in something familiar that you hadn't noticed before in other places. I'm not saying it's something special, good or bad, you know. It's just something you already have some familiarity with. You feel sort of at home, but you don't know why. Isn't there some German word meaning secret, which is like heim? Geheimnis. Geheimnis. Okay.

[20:31]

You feel secretly at home. Geheimnis. Is that the right word? It's a kind of a secret. Go home. It means go home? Get out of here? Here's your hat and what's your hurry? So gross meat hoot. Sweet. I'm smarter than you think. Not now. Not smart. Okay. We're getting off the track here. Anyway, I shouldn't have brought up German. I don't know what I'm talking about. But to intimacy, there's a kind of secrecy. It's open and yet there's something secret. So you notice something that's familiar to you, but it's also kind of...

[21:37]

Secret or unfamiliar thing. But because you feel it with the others, maybe you stay and start coming now and then and practicing. So the Sangha body, I don't know what word to use, the Sangha body ...introduces you to something that's already resonant or... You just haven't emphasized it. Or you haven't even acknowledged it as important. I remember, you know, in the first years I was practicing, I had these experiences of, you know, some kind of nice feeling.

[22:51]

And I kind of, well, it's a nice feeling, but let me get back to my serious practice. That was good. And then after a while I said, well, geez, it keeps reappearing. Maybe I pay attention to it. Maybe it's a little bit like the feeling when you're late at night and you hear a train in the distance or a tugboat on the... Harbour, if you live near a harbour. Yeah, it's some feeling, a kind of blissful feeling. But it took me some years before I actually said, yes, I'm experiencing the bliss which arises from meditation.

[24:12]

And once I acknowledged it, I began to flower. So perhaps when we And what's interesting to me, as the Sangha has matured, and as I've often said, the Sangha now, in the year 207, is so much more mature than the Sangha who practiced a lot of years in 1977. And the Sangha is, if a new person comes in, their practice matures much more quickly. if the sangha is mature.

[25:27]

And people, when other people sit well, new people learn to sit well much more quickly. So when you bring attention to your body, And what we're doing when we practice, we're bringing attention to our body. It's codified or presented in the four foundations of mindfulness. But it's also simply, you know, you investigate bodily phenomena.

[26:36]

And you investigate external phenomena. And you cultivate an awareness of the body. And you cultivate an awareness of the breath. This is the practice of a Sangha practitioner. And if we bring attention to the body, you bring intention, attention, mental aspects to the body, that there's an alchemical process there, an alchemy in it. Because attention brought to the body becomes a deeper kind of attention. It's like, I don't know, ordinary water becomes heavy water, I don't know.

[27:49]

So attention becomes embodied. And embodied intention, attention we can call concentration. And what concentration in Buddhism means is not mental concentration. But embodied concentration, embodied attention, and this embodied attention begins to transform mental attention. And a mature practitioner or adept practitioner begins to have a kind of embodied presence.

[28:51]

And when you meet a Sangha practitioner, you can feel... the presence of attention in the body. Not just giving attention to things, but an aliveness or attention throughout the body. The body feels transparent and solid at the same time or something like that. I don't know what to say. And also, the mature practitioner, his or her senses go ahead of his cognition. Now, what do I mean by that?

[30:15]

I mean, let's say we're, instead of saying we're sentient beings in English, let's say we're sensate beings. This is a challenge to our translator. You don't have to translate it. I'll never say it again, I promise. It's very interesting. Okay. It's not sensual. It has something to do with feeling and leading. I think what Gerald said. That's what Gerald said. In the form of... Sense has this double meaning.

[31:34]

Sensing and having a sense. Having a sense for is the palpable aspect and the... Well, I mean, in English, I just... Partly I'm using it... They could mean almost exactly the same thing in English. The word sentient means to send. The root is to send. You send your senses to another person or you send your senses to an object or the object is sent to you. Also, sentient im Englischen fühlend heißt, du sendest deine Sinne sozusagen zu einer anderen Person. So it means the mind and perception is sent to the object or sent. The word sensate emphasizes the feel without the thinking. For instance, you can have the sensation of heat without thinking about the heat.

[32:44]

So the practitioner more has the sensation of the world, not the thinking of the world. So you can try to get... Because thinking... tries to grab hold of... Thinking is so greedy. It tries to grab hold of everything and make it its own. And if I don't stop, we'll never stop. But I'll continue for a while. Okay. Consciousness is basically conception, an interlocking network of concepts.

[33:44]

If some strange object went through that garden now and some kind of funny object was seen in the window, we wouldn't have a concept for it and we wouldn't know what to do. We'd be surprised. Would we make it into something we know? We'd make it into something we know or we wouldn't see it. So thinking wants to turn every perception into a concept. And one way to get free of that is to participate in turning everything into a concept.

[34:52]

So until you really feel yourself making the concepts, and then you can begin to be free of them. But another way is to use, which I find useful, is to use a phrase in English, like for me, sensation only. So I look at a mountain and I say to myself, only sensation. And the mountain is there as a field which I don't think about. Like I feel heat, I feel the mountain. This wonderful wall with its plaster patch. Which Otmar says is going to be a graffiti board.

[35:59]

Anybody ready? We'll give you a brush. No, Ger. I just feel it. I don't think it. Now, in many ways, I've recommended this as yogic meditation. So you can feel a sangha, a mature sangha practitioner by their presence. And their presence is often or is also The feel of the immediacy. And thinking is held back.

[37:00]

It's present. Some kind of associative knowing is always present. But our... Attention is not gathered in the associative knowing. Attention is gathered in the feel of the world. The sensation of the world. Now, I want to continue a little bit and then I'll come back. So, Maybe I'm going too far. Everyone agrees? No. Because I've got a few more steps into the mire of mind.

[38:02]

Meier, you know Meier? Mud. Also, in den Sumpf des Geistes. In the Sumpf, yeah. In the Sumpf des Geistes. Sumpf des Geistes, yeah. I like German, it's just... Das mache ich am Deutschen. Yeah. Okay. The last time I saw Lea and Agatha, they were in the great... Basel Sanger. Of Fastnacht. Yeah. And there was, was there Totentanz? Is that the dance of death? Oh. And David was there, too, playing his piccolo. But it was interesting. I mean, here in the Do you call a person from Basel a Basilian?

[39:07]

A Basler? Oh, not a Basilian. Okay, the Baslers all recognize themselves because they can't see through the mask. And it's sort of funny. That when there's no mask, you look through and there's a Sangha practitioner, but then the ordinary person is the mask. If I ever go again, I hope I'm there when all the lights go out. And I was told, but I'm sure it would be the case, when all the lights go out, everyone goes, ah! Okay, now I come back.

[40:14]

Okay. In winter without the mask, how do we recognize, how do we feel our presence in the paradigm of the Sangha. Okay, so let's look at speech. Well, obviously for a Sangha practitioner, in their speech you would feel the presence of their breath. But also probably rather particularly to a Buddhist and not to say perhaps a Hindu, you would have apophatic speech. You don't know what that means. Apophatic.

[41:21]

Epithetic? Nobody knows the word practically. A-P-O-P-H-A-T-I-C, but it means... Epiothetic. Yeah, it means unsaying, to take the saying away in saying. It's often used in religious theology when you try to explain what God is by not explaining. What actually do you do then? You circumscribe it? Do you circumscribe it? You describe all the things it isn't. Yeah. You say something but around it. You say it's not this, it's not this, it's not this. Yeah. Okay. But this time in Zen, too. Okay. For instance, in the koan 98 in the Blue Cliff, in the Shoyoroku. Dongshan, our ancestor, we chant him in the morning.

[42:23]

Dongshan Lianji Daiyosho. That's your buddy. Someone asked him, among the three bodies of the Buddha, Which one is the Sangha body? No, he didn't ask that. He said... among the three bodies of the Buddha, which does not fall into any category? That's really a great question. Because it means this practitioner, we have our body, we have our Sangha identity, We have our bliss body of meditation, which is called the Sambhogakaya, which is one of the three bodies. But what about a body that doesn't fall into any category? Yeah. Break it in two.

[43:34]

Cut it into three. Bring me my sewing kit. Where is my sewing kit? Where are my nostrils? I have no problem finding mine. And Dung Shan says, I'm always close to this. This is saying which takes away saying. Do you understand? I'm always close to this. It's an answer, but it doesn't say anything. But it expresses an attitude. So, you know, supposedly, I can't remember exactly now, but the sixth patriarch, in the sutra of the sixth patriarch, a Chinese, you know, not really a sutra, text. I think near the end of his life or something, I can't remember exactly, but someone asked him, a monk asked him...

[44:38]

how do I answer questions of people who want to know about the Dharma? He said, always say the opposite. But But if you listen to Suzuki Rishi or you listen to a teacher, Zen teacher, often when they say something, they then say the other side. They then say the other side. That's apophatic speech. Because in saying it, you take it away. But if your speech is a construct, then it can't be, it's a construct, so then you take the construction away.

[45:51]

So you can feel that in a practitioner. People ask me, you know, are you Richard Baker? And I say this because I think you would have the same feeling. I say sometimes. That's apophatic speech. I say yes, but I take it away, too. That's apophatic speech. And I'm sure Geralt or Agatha, sometimes we say, are you Agatha? Well, yes, but not only Agatha. Isn't that right? Don't you feel that sometimes? Yeah, so there's that quality and that... is the quality of someone who knows the world as a construct.

[46:55]

I'm giving you a construction, but we both know it's not really real. Mm-hmm. And mind, I'll just make it short. And mind, body, speech and mind, I'll just make it short. Maybe come back to it. But there's the feeling of knowing that all objects of perception are percept objects. They're not And regarding the mind, there is this feeling that all objects of perception are actually objects of the mind, that they are pieces of perception, so to speak.

[48:07]

It's like, is this a watch? Well, it's called a watch. That kind of feeling. Okay. So I think, you know, I've talked more than enough. It's time for several breaks. And of course I would like you to meet with each other in small groups after the break. And you can talk about, of course, whatever you want. How can I prevent it? but I can suggest that we speak about how do you How do you feel about the difference between when you started to practice and before you started to practice? And what's the difference between being with people who practice and being with people who don't practice?

[49:16]

Eventually, a third question, which is, how do we bring the feeling of practice to people who don't practice? Thank you very much. So I'll let Otmar and Nadine or whoever Let's begin the kindergarten process of counting off.

[50:00]

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