Well, I thought, normally we don't record dharma wheel gatherings, but I thought maybe I would say something at the beginning that would be useful for me to have a reminder of in order to write some of it down for what I'm writing. But now I don't know what to say. And also I was quite busy up to a few moments ago and so that didn't let me imagine what I might say. Now, as you know, I'm... By the way, thank you all of you, each of you, for... coming all this way from various places and taking time away from your regular life to spend these two and a half days together.

[01:27]

Is this, by the way, the only light we can have in this part? Okay, fine. There are several of these we got around over there. It's much better lit over there, though. But anyway, that's okay. And I have to find a lamp for that other one that broke. You don't need to have this translated. As I've said a couple times very recently, up until now I've always said that Buddhism is a kind of science.

[02:32]

And now I would say, I'm saying to myself, and it makes a difference, Buddhism is a science. And I think you have to think about that too, whether it makes sense that we call this what we're doing is science. For a number of reasons I made this decision. One is I really do treat Buddhism as a science. And my saying it was kind of a science is a way of a kind of a, you know, keeping my foot in the door of religion.

[03:40]

And also, I made this decision because, you know, it just really... I really felt the two primary... Because I've been thinking about Buddhism in... how it's a transformative practice and how it also is a practice which will transform in the West. And I think the two main dynamics of the transformation will be, one of them I mention all the time, that it will be a lay practice, but it will be a lay adept practice, and it won't be the adept part of the practice will be not just monastic, but it will be also lay.

[04:56]

And the way in which lay practice can be an adept practice dependent on being also a monastic practice, is going to transform in various significant ways Buddhism. And now also whether we like it or not, it's going to be viewed, considered, thought about as a science.

[05:58]

Now, as a science, and as people looking at it as a science and doing EEGs and all that stuff, it's going to make us look at the practice differently. And I think we're just going to have to get on with it and see what that means. Now, recently, as many of you know, dear Norbert Janssen died. And he knew I was coming to Kassel and would come to Kassel before I went to Hanover.

[07:05]

And he told Angela and others that he'd hoped to see me. But he died the day before I left for driving because of the Baden-Baden tunnel collapse, ECA collapse. I drove instead of trained. And so anyway I got there. And somewhat on the day that the crematory was supposed to come and get his body ready to be taken away. And just as I, you know, just for the, he was, Robert was, his body was there, beautiful looking actually, handsome, and cold as ice.

[08:21]

And Norbert was gone. But I was just a guy who came in, you know, I guess some people of course know, I would say the majority of people there knew that I was a Buddhist teacher and priest. And some people didn't know I was a Buddhist teacher or a priest. But it became apparent very quickly that people expected me to do something. And they didn't say, oh, a Buddhist scientist has arrived. They said, a Buddhist priest has arrived.

[09:41]

So if Buddhism is considered or thought about in the future primarily as a science, will people ask me or one of you to do a some kind of funeral or crematorial ceremony. I bring this up because I think each of us in our practice has to think about, do you feel what you're doing is a kind of science, a kind of knowledge, shareable knowledge, or do you feel it's also somehow a religion? Now the ceremonies we do, like the Nenju ceremony and the Shuso entering ceremony we just had,

[10:45]

All these ceremonies don't have to be religious or thought of as religion. There's no God we're appealing to. The ceremony is really for us measured by if it works. A wedding ceremony works if the couple feels married afterward. eine Ehezeremonie, die funktioniert, wenn das Paar nachher das Gefühl hat, verheiratet zu sein. And if Uli feels entered as the chouseau after the ceremony the other day.

[12:04]

Und wenn Uli nach der Zeremonie das Gefühl hat, eingetreten zu sein als chouseau nach der Zeremonie. So I don't think there's any problem with I mean, placebos are a kind of ceremony which works. So I think that the ceremonies are not the problem, but we have to identify the problems if we don't think of this as a religion. Now, what I decided to do this weekend with you is look again more carefully.

[13:10]

I'm talking about looking at the basics. I'm looking at the basic, basic, basics now. I have a book which rather scholarly book on early Buddhism. And there's a discussion in the very beginning about breath, of course, and about the five skandhas. And I was amused because they're trying to define in these early texts what rupa is, what form is of the first skandhu. Und es hat mich amüsiert, dass Sie hier ganz am Anfang darüber sprechen, was Rupa ist, was dieses erste Skanda ist.

[14:20]

And the word that's, when they translate into English, it becomes Skanda of Rupa is what molests you, what bothers you. So an example is a mosquito. It bothers you, that's form. Like a fly is a, you know, that's form. So what it really is, is what interferes with you. I mean, this stops my foot, this floor, so that's form. Now, we can look at it more subtly, but here's these guys back there, which was not very long ago, actually. And they're thinking about, how the heck are we going to understand our life, how to live?

[15:23]

Now, we can look at Buddhism as a received wisdom, a teaching, a received wisdom. And that, of course, it is a received wisdom. But when I look at Buddhism in its earliest times, it's just a bunch of people trying to figure out how the heck to live. How to understand in their own experience what the Buddha said. And I think that's the best approach for us too. And it's particularly going to be the case if we're going to have an adept lay practice.

[16:45]

We have to figure out how we want to live. And we can use the received wisdom of Buddhism, to help us figure out how to live. One of the things we have to do, and I've just over and over again found this the case, we have to undo much of what we bring to situations. One of the things we obviously have to do, and it's very clear in the teaching, we have to undo the editing and designing of the world that happens by the brain and it's called consciousness.

[18:01]

So we can discuss this and find out ways in which we can bypass the brain designing the conscious world. And we also have to look at the... Well, we can say that our Western cultural heritage... Not as anything wrong with it, but as different from the assumed cultural heritage of East Asian Buddhism.

[19:21]

So I'm really trying to look as much as possible. It's been going on for decades for me, and it's clearer than it has been what kind of changes we need to make. And I think if we... I've been surprised myself by the more closely I look at the initial and basic teachings It's more clear to me the differences that the practices assume, differences from how we look at the world. I imagine sometimes you're a little tired of me saying versions of this.

[20:41]

But I do have to create some kind of situation so we know what I'm talking about. Now, I guess what I'd like to start with, the emphasis I'd like to start with, is I'd like to switch Instead of thinking of ourselves as a physical being, I'd like us to think of ourselves as a physiological being. Now, Nicole has tried to translate this for me when her health was not much better than it is now.

[22:04]

And I've said this before, but I'm still trying to make sense of it. Nicole seems to have a bronchitis which doesn't loosen up. And when she speaks, the speaking turns into coughing. So she's, to prevent coughing, she's encouraging me to find another translator, and here's my other favorite translator. Okay, so, now, see, I don't know how the words work in German, but in English, the word physical is specifically defined as not mind, So, in English, when you say I'm a physical being, you mean I have a body, my mind or brain has a body.

[23:20]

And if you say in English, I have a physical body, then it means that your mind has a body. And I ask you, if you say this in German, does it mean the same, that it is not the mind? It's the same. Because if I say this is my physical body, I can say that's the physical world. Because that's not mind and this is not mind. Now, if you're born, your gender at birth is female, say, or male, and your parents give you a female name,

[24:35]

Now, if we didn't give female and male names, boys and girls might grow up a little differently or more similarly. But as soon as you have the name of a boy, and it's clear in English or Deutsch that it's a boy's name, you're treated like a boy and expected to be a boy. Now, you might feel like a girl or a boy in the wrong body, And some people do. But all your life you're going to be treated strictly, you know, in your early years, you're supposed to fit the name you have. Now, I'm only saying that because... I really think that, I'm using this as an example, I really think that if I say always, I have a physical body, this is my physical body sitting in the chair, and we design chairs for physical bodies,

[26:23]

If I think that way all my life, I'm going to think this and this and this are somehow the same stuff. Now, if physiological doesn't work, I'm going to have to find or create a new word. Because Buddhism assumes you experience yourself as a physiological activity which includes mind, whatever word we use. And if you experience yourself in every instant as a physiological active event, breathing and heart beating and etc.

[27:50]

And that's inseparable from the mind. You're going to be in the world in a different way. Okay. And what I sometimes say the brain activity to create consciousness. I call the brain skin. And the five skandhas, another totally early teaching, is a kind of peeling the brain skin off the body so you become a sensorial body that isn't designed, the experience of the body isn't designed or experienced through consciousness.

[29:00]

Now I'm suggesting this or bringing this up in order to, you know, just as preliminary to our discussion in the next day and a half. Und ich bringe das einfach hier ein als eine Art Vorläufer zu allem, was wir in unserem Gespräch in den nächsten eineinhalb Tagen sprechen können. Yeah, and I want to... So now I want to change the subject slightly. Yeah, change the subject. Und jetzt würde ich gerne das Thema wechseln. And I want to look at this koan 3... more carefully than we usually do. And I really only want to look at one paragraph in the Quran to see if we can

[30:06]

get a feeling for the difference, the experiential, physiological world that this porn assumes. Now, the first opening statement, the introduction, I'm just going to read you a few, the two couple sentences that have the interjection. Now, you have somewhere here is the paragraph on the third page, but this is, I don't, you don't have a copy of this, I'm just mentioning it.

[31:36]

Now, the introduction is not a description. The introduction is more like a warm-up, like if you were warming yourself up before you jogged. This is a form of literature. but the literary devices in it are different than would be in our own literature. So this starts out with the state before the beginning of time.

[32:41]

That's quite explicit. But it's not meant to be a description. And then it gives you an example. A turtle heads for the fire. So this is not philosophy, it's imagistic. And the whole way that we turn things into a kind of philosophy or an explanatory philosophy doesn't really exist in the usual way, in our way in China. Because the emphasis here is not to give you something to think about. There's a joke someone told me the other day. You go to heaven and it says, To the left is heaven and to the right is an explanation of heaven.

[34:18]

And most people turn toward the explanation. Well, these koans are written so that there's not even the opportunity to go to the explanation. You have to go straight to heaven or, you know, Okay, so a turtle heads for the fire. Now, what this imagistic way of presenting the story is, This isn't something you think about. It's something you imagine doesn't have the right feeling in English.

[35:22]

It's like it's not real. You imagined it. You imagine it to make it happen. It's also, you know, symbols are not used in Buddhism much at all. They look like symbols, but they're not. A Buddhist statue like that, or the one I brought sitting in front of the flowers. is not a symbol of the Buddha. It's not a representation of the Buddha. We could say in English, it's a re-presenting of the Buddha. It's one of the reasons that you make an effort to find figures if you do want a Buddha statue in your life somewhere.

[36:33]

You want a statue which represents the Buddha to you. So the statues are designed to give you the experience of being a Buddha. And many statues even have, to make them real and not just a symbol, have In the base, you can take the base out and put the ashes, your own ashes if you have time when you're not busy. Your disciple can put your ashes in. And your ashes are in the statue. Okay, so this is also something we can explore a little bit, what this means. Because there's many reasons why The things you read aren't symbolic.

[37:59]

They're totems or represent another version of what it's, a real version of what it's representing. Like Manjushri is always on a lion, or often. And the lion isn't a pet. Der Löwe ist kein Haustier. The lion is another version of Manjushri. Der Löwe ist eine andere Form von Manjushri. And so we have to sort of, this again, we have to try to sift through this way of looking at pigs.

[39:05]

Sift, you understand? Like you sift out the sand out from the rice or something. Okay, so they give you an image. A turtle heads toward fire. Turtles don't head for fire unless they have a choice. So they picked an image which just doesn't compute. So basically, this koan, which is about breathing, Primarily. The first words in the koan say, a turtle heads toward fire. So you have to ask yourself, what's this got to do with breathing?

[40:07]

Okay, so the koan's asking you to warm up and get ready for the koan. All right, so turtle heads toward fire. The idea in imagistic thinking or preparation is that it doesn't work. So it boggles the mind It's meant to be an image you can't think. So it means you feel timelessness. And it makes that clear by the opening phrase, a state before the beginning of time. So in this imagistic way of studying Buddhist teaching, the image means something like timelessness.

[41:25]

But not an idea of timelessness, but an experience of timelessness. So it means take, if you can, take out of your thinking any imagination of the future. So if you really want to practice this koan, you're walking around for some days beforehand saying no time or stopped time or no lifespan like in the Diamond Sutra. So it asks you to find yourself as much as you can in a situation where there's no past or future. So again, this is not philosophy.

[42:49]

It's asking your body to feel. No time. And then the next sentence in this thing. is the one phrase transmitted outside of the teaching, outside of doctrine. So that's to say, get yourself out of of thinking this is Buddhism. What is your experience? And then it says, parallel to a turtle head for fire, it says, the lip of a mortar bears flowers.

[43:53]

Now, a mortar, which you grind up grain in, So you're grinding grain in a mortar, and the lip of the mortar produces a flower. So the grain, which came from a wheat or rice or something, So the grain is the fruit of the rice plant or wheat plant. And now the lip of the mortar turns into... A rice plant or a flowering, green-laden wheat plant.

[45:13]

So now what's that asking? It's straight out asking you to... feel yourself in the midst of the simultaneity of time. And this is straight out Wajin Tendai teaching. And in the note in the back of the book, which we've also translated, it straight out says it, Tendai teaching. And Tendai is probably the most complete of the... teachings worked out, more worked out than Zen.

[46:18]

And Dogen studied Tendai before he started practicing Zen. So Tendai, represents the teaching of interpenetration, not just interdependence, but interpenetration. Now, I'm also asking, if this is a science, how do we deal with the idea of the simultaneity of time? I mean, it said lots of phrases for this, like Farmer Brown milks his cow. And Farmer Schmidt in different part of China or Bavaria cow gives milk.

[47:43]

And this teaching is why we when we pour the water, at the end, we touch the bowl that we dump the water into with the rim of our third bowl. And this is Hua Yen, Tendai teaching, and it's exactly the same as the lip of the mortar gives birth to a flower. So this koan starts out with an emphasis on timelessness. And then and then in a parallel way and immediately, emphasizes the simultaneity of time, which means that each moment is all time of all spaces at this moment.

[49:30]

all of time is present in each moment. And so in your life you can sometimes feel that your own life experience, all of your life experiences, is in each moment. So basically this column, if we're going to think of this and look at this as a science, Or as a Dharma practice. This koan says, before you do anything else in this koan, establish in yourself a feel for timelessness and also the simultaneity of time. Now, once you've got that, Then we can say, what's this got to do with breathing?

[50:49]

And how can the simultaneity of time and timelessness be anything that's real? It doesn't make sense. But it does make a kind of sense. But can we make it experientially real for ourselves? So this is what makes Zen koan practice so instrumentally the whole of Buddhism and makes it so demanding to actually practice it in the way these koans have been put together and conceived. And my point here is, if I think I'm a physical body, a mind which is different than the physical body, and the physical body is something like the stuff of the world,

[52:07]

That way of identifying myself in the world simply does not let me understand this koan. If somehow I can have a physiological experience of, oh, I'm alive, there's rhythms, there's a pace, there's my heart's beating, there's my metabolism, and everything is happening, and it's interacting rhythms. When you do a simple thing like breathing, attentional breathing, your breathing is the entry, the passageway, into the autonomic nervous system.

[53:31]

Because breathing, if you don't pay attention to it, give attention to it, your breathing still goes on, luckily. And if you give attention to it, at first it sort of interferes with it. And after a while, breathing can breathe itself while it's also simultaneously attentional breathing. And now you're attentionally participating in the biology of the autonomic nervous system and the attentional relationship to breath. And this opens you to, as I said the other day somewhere, this opens you to when you're simply bringing attention to the inhale and the exhale.

[54:38]

To become a more and more evolved attentional participant in the physiological body, not the physical body. Now, it takes a while just to make these distinctions with your mind and begin to have the distinctions have an attentional difference. Maybe we should give up on this and just leave it for the Tang and Song dynasty and to heck with it. It's too much for us. But I think it's kind of interesting. Here we have this book These colons, translated.

[56:03]

And it gives us an entry into another way of being. And a way of being that can be free of emotional and mental suffering. So, there, that's my little introduction. within the possibilities of being is an experience of timelessness and an experience of stopped time. In your breath even. And the simultaneity of time, at each moment everything is flowing together.

[57:09]

And this can't be thought. It's too complex to be thought. But it can be experienced. So this is the preparation, the warm-up for Prajnatara's, what he says about breathing. Now, of course, tomorrow I would like to know if any of this makes any sense or interest for you. And then I don't expect it. I mean, if it does, I would be surprised. Because it's taken me half a century of practicing to be able to say this.

[58:25]

But you all are quicker than me, so maybe we're in a good place here. Thank you for...

[58:31]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.63