Yesterday I said she shares my seat and my responsibility. She's already sitting here. And Otmar said, well, halfway through the lecture you have to let her finish it. Yeah, well, that comes later. Okay. You know, as I say, various... probably too often, that before a lecture I'm always a little lost. Because I really don't know quite what to say. And I always want to say something I don't yet know how to say. But then that's also really the only thing that interests me.

[01:02]

And although it may seem the same to you over and over again, to some extent at least, And for me it's always different. Yeah, and maybe by trying to see what happens when I speak together with you, in my mind I'm together with you, Perhaps if I discover it with you, you'll discover it more yourself. And so what I'm trying to do now really is integrate the sense of a durative present which is also a dharmic present in a wider picture of this teaching.

[02:32]

Yes. And, of course, we're trying to talk about what the heck we're doing here in practice. Yeah, and since I'm asking you to do this, I feel I have a pretty good understanding of what we're doing. Or I wouldn't have the confidence or permission to ask you to do this. At the same time as I feel it's my responsibility to understand it as well as I can, I could never think up this practice by myself.

[03:42]

I mean, no one or two human beings could think up this practice by themselves. It's been created through trial and error through a lot of generations. Trial and error rooted though in wisdom and rooted in the experience of awareness. Okay. No, I mean just yesterday's ceremony. And as I've told you many times, I'm a person who really didn't like ceremonies.

[04:44]

I refuse to go to my high school graduation, my college graduation, etc. And here I am all dressed up like a monkey. I mean a monk. Here I am all dressed up like a monkey. And I never, when I was in college and had to give a talk, I never did three bows first, you know, before I gave a talk. And so, you know, I wouldn't have thought that we should, this important decision that we have made as a Sangha, or some of us have made for the Sangha, That Yozan, Christina here, would be the head monk, the Shuso.

[05:47]

Nor would I have thought, you know, that we should enact the decision So we did nothing more than yesterday act out the decision to ask her. And she acted out her own genuine reservations about doing this. And even though we say formally prepared things, each time I've done this over many years, Each time it feels very personal and very different.

[07:05]

And we do the Nenju ceremony. Again, we've cleaned the place, etc., But to enact the clearing that we've cleaned it and we do the Jindo and we all say, hey, we're starting anew, we've cleaned the place. Anyway, So I never could have thought that up. I mean, I inherited this practice, so we're doing it, and surprisingly, I find it works. Just these three anchors, anchors in awareness of the Oyuki meals, Einfach diese drei Verankerungen im Gewahrsein der drei Orioki-Mahlzeiten.

[08:27]

The Orioki meals, you know, require, for me, undivided attention. Diese Orioki-Mahlzeiten erfordern von mir eine ungeteilte Aufmerksamkeit. The other day I, you know, I divided my attention, noticing something's going on in the Zendo, and putting the gamascio back and dividing my attention divided the gamascio half on the tatami and half on the bowl so I had to go apologize to Mark sorry Also musste ich mich entschuldigen bei Mahakabir und er musste dann aufputzen. Tut mir leid.

[09:28]

But, you know, an Orioki meal is not a coffee clutch. Aber wie ihr ja wisst, ein Orioki essen, das ist kein Kaffeeklatsch. You don't sit and chat and things like that. It wouldn't work. So that three times a day we eat a meal which requires undivided attention. And requires attention too from the servers because we can't serve ourselves sitting there behind these bowls. So the whole thing is a field of shared and choreographed attention. Now the sense of practice that this is trying to convey to us To see if we can use these three anchors

[10:38]

ist zu schauen, ob wir diese drei Verankerungen verwenden können, diese Aufmerksamkeitsanker der drei Orioki-Mahlzeiten, to continue this undivided attention as much as possible throughout the day. And strangely, it's not only an undivided attention You might drop the bowls or whatever is going to happen. It's also a mutual attention. We're doing this together and opening our bowls simultaneously and food is being served and so forth. Now this undivided mutual attention we can also experience as a field of attention. And not as a field of attention, but not as a field of consciousness.

[12:03]

I mean, consciousness literally means divided attention. As I've said before, Pointed out many times in the word in English, conscious, the S-C-I in conscious is the same as scissors. It means attention that can be cut up and look at the parts. But practice is to establish ourselves in a mutual consciousness. field of attentiveness and although the field of mind doesn't exhaust the meanings of awareness that exhaust means you don't use up all the meanings

[13:05]

But the field of attention is one of the ways that we manifest awareness. Okay, so this practice is designed to help us develop a continuity of attention. A continuously present field of attention. That we can enter into and withdraw from without losing it, etc. And that's again the teaching of the five ranks. The way you can and just to say simply you bring a

[14:32]

attention into the field of awareness or into particularity. Or you bring them together. Okay. Okay, so it's a discovery how to do this. And it's also a discovery because our mind is usually located in karmic thoughts. And another text of a practice period is much of our karma is coming up in the first weeks of practice period.

[15:57]

It's like you're skyping into the past. And these things, oh, did I do that? And things that you overlooked or forgot or hurt somebody, etc. They're just plain stupidity. Foolishness. Yeah. And then you look for some karma-correcting software. So you can shape things up a bit without rationalization. But mostly you just accept, accept, accept, accept. And this process of accepting starts clearing things up.

[17:09]

So we have this opportunity in practice period to see if in the midst of a various sort of past arising, if we can at the same time establish a pretty much undivided attention, a continuity of attention, And Dogen calls this ceaseless practice. He says something like, the blooming of the flowers and the falling of the leaves is ceaseless practice. And in a way we feel this ourselves, like when you've been doing the orioke.

[18:24]

We bring attention to the bowls and the setzu and the spoon and so forth. But after a while, we're not bringing attention to the bowl. The bowl is attention. There's no us in the bowl. The bowl just is attention. And it becomes a kind of effortless activity. And really it's wonderful, which we have not been able to ever do at Tassajara as far as I remember, have a practice period where all the meals can be oryoki meals in the zendo. Tassahara, I meant Creston. Because just that every meal is a Yogi meal, suddenly there's no bump when the meal occurs.

[19:35]

There's the service, Zazen service, meal, And it's just, there's an effortless activity, ideally, or it does happen, throughout the meal. So the day does not become different activities, it becomes... The day doesn't become different attentional activities. It becomes different activities within the same attentional domain. It's like a friend of mine pointed out once that

[20:35]

Good painters usually paint, all the different things they paint, they paint with the same brush stroke. So there's the same breath stroke, brush stroke, et cetera, something like that. And we begin to feel an equanimity-like, equanimous... continuum of attention. Now in the classical on ceaseless attention, ceaseless practice, Dogen also says that the Sun, it is through ceaseless practice that the sun, moon and stars move.

[21:53]

And he says the great earth and the vast space the right mind and body the right mind and body and the five great elements and the four elements and the five skandhas exist. So let's just look at the categories he's got there. The sun, moon and stars move through ceaseless practice. And the great earth and vast space exist through ceaseless practice. And the right mind and body He means mind and body realized in the dharmic present.

[23:13]

And the four elements, earth, fire, water, etc., and the space, and the five skandhas exist through ceaseless practice. So here Dogen is speaking, of course, about this sense of everything all at once is a kind of activity we can call practice. Each thing is in its own mode of being. The tree is in its own mode of being. We are in our own mode of being. And knowing that mode of being of each and all at once, Dogen calls something like knowing the world, entering the world through ceaseless practice.

[24:27]

I forgot my watch, so this could go on forever. When I see all your knees up in the air, I'll realize I should stop. So what time is it, by the way? Anybody know? You're not supposed to be wearing a watch. Oh, no, you're okay because you're the bell ringer.

[25:30]

It's 3 and 40 minutes. Oh, okay. So let me take a little different tack here, tack direction. Again, as I've been saying, planetary time has a structure. And that planet, that structure is the elliptical orbit and the... the declination of the axis of the Earth, etc. And we're embedded in this structure of planetary and solar time. And which produces the seasons and the months and the hours and so forth.

[26:44]

But human time also has a structure. Our metabolic pathways, our electrochemical circuits and so forth. And there's also then, of course, which Nicole has been sick, a little somewhat sick the last couple of days. So her bodily time is required in an adjustment to our shared contextual time. Yeah, and the contextual time is our shared time, shared with the environment as well.

[27:48]

but it's also our what I've been calling durative time and dharmic time and what I'm meaning by and I'm trying to make these distinctions if the present is is our presence in the present. We have a choice about how we're present in the present. And that choice of how we're present in the presence has something to do or can be an expression of our innermost request. Now, Tsukiroshi had this expression, innermost request. And when I put Zen mind, beginner's mind together, I thought a lot whether to call it innermost request or innermost request.

[29:13]

It's not important to make the distinction. It's just in English I was... But from the point of view... The knees are going up and... But there's a Japanese idea that if you lead the life you most fully want to lead, you'll live longer and healthier. Das genauso ist, wie du es leben möchtest, dann lebst du am längsten. And we all have some kind of inner request.

[30:28]

Und wir alle haben so eine Art inneres Verlangen. As I said the other day, it's rooted in the decision, not just the fact that you're alive, but the decision you're going to stay alive. Und das ist verwurzelt, nicht nur in der Tatsache, dass du lebst, sondern in der Entscheidung, am Leben zu bleiben. With no ifs. Ohne irgendwelche wenns. I'm only going to stay alive if I'm successful or something. You know, in my 40s, I left everything behind, lost everything. And I had to start really all over again. And what to do. And I reduced myself to the most basic. Like, should I get up in the morning? Well, even if I decided not to, I still did.

[31:40]

Finally I crawled up out of my sleeping bag. I was walking along the California coast. And I decided after a while of not washing my face that probably I wanted to wash my face most mornings. It was a big decision for me. I mean, I clearly preferred to have a... somewhat washed face at least. Rinsed off. And I noticed I did feel better when I ate. But I think among the various three or four things I decided to do, like wash my face, It was clear whatever I was was inseparable from the world.

[32:51]

The world is an environment of trees and ocean and sky and vast sky and moon and so forth. And I was inseparable from the languaged world, the world with distinctions made. And the distinctions, the language world made by other people. And so I came to some feeling I wanted to discover, I wanted to be part of some kind of mutuality with others. It had nothing to do with being successful or having a job or anything.

[34:07]

It's just, could I find a mutuality with others? It had nothing to do with success or having a job. And I'd had enough experience by that time, many years of practice, so meditation seemed to be the best way to do this. So this became a... essentializing my innermost request. Distilling. That's good enough. It wasn't very alcoholic, but...

[35:08]

And then maturing it. Und maturing it began to mean how to bring an equanimous attention into the durative present. Und es zu reifen bedeutete zu schauen wie so eine auf Gleichmut beruhende And how to bring a compassionate intention, presence into the durative present. Yeah, and how to bring a wisdom in the sense of World views about how the world actually existed into the durative present. And the skill then to develop and find the skills to bring wisdom, compassion and equanimity into how the present is forming in front of me.

[36:27]

In front of me is what language says. Maybe better forming as language. no longer me, but which is also it. So that's enough for today, huh? So the question is here, how to bring your intention, how you want to live.

[37:47]

What kind of person do you want to exist on this planet? Who do you hope would be running our government? Who do you hope would be your neighbor? Von wem hofft ihr, dass er euer Nachbar ist? Was auch immer ihr euch erhofft, dass es eine Person gibt, die irgendwo existiert. Ihr müsst euch entschließen, diese Person zu sein. Das ist der tiefste innere Wunsch. Vielen Dank. May our aspirations be the same, may every being and every place be free.

[38:42]

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