Yesterday I missed Otmar's lecture. But I had an experience that made me think maybe I'm becoming a resident of Germany. Not even in America have I ever had a car fail me while I'm driving. I might know what to do in America. Here I didn't know what to do. I was on the way to... Well, I dropped off Akash to pick up our center's car. And Ralph at the train station.

[01:03]

Then I was going to, one, I was going to get this eye poked again. And I thought I would change my tickets at the airport, do that all in the morning. In a few weeks I have to leave for the States, but I come right back again. So I drove into Switzerland and I'm driving along and suddenly the car seemed to be on fire. I couldn't believe it at first, but all this smoke was behind the car.

[02:08]

So I pulled into a gas station. As soon as I stopped, smoke started coming out of the engine and all around the hood. So I opened the hood and smoke is coming out and everything. Somebody was walking by and I said, Do you know anything about cars? No. He said, No. So I was wondering if I should dump water, and I didn't know what to do. It seemed to be getting less, and there were no flames. So I called our car dealer, the Volvo dealer. So he said, call the Volvo road service.

[03:30]

So I did. And they speak English. Not Swedish, thank goodness. And so they said, what emergency phone are you calling from? No, no, they asked me the number of the phone I'm talking about. So I looked at my handy and I said, where do I find the number? He said, find the emergency phone near you. So I started walking around the gas station. I couldn't find the emergency phone. He said to me that I should find the emergency phone nearby. So I walked around the dance floor and couldn't find an emergency phone. I said, I'm in a gas station.

[04:33]

I don't think there's an emergency phone here. So she said, where are you? I don't know. I'm in, I guess it was a place called Wernlos. How do you pronounce it? How do you pronounce it? Wernlos. I said, I'm in Wernlos. She said, I know you're lost. But where are you? I don't know. So she said, I said, okay, I'll go in the gas station and get someone to talk to you. I'll go in the gas station and get someone to talk to you. I might as well be in. So I'm waiting in line. Everyone else is to pay and I'm waiting in line to get translation.

[05:38]

And I said, where are you? First I said, what is your name? And she said, Hernandez. Well, in America there's lots of Hernandez's. She said, yes, I said, you're Spanish. She said, yes, I'm in Barcelona. So I'm lost in a line waiting for a woman who's in Barcelona. I said, look, we'll figure this out. She said, is there a restaurant there? And I looked around and I couldn't find a restaurant. There was no restaurant. This went on for quite a while. And later I looked up. The restaurant was over my head. It's this bridge that goes over you. So I said, it's a Mövenpick.

[06:51]

She says, well, then lots of them have Mövenpicks. And I said, well, it's the one overhead, you know. She said, I'm in Barcelona. She said, yeah, that's the one overhead. Finally the guy came by and it seems to have been the differential gearbox. When I backed up it would sound like the engine was chewing up metal the way we chew peanuts. So finally, anyway, it all happened and we get delivered by truck to... And this guy drove this huge truck with my car on the back like it was a sports car.

[08:05]

A very nice guy, but we had a very limited conversation. So it was a nice day. I got to sit in the car and take naps and read. But I missed Ottmar's lecture house at this point. We're here and The trees are here, the leaves are here. And the wind, more breeze, and sometimes thunder and storms.

[09:17]

And the Earth comes up through us. And sometimes people are here and there. And voices, just as now. So what is our location? What is our experience of location? And the question I've been asking, how are we together? What is our location? Our experience of location.

[10:31]

Even more than location of engagement. With the world and with ourselves. And I think when we have a feeling of engagement, we feel a certain a power, certain strengths. And we picked three words, really, for each of these ten day periods. And the first was entering, and this 10-10 period is transformation. And I've spoken also about restorative practice and transformative practice.

[11:35]

And restorative practice, the center of it is developing a accepting relationship with yourself. And coming into a trusting of your own being alive. Yeah, and transformative practice... What can I say here? When you... I said we feel the earth coming up through us.

[13:09]

If we're going to transform ourselves, are we going to transform ourselves into a goblin? Goblin? Goblin's one of those little guys who live in the mountains here. Trolls? Yeah. Or something. Yeah, or a ghost? Or another person? What do we mean by transformation? What's the territory of transformation? Well, it's the... Yeah, the world itself. What does Dogen say? When the self goes forward and illuminates myriad things, this is delusion.

[14:12]

When myriad things come forward and illuminate the self, this is awakening. So what is Dogen getting at when myriad things come forward and illuminate the self? Was versucht Dogen da zu sagen, wenn er sagt, die tausend Dinge kommen herzu und geben dem Selbst Licht? So when you're chanting, let's say, for example. Sagen wir mal, wenn ihr rezitiert. You want to... lift yourself up through your spine. And have the feeling of lifting yourself up through your spine.

[15:29]

out into the room. You don't want to feel folded in. You want to feel just lifted up through your spine. And it's... Almost like the sound is some kind of mutual body or realm. Recently in shops I've seen some sort of clock which has a kind of wand that goes like this. And the time appears in the air. If I go like this fast, you don't see it, but the time appears.

[16:43]

It's almost like our mutual... What do I call it? Realm, feeling, body? It's like a common field. How should I call it? A body. Appears in the sound. And it appears in the sound. And your voice, you're not chanting loudly, necessarily. But you have a feeling of your voice reaching throughout the room.

[17:56]

So chanting and the service in the morning gives us a chance to feel this mutual realm. And it will stay with us. Usually it stays with us throughout the day, makes some difference throughout the day. And this is, we could call this... This isn't realization or enlightenment.

[18:59]

But it's a transformation, it's transformative. If you make this, if you have this intention Conscious intention is to lift yourself up through your spine. As if you're releasing yourself into the space of the sound. We could call this, I would call this a transformative practice. And you can discover in your daily life various transformative practices. Little shifts. I think of, if I remember correctly, a Rumi poem where The lover comes to the door and knocks on the door.

[20:11]

And from inside, someone says, she says, who is it? And he says, it is I. And she doesn't open the door. So he comes again and knocks later. And each time he says, it is I. She doesn't open the door. And then the fourth time he finally, when he knocks, she says, who is it? And he says, it is you. And she opens the door. If it were only that easy. But sometimes a little shift like that makes a difference. The shift in attitude, like in the other Rumi poem where he says, for many years I knocked on that ancient door.

[21:43]

And it never would open. And when finally it did open, I found I was already on the other side. Anyway, that kind of shift in attitude to recognize that we're already on the inside. That kind of attitude in our practice is transformative in the sense that the point of coming into some kind of stillness in your practice, is to realize stillness, of course.

[22:58]

That to come into stillness, to achieve some stillness in your practice. The point is, in one sense, is to realize stillness. But stillness is also a kind of... Roundhouse. Roundhouse, you know what that is? Where trains come in from different directions and then they can turn them and send them out in a different track. Because when you realize stillness or have a feeling of stillness in body and mind, Yeah, myriad things can advance. And you yourself can go out on a different track. You find a road to go out on.

[24:13]

So transformative practice is like this, to find a certain location which is transformative. A location which is transformed. It's like I spoke last time about the practice of interdependence. You find the valence of the world where everything communicates with each other. then we could say myriad things advance. So this mind of equalness is a mind in which you find yourself located not in the world, but with the world. Yeah, it's like the Chinese word for, one of the Chinese words for the body is a share of the whole.

[25:56]

Now, to feel that is a shift, like to already be on the inside. And we could make up a gate phrase right now. Like already on the inside. Yeah, and if you practice with such a phrase, finding a way to say it so it moves under, ordinary consciousness. It can move the roundhouse a bit and you find yourself on a different track.

[27:11]

Or everything, everything inside, everything is inside, only inside something. Maybe already inside. Some kind of relaxation, physical relaxation when you say that. So the practice of interdependence as our actual experience is not realizing some philosophical concept, The practice of interdependence is not the realization of understanding of some philosophical concept, but to find yourself

[28:32]

in a transformative location, place, where the myriad dharmas can advance, where you, as I said, you find yourself Not in the world, but with the world. A share of the whole. This is the territory of transformation. And the vijnanas and the practicing with the vijnanas and the four elements, earth, fire, water, etc., are also ways in which we find ourselves within the world, not in the world.

[29:53]

As part... Yeah, anyway, you understand. I say it... If I say it in a too understandable way, then our mind thinks we understand. So I'm trying to say it in some kind of incomplete way. So you complete it in your experience, not in your thinking. So that, and yeah, again, what does Dogen say? Something, hearing, hearing sounds and seeing forms. When he says hearing sounds and forms, he means Vijnana practice.

[31:11]

And hearing sounds and seeing forms means each sense separately. Fully engaging mind and body. Fully engaging mind and body. Hearing sounds and seeing forms. be entered, I would say we enter a realm of transformation.

[32:22]

So the vijnanas, the sensorium, realm of feeling the world, becomes the way we pivot the world. Yeah, something like that. I mean, if you just think of it, oh, well, you have some kind of sense, you know, You know the world through your senses. That sounds okay. But it's really about, how can I say, how self functions in the world. And how does self engage the world? and know the world as also, I think we can say, self.

[33:39]

And we have this embanked self of the kind of world of familiarity, And the autobiographical and self-reflective self is a small part of our real functioning of self. When you feel with the world through the senses, it allows all aspects of self, including I'm,

[34:40]

this embanked self, to become a realm, a transformative location, a realm of transformation. So what does that mean to you in your practice? I think practically speaking it means that we see if we can feel our way into, discover, An initial ... a continuous sense of location or that world

[36:20]

Earth comes up through us. And we can practice, as I've said, sort of fully hearing or fully tasting or et cetera. Only seeing or only feeling. And if we practice that, yeah, a little bit every day, we do not that we achieve some Yeah, something special. We achieve something through that, but that's not what I'm emphasizing. We create some, we discover some territory where we in the world light up. There's a poem, Saigyo, a Japanese poet.

[37:50]

I guess if I can remember it. It goes something like, inviting the wind. inviting the wind to bring the salt sea waves, inviting the wind to carry the salt sea waves, The pine tree of Shiogoshi. The pine tree of Shiogoshi. Trickles. Drops. of moonlight all night long.

[39:09]

Trickles. Drifts. Thank you very much. May God bless you.

[39:34]

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