And I guess some more people, five or six or something, two or three are coming tomorrow. And more on Saturday and more on Sunday. Okay. So the additional people are mostly coming tomorrow. I always want to find a way to make practice make sense to you, of course. Some way that it's useful to you, whether you're a Buddhist practitioner or not.

[01:03]

Of course, I also hope to show you, if possible, the inside... of this Buddhist practice. And the inside of this way of looking at the world. You know, there's a little, a very brief poem of Rumi's that I like. Yeah. for many years I knocked on that ancient door and when it finally opened I found I was knocking from inside

[02:10]

So I'd like to, if possible, have some feeling in practice that you, in the seminar, somehow felt inside of practice. Inside of it as a possibility for you, yourself. And maybe if you can see, if possible, inside a tradition, even if the tradition is not your own, it somehow helps you be more inside your own life. And I would say that then practice Buddhist practice in general, traditionally, is a practice of working with certain views,

[03:31]

and working with them in considerable detail. You know, we now can go to the library and, well, not every library, but the entire Buddhist canon will be there. And certainly you can go nowadays to most libraries and certainly bookstores and find a wide range of books on Buddhism. This was just not possible in the past. Just to copy the Mahayana Canon, whatever that is, and the Tripitaka or the Tripitaka.

[04:54]

It was a huge undertaking. And so expensive to just make one copy from all these wood blocks. that even major monasteries would have only one volume and some other monastery would have another volume. So they didn't have the possibility we have of having all this available to us and we can make comparisons and so forth. They had to work out They did have some written material. They had to work with what they had, which wasn't much.

[05:58]

But ideas passed. Ideas passed throughout India and China much faster than manuscripts. So they might have, you know, I'm thinking now about the transition from early Buddhism to the Mahayana. And how you had these few texts and some new ideas came in and how to look at them. So there'd be a new idea and they'd start rewriting the text to make the text reflect the new idea. Mm-hmm. So when I speak about it this way, you know, our topic is the art of practice.

[07:07]

Which to me also means the craft of practice. Because handwork, it's geistwerk, spirit work, body work, And the... Every art has a craft. So I'm also then speaking about the craft of practice. And... In Buddhism, the craft of practice, hi, oh, how nice. You didn't come tomorrow.

[08:13]

He promised me more people were coming tomorrow. Well, I haven't said anything important yet. I don't know if I ever will, but we'll see. I'm trying to speak about Zen Buddhism as a craft. I'm emphasizing that the ways it has been a craft It's interesting, there's one sutra, I can't remember the name of it. And it says, this is the most important sutra. This is the best sutra.

[09:17]

And if you copy this sutra out, it will do this for you. And if you copy it out, it will do that for you. That's all it says. There's no content. But if you go to the caves at Nongwan, there's thousands of copies because people copied it out. There's more copies of that sutra than any other. Now, this is kind of a silly example. But somehow, at least there was this craft of copying it up. How do you enter into a practice? The integrity of the craft is found through the integrity of the path.

[10:19]

And a path is What characterizes a path, a sense of path, is that the beginning and end are at every point. The beginning of the path and the end of the path are at every point. So I'd also like to discover with you a feeling of path Not like where you are in the path, but how the path is present in what you do. I'm just still talking about it as a thought. written and oral tradition.

[11:40]

Now, Buddhism was written down fairly early. Much of it around the beginning of the Christian era. And one of the differences between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism was Indian Buddhism worked with texts. I mean, Chinese Buddhism worked with texts. And Indian Buddhism was primarily an oral tradition. Now a friend of some of ours, Paul and I, Michael Winger, tried to memorize the Lotus Sutra. This is a pretty big sutra.

[12:41]

And it goes on and on in endless detail. Well, he memorized the first chapter. And he started on the second chapter. But he couldn't really work with the second chapter because he started forgetting the first chapter. So he had to every day recite the first chapter in order to keep it in mind while he started the second chapter. And to just recite the first chapter took him an hour each day. So somewhere in the second chapter he gave up. Again, I'm trying to give you a picture of how Buddhism worked in the past. It's to keep the immense literature, a portion of it, alive, it was memorized.

[13:41]

And although pretty soon in Buddhism there was a textual tradition as well as an oral tradition parallel, some of the magic of the oral tradition was brought into the, was also carried in the textual tradition. So it says in the Diamond Sutra, for instance, if you recite only four lines, And demonstrate it for others. And fully illuminate it. There's more merit in doing this than in filling a hundred thousand world systems with the seven precious things.

[15:08]

So how many of us have any such relationship to four lines or a few phrases? Maybe I suppose practicing Christians would have certain phrases which maybe stay with them all their life. Anyway, again, trying to look at this practice as an art and a craft. I think we have to really find a way to bring it into our activity. So let me take a very brief statement of Suzuki Roshi's.

[16:20]

That I like and I mention every now and then. He said... Usually when we look at a tree, we see a tree. Sometimes we see a poem. What's the difference? What's the difference when we see a tree and when we see a poem? Sukhriyasi also said, this is quite different little statement. When somebody asked him, you know, sort of European, Western philosophy... When a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

[17:29]

And Sukhriya, she said, it doesn't matter. So much for quite a lot of philosophical thought. But when is a tree a poem? What's in a statement like that? There's a poem of Rilke's I've mentioned a number of times recently. Unfortunately, I received this poem in a roundabout way. I remember it from when I was 18 or 19 in English. And now I have it, I don't know, in some... version of my own.

[18:53]

I should make an effort to find the original translation anyway, and if possible, the German. But it goes something like this. The space outside of ourselves violates things. The space outside of ourselves violates things. Then he says, if you want to accomplish a tree, This is already rather strange.

[19:58]

I mean, in English it's strange. You want to realize a tree. What's he talking about? We have to stop and stop for a while. Wir müssen hier anhalten. The words make us, don't let us look at, immediately look at things the way we usually just think and look at the same action. Die Worte erlauben hier nicht, dass wir hier gleich unmittelbar einfach schauen und denken in einer einzigen Handlung. What can Rilke be speaking about? What does he mean when he says the space outside of ourselves? Your body is space. There's space in this room.

[21:03]

All space Isn't all space outside of ourselves? What can he mean by the space outside of ourselves? Now, when you look at a Buddhist teaching, You have to look at it in a similar sort of way. If you want to feel the craft of the practice, the art of the practice, you don't just say, oh, the space. You hear Buddha's body is space. I don't know.

[22:04]

Whatever that means, such statements are made. What kind of space is that? Can you actually not have ideas about it? I think... 99% of people have ideas about it. You have interesting ideas, you have spiritual ideas. You have five or six different ideas. And you pick the one that sounds most interesting. But can we... But I'd like to stop you some way. Yes, so there's no idea. Only just experience. What is your experience of space?

[23:04]

And don't lead with your mind. You have to start in a very primitive way. At least I have to start in a primitive way. Is this space? Can this be, what is Buddha's space? What is my space? Some of you know I have a new little baby. You know, I rather like her. This is the first time I've been separated from her. And when I'm with her, I talk about her a lot. So we'll see what it's like when I'm not with her, if I talk about her.

[24:07]

What I've been noticing is that she's... Well, in the first weeks, six or seven weeks, she's a really cute and nice little girl. And I like being a father again. And here's a little kid, and she just moves her arms and legs in all directions. And they sort of bang into you, you know. But there's not much consciousness in her arms. There's not much intention in her arms. Now she's almost three months old. So now there is intention in her arms.

[25:20]

But at first there was, for the first six, seven months, there was very little intention in her arm. She bumped you. It was by accident. And you felt that she didn't know how to keep her arm there even if she wanted to. She certainly didn't know how to bring intention to touching. Or get information back. So I'm just, I'm trying to use this as an example, of course. So she clearly is trying to get her body together. The first thing she learned how to do, which is very convenient for us, we didn't teach her.

[26:34]

She just learned it because you have to change her all the time. About eight, I don't know, ten times a day you have to change her. And she has every night from about... two or three in the morning to a four or five, she has some gastrointestinal distress. So it's really great when she finally is able to shit. So we cheer, you know. Bravo! Yeah, but still you have to change her all the time. Okay. She learned almost really early to keep her legs in the air while you change her. She holds her little legs up in the air until you get the diaper on.

[27:36]

It's interesting to see what she learns. Okay, so that you begin to, she begins to put her body together. So there's some coordination between what she sees and hears and how her body moves. She can turn her head to find a sound or follow something across the room. Those are big changes. Okay. Okay. So she puts her body together and then she starts putting her sense fields together. Once she's got her body more or less together and her sense fields together, She starts shaping a consciousness.

[28:50]

And I wouldn't say there's much consciousness in there. There's some kind of awareness, but not much consciousness. And her consciousness, her consciousness, So now she's well into the process of shaping her consciousness. So if you look at it like a Buddhist, like I would look at it, studying the skandhas and the vijnanas and so forth, I don't have to explain what that is, don't worry. I would look at her. Is she shaping this process of consciousness? Okay, I would say, of course she is. And is this consciousness a kind of space?

[29:53]

It's the space of her body. She's beginning to be able to move intention, has learned now to move intention into her hand. And then attention into her hand. And she's shaping a consciousness that more and more fills her body. And extends into the sense fields she, her sense fields. So that's a kind of space. She's making a kind of space. Which we take for granted. As adults. Okay. So she makes a consciousness which integrates her body and sense fields and the world and activity.

[31:22]

In Buddhism, in some funny way, we actually reverse this process. This very process which a baby goes through and is a huge accomplishment to accomplish, We, in a way, and through practice, deconstruct. Okay, but I'll come back to that perhaps, again. So I brought that up just to say something about space. We can go back to Rilke's line. The space outside of ourselves violates things. Now there's Sophia. My little daughter's name is Sophia. Um... Does the space outside of ourselves violate things?

[32:49]

Does she have any experience of space outside of herself? So far, yeah, anyway, okay, I'll leave it at that. The space outside of ourselves violates things. Der Raum, der außerhalb von uns liegt, der tut den Dingen Gewalt an. If you want to accomplish the existence of a tree, wenn du die Existenz eines Baumes vervollkommen möchtest, you must, he says, invest it with, instate it with, invest it with, musst du ihn ausstatten, That space whose source is your own being. That inner space which arises from within you. And surrounded with constraints. Surrounded with constraints.

[34:14]

I think he means something like attention, intention. He means take away the outside space. This space has no boundaries, he says. And only becomes a tree. This space has no boundaries and only becomes a tree through your renunciation. I understand it means through your renunciation of outside space. So what world is this? What is a world or what does it mean to renounce outside space? How can you know things from the space which arises, the inner space which arises from you yourself?

[35:41]

That inner space which has its source within you, he says. So these words of Rilke's have some kind of immensity, some vastness. The words cover our activity, cover the world that we live in. So how do we... We can't exactly... And Rilke's intention is not to let us exactly know what he means. We can't think these words. You have to feel yourself into them. No. Rilke took quite a few words there.

[36:50]

Sukhiroshi just said, when is a tree a poem? No, does Sukhiroshi mean the same thing? Or something like that. So if I didn't give you Rilke's poem, could you have felt what Sukhiroshi meant? When he said, when is a tree a poem? And I know that Sukershin meant, personally know that Sukershin meant something very close to what Rilke said. But if I gave you this, when is a tree a poem? What would you know to do with it? Or even we now have this poem of Rilke's.

[38:08]

Is Rilke, what is, let's say that Rilke means what he says. The space outside of ourselves violates things. Do we have some experience like that? So I think we could take quite a few weeks or months to actually feel and not think, to space outside of ourselves. Until you come to the point where you don't feel there's any space outside of yourself.

[39:10]

Well, you don't feel any space outside of yourself. Yeah, what would that... Yeah, maybe that's possible. Rilke thought it was possible. At least he felt it when he wrote the poem, I think. The Buddhist practice is not to feel that only when you write a poem, or have some reason to look at space that way. But what about right now? I think we can work with a phrase maybe like there's only an inside.

[40:12]

There's nothing but inside. No, I don't know. It doesn't make sense. But we have to find some way to use a phrase or view that confronts us with our habits of categorizing the world. Perhaps if you have a baby, you feel the space of a baby. And you have enough calmness in yourself, you feel the ease of your own space. And here, as usual, we're speaking about ease. Feeling at ease inside and out. Feeling at ease inside and out.

[41:13]

If you don't feel at ease inside and out, there's no space which has its source within you. Because to not be at ease means you're always turning out. So one of the traditional measures of the realization of the Dharma in Mahayana practice, if you feel ill at ease, or you have fear or trembling or anxiety, especially when faced with the teaching, which takes away our usual way of looking at the world.

[42:55]

When you feel this fear or when you don't feel at ease, It means you're still outside the door, knocking outside the door. One of the signs that you actually are beginning to understand it, not just with your head. The understanding is your actual experience. Sorry? Sorry? The understanding is your actual experience. You feel thoroughly at ease inside and out. And from that ease some kind of space arises which doesn't violate things. So when is a tree a poem?

[44:07]

When we... Anyway, okay. A few things. A few simple statements from the path of practice. and to see if we can feel into the words, so that they can become our, so that they initiate our actual experience, perhaps ordain our experience. I think that's enough for this evening.

[45:29]

Maybe we sit a few moments. Thank you for translating. are shaping, helping to shape Sophia's consciousness.

[48:08]

They say that a baby up to about a year old can say or learn to say all the sounds or any of the sounds of all languages. But after about a year, they can only reproduce the sounds the languages they've heard regularly. And could no longer make the sounds of, say, Chinese or Finnish or something.

[49:10]

And could no longer make the sounds of, say, Chinese or Finnish or something. or Swiss German. There's a koan. Please show me a word that has not yet been spoken. No, no one would agree. But can it be approached? So the baby can speak, can learn the sounds of every language.

[50:18]

Perhaps even languages which haven't been invented. But around a year, there's one or two or three languages that most kids would know. But after a year, there are only a few languages that the child can know. Yeah, and our consciousness is the same. There's many possible shapes of our consciousness. There's no way Maria Louise and I can avoid shaping Sophia's consciousness. When we interact with her, we make the consciousness of our Western culture.

[51:20]

What about the consciousness of a Buddha? What about the consciousness which has not yet been spoken? Or thought? Felt? Is there some way to open ourselves to the possibility of a new consciousness?

[52:30]

These are the questions that form the craft and art of Zen practice. Das sind die Fragen, die die Kunst und das Handwerk der Zen-Praxis formen. We all shape each other's consciousness. Wir alle formen unser Bewusstsein gegenseitig. You transform your consciousness. You inevitably transform others too. When you transform the form of your consciousness, you inevitably do the same with the consciousness of others. I might ask Sophia.

[53:51]

Show me a way of being that has not yet been formed. Perhaps we're always doing that. Perhaps we can discover this being which has not yet been formed. Yeah, thank you very much.

[55:55]

Thank you for translating. Thank you for inviting me to be here. Thank you, Paul, for coming all the way from Northern California. Gerald drove here from Johanneshof. Yeah, I did too, but we took different routes. Yeah. It's getting to be a bad habit. Really? I can't come back next year? That is... 13 is change.

[57:00]

Uh-huh. Okay. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Thanks. Thank you for transforming. Yes? About the schedule tomorrow? Oh, we'll see. You guys are the bosses, so you have to say. From half past seven, seven after seven, the first and then from twenty after seven to ten before eight, I would say. Yes, it is always done in such a way that people come to the Sazen when they want. There are no rules or anything.

[58:01]

It's just an offer. You can also simply join in between the two periods. Yes, or just the first sitting and breakfast. So the first period at 7.30 am to 7.10 am and then 10 minutes of meditation and then the second period from 7.20 am to 8.10 am. Okay. I love hearing you speak because I realize how poorly shaped my consciousness is. You all look like normal people, but you can understand this language. To me, it sounds like the wind in the trees when she speaks.

[59:03]

But I don't know what to do tomorrow morning. What am I supposed to do? Well, there will be two periods of sasen. Really? Okay. The first starts, and it's optional. You can come and you can... The first starts at 6.30 and it's 40 minutes to 7.10. Then there is 10 minutes of walking meditation. And then there is a second period. This is a serious group. Second period from 7.20 to 8.10. Okay. Okay. Okay. And Michael starts at 3.30 by himself? Michael starts alone at 3.30. Okay. And then we'll have breakfast at what time? Breakfast is between 8 and 9. Okay. And we start at 9.30. We start at 9.30. I'll see you tomorrow morning. See you tomorrow morning.

[60:15]

Vielleicht noch die Frage, ob alle Sitzerfahrung haben oder ob es Leute gibt, die gerne eine Einführung haben wollen oder irgendwelche Informationen? Oh, hi.

[61:23]

Good morning. It's like a time release capsule. Every little while another person arrives and releases us into this particular day. Yeah. Are you alive and well? Okay. There are clichés like every day is a good day.

[62:43]

And it's also a Zen koan. But maybe it's not a cliché. Maybe it's a possibility. Yeah, so again, of course, we have this topic. The art of practice. The craft of the path of practice. And I'm always a little embarrassed to speak about, I don't know, you know, about Buddhism. I must spend a lot of time embarrassed. Yeah, because I don't want to disturb any of you, you know.

[63:52]

And I don't want to describe practice in a way that excludes any of you. Yeah, but practice is something particular. Although I can't sing two notes in succession on tune, I'm happy that my middle daughter can. But I still like to hear about the craft of music. And although I can't do it, it helps me. Maybe I hear a little differently as a result. So, if I really look at the craft of practice, it's actually pretty specific. But I think we can learn something from its specificity.

[65:10]

What it expects. And what it expects of us. Ropes together. Don't touch it. Suzuki Roshi, I gave you this simple line last night.

[66:24]

Sorry, I can't write in German. When is a tree a tree? A poem, sorry. Yeah, that's the next question. Thank you. So, you know, I know, obviously, I know Suzuki Roshi quite well. Yeah, it's a lifetime in that state. Und sein ganzes Leben ist in diesem Satz enthalten. It's just a few words. Und das sind doch nur ein paar Worte. And also then I gave you a real piece.

[67:31]

A poem, I'll give you one line of it. And then I gave you the poem by Rilke and here I write a line from it. The space outside of ourselves violates things. And now I can't get the paper back. Sure, I can also give you a teaching poem.

[69:06]

Have I ever mentioned it here before? If I start acting strange, these things are making me high. Stand still. Blood of trees ahead of you. I have to change color here. And and the bushes next to you are not lost

[70:19]

The place around you is called here. You must treat it as a powerful stranger. You must ask permission to know You have to ask for permission

[71:58]

It's not really a poem. It's a Native American teaching. And a poet named Dave Wagner turned it into a tiny poem. And this is the first section. All dharmas are without self.

[73:35]

Okay, so I want to discuss that line. What can it mean? So I showed you a little bit last night what's behind just a few words like, when is a tree a poem? Or Rilke's poem, of which this is the first line. The space outside ourselves violates things. And we spoke about, and I'm speaking about now, how to look into a few words. To try to find some... If I say experience, it's actually still too small.

[75:00]

Experience the words. Yeah, and I mentioned a friend who learned to, by heart, by, do you say in German, by heart? By memory or by heart? The first chapter of the Lotus Sutra. And how to have it in his memory, he had to keep it in his memory, he had to recite it every day or several times a week. And so we're speaking about what can be our relationship to the words of a teaching. No, it's good to have a teacher.

[76:05]

It helps a lot. And shows, ideally at least, it shows that practice is possible. But words in words in Buddhism became a replacement for the Buddha himself. One of the shifts from, not that you need to know the historical background, but the shift from so-called Hinayana to Mahayana is the shift from the teachings referring always to the historical Buddha, to the teachings referring to your experience of them, to your Buddha nature experience of them.

[77:12]

So what kind of experience is expected here? Yeah. Now the siddhas almost always start out with a formula. The Buddha usually goes begging. And he returns from begging. He eats his meal. washes, cleans his bowls, washes his feet. I don't know why he didn't wash his feet before lunch, but he washes them usually in the formula after lunch. He lifts himself upright, and intently establishes his mindfulness.

[78:44]

Now some scholars treat these as cliches. That you just plug in at the beginning of a sutra. But it's, I think, yes, it's a formula. But I would say it's an alchemical formula. But you repeat what is expected of you to understand the teaching. And a scholar who tries to study the sutras without first meditating from a traditional Buddhist point of view, doesn't have a chance of understanding what it's about. He or she can supply us with lots of useful information.

[79:46]

But often they express great interest in the text, but a perplexity about its meaning. Let alone, as I said last night, the Diamond Sutra, which says, if you only... Demonstrate four lines. If you only realize four lines, this is enough. More important than filling infinite world systems with jewels. So what we're talking about now, what I'm emphasizing so far in this art of practice, is entering these four lines.

[80:57]

Or these single lines. And you notice that this is presented, each thing is presented in this formula very specific. In this formula introducing a sutra, he returns from begging. He eats his lunch. He cleans his bowl. Yeah. It doesn't just say, he came back from lunch and he started teaching. No, each thing. And then washes his feet. And then lifts his body. And in what posture is he or she lifting their body?

[82:24]

It's not a posture we're born with. We're born walking, reclining, standing, and so forth. Postures that any person has to do to live, practically. But this posture is a choice. Yeah, and I'm not trying to say you have to choose it. To have a happy life. But it is tied to this particular kind of teaching that you choose this wisdom posture And clearly that for the sutra, this posture is the source of the Buddha's teaching.

[83:35]

How can a posture be the source of anything? You can dream standing up. You can dream standing up. If you're tired enough or... But normally it's the posture of reclining which allows us to sleep and to dream. Look how much arises from the posture of reclining. Look how much arises from the posture of reclining. Mianas, take some time before you find out how much arises from the posture of upright sitting. You have to sleep.

[84:36]

I mean, most people anyway. But you don't have to sit this way. So the have-tos of our life keep most of us from actually choosing this posture. And I'm not saying it works for everyone. But this particular, the root of this teaching of Buddhism if you don't want it just to be a received teaching but a teaching you generate within yourself.

[85:37]

Then we do as the Buddha did. I was at a conference recently in Basel. And people always ask me what this is. It could be cleaner, I just noticed. Hmm. And I say, oh, it's Buddha's robe. And I found out, I never thought about it, that this is quite confusing as an answer to people. It's perfectly natural in Buddhism, but it may not be so natural to others. Because I realized when I said this, someone reacted as if he'd asked a Catholic priest.

[86:40]

What is this stuff you're wearing, the collar and all? And he said, this is Jesus' robe. It would sound kind of... I mean, the priest wouldn't say that. Yeah, but in Buddhism we... actually try to do as the Buddha did. Because somehow in the doing, in the enacting of a life, there is wisdom. In the enacting of a life, there is wisdom. Yeah. So we have a little symbolic version of Buddhism.

[87:49]

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