A moment ago this machine here said I was about to speak with you at 12 midnight. And Dogen used to sometimes wake everyone up at midnight or so and give a lecture and let them go back to bed. But I don't have to bother. I just have to pretend this machine is real. Yeah, now I keep emphasizing to you that how this is an exploration for me. And what I mean by that, of course, is not only that this is very true and I can't escape the fact of it in what I'm speaking about,

[01:07]

But also because you are mutual explorers, whether you like it or not. Okay. Yeah, so I again inherited this, found myself in the midst of this way of being in the world or this way of, this path of aliveness. And one of the reasons I haven't, you know, written books and stuff like that. I mean, I like to write, but, you know, I really think the only real audience and mutual way of proceeding is with a small group of people like us together over some years.

[02:35]

No, I don't think that what I've been saying all these years has been superficial. But if I tried to give it some acceptable form for publication, I think it would have become superficial. Just some appropriate, acceptable way of expressing these things. And one of the things that I'm trying to find ways to speak about now is that practice assumes an attentional world and not an intellectual world.

[03:54]

We see it in Japan, for example, how the crafts, not art, a craftsperson is honored like Michelangelo or Picasso would be in our culture. There are stories, you know, kind of half mythological stories about the emperor and the such and such century of Japan going into the poorest quarters and finding craftspeople and then spending the afternoon with them. And we don't have national treasure glass blowers, things like that, but they have equivalent to that in Japan.

[04:58]

Because it's a culture which emphasizes that attention is more important than intelligence. Weil das eine Kultur ist, die betont, dass Aufmerksamkeit wichtiger ist als Intelligenz. And that attention itself is a kind of intelligence. Und dass Aufmerksamkeit selbst auch eine Art Intelligenz ist. Yeah, I first noticed it when, I mean, it seems like a strange example, but when Sally, who's now 55 or so, was in kindergarten and first grade in Japan. She would come home with her books every day. And we would say, why don't you leave them at school like kids in America do?

[06:19]

And we were told, she would say, I can't, they tell me I have to bring them. So we went and talked to the teacher and the teacher said, well, they have to bring their books back and forth because it improves their posture. So they had these rather heavy leather backpacks that they filled with books because it made you walk a certain way. And then there were these pretty heavy leather rucksacks. Leather... What do you call that again? Tunisters. Tunisters, exactly. These leather tunisters. And then they had to carry these heavy books back and forth every day because they would then go on in a certain way.

[07:36]

the other day, the robes and the orioki and so forth are designed to demand, require attention from you. My example of the maiko walking down the street in Kyoto. She has such attentional presence. You feel like probably someone could hold a tray in front of her with an orioke on it, and while she was walking, she could handle the whole orioke and just keep walking along and not spill anything, etc. So part of that is the culture, of course, if you're going to emphasize that, you're emphasizing energy. And emphasizing energy means you do each thing separately and completely.

[08:54]

Now I try to limit my examples to things we can do. But there's some things we can't do unless we grew up in such a culture. Now, you know, I'm not a professional, experienced architect like Jonas. And help me design the Zendo. But I've designed quite a few spaces, including a restaurant and the seminar room next door and things like that.

[09:59]

Ich habe eine ganze Menge Räume entworfen, zum Beispiel ein Restaurant und den Seminarraum drüben. And as someone who has designed quite a number of spaces here and in other places. Even simply the Johanneshof room I live in across the street. That was just an attic space, you know, at the top of a building when I first started living there. And we turned it into a dining room, one room, it's not very big, one room that's been turned into a living room, a dining room and a kitchen with sort of a bedroom. But if I'm going to design something, first I have to see it and feel it in my imagination, imaginal body.

[11:05]

But when I design something, I first have to feel it in my imagination or in my visualized or imagined body. Santa Fe, once I had the space in my mind, I just took a piece of chalk and I drew the whole thing and then the architect who actually did the drawings came and just followed all my lines and it worked out perfectly. When I designed the restaurant, I needed a clear picture in my imagination and when it was clear in my mind, I could just draw the lines and the architect could follow all my designs and it all worked out great. I'm going somewhere. I mean, I'm saying, don't think I'm just anecdoting here. That would be all right, though, too. So first the space exists in your... And then when you complete it and it's built, you walk in it, oh, it's just like the one I walked in in my head or in my body.

[12:36]

So when I walk around in this space next door, which I've been living in for 20 years or more, I still feel I'm walking around, I still feel I'm designing it as I walk around the spaces that have been there for 20 years or 15 years. Okay. I found when I worked for the University of California years ago that I could know everyone's, many people's phone numbers in my hand. Als ich für die Universität in Kalifornien gearbeitet habe, ist mir aufgefallen, dass ich die Telefonnummern von vielen Leuten in meinen Händen erinnern konnte. So I wouldn't think a number, I would just dial it.

[13:52]

My finger would dial it, my hand would dial it. Dann habe ich nicht über die Nummer nachgedacht, sondern ich habe einfach losgelegt zu wählen und mein Finger wusste, was zu tun ist. And if you ask an Asian person, or East Asian person, what is such and such a character or kanji, If it's unusual, he kind of thinks of the word, the sound, and then he, oh, that one. His hand knows it. He doesn't. His head doesn't know it. So if you learn characters, and it seems like you can learn more kanji than you can learn... Well, the newspapers require 2,000 because of MacArthur, but most people know 5,000, 6,000.

[15:02]

If you're a scholar, you know 20,000 kanji. Not 26 letters of an alphabet. So how do you learn such things? Your body learns it. It means you create some kind of interior feeling for the meaning of the word, and then you create a gestural feel for it, which the brush demonstrates. So... You learn the kanji by writing them.

[16:15]

It becomes a gesture. You feel like where the light switch is or when you drive, what you have to do while you're driving. Your body knows. So I'm bringing this up because something like what I'm aiming at here is what's the lived life of these folks we're reading about in koans. If the architect walks in the space that he's designed, he feels the space when he walks in it. The calligrapher, or when you read something, you feel the gesture when you read the character.

[17:34]

Because that's how you know it. You know it through a bodily, interiorized, internalized gesture. That brings you into an attentional relationship to the materiality, the feel of the world around you. Because when you do this, you know, learning 10,000 kanji with your internalized gestures, You're not just learning the kanji, you're teaching yourself attention.

[18:53]

So Sally had to carry her books because it taught her bodily attention. The books were used to teach her bodily attention, not just what was in the books. And that's why Sally had to wear her books, because the books gave her physical attention with the wearing, and not just the content of the books. Very recently, Western medicine has realized, through lots of things, but fairly recently, not so long ago, that the brain has plasticity. Not so long ago, Western medicine recognized that, by studying different things, it was not so long ago that it became clear that the brain is formable or changeable, that the brain has plasticity. And if you really know that, and East Asian cultures know that, you create as complex a language as possible.

[20:00]

Because it makes the brain and the bodily mind more complex. Then you would think of such a complex language, create such a complex language, as one can even imagine, because you know that the language influences the body-spirit. I don't think we really understand that, but boy, we really didn't at the end of the Second World War because the U.S. government and MacArthur tried to get the Japanese to switch to an alphabet. And they said, huh? Are you trying to make us dumb? Yes. So it was governmental policy that... simpler things are better.

[21:05]

But we live in a complex world. Maybe it's good if we are intentionally complex as well. So if you read kind of the lore of Chinese and Japanese calligraphers. They find the whole surface of the world in its forms is speaking to them spatially the way the characters do. They have an interactive relationship with any space they're walking through and not just walking through it as a whole. If you understand this, if you get a feeling for this, you'll understand why much of the stuff we do around here is about interactive spatial stuff.

[22:30]

I'm very fond of the Nenju ceremony, which we did yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what Nenju, the word, means. But I think Nen, I'm sure Nen means thought or a physically perceived thought. And Jew means something I think like gratefully received and gratefully given. So it's actually a description for how we relate to appearance.

[24:03]

Things suddenly appear. What's here? We receive. It's a giving-receiving relationship. Anyway, I like the Nenju ceremony because it's a kind of classic Buddhist Zen ceremony. Because it's not about anything. It's just about itself. You know, on most of my desks in several locations, I have a box. Usually somehow I end up having a box with nothing in it. But I like the fact that it's there because it's only a box, not because there's something in it. And the Nenji ceremony is like that. It's not about anything, but it's a ceremony.

[25:04]

And the Nanshu ceremony is the same. It's not about anything. It's just a ceremony. Yeah, so we come in and wander around. Nobody knows what's going on exactly. And then we, you know, bow here and there and, you know, it's over. And there's no God or some space this is for. We're just, there's just us. So we're wandering. wandering around saying, no schedule today. The whole thing is only about saying there's no schedule. Now, if you're in a world view, Where there's no beginnings.

[26:24]

It's just always, always, always. It means that everything's a beginning. And a kind of key word we've talked about last year or so, now and then, kek-gai, which means... An example of a kekkai is offering incense. And you're offering incense to the Buddha or whatever, but basically you're just making a beginning. So then every moment's a beginning. And every moment you can make a beginning. Because Buddhism is one of the for wisdoms or conditions for Buddhist practice is to live as closely as possible to how things actually exist.

[27:47]

There's always a... that results in that there's usually in Buddhism a kind of underlying fundamental, trying to look at how things are fundamentally present. So three and eight days are cleaning days. And then at the end of the cleaning days, you have a ceremony which says, okay, tomorrow no schedule. So I think instead of saying Hosan, we ought to say no schedule. And I think that instead of saying, let it be closer to what it's really about.

[29:02]

So when you come up to me and you can say, no schedule. Cool, okay. Yeah. Zeitplan. No, Zeitplan. Nein, Zeitplan. Free. No. If you say a free day, it implies we're not free the other days. No, again, in this kind of culture, they all want to vowelize, breathe their words. Vowels you can hum and consonants you tongue. When we chant in German, and I don't know German, obviously, but I try to feel the sounds, my tongue leaps around the roof of my mouth trying to find the sound.

[30:28]

Which I don't notice when I do it in English, but when I say German... It's hard to hum vowels, I mean consonants. Like, take the word church in English. You can't hum church. No, it doesn't work. So, normally, or usually, if you say Hosan, you say it. It comes from the body. Some people are saying it with their mouth. Hosan. Hosan.

[31:31]

You feel it with your body. Okay, I don't think that needs translation. I don't want to do it. That would be embarrassing. But I think we can chant, no, no schedule. And if you want to say, Hosan, go ahead. I don't care. But German, we have a problem. Well, then say, no schedule. Or say, no Zeitplan. We're multilingual here. At least by. So what's the basic schedule?

[32:35]

Is such a thing as no schedule possible? What's the basic schedule? Your heartbeat. Your breathing. Your body. If I sleep on my left side, my heart is toward the bed. And my arms take certain positions. If I sleep on my back, or if I sleep on my right side, then my heart is on the upper side of my body. And my arms take a different position. That's a schedule. The arms, the body, the breath, the heart, etc., they take certain forms, whether you like it or not. A body plan.

[33:47]

A gestural plan. So the ninju ceremony is a ceremony where we, it's a scheduled ceremony to say no schedule. And then on the next day, you have no schedule, but it's usually the day you do your laundry and shave your head if you shave your head and take a bath and so forth. But you have to do something. A schedule, some kind of activity arises, which we can call now a schedule arising from body breath and heartbeat. So what do we do here in these three months?

[35:00]

We have a highly detailed daily schedule. And then we have one day with mostly no schedule. And the meal is made voluntarily, not part of the schedule. So it's a kind of experiment with very scheduled and then one day mostly not scheduled. And then experimentierst du sozusagen mit, wie das ist, zuerst sehr viel Zeitplan und dann einen Tag so gut wie kein Zeitplan.

[36:01]

And then you, what is samadhi but no schedule? Und was ist samadhi, wenn nicht kein Zeitplan? And when you sit down in zazen, you can say to yourself, no schedule. Wenn du dich im zazen hinsetzt, dann kannst du zu dir selbst sagen, kein Zeitplan. Oh, no, but you have one schedule. Don't move. So we're experimenting with the whole thing. When you look at something like the practice period, it's experimenting with some very basic ideas. What is the schedule? And some five days, four days a week, monk week, we surrender to the schedule. And what we're Approaching is a feeling for what I could call physiological attention.

[37:16]

Not mentated attention. You're following your experience of aliveness, not your experience of thinking. It's not that you're not sometimes in your experience of thinking. And you can feel when you're in the experience of thinking. And then you can feel when I and me processes come into your experience of thinking. And then you can feel when you shift out of the experience of thinking.

[38:30]

Into the experience of aliveness. And that's what mindfulness is all about. It's really a bodyfulness experience of aliveness. Like a little camera is a constant experience of aliveness. And the emphasis on bringing attention to the inhale, not breathing, the inhale, and then attention to the exhale, etc. And you just have to do it over and over again. Bring attention to the inhale. Bring attention to the exhale. Jin. Bring attention to the gestural presence and energy of the body.

[39:59]

Until that's your experience of continuity, not thinking. So the schedule is meant to kind of break up the continuity of thinking. So the fundamental schedule is there, breath, body, and heartbeat. And then you establish that as each moment a reference point. So that each moment reference point is not I and I, what I feel, etc.

[41:05]

Each moment reference point is simple aliveness. In English, at least, being is clearly a word about continuity. You establish continuity. Beingness is continuity. Aliveness is moment by moment. Sometimes you feel a little sick, sometimes you feel a little better, sometimes you feel a little energetic, etc. manchmal fühlst du dich ein bisschen krank, manchmal ein bisschen besser, manchmal fühlst du dich energiegeladen und so weiter. And you feel into the topography of this physiological attention.

[42:10]

Und du spürst in die Beschaffenheit dieser physiologischen Aufmerksamkeit hinein. And I guarantee you, when you really find yourself located in physiological attention and not mentated attention. And I guarantee you, if you really establish yourself in physiological attention and not in mental attention, you'll feel yourself located in each moment and each situation in a really quite different and much more satisfying way. So this simple dynamic of shifting from mentated attention to physiological attention which we have three months to try to do, locates us in the world and is one of the main factors

[43:19]

Buddhist dynamics for freeing you from mental and emotional suffering. Okay, thank you. Vielen Dank. May God bless you. May God bless you.

[44:11]

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