I'd like to say something about your question, whether we can work or whether this text is accessible to us, whether we can work with it. In the beginning, I felt like it was, for me, it was quite complicated and complex, maybe, for Schachtel. So for me the translation and the explanations that Nicole did were very helpful. This afternoon I sat in the garden and went through the text again. And whenever the text speaks about culture, I try to sense into the culture of Friedemann.

[01:06]

Oh! And I found that very helpful. And then I ended up on the second page with these Dogen quotations. And you said yesterday, take these words seriously. I'm a little unsure whether I can say what I'm about to say, but I will. I sat in this chair and entered a space of non-thinking.

[02:23]

Das ist Übung, die ich die letzten zwei Jahre anhand von dem Chor nicht wissen ist, am nächsten, wo der eine Satz drin ist. Beim Sitzen, beim Gehen halte dich an dem Punkt, bevor Gedanken aufsteigen. So that's, for me, that's based on my having practiced with the koan for the last two years, when walking, when sitting, hold on to the moment before thought arises. And I have been told that practicing this sentence or this point, to practice before the thought arises, that this has led to the fact that I And then I noticed that through practicing with this phrase that bodily sensations and bodily perceptions have surfaced that I didn't know before I started practicing with this phrase.

[03:50]

And that kind of feeling I entered when I sat on the chair this afternoon. And if Dogen was real serious about this? He was. Grass was around me, trees were around me, the wind was there, the blue sky. Grass was around me, trees were there, the blue sky. And I learned how to let myself fall away. And I learned something almost like letting myself fall away. Just now, you mean?

[04:53]

When you were sitting in the chair? Ja. War nur noch ein Pulsieren zwischen Wind, Bewegung, Räume, Blumen, Blättern. So then all there was was a pulsation between wind, flowers, trees, everything together. And now the question. To continue practicing this or to make it deep in it. You can say something more about that. Okay. Well, it's great that you bring this up because I think it's helpful to all of us.

[05:57]

And it's helpful to me. Okay. So, And Dogen would agree with your experience. Okay, but let's go back. Obviously, if you're sitting in this chair, the grass is not you. And there's wind and etc., So then you have the question, why does Dogen say that this is your body, and why does he say when grasses, trees, wind and things are not your body, they're also not grasses, trees and wind?

[07:00]

Now, as a simple fact, now, some people think human beings are separate creations, we can go live on Mars and, you know, things like that. But right now, we're completely dependent on food and air and so forth, that we're part of this system which gives us life. Okay, so what Dogen says and Buddhism says, we need to view everything as it is, as inseparable from us, which in fact it is.

[08:09]

When the loggers and farmers in Brazil are burning the rainforest, they're not viewing the rainforest as part of them. They're viewing, thinking about when they can stay in a really nice hotel. And afford it. So then the question is, how can we think, feel about this... complex system we're part of in a way that we act within its totality. Now, one of the things I bring up and say in this piece is if we have built into us the difference between the human and the non-human,

[09:41]

That's like something right under the surface of the water of our mind and activity. And so that it's not very deep. Yeah. Okay. So somehow you have to make the water a bit deeper. You're going to swim in it and sail in it. So somehow you have to get past human, non-human, subject, object, and so forth. You have to get past those dualities. Okay. And we... Okay. Okay. The only way to do that really is to think about it metaphorically.

[11:06]

In other words, you can think to yourself, I know that I am inseparably part of this life system. And I know I don't experience it. When I look at a tree, the tree is over there and it's just over there. But could there be a difference? Okay. So when you think, well, there could be a difference, maybe I can take Dogen's statement, the entire earth is a true human body. Now that's a metaphor. Okay. And you're 40 or 50 years old?

[12:07]

So for 40 or 50 years you have a habit of thinking that is the way it is. How are you going to get rid of 40 or 50 years of habit? What's amazing is it's possible. It doesn't take 40 or 50 years. But it may take a few months of moment after moment thinking this is the true human body. Not just occasionally, it's a nice idea. So you've practiced with this Shoyaroku line from the Koan 20, I believe. Just hold to the moment before thought arises. And you've been practicing with that phrase for a year or so.

[13:32]

When you practice with a phrase like that, and you do it consistently for a couple years, it begins to find yourself in the moment before thought arises. Now, this is the difference between an intelligible culture and an experienceable or experiential culture. In an intelligible culture, you don't know how to approach hold to the moment before thought exists, before thought appears. Okay, so it's...

[14:32]

We Westerners have to sort of shift to believing in or noticing an experiential culture in contrast to an intelligible culture. Okay. If you tend to try to only believe what you can understand or be intelligible, practice is not going to take hold of you. You have to somehow Start thinking, if I can experience that this is the true human body, if I can try to remind myself that it's possible to experience that, because Dogen says so or whatever, I don't have to understand it, I just have to believe in the possibility of experiencing it.

[16:09]

Okay, so all of Dogen's teachings and all of the koans are based on assuming it's possible to experience this. If you keep, oh, I'm only going to do it if I can understand it, you're dead. Dead from the point of view of Zen practice. For instance, if you're going to practice Hishirio, And what's non-thinking?

[17:12]

Well, even to imagine that non-thinking is possible is a form of thinking. Selbst allein sich vorzustellen, dass nichtdenken möglich ist, ist eine Form zu denken, ist eine Art des Denkens. Also dann ist die Frage, wie denkst du das nichtdenken, wenn doch das nichtdenken zu denken auch eine Art des Denkens ist? You have to get out of that pattern. And so your practice, my life depends on getting out of that. If you don't have that fierceness, it's not going to happen. Okay, so I've given you a suggestion. Jetzt habe ich euch einen Vorschlag gemacht.

[18:15]

Praktiziere, indem du bemerkst, ohne darüber nachzudenken. Es hilft, wenn du erkennst, dass bemerken eine Form des Wissens ist. If you only believe, as most neurologists only believe, we only know things because we have a conscious experience of knowing it, and the conscious experience of knowing it confirms that we know it. That's not true in Buddhism. The conscious experience, my looking at this bell, my conscious experience of looking at that bell is the way in which I know something. Also, wie die meisten Neurologen annehmen, wird es so gedacht, dass wenn ich mir die Glocke anschaue zum Beispiel, dann ist mein bewusster Blick auf die Glocke, ist das Wissen von der Glocke, das Erkennen der Glocke.

[19:25]

And then I think about it. Okay, and then that becomes memory. So, our memory is stored through conscious noting and thinking about it. So as a practitioner, if you take on noticing without thinking about it as a dynamic of every appearance, And you just let yourself notice things. You don't have to be conscious about them or note that you're noticing. You just notice and you don't think about anything. Now, you may have to... Sometimes, notice, you know, you have to go to work and you have to remember something and you have to... That's fine.

[20:42]

That's just one thing we do. It's not the fundamental way we function in a world of successional appearances. Okay. But if you have the sense of, well, I'm just going to be stupid if I only notice and I don't think about it, I'm just going to be a stupid person. So maybe it would help you if you just noticed without thinking. But trusting that noticing is a form of connoticing is a form of knowing. Now, I see that, and as I mentioned yesterday, I study pretty carefully Cezanne and Matisse and Picasso and so forth, the artists of my youth.

[21:52]

And from what I can see, and from what they talk to other people about and write letters to people about, is they really practice noticing without thinking about it. And they let that noticing accumulate and accumulate and accumulate, and then suddenly they find themselves painting differently. So, now we're talking about, let me use the word culture. And now let me use the word culture here. If you insist on conscious, referential consciousness to be your condition for knowing, you're in an intelligible culture. Okay.

[23:25]

But if you try to train yourself, can I actually train myself to not think about and just notice? But when you get used to it, it becomes an experience of being blissed out at every moment. Whatever you look at just blisses you out. And you don't think, oh, isn't this interesting? Or that would make a nice photograph. Or, you know... Okay. You are actually making yourself into a different kind of human being. When you're 80 years old, what you remember and how you remember things will be different if you have spent 10 or 20 years noticing without thinking about it.

[24:34]

The neurology of memory differs, changes. Okay. So, I mean, if I say this, I say it... And from my feeling, that this is an extraordinary discovery which almost nobody knows about in the West and almost nobody knows about in East Asia because they haven't made the comparison. And when I say that, I say that with the feeling that this is an absolutely extraordinary discovery that almost nobody knows about, from which almost nobody knows anything. Not in the West and also not in East Asia, because they have never made the comparison.

[25:37]

I just met recently in Interlaken with about 900 people. I don't remember. I think it was more, but maybe, yeah. 700, 800, 900, mostly neurologists. They don't know what I just told you. And they're studying how memory works. That's what their job, their life profession. But they don't see, because they don't have an alternative, that memory that we measure is the result of self-referential consciousness. Now we're in a territory, not of, you know, non-duality, non-self. We're in a territory of a different kind of self. Okay. And that different kind of self puts together a world differently.

[27:06]

And the experience which informs you, maybe like an artist of your own life, arises from embodied noticing, not from conscious memory. And in Buddhism, a person whose life arises from embodied noticing would be called an enlightened person. Whose what arises? Whose life arises through embodied noticing. Okay, so if the first precept or tenet of Buddhism is to know that realization is possible,

[28:11]

Wenn dieser erste Lehrsatz des Buddhismus lautet, zu wissen, dass Erleuchtung möglich ist. Now we can say that if you realize that embodied noticing is possible without thinking about it. Können wir jetzt sagen, dass wenn du erkennst, dass verkörpertes Bemerken möglich ist, ohne darüber nachzudenken. Now, if you look at the koans, you could say you can read almost every koan as a riff on, hey, embodied noticing creates the conditions where enlightenment is more likely. So Dogen would say, and I would say along with Dogen, that if we can create an institution called Johannes of Quellenweg,

[29:31]

Which is lived in and practiced in by people who recognize that embodied noticing is one of the prior conditions that makes enlightenment likely. And there are sufficient people in the Sangha who are actually doing this, then Dogen would say, I'm doing my job. I would say, I'm doing my job. Now, I would say that Friedemann, by practicing for, and it really does take a year or two or three of working with a single phrase, before it gets into you neurologically.

[30:59]

That practicing with this praise, which is really wonderful, to hold to the moment before thought arises, Mit diesem Satz zu praktizieren, der wirklich wunderbar ist, sich an den Moment zu halten, bevor Gedanken auftauchen. An den Moment zu halten, bevor Gedanken auftauchen, ist eine andere Art zu sagen, zu bemerken, ohne darüber nachzudenken. Now, Dogen would say, if you've done that kind of plowing your neurology, plowing your neurology like a farmer turns the earth, you're more likely to, by practicing repetitiously,

[32:03]

uniquely repetitiously at each moment, the phrase like grasses, trees, et cetera, or the whole body, the entire earth is the true human body. then it is more likely that you practice with repetition, but a repetition where every time is a unique time, for example with the sentence the true human body or with the trees and the grasses. this metaphor which you know, well of course this is not my body but when you practice with the metaphor it can shift you into finding this is actually one spectrum experientially you realize it is one spectrum then when you practice with this metaphor, with this picture then it is clear Okay, and Dogen would say, and he does say, that when you have that experience, you feel sometimes body and mind drops off.

[33:21]

And Dogen would say that if you have this experience, then you can sometimes have the feeling that body and mind have fallen apart. So the mental categories we live in of mind and body suddenly are gone. And you're in a spectrum, a continuous spectrum, where you feel the tree is also you. It's the trees. As much you as your right hand is you. So this is a weird practice. You repeat a metaphor which clearly in any intelligible universe is factually not true. Well, factually it is true, but also factually, when you think dualistically, it's not true.

[34:40]

And then, something you cannot plan, and you have to be open to not planning... happens to you and you say, oh yes, body and mind dropped off. I know what Dogen meant by that. Yeah, okay. So we primarily have a lay practice. Dogen and the koans are very clear that really this probably doesn't happen to most human beings unless they live with other practitioners for Months, if not, generally thought, ten years.

[35:45]

And none of us can do it as laypeople. And most of us can't do it in the lay practice. A very small percentage of the population can do this. But look how much work it takes to be a surgeon, to be a musician, how much often you have to practice and so forth. It doesn't happen naturally or easily. It happens to have some gifts. Yeah. Okay. What? But only talent is not enough. Only talent is definitely not enough.

[36:46]

That's one reason Buddhism is good, because only intelligence is not enough. The craft of practice is more powerful than intelligence. And generally, smart people don't practice. because they're too smart to think it's useful. So we have to work with the dumb bunnies. That's us. We can call ourselves the dumb bunny sangha. I'd like to say something about breathing in and breathing out. A while ago I started concentrating on the difference of activity and breathing in and breathing out. And then I started playing with the difference in bodily sensation and started adding different meanings to it.

[38:15]

As a physician, you sort of know what happens with the body in inhalation and exhalation, what changes in the body and so forth. And you can add certain ideas about that. Which... which blood flow goes where and what the diaphragm does and so forth. And then I added images, like if I was a big bird, would I lift my wings in inhalation or in exhalation?

[39:45]

Yeah, this is all good. Come on, I'm going to try it too. Okay, but after a while I had the feeling that it was all nonsense. But a while later I had the feeling that that's all nonsense. Yes, it is nonsense. I just focused on the difference in body perception. I just started concentrating on the difference in bodily sensations. For instance, the increasing increasing maybe tonus and exhalation and then the relaxation and inhalation and so forth. Yeah.

[40:48]

But trust all of the aspects, including the bird wings. You're bringing in an intelligible universe world when you think, oh, the bird wings. No, that's all there as part of your experience. You have to trust what comes up. By the way, I just happened to think of this. There's a swimmer named Phelps. Yeah, Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps is the greatest swimmer in the world, or has been. For 40 years, he's held most of the world records. And there's an American named Oleg, I think Oleg, who recently beat two of his records fairly easily. And someone asked him, what did you learn from Michael Phelps?

[41:52]

He said that each stroke is a single breath. You know, maybe next time, if I do a paper like this, and I think maybe I'd like your help in thinking about it, we could have it translated, and it could go out, and like pretending we're a little conference, you could all write a little abstract, and on the basis of your abstracts, I'd accept whether you come to the next Winter Break. Wow. Okay. Okay. So, we're late for dinner, but go ahead. Oh, okay.

[42:53]

A cliffhanger. By my teeth or by my fingers? Hanging? Yeah, well, there's a Zen story. You're hanging from a cliff by a rope held in your mouth. What do you do? You can't say anything because if you open your mouth, you're in trouble. Okay. Go ahead. Oh, and the others anyway. Yes, exactly, right. Yes, I think it's really important to know. I can only imagine it, but why is it so important to see the in-breath and the out-breath really separated and to emphasize the physicality in it? I'm just fascinated by or I'm wondering about why does it have such a tremendous impact or meaning to look at inhalation and exhalation separately and to look at the physicality of it.

[44:01]

You have to find out by doing it. But what is the difference when we say, okay, we recognize the momentum instead of the continuity, when we only see the breath as a whole. But what is the advantage of recognizing the momentum of every single moment? Yeah, but the question is, you said about that, you know, the momentariness matters, or to see the world as succession of appearances. But what's the benefit of that? Why not just look at the breath as a whole? Okay. He explained it that way. I find it exciting to ask the question, what would be the difference? Of course, I can find out from experience what the difference is if I practice the three words intensively.

[45:02]

Of course, I can find out if I practice this for three months intensely. I can find out. Well, good. Good luck. Okay. A mediocre student would ask the teacher, excuse me, what's the benefit of doing this? Also, ein mittelmäßiger Schüler würde den Lehrer fragen, was bringt das, das zu machen? exceptional student would practice it for three months, practice the other way for three months, find out what the differences are, and then go to the teacher and say, here's the three differences I've noticed. And then the teacher says, yeah, and here's 10 more. So the way Soto works, the way Rinzai works, is the teacher gives a koan to the student. The way SOTA works is the teacher says things in lectures which are definitely challenging, sometimes aimed at a certain person.

[46:32]

Then they see if that person comes to Doksan with the challenge. Now, Nicole and I have a 6.30 Zoom meeting, FaceTime Zoom meeting with California. So we have to go get ready for that. And we also are meeting with Jonitz and Michaela. Maybe it should be at 7. Okay. Okay? All right. Yeah, good.

[47:26]

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