Every now and then I, well, before I say that, we almost had a wonderful storm. Yeah, promises. Anyway, I often notice that I'm a fortunate person Yeah, really, because I get to practice with every each of you. But not just because of you, who you are, which is actually quite good. Very good. But because, in addition, because for some reason I've been, I don't know, stuck with this question, what is existence? I can't say why.

[01:14]

I mean, maybe all of us are stuck with this question. But for me, it's been pretty much the only question. Yeah. From as long as I can remember, I was surprised to find You can't be alive unless you find yourself... You can't be alive... You can't be surprised to find yourself alive unless you're alive. So, in a sense, there's no reason to be surprised because you are alive. But yet the potential of death is obvious all the time, so maybe that makes the question more acute.

[02:18]

Maybe it's the surprise to be still alive after all these years. So I suppose the question was when I was young, what is the meaning of existence? And after a while, I don't know, I wasn't interested in meaning anymore. It didn't mean anything. So somehow the question shifted to what is the experience of being alive? What is the experience of existence? And the question became much deeper as soon as it shifted to what is the experience of existence. And I'm still exploring it. And I'm still researching that.

[03:56]

And the reason why I feel so fortunate is that I really can't do this exploration all by myself. Somehow I discovered, and I think primarily through Suzuki Roshi, to really thoroughly, profoundly face this question, you have to do it with others. So I've had nearly 50 years of opportunity to explore this question with others. Okay. Now, maybe at this point I should repeat the koan I presented last night. What's that sound in the garden?

[04:56]

Oh, the sound of raindrops. The weather almost cooperated with me, but... Castaneda, where are you now that I need you? Jetzt hätte das Wetter beinahe mit mir operiert. Where is who? Castaneda. You know who that is? Yeah, but how will he help you? Oh, because when he does things, nature cooperates. Oh, I see. Also Castaneda, wo bist du jetzt, wenn ich dich brauche? Weil wenn Castaneda etwas macht, dann kooperiert die Natur auch. What is that? Oh, it's raindrops. Was ist das? Das sind Regentropfen. And then Ching Ching says, these days people are inverted.

[06:02]

Und dann sagt Ching Ching, heutzutage sind die Leute umgedreht. They almost lose themselves following after things. Sie verlieren sich und folgen den Dingen einfach. They lose themselves following after things. So the monk says, what would you say, teacher? I almost, I almost, I always almost lose myself. Ich verliere mich fast. Fast verliere ich mich immer. And what do you mean? You almost lose yourself. Und was bedeutet das, dass du dich... Was meinst du damit, dass du dich fast verlierst?

[07:04]

Well, it should be... It should be easy to... What is the word that should be easy to describe? Oh yeah, it should be easy to express oneself. But to say the whole thing is difficult. Now, and that's what I feel. I've been doing this for nearly 50 years. And I find it difficult to say the whole thing. But, you know, you wouldn't have... Teixos would have been finished years ago if I could. So it's a constant source of Tayshos.

[08:15]

Try to find a way to say it when you can't say the whole thing. You know, but sometimes I just feel, wow, I just can't say the whole thing. Aber manchmal habe ich dieses Gefühl auch einfach, ich kann einfach nicht das Ganze sagen. In diesem Koan ist es sehr interessant, dass er nicht sagt, ich verliere mich fast, sondern er sagt, ich verliere mich fast nicht. which could imply that he almost loses himself following after things, but maybe he doesn't. You know, as a good monk, he probably doesn't. Yeah, but what about the other side?

[09:19]

But what about the other side? The inability to say the whole thing. So this is clearly a two-edged sword in this koan. You can read it, he almost doesn't lose himself following after things. Or he does lose himself and almost doesn't lose himself in being unable to say the whole thing. Yeah, and so that's the trick of this koan. And what gives it the depth and why it's been hanging around for some hundreds of years?

[10:38]

Okay. So I'm trying to speak about following after things. But what things are we following after? I'm suggesting to dwell in the word continuum. To see what it does to you, where it takes you. That's following after things. But that's also following, that's also trying to reach into what the difficulty of saying the whole thing.

[11:39]

Okay. [...] So then to emphasize this or to get us into this, I'm speaking implicitly so far and now explicitly about bodily thinking. Now that's kind of, I mean people sort of understand that nowadays. But when I started practicing, it was a no-no. And it's been a no-no in Western culture for a very long time.

[12:42]

Not only is Christianity for much of its history not trusted the body, But it goes back to Plato who didn't trust the body. Yeah. Yeah, these are the foundations of our culture. Now, I'm in this perplexity partly because I'm trying to find words. Bodily thinking, it's the best I can come up with. Corporal thinking, somatic thinking, I don't know. Now, this is not just, you know, a verbal exercise.

[14:03]

Because if you're going to dwell on, live in a word outside of language, like bodily thinking, At least outside the usual forms and usual use of language. Then the words have to be worth it. Now it seems that the original, excuse me for going into this, but it's important to me anyway. It seems like the original meaning of thinking Was to cause something to appear to oneself. No, that would work perfectly for bodily thinking. Using the body to cause something to appear. But thinking as a word, to think, also has the same root as thankfulness or thank, gratefulness.

[15:14]

And you can see, if you cause something to appear to oneself, there's thankfulness, gratefulness. But thinking soon came to mean to appear to the mind only. And we are, at least in English, thoroughly stuck with this meaning that thinking means to appear in the mind. But what about to appear in the body? Now, I always hate to quote Einstein. He's too obvious. But he has made clear in his writings that his thoughts appeared first as bodily sensations.

[16:42]

And from bodily sensations to metaphors and images, which then became thoughts. Thoughts in today's use of the word. Now body by the 1200s was clearly a meaning contrasted with soul. In the twelfth or thirteenth century it meant... Sorry, which body was... The body became... Its meaning was, it was not the soul. It was in contrast to soul. And by the 1300s body meant stuff. matter.

[17:51]

So when you're dead, that's your body. And it's interesting, you can't speak about the Dharma body and mean the dead Dharma. So clearly body in yoga culture means that which makes the stuff alive. And corporeal originally meant womb or stomach or belly. Yeah, and then that sense of body as form or womb. The phrase form is emptiness, emptiness is form takes another depth. Womb is space, space is womb, womb is emptiness, emptiness is womb.

[19:04]

That's more what the word form means in Buddhism. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now you see why I say it's so... I find it difficult to say the whole thing here. I'm wandering all over the place telling you all kinds of crazy things. And although in the last 50 years the general understanding of the body is very different than when I was trying to... wake up in the 40s and 50s. Still, I think for us, even though we're in a different sort of cultural atmosphere, the words body and thinking and so forth in English carry the meaning they've had for hundreds of years.

[20:33]

And I don't care who, whatever some sophisticated, well-informed, intelligent person in Manhattan, he says, think he means with his mind. And he probably wouldn't trust his body to do his thinking for us, not certainly his investing. But that's not true actually for entrepreneurial types, but that's another question. Now let's just let me finish this little riff. Going back to Plato.

[21:35]

He really didn't trust the body. And his basis for not trusting the body was that oral cultures memorize their culture. So he was opposed to the poets, the bards, the storytellers. Because they practice menaces or... Memorization. Imitation. Yeah. So you learned your culture orally. And then it was in your body. And you were reliving the tradition all the time.

[22:37]

And moral intelligence, the sound of raindrops, moral intelligence couldn't penetrate, moral thinking couldn't penetrate this bodily, you know, embedded tradition. Let's say that Plato was right. And his emphasis on thinking in the present, contradicting the myths of the past. Yeah, freed us. Freed Western culture. It was a turning point in Western culture. But yogic bodily thinking is quite different. It's not about what you memorized. Yes, it's based on repetition.

[24:10]

Like I've asked you to keep holding in your mind, mind and mind. Hold it in your body, dwell in your body with it. This is profoundly the technique of Zen Buddhism in particular within all schools of Buddhism. Not as a technique of well-being, but a technique of transformative non-being. Nicht als eine Technik des Wohlseins, sondern als eine Technik zum Nichtsein. Okay, now, how do you dwell in, repeat, engage bodily and mentally wisdom? It's really simple. You just engage body and mind with the wisdom.

[25:11]

And you don't think your way to it. You act your way to it on the washboard of the present. Now I say washboard of the present. I don't know what the hell that means. You know what a washboard is? Washer clothes. That's what we used to do in Tassajara. We had no washing machines, no electricity, so we all washed metal boards. It's kind of great. It works. Okay, so let's imagine the present situation as a kind of washboard. Or a kind of threshing machine. Yeah, you're kind of getting the seed separate from the chaff.

[26:40]

Okay, then the question is, how do you turn the present into a washboard? And the second question is, how do you bring this wisdom into your activity as thinking and not as memory? Und die zweite Frage ist, wie bringst du diese Weisheit in deine Aktivität ein, und zwar als Denken und nicht als Erinnerung? You develop a mind of non-exclusive concentration. Okay, that's all. I've said it all.

[27:41]

Do you see how difficult it is to say it all? It should be easy. I'll give it a shot again tomorrow. And tomorrow morning I think I'm supposed to start Doksan, right? I look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you.

[28:09]

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