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Embodied Self: Zen's Lived Body Insight
Practice-Week_The_Lived_Body
The talk focuses on the philosophical exploration of the "lived body," a key concept in Zen practice, encouraging participants to internalize this idea as both a personal and collective seminar. Discussion involves how one's existence and interactions reflect bodily experiences and the integration of self-identity with embodied living, further elucidated through references to specific Buddhist teachings. The Genjo Koan is highlighted as a central text, offering a complex and continuous opportunity for personal inquiry and understanding of delusion and self-authentication through bodily awareness. The seminar encourages cultivating an 'athletic attention' to bodily presence, suggesting the challenge of navigating life by focusing on ‘body as self’ rather than traditional notions of self.
Referenced Works:
- Genjo Koan: A central text in the talk, it is used to probe the nature of delusion in self-authentication through bodily experiences, and to inspire ongoing personal reflection.
- Houston Smith's Works on World Religions: Mentioned as an influential reference for understanding varied religious perspectives and the embodiment of experiences.
- Poems by E.E. Cummings: Cited to draw parallels between lived experiences and the deep personal connections expressed in poetry.
Key Concepts:
- Lived Body: A central theme; it is explored as an interactive and reflective component of Zen practice, focusing on body awareness over self-identity.
- Athletic Attention: Proposed as a practice exercise for focusing on bodily continuity rather than subjective self, drawing metaphorical parallels to athletic focus and discipline.
AI Suggested Title: Embodied Self: Zen's Lived Body Insight
Well, first of all, I'm very happy that Marie-Louise can translate for me again. Yeah, I find it quite good experience to practice and work together like this. But I have to get used to again having German appear in the pauses. This is the first seminar I've done since I came back. Of course when I go to Back to America, to the United States, I pause and no German appears. And I miss it, actually. It takes me quite a while, and sometimes even after being there some months, I pause and my German body doesn't appear.
[01:03]
And that takes a while. Even after a few months, when I take a break, my German body just disappears. Where did it go? Now I feel good. My German body is appearing. must be half German by all this time I mean you wouldn't say so but after all this time but Sophia is our daughter is now just turned four in March and she can go to and she goes as she did last year to the local kindergarten One of the few German words I know, kindergarten.
[02:17]
And she's old enough to walk back from the bus, the local bus, by herself. So Marie-Louise can, there's more opportunity for Marie-Louise to translate. Yeah, Sophia, we have this topic, of course, the lived body. And I would like you to think of a topic like this as a question. Or a lot of questions. You ask yourself, what is a lid on? A good title in our tradition should, the exploration of the title itself,
[03:21]
should lead you into the whole seminar. And by your own exploration of the title, by repeating it and so forth to yourself, Yeah, letting the questions that are in it come out. You produce your own seminar. And then you see, yeah, how come he went that direction with the seminar and I went the other direction? So ideally there's two seminars going on. Or many. For each of you two. but my seminar I am doing with you and the seminar you're doing within yourself.
[04:48]
And I'm speaking to the seminar you're doing within yourself. And the more developing the seminar is within yourself, the more it will be brought out of my half of the seminar. Okay. And then you will meet in the afternoon and And there's some more joining of your seminars with each other. This is the process that's assumed and consciously assumed in Zen teaching.
[05:50]
Yeah. Yeah, so I look at Sophia. There she is with her lived body of four years old, of four years. Four years young. Well, then she goes to, I could understand that, and then she goes to nursery school, kindergarten. And she comes back with the bodies of her friends. Dann kommt sie zurück mit dem Körper ihrer Freunde. No, sometimes she actually brings them over and has sleepovers. Manchmal bringt sie sie wirklich mit, die Freunde, und dann übernachten die bei uns. But usually she just comes home and she starts acting like the girl or boy she's now most in love with.
[06:56]
Ja, aber oft kommt sie eben alleine nach Hause, aber sie... She's very open to the other kids and falls in love with them, and then she has this pain of that. How come Rosalie went home from kindergarten with that other kid? And then Rosalie has a, this is a Crestone, Colorado kindergarten. And then Rosalie has the, throws tantrums. And then Sofia throws copies of her tantrums. Same tone of voice and shouting.
[07:57]
We say, this is a fake tantrum. And if you make her laugh, suddenly the tantrum is gone. So what is this lived body? Lived through yourself and through others. We have this kind of experience, each of us. So you'd say you're living your body within somebody else. You live your body through yourself and you live your body through others as well. Now, Sophia also says things like, she's my teacher, she says things like, mommy, I only love you.
[09:31]
She used to be mama, but now in America, it's mommy. Mommy, I only love you this much. And how much do you not, Marie-Louise says, and how much do you not like me? And then she says, well, this much. And then she suddenly says, sometimes this much. And the other night, Sophia called Marie-Louise and said, Mommy, come here. So Marie-Louise went in and Sophia said, I love you. And then Marie-Louise said, I love you very, very much. And then Sophia said, I don't love you that much. I only love you as much as I want.
[10:33]
But if she bumps her head or has a crisis, her body runs to Marie Louise's body. So her body has unending love for Marie Louise. But what are these two sides? The side that only loves Marie Louise as much as she wants. And then the side, the body, the lived body side, which has no question about who it loves. So we can see this quite clearly in a child. But in ourself, what is our experience? You know, we all know that our body is a process and changes through our living. Yeah, through our lived life. Through living our life.
[12:06]
So again, what is our lived life? Because there's already the sense of karma in the word lived. And I think we all know expressions like Your face belongs to your parents until you're 30 or something, and after that it belongs to you. For some people it doesn't. I remember I had a friend named, still a friend, he's old, named Houston Smith. And he wrote the book on world religions. And did a famous television program in the 50s, maybe, on world religions.
[13:10]
And I think his parents were Christian missionaries in China. So he grew up in China. But then he went all over the world and lived in China. various kinds of religion, religious centers, communities, monasteries. And when I knew him, he was, I would say, mostly a Buddhist. But the latter part of his life, he's been more a Sufi or something. But he was on our board for a long time, the Dharma Sangha board in the United States.
[14:27]
Anyway, he had a face which had been places I hadn't been. So he became a teacher for me. Because when I was with him, I felt the presence of where his face, his experience had traveled. In his presence, in his gesture, in his voice, there was lands, places I hadn't been before, experiences I didn't know. And he was one of the two friends I had who had a cast eye.
[15:40]
Do you know what a cast eye is? No. One eye just goes other directions. The other person was a poet teacher also, my name Robert Duncan. And Robert, when he was giving one of his early big poetry readings, He started speaking and he could tell there was a woman in the front who was beginning to laugh about his poems. And he thought, this is going to ruin. She starts laughing, I'm finished. So he took his cast eye and put it on her.
[16:41]
Well, he read the poems and went up and down like this, and she sat there. Anyway, Houston had a similar kind of casting. He always felt that he was with you, but when I was... And he always, in those my younger days, I was very fond of a poet named E.E. Cummings. And he was one of the first poets to experiment with the typography in a way a typewriter allows. And he was the first who experimented with typography that a typewriter allowed him.
[17:56]
And that's why he never used capital letters. It was always small e, e, Cummings. And that's why he never used capital letters. It was always small e, e, Cummings. Well, one of his favorite poems, the first line is, Somewhere I've never traveled. Well, one of his favorite poems, the first line is, Somewhere I've never traveled gladly beyond any experience. And whenever I was with Houston or saw him, I thought, these lines came to mind, somewhere I've never traveled, gladly beyond any experience. The poem, I can give you some of the poem. It goes, somewhere I've never traveled. Gladly beyond any experience.
[19:13]
Your eyes have their silence. In your most frail gesture, are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they're too near. In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me. In deiner zartesten Geste sind Dinge, die mich mit einschließen. Which I cannot touch because they're too near. Die ich nicht berühren kann, denn sie sind zu nah. And later the poem goes on.
[20:14]
The power of your intense fragility whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing. I do not know what it is about you, Ich weiß es nicht, was es um dich ist. I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens. Ich weiß es nicht, was es um dich ist, das öffnet und schließt. I think if Sophia could express what she feels about her classmates, her schoolmates...
[21:22]
Also wenn Sophia ausdrücken könnte, was sie fühlt für ihre Klassenkameraden oder Kindergartenkollegen. Sie würde vielleicht auch sagen, deine Augen haben ihre Stille. Ich weiß nicht, was es an dir ist, das mich so... But she's just in the midst of it. And practice is also to be in the midst of it. And yet to explore how we're in the midst of it. Now a sentence I keep wanting to bring up from the Genjo Koan.
[22:29]
It's been, I don't know, half a year or more that I've been working with this sentence with its instrumental power. And Dieter, I think we might take the Genjo Koan as the text. Why not? It's good to get familiar with it. And look at each line, as I said, about the title of the seminar. Look at each line as packed with questions that aren't meant to open up on the first reading. The difficulty of the text is the openness of the text.
[23:41]
The openness that can keep opening up every time you read it, any time in your life. And it's like a hidden box. And every time you happen to find it, and you can open the box, There's often something different in the box. Anyway, this line, you know, they build up, this line here comes. I went to too many movies. To cultivate and authenticate
[24:41]
Zu kultivieren und zu authenticate. To author, to make real. We need a nice word. A nice word. How has it been translated before? We had it in English only. Authenticate? Authentifizieren. Authentifizieren. Yeah, that's right. To cultivate and to authenticate. zu kultivieren und zu authentifizieren, the 10,000 things, die 10,000 Dinge, by conveying the self to them, indem man das Selbst zu ihnen bringt, is delusion. Das ist Täuschung, Verwirrung. Is this true? Ist das wahr? What does it mean to you? And if it is true, or you imagine it might be true, how can this truth, if it is true, find its truth in your actions?
[26:00]
Now, that's an That's what I mean by instrumental. It's a tool. It's a tool you can use to notice your actions. To bring your attention into the midst of your living and lived body. Now, the 10,000 things is often translated as myriad things or many things. werden oft als myriaden Dinge oder als viele Dinge übersetzt.
[27:20]
And it's, yeah, to cultivate and to bring, to cultivate and authenticate the ten thousand, the many things. Also die zehntausend oder die vielen Dinge zu kultivieren. The many things, it's almost always how it's translated, a myriad. Also viele Dinge oder ist fast immer, wie es übersetzt wird, oder auch myriaden Dinge. But it's a fundamental mistake. Aber das ist ein grundlegender Fehler. Because it moves in the direction of generalizations. Denn es bewegt sich in die Richtung von Verallgemeinerungen. And generalizations mean nothing to the lived body. Und Verallgemeinerungen bedeuten nichts für den gelebten Körper. 10,000 things is not a generalization. But 10,000 things, it's a reachable number. Yeah, it's possible to have 10,000 books.
[28:32]
Most of us don't, but you know. It seems to, sometimes it seems to me it's possible to have 10,000 things in my closet. But the point is, it's not a generalization. It's a metaphor, but it means the universe. But if we say the universe, how do you relate to the universe? First, it's not a universe anyway. But, yeah. But you can have a relationship. The idea of calling the universe the 10,000 things means you have a relationship to these 10,000 things.
[29:35]
You might live in the universe like it was a big box. Vielleicht erlebst du in diesem Universum, als sei es eine große Kiste. But you live with and through the 10,000 things. So already we have to cultivate and authenticate, to cultivate, to relate to the things around you. Also, wir haben dieses Kultivieren und Authentifizieren. Und Kultivieren bedeutet in Beziehung stehen mit den Dingen um einen herum. Ja, is delusion. Und das bedeutet Täuschung, Verwirrung. And what kind of delusion is it?
[30:37]
Well, you cultivate these 10,000 things maybe like you cultivate a field or corn or wheat or something. You cultivate it in relationship to the self. And you authenticate it as real Through the self. And this is delusion. Now I can say that you can pivot the whole of Buddhism on this sentence. If you can work with this sentence in your activity, rendering death and forever with each breathing.
[31:41]
All of the teachings of Buddhism will become apparent and clear to you. Now the move the Buddha made, the historical Buddha, as I've said, and I hope that those of you who are practice with me a lot, will be patient with me in coming back to some basics. Because for the newer people, I want to try to be as clear as possible.
[32:45]
And again, for the newer people, this practice week is an experiment. In combining a feeling of Sashin or monastic life with a more lay life study and so forth. So in the morning I wear my Buddhist dressings. which are conceptually very different. They're big pieces of cloth that don't fit the body. Die konzeptuell sehr anders sind. Sie sind große Stücke Stoffe, die nicht an den Körper angepasst sind.
[33:45]
But did you sort of find a way to live inside like it was a sort of tent? Also man findet sozusagen eine Art darin zu leben, als seien sie so etwas wie ein tragbares Zelt. In the afternoon I wear regular clothes. Nachmittags trage ich normale Kleider. Like that man coming out of the phone booth, you see. And I'm more like Batman than Superman. And wearing clothes that are cut to fit the body so the body is free outside the clothes instead of inside the clothes. And the concept of Clothes in Asia and Buddhism is your body is free inside the cloth.
[34:57]
And the cloth is pretty much as it comes off the loom. So the cloth has its own separate identity and power. What is the lived body inside the clothes in control of its own temperature? And the lived body in the convenience of our Western clothes. Which, for example, isn't so in control of its own temperature. Where you have to put on sweaters and things like that. It's very hard to put a pullover on over this. So we have these questions that come up. Why do we do this formality stuff?
[35:58]
Why do I bow three times before I start talking? I won't in the afternoon. It's a waste of time. It takes five minutes or so. Yeah, but for me, I'm acknowledging that what I'm speaking about is in the context of what this figure on the altar represents. So I make it clear with my lived body. Ich zeige es mit meinem gelebten Körper. I don't just think it. Ich denke mir das nicht. Oh, now I'm talking about Buddhism and I respect the lineage of practitioners.
[37:07]
Ich denke mir nicht bloß jetzt spreche ich über Buddhismus und nicht respektiere... No, I actually physically bow. Is this a different statement than just saying it in my head? Nein, ich... Verbeugen mich körperlich, ist das ein anderes Statement, eine andere Aussage? And why does the handmade, mostly handmade, Kesu bell, the big bell there, have such a fancy Victorian Buddhist red lacquered stand? These are the questions I want to be part of our practice week seminar. Das sind die Fragen, die ich möchte, dass die alle Teil eurer Praxis dieses Seminars sind.
[38:30]
Also der Schritt, den der Buddha gemacht hat, der historische Buddha, In the context of his own teaching and practice and living, in the context of what we now call Hinduism, there was the overall sense of an eternal, permanent self. Well, the Buddha had to kind of take a position that separated his teaching from that. It wasn't a political move. It was an instrumental move. He couldn't deny the self. Really, because we all function in some sort of way with the self. I love you, Mommy, as much as I want to.
[39:54]
Yeah, that's the self speaking. So the Buddha's move was to say the body is the self. Now, what does that mean? It means that the self, while we function through a self, the continuity of self is the body. So to finish the practice I want to give you, the suggestion I want to give you, the exercise, is see if you can bring the continuity of attention to the body and not to the self. Look if you can bring the continuity of attention.
[41:10]
Of attention. Schaut, ob ihr die Kontinuität der Aufmerksamkeit in den Körper bringen könnt. Away from. From the self to the body as self. Weg von dem Selbst hin zu dem Körper als Selbst. Yeah. As if you were crossing a crevasse, a big crevasse in the mountains. Yeah, an icy gorge. You can't be thinking, oh, what am I going to do later in the day? You've got to have your entire attention on how to get across this icy crevasse. So Buddhism, the teaching really suggests some kind of athletic-like attention to the continuity of each moment, of the self-body, the body-self.
[42:12]
So Buddhism really presents an athletic attention to the self-body in every moment. So that's your exercise for the next week. You can bump into each other, I don't care. Just try to shift into this bodily continuity. And try not to convey the self to things. Just as an exercise. And see what happens. That's enough for today. Sorry, I went on so long.
[43:29]
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