Are you standing the whole time? I try. Is something wrong with your bottom? Maybe you heard about it. No, I didn't hear about it. That's correct. Oh, dear. So maybe you should stand next to the Shakyamuni so you look exactly alike. Yeah, I think I may, I think I might. I wish I may, I wish I might make the wish, have the wish I make tonight. Yeah. I wish I may.

[01:02]

I think that I wish I might have the wish I make tonight. You don't have to translate it. It just popped into my head as I was coming over here. So I thought, yeah, I do have a wish for you, for us and our Ango. But also little phrases like that. which don't exactly mean anything, but I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I make tonight. We have to find, you'll have to find in German, Deutsch, ways of embodying, because that's in my body, I didn't think of that, it's just in my body, ways to bring various basic teachings into your body so they just appear in your activity. Dieser Vers ist einfach aufgetaucht, als ich hier rübergekommen bin. Da habe ich nicht drüber nachgedacht. Er ist einfach aufgetaucht. Und ich habe schon Wünsche für euch und für diese Praxisperiode.

[02:03]

Aber ich glaube, wir müssten mit Versen wie diesem, wie diesem, ich wünschte, ich könnte, ich wünschte, ich könnte vielleicht, und dann irgendwas mit einem Wunsch heute Abend oder so, Verses like this, which are ingrained in us physically, we have to look at them in English and then also in German, how we basically teach in this physical way that they are ingrained in us and appear on their own. This is the first time I've given a sort of formal teisho in ten years or one year or six months or something. Anyway, it's a do-do. Do robes belong in the Zendo or in the Tesho?

[03:14]

Does it make a difference? I don't know. It does. I am speaking from a tradition, so I wear Buddha's robe. And what about the robes? Do they belong in the Zendo? Are they really necessary? Do they make a difference? Well, I speak from a tradition, and that's why I wear the robes of the Buddha. The 90-day practice period is, of course, an old tradition we've inherited from China, and Buddha's time, too, in a way. And it's... In one lifetime, 90 days is a pretty long time to set aside. But given that 90 days can, simply 90 days can change, affect your whole lifetime, it's not very long.

[04:19]

We've created together, the Sangha, we've created a kind of island here in the middle of the German countryside. But each of us, each of you, have to make it your own little island and you feel for the world if it's going to have its potential power. I mean, as I've been saying recently, practice and practice is a path of discovery It seems to me more than any other of the Buddhist schools Zen gives the least instructions

[06:01]

and expects the most of you to make the practice work. So how it becomes a path of discovery is really up to each of you. The leadership, the mentorship, the experience in my case that I have from Sikhi Rishi, quite a long time doing practice spirits, I can bring into your field as suggestions. But it's up to you to take the suggestions. And as well as a practice of discovery, it's a path of discovery.

[07:51]

It's also a practice of actuality. Simply the concept of everyone has Buddha nature means that Buddhism is not really a religion. Not a belief system. In other words, everything Buddhism is, is embedded in your actuality, your life within the actuality of each moment. So how to open yourself to the actuality of the Buddha. your lifing, your lived life.

[09:18]

We use the instruments, teachings and practices of Buddhism Again, how you apply them, how you understand them, feel them, is what counts. So this needs to become your little island. Maybe big island. There's one of the descriptions of samadhi from the third koan in the Shoyaroku. is hang the sun and the moon in the shadowless forest.

[10:45]

And discern the autumn and spring on the budless branches. And discern autumn and spring Now, this is not philosophy. It's a molded mind or a feel, an energy, It's an image or a feeling that you internalize, like this little verse, I think I could, I think I could. So to hang the sun and moon in the shadowless forest, Yeah, so a forest without shadows is only possible if time is stopped.

[11:58]

So time is stopped, and you're in charge. You're sun and moon. I mean, one reason we get up in Zen practice centers and Zen monastic practice. One reason we get up before the sun comes up is because we get up because we get up. The sun gets up because the sun gets up. It's its own problem. We're our own problem. We get up and then the birds start to get up and the sun comes up.

[13:13]

We are inseparable from the process and independent at the same time. And yet, also, even timeless samadhi, we know autumn and spring on the buddhist branches. So it's a stopped time that includes everything. Includes the sun and moon, which represent time.

[14:14]

Sie enthält Sonne und Mond, die die Zeit repräsentieren. And it includes spring and autumn, which are also time. Sie enthält Frühling und Herbst, und auch das steht für die Zeit. And it includes the buddhist branches. So in this kind of image, this kind of metaphor, can you feel the budless branches in yourself? And can you feel that you're decided courageously, stupidly, courageously? To take 90 days out of your usual life.

[15:34]

Just to let yourself feel the budless branches of whatever your life is. It means you've decided to step out of, you know, this is what you got yourself into, I'm sorry. It means you've decided to step out of your culture. How can you unpack yourself if what you know as yourself is all arisen from your culture? How can you get close to discovering actuality if actuality is just told to you by our culture, which we know is just a version and not an ideal version?

[16:47]

So the effort to realize to come to the realization of a Buddha and the historical Buddha. centuries of our ancestors and they are our ancestors just as much as your biological family or your ancestors. Or they can be your ancestors. been sincerely struggled and struggled for decades and generations, how do we make this possible for ourselves and for others?

[18:24]

I mean, they really have made immense effort. This posture, this sometimes difficult posture, and satisfying posture, Which is so alive and yet gives us the chance to discover stillness. And stillness is the transformative jewel of realization. And the silence is the transformative jewel of realization.

[19:29]

And they come up with this posture, they come up with sashins, they come up with 90-day practice periods. And Duncan emphasizes not the 270 or whatever it is precepts that earlier monastics took, but the 90-day practice period with others. When you see if you can step out of your culture and step out of your, you know, Yeah, learned experience so far.

[20:37]

And establish some new kind of lifing in the world. Some of you know that I'm really One of my life studies has been, how does the societal world and the cultural world we live in form itself? And the cultural world we live in forms itself. And I particularly... I've studied the invention of science as a dynamic and description of our world.

[22:04]

And it's interesting how you can see the shifts and turns on simple shift in the use of words. The word, for example, I want to see if I can feel our way into this with two words. The word evidence, evidence in English, evidence, has been known for many centuries. And various versions of that word.

[23:18]

But it wasn't used really in the sense that we mean to evidential truth, things like that. It wasn't used in that way until, or barely used at all, until around the 17th century. And before that, I mean, you may not get the point exactly, but I think if I continue, you'll get the point I want to make at least, I hope. Because before that, what they used to mean, what we mean by evidence, was something became clear. And this signals the difference between a sensorial world and a cognitive world.

[24:28]

And we're going in this 90-day practice period, ideally we're going back, back, forward, something like that, to a sensorial world. Sam walked me along the path between the buildings at night and the past lights haven't come on or it's just quite dark. Sagen wir mal, ich gehe zwischen den Gebäuden auf den Wegen entlang und es ist dunkel und die Lichter sind entweder noch nicht an oder es sind einfach unbeleuchtete Ecken. And someone's coming toward me, I don't know who it is. Und jemand kommt auf mich zu und ich weiß nicht, wer das ist. And then it becomes clear, it's Uli.

[25:50]

I say, hi Uli. Und dann wird klar, dass das Uli ist. Und dann sage ich, hallo Uli. And then someone else says to me later, who was that on the path? And I say, it was Uli. It was clear to me it was Uli. And then let's imagine the person says, do you have any evidence? Was Uli wearing that usual jacket? Now, what's the difference there? Evidence requires me to think about it. Put it together, it's a constructionist view of the world. And the way concepts of technology and construction and so forth have taken over our thinking. Die Art und Weise, wie Konzepte aus der Technik und aus dem Konstruktivismus, nee, vielleicht aus dem Konstruieren, unser Denken übernommen haben oder in unser Denken eingeflossen sind, die Art und Weise, wie das geschehen ist, hat uns so wie verschlossen für eine sinnliche Welt.

[27:27]

closed us off and closed down our sensorial world. Like closing down a store or something. Okay. And we shifted into cognitive constructivist worldview. The Big Bang is a construction. But the yogic world is an experiential world, a sensorial world. The yogic world is an experienceable world, a sensual world. At the base of the ground of the base of the experiential world is mystery.

[28:37]

And at the bottom or at the bottom of the sensual world lies something mysterious. There is mystery there. The Big Bang is a brilliant, measurable kind of fact. And so in the cognitive constructionist, construction of the constructivist world... confirmed by consciousness. Yeah, it's in some kind of God space or creator space. And even if the Big Bang is a measurable construction,

[29:50]

We still don't know why anything exists. It's still a mystery. So in a yogic world you try to make sense of things, make sense of things, but you allow... fundamentally to be ineffable, to be a mystery. Okay. So it takes a little while for something to be clear. It's a sensorial experience. Let's talk about, instead of people, let's talk about animals, cows.

[31:07]

A Kohlbrenner usually has four, five, six cows in the field next door here. And you can sort of get to know the cows. They have numbers. I don't know if they have names, but they have numbers. Numbers are a cognitive world. But I find all the cows are each different. They have kind of personalities. But I think that the cows, each of them is different. They have something like personalities. It takes me a little while to get to know each cow. And they keep changing them because they go off to be hamburgers. I always need a while to get to know each individual cow. But then it becomes different again and again because the previous ones have gone away to become hamburgers. It's a human history applied to unwilling cows. That's a reference to Nagarjuna saying and Dogen saying ashes are ashes and firewood is firewood.

[32:35]

Firewood is not the past of ashes. Firewood belongs to the history of forests and things like that, but we've applied our human history, our human interest in firewood, so we burn it. So as I say sometimes, pig is not the past of pork. But you say pig and pig, don't you? Yeah, so that's difficult. But cows are not the past of hamburgers. So Dogen says, no cows is cows, no hamburger is hamburger, and don't think there's some kind of simple causation between them.

[33:41]

It's agriculture and cows destroying the planet, which is the history of hamburgers. So I like to get to know the cows. So I have to spend a little time to feel each cow. And until that cow becomes clear. Bis diese Kuh klar wird. And then there's another cow, there's five or six, and it takes a little while.

[34:48]

That cow is always this one, and that one often separates itself, and so forth. And then I develop a feeling for the next cow, and so on, until at some point I know, ah, yes, the cow is always like this and like that, and the cow back there is always a little bit off. Now in a cognitive world, I just walk by the cows. They're sort of there doing their whatever they do. Basically, they kind of like each other and they love each other. But in a sensorial world, they're kind of a space scape, landscape. A sensorial space scape.

[35:51]

I'm really not testing you. I don't know how to talk. That's all. This one was easy. That one was easy. Okay, good. All right. So when I walk, as I get to know the cows, and it takes, you know, probably... some days or a week or so before I really have a feel. The feel the clarity, the clear feel of each cow in its field. And so as I walked over the two wooden bridges, Atmar, conceived, they're great.

[36:55]

I feel the sensorial space-scape of the cows. I just feel them as bumps as I walk across the bridges. then I develop a feeling for this sensual space landscape, this cure. And they are all like little balls or something like that. And if we're here in this 90 days together on this little island, which we do not leave unless there's an emergency. You're trying to find ways to step out of your culture and your personal identities and habits. And see if you can make a reversal and feel the world sensorially, primarily, most often, and not cognize the world.

[38:20]

I mean, you can cognize as much as you want after 90 days, but no cognition now. No smoking, I heard, too. Well, no cognition as well. There you look to see if you can complete such a rotation, if you can complete a rotation. So if you kind of find your own way to do this. One way is to really come into a breath-paced world. You let continuity go. Dogen says something like these 90 days, I forget exactly what he says, but these 90 days can't be measured.

[39:44]

But if you do measure them, they're only 90 days. How can you not measure them? If you stop thinking in terms of continuity or 90 days or time, you're in this shadowless forest. You're in this sensorial world. Not just to people and cows and so forth, but a chair too. You look at a chair until you feel you could design the chair almost, as if you were a chair designer and you looked at a chair and you'd touch for a while to feel what the chair is all about.

[40:51]

I guarantee you, if you can for these as much as possible, as often as you can for these 93 months, Just feel just sets the world. I often say pause for the particular. Maybe I should say now pause for the feel of everything that appears Vielleicht sollte ich jetzt sagen, halte inne für das Gefühl von allem, was auftraut.

[41:55]

Das ist die Praxis der Tatsächlichkeit. Die ist für jeden von uns zugänglich, aber sie ist unter kognitiven Gewohnheiten verborgen. So the world of each inhale, each exhale, each inhale, each exhale breaks up this continuity and much of what we know as self and identity. the world of every inhalation, of every exhalation, of every inhalation, of every exhalation, breaks through. It breaks through the feeling of continuity or the cognitive stream and actually breaks through a large part of our habits and identities. It's to step, literally step into a breath-based world in homeopathic doses is okay.

[43:04]

Small doses work. So you start living in a successive world, not a continuous world. Yeah, it's right here, Bill. You're breathing. Just use your attention to locate your world on each exhale and on each inhale. In the experiential world you feel and accept its ultimate, its mystery.

[44:15]

Then these, and I almost can promise you, then these naive days will live in all the days of your life. Thank you very much.

[44:57]

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