I'm sorry, I have a bronchial cold, but it's much better than it was in the first Sashim. And is Surya okay? Yeah, I thought it was a little early for her to be. Heike's daughter Surya was here in the latter stages of her pregnancy. And the hospital they wanted to go to was 100 miles, no, 50 kilometers away, 100 kilometers away? 200. Oh, my goodness. The birth house. The birth, yeah. So if I were pregnant and it was that far away, I'd leave early too. Yeah, I said that, and I really wish I could be pregnant. Well... Anyway, let us know what happens.

[01:14]

So what are we doing here? This used to be a farm. And then it was a kinderheim. And then it was a schreinerei. Yeah. And now what is it? And what is it now? Maybe it's a dharma-hof. Maybe it's a dharma-hof. Or dharmaheim. Or a dharmaheim. Very good. Dharma shrine? No. You could actually. That would be good. So obviously I seem to want to speak about the dharma. And this is, we call this the Buddha Dharma Hall.

[02:23]

And in English, I think it must be, you have the same word in German, hall? Yeah. Yeah, it's an enclosed space in the middle of a community that's kind of where decisions are made. A roofed space. Okay. And we've turned this building into a Buddha hall, Dharma hall, Buddha Dharma hall. And an absorption hall, the Zendo. Yeah, or the Dharma practitioner hall. Yeah. You know, I asked myself, how did this happen? And by the way, I know that there's a few of you here who aren't familiar with our way of, or my way of speaking about Zen practice.

[03:44]

Or you have to listen to it twice in English and German. Sorry. But, you know, I always think I'm crystal clear. I mean, something close to crystal clear. But I've had so many people say to me, you know, the first few months of my practicing, I never understood a word you said. I wonder why they stayed if they didn't understand a word I said. But in any case, so I hear that, so maybe I'll try to make sense of the words I use with her help. And even if I don't use neologisms or unusual terms, what we mean by Dharma or a Dharma hall or where we study the truth,

[04:59]

If this is a place, which I hope it is, to practice the truth together, discover the truth together, Yeah, if that's what it is, and I think that's what we want it to be, the simple word for, we can say, truth of how things exist, Dharma, It's not the context and associative field of the word Dharma. Dharma is not something easily put into English or German. Okay.

[06:29]

But basically to hold something in mind that allows you to make sense of the word Dharma as a description of practice, Yeah, it means in English to something that holds in place in the midst of change. Das bedeutet so viel wie etwas, was an Ort und Stelle hält inmitten des Wandels. But the very definition of Dharma is momentariness.

[07:31]

Aber die Definition von Dharma ist Momenthaftigkeit. So how can momentariness hold in the midst of change? Help! Dann ist die Frage, wie kann Momenthaftigkeit inmitten des Wandels halten? And it's etymologically related to the word firm in English. To hold firm. So again, how did this happen? The answer is really completely simple. We wanted to practice together. We wanted to do whatever practice is together.

[08:32]

And I think there's a basic intuition that, yes, family, it's obviously definitively important. But we want some, we feel some need to gather together in a way that isn't just family. And isn't just community, neighborliness, and isn't just society. Kind of fourth way of being together. In a way that feels true or we have a vision of the truth in how we're together. And you're doing a sashin.

[09:49]

We're doing a sashin. And the word sashin means something like to gather or unite or touch the mind. Oh, here it's to touch, feel the mind as the Dharma. Or maybe what holds in the midst of change. Okay. Now, at least in English, mind is a very useful word for, deceptively useful word for translating many aspects of knowing from Sanskrit and Pali.

[11:13]

In English the word mind, in German we mostly say geist, is the English word mind, a often deceivingly good way to translate various kinds of knowledge or knowledge from Sanskrit or Pali. So I say it is useful, the word mind, in Buddhist thinking about, talking about Buddhism. And it's changed the use, the Buddhist use of mind in English has changed the meaning of the word mind, the spread of the word mind in English. So now mind is everyone, everyone wants to be mindful. I mean, it pretends anyway they want to be mindful. My son-in-law is quite close with the part of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial world.

[12:35]

Yeah, and they all want to practice mindfulness and meditation. But they say, we're just too busy. We only have time for microdosing psychedelics. You know, the people are becoming the richest people in the world, the fastest, and they only have time for anyway. So it's not a small matter that we have created this place together to study the truth or discover the truth. If Sashin is to touch the mind, maybe then to discover how the mind is the truth.

[14:05]

Then maybe to discover the truth is to discover how the mind is the truth. So I'm saying all these words in English, which she's saying versions of them in Deutsch. But what, really, what do you mean by mind? We could spend probably the next seven days just talking about what is the touch of the mind. The mind isn't somewhere else. But so what, how can we, we're all, we are. How can we touch the mind because we already are the mind, maybe, maybe, maybe. Wie können wir den Geist berühren?

[15:36]

Wir sind doch schon Geist. Vielleicht oder vielleicht auch nicht. So again, I'm in recent year or so more now I've been trying to find myself speaking about the basics of Zen practice. Im letzten Jahr oder vielleicht schon etwas länger merke ich, dass ich immer mehr über die Grundlagen der Zen-Praxis spreche. Because I'm wondering how You know, Buddhism is pretty easy to understand. But as I keep pointing out, understanding is not realization. Realization is a sort of incubation process in accord with everything all at once. But we can explore these aspects as we go along. So, I mean, if I'm going to look at these basics again, because, you know, again, as I've been speaking, we have, in fact, created a contemporary sangha.

[17:03]

So for those of you who are new to the Dharma Sangha, which is what we call this place, you're in the Dharma Sangha hall. If we're going to... If we have created a contemporary Sangha, how can we make, can this contemporary Sangha, which is primarily or definitively a lay Sangha, can this be a multi-generational Sangha? If I have a single job description given to me by Suzuki Roshi, he said, go, go, boy, and create a multi-dharma, multi-generational sangha.

[18:23]

Oh, really? Yeah. I think it's impossible. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to fulfill my job description. How can we become a multi-generational Sangha when we don't even have a real shared experience of what mind is? How do we get our own experience of touching the mind in a realisational way? And that's not enough. We're together because it's the power of shared touching the mind which creates the power of a multigenerational lineage.

[19:29]

So it's... common now to talk about mindfulness. Everyone has some idea what it means. In general, people think it means directing your attention. In the seamless brain-formed consciousness. But really, mindfulness means to see between the scenes. through the seams of the seamless brain-formed consciousness.

[21:01]

If we're going to speak about that, now we have to speak about what dynamics of knowing are there beyond consciousness, the brain-formed consciousness. When we talk about this now, we have to ask ourselves which forms of knowledge or realization exist beyond the consciousness formed by the brain. This brings us into the common practice. Into the shared practice of mindfulness. The shared craft of the practice of mindfulness.

[22:04]

So then that's, you know, I should probably end, right? Because I started late. We have this ubiquitous mindful practice which comes from the four foundations of mindfulness. Which is, you know, rift as the mindfulness of the body. mindfulness of feelings and mindfulness of mind and mindfulness of dharma but dharma really means in this case phenomenality Yes, but as mind is understood by us Westerners,

[23:24]

We can't wipe the tabula rasa completely, which means to erase an erased blackboard or slate. It doesn't mean a blank slate, it means an erased slate. And the importance of that is you can't fully erase the slate. And as my experience is, we Westerners, we still understand mind as something different from this. Now, I can say, we just don't get it. But it's very difficult for me to say why I say, that's also mine. That's not also mine, that's a piece of wood. But it is very difficult for me to explain why I say that this is also spirit.

[25:03]

You could say, this is not also spirit, this is a piece of wood. We have to find adjectives that describe this piece of wood and spirit in similar ways. So let's first of all change the four practices of mindfulness into the four practices of bodyfulness. And then we have to sort of like incubate that for I mean, if I'm serious, a few years. You just don't get these things through understanding. That's part of our belief that this is not mind.

[26:04]

We think when we understand it in the mind, or we can say it in words, we've got it. Delusion. You may get an A in school, but an F in the Dharma hall. Okay. I've been getting an F for years. This is why I'm struggling with this. Okay, so let's say bodyfulness of the body. Sorry, this is every time. Just say it in English. Bodyfulness of feeling. So you don't have a single thought without feeling it.

[27:29]

There's no thoughts that are real in Dharma practice unless you feel them. So bodyness, fullness of the body, bodyfulness of feeling, Körpersamkeit des Körpers, Körpersamkeit der Empfindungen. And the word embody is already deceptive because it's not embodiment, it's embodiment of the body. Or it's really not having any feeling of that distinction at all. So now then the third, bodyfulness of the mind.

[28:35]

I'm just doing the best I can using words as targets. And then bodyfulness of things. But things actually means dharmas. What makes a thing a dharma? This we should know. verwandelt ein Ding in ein Dharma. Das sollten wir wissen. And really, Dharma itself is a deceptive, let's say, phenomenality. Und das Wort Dharma selbst führt auch in Irre oder kann täuschen. Sagen wir doch lieber Phänomenhaftigkeit. So, bodyfulness of phenomenality. Also, Körpersamkeit der Phänomenhaftigkeit.

[29:36]

You've had enough trouble with these words, so let's stop. Thank you very much.

[29:43]

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