You changed your mind. Your body changed your mind. Earlier today she said, I'm sick but I'm well enough to translate. I just bowed over there. Without thinking about it, you probably took it for granted that there would be no bells when I bowed. But when I came here and bowed to the cushion and so forth, there were bells. Now, we can try to understand this in various ways and explain it, sort of. And to some extent, of course, I'm trying to explain things

[01:04]

So we could say, if I try to say some kind of explanatory words, is that this is a Sambhogakaya bow. It's an inner bow to myself. So it doesn't include you. Or it only innerly includes you. So a bell is not rung. Okay. Of course, I mean, it's obvious to you that I'm trying to as well as trying to share this, I find it both obvious and mysterious, Ango practice period practice with you.

[02:38]

And I'm simultaneously trying to explain it to myself. I mean, I helped and then developed the practice at Tassajara. And then at Creston. And now here again. And last year when we were talking about doing a practice period, I talked to him, maybe I'd just stay in America and Otmar could lead the practice period. And He said, and I was touched by his saying so, I don't think, he said, I don't think I'm ready to lead a practice period.

[03:58]

Hadn't been in Creston for a while, and also, still, it's a difference between doing a practice period and leading a practice period. And I think he's right. Probably he is right. Because it's a practice which requires embodiment and embeddedness. Embodiment, of course, is an obvious, but by embodiment I mean it's not just embodied in your body, in your postures. But it's also embedded in circumstances, how circumstances are developed and used.

[05:02]

Maybe none of us are ready to lead a practice period. But I made it a big part of my life work, so it's something I'm... Somebody has to do it, so I'm trying. It took, I know, it took many hundreds of Oryoki meals over many years before I felt I could really have an articulated feeling of what orioki practice is actually about.

[06:06]

Now, a number of you have spoken to me in the last week or so about that they've read Dogen's fascicle on Ango on the practice period. And there's naturally a feeling that Dogen is describing the real practice period. And that's completely not true. This is the real practice period. And if we're going to understand what Dogen said in the classical Anga, which I've of course also studied, We have to study it from the priority of the practice period, the embodied practice period we're doing.

[07:17]

In other words, you know, in sociology there's a sense of the inscripted tradition, the written tradition, the embodied tradition. In the Western culture, we generally give priority to the inscripted tradition. But for us in a yogic culture, the priority is given to the embodied tradition. Yeah, now I'm trying to also continue with the story of although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. So I'm trying to speak to also then the statement by the national teacher, Hui Cheng, that

[08:42]

that one born of a mother and father can never explain this to you. Or another version in the account, in the way the story is told. Is this mouth, born of a mother and father, can never explain it to you. Anyway, I'd like to try to give you a feeling for that. And it's also, of course, a comment on insentient beings. Teach the Dharma. But can insentient beings explain what they're teaching? Okay.

[10:03]

Ah, dear. This is fun, but impossible. Das macht Spaß, aber es ist unmöglich. I don't know. How am I ever going to say these things? Ich weiß nicht, ob ich das überhaupt irgendwann sagen kann. Okay, so I'm crazy, I think somewhat a little crazy to try to talk to you about a postural space continuum. But that's one of the entries into what I'm trying to speak about. Now, you know, many, many, well, not really many, it feels like a few days ago to me, but 45 or 50 years ago, And first practicing.

[11:14]

I would say that probably by the contrast between my experience and my concept, my Western concept that space separates, which I brought this up many times over the last five decades, is that my Zazen experience made me see that space connects, space separates, isn't a fact, it's a concept. And it showed me actually that concepts are more defining than perception.

[12:16]

In other words, if you have the concept that space separates, that's what your perception will tell you. Perception will notice all the ways that space separates and say, yeah, that's a fact. But if you change that concept which lies behind perception, And you change it to space connects. The senses say, there is a new boss around here. We have to behave differently.

[13:40]

Okay, guys, let's start noticing that space connects. Oh, yeah, look, it sort of does connect, doesn't it? Oh, okay. It also separates and connects. No. No. What I'm speaking about today is space also is shaping and is shapeable. And this topic is coming up again through making this temporary Zendo. And figuring out how we should walk in it and so forth. So I have a clear sense of what the basic ingredients are. And I got it through an embodying, embedding experience, a practice period over a long time.

[15:07]

And for four years, continuously living in and spending time in temples in Japan. And about 35 years of going fairly regularly to Japan. Yeah, and trying to see how to embody, embed myself in a yoga continuum. When you're first in Japan, for the first, you know, maybe a year or so, if you're in a place where there are a few Westerners, and they don't know Westerners tend to tip while the Japanese don't tip, They don't know?

[16:23]

The taxi drivers know that Westerners tend to tip and Japanese people don't tip. So now they often stop for Westerners. But when I first was in Japan, they wouldn't stop for Westerners. And then Japanese people would sneak ahead of you in mind and get a taxi. And the most common, a taxi driver would go by you and he'd see you and he'd go, That meant, I ain't stopping. But after I found myself embodied in the postural continuum of Japanese culture, I just stood there and taxied one after another, stopped for me. Da bin ich einfach dort gestanden und ein Taxi nach dem anderen hat angehalten.

[17:40]

They wouldn't stop for this Westerner or even this Japanese sometimes. Oh, look at that curious Westerner. He's in our continuum. I'll stop for you. Also sie sind nicht für die anderen Westler stehen geblieben und auch nicht für die Japaner. Sie haben sich gedacht, oh, dieser interessant aussehende Westler, der ist in unserem Kontinuum. Da bleibe ich stehen. So that was part of my study. Also das war Teil meines Studiums. What is the postural continuum that allows a Japanese person to know you'll know how to pay, know where you're going, etc.? Okay. So again, I've given you these categories now of space separates and space connects.

[18:46]

And I've also given you the categories of emotion and feeling. In English, you know, I don't know what you guys do in German. Yeah, and awareness and consciousness. Now, Aquin and Bodhidharma and Rinzai, they all say things like, hey, these are just words, don't get excited. The three worlds are just categories. Okay. I'm giving you categories. And when I first started practicing and having to think about practice in the minds of other people, I decided not to use, except very obvious ones like Dharma and Buddha, Sanskrit or Pali words.

[19:55]

Da habe ich mich dafür entschieden, außer sehr naheliegenden Worten wie Dharma usw., habe ich mich entschieden, keine Sanskrit-Wörter zu verwenden. Because they had no filiation, no little tentacles to all other words in our language. Denn die hatten keine Verbindungen, keine tentakel zu all den anderen Worten in der englischen Sprache. Well, that's how I thought of it. So habe ich darüber nachgedacht. But how would I say it now? I would say that I couldn't, not just that the Sanskrit and Pali words had no embeddedness in my life, But they didn't generate practice. Not only did they not describe practice, they didn't generate practice.

[21:13]

Let me see if I can give you a feeling for what I mean. Okay. So again, these are just categories. They're not real. Die sind nicht real. And I always get a little bit kind of, oh dear, when someone comes to me and say, they start talking about these categories as if they were real. Und ich werde immer ein bisschen, oh je, wenn die Leute zu mir kommen und über diese Kategorien sprechen, als wären sie real. They're not just real. They're just a way of looking at things. Sie sind nicht wirklich. Sie sind einfach eine Art, die Dinge anzuschauen. So it's a process of looking at things, not a description of things. So I said, you know, the other day, 5533. That's just a kind of joke. It would be called in traditional Buddhism, twilight language. In other words, you take it as a practice and you hide it in a symbol so people don't know what you're talking about.

[23:00]

So 5533 just happens to be what I happen to be speaking about in the first couple of teshas. Okay. The first five, or the second five, I don't care which one you call it, is the five aspects, aspects of the senses. In other words, to see that you're seeing the world through the five... as, not through, only as the five senses. And that then, once you begin to notice that, oh, look, I'm seeing the color of the leaves, I'm seeing the movement of the leaves, I'm hearing the leaves, you know, etc., I'm smelling the leaves,

[24:08]

And you know there are only five aspects. And you're immediately in the mystery of an infinite number of aspects. Through your practice of direct perception, mental clarity and so forth, every leaf may be brilliant and precise and glowing like a jewel. But it's only the aspects your senses will show to you, plus the clarity of a mind at ease, And so, no matter how satisfying it is, you know you're in an immense situation that your senses are only five aspects of many, many aspects.

[25:46]

And that turns space into a potential. Because these other aspects that aren't available to the five senses are functioning within this mystery. So we can call this mystery space. And if you think of it that way, then the Dharmakaya has space becomes a much more active presence.

[26:47]

Yeah, okay, so that's one of the five. I don't know if the first one or the second one. But the other five is other five skandhas. Just categories. But they're useful categories to observe how we put ourselves together. When I was a kid, I got interested in number systems and zero and stuff. So I tried to create number systems based on other numbers and things like that. As ich ein Kind war, da habe ich mich interessiert für Zahlensysteme. Die Null hat mich interessiert und ich habe versucht, andere Zahlensysteme zu schaffen.

[27:49]

It's really difficult to do with Roman numerals. Aber das ist sehr schwer mit römischen Zahlen. M, D... Also mit M und D und so weiter. So... So the five skandhas are a way to look at how we're put together. But there are other ways. But Buddhism, from the very beginning almost, has decided, hey, this is a very effective way to look at our beingness. So the idea of the five skandhas is you really got them down. And got them up too. In other words... It's very useful when you're sitting to see yourself enter zazen through the five skandhas.

[29:02]

Until it's embodied and embedded in you. Now I also added the three, the mysteries of body, speech and mind. And the three bodies of Buddha. Okay. Now I've spoken about each of, not Skandhas particularly, but I've spoken about the other four itemized items. But right now I'm speaking about the process of just creating categories. And maybe it turns your experience into sort of three-dimensional chess. Do you know what three-dimensional chess is?

[30:10]

Well, it's three... It's three layers and you can play... Okay. So there's a... Once you really... don't think these things, but you're embodied in these things, you feel the five skandhas. I mean, Agatha's here, I feel her five skandhas. I'm sorry to tell you that, you know. Maybe you will. Oh, please. But I've just been doing this a long time, so the five skandhas, you know, I just boop, boop, boop, boop. And the five aspects, I'm swimming in mystery all the time. Sinking and drowning, too, sometimes. And the three bodies, yeah.

[31:11]

I mean and you know when you bow to somebody if you want to explore I talked to you the other day about the you know allness, innerness and otherness these are just categories Like, I'm bowing there and you don't really notice that there are not three bells. But if there had been bells, you would have felt, hey... Whoever is ringing the bell doesn't know what they're doing. Agatha has not had enough training. Although you hardly noticed that there weren't bells, if there had been bells, you would have noticed. And you would have said, Agatha, no. I mean ten so embodiment works

[32:34]

underneath and in situations. But it doesn't work as long as you're trying to understand it. It only functions with any depth until you embody it. I mean, then you don't come to me and say, you know, how do I practice the five skills? How can I remember all the things you told me? You don't remember, you embody them. And a chemistry, an alchemy, a catalytic alchemy begins to work in situations. Yeah.

[33:52]

So 5533. And it's a way to remind yourself to begin to these things can be embodied. And every now and then you make them articulate just long enough to let them settle back into the body. and be embodied so when you come when we're passing on the road here and we stop and bow you can feel if you want to practice the Sambhogakaya body You can feel an innerness, the inner body, and let's say the Sambhogakaya body is bowing to whoever happens to be there, Jung's.

[35:06]

And then you can imagine you're bowing to Jonas's or Paul's or, you know, Sambogakaya. Now you may think, well, the purpose of imagining it is eventually it'll become true. But it's much more playful than that. You're just having fun. The Sambhogakaya body is the fun body. I mean, Jonas may not be, you know, he may be in a bad mood or something, and hell with the Sambhogakaya body, but, you know, I'm imagining, hey, look at that Sambhogakaya body.

[36:12]

So the imagination is a kind of fun. And do I ever expect it to come true? Of course, but I don't care. And the imagination, well, how much time do I have? None. This is part A of part 1. Okay. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, let's also say now space isn't just a shaping of space.

[37:23]

Space is a process. A potentiality. Yeah. And I think what I should speak about here is the Japanese concept of ma as space. Und ich glaube, worüber ich hier sprechen sollte, ist das japanische Konzept von ma als Raum. So I'll come back to that. Also darauf werde ich zurückkommen, denn wir müssen jetzt aufhören. Now the character for... I mean, the Japanese don't have a word for space like we have. A kind of generalized word like we have. Die Japaner haben kein generalisiertes Wort für Raum, so wie wir das haben. the word they use is ma. But it doesn't mean exactly space. It means in-betweenness or interval. And the kanji is a gate or shutters.

[38:25]

Here's what you should close the window with. Fensterläden. Yeah. And in the gate, in the middle, is the moon. So space is something in which you see the moon in relationship to the gate. Also Raum ist etwas, in dem du den Mond siehst in Beziehung zum Tor. Or you see that space is in relationship to the gate or the shutters and the moon and you, the observer or the writer of the kanji. It's clearly a category. And it's a category which has a lot of vagueness in it. Typical of Japanese. What exactly does it mean? Are you emphasizing the moon or the gate?

[39:43]

Is the gate being shut or is the gate being opened? So it's also the word hashi means chopsticks. But it also means bridge. And it also means edge. So the space is considered a bridge, a connecting space. And an edge. And you can push the edges together and compress it. Or it can be like a Japanese architect would say It's where the kami, the shrine or a spiritual element can come down. You create a space which allows special kind of movement.

[40:45]

That's one reason this stairway is so interesting and important to me. Because it's a transitional space. And You know, in the Zen they often say things like, two arrows meeting in mid-air. And it means, when you shoot an arrow into the air, it's into another world. So it's a way of saying, other worlds there. Can you know exactly where the arrow is going to land? So you don't know exactly where the arrow is going to land. I almost killed myself once. I used to get down on my back and shoot arrows up in the air as far as I could by using my feet to hold the bow.

[41:53]

Also, ich habe, das war meine Gewohnheit, ich habe mich hingelegt, Pfeile in die Luft geschossen, so hoch ich konnte, indem ich meine Füße benutzt habe, um den Bogen zu halten. And we lived out in the country, and behind our house was actually a golf course. Und ich war mitten in diesem fairway. And it was extremely foggy. And I, as usual, pulled my bow. And then I didn't know where the hell it was going to come down. And I was quite good at sending them straight up. So I remember there was no place to run to. I didn't know what to do. And the phone was butted into the ground right beside me. I think I wouldn't be here. Yeah. Anyway, so that's the sense of an arrow. So in the koans when they said it means two different worlds come together on an edge.

[43:08]

So this building over there is conceived as stairs in different places going up with different transitions out of different contexts. So I tried to conceive of a staircase which would be a transitional space and maybe occasionally as you're coming down and someone's coming up something happens Yes, and if it did, we could say this is a teaching that can't be told by one born of a mother or father. entering the process of space all the time, space as an activity, for instance, I'm going to stop in a minute, don't worry.

[44:39]

If you practice with the category of space as in-betweenness, what happens when I enter this room? I'm constantly changing the in-betweenness. Ich verändere fortwährend das Dazwischensein. So I'm in the middle of an in-betweenness, a process. Ich bin in der Mitte eines Prozesses, eines Dazwischenseins. So I say things are not entities, they're activities, but the activities are processes. Also die Dinge sind Aktivitäten und Aktivitäten sind Prozesse. So you can use the concept of in-betweenness And see where it takes you. How it opens up the world which can't be explained by one born of the mother and father. Okay, thank you. Mögen unsere Absichten leichtermaßen jedes Wesen und jeden...

[46:10]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.71