You know, I don't usually introduce people, but if there's another Zen teacher here, I probably ought to introduce him. So my friend, Myoken Roshi, is sitting right there. And he's French, but he takes care of Eastern Europe. And he has a center in Budapest and Bucharest and Zagreb, Croatia. So if any of you want Zen holidays in the East... With a little crossed legs as part of your vacation. You're welcome to. I'm sure you're welcome to visit. And this is his disciple Bar... Bar... Borash.

[01:05]

It sounds like that forest garlic. Barlock. Barlock. And thank you both for coming. And in July, after Norman Fisher and I do a seminar with the title, I think, Zen and Poetry or something like that. We're going to Budapest and do a seminar there, but just also be in... Budapest. And I just found out this morning that my daughter Sally from Portugal may join us too. It's getting bigger and bigger, you know. And we can all go. If you buy now, the tickets are cheap.

[02:06]

I'm sorry. No. Anyway, thank you for being here. So somehow I find myself speaking about this verticality of words. Just my way of trying to say it. But there's a Japanese word Kori, K-O-R-I, it's romanized. And Paul Rosenblum has mentioned it in his lectures. But it means just here. And that means just here. But actually it means, when you look at the character, the kanji, it means inside this.

[03:27]

Now just here or here doesn't have the same practice dimension, let's put it that way, of inside this. What a difference between here and inside this. And now, the etymology of now? Is, yeah, this here. And it also has, shares roots with him, her, his, she. So it has a sense of, a subjective sense or a observing. Someone's present for something.

[04:28]

this. And bad English is, you know, this here book, you're taught not to say that. But this here book, yeah, might be better than this book. And the etymology of now also means that which remains. So it has in it the sense of, a subjective sense of an observer and the sense of duration, that which remains behind or stays. Now you could practice with now as a kind of arriving on the inside. So we could turn the word now into a gate phrase or a wado, inside arriving. And why not?

[06:01]

I can suggest you might practice with that. Arriving inside, just now arriving inside. Where inside and outside, those boundaries... loosen or disappear. So, what is a... I mean, we have this word, non-dual, the world is non-dual, etc. Yeah, that doesn't help much, it's too philosophical. But the practice of non-duality would really simply be just... now arriving inside this.

[07:09]

Now we've taken away the horizontality of the word now and opened up its, as I would put it, verticality. Now, as you know, for a Westerner, I've been doing this a pretty long time, 45 years or so. And I've tried to... find ways to identify practice clearly enough that I can practice it. So, you know, gate phrases, as I put it, have been important, very important to me.

[08:16]

But just finding terms in English for practice has been important to me. So I, as Joseph said yesterday to me, he was saying he doesn't mind my going over things I've gone over before. And I really appreciate that, saying that. Because I have this kind of standard in myself of never repeating myself. If any talk I give isn't at least in part new, new to me too, I'm depressed afterwards for days.

[09:17]

That's an exaggeration. But I do feel like, oh, I'm failing. Because really practice is to find the uniqueness. Always the uniqueness. It's there. It's here. But I do have to get us on the same page, as we say. On the same page like you're reading a book. We're all on the same page. We're all in the same place. Yes, so that's part of why in each seminar I have to establish a certain territory that we're talking about. But also these terms and phrases have been with me now 20, 30, 40 years. Yes, so they sit beside each other often.

[10:41]

But then they begin colonizing each other. They start occupying the adjacent space. And sometimes something that's an obvious connection takes me 20 years to see. It's so obvious, but they were just resting beside each other. This was one practice. I don't map practices on top of each other. So I see this territory move, a term or a phrase, kind of occupies the adjacent space. Yeah, it's all a kind of living activity. These phrases live in you and evolve with your own practice. So I'm trying also in to find ways to, and I depend on the talent of my translator, to find ways to create a phrase which can live in English and can live in

[12:08]

Now we have the term in Zen Buddhism, dead words and live words. And now is a dead word. But just now, inside this, is a living word. Because you can live it. Okay, let's go back to here present.

[13:15]

What is the present? Now, it's amazing there's a present at all. We live this present and obviously take it for granted and we better take it for granted or we'll have a lot of problems. But even though we take it for granted, why is there a present? No. This is really a question Buddhist practitioners ask from the very beginning. If If, as I said, it's already passed, already passed, already passed, what I said a moment ago is in the past. It's on the tape recorder or MP3 player, which I don't know how to operate. We're in this rolling, flowing present.

[14:18]

Why does this now have a certain duration for us? Why can we turn a now into an inside this in which we arrive? The present isn't a fact of physics. It's a fact of our experience. It's not a fact of... It's a fact of our experience. Yeah. I mean, from the point of view of physics, science, everything is just... momentary interrelationships.

[15:30]

And that's true for us, too, as practitioners. But we have a sense of duration. And the idea of dharma and Buddhism, we call it dharmism as well as Buddhism, And Dharma in a big sense means the teaching. But really, what is this? What is the teaching? The teaching is that in the midst of everything changing, In the midst of momentariness. Now, it's given that there's momentariness. It's given that there's momentariness. And that momentariness is... a matrix of interpenetration or interdependency, interrelationship.

[16:58]

So how are we going to find, if that's the case, how are we going to find our sense of life in the middle of such momentariness. Well, mostly people do it by establishing a sense, assuming a sense of permanence. The world is permanent or semi-permanent. Yeah, it is. I mean, from our experience, it's usually... The word for truth in English shares the same root with tree. And when we go out of the door today, the tree will probably be in the same place it was earlier.

[18:02]

And we need it to be there. Yeah, but if we call it a tree, we turn it into an entity. But it's not an entity. It's a, yeah, my usual example, it's better called a treeing. Because it's an activity, even if it's usually there when you come out in the morning. In Crestone, we're having quite a lot of problem with the treeing.

[19:03]

With Kerstin, we have a lot of problems Because there's a general drought in the New Mexico, Colorado, southern Colorado area. A drought. What's a drought? No rain. And the Santa Fe, the northern New Mexico area has lost 90% of their opinions. That's mostly all the trees. Okay. They think this year they'll lose the last 10%. Because there's a beetle which attacks weakened trees and it's attacking our trees too. It's not quite as bad. But we're very aware that the trees are not necessarily always there in the morning. One of our biggest trees between the Main house in Hotuan, a little Japanese-style building.

[20:26]

One of our real old trees. Suddenly had started having brown stuff on it. We had to take it out completely because otherwise the beetles moved to other trees. Yeah, so we really want to find a way. I mean, treeing is one way to remind yourself it's not an entity. Entity. So he may be stretching German, but I'm stretching English too. Because there really aren't words for much of what we're talking about.

[21:28]

But it doesn't make sense to use the Buddhist terms, Sanskrit terms, etc. It's much better to deal with our experience of the word in English or German and then extend it. So what is this here present? What do I mean when I say it's not an entity? Okay. The example I tried to use the other day was, this is a bell.

[22:31]

It's actually quite hard. Kick it and it'll hurt your feet. And you might break the bell, too, probably, because these bells have a lot of crystalline structure in there. So is this a bell? In Buddhist terms, it's not a bell. You could try using it as a teacup. I've tried it. It tastes pretty terrible. You could use it for paperclips. Then it would be a paperclip holder. Okay. Now you may think this is just dumb, all this talk.

[23:40]

Of course it's a bell. But Buddhism doesn't say it's a bell. Buddhism says it's a bell only when it has the activity of a bell. And what's that? It's air moving. It's your ears apprehending it. It's the fact that I decided to hit it. It's the fact that I have a stick with cloth on it that makes a better sound than if it's just wood. And so in what sense, where is the entity of the bell?

[24:41]

Now this is, yeah, this is also atoms. And yet all of this is atoms in different patterns. So the pattern, you can't say the pattern's an entity. And it's bronze, so it must be a mixture of copper and tin or something like that. And somebody made it. I think it's even signed. And somebody thought of it. So at what point is it an entity? Is it an entity when it's molecules? Is it an entity when it's the idea in the crafts person? Is it an entity when it's copper ore or tin ore? Is it an entity when somebody noticed you could mine and make copper and tin?

[25:59]

Is it an entity when the store sold it, I suppose, in some sense? But even in the store, it's really a focus of relationships. Mine and the store and the maker and the shelf it's sitting on and so forth. So typically, I mean, we can say that there's no such thing as a bell. As an entity. And not in any substantial sense. And this is exactly the meaning of emptiness. Emptiness means entitylessness. Whoa! Whoa! So entitylessness is, yeah, one way to get inside the word emptiness.

[27:21]

Now what's the difference? If you don't have a sense of entitylessness, if you have a sense of a world of entities, which is to get inside the word permanence, Because intellectually you can know everything is changing and everything is not permanent, etc. But if in fact you live in the world as if you were living with entities, This is a delusion of permanence.

[28:35]

You're explicitly really, or implicitly for sure, assuming permanence in your way you live and think. So when I hit the bell and you hear the bell, we make this a bell. Okay. So again we have, let's go back to this question, if we're in this momentariness and we don't want to assume permanence, how are we going to have a practice sense, an activity sense, So the present isn't an entity. Yeah. Now, if you think in terms of entities, basically you treat the world as a container.

[29:36]

We have the feeling we're living in a container which... We don't have much to do with. Now, the environmental movement since Rachel Carson and in the 60s has changed the world's view, so political policy is that it's not a container, it's an ecological environment. So the environmental movements, especially Rachel Carson in the 60s, have changed this worldview, so to speak, and it no longer feels like a container, but rather like an... It's an ecological... interactive environment.

[30:43]

But still, the way businesses exploit the environment, they're treating it like an entity. But simply psychologically, if you feel you're living in a container... You'll feel, to some extent, a victim of the container, trapped in the container. So what is your present? My actual present that I'm acting in Experientially, it's you and the wall and the tree and, yeah, a couple of buildings of Nymphenburg. And I can think what's on the other side of the garden because I saw it this morning. But that's my thinking. And I'm not rooted in that.

[31:57]

I'm rooted in this present, which is within my own senses. That doesn't mean I shouldn't take thinking responsibility for things I can't see and feel. But I'm experientially rooted in this sphere in which I can act. Aber erfahrungsmäßig bin ich in dieser Gegenwart verwurzelt, in der ich handeln kann. Now, how does, again, Buddhism say, try to mark off some territory, experiential territory of the present? How do they mark? How do they put boundaries? Yeah, yeah. Wie markiert der Buddhismus denn jetzt dieses Territorium sozusagen?

[33:04]

They use the teaching of the four marks. Sie benutzen die Lehre der vier Zeichen. The basic teaching is it's not permanent. Wenn die Kronen It's changing. But we have an experience of a territory of the present. How do we enter into the practice of establishing a present? That's called the four marks. So what are the four marks? Birth. duration, dissolution, and disappearance. Okay, let's start with the first one. What is birth?

[34:06]

You could just say appearance. Something appears. But by using the word birth, it means it's somehow new. It's not just that you've opened your eyes and seen something that was already there. So again, I can look at you and then I can look over at you. You appear when I look at you. You're gone, I'm sorry. And I can look back at you. And if you want to get a physiological sense of this, you can actually simply experiment with opening and shutting your eyes. The world is here. The world is gone. The world is here. The world is gone. And actually, each time I open my eyes, It's slightly different.

[35:18]

Your right eye is down and before it was up. But if I don't do some fiddling around like that, I actually am assuming a kind of permanence. Andreas is always Andreas and he's always like that. And sometimes that's true. But it's actually never true. Andreas is always quite unique. And I think... If you don't think in terms of entities and permanence, you'll find it releases you in some way. I'm sitting here. I don't know what kind of person I'm supposed to be, a Zen teacher or something. If there's a good part of me that doesn't know what I'm doing, I just... Start doing something.

[36:26]

And I think, whoa, what kind of person is that? But I don't really think that very often. Are you making a fool of yourself? Oh, I don't know. So there is some difference when we don't think in entities or implicit permanence. And the more that's a habit, a new habit, we could say a wisdom habit, actually begins to change how you are in the world, because it changes your habits. It changes the world you Inhabit, inside habit. I gave the example the other day of when I first really recognized, you know, now this was my new habit.

[37:28]

It's one of the great craft potters of Japan, Shoji Hamada. Craft. Craft. Craft. Yes. Shoji Hamada. He came to San Jose once, briefly in America, and he made some cups. Someone gave one to me. And yes, it's quite a wonderful cup. And my daughter Sally, she hates me to remind her. When she was four or five, she knocked it off my desk by accident. And it broke into a lot of pieces. And I remember I really had no feeling that something was lost.

[38:55]

The cup was now so much an activity and not an entity. But my feeling was, oh, look, now it's something to clean up. Yes. Now the activity was cleaning it up, so I cleaned it up. And I felt, yeah, now the activity, my second thought was, now potters can make a new cup. Potters something to do. Yeah, and I, yeah, now I could also repair it. And I did repair it. And there's a tradition in Japan of repairing cups like this with glue and gold, and it makes them quite pretty. So I want to give it to my daughter sometime because she should have this because it's one of my recognitions that, hey, practice is working.

[39:59]

So birth. When the cup fell, it was born into a bunch of pieces. This is not just an idea, it's your experience if you practice. Mm-hmm. So each moment that something appears, actually it's always slightly different. And then it has some duration. Why does it have some duration? What is the physiological process by which we establish duration? As I said, it's actually a scanning process.

[41:13]

You can see it if you're, just to use Crestone as an example. We're sitting at about 2,500 meters. And the mountain above us is about 2,500 meters. Or 1,500 meters, something like that. And when you're living there, the mountain is right there. And it's like another world. And it's a weather machine. It kind of throws off storms and in the middle of April or July it hails. You know, it's kind of great.

[42:15]

Where we are is wild enough. We've got mountain lions and bears and all the things in kids' books are outside Sophia's storybooks. But the mountain is like another world. It's storms and winds, and I think, that's my Buddha nature. Well, I don't think that too often. But if you try to take a photograph of it, you stand in front of the building and there's the main house, you take a picture, you get the picture in the mountains away, a little teeny thing in the background. You have to be a really great photographer to somehow... get the actual feeling of the mountain right above the buildings. Because it really is right above the buildings. But what am I doing that the camera doesn't do? I'm actually... taking millions of little photographs or thousands and putting them together.

[43:34]

I see the mountain and I see here and I put them together in my mind. So the present is actually a scanning process. This sense of a location here, I am looking around and putting it together dieses Gefühl der Örtlichkeit hier, ich gucke herum und setze es zusammen mit meinen Sinnen. And as I said also, there's a scanning process of memory. Self-referential memory. And non-self memory. But I hardly notice the non-self memory. Because the self and the present memory are companions in duplicity. They're companions that live harmoniously and sometimes battle.

[44:37]

The present and the self are very interrelated. The present is an act of imagination in our experience. We can go on more about this after lunch sometime. So this duration, there's birth and then duration. And through this act of imagination, of imagining, we, scanning, we create a sense of the present. Which we learn how to act. We learn how to create a present and how to act in a present. Then it dissolves.

[45:53]

So the third mark is dissolution. And the fourth is we dissolve. wipe the slate clean. So the four marks are a way of, which is a definition of a Dharma. The four marks are a way to enter the practice of the present, which is always disappearing. Okay. And Shiri asked me to stop at quarter to one, and I'm not one who follows the clock much, but I'm about 40 seconds late. Julio, you want to say something?

[46:55]

Is it in Buddhism about saying actually what you perceive as permanent is impermanent? So you haven't told me, or is it more about you have the role of permanence and you develop side-by-side feeling for the impermanence, and you have both? That's a good question. Let's leave it till after lunch. It's a good question. I love touch. Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. It looks like we're going to eat here.

[47:28]

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