You don't have to turn around, but I wanted to start right here. Yeah, so I realized that this practice period, that the practice of appearances isn't as simple as it appears. Ich habe in dieser Praxisperiode bemerkt, dass die Praxis mit Erscheinungen nicht so einfach ist, wie sie erscheint. Ja, so I'd like to try to present the attentional domain of appearances. Ja. And also, how a culture which assumes an attentional domain of appearances, how they articulate appearance.

[01:05]

Now in 1890 or so, William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, In 1880 or so, William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, coined the phrase stream of consciousness. Yeah, and it took hold as a contrast to the world of usual consciousness. And novelists began writing novels with the feeling that the stream of mind, consciousness, went on independent of the outside world.

[02:33]

And we take this pretty much for granted. And when we sit zazen, there's suddenly this stream of discursive thought. But in East Asian yogic culture again, the world is divided up into units. It's a series of moments, not extreme of moments. Sometimes, vijñāna, which means to know things separately together, is actually translated into English as stream of consciousness.

[03:57]

So to get the feeling for the practice of appearances, we have to kind of get ourselves free of the idea image of a stream of consciousness. So I'm standing here with the Anja, director, and with the Shuso, And what is my attentional domain? My attentional domain is not the me stream, me, me, me stream of consciousness.

[05:12]

Now the me stream, I'm calling it the me stream, is not entirely absent. Like when you're driving a car, you know you're sitting in the driver's seat and not in the back seat, I hope. But the knowledge that you're sitting in the driver's seat is not your attentional domain, particularly. Your attentional domain is the road and once you're driving, other cars and so forth. So when I'm standing here, coming into the Teisho, my attentional domain is, first of all, it's local, it's just the immediacy.

[06:22]

My attentional domain is those of you, all of you, sitting to my left. Yeah, and there's also a sensorial domain. I feel the room. I actually smell and feel the temperature in the room. And through the sensorial feel of the room, I tune myself. And since we're not usually aware of how deeply mutual everything is, I can point out that when I tune myself by the feel, sensorial feel of the room, I'm actually to some extent

[07:41]

tuning you as well. Now, at least this is the assumption and from my experience, the actuality of the practice of appearances. So I'm moving, I hope to move anyway, otherwise we'll be here for a long time if I just stand here. I hope to move within the sensorial realm. Feeling how the tuning is going as I come into the room. And my intentional domain is just me to see the floorboards and knots on the floor and so forth.

[09:04]

And the memory of when it was sanded by Otmar and others. So I'm moving in this attentional domain and sensorial domain. So I couldn't shuffle along there. And then somehow the corner of the room appears. I required a turn to the left. A new appearance.

[10:13]

Or it's horizontal now instead of vertical. So I continue. I have to put my shoes somewhere. Okay, then there's a kind of division here. I stop here because I can feel the division. In Dukesan this morning, I mentioned to many of you that customarily, you don't step on the lines between tatamis. And in the documentary this morning, I mentioned to some of you that the need is that we don't step on the cracks between the tatamis.

[11:14]

And they have like children's stories, that some kind of samurai might be underneath, thrust his sword through the crack. But it's really about feeling the room, feeling the space as a series of appearances. Almost like a chessboard or a checkersboard. fast so wie ein Schachbrett oder ein Mühlenbrett. When you put the knight down or the rook or the pawn or the bishop. Und wenn du den Turm oder den, wie heißen die alle, den Läufer und so weiter, wenn du die alle aufsetzt.

[12:16]

You don't put them down halfway across the square, you put them down in the middle of the square. then you don't put them on the line or pushed sideways to the square, but you always put them in the middle of the square. And the feeling, and this is also in the East Asian yogic culture, that a stream of consciousness is just blurred. find yourself physically and emotionally and mentally located much more accurately when you feel you're in a series of appearances. Now, I mention this because you know, art, the practice is rooted in this kind of culture.

[13:22]

And if you recognize that it's just the arbitrariness of a culture, You can practice it yourself. For instance, when you go into the doksan room, you can see, look, there's lines there. I will not step on the lines, or maybe I will step on the lines, just to irritate the Roshi. So I feel a little line here, so I stop. And then I step over. And then off. And then something appears again.

[14:27]

Look at one. And then I stop somewhere. Why not here? Why don't we swap? You hold this. Okay, so now this makes a nice little shape here, a kind of T, so I step into the T, onto it and into it. Now I feel this T, and it's designed for me to feel the T, which lets me step into the slightly larger space, where the bowing mat is. No, I'm standing in a woven grass area.

[15:27]

Now I'm not stopping here really because it's part of the ceremony to begin the show or whatever. I'm stopping here. Again, it's not physical or psychological or ritual. It's just to enjoy the coolness and temperature. and texture of the woven grass, tatami, tatami mat, both mat. Now, if I feel myself in a stream of consciousness, probably the floor didn't feel much different than the woven grass.

[16:59]

But I stand here because I actually like the feeling of the woven grass. It comes up through me. Now, you may think this is all crazy and you're never going to do this between your hall and your living room rug. But you know what Tim Leary used to say about oriental rugs? Watch out, you're walking on someone's psychedelic experience. I'm not sure he was right. So, whether it's crazy or not, I want to show you how this culture is different.

[18:16]

And the exterior looks the same as our culture, and it's worded the same as our culture. But on the other side of the words, there's a rather completely different culture. And the habit of it is one of the doors to the opening of immediacy where time shrinks and space expands. Okay, so now I see all the Anja, the jishas there. I have just to do something. So I just shoot forward. Now I step back in this space and I feel gratitude for those who wove this grass, dried it, wove it, just so I would feel this.

[19:47]

They didn't do it just for the heck of it. They did it so I could feel it. It's not a visual experience. It's a tangible, sensual experience. In a feeling world where the stream, if there is a stream, the stream runs through the details of phenomena. not just through your mental blur. And this bowing mat has this brocade along the sides and you can see that it actually makes a mandala shape.

[21:12]

And the mandala shape is there because it represents the fundamental truth of the two truths. So now I've not just stepped from the floor onto the woven grass, I've also stepped into a mandala. And in the experiential series of appearances, I feel myself in the mandala. So I feel myself in the fundamental realm where there are no preferences. And so finde ich mich wieder oder empfinde mich in der grundlegenden, in der fundamentalen, in diesem fundamentalen Bereich, wo es keine Vorliegen gibt.

[22:19]

Yes, the third Zen patriarch, ancestor said, the great way is not difficult. Wie der dritte Zen-Vorfahrer, der dritte Patriarch gesagt hat, der große Weg ist nicht schwer. Only don't pick and choose. So once I step into the mandala, I shift into a mind where there are no preferences. I mean really no preferences. So the practice of the two truths is to actually feel yourself in every situation where on one hand you have preferences, on the other hand you can feel absolute no preferences. Alive or dead, who cares? And one of the marks of an adept practitioner is they really know the realm of no preferences, and they can be there.

[23:26]

These teachings of the Third Path, they're not games, they're are meant to transform your life. And then our third Zen ancestor And he says, if there's a hair and breath distinction, there's a difference between heaven and earth.

[24:30]

So the challenge for the adept practitioner is to really find oneself able to shift between absolutely no preferences and the usual preferences. And it's also a preparation for dying, which, you know, happens. They are that amount of life deficit. Now, if you knew how difficult it was to do this brocade with the gold in it, that's actual gold put on paper, cut into very thin strips, and woven into the silk.

[25:42]

I mean, it's laborious. It takes forever. And we actually can't afford this, but we somehow did. So this brocade cushion is not here just because we can afford it or because it's rather pretty but because it represents people trying to create locations, appearances which are transformative Why you recognize and feel gratitude for the woven grass and straw and the brocade.

[26:54]

Okay, so now I step back, and if possible, don't step on him, you're kidding. This is an appearance. Now this is another appearance. Whoa, Shakyamuni! How'd you get there? I saw you in Freiburg one day. And look, the incense is burned down. I've been talking too much, sorry. Now, Chinese and Japanese kanji characters are a series of appearances.

[29:44]

Most kanji are not just one word. They're usually three, two or three separate characters which together make the meaning. Most kanji are not one word, but usually two or three separate, different characters that together bring out the meaning. One of the separate kanji, or radical, establishes the sound, and another one establishes the meaning. And kanji are gestural. And why are there so many, 20,000, 30,000? Because that's the upper capacity of the bodily memory. Because that is the upper limit of the body memory.

[30:57]

Which far exceeds the mental memory. So they are gestures. And each stroke, when you write it, each stroke is a separate gesture and another separate gesture. And you feel it as a series of appearances, so the kanji takes form before you in slow motion through a kind of series of appearances. And every brushstroke is a spontaneous gesture, a spontaneous movement. And then comes the next movement, the next gesture. And so the kanji slowly takes shape in front of you. It's in slow motion, a series of appearances, separate appearances. Okay. And the kanji for Buddha in Japanese is pronounced hotoke.

[31:59]

And the kanji for Buddha in Japanese is pronounced hotoke. The side kanji is usually simplified, and it's a figure of a standing person. So it's the side form and it's to the left. And the center kanji, the main kanji, means resemble or appearance. And the central kanji means similarity or appearance. So the kanji, when you write it, it means a person standing beside appearance or resemblance.

[33:09]

Wenn du das schreibst, was du dann schreibst dabei, ist ein Mensch, der neben Erscheinung steht, oder neben Ähnlichkeit oder Erscheinung steht. Now, when you are wiping your, cleaning your orioke mat after eating, wenn du deine orioke, diese, diese, diese, Any Asian person who grew up in Asia, East Asian, would feel when they wipe the top part, then they wipe the middle part, and then they wipe the lower part, they feel completely they're making the kanji for three. And then on the left side, after you move the bowls to the center of the mat, you make a vertical stroke. And on the left side, when you lift the shells in the middle, then you make a vertical movement.

[34:36]

And these together make a kanji. I remember sitting in the kitchen with Suzuki Roshi in the 60s. And watching him wipe his eating mat, his yuki mat. And I thought, why does he wipe it on the right with that vertical stroke? Because there's nothing there to wipe. And then I asked myself, why is he wiping it off on the left side with this vertical line? There's nothing there that needs to be cleaned. Completing a gesture which his body knows. One, two, three, and then a vertical. Aber was er da gemacht hat, ist er hat eine Geste vervollständigt, die sein Körper kennt. Eins, zwei, drei und dann einen vertikaler Strich. And it's symbolically and maybe really about cleaning the mat.

[35:38]

Und dabei geht es symbolisch oder vielleicht auch tatsächlich darum, diese Unterlage zu säubern. But it's also just acknowledging a gestural appearance. So a Japanese or Chinese person, when they're standing here and about to bow. And they take their Zagu. And they take their Zagu. the Nishidana Sargu, which is made according to Buddha's own. And you bow in the ordination ceremony, as Evelyn just did, to use it in a as the Buddha and Dharma ancestors used to. So it's not just, you know, why do we give the Zagu the same importance as the Okesa?

[36:50]

Well, first, when I open it, when I put it here, I've actually made the kanji for the Buddha. This is the vertical. So I put it to the side. Then I move it to the center. Then I open it to the Buddha. And what have I opened? A mandala. So I've opened the appearance of the fundamental truth again. Also habe ich wieder die Erscheinung der grundlegenden, der fundamentalen Wahrheit geöffnet. And if I'm really well trained, I keep my stick vertical all the time. Wenn ich wirklich gut ausgebildet bin, dann würde ich meinen Leerstab die ganze Zeit über senkrecht halten. So the mandala is daiten, means it's spread out entirely open.

[37:53]

And the mandala there, there is a daiten, and daiten means that it is completely opened, lowered. I open myself to the Buddha by opening the mandala. And then I overlap it backwards. And so now there's two mandalas. There's the smaller mandala and there's the bigger mandala. And they're simultaneous. Hidden in the smaller mandala is the complete mandala. So this comes in a culture which emphasizes not a stream of consciousness but a series of appearances. And you're playing with, it's a kind of play, playing with the series of appearances which can be several layers of appearances in one act, like the kanji, the big mandala, and the smaller mandala, and so forth.

[39:12]

And, of course, located in the larger bowling mat, mandala. So then, before I bow, I bring my energy up my spine and feel the staff as my backbone. So this is the appearance before I bow. And now I offer this upright spine mind awareness to the Buddha by bowing. And since this is supposedly Buddha's robe and I'm dressed like the Buddha on the altar,

[40:26]

Und weil das hier angeblich die Robe des Buddhas ist, und weil ich vor dem Altar angezogen bin wie der Buddha, I lift the okesa so I don't put my knees on it. deshalb hebe ich das okesa hoch, damit ich nicht meine Knie draufstelle. And Sukhiroshi emphasized that we Westerners need to bow more. So he emphasized that each bow should be three bows. So one bow becomes three bows by touching our head three times. Now the first bow I'm offering myself at the feet of the Buddha. And the second bow, because each bow is different, the second bow is I'm entering a mutual field with the Buddha.

[41:39]

That's how the appearance is articulated. So now I've entered a mutual field with the Buddha. This is all sort of to, in a way, purify myself to prepare for giving the teshu. And I'm purifying myself in the mutual field of the Buddha. Okay, now I do the third bow. And again, you feel the space of the room, and you feel the room on the palms of your hand, and I bring the feel of the room, and I can feel my palms vibrating.

[42:48]

I bring them together as I bow. Now when we lift the hands, Not after each bow. The feeling is the Buddha is standing on your feet, on your hands. So you keep your hands flat and your thumb gently against your hand. So if you're young and agile, when you come down, you actually come down with your back straight. And then you come down, the first thing you touch is your elbows. You touch the cushion. Wenn du jung und agil bist, dann verbeugst du dich idealerweise so, dass du mit dem Rücken gerade nach unten gehst, und das erste, was du auf den Boden auflegst, sind die Ellbogen.

[44:06]

And you're keeping the hands, once you're down, flat. Und wenn du einmal unten bist, dann hältst du die Hände dabei immer flach. And you lift from the wrists like that. If you lift like that, your hands stay flat, and you can feel yourself lifting the Buddha. As you whip the Buddha on the third bow, you stand up into the Buddha and become the Buddha. And now having enacted, first bowed to the Buddha, put myself at the Buddha's feet, and then into a mutual field with the Buddha, and then enacted the Buddha, I now have permission to give the tesha.

[45:10]

And now that I have first surrendered to the Buddha, then entered into a common field with the Buddha, and now have enacted the Buddha, have implemented the Buddha, have entered into the Buddha, no, that's not how you say it, have implemented the Buddha, there I have the permission to give a teshu. No, I think I've used up all my time. That's the first Teisho, a standing Teisho. But I don't think you realized what it means to go through a series of appearances which make you feel empowered to say something in the field, a mutual field we've created.

[46:15]

And the dynamic is rooted in the two truths. When in the tantric side of sotashu and shingonshu, it's rooted in the three truths because the simultaneity of the two truths is the practice. And in the tantric aspect of Buddhism, for example in the Shingon school, one speaks of the three truths, and the third truth is the simultaneity of the two truths, and this simultaneity is the practice of the two truths.

[47:21]

Und diese Lehre von der Übung der Erscheinungen is rooted also in that appearances are not just a single stream. Every appearance is a layer of appearances. That the world is still here. You bow? Oh, my goodness, I'm going to bow. You know, there's something to bow on. You inhale. You receive and you feel it as a reception, a receiving. And then you release the exhale. And then maybe there's no preferences.

[48:28]

And then, oh, the inhale comes. So inhale and exhale are two separate appearances in which you feel the bodily difference. And you shift between the conventional realm and the absolute realm where you really have no preferences. That's a challenge, but that's what an adept practitioner feels when he or she is in stillness. So I think that's enough for today. This is a real challenge, but this is what a advanced practitioner feels, and I think that's enough for today.

[49:43]

Now I have to get my Zagu, Nishidama Zagu, back on my wrist. It's my activity, this activity. Meine Aktivität. Diese Aktivität. Hier stand ich schon viele Male und muss da wieder zurück. Jetzt trete ich wieder in diese Erscheinung ein. Und auch hier war ich schon viele Male. Und jetzt verbeuge ich mich und nehme dabei mein Sagu auf. I keep my feet straight.

[50:53]

I don't move my feet. I just turn my body. I'm located, rooted in this posture. I have this movement. And it's underfolded, which means the whole inside folds are shorter than the longer folds, outside folds, so that when it's done the mandala completely disappears. And I know, but I know the mandala is still there on my wrist. And I know it not only because I know it, I also know it because for 50 years now I've been opening my Zagu.

[52:01]

And I know it not only because I know it, but also because I've been opening my Zagu for 50 years now. To locate myself in the two truths, which is what the Zagu does, I'm using it as the Buddha and Dharma ancestors. So if you can practice even a little now and then, aliveness is a series of appearances. Wenn du auch nur ein bisschen hin und wieder mal Lebendigkeit als eine Abfolge von Erscheinungen praktizieren kannst. The series of appearances allow the subtle world to come in. Weil die Abfolge von Erscheinungen dafür sorgen, dass die subtile Welt hineinfließen kann.

[53:03]

Und das macht möglich, dass die Lehren wirken oder funktionieren. Vielen Dank für eure Geduld. Sometimes I jump and then I'm very thankful. I'm too old to jump. Whoa, where are my shoes? One appears on my left foot. Tell them to appear on my right foot.

[53:37]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_77.85