Well, as you know, I'm writing this, some of you know, I'm writing this essay I'm supposed to have sent yesterday to Esalen, etc. As some of you know, I'm writing this essay I'm supposed to have sent yesterday to Esalen, etc. And, you know, as you know, I don't write much, as much as I'd like to. I enjoy it, but you guys keep me busy talking. I don't write as much as I would like to, and I always enjoy it when I can write, but I get too excited and I always have to talk. Myokinoshi called me just before I came over to check up on Vicky and Jonas. Are they behaving themselves? Where is he? He's sick. He's sick. Hey, everyone's sick. What's wrong with you guys?

[01:01]

So far, it's not wrong with me yet, but... Oh, dear. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I woke up at 1.40 and decided to get up at 2.30. Because of my operation, my daughter would say, TMI, too much information. I have to get up one or two or four or five times a night. Anyway, so at 1.40 I decided, oh, at 2.30, okay, I'll get up and continue writing. And I thought, well, maybe I should share it with you, but it's kind of deadly dense.

[02:20]

But Otmars read some of it. I guess you found it comprehensible enough? Yes, it's almost on the way to the whole Sangha already. You sent it to other people? Well, as an invitation, just the four points you sent me. Oh, okay. And Nicole has found what she's seen as understandable or something like that. And made some suggestions for improvement. Yeah. Fair game.

[03:25]

I don't understand a word. You didn't make fun of me. It's funny because I was really trying not to make fun of you, and for some reason that was that friend. Okay. Oh. I've lived through worse. Yeah, so I decided, well, at first I thought, well, geez, maybe more efficient if I just sit here. I have a little altar that I like in my office up there where I sit, and I thought I'd sit there. And then I thought, oh, I hear the wake-up bell. This is crazy. I guess I'll go sit with everyone. So I came this morning to sit with you. Because it's a... Much more information when I sit with you.

[04:33]

Or a different kind of information. I don't know what words to use for these things. Not part of the normal English vocabulary. Ich weiß nicht genau, welche Worte ich benutzen kann, um das zu beschreiben, die nicht Teil des gewöhnlichen englischen Vokabulars sind. But it's kind of an attentional connectivity. Aber was das ist, das ist so eine Art Aufmerksamkeitsverbundenheit. So when I sit with you, I definitely feel I'm in the midst of a field of attentional connectivity. And I said I wanted to speak about how we could say that when you experience suchness, the shift from The shift from experience to suchness, I call them kind of wisdom shifts.

[06:19]

Yeah, maybe I can try to say something about it. But suchness is basically, as I said the other day, only information. And because it's only information it also is the potentiality of a direct experience of emptiness. Now how can I say something about this? Because we're not talking about newspaper information or borrowed consciousness information. Borrowed information. I thought maybe I could read something from a statement of Haruki Murakami.

[07:34]

Some of you I know, I think, read his books, his novels. I remember when Murakami first looked at this, when he was first published. He was criticized, particularly in Japan. The books are not Japanese. They're not Japanese enough. And he lives in New York, and he had a jazz club in Tokyo when he was younger. And he lives in New York and is the owner of a jazz club in Tokyo when he was young. And he's been influenced by lots of American writers, F. Gus Fitzgerald particularly, for example, who wrote The Great Gatsby, etc. And he was influenced by many American writers, like Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby, or I don't know in German, Tender is the Night.

[08:40]

But when I read Murakami, I immediately, whoa, he's more Japanese than any of the other writers. I mean, I would say that the Japanese writing community thinks their novels look are Japanese when they look Japanese from a Western point of view. They're full of cherry blossom and stuff like that. But Japan has a kind of craziness that, yeah, that's in Murakami. You know, I lived in San Francisco throughout the 60s.

[09:59]

I hate Ashbury and all that stuff, and psychedelics. You know, I was even an editor of the Psychedelic Review, which I'd never taken psychedelic, I mean, LSD. But, you know, I certainly was in the midst of all that. And, you know, and the developing music scene and Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore, et cetera. But I was certainly in the middle of everything that was going on. Evelyn Ballroom and Philemore and so on. But then in 1968, because of Sukiroshi's advice, I moved to Japan. And it didn't seem much different.

[11:14]

It was as crazy as Haight-Ashbury. Because they don't, I mean, I think the reason is, it took me a long time to, is they don't make the same kind of inside-outside distinction we make. And I thought about it for a long time, I needed it for a long time. But I think the reason is that they don't make the same kind of inside-outside distinction as we do. Yeah, so the world of dreaming and imagination and consciousness all overlap much more for them than for us. I can't give you... I don't have time this week to give you all the crazy examples.

[12:15]

But the one that popped into my visuality is they designed a building for the World's Fair at that time. I don't know where it was, but anyway, there. They designed a building for the World's Fair. He was in Japan. And they had this huge building. And on top of it, they had mannequins. People? No, mannequins, like in the store windows. Oh, yeah, okay. But they were mannequins doing work with pickaxes and brushes, paintbrushes, and a whole bunch of them were on top of the building. as if the building wasn't finished. They just were there, part of the building. Who would think of that? So this interviewer of Murakami, Haruki,

[13:17]

said Murakami operates from a bedrock trust in his subconscious. If an image arises from that dark inner well, He figures it must be there for some reason. And, you know, we ought to feel that too when we sit, whatever it is. All this stuff comes up. You don't edit it. What is all this about? And the interviewer says that he feels, Murakami feels his job is to record what arises rather than analyze it. And the interviewer says then that Murakami obviously has the feeling that his task is to... Excuse me.

[14:52]

His job is to record. ...to report what appears. Did you cheat during tests when you were in school? Okay. I'm still not done. All right. Murakami says, it's smart people's job to analyze what I write. Anyway, in his novel, Kafka on the Shore, which I read is quite marvelous, Und in seinem Roman Kafka am Strand, den ich gelesen habe und der wirklich wunderbar ist, gibt es eine Szene, in der Fische wie Hagel vom Himmel fallen. Und die Leute fragen mich, warum Fische und warum fallen die vom Himmel? And Murakami says, I don't know.

[16:09]

I have no answer. I just, while I was writing, I just got the idea that something should fall from the sky. And then I thought, well, why not fish? And I said, yeah, fish. Fish would be good. Yeah. And he said, and you know, if that's what comes to me, maybe there's something right about that, something from the subconscious or something that my readers may resonate with. And then he said, so now the reader and I may have a secret place, secret meeting place underground. And in that secret place I share with the readers, maybe it's exactly right that fish should fall from the sky.

[17:35]

It's the meeting place that's established that counts, not analyzing it. Murakami, the interviewer says, Murakami's sense of himself is as a kind of pipeline, a conduit between his subconscious and that of his readers. And he said, people tell me I'm a storyteller. And I say, well, no, I'm a story watcher. And this is quite close to how the Japanese feel about what's happening.

[18:47]

And it's part of a culture also in which, as I've been saying, it's not in the beginning there was the word. In the beginning there was allness. Undefined allness and the words come out of the allness. And you develop a mind which allows a story to appear and you watch it. And he says, he also said to the interviewer, that maybe this explains why I almost never dream. Maybe once a month I dream, he said. When I'm awake, But I don't dream probably because when I'm awake, I get to dream.

[20:04]

And that really is so. I think the first five years of my practice, when I was practicing most intensely, I would say I never dreamed. Everything happened in my zazen. Not my zazen, the zazen, which I was observing. Is Yana's girlfriend sick too? She's sitting. No, she's sitting there. Oh, you're there. Oh, okay. And you're a doctor, right? Myokin Roshi was checking up on you too. Okay. Okay. So how do you distinguish between, that's the question, between newspaper information and this attentionally realized information?

[21:30]

Attentionally realized information. Or experientially realized information. You see, in order to speak about this, I have to kind of create a vocabulary. Yeah. I mean, the other day I said in the Zendo, the slate... tiles. Yeah, which are compressed, foliated, layered, layered volcanic ash or clay.

[22:34]

They were formerly something else and they got so compressed they are now called slate. They had some information about slate. Und das ist Information über Schiefer. Experientially determinable information. Die in der Erfahrung bestimmt oder geprüft werden kann. And then again, are the slates squares or diamonds? Und dann nochmal, ist der Schiefer, sind das Quadrate oder Diamanten? Well, I mean, there are squares from one point of view, and when you embody the walls as your determinative space, they're diamonds.

[23:37]

So you see, whether they're diamonds or squares, it's just information. And if they're only information, diamonds or squares, or the square or rectangular embodiment of the walls, That's all experientially realized information or attentionally realized information. It's not newspaper information. You can feel it functioning. Du kannst spüren, wie diese Information wirkt.

[24:43]

It's a kind of charged space, charged with the rectangular walls and so forth. Es ist eine Art aufgeladener Raum, aufgeladen mit der Rechteckigkeit des Raumes und so weiter. You know, if you flip a coin, wenn du eine Münze wirfst, it's both heads and tails over and over again. We experience it as, oh, it's heads, no, oh, it's tails. But that's only a termination, a reality limit. But if there's no reality limit, it's all of those things, it's all of those positions all the time. And if everything's an activity, then the activity of the flipped coin is heads and tails, heads and tails, heads and tails.

[25:50]

Well, our living, our bodhisattva is a multi-generational Yeah, bodhisattva means, the word means enlightenment suchness. So the, and the bodhisattva is not just the emphasis in Mahayana, it's the replacement for the Buddha in Mahayana. And the Bodhisattva is not just the emphasis in Mahayana Buddhism, but it is the replacement for the Buddha in Mahayana. Because the Bodhisattva is one who is all the positions of the flipped coin. So if we're back in the Zendo over there, over there, right here, now, here, there.

[27:06]

And you experience the slates as square or diamonds. And you feel the rectangular embodiment of the walls in your charged space. And if you take all that information away, there's no left and right, there's no up and down, there's no past and future. And this experience is what's meant by suchness. Now you see when people translate suchness, thusness, etc., do they actually realize they're talking about a flit coin which never terminates? A clipped coin which is only information

[28:17]

It's not yet terminated. So it's also neither heads nor tails. Now that's the best description I can give you of what is meant in Buddhism by suchness. Und das ist die beste Beschreibung, die ich euch geben kann, was im Buddhismus für Soheit gemeint ist. So, if the first... If the rigor or discipline of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, is experience... Wenn die Kraft oder die Disziplin im Zen Buddhismus in die Erfahrung geht... Okay, if it's experience... then how do you know your experience? You can only observe your experience. Otherwise you don't have an experience. You can't study experience without observing it.

[29:36]

And so that observation is attention. And we can run through this again because we really should get this in our practice. First you say, I'm not going to have any story, a Buddhist story, even a... A Hebraic story, a Muslim story, a Christian story. No stories. And if you'd like to choose a story, choose a story. It may enhance your experience and so forth. But strictly speaking, Zen practice, the core of Buddhist practice says no story. The discipline and dynamic of no story. Now you can add a story, that's called the conventional truth.

[31:04]

But you know it's only a story. And to really know it's only a story is also to be in the midst of suchness. Und wirklich zu wissen, dass das nur eine Geschichte ist, bedeutet auch inmitten von So-Heil zu sein. So the rigor of Zen practice is you only know experience. The determinative actuality is experience. Also wirklich die Disziplin in der Praxis, da geht es darum... Determinative actuality, not reality.

[32:04]

Okay. The determinative actuality is experience, not a story. Okay. And that experience requires attention. And first you're developing attention as a tool. When you bring attention to your breathing, you're not only bringing attention to the breathing, you're bringing attention to the tool of attention. Wenn du Aufmerksamkeit zum Atem bringst, dann bringst du nicht wirklich Aufmerksamkeit zum Atem, sondern zum Werkzeug der Aufmerksamkeit. You're developing attention skills. Was du da entwickelst, sind Aufmerksamkeit. And those attention skills eventually, by being attentional to the inhale and the outhale and so forth,

[33:14]

Pretty soon can really sense the organ body. Now, the organ body is, you know, the phrase Shikiroshi used, is code for bringing attention to your entire, your organs, and when you bring attention to your heart, for example, you find out you're actually bringing attention to your circulatory system. And your circulatory system includes your breathing and it's pretty soon the air and so there's less and less experience of an outside and inside. So when I come in here, I'm sitting here, I can feel my attentional body at this moment, if I want to make that choice, is my circulatory system.

[34:34]

Or it's the flexibility of my bone body, which Nicole says she practices. So all of these attentional bodies of the organ body, the biology of Neurology and so forth of your lived life. And all these different body systems, the biology and the physiology of your lived life, are antidotes to the self-referencing body.

[35:53]

Yeah, like that. So if you then begin to develop the tool of attention, you then can start bringing a notice. One of the ingredients of all experience is not just what you're experiencing, but the attention also. So now we can say attention to attention, and now we can say that mind or attention is the partner of all experience. Now you get to the point where you can feel that partnership all the time. So the two main zones, experiential zones of practice, are zazen, where there's no outer movement, but there's an opening out inner movement.

[37:16]

Which you're observing and exploring. Which you get more and there's no end to this, there's no termination. When you're, how old am I? 82. When you're 82, it's still like new every Zazen. I started practicing because I was bored all the time. Now I can't get bored. It's kind of boring. Yeah. So zazen is one of the attentional zones of practice, experiential zones.

[38:44]

And the other is immediacy. And immediacy is opening up, always flowering into all of us. So I can decide that as I walk over here to the lecture or sitting here now, whatever, I'll walk within the partnership of mind and perception. Yeah, so all the time I'm walking over our two bridges and so forth, I feel the partnership of mind arising and leaves not falling.

[39:47]

It's so still out. Only the birds make the photograph look real because there's no wind, no leaves are falling even. But I'm seeing the mind arising even if the leaves are not falling. And then two or three birds come, which makes me realize, oh, I'm not in a photograph. Yeah, so that's a position, a posture, a mental, bodily mind posture you can experiment with as a territory of, attentional territory of knowing. Territory of knowing.

[40:50]

Or I can walk over here, sit here, in the field of mind in which you're all arising in the field of mind, not as a partnership, but you're in the field of mind. And maybe if Murakami was here, he would feel... He would feel a connectivity in this field of mind. And if Murakami were here, then he might have the feeling of a connection in this field of the spirit. Now the field of mind comes before the objects of perception.

[42:07]

First the objects of perception and then the partnership and then the field of mind which actually can have no contents. Or you so fully feel the field of mind, the contents are almost irrelevant, they're just information. And when they really become just information and you have a non-sensorial field of mind, a field of mind not rooted in the senses, This is the experience of suchness. Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much.

[43:28]

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