I'm in a sea. I feel myself engaged in a sea of practice. Mostly wordless practice. And a sea of practice with waves and troughs, troughs are the space between a wave, and calmness of the water too. Yeah, and in the calmness of the water, the stillness of the water, I feel, even in the waves, And I come in here and I'd like to speak to the stillness I feel in you as well.

[01:02]

And in this, best way I can say it, this sea of practice which is, you know, different every week or two or three or a month. I try to find some a way to bring it into focus or into words too, so I can share it with you. I even have a kind of image that I can find each of your docks and tie up our boats together. All at once, but somehow separately too. And find out how to do this together.

[02:23]

And I kind of don't like it that we record these talks. I don't mind that... I mean, I've gotten used to it and many people like it that I record them. But I'm really only speaking to you. I'm not speaking to people who might listen to the tape or whatever it's called. So I don't like it being so visible. Could we throw that away or something? No, we can't. Yeah. And that light bulb needs to be changed. Where's the work leader?

[03:44]

Okay. And since we've accepted, I've accepted a few of you, some of you who are quite unfamiliar with us, And unfamiliar with this monastic style practice. And unfamiliar with koans. Yeah, but since it's, you know, the last time I'll do something like this, we just thought we could accept people anyway. Anyway. But now I feel I have to make some of these things clear so that you're not lost. Your first question that's implied in the way this seminar is constituted is what is monastic practice in relationship to lay practice?

[05:12]

In the morning it's more monastic style and in the afternoon it's More lay style. So in the morning, like now, I put on robes and so forth. And I'm getting a little old for doing all the bows and things, but I do some of them. And it's a kind of ritual of the tradition, which is okay. But does it really make any difference? And in the afternoon, I won't wear robes. Does it make any difference?

[06:30]

I'm trying to find that out. Every day I'm trying to find these things out. And I mention it a lot because it's on my mind a lot. So what, if I tried to characterize now, what's the difference between lay practice and lay adept practice, lay practice and monastic practice? I would say that lay practice is more societally, economically and mentationally defined. Now you're up here right now.

[07:37]

I find I need to make up words like mentationally. mentally it's a little different flavor in order to speak about this so this is something some of you aren't familiar with this peculiarity of mine And in such an example, I notice that I have to create new words for myself, for example, like the word mentationally, which I have now translated as thought. I could also say mentally, but it's a bit different. That's one thing that those of you who are not yet familiar with, that I always have this speciality to think out words for myself. And I would say, what is the contrast in this way of speaking with a monastic practice?

[08:41]

And this may sound like a strange contrast, but I would say that monastic practice is more biologically defined. You know, in yogic Zen practice, there's really no difference. I mean, the distinction between mind and body is not really present. I mean, the left hand is different from the right hand, but they're still part of the same And Jan, look, what I decided to do during these days, looking at koans,

[09:57]

Instead of looking at one koan in particular, mainly, which I characterized in a note, I guess, Nicole sent out. When you enter one koan, you sort of enter the washing machine of the koan and you have to go through the cycles and finally you come out as soiled as you were. But at least you shook up a bit. But when I want to look at these days, is certain phrases that occur in koan after koan which represent a way of looking at life.

[11:24]

And I think that a good attitude to have when you're looking at koans is kind of an anthropological approach. As if you're looking at a completely alien culture that is societally and culturally and anthropologically, in a physical sense, different in habits, etc. Instead of assuming that this is something well, it's a little bit of a version of something I already know and so forth.

[12:34]

No, maybe it ought to start out with the feeling that it's actually something really different from what I know. Just that there's no real distinction like the kind of distinction we have between mind and body The difference that makes takes years to notice. Like as is well known in Many of us anyway.

[13:40]

In Chinese and Japanese, the word for mind is shin. Or in Japanese, it's very similar in Chinese, it's shin in Japanese. How many of us know that the word for spirit in Chinese and Japanese, or in Japanese very similar to the Chinese shin, And we think of that, but it also means heart. It's also the word for heart. Yeah. And so we think of it as some kind of combination of a feeling or the idea of thinking and feeling are related. Well, you know, that's true. But the experience of it, I mean, it's so common now to talk about mindfulness, right? And it's, you know, what's wrong with mindfulness?

[14:57]

How can you complain about that? But what's really meant in Zen yogic practice is something like feelingfulness. Yeah, good. I could have made that translation too. That's very good. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And mindfulness too, even if we use the term mindfulness, it's not really about being attentive to the outside. It's about feeling mind arising with all appearances. So I'm seeing you all individually as much as possible. Ich sehe euch alle als Einzelne, so weit es möglich ist.

[16:23]

But I also see my mind seeing you, just as real as each of you separately. Aber ich sehe auch, wie oder dass mein Geist euch sieht. Ich sehe das Sehen, genauso wie ich jeden von euch einzeln sehe. And it's a feel which has a kind of... actuality to it, a viscosity to it. And you're participating in this viscosity. And it's this experience which makes mindfulness not just makes you more alert and healthy and things, it's what is transformative about mindfulness practice. So how can I give you some examples of the difference between mentalized attention or mental attention and physicalized or feeling, feeling full attention.

[17:45]

How can I give you examples of this difference between mental attention and embodied or from the feeling of attention? No, I can say physical, but if I say physical, you think you know what I mean. And I don't think you do, if I say physical. Okay. So let's take this word shin again. It's not the concept of mind or the concept of heart or feeling, emotions. It's a feeling like there's a little bar of light here or knowing here.

[18:50]

It's not divided into mind and body, but it's one kind of unit that you feel in this area of your body. The body. And this little column, this little feeling here, you know, sometimes it's this way, sometimes it's this way, sometimes it's this way, has a kind of its own viscosity and a kind of illumination within it. And when you are talking to somebody, you feel this and you feel yourself presenting this to the other person or maybe holding it back a little or putting a little rim around it or something. Okay, so let's just go a slightly different direction.

[20:08]

The earliest teaching of the Buddha is to bring attention to your breath. No, that's not true. The earliest teaching of the Buddha is to bring attention to your inhale and your exhale. No, that's not true. The earliest teaching of the Buddha is to bring your attention to the physical experience of the inhale and the physical experience of the exhale.

[21:13]

Now, okay, now what would that mean? What does that mean? One thing it would mean is you're bringing attention to the lungs. You can call them your lungs, but they're really just the lungs. You're using them a lot though. That's why I called monastic practice more biological or physiological, but maybe biological. Now then, here we've seen one of the problems with the contrast between lay practice, even lay adept practice, and monastic practice.

[22:22]

I mean, monastic practice is set up to give you a chance. You know, I don't believe monastic practice is going to last, and I don't believe we're going to all be wearing these robes and making Japanese kimonos for more than another decade or two. Now, when I started 55 or 60 years ago, I thought that was the case too, but I'm still doing it. Okay. So what does it mean that you're bringing attention, that you have a feeling for attention, not a mentalized attention? Now, it means the first practice of so-called mindfulness is not like being mindful, not falling over and stuff like that.

[23:56]

Naturally, that's rather good if you don't fall over. But again, what it means is your first object of attention is your biology, your physiology. No, I sometimes talk about practicing mindfulness and bodyfulness and so forth. It's like having a little flashlight that you observe your organs and so forth. An inner flashlight. Not so okay, and that's true as a practice. But it's really conceived from my Western point of view, which is starting out the mind, and so the flashlight is like the mind, and the flashlight is examining the organs which are separate from the mind.

[25:21]

And it's useful that I've taught that and done it for years, the various versions of that practice. But it's a practice developed by projecting my mind and body distinction into yoga practice in a way that's not really there. Okay, now say that I... that the first teaching of the Buddha is to bring attention to the... use the breath as a vehicle to bring attention to the body that breathes.

[26:35]

Excuse me, can you say it again? The earliest teaching is to use attention to breath is to use breath as a way to bring attention to the body that breathes. Okay, so I'm not bringing attention to the breath anymore. Also, okay, jetzt bring ich hier nicht mehr Aufmerksamkeit zum Atem. I'm bringing attention to each separate inhale and each, the separateness of each inhale and exhale, and its upward movement, its downward movement, its pause, etc. And one reason we and I don't get the don't really get the point easily is because we don't see the point.

[27:48]

What the hell do you want to do that for? So, I mean, we wouldn't say, I mean, in yogic Zen practice, you wouldn't say to know thyself, Socratic-like stuff. We would say maybe to feel one's aliveness. And so, you know, Heidegger, I loved reading Heidegger, and he's very smart, and it's interesting to see, watch him think, but it's not being in time, it's aliveness, and maybe there's a little time. So it's not to know thyself, it's to know your aliveness.

[28:57]

It's not even your aliveness, to know aliveness which isn't limited to yourness. This is a little challenging to translate. I'm sorry. To know your life. Okay. So I'm sitting in a car. I'm at a stoplight, a red light in a car. Yeah, so I rest in aliveness.

[29:58]

I don't care when the light changes. This is real fun being alive right here. As soon as you have, oh, I get, well, that's discursive mentality. But just aliveness doesn't matter. You have to be alive somewhere. Why not sitting in a stop sign or a stoplight? But as soon as you start thinking, oh, I still have to do this and that, that's discursive, being discursive mentally or thinking discursively, while simply living in the living, there is the feeling, somewhere I have to be alive, why not here? No, stoplight's okay, but, you know, if it's a style, maybe it's a little too much. I love that outside of Dortmund, there used to be a sign. I've told you this before. I taught at Dortmund every... Dortmund? No.

[30:58]

Yeah, anyway, Munster every year, and outside of Munster there was a sign where there had been a construction, and the sign, somebody had written on a billboard, if you think you're in a style, but you are the style. That observation has more application than is obvious. You think you're alive for a purpose, but actually aliveness is your purpose. And if you, sitting at the red light, feel stillness, feel aliveness and stillness, Then when the red light changes, can you stay with that stillness and that aliveness, even though now you're driving?

[32:27]

Recently I've been teaching the four postures of Zazen, and that's a very simple example of the third and fourth posture. And since... probably be useful for me to speak about that. I'll see if I can speak about it during this these days. Okay, so just let's imagine that my practice is now what could have been all these half a century. And it has been implicitly, but it could have been more explicitly. Just bringing feelingful attention to the lungs that breathe.

[33:29]

Nämlich einfach aus dem Gefühl entspringende Aufmerksamkeit zu den atmenden Lungen zu bringen. After a while, more and more, your lungs are... They almost glow with a kind of transparency. Nach einer Weile und immer mehr beginnen deine Lungen fast zu strahlen mit einer Art, mit einem Gefühl von Transparenz. And you just feel your lungs. I think some people smoke because it's an easier way to feel your lungs. But if you start feeling biologically, let's say, physiologically, biologically, feeling the lungs breathing, That feeling begins to extend to your gut, your organs, your kidneys, your stomach. your legs and so forth.

[34:53]

So in these early... Satipatthana Sutra, it also says bring attention from the toes to the crown of the head. But what it really means, and that's how it's translated, it means feel your toes from inside, feel your foot from inside, feel all the way up through so that you become a feeling aliveness. So, another simple example. When I'm a little in a hurry, I'm a little late, and I have to catch up with Atmar, who's going to to open the Zendo.

[36:14]

I might walk on the road instead of the path over the stream. But then I'm in a discursive attentionality. Am I going to be late, etc. ? But if I ideally am not in a discursive mentality, I can walk on the stones and the two bridges if I'm balanced enough to not fall over. And I can drop discursive mentality. And I'm just walking and letting the two bridges and the stones define, give me a kind of biological, time-free definition.

[37:36]

Yeah, one of the phrases from the koan is koan 50, I think. Is if you try to realize this with your conceptual faculty, you'll never find it. Da heißt es, wenn du versuchst, das mit deinem konzeptuellen Verstand zu verwirklichen, dann wirst du es niemals erkennen. Now there's various versions of this statement throughout the koans. What really does it mean? Und also es gibt unterschiedlichste Versionen von dieser Aussage in allen möglichen koans. If we can really get that, it'll be a door in many koans, a door into many koans. And in the koan I've suggested, we looked at partly because we looked at it in relationship to deer. Neil McLean's death at a recent funeral, memorial service.

[39:10]

And his daughter, Carolina, is here. And Neil's a good example of how... The Sangha is created by each of us. He created the Sangha by being the person we often asked for medical advice from. And he was on the governing board. Mm-hmm. And he translated. He tried to perfect his translation and he was great.

[40:13]

And he read up on Buddhist terms so that he would have some German Buddhist terms ready for what I might say. So we looked at this koan where a monk hits the coffin. They're visiting, doing a condolence call to a parishioner who just died. So he knocked on the coffin and said, alive or dead? Yeah, alive or dead. Is Neil alive or dead?

[41:24]

And there's Yendo, who was the famous in the Zen koan world, ferryman. He ferried people across a river. And on both sides of the river, he had a sign up. And when people would come and want to get on the ferry, he would knock on the sign. Which side do you want to go to? Which side do you want to go to? Thank you very much. Vielen Dank. God bless you. God bless you.

[42:25]

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