You'd like to know what the realm is that isn't dwelling in the realms of body and mind. Why do you want to know? That is another question, because I will explain it by myself. I will know. That is all I want to know. You'll feel more secure if you can make it clearer. Maybe we can have Alan Watts' book here, The Wisdom of Insecurity. Mm-hmm. the willingness to be insecure or not to know. But I can understand your feeling. But the realm, not breathing in, don't dwell in the realms of mind and body. This is like there's a realm far beyond form and emptiness, that you're not thinking, not living in the categories of form and emptiness.

[01:03]

And the key word in this statement is he doesn't dwell in the realms in mind and body. And he's not caught by myriad things breathing out. But I think to practice with something like that is just to enter into the feeling of it. I mean, the words are meant to give you... Yeah, the words are meant to offer you a certain freedom. And it's not meant to be thought about. Okay? Yes. Yes? Please, in German. We have to translate. I've been in a decision process for two or three months.

[02:11]

And I practiced with it what you said in your last seminar, together things. To let things gather, yes. and supported by the house group, not to go from my side immediately into action, but to let it grow step by step. Now I started to try things out and went into action.

[03:23]

And noticed that my action had some results here in my realm, but I didn't notice that. Right now I am reading the Shurugenshung. Right now I am reading the Shurugenshung. One patriarch said that my thinking can't surpass my action and my action can't surpass my thinking.

[04:50]

And I notice that in my practice right now there is some struggle with this. What is the struggle? I noticed that it's like a circle and I can't come out. What is the circle? Where can't you get out? I can't get out. I can't describe what the circle is.

[06:24]

You feel like you're a cat chasing its tail? Some kind of this. Sometimes. It's not all, there's more. I just feel that now that I've gone into action, that something happens that makes it a little more unstructured, that it becomes a little more chaotic. So that things don't become more structured or clearer, but rather mix again into an undefined state. Since I went into action again, I noticed that the things don't become more clear, but more chaotic. So it's more... An undefined feeling. Indefinite. Indefinite feeling.

[07:26]

Undefined, you can say, but it's indefinite. It could be, Max, that you try to clarify things through thinking, and you notice a deficit in action. Then you act, and you notice that thinking does not follow, and that there is no synchronicity, that one is always in an unequivocal other. Parts of it are to me, yes. I tried to interpret him and said that if he is acting, he has a feeling that his thinking and his trying to order his actions can't follow and if he tries to lose the situation by thinking, he feels that there is not sufficient action behind it and so there is no balance between acting and thinking. Okay.

[08:29]

Well, first of all, just let's look at the statement you said was in Shobo Genzo of some patriarch that action can't exceed thinking and thinking can't exceed action or something like that. Now, if you see a statement, I don't know where this occurs in Shobo Genzo and I'd have to see it in the context, but let's just take it like that. Someone says, action can't exceed thinking and thinking can't exceed action. Okay. What does that mean? It's obviously untrue. So what can it mean? It's obviously untrue because you can... you're thinking you can think all kinds of things unrelated to action. So this statement is so obviously untrue. Why would anyone make it?

[09:35]

What's the truth of it? I mean, in order to feel complete, it should be in balance, action and thinking. Yeah, but how do you get them in balance? And he doesn't say action should be in balance with thinking, he says it can't exceed thinking. When can thinking not exceed action and when can action not exceed thinking? Perhaps thinking is a form of action and action is a form of thinking. This is what he assumes. Yes. But when is that the case? When is it the only case? It's something I speak about often. When is what the case? When action and thinking are unable to be separated.

[10:39]

When is that the case? That's something I mention in lectures 50% of the time. When you separate thought from action. I mean, in that sense, at that moment... No. To separate thought from action means you can think anything without having to act on it. That's one yogic aspect of practice. But when your thinking and your... when your thought is related to your breath and your body, you no longer think things that aren't possible. In the state of body-mind. Yes. And at the center, as I've often said, of the practice of the Eightfold Path is the establishment of the truth body through bringing mindfulness to the breath until your thinking is in the pace of your body.

[11:43]

And as I say often, lie detectors work as often as they do because the body, it's very difficult for the body to lie. So when your thinking is always rooted in your body, and Wittgenstein says something, which I think is quite true, that words, what I call vertical words, are gestures. And if you really look at a person, if they say, if, they raise their shoulders. If you're saying, why? They tip their head. If they say no, they tighten their stomach. Now, I'm not saying that those physical characters, but you can feel words in your body. When you limit your thinking or you aren't, you feel, when you think in a way that isn't joined to the body, It's like watching television for two or three hours. You feel kind of... Well, that kind of thinking makes you feel... Or not so good.

[12:46]

Or it's, again, thinking about... You know, thinking about the narrative self, which is mostly past-future oriented, is thinking that... Now, paratactic thinking... Do you remember I used the word paratactic? Paratactic thinking tends to help you integrate your thinking. You think things without relate. There's no syntactical thinking. There's paratactical thinking. You just see this. You don't think before, after, anything. You just see that. And then I see that. And there's no relation. If I look at you, I just look at you. I look at you, there's no connection. Just you. Just you. So if you kind of... The gate of paratactical thinking is a gate that has a similar effect to... one pointedness in Zaza, in order to be able to really sit without moving. So, and remember the tea ceremony we used to do here, that Japanese lady, who, she did the Sencha tea ceremony.

[13:47]

Did any of you ever see her do it? Yeah. What? Yeah, I remember. You saw her do it? Yeah. Well, it's kind of interesting, you know, it's a, there's the Matcha tea ceremony, which everybody knows, which is a tea ceremony based on instant tea. You have powdered tea and you just whip it up, right? And then there's the Sencha tea ceremony. The Sencha tea ceremony is tea as an infusion process. So it's not instant. The leaves take a while for the water to soak into the leaves and to come out. And when they have the teapot, you hand me the bell there. No, just the bell. You have a much smaller pot. That's when you drink something called A sparrow's tear. And a sparrow's tear means you have such a small drop on the tongue that it spreads throughout your body, but it's just a drop. A sparrow's tear. And when they pour the tea, they have this line of cups. You pour it. And you pour it.

[14:50]

And when you're near the end, it's drip, [...] drip. You just hold it till the drips stop. You don't shake it, you don't tip it, you don't say, the tea's not that good anyway, but this is one more sparrow's tear. Well, the question is, can you really enter the state of mind just letting the drips come? Okay. Without impatience. Just, okay. The sense of that is that that's the pace at which you enjoy the tea. If you don't have that pace, you don't... This small amount of tea you drink doesn't... What was it? It's just bitter. So the matcha tea ceremony actually establishes a different pace than the sencha tea ceremony. And the matcha tea ceremony establishes a pace where you drink tea where you'll enjoy that kind of tea. So the teaching in this is every situation has a different pace.

[15:55]

And if you don't find yourself in that situation, the pace of the actual situation you're in, you will then, thinking won't be, and action won't be united. So this sense of thinking does not exceed action, action does not exceed thinking, if you strictly take cannot, not doesn't, cannot, this is a very yogic statement that means you are in the pace of the situation. And not in a mental pace, not in a pace of the narrative self, not in a pace of what you have to do. That's there, but it's always secondary. Your primary experience is the pace of the situation you're in. And Picasso talks about painting. He says, when I paint, there has to be darkness between me and the canvas. I can't even see the canvas, but I paint into the darkness.

[17:01]

But he's talking about finding the pace... There. He doesn't know what it is. He doesn't know what he's doing. But he paints into the darkness and the painting emerges. That's finding a pace. So, okay. So that's what that statement is rooted in, I think, in Dogen. And that's how Dogen saw the world, for sure. Now, in your case, you're in a situation where you have a whole lot of things going on. You have a son, you know. I mean, you have some basic priorities, which are you need to find a job and you need to live somewhere, as we discussed this morning. And also it works for you to practice because you feel better when you practice. So how can you join where you want to live and work and practice plus your son and your debts?

[18:04]

Well, this is a complicated situation. And I think that what probably you need to do is let things gather within a context. In other words, you say to yourself something like, I will... take any job I find within the next week. And then you just take whatever. If it's a waiter, you're a waiter. If you're a janitor in a local school, you're a janitor in a local school. What is a janitor? Ask my foolish name. A sanitary engineer. Well, they really call janitors now sanitary engineers. I was about to say that. There's so cheap. I gave a lecture in New York once, and a woman I know and a famous Spanish-American tennis player, one of the two or three top tennis players in the world, went to hear my lecture in New York with Suzuki Roshi.

[19:08]

Suzuki Roshi and I were giving a lecture, and he went to hear it, and it was in a Unitarian church, and they went on the wrong day. So they found a door, and they thought, well, this is Zen, the door's unlocked. So they found a basement door, they went in, and they ran into the janitor. And they asked where the lecturer is, and they said, are you the Zen master? And the janitor said, yes. So many concepts. Okay. Or, you know, you take any carpenter job you can find, or whatever. I mean, because you've got to create a context, I think. because otherwise it goes on forever. So gathering as a Dharma practice means you let each moment gather. That's more paratactic thinking. Gathering in the larger sense is you let a process evolve in you, but you still have to put some, in the practical world, you have to have some context for it. And that's why we have this place.

[20:11]

But at some point I said, well, I'm not going to find the ideal place. The next place I'll look at will be it. So I refrained from looking at places for quite a bit. People would say, why don't you go look at this? I'd say no. But finally when I agreed to look at this place, I knew we were in trouble. Because I thought, I'm getting too old to look anymore. But it wasn't such a bad choice. If we could keep it fresh. But we need a lot of help from each other to keep it fresh. And my feeling is, you know, this question I brought up the other day of the person who appears out of the forest, who you don't say, you know, I don't want any advice from a guy like you. You say, geez, somebody appeared out of the forest and I'm lost and I'm happy to have this person help me. Basic question, I think, is every person who comes in the door, why don't you feel that thing?

[21:18]

Every person who comes in the office, every person who phones you, why don't you feel, wow, a voice out in the wilderness of being? Hello? Are you a voice out of the wilderness? And then the person says, are you the Zen master? Okay, thanks a lot.

[21:48]

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