Is tomorrow the last seminar, is that right? And is the last seminar before some of you leave? How do I deal with my attachment? Oh dear, oh well. Anyway, so maybe tomorrow, maybe I will do a seminar with you. Which means mostly that I'll just try to answer some questions, see if it's possible. The only problem with such seminars is that they take forever. Because you have such good questions, it takes me so long to even try to answer them. So if that's the case, maybe you should have third generation questions tomorrow.

[01:14]

That means you ask yourself a question that's important to you and then you answer it yourself and then you answer what question comes out of that and then you answer. And then second or third generation questions are more... But I'll accept half. But I'll accept half-born questions as well. Yeah. And I'm saying that partly because today I find what I might say is more like a series of questions I don't feel so much like presenting something as just presenting some questions.

[02:31]

I've read that Wittgenstein in the latter part of his life repudiated All his earlier, much of his earlier philosophy. Repudiated is regurgitate? No, no. Yeah, he sort of regurgitated, but he also repudiated. Repudiated means said it doesn't belong to me. Widerrufen, that's right. Sounds good. Widerrufen. In the earlier philosophy he was trying to explain things but later he tried to always ask the question, what's going on? And I think, you know, I think

[03:34]

Much of Zen practice is just asking and noticing what's going on. And much of the time noticing you can't answer what's going on. You can notice, but... There's even a limit to what you notice. Now this is rooted in this initial mind I spoke about last time, this initial mind of acceptance. And the art or craft of practice And I don't know how to make a general statement about really what I mean by the art of practice.

[05:13]

Yeah, it's... Yeah, it's... It's all about, it's something you get a feel for, the feeling into the details of. Now last time I made the distinction between, for example, bringing attention to your breath. Something I tell, I say... every other day practically. But it has this problem of assuming a continuity. Yeah. When really... Another way to look at it is to bring your attention to the pulse of each moment.

[06:42]

So instead of bringing your attention to your breath, you're bringing You're finding your breath in each moment. You're finding your vitality in each moment. Now that's, it's okay to, you know, it's okay, it's one way to practice is to bring your attention to your breath. But it's also a little deeper and different to have the intention to find your breath in each moment. The images we have are useful.

[07:50]

They settle in us. They lodge in our... It's lodging into what? Lodge means to be stuck into our presence. Thanks. Yeah, that surprised you. It's an unusual use of the word lodge, so I was testing you. I remember when I first started to practice. I remember Houston Smith, who was a friend of mine and a kind of hero of mine. He asked me to speak to some students at the university where he taught.

[09:19]

Or something like that. And I'd been practicing only a year or so, so I don't know why, but I saw him, he said, you know, in those days, you practice a year, it was unusual. And I used the image of, like, if you were driving along, and you saw, you know, you could see the billboards along the highway. And if like in America, sometimes the billboards completely hide the scenery, the nature. Yeah, and so I said that for me, practice had become noticing that the billboards were like thoughts. Sense impressions, constructs.

[10:30]

And somehow through practicing zazen, the space between the billboards got wider and wider. And you could see that the billboards were made out of the landscape, the trees, you know, whatever has been made into billboards. You could see that the landscape was the source of the billboards. The billboards were constructed from the trees and so on. So I had the... The feeling I remember that from practicing zazen I had the feeling that I had been living much of my life in a world of billboards and I hadn't seen the spaces between the billboards.

[11:47]

I remember being a little embarrassed by the image because it seemed awfully simple and contemporary and highway driving and so on. So now nearly, what, 40 or 45 years later, I still remember it, though. And I didn't realize at the time what depth an image has. The resources that can be in an image. Resources, provisions, groceries. All of you experts in English out there are welcome to throw out.

[13:12]

Why did I say out there? Why did I say all you experts in here? In what sense are you out there? Or not out there? Yeah, so that image has this sense of the observer being in movement. And the billboards being rather stationary. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that somehow the background of the billboards is more stable or more continuous than the billboards.

[14:17]

Yeah, so this image was the source of my, or an expression of my feeling that there's a background mind. And my early experience of practice was that there was a background mind that was always present around, behind, etc., the billboards. Also in meinem ersten Erfahrung von Sasin hatte ich immer das Gefühl, dass es ein Hintergrundgeist gibt, der immer hinter und zwischen und um diese Plakattafeln herum war.

[15:18]

And this... image of a background mind, this really stayed with me. I noticed it in Zazen. And then I began to feel the presence of this background mind all the time. I could feel thoughts and the objects of the world appearing in it and disappearing back into the background. Why did I call it the background? Well, because at that time, certainly, my foreground was my thinking and things I had to do and all that stuff.

[16:21]

And also sometimes that background mind was way in the background. Come back, little Sheba. And also another image I used I sometimes spoke about this background mind or the mind of practice. It's like a woman who's pregnant. who is like a pregnant woman. I assume that's the way it is. You live your daily life. Of course, I don't have this experience. I was never pregnant, only secondary pregnant. And I was told that it doesn't seem to be the same. But in any case, that you're doing your daily life and yet you're always aware that there's this baby in you.

[17:32]

The quickenings. Mm-hmm. So somehow this image I had of Cohen was sort of overlapped with the image of the background mind. of the billboards. This image of the pregnant woman and the background mind kind of merged in my mind. And the background mind felt like something pregnant. It felt like Yeah, maybe there's a baby Buddha there.

[18:33]

Ready to be born. And almost I felt that the more I can stay in touch with this womb, this background mind, it would... more likely come to full term. So I felt the background mind wasn't just something that was present, it was also something I was taking care of in how I noticed the billboards too. Rilke has some sort of saying like, the world is large, but within us it's as deep as the sea. What is this inside-outside distinction?

[19:50]

Again, we talked about it the other day. You open a box, and the outside is now inside. or the inside is now outside. And I was struck when I first went to Japan that really they have a different inside-outside distinction. The house is built so there's a series of steps to the so-called outside. Das Haus ist so gebaut, dass es wie eine Anzahl, eine Reihe von Schritten gibt bis zu diesem sogenannten Draußen.

[20:59]

And at least in the old days, what you were responsible for extended to the middle of the street. Zumindest früher war das so, dass das, für das man verantwortlich warf, bis zur Mitte der Straße vor dem eigenen Haus gegolten hat. And you didn't heat the house. Und man hat das Haus auch nicht geheizt. I mean, if you said to a traditional Japanese person, it was still pretty traditional when I was there, It's freezing. He said, it's freezing cold in here. I can see my breath on the air. Why don't you heat the house? They'd say, why should I heat the house? The house isn't cold. It's your body that's cold. Keep your body. What's wrong with you? So they used to have little, like, lighter fluid cigarettes that they put down in their clothes, and you have to learn how to use them.

[22:06]

I never used them. I mean, I tried it once or twice, but Sukhyoshi always told me, you should adjust your body temperature, you should heat yourself. But this is also like this mind of acceptance. If you're cold, you heat yourself. And so the temperature of the outside and the temperature of the inside is more or less quite similar.

[23:20]

In those days, Japanese people would say, if you go in these buildings, if they're too heated or too cold, you get sick. Yeah, I remember at Tassajara we had no heat at all, and it didn't get that cold, but it got down to sometimes 10 degrees Fahrenheit. That's above freezing. Really? No, that's below freezing. It's above zero, but it's quite a bit below freezing. Yeah, okay, the zeros, other zeros. Yeah, I'm sorry. Where am I? It wasn't. That cold very often, but sometimes, and I get so used to it that when I went back out towards San Francisco, my whole body would tingle because of the heat.

[24:37]

I used to be, you know, we only had kerosene lamps. And I'd get so used to blowing them out at a distance, you know. Okay, I'm just telling you this is a joke. That really, though occasionally I would be in San Francisco and I'd try to blow out an electric light. Just out of habit. People say, where's your mindfulness now? Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, really, I'd get up and go... Okay. So this... So I'm bringing up this question of inside-outside distinction. Well, there's no idea.

[26:02]

Again, in Japan, just to point it out some more, there was no idea of public space. There were various kinds of private space and initiated spaces, but not public-private spaces. So in those days, if it was a warm day, the Japanese people went around the Tokyo airport in their underwear. It's a hot day, you take your clothes off. And they had little signs up, please remember Westerners, you know, etc. You should keep your clothes on. But in villages, people just walk around in a hot day.

[27:04]

Everybody's in their underwear. Because they don't have this public-private distinction. Which means they're going to have a different concept of government. What does government rule? Does it rule the public life or the private, etc. ? We take this public-private inside-outside distinction for granted. But if we have the image of the body as a brewing vat again, The etymology. And a different temperature inside than outside. Yeah, but if the Chinese idea is the body is a share of the whole...

[28:08]

then there's really a different inside-outside distinction, if there's any at all. So I'm asking you again, what's going on? Also frage ich euch noch einmal, was passiert, was geht vor sich? When you sit zazen and your sense of the boundaries of your body, usual boundaries disappear or are different. Wenn ihr also im zazen sitzt und eure üblichen Grenzen des Körpers verschwinden oder sind anders. What's going on? Was ist da los? Yeah, they've done studies, but they've noticed, I don't know, I read an article recently, you know, 100, 150 years ago, they noticed that women in big feathered hats would duck through doors and the feathers wouldn't touch the top.

[29:25]

So they've done a lot of studies in what they call peripersonal space, periphery and personal. Periphery means around and what you carry. What you carry around. Can you say the study's name? Peripersonal. Peripersonal. In other words, our body makes mental maps. And it seems to have some kind of, you can track it in the brain, some kind of map and model of the size of the body. And for most people, and monkeys, it's the length of the arm.

[30:50]

A person with short arms has a smaller peripersonal space. But if you give a person a tool, it suddenly increases. Or people, I think, who ride horses have this experience of they know the shape of the horse. And if you're driving a car, you hopefully have some sense of that. In Japan, you really have to be good at it, because they make these tiny spaces that you know they think a car can get through, and just right through. So our body, our peripersonal space becomes also the shape of the car.

[32:03]

So when you're sitting Zazen and your body boundaries disappear and you don't know where your thumbs are they're miles apart. Is this your peripersonal space? What is the boundaries? Or is this the dharmakaya, the body of space? Or if your body is always... updating its sense of space, does zazen in some way actually extend our sense of space?

[33:21]

Does zazen extend our sense of space in our daily life? I think it does. And we come closer to feeling that, again, space connects and not just separates. Now, does this peripersonal space or... Space with different boundaries? Are they the same? What's going on? Is the space that you feel without boundaries, is this just the peripersonal space or are they two different things? So I'm always asking these questions.

[34:31]

You know, when we're chanting, I'm wondering, this sound body we create in chanting, which is different from singing, What kind of space is this sound body? The other day I went to, I was in Zurich, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. By myself. And I had to have lunch, so I went to a restaurant I like. Also, musste ich Mittagessen und bin zu einem Restaurant gegangen, das ich sehr mag.

[35:33]

And I'm kind of a nest builder. Und ich bin so jemand, der immer ein Nest baut. So, if I get to a restaurant, I get my reading glasses and a book. Also, dann komme ich ins Restaurant und dann nehme ich meine Lesebrille und mein Buch und... Maybe I shouldn't have my spouse translate. Yeah. Anyway, when I build a nest, which I do all the time, I don't have a feeling of it protects me, but it starts me. It's a place from which I can start again, like a little egg ready to hatch. And then they brought me a particularly good soup. And I'm thinking now, why do I appreciate the cook making this good soup, etc.?

[36:57]

Now, is my liking this good soup the self that Buddhism wants me to get rid of? Or is this habit I see in myself, is this habit I see in the activity I'm familiar with in this location? I said, is this habit that I see in myself, now could I say it some other way? Is this habit I see in the activity that I usually find in this location, Is this activity, and the activity is actually a word also in Japanese for the body.

[38:03]

What is the body? The body is an activity and a share of the whole. So this activity that I, that is noticed at this location, Is this the self? Is this the self I'm supposed to get rid of? Or I'm supposed to not identify with? Or is the defiling self something that pollutes you or... Now, Otmar in his talk the other day spoke something about what aspects of our noticing are self that's not a problem and self that might be a problem.

[39:15]

Otmar hat in seinem Vortrag darüber gesprochen, welche Aspekte des Bemerkens, Beobachtens ist ein Selbst, das ein Problem darstellt, oder ist ein Selbst, das kein Problem darstellt? Hongji has a poem. Hongji hat ein Gedicht. One of our ancestors. Letting go the edge of the cliff. letting go at the edge of the cliff, if each moment is unique, if each moment is being unique means it's unfamiliar. Wenn jeder Augenblick einzigartig ist, und das bedeutet, er ist uns ungewohnt.

[40:20]

And as unfamiliar, it's maybe fearful or unpredictable. Und wenn er ungewohnt ist, bedeutet das, dass es vielleicht Angst macht oder unvorhersagbar ist. So are we always somehow at the edge of a cliff? Sind wir also immer am Rande eines Abgrundes? But we're letting go at the edge of the cliff. But if you have this mind of acceptance, the habit of this mind of acceptance, so at each moment you feel you can, unique as it is, you can find your breath. You can find your vitality. Whatever is there, you can find your health. You don't just notice your sickness, you notice those parts of you that are also healthy.

[41:28]

And you strengthen those parts. And that's actually the concept of Asian medicine. They treat your health, they don't treat your sickness. But it's related to this yogic idea, at each moment you find and have what you need. Just now is enough. At the pulse of this moment, you find your warmth or coolness. Mm-hmm. So if each moment is unique, you still have the feeling of finding what you need, the confidence of being able to find what you need.

[42:49]

In the next line of this poem, which Paul Rosenblum likes a lot, is taking a step in wholeness or in completeness. Each of your actions come out of a feeling of wholeness. And some people, you know, people talk nowadays a lot about mind and body and they're related and you're one, etc. But I don't notice people really speaking about what is my experience. is when you're no longer in the generalizing world, the generalized world of the mind.

[43:57]

the generalized world of thought, of thinking, where things are predictable, etc. The sheer aliveness of the body Yeah, there's a daughter, a friend of mine. A daughter of a friend of mine. Yeah, Hans-Peter Doerr's daughter. He's an old friend of mine, and his daughter just moved into our neighborhood. And she's raising pigs and horses and goats and things like that.

[45:12]

Right in the next village over there. We'd like to see if she could... Probably she can't stay there. We'd like to see if she could move. I don't know if we want pigs living in the Zendo, but anyway. She has these wonderful pigs that look like leopards. I mean, the spots, anyway. And she says they're becoming extinct or something like that because They don't produce as much fat, so farmers don't like them. Yeah, but they taste a lot better, she says. These pigs are so great, I couldn't imagine tasting them. She said, would you like me to slaughter one for Johannes Hof?

[46:13]

But some of us remember, were you at the seminar in Singen? where all during Zazen we heard the pigs being slaughtered downstairs, and then when we went downstairs at night, we ate them. Sindelfingen, oder? Singen? Singen is Sindelfingen. Yeah, all that. That old dog was also there because she remembered when we were... Beate Aldag was also there. She also remembers this seminar from many years ago. These pigs are fabulous. Ottmar was also there.

[47:14]

You can touch them and they are really alive. Yeah? Well, our body feels that way, too. You know, if I touch Sophia, her ribs, her body, this is something really extraordinary. And when you feel the sheer aliveness of the body, the mind, what do you think? Are you depressed? No, no, unimportant. Taking a step in wholeness. The reed flowers and the bright moonlight mixed. The reed flowers along the... Oh, the reed flowers?

[48:25]

Reed, the reed, R-E-E-D, like flowers that go along the pond. It means the white of the moonlight and the flowers. You see the sort of... Everything is mind. Everything has a sameness. Das Weiße von dem Mondlicht und diese Blumen, that means sameness, das bedeutet das Gleichsein. Or as pulled in, the boat drifts as it will. Ruder hereingezogen, das Boot treibt wie es möchte. Thanks. Vielen Dank. Okay. Good morning to all of you.

[49:17]

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