because it is present to various degrees to us. And I would also say there's another world beside this world. And there's another world, a different world outside this world. And my experience now with 60 some years is Buddhism is designed for a world that we don't live in. There's some kind of background... There's a background assumption in our thinking that all worlds are basically the same and humans are basically the same and so forth.

[01:15]

And Yeah, it's natural that we have that assumption. But in fact, realisational Zen, not just nice guy Zen, assumes a different world than we live in. Okay, so what you said about metaphor lets me point to that in one way. Now, we might think a metaphor is something we should understand and use.

[02:18]

But the only way you use a metaphor is to repeat it. There's no other dimension to a metaphor except repeating it. Even, you know, Einstein's metaphor about elevators and moving in space, etc. They function by contrast, not by understanding. So what does it mean? What does a metaphor assume? A metaphor assumes the world is changing. And you don't have to do anything but hold the metaphor in place and the changing world to evolve the metaphor.

[03:40]

Yeah, it's like the Buddha holds up a flower, supposedly. Or Gute holds up his finger. The point is that the finger looks like it stays the same, but everything's changing around it. So the concept of practicing the precepts is you hold the precepts and then see what happens as the world changes while you're holding the precepts. You don't follow the precepts. You hold them. So you hold the image or metaphor, don't move, while you're sitting.

[04:41]

You don't try to understand. Don't move. Yeah. Okay. Now, what does that imply? Oh, dear. I don't want to talk so much. Oh, dear. What can the matter be? Johnny's so long at the fair. Must have found a girlfriend. So I'll come back to Odir. So let's have someone else say something. I would like to talk about an experience that I had this morning. In this sitting and don't move, what is not difficult anymore for me?

[06:07]

Something arose. It wasn't an impulse. It wasn't a thought. Something came up. And what arose was enlightenment. Is only enlightenment when? When everything is enlightened. Okay. Okay. And I can remember that Roshi said something like that in a teshu. And maybe that has been a question for a long time for me. And all of a sudden it appeared within my perception.

[07:59]

And it felt like a happy or blissful state. I hope. I don't want to say that I'm enlightened, that I don't want to say. Well, that's a polite opinion. But this with you together, and that's what I always think here, But this feeling, and it's so inspiring to be here together with all of you, to sit together with all of you. In that context, it arose, it has arisen.

[09:00]

Well, I mean, one of the big obstacles of... Okay. Okay. I think we really should keep in mind the four, what I'd call, tenets or convictions of Buddhism. So it's been inseparable from everything I've done for the last many decades, but Recently I thought maybe I should just specify it, and it actually seems to make a difference to specify it. Okay, so... Practice assumes a human being, or a mutual being, I don't like human being much, but a mutual being, who knows, who believes, who has the conviction that realization is possible.

[10:17]

that transformation is possible. Okay, that's the first. The second is that it is possible to be free of emotional and mental suffering. Yeah. And third is that it's possible to live and practice in a way that's beneficent to all. And fourth, it's possible to practice in a way that's close to how everything actually exists. Now, why I say they're convictions...

[11:30]

And they can also be understood as metaphors. Because if you don't think these things are possible, you won't notice the possibilities. Okay. It's like you went into a funhouse. Is that what you say in Germany? Funhouse? Yeah, with ghosts that jump out at you and stuff like that. Yeah. They're not usually much fun. But anyway, a funhouse. And you were told to notice, you assumed that the only way out of this place was through doors. But you don't know that all the doors are just painted doors and the real doors look like windows.

[12:58]

So you'd be trapped because you keep trying to open doors and they'd just be painted handles and things. And you wouldn't say, well, that's a window. I can't go out the window. It's, you know. So, I mean, because we're looking for doors, we don't see the windows which say, hey, here's a little bit change in how we suffer. So you have to notice these four windows in which you see into another world. So these four tenets are assumed in practice, and as I think the best way to say it, as I did a minute ago, when you imagine these things are possible, you are much more likely to see and respond to the possibilities.

[14:33]

And one problem with our relationship to enlightenment and transformation If one part of us has an accumulative identity, And you're well trained to be civil and not competitive and so forth like that. Yeah, you might have an enlightenment experience, and you'll say, oh, that's not polite for me to have an enlightenment experience, because my friend doesn't have one.

[15:42]

But then there's the opposite disease. I've had an experience and I'm going to be the next Roshi. But it's just an experience. And we should be able to recognize it as just an experience without adding who it happened to. And as you said, it felt okay if you imagined everyone. It only happened if everyone was enlightened. No, it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to Everything. So enlightenment experiences are transformative, wonderful, and of various degrees, but they're quite common.

[17:00]

Just give a real simple example. You're on a bus. There's been a car accident. The bus isn't going to get you to work on time. And your first inclination, oh, jeez, there's such and such, and at my work I'm supposed to do such and such. But suddenly you realize It's obvious. I can't do anything about it. I mean, I can get out and walk, but I'm going to be half an hour later even. That's a simple realization. I mean, a simple observation. It's a realization or an enlightened experience if never again do you ever feel anxious if you're late.

[18:21]

I mean, that experience, I can't do anything about it, so fine, I'll enjoy the sunset or the stars or the ambulance which has come for the accident. So, there's lots of directions I could go here, but let me say, let me ask again, anybody else wants this? Everyone else? This unparalleled acceptance that you speak of is... I'm sorry, I think the best way to put it is... Unparalleled.

[19:23]

...is without restraint. Without restraint. I would say, right? Unequivocal is if you're wholeheartedly, isn't it? Unequivocally means there is no other choice, how I'm using it. Okay. It's clear, it's unequivocal, but it's this way. There's no way to even discuss it. Da gibt es keine Wahl, das ist also... Equivocal. Ja, unabdingbar. Unabdingbar, ja. There's only one voice. Ja, also unabdingbare akzeptanz, ja. If you could say something to this unequivocal acceptance. You talked about it and within me the question came up, why is it so difficult? And last time this question came up when you talked about the hyper-objects.

[20:34]

and one reason why this unconditional acceptance is so difficult is that I move a lot in the duality. And I've practiced with that during the last weeks and one thing that I found why this unequivocal acceptance is so difficult is because I'm moving within duality quite a bit. And this duality I experience as separating from my feeling again and again. And in one of the koans, Manjushri asked the question, how is it possible to enter into non-duality? To enter into non-duality.

[21:58]

So it means I'm actively moving as and in my practice into connectedness. And that is kind of still around from the last doorstep sermon today as well. What time is lunch? One o'clock. One form of the wake-up call is expressed in what's called now O-O-O ontology and philosophy.

[23:03]

The letters O-O-O. O-O-O-O ontology. Object-oriented ontology. Okay. Okay. Now, this recognition, which they express as object-oriented ontology, has developed with young philosophers. The only ones I know are American philosophers, but there are probably others. There are some British. Some of them are British, which is that our present Anthropocene, or sixth extinction, has brought into philosophy the environmental situation we're in.

[24:08]

I think I didn't understand it. The sixth extinction. There have been five extinctions of everything on the planet. We're now in the midst of the sixth extinction. Like the simple things like less butterflies. Now, the simplest way to describe a hyper-object, which is one of the terms that's come from, coined by Timothy Morton, who is an admirer and friend of Bjork, a Danish singer, who uses the word hyper. Timothy Morton. Timothy Morton? Yeah. Very smart guy.

[25:18]

The simple example is, you feel raindrops keep falling on... I mean, raindrops are falling on your head, right? What's that? The weather. It's also climate change. And if you could really know those raindrops, it means 50 feet of water in New York City in 100 years. And that means 50 feet of water in New York City in 50 years. And he calls it a hyper-object. I would call it, what I have been calling something similar, is extensional objects. For lineage... What we're doing here, a multi-generational Dharma lineage, is a hyper-object.

[26:26]

Each of us is a multi-generational being, though nowadays people don't have much sense of who their great-grandparents were. So a hyper-object in this environmental concern is something that's massively extended in space and time. We only can experience a small aspect of it in the present. Okay. What has caused this problem? From the point of view of East Asian Zen Buddhism and my own experience, what's caused this problem is... One of the things that's caused this problem is the distinction between human nature and...

[27:36]

what's not human, the non-human. Of course, there's a distinction between human Und natürlich gibt es einen Unterschied zwischen menschlich und nichtmenschlich. Aber es ist ein Unterschied in der Abstufung oder im Spektrum, aber nicht in der Art. Und das ist aus dem gleichen Stoff gemacht wie ich. Es ist einfach eine andere Art von Zusammensetzung. So if you practice like the koan which says, heaven and earth and I share the same root. The 10,000 things and I share the same body. Die 10.000 Dinge und ich teilen den gleichen Körper.

[28:54]

No, that's a metaphor. Das ist eine Metapher. Okay. In other words, as Otmar said, metaphors are used because we can't really understand anything. If we imagine a global Google camera, And the global Google camera shows us the whole earth. So that's a high integration image. So the Google camera goes down and we see more and more. Suddenly we see houses, trees, roads, etc., And at a certain level, it notices the categories that our senses notice.

[30:00]

So it notices trees and leaves and, you know, rocks and so forth. Garden hoses. Okay. Okay. But it notices, for us, we notice the categories in which our senses work. Okay, you can go a little in higher resolution and in a tree... of a thousand leaves, each leaf is different. And then you go to a little higher resolution, And we have no words for what is there.

[31:10]

There's patterns and phases and fluctuations that are just beyond any categories we can appreciate. Now Zen is described as a teaching beyond words and concepts. But that means we have access to the world beyond words and concepts. It doesn't mean it's excluded. So the teaching and concept of the Elaya-Vijjana is how do we know, because we are... those categories that don't that we are that freedom or fluidity of categories which we can't fit into any of our sensorial apparatus.

[32:13]

So metaphors allow us to notice into experience which doesn't fall into linguistic or sensorial categories. Okay. Okay, so one of the problems which has deluded us seriously is the distinction between what's human and what's non-human. You know, and I'm not really conversant with the real differences between different philosophers, but in general, I mean, somebody like Kant

[33:17]

views aren't simply just selfish, but they're human-ish. His teaching, his views, as far as I know and can understand, are within the human realm. But the human realm is a delusion. It's not the human realm that's going to be the sixth extinction. So this object-oriented ontology is a response in some ways, many ways, to Heidegger, who's always trying to describe what being is. But from this more fundamental, I think, point of view and East Asian Buddhist point of view, there is no continuity. There's the illusion of continuity.

[34:30]

Yeah, so, all right. But, yes, there is continuity, and yes, there is discrete continuity. What the Dharma means is unit, [...] unit experience. And it's still, it's in the same conceptual realm as a wave or a particle. So to think in metaphors is to say, well, we can't really think accurately about this. Like if you say, it's not one, it's not two.

[35:31]

Well, that's a concept, but it's not graspable. How can it also be not one and not two? Okay. So... Then the question is, and why wisdom is practiced through metaphors, is you choose the metaphor which is closest to how things actually exist, but no explanation can reach into how things actually exist. Also dann nimmst du die Metapher so nah wie möglich an den Dingen zu sein, wie sie wirklich existieren, weil es gibt keine Möglichkeit to find out how things really exist. So it is more fruitful to think in terms, Buddhism has decided, in terms of Dharma units, which are described as in the four marks, in the five Dharmas, and so forth.

[36:45]

And so it is more fruitful in the units, in these units, as they are described in the four characters and the five Dharmas. So if the distinction between the human and non-human, which are instituted in our agricultural practices and how we treat animals and so forth, Now, I think, you know, one of the real points at which we went wrong is plowing the fields, clearing the earth. But I don't think we can be blamed for that. It's just, you know... It seemed like natural, a good way to get a little more food and have a little more people.

[38:02]

And perhaps if we'd done that, Without the distinction between the human and non-human, we would have done it in a more respectful way to how we are also non-human, so-called non-human. Okay. So ontology is a word which is used to mean something like being. So object-oriented ontology is the attempt to remove the distinction between subject and object dualism, and between human and non-human.

[39:08]

And recognize we're all objects. I'm an object. Yes, I'm a little different object than you and this cup, but basically I'm subject to the laws of the physical objective world. So the object-oriented ontology is a school of philosophy now which emphasizes that to think of ourselves all as objects is one of the big steps we can make in trying to come into how we can unequivocally accept what's happening and more, and hopefully realistically.

[40:15]

Ja, und diese Schule versucht, I lost the word again, einen Schritt in die Richtung zu machen, wie wir diese unabdingbare Akzeptanz herstellen können. And, ja. Okay. All right. Lost some. Let's start. Okay, so let's go back to the metaphor. We usually translate it as myriad, but the word myriad actually means 10,000. And often we translate it with myriads and this metaphor myriads actually means ten thousand.

[41:19]

And to translate it as 10,000 as myriad is also a mistake. Because it turns it into a generalization. When it remains, as it does more often in East Asian yogic texts, When it's 10,000, it's countable. It's not a generalization floating. It's 10,000 things right here. So if you're in a... serious practitioner. You take a statement like the 10,000 things and I share the same body.

[42:30]

Now, the power of that is not its meaning or understanding. The power of that is repeating it in every situation where you feel This and I share the same body. This and I share the same body. So until finally you actually feel the trees, the lettuce that you eat, the tar of the road, we're all interrelated. You actually know that experientially, not just as an idea that, oh yes, we're all atoms and molecules. And if we don't notice how we're all objects, we really won't be able to do anything about the sixth extinction we're in the middle of.

[43:55]

So again, The 10,000 things and I share the same body is more or less true, but as a metaphor, it's a practice to actualize the feel of that on each moment. Okay. Okay. Now I'll say one or two, we're supposed to eat at one, right? Yeah. Okay, let me just say something, if I can be brief. I pointed out a few years ago to really see everything as activity and not as entities.

[45:03]

And again, activity in effect is a metaphor. And it's a metaphor in this case for interdependence. And it's a metaphor in this case for interdependence. interdependence. There's no God space. There's no space outside this situation that's different from this space. And one of the big differences in East Asia, is they don't have God's space.

[46:05]

They have ghost space, but not God's space. Ghost space is like, there might be a ghost sitting here, but it's not in a space utterly different than our space. So if you assume this is an activity, you can get to it through the practice of interdependence or you can get to it by using activity as a metaphor. The cup is an activity. I can pick it up. I can put it on the floor. It's supported by these chestnut tree boards. And the fact that it's supported is an activity.

[47:18]

And it's, of course, an activity because someone chose this blue and made it and all that. Okay. All right. If everything's an activity, what does that require of us? It requires attention. What does it mean that attention, then, is the primary dynamic of knowing, not conceptual comparison? And what it requires from us in the attention is a kind of knowledge beyond the comparative perceptual, non-comparative, no, comparative, what?

[48:20]

Concepts. Concepts. comparative categories. When you think discursively, you're thinking in comparative categories. When you're thinking When you're noticing attentionally, there's no contention. Your attention is smooth. It goes over everything. It's not into categories. Okay, okay. So the word mindfulness... The word mind, I'm always impressed by how useful the word mind is in English, the English word mind. But in the end, it becomes the soft thoughts about mindfulness which exist in contemporary Western media. Mindfulness still has the subject who is mindful of something else.

[49:31]

That's a useful practice. It's nice to be careful and not trip over the garden hose. What we're really talking about is not mindfulness, but I would prefer attentional attunement. Now, an opera singer can... if they're, I guess, relatively skillful, can shatter a wine glass. I've seen movies of it. The wine glass starts to... and then it goes... So attentional attunement instead of mindfulness means if I'm looking at this, I'm bringing attention to it. and I'm attuning myself to it.

[50:53]

And this is attuned to me, the me-ness or whatever. And that's also in the koan Otmar is looking at, 52, because it says, the donkey looks in the well, and the well looks at the donkey. So, in 52, East Asian yogic attentional culture, non-discursive attentional culture. Attention is a a skill of engagement and attunement.

[52:07]

And if you're going to investigate everything changing, it's not only interdependent, it's also interindependent, but interdependence is only a code for examining all the ways things are interrelated. So we have to look at various words which help us notice these things. Like we can have interactive, we can have intra-active. We can have indeterminacy. Interdeterminacy.

[53:25]

Indeterminacy. Unbestimmtheit. Unbestimmtheit, ja. Unschärfe. Okay. Now. the attentional is always looking at everything as a process. It's independent, but it's dependent, and it's unpredictable. If your primary way of knowing is noticing, Memory works differently. And you're in a shimmering, vibratory world, not a world of entities. And you're in a shimmering, vibratory world, not a world of entities. Now this woman who died, no, this woman whose husband died, who had a carpet store, and she wasn't interested in carpets, and so she gave us a bunch of carpets.

[54:47]

Also diese Dame, deren Ehemann gestorben ist, der ein Teppichgeschäft hatte, und sie, die nicht an Teppichen interessiert war, hat uns eine ganze Menge Teppiche gegeben. Okay, now, a carpet is, and what makes it, why a carpet that I like, is it's, clearly a kind of vibration. It's woven by probably young boys or young boys and girls And there's probably some master weaver who participates to various degrees. And there's probably... The wool they start with, by the time they're in the middle of the rug, different wool is available.

[55:53]

Yeah, and different dye lots. They're slightly different colors you work along. But they're working within an attentional field, a rhythm. And the good rugs, you can feel they come together at some point in a vibratory field. Now, if you're a practitioner and you're in a field of attentional activity, not entities, when you walk on one of these rugs, you can feel... tuning forks in the rug. It's like a musical score. vibratory feel that went into the weaving is still present there to be read by your own feeling.

[57:11]

My point here is we're in a world in which the primary dynamic is attentional attunement is a really different experiential world than our world of entity-based subject-object distinctions. And it's not entirely different. because the arts are in the realm of this attentional field, like a painter knows when to stop the painting, usually.

[58:13]

The painter feels, well, these brushstrokes, these brushstrokes and this and this area, they've come together. I'll stop now. You can feel that stop when you look at a painting, a good painting. So we've used the phrasing, the turning word of already connected, But that already connectedness is also a potential that's realized more and more through attentional attunement.

[59:13]

Okay. Hi. Thank you. Thanks for translating. Not so easy, I know. Sometimes. I don't know what I'm doing, so why should you know what I'm doing? That's right. I don't usually go this far out. I'm not sure I should, but anyway. If I'm trying to find out, maybe I could even go farther out.

[60:17]

I'm not making any promises.

[60:19]

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