No, you know, in some sense what we're speaking about is to see the Buddha. Or at least that's what has evolved to be our subject somehow out of how we put our placemats. And yet then I come in here and I see the Buddha statue at least. As many of you know, through some complementarity of circumstances, this is a Buddha I used to have lunch and dinner with. Because it was in an Asian antique shop next to a restaurant I ate in regularly.

[01:08]

And I ate there because I liked to look at the Buddha. And then many years later it came to a party or a conference I was at in San Francisco. And I, yeah, it's so nice to see her, him again. I invited him to. Join us here in Johanneshof. Now, one of the things we're planning to do for this 10-year birthday party, which happens to be my 70th nearabouts, at the same time, as you know. First you're 27, and then suddenly you're 70. You don't know how that is. Yeah.

[02:12]

Luckily there was lunch with Buddha in between. So one of the things I'd like us to do is to raise the floor in the altar area. Take out this unnecessary... I don't know what you call it. It comes from the chimney here, from the old furnaces. Because if we raise the floor here in the altar area about... then the Buddha will be a little above us when we look at it. And that will make this area, these three spaces, a little different. Different floor. Now, I've hesitated to do these things because I, at some point, thought we might tear this part of the building down, and the footprint of this building is just about the same as the Zendo at Cresto.

[03:42]

And it's probably something we can do because, you know, get permission to build on this same footprint. And it has rooms upstairs above the Zendo. But I looked at how old I'm getting and I think it won't happen in my life. Yeah, so we'll put the floor in here instead. That'll be good enough. Some of you younger gals and guys can do it, you know.

[04:46]

So, to see the Buddha. So I could have had a title yesterday something like Emptiness and the Buddha. But that wouldn't, you know, yeah, it could be a title. It doesn't help us at all. It's, yeah, not even as good as saying Zurich and Basel are both in Switzerland. That doesn't help us much at all unless you're trying to find an airport. Now, if you say Basel and Zurich are both Swiss cities, and Lugano too, that's a more complex statement. You have to know something about Basel and Zurich and realize... People who live in the two cities don't actually think they're much alike.

[06:05]

But there's Swiss elements to them. Just like there's a Swiss quality to Lugano. Even when you go across the lake into Italy, it's... It's different. So how do you know the difference between Basel and Zurich? Well, to know that they both have some specific number of people living there, supposedly. That doesn't help much. You have to walk in the streets and feel the difference between Zurich and Basel. And similarly, you have to kind of walk in the streets of the Buddha and emptiness, if you're going to know how they're similar or how they're related, etc.

[07:24]

I read in some book recently that somebody said, well, if you're a philosopher who trains himself to analyze things in their existence into its parts so that he sees nothing at all, Well, I mean, we're not going to practice that way. To analyze things so that we end up seeing nothing at all, this is not what we want to do. But it was the scholars, I think, idea that how else you're going to see emptiness when you see form. that for us, you know, we just have to, yeah, what can I say, yeah, enter through form.

[08:38]

To just, as I say, yeah, Notice particulars. Now, I resist saying that. I'd like to find some other way to say it. Say you want to put on the TV.

[09:47]

Yeah. But then you think, I always feel lousy after watching the TV. Or it's the same old, same old. Do you have an expression like that? Yeah, we have exactly the same, but the same old. The same old, same old. So you don't turn it on. So what are you going to do? There's a movement of attention out to, yeah, look at the TV or do something. It might not be so different. You're sitting Zazen, and you kind of like to go outside, so you feel your attention starts wandering around. But you can sort of take that attention, accept that attention, And try to bring it back to just your activity.

[10:58]

So, let me say again, attention, let's not say to particulars, let's say attention to activity, as I have been saying. So we enter through form by bringing attention to activity. Now, I found that practice very often turns on noticing differences in culture, differences in worldview. And that's certainly in the background of everything I say, usually.

[12:05]

It's usually in the background of everything I say. So this noticing activity is one of those things. Now it's the basic whatever of mindfulness practice, four foundations of mindfulness. So what happens when you develop a practice of continuously noticing activity? Now, when you notice your breath, you're not noticing the entity, you're noticing the activity of breathing. So you're not just noticing your breath, you're also getting used to noticing activity, which in this case happens to be the breath. Now, if you really wanted to accelerate your practice, you would

[13:29]

take periods of time and try to rigorously only notice activity. And see if you can resist entity formation. And seeing things as things. Yeah, and if a thingness comes up, you immediately... switch it to activity. Okay. Okay, so you're going to turn on the TV, say. Yeah. But instead you put on a sweater. Yeah, or a shirt or something. Okay, now normally when we put on a sweater, we've got it all choreographed.

[14:39]

You sort of switch off and you go through the motions and suddenly the sweater's on you. But I'm suggesting you... follow the surfaces of activity. Yeah, generally it's sort of negative to say, oh, he's just on the surface. Just on the surface. So I'm talking here not about surface activity, but the activity of surfaces. Oh, sure. He can say anything in German, even things I don't say.

[15:41]

But I don't. But he doesn't do it. He's very modest. Okay. So, you know, like a kid, you know, a kid puts on a sweater and they say, where am I? Because they still feel the inside of the sweater. So I'd like you... I went to Baker Roshi's session and you told me to go inside my sweater. This is a profound teaching. But you kind of go, there's an inside surface too, you know. Now, if it's me, you know, I'd say I go into my office. There's a little bump of a door sill I have to go over.

[16:55]

Yeah, and then there's the handle of the door you have to hold. And then there's... Yeah, surfaces all the way through this little hall. Got a little altar in the window. And there's usually a lot of clothes drying. It's where we dry clothes. And I have a step up to go into my office. Now these are all surfaces. Mm-hmm. surfaces you can bring attention to. And so you divert your attention, I hate to say your attention or my attention because it doesn't really belong, yeah, we're the location of it, but it's not exactly a

[18:02]

There's no I or subjective self which possesses this attention. If there is a self, If there is a provisional self, it's about 1% attention and 99% is the attention. If there is a provisional self, let's imagine the attention is a strip. About 1% is self and 99% of self is actually the attention. So attention is self, perhaps, but we experience a little part of it saying, this part is doing it, sort of. And the more attention can just be within attention, The less self is part of it.

[19:24]

And again, it's an activity of surfaces, I'm saying. Maybe just a thought comes up, and that then becomes the surface of attention. So these are kind of like Mobius strips. You don't know? Mobius? I don't know. How do you pronounce it in German? Mobius. Ah, Mobius. Ah, das sind vielleicht so Mobius-Streifen. Sorry, you say Mobius. Yeah, vielleicht Mobius-Streifen. What if he was a German mathematician and the... Early 19th century or something like that. So, you know, it's a certain... Is this in my history book? The inside becomes the outside, you know, because you have a 180-degree switch. So these surfaces start weaving into you and out of you and weaving together the world.

[20:32]

And they... gather attention, educate attention. You know, I was, you know, one of the things I like about being in Europe is, you know, when I have a chance to be in a medieval or old part of a city. And I had to give a lecture in Bremen recently and a couple of times I walked downtown. And I look at the facades and I mentioned this once or twice recently after being in Bremen. And I look at the facades and I It's a different world than our world.

[21:43]

If I stand and just look at the surface, if I just stand and gaze at the surface of this building. And, you know, gaze is a, I like the word gaze. It means something like to look long and intently. Das heißt so etwas wie etwas lange und intensiv ansehen, betrachten. In English we'd say you gaze, you don't look at the stars, you gaze at the stars. Habt jemand ein besseres Wort? You always gaze. You don't have to point it out. In German, it has a slightly fixed gaze. It's a bit like that. Like Sophia. sometimes just gazes at me.

[22:59]

That's great. I just gaze back at her. Much longer than you could with most adults. When I was a kid, if you were in a bus or something and some other teenager gazed at you and you gazed back at him, they'd start to hit you. And I'm a guy who liked to gaze, so I had to learn, don't look at other male teenagers. And I'm a guy who liked to gaze, so I had to learn, don't look at other male teenagers. So I just gaze at the building. And it gathers attention. It gathers attention very differently than contemporary buildings do. And this gathering of attention is is a different world.

[24:19]

It represents a different world. And one of the ways in which Christianity is similar to our practice, as I find it, And an idea, as I've read, developed between the 11th and 13th centuries of contingency. One thing is contingent on another. Well anyway, the idea developed that at each instance, at each moment, on each instance of the world, each instantiation, is contingent upon God's will, is an act of God's will, or dependent on God's will.

[25:42]

Yesterday I thought I was pretty successful. I didn't know if I could talk about what I did, but I thought I did better than I expected. But today, maybe I'm going to fail. What? But we could fail together. Okay. Agreed. Okay. Okay. So if the world is contingent on each moment... Imminent is something different. Not congruent. No, no. Interdependent is probably the most... Simply interdependent.

[27:00]

Contingency is really a word for interdependence, we could say. Okay. So anyway, this idea developed in Christianity that at each moment... The world was in continuous creation. So the world didn't exist for any reason of its own. It just was a continuous appearance. Now, for some people, this... was the step toward a monistic reduction, to oneness. When it goes in that direction, it's not very Buddhist.

[28:08]

But when it goes in the direction that you can feel in Hildegard von Bingen's music and writings, which are some of the most beautiful music in the world, It goes to a flowering of particularities in which things are felt to be related but also different. So we're noticing things. We notice and follow our curiosity. What appears? Now, if we just are in the midst of a continuous appearance, and we're not trying to find some kind of causal source, and we're not trying to understand, things just appear.

[29:14]

Nothing's added, nothing's subtracted. Die Dinge erscheinen einfach. Nichts ist dazugefügt. Nichts ist weggenommen. We're not trying to look beyond these surfaces. These Mobius strips just appear and intervene. Wir versuchen nicht jenseits dieser Möbusstreifen zu gucken, die sich erscheinen und sich verweben. And they gather our attention. Und sie sammeln unsere Aufmerksamkeit. Now there's There's a background of cultural assumptions. Yeah. There's a kind of macrocosm, microcosm relationships that all cultures assume. When we notice things, we're noticing with a relationship of here or there. Yeah, the stars and the seeds, the baby and etc. So there's some, you can begin to see there's some kind of pattern to just what you notice. But the more you just notice, without trying to understand.

[30:36]

But there's energy and presence in your noticing. Then this contingency of everything is momentarily created by God. People might say they're seeing God's face or feeling the presence of God. This makes sense. Experiential Christianity, I'd call it, is not much different than experiential Buddhism. At each moment you feel things appearing. Out of your own spontaneity, curiosity. And your attention isn't drifting off into something.

[31:37]

It's in the midst of your activity. The activity of yourself. It's all contingent or interdependent. It's different and yet interrelated. And you begin to feel all this texture that's interdependent. So this is somewhere in the midst of form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Now commonly when I was younger I used to have to tour people around the centers and San Francisco, Tassajara, Green Gulch.

[32:42]

When I had to tour people. Yeah, Green Gulch. Yeah, there'd be the Zendo and the big Buddha in the middle. What's that? Is this a religion? Well, I used to have some kind of odd explanation. Yeah, sometimes I say it even myself. If the Buddha represents one who is enlightened, then that possibility of enlightenment has to be present. And has to be everywhere present at all times. So the shift from the historical Buddha to the more cosmic Buddha or Mahayana Buddha or Dharmakaya Buddha the body of the Dharma is an expression of that enlightenment is everywhere at all times possible

[33:57]

I wouldn't say it that way probably very often nowadays. But it is this sense of the interpenetration of everything at all moments. that can arise in you through the attention gathered in activity is what we mean by Dharma and emptiness and is understood to be the nature of enlightenment and Buddhism and the Buddha.

[35:25]

Yeah. Now, I don't think I made that so clear or accessible as I'd like to. So let me just say that try out bringing attention to whatever surface of activity appears. Yeah, you may find yourself inside a sweater. You may find yourself inside a Buddha. Okay, thanks very much. God bless you.

[36:19]

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