Well, if we keep changing the room every day, I can give the same lecture every day and it will feel different. So I'll try it out. Today I'll give the same lecture as yesterday and see if it feels different. It would be a miracle if I could give the same lecture as yesterday. I can barely, I can easier give a new lecture than the same lecture. It's nice to face you this way. And those three, Adi Buddhism, Tara and Avlokiteshvara in the back are impressive. Since I know some of you are a little worried about me

[01:01]

Actually a little sicker than yesterday. Yesterday afternoon I felt like, jeez, I'm almost normal. But it's, you know, it's not, for me, not a big problem. It's kind of a nuisance, that's all. Marie Louise, my wife, had Before I left, she hoped I didn't get it, and I don't think I caught it from her. But she had a, I don't know, six weeks or so of a quite serious incapacitating cold. Yeah, but this is pretty normal for me, once a year or every couple of years. Yeah, it just makes me feel a little faint and things. Yeah.

[02:33]

Okay, so basically what I've been doing is trying to, well, something gets you to rethink the world. Im Grunde genommen, was ich versucht habe zu tun, ist etwas zu sagen, was dafür sorgt, dass ihr die Welt neu denkt. Or maybe re-experience the world. Oder vielleicht die Welt neu erfahrt. Or maybe re-experience your experience. Oder vielleicht eure Erfahrung neu erfahrt. Now these are actually, in philosophy or something like that, rather radical statements. For instance, there's a kind of philosophy called something like phenomenalism. And it might be the case that Our scholar in residences was looking with disbelief.

[03:55]

But phenomenology is not what he just said. Right. And I don't know what that means. He knows most words, so he's surprised when one comes. Okay. Which assumes that all knowledge is from the senses. But Buddhism takes the view that your senses are like keyboards. And not just like a piano with one keyboard. But more like an organ with several keyboards. And in fact, probably you could make some new keyboards. And you could reprogram or rearrange the keys of any one of the keyboards.

[04:57]

So phenomena, phenomenality, plays on the keyboards of our senses. Yeah, so I've been... trying to look at these keyboards. And one of the things I emphasized yesterday was that all space is gestural space. Or at least maybe like horizontally conceived space. Yeah, now I'm again making these distinctions to give us a chance to notice things differently. There are huge numbers of possibilities for knowing our experience.

[06:29]

And many have been developed in this world. But the two dominant ones are the Asian and the Western ones. And we're in the midst of that, just by some affinities or circumstances, we're in the midst of this playing the tunes of our life on these two dominant keyboards. You know, in the 18th century in Europe people started traveling a lot.

[07:30]

And people brought back all kinds of plants and strange skeletons, fossils and things like that. And it was of huge interest to the educated classes. And then they all started trying to classify them. And they went back to kind of, I think, Greek classification of animal mineral and plant. Animal, mineral and plant. And nowadays it's kind of hard to maintain and these distinctions aren't maintained anymore.

[08:37]

But when we classify something, make distinctions, it really deludes us, but it also allows us to act in the world. Und wenn wir etwas klassifizieren und Unterscheidungen treffen, dann verblendet uns das zwar einerseits und andererseits ermöglicht es uns aber in der Welt zu handeln. So Einstein said space isn't just nothing. So hat Einstein gesagt, dass Raum nicht nur nichts ist. It can bend and stuff like that. Sondern dass er gekrümmt ist und so weiter. And nowadays maybe it's quanta. Uh-oh. gravity particles or something like that. But if we're going to experience space not as just an absence Which puts us all in a container we have nothing to do with when we think of it that way.

[09:59]

In order to look into how the yogic world knows the world, and yogic in the Buddhist sense, the world is conceived in a certain way, the way the world is conceived Because the world is conceived a certain way, the teachings are developed for that world. Yeah, again, the example I used the other day is you... We all know everywhere that if you pour water from one container to another, you pour it a certain way because gravity assists you.

[11:15]

And if you miss the cup, people would start getting worried about you. So, in other words, this is an example of knowing how things actually exist. The body knows how things actually exist. Now, it's assumed in yogic practice that the body knows it's always making space. We have to have an admonition and a a truism of yogic practice that all mental phenomena have a physical component and all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component.

[12:23]

And that means you can tune your body with the mind and you can tune your mind with the body. And yogic practice says it's easier to find the knobs, the tuning knobs, in the body than in the mind. So as you begin to develop attentional bodily experience, The main point of zazen practice to develop attentional bodily experience You can discover the knobs which allow you to tune the mind toward less suffering or more suffering or toward immediately going to zazen or hanging around in the thoughts that appear in the back of cereal boxes.

[13:51]

I'd say that with a certain irony. Because someone showed me on the box of some, you know, New Age cereal box a quote by Suzuki Roshi. And Suzuki Roshi never even wanted to publish a book except a kind of manual for his students. Then it ends up in the box. Yeah. So in a yogic culture you don't have to point out that all mental phenomena have a physical component and vice versa.

[14:58]

It's just known. In a yogic culture, you don't have to say it, you don't have to point out that all spiritual phenomena have a physical component and vice versa, but it's just clear, it's just known. How to refine it and develop it is practice, but the facticity of it is... unknown. You can see it in these extraordinary Tibetan-style statues in the back. The fairly naked bodies are articulated with yogic mental chakra phenomena that's taken for granted okay yeah you want me to say something more no you did and I didn't oh well there should be a little mystery here that's good

[16:28]

So if we're going to experience space as a form of connectivity, we have to start articulating it. If we just treat it as absence or distance, we'll have an extremely primitive, we're barely able to write poems about it. I don't crack up my translator very often. Okay. So we bow. Bows is just the most basic way we start to articulate space as a medium, an experienceable medium. And that we are articulating space all the time.

[18:02]

And that we articulate space all the time. For those of you who have a religious prohibition against bowing, from your experience, of course, I suggest you just use the doorway. The threshold. Entry. Yeah. When you... Because you're going from one space to another. Yeah. They're each defined as rooms or inside and outside or something like that. So in order to stop the habit of feeling space as a container, pause at the threshold. In English, the N-trance. And let yourself in that pause be blank and then open to the new space.

[19:44]

Now I blanked out. You get blank in the pause and then what happens? Well, what are the choices? Everything, I don't know. You open yourself to the new space. Oh, okay. Okay. And I notice some of you do that, you know, somewhere, and I see you make a little secret pause as you go through a doorway. When you're helping your body articulate the concept and fact, fact, that space is gestural. Okay. And so in the Zendo, as you all know, we don't have a Buddha.

[20:55]

We got the Buddhas here. Three, Shakyamuni, Amida Buddha, and Akshobhya. And the other guys are kind of Buddhas too, but, you know, different dynamic and experiences. And the others are also a kind of Buddha, but with a different dynamic, a different experience. But in the Zendo there is no Buddha. And I have told you many, many times. Why? Because the practitioner is the Buddha. But in the Zendo there is no Buddha. And why? I have told you many, many times. Because in the Zendo the practitioner is the Buddha. So with that spirit in mind, we'll try to design the altar, which Jürgen Pittasch is working on now, with three pieces of pear wood he's found. Und in diesem Sinne oder in diesem Geiste werden wir den Altar für den Sendur entwickeln.

[21:56]

Und das macht Jürgen Petersch gerade mit drei Brettern Birnenholz, das er gerade gefunden hat. And birnenholz ist auch das gleiche Holz, das er in der Tür zum Kücheneingang zum Hotzenhaus benutzt hat. so if I go into the zendo to sit by myself I put on my if I don't have my raksu or okesa on I wear an okesa or raksu when I'm teaching as the custom is Because it's a statement that I'm speaking from the space of the Buddha's body.

[23:12]

When I eat with the Oryoki bowl, the main bowl, it has no base because it's the skull of the Buddha, conceptually. That means the space of the Buddha, historical Buddha, is also the space of today if I represent it in my lived life. So I would face the seat, the zafu, because that's the Buddha seat that I'm going to occupy. On the other side of the Marburg.

[24:27]

auf der anderen Seite des Marbrettes. If I'm there as, like this morning I asked Nicole as Jisha, she should face a cushion because she's not there as the director or a teacher or something. But for Paul and myself and Atmar, we are opening our Kesa for the Sangha. So that's our job. So we face the Sangha when we do it. Now this may seem, you know, kind of crazy or meaningless to you. But I think if you try entering a room with the custom is with the foot nearest the hinge of the door, Again, these things are not taught in Japan.

[25:51]

They're not said, they're shown, and you notice them. No one ever says them. You either notice them, and you notice which people notice them, and which people don't notice them. Bodily notice them. But I remember... And when I spoke these words to Suzuki Roshi in his office one day many years ago, in the 60s, and said, why do you always... He laughed and laughed. You're not supposed to say that you've noticed that. Just do it. I think Katagiri Roshi was there, too, and they both laughed at me. But, you know... It's my job to try to figure these things out for us Westerners.

[27:09]

We live in a different kind of space. We have an attentional mental space. We don't really have an attentional body space. And an intentional body space is inseparable from feeling space as gestural. Because you feel the space of your body in zazen differently than in usual circumstances. And you feel the space of other people and bodily space of other persons in a different way if you're a practitioner.

[28:10]

A new way if you're a practitioner. And I learn ways in which I have to shift my mental attention in order to feel our shared bodily space. This is kind of basic yogic stuff, but it's interesting to us to discover it. It's a great treasure that we can start playing around with it and noticing it. So we could say that the space in this sense is, physical space is Phenomenalized space is gestural.

[29:24]

Phenomenalized space. And it's more horizontal, sort of. Like we're all on the same floor or we're all in the same house. We're in different parts of the house, but we know we're all in the same house. We feel the connectivity of the same house, not the separation of distance. The words are the same in a poem, separation, connection, but it's separation that's separation which is fully engaged with connectivity. Can you say again, it's separation?

[30:44]

Which is... It's still the same word, separation, but it's separation which assumes an engaged connectivity. And then there's more vertical, we could call imaginal space. And the imaginal space is real. If I imagine this space is also Buddha's space, it has some influence on me. If I imagine I live in a a democratic country with, you know, freedom, etc., I function differently in that imaginal space than I would in contemporary China.

[31:56]

Okay. So one thing I suggested then is to feel space as always being... as an ongoing process of creativity in which you're a participant. And it starts with a concept. And then you try to enact realize that concept. And then you try to feel it feel it feel the experience of it.

[33:03]

That's the basic steps in developing a teaching, which usually starts with a concept. I also mentioned to think of the physical world as sharing stillness with you. And it's a stillness which is a kind of saneness that you share with everything. And it's a stillness which takes a certain kind of mental posture and experience to feel because our senses notice activity, but our deeper sense of the world notices stillness.

[34:22]

So I'm trying to get us into the soil, the fertile soil of the world in which Buddhism flourishes. Ich versuche uns damit in den fruchtbaren Boden hineinzubringen, in dem der Buddhismus blühen kann. Now, Buddhism is... Yeah, maybe I'll leave that till another time. Der Buddhismus ist... Buddhism is... I'll leave that till another time. Buddhismus ist, und das bewahre ich mir für ein anderes Mal auf. Alright. So let me just speak about one other truism of Buddhism. At least I'll get us started on it.

[35:26]

Okay, it's the general awareness that mind is inseparable from each appearance. Now, I've gone through this quite often. And you really want to make it your habit. Because that's an assumption of all the teachings. That you know conceptually, first of all, that mind is inseparable from any appearance in your experience. First you know it intellectually and then you begin to know it as a habit you've incubated. Then you begin to inhabit that habit.

[36:33]

And you feel mind on each appearance. Now that feel of mind on each appearance turns into a kind of shuttle, like in a loom. And one of the first fruits of this practice is you notice along with differentiation On each appearance, the differentiation of each appearance, you notice the simultaneous, same, similar presence of mind.

[37:35]

Is that you, at the same time, with the differentiation of each individual appearance, the difference of each appearance, you also notice the same presence, the similar presence of mind? Und das wird eingehüllt oder eingefangen mit diesem Wort Gleichheit. Which means that on each appearance you experience differentiation and sameness at the same time. So I experience the differences of each of you. And I also experience the sameness of mind on each of you.

[38:44]

And the more I experience the sameness of mind, the more I experience mind arising on each appearance. It sensitizes me or opens me to mind appearing on each of your perceptions. So not only are our perceptual The perceptual differences we notice are present. But they both appear, the differentiations both appear, all appear in a shared field of mind.

[39:46]

So we feel connected with people in a new way. Like if you're lost in a forest. As I say, it's freezing rain and it's been two days and then suddenly somebody appears on the path. Hey, do I feel familiar with that guy? Yeah, unless in some Japanese movie they turn into a bulldozer or something like that. There's of course a yogic background to those cartoons, but let's not go into that.

[40:49]

But it does, you can see, it opens you into, you feel so... Close with people you have to pretend you don't feel close, because it's embarrassing. And then if you really know, you're only knowing whatever is appearing in your own mind. And you feel the limitation of your own sensorial mental field. You realize there's a whole lot happening outside that sensorial field, which is a mystery.

[41:52]

So you live in a deep familiarity, surrounded or immersed in mystery. It's a kind of built-in humility. You experience everything is happening in the mind as an interiority. So I'll say a couple of things and maybe I can develop them, make them clearer tomorrow.

[42:56]

And I know you're not supposed to talk during Sashin, I've heard that anyway. But maybe you could whisper it to yourself and I can overhear it, whether you like me to, should we do this pattern tomorrow or a different one? a configuration. You know, if you go to a concert or a movie or something, and in the middle of the concert there's a break, a pausa, And you've been completely involved in the music or the opera or the play or something. And if it's a movie, for example, it's clear it's happening within you because none of these cars are racing, crashing into each other in the theater itself.

[44:05]

You experience everything happening within you. And then the break comes, the pause comes. And people start rustling their program or changing, getting up to go for a drink or something. And all those noises of the pause at the beginning sort of happen within you too because that's where your experience has been located. And then after a few minutes you externalize that and decide to go out to the lobby yourself. And you externalize it so you can find your way down the aisle and what?

[45:09]

But at first it's an internalized experience. And once you get the habit the habitation of mind arising simultaneously on each appearance. At first imaginal and then factual experience of mind arising. It becomes like a shuttle which weaves the exterior into the interior. Or a fishing line where you pull the exterior world into the interior where it is actually happening. And now what are the consequences and corollaries of that?

[46:27]

Well, we've run out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[46:49]

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