Yeah, well, first of all, I apologize for my irregular attendance, participation in the session. But if I'm going to continue doing sessions and I'm going to continue to get older, my participation will become more and more irregular. And of course my cold and my bowels and the problem I had from cancer almost 15 years ago. I remember it was about that many years ago. I remember I got the diagnosis during Sashin.

[01:04]

I talked to Gerhard Schwatzel after the Sashin. Remember we met? I said, what shall I do? Shall I live or die? And since I'm stupid enough and like living on the edge I don't have health insurance or anything so the Sangha helped me. Anyway, I'm very happy that you're all each here. I feel very lucky that people like you, in fact you, not people like you, you, help me with my lectures.

[02:21]

Because, you know, as I said yesterday, I think this is a kind of laboratory. I'm trying to explore in Western paradigms, conundrums, how we can live and make use of Buddhist, 2500 years of Buddhist And it's really different. If I only have to say it to myself, it's different than when I have to find a way to say it to you two. And that really makes a difference.

[03:23]

If I only discuss this with myself, then it is different than if I also have to discuss it with you and have to find a way to discuss it with you. In these two sessions I emphasized the difference that small differences make. Like on the inhale, the practitioner holds the notices impermanence. And on the exhale, notices impermanence. Yeah, this is repetition. Not understanding. I keep saying. Now, funny, an anecdote that I read some years ago.

[04:27]

A Japanese mother living in the United States Probably the wife of a Japanese businessman or something like that. And I've mentioned this anecdote once or twice in the past. But her four-year-old daughter came home from kindergarten. Ihre vierjährige Tochter kam vom Kindergarten nach Hause. Und dann hat sie gesagt, der Lehrer oder die Lehrerin hat mich nach meiner Lieblingsfarbe gefragt und ich wusste das nicht. Und dann hat die Mutter eine Weile darüber nachgedacht und hat gesagt, ich weiß das auch nicht. I mean, this genuinely puzzled, so they asked for an interview with the teacher.

[05:33]

Also, die waren ganz aufrichtig oder ernsthaft vor ein Rätsel gestellt und haben dann um eine Sprechstunde mit dem Lehrer gebeten. And she talked to the teacher and said, how are we supposed to know what our favorite color is? It depends on the time of day and what you're looking at and things like that. Well, just think about it. what this difference means. We take for granted, you have a favorite color, red or chartreuse or something. Chartreuse, no one even knows what that color is, do you?

[06:35]

I used to, and then I forgot. It's a kind of green. It comes from a jazz song. She dyed her hair chartreuse, chartreuse. She went too far. She dyed her, you know. Anyway, I think it is. So we teach our kids, and look, we're growing up, right? So we have habits. Yoga culture assumes we're born with physiological awareness. Yeah, and then that physiological awareness is biologically synchronized with the mother and I hope sometimes the father. And this biological awareness is instrumentalized so that it can compare, discriminate, reliably predict, and so forth.

[07:39]

And all that process of teaching kids their ABCs and to count to ten and all is part of constructing the categories of consciousness. So you know left from right and so forth. Some of us still don't, but... Now, G.E. Moore, I've mentioned a few times, a British philosopher, contemporary of Wittgenstein and Russell, G.E. Moore, den ich jetzt ein paar Mal erwähnt habe, ein Philosoph, ein Zeitgenosse von Wittgenstein und Russell.

[08:51]

And emphasizes and states that consciousness is invisible. Der betont und sagt, dass das Bewusstsein unsichtbar ist. So we don't teach consciousness, we teach really the invisibility of consciousness. Und so lehren wir das Bewusstsein nicht, sondern was wir tatsächlich lehren, ist die Unsichtbarkeit des Bewusstseins. That's certainly one of the underpinnings of this seminar and Teishos. is the visibility of consciousness can be taught. And that consciousness is a construct. And because it's a construct, it can be reconstructed. Now this is the difference in growing up in a world which has no creator God. You have to look at how things and you exist in a different way. Nevertheless, as I say, you know, because I am a Westerner, so I want to stand up for being a Westerner a little bit.

[10:08]

Somehow, Western... Classical and Christian culture has created the place everybody in the world wants to live, or at least a large percentage. But that's a different discussion. Okay. Okay. So... Here's this little girl. And what is she taught? She's taught not to notice differences, as we're taught. Entities and differences and categories. This little Japanese girl is taught to notice constellations. Or context.

[11:24]

And the activity within the context. And more than that, so constellation is a better word, the activity, the whole constellation is activity. It's not an activity in a fixed context. This, do you know the word valence? I think the valence of hydrogen is four, is that right? Talking to our chemist over here, biologist. It's one, yeah. Valence of hydrogen is one? Yeah. Oh. One electron. Oh, one electron. Anyway, I forget which is which. But valence in linguistics and chemistry is the degree of connectivity, the potentialities of connectivity.

[12:34]

So if you're brought up from childhood to notice contexts with your constellations and to notice the change within and inseparable from the activity of the constellation itself as well. You're going to notice the world differently? No, I'm told that some Chinese group is suing Harvard for discrimination. Because if Harvard simply accepted people on the basis of their valence, power, testing, etc., it would be all Chinese.

[14:03]

There would be no... dumb white Caucasians. Yeah, well, um, But Harvard says, we're a university in America, we have to accept a few Americans. So they say, we're going to keep a certain percentage for whites. No, it's just because... Chinese are genetically smarter?

[15:11]

We don't like to think that, and it might be partly true. The incidence of high IQ in Asian cultures is higher than in our culture. But There's no reason it shouldn't be genetic. We have genetic differences. Probably there's genetic differences in intelligence. But I guess, and I don't think I could convince the Harvard authorities of this, but if so, only privately, is that Chinese people probably do so well on these competitive tests because they don't know what their favorite color is. If you grow up seeing connectivity on every instantiation, this is going to be different than if you see fixed entities.

[16:27]

And so I'm trying to bring us into this world of connectivity that Buddhism teaches. To see the world created by mind and consciousness And be able to develop that just like you can develop your physique with exercise, etc. You develop your observational, not necessarily intelligence, but they're related, observational and attentional skills.

[17:52]

And it's a realisational process and it's also a neurological process. Okay. Now I... I thought I should say something about our Manjushri statue there in the Zendo. And I think Manjushri is the most ancient of the Buddhist bodhisattvas. And if you'll notice, in his right hand, it's holding a flaming sword. Which represents cutting off delusion.

[19:01]

And transforming, so the flames are cutting off and transforming delusion. And in the left hand, he, she is holding the fingers like this. And where is it held? Not in the center of the left, out of the chakra point, but the heart, just above the heart. In some statues it's not so specifically above the heart, but in this one it's specifically above the heart. And it's in space. It's not held against the thing. It's in space. And in the hand of the Bodhisattva, Sometimes between the fingers and sometimes from the palm of the hand where a healer would feel energy.

[20:47]

There's a stem that winds around the body and gets mixed up with the fabric of the clothes. It's all kind of the one thing. And then turns into a blooming lotus flower. Above the muddy water, etc. And on the lotus flower is the Prajnaparamita Sutra. So from the heart, held in a space, the spatial presence of the body, from this heart spatial point, a lotus blooms and turns into the

[21:49]

Prajnaparamita Sutra of wisdom, wisdom sutra. So the sword is wisdom and the lotus stem and position above the heart is compassion. These are cartoons for a painting. You know the word cartoon is actually the original sketches for a painting. And then it became the word for like Mickey Mouse. So perhaps what I'm saying is a bit cartoonish in the positive sense, but it does paint a picture of our world. And in this Manjushri statue, you can see that it's a yogic statue and there's a spine-mind posture.

[23:16]

And sometimes Manjushri, instead of having a... Oh, there it is. I forgot my watch. She said, you know, there's a clock in the... Oh, there it is, yeah. I put it there. Um... Instead of this flaming sword, sometimes, the Manjushri is holding a Nioi. This is a Nioi. And this is the Nioi that Suzuki Roshi gave me, the first one he gave me. And I had to give a one to... I had another one and I gave it to Suzuki Roshi, no, I gave it to Hoitsu Roshi, Suzuki Roshi's son, at the time of Suzuki Roshi's death.

[24:45]

Suzuki Roshi had three transmitted disciples, his son, his Dharma brother's son, and me. So the other nyoyi that Sukhiroshi used quite often was given to this other Dharma successor of Sukhiroshi's. But then 20 years later... Hoi Tzu Roshi showed up here at Yohannesov, and he had made me a nyoi, which I have used in one of the lectures. Now, since I'm talking about connectivity, I'm just using these as examples. The word nioi means in Chinese and Japanese something like whatever one wishes.

[25:49]

And Tsukiyoshi's basic message to me was about traditional practice and doing it, but in the end it was always, but whatever you wish. There's rules, there's commitment, there's expectations, but in the end that's framed in, but whatever you wish. And this kind of scepter and shape, and there's various shapes. Historically, it goes way back in India, but even prior to Buddhism. And Western scholars and psychologists tend to be imprisoned by the idea of self-interest and power.

[27:20]

In the end, everybody's interested in self, everyone's interested in power, everybody's interested in creating their reproductive, et cetera. Am Ende wird immer alles so interpretiert, dass jeder an seinem Eigeninteresse interessiert ist oder an Macht oder sich selbst zu reproduzieren. And this is considered a symbol of authority. It gives me authority to talk. Und das hier wird als ein Symbol der Autorität verstanden. Das gibt mir die Autorität zu sprechen. But it's really a symbol of connectivity. Aber es ist wirklich ein Symbol der Verbundenheit. That Sukershi gave it to me. But I gave a similar one to his other disciple. That his son made me a new one.

[28:38]

That it's also a understood to be a back scratcher. Because, you know, in those days they didn't have running water and, you know, and air conditioning and things like that. And when it was hot and sweaty, you were sticky and flies were on you and, you know, and your back itched. Oh, God. You had a thing to whisk the flies, you know. Back then there was no running water and you couldn't really wash yourself and so on. Especially when it was hot, you were sticky everywhere and you sweated and the flies swirled around you. And then you had something to scratch yourself with and you could beat the flies away. And so because it's a back scratcher, it can reach anywhere. So as a teaching staff, it can reach anywhere. Scratch your dharma backs.

[29:42]

And it goes back too to oracle bones. and this could be an animal bone, and it also represents the spine. So as the fingers of the Manjushri are above the heart, even when my hand isn't there, I can feel it there. And one of the basics of practice, I think, for us to emphasize is spine-mind. And many of you, you have, most of you, I think all of you have had a spine all your life.

[30:45]

But many people over the last, as I've been emphasizing, spine mind, many people have said to me, Oh, I discovered my spine. But the spine mind of our mutual practice is present in this room. So this is in my hand because Sri Krishna gave it to me, but also because he taught me to teach about the spine mind. And that's how I hold it. You don't hold it just like this, you hold it like this. And just to show you the valency of such things, I have a rabbit here.

[31:53]

Wouldn't it be great if I pulled a rabbit? I'd say, we don't know if he's a Zen teacher, but he's kind of funny. I did that once. It was a stuffed rabbit of my daughter. It didn't impress anyone too much. In this case, I have another staff. And here's the valency. Here's a stick coming into bloom. And space is considered to be chi, or the sign of spring. Because it's the sky of spring which creates the fertility of the crops and all that.

[33:04]

And that's how some of the Buddhist ceremonies are understood. Actually, the entire constellation brought to a point is Ji, but it also is epitomized by the sky. So this is also a cloud. But it's also the mushroom, psychedelic mushroom, soma. And if I may be transformed. So you can see how much connectivity is in just a simple thing.

[34:06]

A normal sort of natural stick blooming from the sky of spring, which is a cloud above it, but also the magic mushroom. ein ganz normaler Stab, der aus dem Himmel des Frühlings blüht und der eine Wolke hat, um das zu symbolisieren, und aber auch ein magischer Pilz ist. So I guess since I think this is the last lecture of this sashimi at least, der letzte Vortrag zumindest von diesem sashimi ist, What can I leave you with? The sense of the constellation perhaps of unbounded open immediacy.

[35:13]

And within this always transformative constellation, there's the Dharma, the presence of the spine mind. Und in dieser sich fortwährenden, verwandelnden Konstellation ist die Präsenz des Wirbelsäulengeistes. It's almost like living in a Dharmic fluid which you're always stirring or letting still you. Es ist fast, als würdest du in einer dharmischen Flüssigkeit leben, die du immer rührst oder von der du dich immer wenden lässt. Should I say anything else?

[36:17]

Okay. She didn't tell me, so thank you very much.

[36:23]

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