No, Rudolph, one of the theories of why we toast. And there are several I've heard, but the one I like and prefer. Is you have the smell of the wine. is that you have the color of the wine, and you have the taste of the wine, but you don't have the sound of the wine. So you clink your glasses, and then all five senses are present, which make you feel complete. That's a bell. Or a whistle. Yeah, I want to know. Yeah, well, in Buddhism we do it too. Kampai! At least in Japanese.

[01:23]

But anyway, many things are like that. They're meant to create, in this case, the five senses being present, five physical senses. What's the equivalent in German of a hot dog stand? I like my pre-day to be a kind of bratwurst stand. Ich mag es, wenn mein Vortag, also dieser Tag, so eine Art Bratwurststand ist. You're walking along and you say, hmm, I'd like a bratwurst. Gehst dran vorbei und denkst dir, hmm, ich glaube, ich mag eine Bratwurst.

[02:28]

And so you just go right in and have one. They're standing on the street. So I like the pre-day. That's one reason I don't have Zazen, usually at the beginning. So in my imagination, you've never done Zazen before. You're just wandering along. You happen to smell a little Buddhism. So you come in and say, hey, here I am. And then I have the feeling, not really true of course, but I have the feeling that I'm seeing you as you are in your lay life. Und dann habe ich das Gefühl, und es stimmt natürlich nicht wirklich, aber dann habe ich das Gefühl, ich könnte euch so sehen, wie ihr in eurem Laienleben seid.

[03:33]

And then on Saturday morning, and from Saturday on, we do like we did this afternoon, 30 minutes of Zazen before we start. Und dann von Samstagmorgen an, da machen wir das so, wie wir das heute Morgen gemacht haben, beginnen wir mit, heute Nachmittag gemacht haben, beginnen wir mit 30 Minuten Zazen. So usually on the pre-day we start at 10 and the other days we start at 9.30. But last year I was told we can't start at 9.30 because we can't get breakfast in time or something. And I see tomorrow we start at 10 o'clock again. Can we change it? No. Can the kitchen do it? If we jump from work directly to the other, it's possible, but if there's a break or brushing teeth or whatever, then...

[04:41]

Well, you can't... I'm not going to keep people from brushing their teeth. I mean, I'm tough, but not that tough. I may not want you to smoke, but I'm... I call up the kitchen crew and we are ready. Oh, tough. Yeah. Well... Let's try it tomorrow and see if it works. And if when you smile at me it's clear you haven't brushed your teeth, we'll change Sunday. Okay. So I'm going to recapitulate, recapitulate is to re-head ourselves again in an old direction.

[05:52]

Zen practice, the most common all of you know most, Zazen instructions Suzuki Roshi gave was don't invite your thoughts to tea. Now here I'm speaking about Zazen experience undifferentiated by language but now I'm bringing in language. Okay. And I heard very early on that Zen is a yogic practice. But it's primarily based on this yoga posture.

[07:18]

And that took me time to get used to. Because I don't like to think a posture excludes some people for whom this posture is too difficult. Weil ich das nicht mag, mir vorzustellen, dass eine Haltung einige Leute ausschließt, für die diese Haltung zu schwierig ist. And it wasn't easy for me, though, too. Und für mich war das aber auch nicht leicht. I'm very stiff-jointed. Ich habe sehr steife Gelenke. And in the first years of sitting, I had to kind of sit down, force my legs down, And I got in a position I called the half lily because it nearly killed me. Lilies are at funerals in America. But I would sort of get myself in a push down for about five minutes. And then they'd pop out and I'd sit with my arms around my knees.

[08:38]

But then Sukhya was very kind. He would get up every period and walk around with his stick. And that was permission for me to let my legs up. One time he came by and whispered to me, This is really too hard for you. Why don't you sit at home? But I continued anyway. So for persons who can't sit easily, then we have to figure out other ways to achieve similar concentration and stillness, which is really emphasizing the spine.

[09:59]

Okay. So I heard and accepted and tried to develop this posture. And I was heard somewhere, I don't remember where, that Buddhism emphasized mental postures primarily and not physical postures. But I never heard this again. It stuck in my mind. But I never heard it again. I can't even find it referenced in Wikipedia. Which didn't exist then, for sure. Okay. So, when... So here I'm speaking about Zazen practice that is not languaged.

[11:25]

And yet Suzuki Roshi says, don't invite your thoughts to tea. And I think all of us pretty much instantly understand that. Because it's within our capacity to understand it from our own experience. And yet, when you stop and think about it, it seems that to not invite your thoughts is also a thought. So you're using a thought not to invite your thoughts. Something's wrong with that. There has to be some difference between the two thoughts.

[12:28]

So I remember it took me quite a while before I began to ponder this and thought it would be worthwhile to make a distinction to understand the difference So then I said, okay, we can call them both mental formations. One is a thought. Let's call what you're not inviting to tea a thought. And we can even modify it with discursive. In English.

[13:40]

So then you can start noticing we're talking about more than just discursive thoughts, but that's a good target. Okay. So if they're both mental formations, one is a discursive thought. What can we name the other mental formation? Well, it's pretty simple. I think most of us English speakers would do it. The other is an intention. You have intentions working in apposition and opposition, both together, with discursive thoughts. It works together with and against... Also hast du diese Intention, die sowohl mit als auch gegen die diskursiven Gedanken arbeiten?

[15:11]

And so one can notice what's the difference between a discursive thought and an intention. Und dann kann man sich fragen, was ist der Unterschied zwischen einem diskursiven Gedanken und einer Intention? Well, I have an intention to go down to the worst stand. Or the best stand. Where you get the best worst. But there's not much difference between that intention and a discursive thought. So I need a stronger word than intention.

[16:16]

So then, you know, the Eightfold Path starts with right views or complete views. And view turned out to be a stronger word. So I have the view that I'm not going to invite discursive thoughts to tea. And a view does have, when you look at the view of the mountains, you have two locations, one from which you view the other. Und wenn du zum Beispiel dir die Sicht auf einen Berg anschaust, dann hast du da zwei Orte, nämlich den Ort, von dem aus du den anderen Ort betrachtest.

[17:22]

Das Wort Dharma bedeutet, an Ort und Stelle zu halten. So if everything's changing, we need something that stays or holds in place. So the entire dynamic of Buddhism is plays with what holds and what changes. And how to establish the simultaneity of change and the possibility, the potentiality of staying within the field of change. Now, this is a dynamic you can't just do mentally.

[18:23]

Unless you're some sort of genius. You need the participation of the body and the bodily dynamic of mind. Okay. So at some point I realized it took me, I'm sorry to say I'm a slow learner, maybe 40 years, 35 years. So to see that now I could substitute mental posture for view. Now, views is okay, and the importance of how the Eightfold Path starts with perfecting views

[19:37]

It really needs to be deeply understood. And one of its dynamics, probably maybe its most crucial, is that a view is located sensorially prior to perception. And I think that this is in Western psychological thinking is now accepted. But if Buddhism is taken for granted, that's the whole point of the Eightfold Path, that views function prior to perception.

[20:55]

Now again, to re-say what I've said and re-said in the past, The example, the experience I had, which made me realize this, was when I began practicing with Tsukiroshi and in a sangha. Maybe I, let me just, step out of that context and say something about Sukhiroshi.

[21:56]

And I said earlier that developing an interior attentional space. Now a yogi develops an interior attentional space And their outer experience is an externalized interior space. So the outer experience is an interior experience, which it is anyway, but now you really live in that medium So as I said in the past, I met this guy, Shukrullah Ali, in Iran when I was working on ships in the late 50s.

[23:01]

And maybe he was a Sufi or something. I don't know. He was just somebody working on the docks to provide money for his family back in the mountains. Where did he work? He worked on the docks, where the ships are. But he's the first person I ever met who seemed like the way I want human beings to be. And I never felt that again, though I approached it with some friends. Now, do you know what a Mobius strip is?

[24:25]

Like if you take a piece of paper and you twist it once, so it's one surface, even though it's two surfaces. Is it? So I was in San Francisco and I was about to go to a samurai movie, you know, it was my several times a week amusement. I sort of lived near Japan, next to Japantown, so it was easy to go to the movies. And I was in a bookstore, and this person who owned the bookstore said I should go meet Suzuki Roshi. And I was in a bookstore, and the man who owned the bookstore said I should meet Suzuki Roshi.

[25:30]

He said, yes, he's on this street here, etc. So I went there. And he came out, spoke. And I'd to some extent studied with Paul Tillich at the university I went to, the college I went to, and various philosophers. And I'd never seen anybody like Suzuki Roshi. It was like I was seeing a Mobius strip. of interior space and exterior space moving simultaneously through his body. I thought, okay, this is it.

[26:33]

Here goes the rest of my life. So I just decided at that moment to do whatever I could to help him the rest of his life. I mean this interiority of exteriority was was a new home base. So that actually relates to my, what I was going to say, the way in which I noticed that are prior to perception.

[27:47]

Because through practicing with this Mobius strip called Suzuki Roshi and this budding and very beginning Sangha I found myself immersed in a connectedness that was new to me. It felt like I could breathe underwater or something like that. And so I realized that space, I noticed that space, excuse me for saying this same old stuff over and over again, but I want us to be together on the same page.

[28:54]

I noticed that space connects as well as separates. Da habe ich bemerkt, dass Raum verbindet, so wie er auch trennt. But my upbringing and my culture and all only said space separates. Aber durch meine Erziehung und meine Kultur wurde mir immer nur beigebracht, dass Raum trennt. So I had a real kind of like, what's going on here? Und da hatte ich so ein Gefühl, so eine Frage, was ist denn jetzt hier los? Okay, so I... noticed that I could think space connected, but I couldn't experience space connecting because my perception told me that space separated things. Even though I was convinced that it was a cultural view and not a fundamental view.

[29:57]

So then I discovered that if I created the view that space connects and held it prior to perception, then my percepts began to show me connectedness rather than separation. Und dann habe ich entdeckt, dass wenn ich die Sichtweise entwickle, das Raum verbindet, und diese Sichtweise vor meinen Wahrnehmungen halte, dass meine Wahrnehmungen dann anfangen würden, mir zu zeigen, wie Raum verbindet. This was a huge experience for me. It was in several ways enlightenment experiences and in several ways simply insights that took hold of my whole life. Yeah. So suddenly I knew what a mental posture was, is. Views. And when I call them mental postures, because I'm emphasizing the craft of doing it.

[31:39]

The craft of doing it. Yeah. So now I was able to start working with thoughts, mental formations, intentions, views, mental postures. And I could feel the difference, the physical experiential difference and the nuanced language difference. And then by using language within the midst of an unlanguaged experience of zazen,

[32:43]

Yeah, I'm telling you, this is like a scientific experiment, and for me it was like that. I could begin to use these words to shift a mental... into an intention, into a view, and into a mental posture. Some intentions wouldn't become mental postures, wouldn't become views. Some would. I began to know the difference. And much of the brilliant literature of koans is how intentions become views and mental postures, like a craft of mental postures we can call turning words or wados.

[34:16]

And very simply then, once I realized my view was already separated I was able to create the alternative, a wado, of already connected. And I would call it a wado and a mental posture. Because you can hold in mind prior to perception already connected. Weil du im Geist noch vor der Wahrnehmung dieses bereits verbunden halten kannst.

[35:29]

Now, if you learn this yogic skill, wenn du diese yogische Fähigkeit erlernst, turning an intention or insight or an idea into a mental posture, wie man eine Intention oder eine Vorstellung in eine A mental posture is a view formulated so that you can practice it, so you can do it. And this is one of the links between so-called monastic or sangha practice and lay practice. Because if you have one of these teachings that you can turn into something you can do in any circumstance, then there isn't much difference, at least in this context, between lay and monastic practices.

[36:38]

Because if you have one of these teachings that you can execute in every field of circumstances, then there is no big difference between the monastery practice and the lay practice, at least not in this context. But the lay practitioner needs about twice the strength and intention to the monastic practitioner. Because your intention has to be, you're not carried by the Sangha. You have to really have a deep commitment that this is going to transform me in ways that can transform the world. Because you are not carried by the Sangha, you really need a profound intention that you do it so that it transforms you and the world. But the craft is there for both of us.

[37:43]

The monastic side of us and the lay side of us. Okay, so let me go back to simple Zazen. Zazen is a physical posture and a mental posture. It is not simply a physical posture. It requires the mental posture of don't move. Even though we're always moving, your heart's going, your lungs are going, you know. But the mental posture, the intent of the mental posture is to, as much as possible, move toward not moving.

[38:46]

Aber die Absicht, die Intention in dieser geistigen Haltung liegt darin, sich so weit wie möglich in Richtung sich nicht zu bewegen zu bewegen. So the first dynamic or mental posture of Zazen is don't move. And you just notice to the extent to which you can manage that. Accomplish that. We move and we don't move and we move less and so forth. But we hold the mental posture, don't move. Okay. Now I would suggest a second mental posture. Of acceptance. You just accept whatever is there.

[39:47]

If you move, you accept that you move. And you keep deepening that acceptance. That's like the dynamic of free association. So you feel a freedom in acceptance. Also spürst du eine Freiheit in der Akzeptanz. And really you want to be free to move when you don't move. Und wirklich strebst du das so an, dass du frei bist, dich zu bewegen, während du dich nicht bewegst. If you If not moving for you is to really keep yourself from moving, there's no stillness there. But when you feel, I'm completely free to move, but I'm not going to.

[41:06]

Why bother? Too much trouble to move. So when you have the freedom to move, you have a deeper stillness. And this third... Mental posture here, I would suggest, after acceptance, is openness. And I could define openness as ease, as deeper acceptance, Anything is okay.

[42:10]

And because you feel so located in your posture, you have the fearlessness and courage of whatever happens. this human being is, or we human beings are, is going to be my life. Hast du die Furchtlosigkeit und den Mut, dass egal was dieses Wesen ist, oder überhaupt die Menschen sind, das wird mein Leben sein. It's going to be a dimensioned familiarity of my life. Das wird eine dimensionierte Vertrautheit meines Lebens. even though my inner request is a kind of wholeness or equanimity.

[43:16]

As soon as there's conflict or disagreement, internal disagreement, there's no stillness. So stillness becomes a kind of guide. Guide. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So don't move, acceptance, openness, and then you begin to really find a deep stillness. Which manifests as silence, even in the midst of talking, calmness.

[44:18]

Die manifestiert sich als Stille selbst inmitten des Sprechens oder als Ruhe. And begins to allow you to feel the stillness of others even when they don't feel their own stillness. Und du beginnst dann die Stille anderer zu spüren, selbst wenn diese Menschen ihre eigene Stille nicht spüren können. As I often say, if you are in the midst of the field of a tree, the space of a tree, the leaves may be moving and the wind and so forth. But the leaves are moving in ways that have to do with the stillness of the trunk and the roots. And so with a person who's really still, you can feel their, like Thich Nhat Hanh, for example,

[45:32]

You can feel his stillness in all his movements. And so you begin, even for people who aren't still, they're still, partly still, and you awaken their stillness through your own stillness. So this is a preliminary teaching in relation, and basic, fundamental, in relationship to change, changing, changing. Because it's not just that change is going on. Change is changing itself in changing and you are changing. Now what is that?

[47:04]

How is it possible to be in the midst of that? Saturday. Okay. Now it's time to change for lunch, I mean dinner. Oh. So I'm sorry I gave you basic Zazen instruction. You're all so advanced. But I need to review these things myself.

[47:39]

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