Now, I was thinking early this morning that it would be that after Norman spoke, I would maybe have some discussion. But Norman said to me, I think I'll have to start with some discussion. So maybe, since we had quite a bit of discussion in the last period, I should say something. And because we had a discussion in the last period, maybe I should say something now. In one way, I don't really want to teach Buddhism. I want to find something, things that are useful to our life, your life and my life. At the same time, I want... to fulfill the discipline of practicing and teaching Buddhism.

[01:18]

But these things are not exactly the same thing or simultaneous, but rather different emphases. And as you may have noticed, I'm particularly interested, particularly the last ten years or so, I'd say, in the craft of practice. In the practice, the teaching and the realization as a craft. And, you know, as Norman was speaking just a few minutes ago, the use of phrases as a craft. And it takes a while to get used to the use of phrases.

[02:37]

I mean, we actually use them all the time. I think our... our... our... our bank of memories, is filled with phrases and images. kind of illuminated moments that kind of are a structure of memory. You know, a little like I started out saying. How sweetly flows, you know, Julia's silken clothes.

[03:39]

The word itself, Julia. you know, just popped up between the two friends of mine, between myself and a friend in Vienna the other day. But using a phrase in a mantric-like way. This is a craft you develop. Some people have an immediate feel for it and some people it takes time to... have a physical sense of it. And sometimes I call the phrases lens, you know, the technical term for these things is wado, or it means...

[04:44]

See, Norman and I aren't making this all up. There's actually technical terms lurking back there. So Wado means something like returning words to their source. Or turning the deeper meaning of words in the flow of the mind and language. oder die tiefere Bedeutung eines Wortes zu wenden in dem Fluss der Sprache. And the usual translation is something like turning words. Because you turn the words and the words turn you.

[06:07]

And a certain sensitivity in Mature or developing mindfulness practice helps this practice. So I sometimes call them, instead of turning words, lens phrases. Sounds like a vegetable. Yeah, that's... In German, it's... Linsen means both. Means both, because they look like little lenses? The lentil and... The lentil and the lentil.

[07:08]

That's one word in German, yeah. So lentil phrases. Also linsenwörter. But I know that in German, the word phrase, there's a problem just with the word phrase. Yeah, aber allein im Deutschen ist auch ein Problem mit dem Wort phrase. Phrase, ja, also Phrase oder Satz. Phrase ist ein bisschen abwertig im Deutschen. Because with these phrases you can kind of peer into things. Weil du mit diesen Sätzen in diese Sache hineinschauen kannst. Whenever I say something like that, I remember... what an inadequate dishwasher I was as a child. Along with cleaning the house and things, my most common job was washing the dishes. But the meal would end at seven and by nine I was still looking through the glasses at the silverware under the suds.

[08:23]

I don't know how silverware can be so interesting, but I would, you know. But, you know, this is very little exaggeration in what I just said. But you can use these phrases, they somehow let you look into your experience. And more commonly I call them gate phrases. And earlier in this seminar I called it gate phrases. hinge phrases. Because if enlightenment is anything, it's a shift in your worldview.

[09:30]

shifts in your views and a phrase is often a hinge for that shift or a gate for that kind of shift Okay, so now I want to bring up a famous phrase of Dogen's which I find I can't use matrically. Which is, along with to think, not thinking, dropping body and mind.

[10:42]

Yeah, I've tried using it in the way that I've used sort of like on each step arriving. And there's a kind of kindergarten aspect to this practice. Like in every situation, you... create the feeling of welcome. Or arriving. So you can have dropping. But not, yeah, somewhat dropping. But it hasn't been a particularly important way to use the phrase.

[11:51]

But, you know, such a, you know, kindergarten approach as Sophia's taught to, you know, say thank you all the time. To get in the habit of the initial response, the initial mind in each situation. Is acceptance. Because nothing, Nothing works in practice unless your initial state of mind is accepted. The next reaction might be, yeah, to hell with you. Yeah, I mean, so you get in a hat, somebody says, let's go to the movies.

[13:02]

So you say yes, and then you say, well, really, I can't. But such simple things, when we meet, often in the chaos, kind of chaos of meditation, when aspects of our life, ourself, are surfacing, You want to be able to say welcome. You want the habit of welcome as your initial response. And, you know, meditation is traditionally supposed to occur in... cemeteries. In the forest. In the forest in India were, you know, where civilization and institutions didn't reach, jungles.

[14:14]

So the forest, the cave, the cemetery, the monastery all represent the chaos of the body, all represent entering the unknown, or at least where culture and Institutions of society don't reach. So the cave, the forest, et cetera, also represent the feeling you bring to meditation. I think of, since I know Japan well, I think of a Japanese house.

[15:30]

Japanese houses assume a particular kind of body. They're not lobbies. They're not lobbies like the lobby of a hotel, which would be the office. So the Japanese house defines the body as something that meditates. It assumes the essential form of the body is a meditative body. That's why Even after China adopted chairs to a limited extent, Japan didn't adopt furniture. Yeah, so the houses... with their grass floors force you to sit in a meditative posture.

[16:52]

So you can look at the buildings of a culture the caves or the buildings or the lobbies, you know, and see what kind of body is assumed. So the early and very early... statements about Buddhism. The Buddha is said to enter meditation and bend and apply his attention and to to the body and noticing then that the body is material elements.

[18:05]

Now this is sometimes presented in contrast to the Hindu meditator who bends may also bend and apply attention to the body, but is looking for some mysterious invisible aspect of being. Yeah, so the Hindu had five elements. This mysterious element, in the early days, had only four elements. Now, what is it about the four elements? They're shared by everything. Das wird mit allen geteilt.

[19:09]

We all are made of the four elements. Wir alle sind aus diesen vier Elementen gemacht. Not exactly science, but you understand that's the feeling. That's what we notice. Das ist das, was wir bemerken, und das Gefühl, aber es ist nicht exakt jetzt Wissenschaft. And the world phenomena is the four elements. Und die Welt, die Phänomene, das sind die vier Elemente. Okay. Okay, so then when I have a phrase like dropping body and mind... For me, it's an instance of questions. I don't even... begin to try to understand what Dogen meant by dropping body and mind. Until I try to understand what body Dogen was dropping. What mind Dogen was dropped.

[20:23]

Was für ein Geist hat Dogen losgelassen? And what does he mean by dropping? Und was meint er mit loslassen? And even what is meant by and? Und was ist gemeint mit und? Are body and mind dropped together? Werden Körper und Geist zusammen losgelassen? Or one after another? Oder einer nach dem anderen? Or did he mean body-mind is dropped? Oder Körper-Geist ist losgelassen? Well, I can see in these questions a few years of work. Ich kann in diesen Fragen einige Jahre Arbeit sehen. What? Because I can't take... that cultural ideas I have of what body are. Or mind. And one of the interesting things that's going on right now is how neuroscientists are trying to define the body and the mind.

[21:32]

Medicine tries to define our body and is turning everything, you know, pregnancy into what the body does and not what a woman does. Oder wie die Medizin das definiert, indem sie zum Beispiel Schwangerschaft definiert als das, was der Körper tut, aber nicht das, was die Frau macht. And neuroscientists are trying to define, for the most part, mind in terms of the brain. And it's fruitful and interesting work. And I don't, myself, being a meditator, I don't usually... agree with their conclusions, but I love their details.

[22:36]

Okay, now Dogen defined, surely defined his body through as a meditated body. Was he drunk? dropping the body he found in society, because that is a body, hat er diesen Körper, der durch die Gesellschaft definiert wird, das ist ein Körper, hat er das weggeworfen. We shape ourselves in the public domain. Wir formen uns in dieser öffentlichen Umgebung. And teenage boys and girls shape themselves in terms of the public domain. They look like they were cut by a cookie cutter. And I really am quite curious and also worried because the public domain includes computer games.

[23:55]

And we shape ourselves, shape our response, our ability to respond to things also in a virtual reality. So Dogen also surely shaped his body within the culture of Japan in the 13th century. But he thought of that as a cultural body, that at least he dropped when he meditated. And the tradition is, in simple ways, for instance, Traditionally, you don't wear a wedding ring or jewelry, etc., when you meditate, because that is gone when you meditate.

[25:13]

This is a kind of ritual, but... not a rule, but a ritual that may or may not be useful to you when you practice. Now, Dogen also certainly knew the Chinese concepts of the body. Now, the word body in English is etymologically rooted in a brewing vat, like making beer. It's seen as a container. A container, a distillery of fragrances, flowers, fragrances, you know, feelings, etc.

[26:31]

Well, the Chinese, there's one word, shen, which means the body as activity and as extended in activity. And in Chinese, there's the word shen, which means body as activity. So we can say, you know, some sociologists now use the lived body. It could be something like the lived body. But it also means more than that. It means when someone comes in the room... You feel their presence, and each person's presence is different. That also is their body. And often in meditation, of course, you don't know quite where the boundaries of your body are anymore. Yeah, you're right. Right foot is up on your left leg and your left foot and your... etc.

[27:58]

And as I say, you often can't find your thumbs. They've drifted galactic distances apart. And you say... It must be there somewhere. Well, you've lost your usual body image. I mean, nothing, you know, you can't find your thumbs. But actually, it's very significant that you can't find your thumbs. It's also interesting how kids do this, you know. Even me. And then you point to a finger and you don't know which one to move. But it's a clear illustration that we experience our body from the outside, not from the inside.

[29:08]

From the inside you know which finger to move. So in Buddhism we have terms like body sheaths, like the sheaths for a knife. Or... or thought body. And one of the things that definitely happens when you meditate is you drop this exterior as if from the exterior image of your body. So the idea of Shen includes this sense of a body extended in space or without space. And this word shen contains a body that extends in space and not only within the skin.

[30:23]

And another word is shing, H-S-I-N-G, which means the body of continuous reappearance. And another word is shing, and that means the body of continuous reappearance. Yeah, well, this is very close to Buddhism and Dharamism. Yeah. Why not? Another day, another Dharma. But we think in terms of containers. Yeah, why not again?

[31:34]

Not only the body is a container, the world is a container. So we think in entities, not activities. So we don't see the tree. We see the tree as tree, not as treeing. So it's very useful to add ing to everything. They ring. Which reminds me of a bad joke. There's the engagement ring. The engagement ring. Der Verlobungsring. I have never been engaged. I don't know that. We're engaged. There's the wedding ring. Das ist ein Heiratsring. And there's suffering. Das ist suffering, ja. Someone told me the other day.

[32:37]

It's not true always. Das stimmt nicht immer, ja. Okay. So really you can develop the habit of saying treeing. or feeling the activity of the person in front of you, not the entity of the person. Now a culture which doesn't think in containers and entities would notice, without even any Dharma training, that the body is continuously reappearing. And a third... And a third word in Chinese for body. And that means a sharing of the whole.

[33:38]

Now, when you think of the body as a share of the whole, That's very different than a container. If you grow up feeling my body, this body, this or my... In Chinese and Japanese you don't even say my stomach, you just say stomach, because who the heck else's stomach would you be talking about? So this body... is maybe thus body. A body that's always thus-ing. And in its thus-ing, I'm trying to make him smoke. Yeah. In this so-being, the body is a share of the whole.

[35:13]

And this relates to the idea of an extended body, because my body just now is shared with you, and your body is shared with me. I think you can imagine if you grow up thinking of the body as a share of the whole, you're going to have a very different idea about your relationships. to others into the world. Now, so is Dogen dropping the body of continuous reappearance? Is Dogen dropping the body, which is a share of the whole?

[36:16]

Is Dogen dropping the body as extended activity or as an extended body? Hmm. Like Miriam, I can spend the next couple of years with this, and I have, in fact. What body is Dogen talking about? What was his experience? And, of course, we have to work with our own body. I don't think Buddhism over the centuries is much different. But I don't think the Buddha is the goal.

[37:26]

I think the Buddha is the beginning point. And we certainly will have experiences that the Buddha never had. Yeah. And each of you will have experiences I haven't had. As you know, Sukhiroshi used to say, you each will have your own enlightenment. But I think that what the real difference is... Not the experience, but the paradigms that shape our experience. Do you have the word paradigm in your thing? Okay. So we have shaped our body in our culture.

[38:29]

That's going to be an aspect of us, whether we practice Buddhism or not. But as Dogen's cultural body became secondary to his meditative, let's call it meditative, zazen body, aber wie Dogen's kultureller Körper nebensächlich wurde oder im Verhältnis zu seinem Meditationskörper Our cultural body is going to be different than Dogen's cultural body. But our meditative body is going to be extremely similar. Not exactly the same. But all us human beings can reproduce with each other from different cultures and cultures. races and so forth. And we can somehow reproduce the same meditative, very similar meditative body.

[39:35]

But the dynamic between the meditative body and the cultural body will be different for us than for Dogen. It means the paradigms of practice have to be different for us, perhaps, in many ways. Okay, and what mind is Dogen dropping? What does he mean by mind? You know, I can make my right hand touch my left hand. I've got them straight. Yeah, this is my left hand. And I can make my left hand feel like it's the agent of touching the right hand.

[40:46]

That's a mysterious and unexplainable but very common phenomena. Okay, so we can say this is the body. The hand is the body. Let's call it the body. It's certainly filled with a lot of things other than stuff. But the fact that I can make the right hand touch the left hand, or vice versa, this is an aspect, a manifestation of mind. Now, Dogen certainly also would have been... Now, let me take a little aside here.

[42:04]

I'm taking a phrase of Dogen's. I'm not using it as a turning word in this case. I'm using it in a way... as the Buddha bends his or her attention and vision to the body. Yeah. And notices body and mind. No, when I first started practicing body and mind were considered to be some kind of Cartesian, you know, absolutes.

[43:06]

I think Herman Kahn, the guy who invented the hydrogen bomb, Teller. Teller, I think, said, or maybe Herman Kahn said, I'd be happy to be a brain in a Petri dish. I don't need my body. Whoa! That kind of thinking causes a lot of trouble. Mm-hmm. But now it's commonplace, 40 or 50 years later, to think of the body and mind as one. And that's better than thinking they're real separate. But thinking they're one does not help practice.

[44:12]

Noticing that they have a relationship is what's important. Because we do notice, I notice the mind which can affect the hand and I notice the hand. And I can develop a relationship between these two noticings. And Buddhism is a particular way, and Zen an even more particular way, to develop the relationship between body and mind. To weave it together and mature the relationship and develop a dynamic of the relationship. Yeah, other teachings do it somewhat differently.

[45:30]

This is a particular choice. To choose to practice Zen is a particular choice. It's not the truth, it's not the only way, it's a way. Now we can assume, Dogen, experience of mind and body was rooted not only in meditation, but also in Buddhist teachings. And Buddhist teachings in the sense that they should be understood, are pointing out what's most useful to notice. The emphasis is not telling you how it is it's telling you what to notice and of course you can notice whatever you want and that's part of practice too but at some point on your own and through the teachings you see hey

[46:46]

These things are most useful to notice. And the two most useful things to notice that Buddhism points out are the breath, and attention itself. Because Buddhism is also rooted in bringing attention to attention. Now, when you hear something like the Buddha bends his attention and vision to the body and finds it's... Yeah, we have some idea about, yeah, to do that. Yeah. But from that description, we don't have any idea of what arises when you do that.

[48:25]

And this simple description of the Buddha's activity of bringing knowledge, attention and vision, It is developed as a teaching in the four foundations of mindfulness. One of the very, very earliest of Buddhist teachings. And which the Buddha, historical Buddha, supposedly said... The four foundations of mindfulness is all you need if you practice it thoroughly. And so what is the four foundations of mindfulness? Bringing attention to the body. to feelings and to mind and to phenomena.

[49:42]

But the word phenomena doesn't mean the physical objects of the world. Even in English, the word phenomena means something close to Dharma. So, because phenomena does not mean objects, it means objects perceived by the senses. And one of the most basic things to remember, along with bringing attention to the breath, every object of perception points to the object being perceived and also the mind that's perceiving. So you develop the continuous habit of on all perceptions you feel the mind perceiving.

[50:46]

So you develop the continuous habit It's like you look into a lake and you see the stone at the bottom of the lake through the water. Das ist so, als ob du, wenn du in einen See schaust und du siehst den Stein am Grund des Sees durch das Wasser. So you begin after a while through yogic practice to perceive the mind as if it were water through which you were seeing everything. Also nach einer Weile der buddhistischen Praxis siehst du den Geist wie Wasser durch das du siehst, wenn du wahrnimmst. The only difference, metaphorically, is that you can take the stone out of the water and look at it in the air and see how different it is, smaller, less colorful.

[51:47]

You can't take the object of perception out of the mind and look at it. But meditation practice is like maybe something close to doing that. So now there's no time between now and five minutes when we have lunch to bring in any dimensions of the teachings of the four foundations of mindfulness. But you see, if I try to talk about Buddhism as a craft, it takes me quite a while to build up a situation where you can feel the craft of it. But let me just say one thing. Sticking with the most classic, the breath. Because this is not just mindfulness of the body, it's also bodyfulness of the body.

[53:07]

Bodyfulness of the body. So there's a bringing of the attention to the breath. And you also explore your body inside and out with attention. Till you know this body as if... Almost as if it were being dissected. But it's very interesting. When you explore all the organs and the shape, it's... It fits the medical picture and it also has other dimensions. This is the body you live and you might as well know it. What body has still been dropping? Now you can bring your attention to your elbow.

[54:25]

That's not too interesting. Unless you've hit your funny bone or something. But you can bring your attention much more fruitfully to the breath. Now what you discover... is the breath is a kind of exercise machine for attention. You bring attention to the breath and the attention and the activity of the breath actually begins to develop the attention. The activity of breathing develops the strength of attention. In der Achtsamkeit.

[55:33]

Your attention is pumping iron. Die Aufmerksamkeit hebt Eisen hoch. And then with that strengthened attention, when you bring that strengthened breath attention to the elbow, it's something else again. Und dann mit dieser gestärkten Achtsamkeit, wenn du diese Achtsamkeit jetzt zu dem Ellbogen bringst, dann ist das was anderes. Now this you can never... Get the feeling for even this simple little example, when the Buddha bends his attention to his body, what's going on? You have to do it to find this out. The attention develops the body, and the body develops attention. Achtsamkeit entwickelt den Körper und der Körper entwickelt Achtsamkeit. And it shapes the body. Und formt den Körper. Now, is the body shaped by attention, what Dogen's dropping?

[56:34]

Ist der Körper, der durch diese Achtsamkeit geformt wird, das, was Dogen loslässt? Let's drop this subject all together. Lass uns dieses Objekt jetzt einfach mal loslassen. And have lunch. Und lass uns was zu essen gehen.

[56:48]

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