Good morning. Guten Morgen. And somehow on Friday, what we call a prologue day, I feel comfortable not saying anything. Or just saying something, but not worrying about how it connects. And, you know, I find I do that, and it's actually a relevant part of knowing in Zen practice. although I just happen to do it, it also happens to be a relevant part of knowing in traditional Zen practice.

[01:17]

It reminds me of what I've spoken about a couple of times recently, Which is about how Cézanne painted. They discovered half-finished paintings that he threw away in the fields and then they tried to see what the heck was he doing. And he seems to have painted this perception and he painted some other perception and so forth. Without trying to create pictorial space. And by the accumulation of these separate things, in the end you end up with a kind of pictorial space.

[02:41]

And in my experience, it's a pictorial space which requires the activity of the observer of the painting. Well, anyway, yesterday I felt I was just doing a little of this and a little of that. But now, somehow, when Saturday morning comes, I feel I have to create some pictorial space. Or some practice space. But still, it's going to require your own participation to make the practice space practicable. And you spoke yesterday, I believe, about control.

[03:54]

Can you tell us what you said yesterday? Roughly, anyway. No? Katerina. Hi. Hi. Hi. So the lack of a word with intention but without control.

[05:03]

So I've found myself over these 50 years of practicing Und ich habe festgestellt, mich gefunden nach diesen 50 Jahren von Praxis. Immersed in, I really am sorry to use the word worldview again, but anyway, immersed in a worldview shift. Ich habe festgestellt, und es tut mir leid, dass ich jetzt wieder dieses Wort Weltsicht verwende, aber ich habe festgestellt, eingetaucht zu sein in eine Weltsicht. Which is not just between West and the yogic East Asia or Asia. But also... Zen within any culture requires a shift in how you live, discover your lived life.

[06:14]

How you discover your lived life in each moment and in successive moments. And I've been doing this and found out it's most satisfying on every level I can notice to do it with others. And this issue of control was one of the most difficult to reach into points. And, you know, I find it completely interesting, but also, you know, on the edge of frustrating.

[07:19]

Because I can't seem to make myself understood. Let's just take a simple example since I have a bell in front of me. And I'm mentioning this because I think it illustrates, well, not only important parts of Zen practice, but it illustrates how our views on it our views permeate everything we do. The Buddha himself supposedly said, your views are prior to perception. You think your perceptions are showing you the world, But your perceptions are showing your view of the world.

[09:05]

Okay. I feel a little embarrassed to be talking about hitting a bell, but here we go. Bell, bell, bell. Okay, even a little bell like this. When you hit it, you let the stick hit it. Which means you have to hold the stick loosely. And I say to people, you know, hold it loosely or let it bounce, you know. And then they're ringing the bell for the beginning of zazen or in service. And they're hitting the bell like this. And they can't stop. I mean, really, I know you all think you could do it, but I'm sometimes over 10 or 15 years pointing it out to people and still try to control how they hit the bell.

[10:31]

And if you hit the bell like that, you hear a clock. But actually the person is doing his best to get the right sound. But we end up not hearing the bell. We hear their mind trying to get the right sound. Yeah, so I don't know what, you know. We hit this big wooden thing, which we call a fish, which is sort of shaped like a heart, shaped like a fish. And you have to hit it so that the stick hits it, not you. And I try to show it to someone. And they say yes and they do it a couple of times.

[12:04]

And then in the morning I see them doing it like this. So this sounds unimportant but it's very difficult to actually let the world into your actions. To release your life to chance. And because really in the end that's what... the assumption in Zen practice and Buddhist practice in general, is that you can have an intention, but you have to turn your life over to the chances, the accidents, And fate isn't part of it.

[13:23]

The accidents that happen, no matter what your intention is. And you see this particularly in the translation. of the word sila, which we mentioned yesterday, which means wholesome behavior or something like that. Wholesome behavior. Sounds complicated. Well, we have to discover the direction.

[14:25]

But it's usually translated as discipline. And what is meant by discipline in Buddhism is you mean something close to the opposite of what's meant by discipline in the West. And there's three basics in early Buddhism. Sila, Samadhi and Prajna wisdom. And I think it's useful for us as Westerners, lay Westerners and Westerners in general practicing that we go back to some of these early formulations of practice

[15:36]

In this case, part of the discussion and controversy within the Zen school's development... But this... three-fold teaching exists way before the Zen school existed. No, why do I say before the Zen school? Because I'm trying to, I'm simply emphasizing that the Zen school is a construct. It's not something absolute.

[16:45]

Buddhism is not something absolute. It's a construct. And the five skandhas are teaching to initially at least show us that, as I said yesterday, that consciousness is a construct. And so we're not following Zen practice, we're constructing Zen practice. Just like you let the stick hit the bell and the bell hit the stick. We are letting Zen affect our lives and the way it affects our lives is also then affecting Zen. And our lives affect Zen.

[17:47]

And our lives affect Zen. So we have complete permission to develop Zen practice. Make it what we want it to be. Now there is a little... need for some kind of reference point or something, you know. So that we can discuss a little bit later too. But let me see if I can define sila and discipline from the point of view of Zen practice. Most simply, Discipline is the way you form the way you give order to the mind.

[19:07]

Again, it's an inside-out activity not an outside-in activity. Discipline in Buddhism is not like pressure from the outside to conform. And really the teaching of sila, samadhi and prajna is how to be free of pressures from outside. How to find an internal functioning and ordered, which then orders the world.

[20:12]

So something like jazz is a much more conceptually consistent music for a Yogi culture than a Western orchestra. And... And... So in general, the Buddhist instruments, for instance, for services and etc., the Buddhist instruments, are meant to, I don't know what to say, make mistakes. They're meant to play themselves if you cooperate with them.

[21:21]

And if you look at various forms of Asian music from most Asian countries, there's always a kind of, well, we'll do it this way now, but we don't have to do it exactly like someone And I'm not saying I want to do away with Bach or anything like that. My daughter is trying to learn the piano well enough to play Beethoven's Waldstein, which I guess is rather difficult. But that's her ambition. And I have another daughter who's, much to my surprise, become an opera singer. And I'm jazzing around with Zen.

[22:29]

But I'm trying to use... I'm not saying... What am I saying? I think we can have the best of both worlds. we can have the best of both worlds. You're attached to both worlds. Okay, so again, let me try to keep trying to define discipline. Buddhist concept of discipline. You see it in the way the precepts are given.

[23:31]

And the precepts are part of the definition of sila. The precepts have never been conceived of as something you follow. They're not rules. From the earliest Buddhist times, they're not something you follow. They're something you intend. And then you observe whether that intention ends up with you sort of doing something close to the precepts. So the discipline is to discover how to hold an attention but not exactly how to follow an intention.

[24:33]

And again, I'm not trying to say one is better than the other. In fact, I think you could make a case for sometimes either attitude or discipline is important. I'm trying to use this as an entry into the interwoven dynamic of Buddhist practice. So discipline is the ability then to hold an intention, I've said, and then prajna then is to wisdom, is to observe how this intention affects your actions.

[25:57]

So discipline is the second perfection of the six perfections. The first is generosity. And the concept of generosity is not like being a donor or something like that. It's about fully engaging in the world. Fully engaging in the world. And engaging in a way that doesn't harm others. and isn't stingy with your presence. So the first parameter of perfection is generosity. And as I say, you can practice that every time you meet somebody.

[27:01]

You just feel open to whatever this person needs. But the second parameter is discipline. So without discipline you can't be open to what another person needs. So that openness, that ability to be open, is achieved through discipline. Now, I think I will try to speak about that in... a number of ways during our two days together. And in relationship to how the teaching like the non-arising of consciousness makes sense only through the Buddhist idea of discipline.

[28:26]

Now, did you have a meeting last night? Yes. How was it? Interesting. That can mean lots of things. It means lots of things. Well, actually, there was a review going on, but also we had a controversy. Controversy? Yeah. Should I know about this controversy? I think so. Okay. I'll brace myself. Well, I think the main point was a question, and... trying to understand each other in our experience and in our way we talk about our experience. And the topic was the body.

[29:40]

It's quite simple. And the question we were asking each other was, how do we understand the body? What is the body? And there were so many different answers that... You started fighting. No, we... Body, about... I don't know. We did start fighting, but it was complicated. And then, I don't know. But it also felt very fruitful. Well, good. So what would, can somebody say, what were the main points of controversy? One or two of them? The main points. Yes. Tara? Everyone who has a body should be able to say something.

[30:43]

Yes. One point was whether we should talk about it at all, whether we should discuss it. Okay. Whether it's useful to define the term body. Or whether this would mean narrowing it down if you try to define it. Yes. So there was a range of meanings, one which is already... So the body could be everything on the one hand.

[31:44]

So in that meaning, I also could call a body a field or space. That's what I thought afterwards. And on the other hand, the other end of the spectrum, just like the physical body. Okay. Yes. Yes, come on. Yes. I think the question was based on Fundamental was also to be able to practice together how far is it necessary that we have a common language.

[33:02]

And if we take a word and talk about it, how far is it necessary that we have the same or common association going along with it? So this was really a wonderful example because on the one hand this is very central to our projectives. And this was really this big range when we were talking about, on the one hand, is everything a body which is not discursive thinking? And on the other hand, the physical stuff of the body.

[34:18]

Someone else? I like this controversy. Also, ich mag diese Kontroverse. Ja, ich hatte sich darüber einmal auszutauschen, das ist für besonders wichtig, wenn wir uns darauf beziehen. Sagt einer, mein Körper entscheidet, ich lasse es meinen Körper tun und solche Dinge gebrauchen wir da. I think it's especially important that we have an exchange about that because we're always referring to it and we are saying things like, I let my body decide, my body knows something. My body has learned this. Without knowing what we are saying somehow. Okay. And when I'm looking at how much you are taking it difficult on you to find new terms,

[35:27]

creating terms like you did yesterday. Then we cannot just take a word like body as a commonplace term and just act like everybody knows what it means. Yeah. So this was somehow the starting point of the controversy or the discussion. Okay. For me, it's so that I cannot really separate what is mind and what is body. It's in a kind of relationship and I cannot separate it. So my feeling is everybody has a different kind of range of experience and whether he sees things as belonging more to the body or more to the other side of the spectrum.

[37:12]

And having an experience, it may be personally that I emphasize the body or the mind more. And having an experience, it may be personally that I emphasize the body Therefore, I think it's not possible to figure it out completely and define it. And I have tried with the years of practice to get a feeling for these terms and to relate it to my experience in a certain way. I have a feeling for this experience. I certainly don't know exactly what he is experiencing, but often I have a feeling for this experience. And for me it is not so important whether you feel it in your body or in your mind.

[38:25]

For me it is more important that there is understanding, that there is a language on another level. And when somebody talks about an experience, what I get is a feeling about what the other person is talking about and not so much that I understand in what kind of territory and what kind of terms are used. Okay. Yeah. I found it helpful. Peter reminded me that during the practice period you talked about the three mysteries. And it's for a reason that it's called The Three Mysteries, Body, Speech and Mind. And you gave us instruction and pointed that we should observe when it's possible to separate it all and how there is a relationship between the terms.

[39:41]

Okay. So the agreement we have to do some things according to clock time to reduce the mystery of time means we should have a break now. And maybe I'd like to continue to some extent this discussion after the break. And I would like to continue this conversation after the break.

[40:30]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.74