Da Wei, a famous Zen master, said that if you want to study the way, you must know right where you are. Yeah. Now, what does he mean by you must know right where you are? Yeah, it sort of makes sense. If you don't know where you are, how the hell are you going to study the way? It has to start somewhere. It certainly is going to start from where you are, unless if you're on the path at least. But beyond such observations like that, what does he mean? Now, I have to admit, I feel a little crazy sometimes that I point out all these details to you all the time.

[01:21]

I mean, I think you guys just must be totally tired of it. I'm surprised you're patient with me. But, you know, they say, someone said, I don't know who, the genius is in the details. I don't know if that's true and I don't know who said that. Well, that's what I'm afraid of. Did you have to tell him you wanted that? Okay. But anyway, even if we take that more positively, I'm not sure that's a good excuse for all the details.

[02:31]

But this morning I felt kind of terrible saying to Evelyn, though I waited three mornings before I said it, You ought to hit the bell for Lerna on the word and Manjushri on the word and not before or after the word. And I was pleased to see that Nico did it on the word the other day. I noticed. And can these little details mean anything? Well, I mean, I don't know how to speak about what I want to speak about unless I do, so...

[03:36]

Please continue to be patient with me. The other day, or yesterday, I guess, I spoke about water coming down, karmic water coming down and hitting the mill wheel. And when we breathe, it's something like that. I mean, when the water is going over the mill wheel, Mill wheel, is that different from a water wheel?

[04:49]

You can't separate the identity of the water from the mill wheel, from the wheel. The water, there's no wheel turning unless there's water and there's no, etc., So again, from the point of view of everything being activity, the water and the mill wheel are an activity. Not two entities. They're one activity. Okay. Now, one of the things I keep trying to point out, too, in addition to things or activities, is that each thing is unique. Each perception, each action is unique. Now, how do you... I mean, it is true, but how do you experience it as true?

[06:10]

Well, I mean, one... The Bodhisattva, let's think of all of us as Bodhisattvas, The ideal Bodhisattva or realized Bodhisattva finds him or herself naturally in uniqueness. It's sort of like constantly being in the dark. And you feel your way in the dark. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, as I've sometimes illustrated, going to the altar as the doshi. Your body knows where you're going if you've done it as many times as I've done it.

[07:15]

But somehow, while you know, you suspend that knowing. So that you are, it's a little adventure path to the altar. And if it wasn't that, I would have quit this business a long time ago. I'm tired of going to the altar. But it's really for me a little adventure path. Who knows what's going to happen between here and the altar. Okay, but it's a way to put yourself in uniqueness.

[08:28]

And that's part of what dhahui means, to know right where you are, is also to not know where you are, because you're in the midst of uniqueness. Okay, now I yesterday talked about 3AB as a sign for taking three being in the presence of three attentional breaths The poet Rumi says, waiting for openness is to let your chest fill with light. So he's trying to find words for the same sort of territory I'm speaking about.

[09:35]

So three attentional breaths. Now one thing I said in the practice period, which I haven't said in Sashin, I don't think I did. Is to see if you can see the world from within the breath. It's hard for me to take these words and put them together in a way that can make you feel what I'm saying. Another way is to say... see the world as if it were inside of you.

[10:50]

And those little things at the end of the Nenju poem, the flash of lightning, is also the moment of enlightenment. Your head burning with fire is when everything is empty, burned up. The morning dew might have the reflection of the moon in it. Yeah. And... What's the other one? Phantom. No, like a phantom.

[11:53]

Star. Okay, anyway. Listing that made me forget what I wanted to say. Oh, yeah. Anyway. We'll come back. So let me go to the water coming, a dream, like a dream. Okay, but the deeper meaning of like a dream is not just that it's insubstantial like a dream, but to see the world as if it were like or as a dream so these are little exercises I'm giving you like you I heard you had a nice walk that's nice

[12:55]

Ich habe gehört, ihr hattet einen schönen Spaziergang. Wenn ihr zum Beispiel draußen sitzt, When you dream the world, it's clearly, even if you're somewhat, the dream really feels real, still, usually we know, this is happening inside me. So I often say to know that every perception is also mind. Now I'm carrying that a step further into the craft of practice. that you feel the world as if it were inside.

[14:30]

The way you feel a dream as is inside. Okay. So let's go back to the water coming down and being the same as the water we are. So each of us is breathing now. And I'm breathing. And the breath, it's a little bit like the water going down the mountain, the stream. The air is coming into me. And as the water turns the water wheel, It produces energy. And the air now as breath is producing energy. This breath is now you. You can't anymore say it's the air. It's now you. Du kannst nicht mehr sagen, dass das Luft ist, sondern das ist jetzt du.

[15:51]

Okay, so maybe we can say this is breath air me. Vielleicht können wir sagen, das ist Atemluft ich. As Dung Shan says, I am not it, but it is now me. So wie Dung Shan sagt, ich bin nicht es, aber es ist jetzt ich. So the air, which was just sitting around on the surface of the planet, is now me. And breath, air, me. Okay, who are you? I'm breath, air, me. Who are you? Okay, so breath, air, me is not the same as self, me. This is a simple fact. Breath, air, me is not the same as self, me.

[16:54]

And there's no argument about that each of us is breath, air, me or you, you know. Now, if you take this into the procedure and craft of practice, And you practice with breath, air, me. Breath, air, me. You actually, I think you'll, the more you kind of repeat it, you'll begin to feel yourself in the world differently. Because if I kind of start identifying breath, air, me and isolating myself from self, me So I'm breath, air, me.

[17:59]

I am now it. Okay, if I am breath, air, me, then I'm also this air. I'm not separated from this air. I'm not only inseparable from the breath, I'm inseparable from the air. And if I feel I'm breath, air, me, I feel more like you. Because you're also breathing, that was my air you're breathing. Hey, cut that out. Yeah, so we're all sharing this taking turns or simultaneously practicing breath, air, me. And you can read Dung Shan's statement, I am not it, but it is now me.

[19:14]

And you don't get it that he means something like breath, air, me. And if you work with breath-air-me, pretty soon phenomena and space is space-me. Dogen actually talks about weighing space, using space. So we're in a different kind of world here, which also can be our world. Now, one of the things we've noticed in practice period is that, well, it's obvious, we're sitting together, we're chanting together, we're eating together, working together, and we're not sleeping all in one big room, like at a heiji, we'd all be sleeping in the zendo.

[20:32]

But the one concession we're going to make, we're not going to be Asian Buddhists, the one concession we're going to make, everyone has their own bathroom. I mean, eventually. It's my concession to Western individualism. Isn't that funny? There's a great book called The Discovery of the Individual. in 1500 etc but it doesn't say you have your own bathroom but we're not a monk monastery we're a lay monastery so I think maybe one of our descriptions of ourselves should be lay monastic center And it certainly defines almost all of how I teach and what I'm teaching.

[21:56]

Yeah. Okay. So one of the things we've discovered, and I've tried, okay, we're chanting together working together, eating together, and so forth. And the emphasis in a sashin is the sitting together, as I said, is to anchor yourself in samadhi. And the emphasis in practice period is to anchor yourself in emptiness. That you develop the habit of seeing everything as empty. Interdependent, not substantial, etc. Okay, so one of the, as I said, the pedagogy of practice period is as much as possible have us all day long for 90 days, 100 days,

[23:11]

Doing everything as much as possible in relationship to each other. Not exactly together, that's too simple, but in relationship to each other. And trying to find a word for that, I called it a deeply engaged, emergent routine. Um dafür ein Wort zu finden, habe ich dieses Wort gefunden, eine zutiefst engagierte, emergierende Routine. Okay. Now, routine I'm using in English to mean also route or route or passageway. Dieses Wort Routine benutze ich auch, um Route oder Durchgang zu sagen. So it's a passageway we find through the day and the 90 days in what looks simply like routine, but as a routine rooted in and anchored in samadhi and emptiness,

[24:43]

So it's a kind of learning experience where you get the feel of always being in contact. You know how you might have noticed I like to play with words. So, alterity means the study of, or something like that, of otherness. Just say alterity. Okay, and alter, to alter something, means to change it. Yeah, so I think of each moment as an alter moment. So for me, it's a moment of otherness and choice. And it's a choice on the altar.

[26:12]

So I feel these little altar moments where the Buddha appears. Okay. Okay. So although we can't after Practice period is only three months. Now, this is not, it's very interesting that the tradition is you don't live this way in the monastery for ten years. I mean, you can if you, this is your job, you know. But the basic tradition and conception is you do it for three months and then not for three months and then you do it for three months. For about ten years. You're welcome.

[27:27]

I mean, three months is, you know, but anyway, you understand. So it's during those three months we can't establish this kind of resonant mutuality. You can't ask the people you work with to chant with you. You could, but you might get fired. That's a religious nut. Or you can't ask your spouse, before we have breakfast, we're going to chant together. But you can have a feeling for the world happening inside you. As a constantly changing connectedness. that you can actually rest in because it's anchored in emptiness.

[28:47]

Now I said a deeply engaged, emergent routine. And by deeply engaged I mean anchored in emptiness. And I say emergent because things emerge from this, flow from this. As those of you in the practice period know, a lot of your past flows into you. So wie diejenigen von euch in der Praxisperiode das Wissen, ein Großteil deiner Vergangenheit fließt in dich hinein.

[29:50]

But the present flows into you too. Aber die Gegenwart fließt auch in dich. And Da Hui goes on to say, to study the way is to know right where you are. And then he says, and many things emerge then from right where you are. Okay. And if you discover this, ah, This deeply engaged routine. This deeply engaged flow. Which allows you to feel inside the world. Feel the world inside you. Yeah. Many things emerge from that.

[31:06]

It is not me, but I am now it. As Dongshan saw his face in the flowing stream, Just before he said, it is now, it is not me, it is, it is, I am not it, it is now me. The flowing stream is flowing, but his image, insubstantial as it is, stays in place. And you can't think so many things. You can't think your way to this. You can understand it, but understanding means almost nothing.

[32:07]

You have to have the experience of the world is inside you as mind flowing. Flowing, but mind stays in place. Breath, now me. Space, now me. Atem, jetzt, ich. Raum, jetzt, ich. Okay, now, part of this came out of watching people serve food. Ein Teil von diesem hier ist daraus entstanden, dass ich die Leute, dass ich euch beim Servieren zugeschaut habe. And I try to, you know, this is one of those details. Das ist wieder eins dieser Details. And this will be fairly quick, don't worry. Und das wird jetzt schnell gehen, keine Sorge. But, I mean, I don't, I don't know how to reach into this situation except to look at the details.

[33:26]

Now, you know, a simple thing. The Japanese car industry changed the car industry in the world because they designed a car to get the driver from point A to point B. An American cars were designed to get the car from point A to point B. And as soon as you had a choice of a Japanese car in California, nobody bought an American car. You couldn't find an American car in California. They all went to Mexico. Retired. This is true.

[34:30]

I'm talking facts. So these little shift, such a little shift to build a car for the passengers rather than the car. change the economics of the world. So if you want to practice appearance, one of the most effective ways to practice appearance is to make every physical motion, every physical act an attentional unit. Now, Japanese crafts... Sorry, what did I say? Japanese crafts are based on treating everything as an attentional unit.

[35:34]

And the tea ceremony is all about everything, how you sit down, how you straighten yourself, how you put the tea bowl in front of you. It's all attentional units. Now, I don't know much. I think the martial arts are like that, too. The Asian martial arts. And I don't... I don't know much about martial arts. I'm as un-martial as you can get. But it's still interesting. I did study Qigong with Dr. Wu for a while. Not Dr. Who. That's a British guy. Dr. Wu. I practiced Qigong with Dr. Wu, not Dr. Hu.

[37:03]

He was studied at Stanford Research Institute because he's the first person to throw people at a distance. To throw people at a distance? Yeah, they'd be coming to attack him. He'd go like this and they'd be 20 feet away. He also studied Uri Geller. You know, I'm in the freaky world. Okay. So, I watched, I watched, could it have been the founder of Tai Chi in, what is it in, what's it called in Japan? not Tai Chi, Aikido. I saw the founder of Aikido in San Francisco, or his disciple, invite five people or seven people up on the stage with sticks.

[38:05]

And he was in his 70s, pretty old. And he said, all of you try to hit me. And he just walked around the stage and no one could hit him. And as far as I could tell, if a person was standing like this, he knew to get to here, you have to do certain things with your arms. So he just walked where you couldn't be. And I would say that it's rooted in analyzing all the movements as attentional units.

[39:17]

So you know exactly what you can do with your body and you know exactly what everyone else, the seven people trying to hit him, can do with their bodies. And these are just people from the audience, not people he brought with him. But this sense that every action is an intentional unit, Aber dieses Gefühl, dass jede Handlung, each act or action, dass jede Handlung eine Aufmerksamkeitseinheit ist, is also what Dawid means by know exactly where you are. Das ist auch das, was Dawid damit meint, wenn er sagt, wisse genau, wo du bist. The yogic bodily mind is known through attentional units. Der yogische Körpergeist wird durch Aufmerksamkeitseinheiten gekannt.

[40:22]

And it's how you discover, it's one of the best ways to discover the habitation of appearance. Okay, so if you're ladling soup There's six attentional units. One is scooping. Now a lot of people scoop and try to get stuff. That's natural. It's very compassionate. You want to put a lot of stuff in the guise of your friends. And you usually want to do that, except in special. I mean, sometimes you want to do that. For instance, the person might be allergic to water. We have all these special diets.

[41:40]

Someone must be allergic to water. Trying to get the water out of the ladle. But if you do it in the most fundamental way, you just go to the bottom, and you get what you get and you just go to the top and you get what you get and you do not discriminate. And some people get shortchanged, too bad. It's a kind of trusting the gesture, trusting activity. Es ist eine Art der Geste zu vertrauen oder der Aktivität zu vertrauen. Now, you can modify it and it depends, but generally the basic is you just go to the bottom and then you go to the top and that's it.

[42:46]

You don't discriminate. Du kannst es leicht verändern, aber im Grunde genommen gehst du einfach zum Boden des Topfes und dann von der Oberfläche des Topfes und da untertriffst du keine Unterscheidung. So the first attentional unit is scooping. And that's an appearance. And you feel it as an appearance. And it's unique. You're not into visual processed acting. Visually processed acting. Which usually generalizes things. Or from doing the names of things out of habit. Now I'm serving soup. Thinking about something else. No. So, mostly it's the first attentional unit is scooping.

[43:49]

Yeah, and the first one from the bottom. The second attentional unit is lifting. And you lift the ladle straight up. And you experience that as an attentional unit and there's a pause afterwards. And the next attentional unit, though you don't have to do it, but usually it helps, is you shake the ladle a bit. Because there's almost always a drop hanging on the bottom. And then the next attentional unit is you bring the ladle horizontally across. And the next attentional unit, the sixth, is you pour the soup into the bowl.

[45:02]

I see us all like in some kind of... you know, sort of musical with all the... See why I think I'm nuts? But if you do this and it is an unintentional unit, Then it's a big space. And everything's happening in a very big space. The person is in the space, the thought in the space, and you are. But it's a great practice for what's meant by appearance.

[46:24]

If you think to watch yourself ladling carefully so you don't spill anything, that's not appearance. visually processed or visually filtered acting. You're saying to yourself, I don't want to spill anything. And I want to be careful. And you're thinking, and you're trying to follow the pattern of your thinking. This is not being exactly where you are. Being where you are, there's an attentional unit of scooping, an attentional unit of lifting, horizontal, pouring. and the more you do that the more you find yourself in a big space in your chest filled with light and you can practice in a simple sense like looking at Katrin

[47:35]

is an attentional unit. Maybe I shouldn't say it's an appearance. Maybe I call it an attentional unit. Then if I turn and look to my right at Agatha, Hey, another attentional unit, absolutely unique. And if I just see you know you're both there and I can look back and forth because you're both there, that's a container entity mind. Als ob ich weiß, dass ihr beide da seid und dann einfach hin und her schaue, dann ist das ein Behältnis und Entitätengeist. So the practice of attentional units is at the center of yogic Buddhist Zen practice. Sorry, I went on longer than I wanted.

[48:57]

Thank you for translating.

[49:06]

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