Well, this is the first seminar I've done since coming back to Germany, to Europe. This is the first one in a pretty long time I've done teamed up with Marie-Louise. And we're seeing if Sophia is old enough to be away for quite a while now. And I feel I have this strange privilege to try to present Zen Buddhism and practice somehow in English and German and your German and European cultures.

[01:13]

It's a kind of meditation for me. By meditation I mean I... enter doing this with you without really knowing how we can develop this practice. And some of you who are here I've practiced with since the 90s.

[02:20]

And some since the 80s. Some since the 70s. And one, at least, Paul, since the 60s. And I guess I practiced with myself before that. And I believe that I have already practiced with myself before. So I must know some of you pretty well. But at the same time, you know, to do this is to really, for me, to start anew with you. And practice is always starting anew. For me at least, anyway.

[03:21]

Yeah, I bring my experience of practicing a pretty long time to whatever I do. But if I really look at whatever situation I'm in, my experience is never enough. It helps, but it's never enough. My experience is never enough for whatever the situation. For something simple like new experience requires new experience.

[04:21]

And we have this question, this very old question, centuries old question, what is reality? But it's a question because it's never fully answered by our experience. And some people, some of you, you're here and some people, some persons will come tomorrow morning, I guess. And I guess some even come Friday evening. So what we, I know this is the case, what we do here will be a big part of the tone of

[05:41]

of what happens during the rest of the seminar. Here in this, whatever, here we are in this room and more people will join us in this room and they'll enter this I don't know, reality. Now, the practice of meditation and mindfulness, let's say mindfulness right now, is, yeah, of course it... It probably makes us somewhat calmer.

[07:04]

More alert, more present. But does it give us more presence? Now I'm introducing now some difference between the Present and presence. A present as an adjective, not as a present moment. The present moment and presence. Okay, also der Unterschied zwischen Gegenwart und Präsenz. Mal gucken, was draus wird. Anwesenheit oder... Are you asking me for help? No, just waiting for more to get it clear.

[08:06]

Well, I think I'll try to come back to this as we go along. Okay. Because mindfulness, yeah, mindfulness is what I said, I think. Also to observe our, to be able to see our thinking as we think. Perhaps to be present within the presence of our thinking. And our activity. To feel space within our activity and our thinking. And if you can't Find space within your thinking and be present within your thinking as you think.

[09:25]

It would be very hard to realize, enter into the perfecting of views, which is the Buddha's first teaching. The perfecting of? Of views. Views. The perfecting of the views is? to enter into the practice of the perfecting of views. I like it when it's difficult to translate. I like it when it's difficult to say. Because when it's too easy to say, we don't see the assumptions hidden in our thinking. So one of the points I'm making here in this more lazy prologue day

[10:47]

Yeah, is to really go slowly and feel the steps in our thinking. And slowly enough that you even see steps you didn't... more steps than you imagine are in your thinking. So I'm trying to go slowly in that way now. Because we won't see our inborn and ingrown views unless we can see them functioning in our thinking. And at the center of all serious Realizing Buddhist practice is to be able to see, feel your inborn, ingrown culture.

[12:29]

That's what phrases like original mind mean. The face before your parents were born. Or the face before you were born. So if we ask, what is the face before... We were born, I was born, you were born. This is a Zen way of asking, what is reality? What is reality, fundamental reality, free from or independent from one's inborn culture? Now that's no simple practice or question. And I can see that, you know, unless you really have a feel for it, it gets somehow underneath your activity and thinking.

[13:57]

Unless you have a feel for it, if it somehow doesn't get underneath your activity and thinking. It's quite boring. Another one of those tiresome Zen questions. I've got enough to do in my life without worrying about the face before I was born. But You know, some kind of questioning in there, questioning itself, is at the center of our practice. Questioning... It and you.

[15:18]

It's hard enough to see past our habits of our personal story and whether we're liked or disliked and so forth. But it's much harder to see past the culture in which you define the world. Now, what I'm saying here is that Zen doesn't say, what is reality in terms of the culture in which you were born, But what is reality in the most fundamental sense, which would be true for anyone in any culture, at least ideally? What is pure being itself?

[16:29]

So that's what The idea of enlightenment means to see past your, find yourself free of your inborn culture. You suddenly feel free, like you can move around, like upside down. down, right side up, left, right, all disappear. Your clothes and your habits and your likes and dislikes

[17:31]

They're all suddenly far away. Then you can pull them back in and function through your likes and dislikes and clothes, but suddenly they're off, too, and you're free to move around, almost as if your shirt could be like this, you know, no problem. At Crestone we talked during this practice period about the rather subtle problem. I admit it's a rather subtle problem. Or You know, like when you're sitting and deeply in sitting, does the sense of front and back disappear?

[18:50]

Something like, you know, some version of body and mind fall off. We don't feel our usual boundaries. And yet if something, some big noise happened in the zendo and you were sitting facing the wall, would you jump off backwards not knowing which was front or back? Now it's probably, you know, it would be quite a strange thing, all these people jumping off backwards in the cushion. Because the cat knocked over the Buddha or something. And sometimes you sit deeply enough that front and back do for a while disappear.

[20:03]

Now, so the question here is what remains? What is front and back? And if we retain front and back, what other senses of reality retain keep you? If we retain front and back, Is that cultural or biological? Or both? And what else do we retain? Now these are the kind of questions involved mixed up with or part of asking for a meditator, what is reality?

[21:09]

What... Yeah, okay. So if you are confronted with, in some way, your culture as habit, if you're confronted in some way... Yes, confronted means you've noticed it.

[22:11]

Confronted means... It disturbs your... No, your... It's in front of you and it... Who knows how to say confront? I understand saying confront, but not in that context. It's like if you can angry at your culture or the culture that bothers you. No, confronted just means there's a cow in front of you, in the field. You're not angry with it. You're confronted with something, faced with something. The idea of koans and these mantra-like gate phrases, because this is part of the questioning process, If you can get one question that hooks you or stops you,

[23:12]

The question, what is reality, may not do it for you. But most of the questions of Zen, like, I'm always close to this. Well, what is your original face? Because so many. But they're all the idea of we can Find a question that gets a hold of you and confronts you with what your culture is. Let's not call it culture, let's just call it habits of mind. Habits of seeing and thinking. which may not quite be fundamental reality. If you can get hold of one part of it... It's like if you could really get hold of this building, this house, this building in some way... And you could move it, and the whole house is very well made... And...

[24:48]

If you could move one part of it, the whole house would move. Because it works more like that. It's not like you break off a piece. Because culture so works, our culture works, our views work, because they hold everything together. They're seamless. So if you can find a seam, you can move the whole thing. And once you move the whole thing, suddenly you're free from it. I didn't expect to get into this in such a basic way so fast. But my feeling was just to speak about the process of questioning.

[26:03]

There's a word that's not used too often. And when I tell you what the word is, you'll understand why it's not used too often. It's paratactic. Probably nobody knows what paratactic means. I didn't know either until recently. But it means to just put words beside each other with no connection. Sometimes used in grammar when you just put phrases next to each other. It was cold. Snows came. You don't show much connection between it.

[27:20]

It's just this and this. And to various degrees, poetry uses paratactic tactics. But when things are just put beside each other, When you can let things just be beside each other and not put a story between them or syntax between them that makes them into sentences. Mm-hmm. Chinese actually, as a language, is rather paratactic. Words are often just beside each other and it's not clear what's a verb, what's a noun, etc.

[28:22]

If you can get the habit of just seeing things Beside each other. In Taoism I believe it's called the stage of objectification. Which is considered a rather advanced stage. When you just see each thing without having any story about anything. You see the gaps between things. And you can then see how you're thinking. The assumptions you have jump in to fill the gaps. Yeah, if I'm not making sense, I'll try to make sense later somehow.

[29:34]

Last night I had a little bit of an experience of this because I went to the local kindergarten grilling with the parents. And Marie-Louise made some stick bread. Because we had such fun with it with Otmar last year. But we never got around to roasting stick bread. Marie-Louise was not feeling well and Liedtgeit was elbowed into taking care of Sophia in the middle of the evening. So we had to leave.

[30:39]

But you know, here's the circle of parents. And I was going to leave or go sit in the car, but no, no, no, you have to sit down. And in one way I feel perfectly comfortable, in every way I feel perfectly comfortable sitting there. But there are a few differences. They're all, first of all, speaking dialect, which Marie-Louise says if she hadn't lived in Switzerland and Lake Constance, she couldn't have understood a word. Right. And of all these parents of children, I'm older than most of their parents.

[31:48]

Yeah, so they're talking away, and Marie-Louise is translating. And it was quite a lot of fun, actually. But what am I exactly supposed to do while I'm there? And I know that Johanneshof and myself are considered rather odd in this community. But there's a surprising acceptance at the same time. But I just sat there. And I can't understand anything, of course, so that helps. Though I could get the jokes somehow, I don't know why. But for me, everything became paratactic. Each person was there, and the trees, and the fire, and the voices.

[32:48]

Mm-hmm. And I just, you know, like one does in Zazen, just created some vitality in my body and sat there enjoying myself. And there's a big glassy, clear space. Everything is very calm in it. And I could really feel something that's there, but not there when you're part of the situation. And it's very much like some kinds of meditation where everything is present, but there's no story which connects anything.

[33:58]

Things were just appeared and then rested in their appearance. So if any of you have any other parties I can go to, I'll be happy to go. As long as I don't have to understand anything. I think it's a good time to take a break.

[34:25]

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