Yeah, Frank mentioned to me that I was maybe a little abstract this morning. We needed something meatier that we could get our teeth into. And I said, I'm a vegetarian. I made that up. Yeah, well yesterday I thought I said everything that could be said and today I would have nothing to say. Yeah, so I tried to just give you a simple outline. Yeah, what is the nature of the world? And we got to begin there. Buddhism begins there. Then we can ask, how do we know the world?

[01:03]

And we need to notice how we notice. And Buddhism would say, are you noticing through usual, ordinary, linguistic consciousness. Because language is self-referential. Once you define something, describe something through language, it's stuck in the kind of tube of language. So if you use language, you want to use language that points outside of language.

[02:05]

So, okay, we've got the nature of the world, which I tried to describe a few minutes ago, before the break. And, okay, the content of the world as the nature of things, how things exist. And then how do we know this content? So Buddhism would make the distinction between ordinary perception, ordinary cognitive perception, And what we could call maybe yogic knowing. Knowing through awareness in the field of mind, not the thinking mind. Knowing through direct perception, our perception.

[03:27]

Yeah. and knowing through an extended acuity of the senses. Now, maybe some of you, many of you, have not been practicing long enough to really notice that you're the more developed your usually daily meditation practice is, the more you have access to knowing the world in new ways, So the first is, as I said, the nature of the content.

[04:46]

And the second is how you know the world, what kind of cognitive or non-cognitive knowing you have. And these are all endemic or indivisible from Buddhism. Okay, and the third is, what contents of the world are accessible to you? Yeah. Okay, so what contents are accessible to you? Well, first of all, there's location. As I said yesterday. There's ingredients and location. There's content and location.

[05:55]

I can have lots of thoughts about the world, but really, especially when we're thinking about direct perception, direct knowing, What's accessible to me is what's in front of me. Or around me. So what's around me establishes a kind of boundaries of knowing. So the ingredients I can know at any moment aren't what I'm thinking about, you know, for the future, tomorrow, or something or other, or the past, but just what ingredients are here. Although I might have been a little abstract this morning, I don't know, it seemed to me completely conceptually clear, but anyway... And yesterday I might be a little, which I heard, dense.

[07:08]

Dense can also mean stupid, you know. He is really dense. Oh, God. Yeah. But still I feel I'm really talking about our practice. And the relevance too of this story of Shushan and Dijan. It can be today's story. And in the midst of it, what... We think the world is.

[08:08]

What we assume the world is makes a difference. And if we know that the world is always in terms of direct knowing, Our mental sensorium. And again, as though I may have been, as I said, dense or abstract. For me, I'm always speaking to the immediate contents of this situation. The contents I feel. And because whatever I know is less than the immediacy of our shared feelings. contents or etc.

[09:28]

So first of all it's location. Sometimes it's useful to practice with no other location. And when you meet a realized person, One of the things that you feel in them is they have no other location. So this practice of no other location is also a way to then say, hey, what's accessible within this no other location? What does cognition and my senses, these senses offer?

[10:29]

And the more alert and extended my senses are, The more at ease my senses are, and not anxious, not worried, the more I I'm in the midst of this location. So what's accessible to us is first of all location. Second, of course, memory and experience. Our memory and experience is also accessible to us. And third, there's personal and communal cultural

[11:30]

The shared communal view of the world. Gemeinsame, excuse me, a little aside, communal in German would be the district government. I know nothing about German government districts. I know that... that Grossherrschwand is part of Herrschried and Herrschried is part of Wolsetingen and Wolsetingen, I don't know. But the Kommune of Herrschried. What? Also das gemeinsame kulturelle Wissen. All right. And then let's say there's shared intentionalities.

[13:03]

If you're at a rave, I've never been at a rave. I think there's shared induced intentionalities. I think there's shared induced intentionalities. Okay, intentionalities. Now, what I mean by that is a little different than culture or the sense of shared community. Because shared intentionalities are, you know, I was just on an airplane getting here and... There were shared intentionalities about we all wanted to land safely in Zurich. Yeah, and right now in the Near East we have all of these, in North Africa we have all of these popular uprisings going on.

[14:10]

Some successful, quite positive, and some disastrous. But they're shared intentionalities. Okay, now what I mean by this is that your intentions and your shared intentions. May I ask something? Yes. What's exactly the difference between intention and intentionalities? This is hard to translate. Really? Why would I make a distinction? I'll have to think a minute. My intention is to do something. My intentionality is an overall sense of intention, not just one intention.

[15:32]

the directionality, the direction I'm going, the directionality is a wider sense of it. But you translate it any way you like. Okay, and I'm trying to establish something, what I'm calling shared intentionality. Okay, and at any point in our life, you go to the dentist or you work in an office or an institution, there's shared intentionalities. Shared intentions. And they shape your world. The intentions that shape you at work may be very different than the intentions that shape you at home. Okay, now the reason I'm bringing this up is because I want to say that vows, Buddhist vows, are a form of intention.

[16:53]

that shape your world. So, if you take the vows and you really take the vows you're going to live this way it's almost like there's a little opening into the world called vows and by taking the vows you slip into the world through those vows. And those vows shape everything you see and do. Now, all of us, not all of us, but many of us, these rakshas represent that we've taken vows together. And even if you haven't formally taken the vows, you may share the vows anyway.

[18:10]

And they actually also create the world we live in. So shared intentionalities, in this case in the form of vows, shape the world we live in. Okay. And the last aspect I'll mention is what I've already mentioned, which is your view of the world. It affects how we know the world. If you have an implied sense that everything is seeking oneness, turns into oneness, etc.,

[19:13]

That's very different from locating yourself in difference and not oneness or sameness. The ability to locate yourself in the midst of difference. Or in the sense of Tathagatagarbha. This fertile womb world. Okay, so that's my outline. Does anybody want to, please, somebody say something.

[20:34]

Yes. Tom. Yes. Yes. So you can describe the world. I don't care. I just have to concentrate on which ear. You've described the world as something where things and people and everything are interdependent. It's a question you've been asking for a long time. How can it be that we humans How is it possible then that we human beings have developed this sense of being separate? Subconsciousness?

[21:35]

The illusion that we have separate consciousnesses. Being separate from each other. Yeah. Well, of course there's some separation. And there's some difference. And that difference allows interdependence. If there were no difference, there'd be no interdependence. Wenn es keine Unterschiede gäbe, gäbe es keine Interdependenz. There would be no relationship. Okay. So difference is the condition of interdependence. Without difference, there would be no interdependence. Okay. So then the question is, Which do we emphasize?

[23:07]

And partly it's person by person we emphasize difference more or separation more or connection more. Western culture has for various reasons over some time emphasized difference more, separation more. It doesn't mean there's separation. It just means we've emphasized it. Yeah, I mean, if we look carefully, there's way more connectedness than separation. The way you're dressed. That you spoke German to us. That you behave in a way that's fairly normal in this room.

[24:11]

That's all connectedness. So one of the things I think we have to make a decision about A useful decision, if we're practitioners, is the degree to which we notice our separation and the degree to which we want to emphasize it or emphasize connectedness. In a somewhat similar way, mind and body can be experienced separately. Mind and body can be experienced separately. But they're not separate. But we can experience them separately. So Buddhism would say How do we make use of this experienced separateness of mind and body?

[25:25]

And how do we decide to emphasize or develop the relatedness of mind and body. So, separateness and connectedness are two aspects of one phenomena. And the creation of the sense of us as individuals as really separate individuals as I think sometimes starts in the West in the 1700s. But in short, In short, the emphasis in Buddhism is to develop connectedness.

[26:33]

And as I say, one of the most useful connecting, turning words is on each appearance to say to yourself, already connected. It changes your relationship to the world and to each person you meet. And on the whole, I think we all practically find it more satisfying. But we also have to take care of our separateness. So again, it's a matter of emphasis and your own choice. So far so good. Yes. It seems to me that how we live in society is almost fragmented.

[27:50]

And if or when we practice as you just described, I find it helpful. I find it helpful to practice in very simple relationships, just with one person, for example, or in my work situation. with the accelerated pace we live in. now in the mind and the accelerated pace of the contents

[29:08]

And if you have something else to say, you have already spoken so often, or if you could support the practice like the all-advancedness, as you said, that all of a sudden everything that exists, Could you describe again, you've done it very often, but again, how to practice with the interconnectedness? Okay. Well, I think, so that we have time for, I won't go into too much detail, but I think even in the midst of very active and busy situations,

[30:30]

Airports, for example. You can still find a pace which nourishes you which also connects with the pace of the airport or train station. So you're walking within the pace of everyone, but you're walking with a pace that's nourishing and connecting. Strictly speaking, these are called siddhis or yogic skills. And if you find that feeling, it affects the whole station. And so one can always kind of move toward that feeling of connectedness and nourishment.

[31:47]

Now the idea of all at onceness is, I think, that What I just said is partly an expression of that. But the simplest practice of all at-onceness is to develop the habit or skill Moving from the particular to the field of mind, back to the particular, back to the field of mind. Okay, enough. Someone else? Yes, Paul. The word intent, the word intent itself, I found myself asking, where does it reside?

[33:11]

Because if I sit Zazen, I can see sort of the fifth and the fourth skandhas dissolving, or the past volition disappears, but I can still feel intent. So it must reside somewhere else. Because when these layers are dissolved, you can still feel it. And when identification with thought stops, It's born of volition because we decide to sit. And it picks up on something you said yesterday. You said we don't repeat anything because it's always different.

[34:13]

I think in turning phrases we are repeating the intention. You said yesterday that nothing repeats itself, but if we take these blind words, then we basically repeat our intentions, our intentions. Well, you can say repeating, but I would say you're re-presenting the intention. Or you're renewing the intention. And since the situation is always slightly different, even if it's the same intention, it's in a new situation. But I think that what we have to notice here, my feeling in this context you've established, is that intent intent or intentions, the more thorough, deeper they are, then we can call them views.

[35:21]

And the eightfold path starts with perfecting views. Because views are not perfect. They may start out as thoughts, as volitions. But established views are prior to thought. And exists, whether you're thinking or not, the tensions are still there shaping your perception and thinking. That's why vows are so important. Because they're prior to perception and prior to cognition. Okay, someone else?

[36:40]

Yes? It was mentioned several times to recognize appearances as activities. So my question is, what kind of practice can help me to experience it that way? Well, if you notice appearance, you will notice that there are activities. But you can practice also, as we've been talking about, noticing when you see things as entities and trying to shift that into seeing things as activities.

[37:54]

That habit, developing that habit helps. But as... Dogen's Genjo Koan can be translated. To complete that which appears. So appearance is occurring within your mental sensorium. and the more you recognize that the more in fact you accept the appearance you hold it for a moment and you release it so that's an activity and if you don't do that the not doing of it is also an activity so you can use the words maybe receive

[39:17]

hold and release. And that's implied too in what I said earlier about what is accessible to us is in a location. And that location first establishes what appears. Or influx what appears. Influx? Influx. Modifies. I mean if you're, say, completely compulsive and all you can think about is some wonderful person or some anxiety still your situation modifies what is appearing. Someone else. Yes. Okay. My question is It's about the sense of life, to say it this way.

[40:48]

Sense of life? Yeah. I was raised clearly in a Western world, so I'm pretty much influenced by Western values. One moment. You're not the only person you know. The meaning of life. I grew up in a Western culture and was raised with Western values, so to speak. And somehow I feel that it is not enough and that I hope that there is something else. Now, how can I... No, I'm not sure. I just hope. My question is, do I just have to sit and wait until I see or that I receive that there is still something else? Well, somehow you got yourself here. So, Buddhism is designed to answer your question.

[42:08]

But it's not the only answer. There's other answers or responses or... This is the one I like best. It doesn't mean you'll like it best. But it's certainly what led me to practice. Because when I was a teenager the world as presented to me in the 40s and 50s in America, that's not the 1840s, was, didn't really interest me. It didn't seem to fit my experience of the world.

[43:18]

And it didn't fit the world I wanted to live in. And also it... it didn't coincide with experiences I had of the world which I couldn't explain to other people because they were rather different than their experiences. So I actually set out to see what are the various descriptions of the world And Buddhism turned out to be the one that was closest to the world I wanted to live in. So I started trying it out with moderate standards. with intellectual interest but not real emotional success.

[44:37]

And then I, by chance, went to California. Partly with the vague idea of meeting a teacher. And I happened to meet Tsukiroshi. And he was what he was speaking about. And so I just started hanging around. Yeah. So that's like, you start out with my first point, what is the nature of the world, change, interdependent, etc. If you agree with that, you start saying, well, what kind of world, what kind of life can I have in such a world?

[45:39]

Okay, anyone else? One or two more, yeah. The fact that everything changes and is moving also implies an uncertainty about what can happen. It can be seen positively, but it can also cause fear. implies that there is an uncertainty about what will happen, and it can be positive, but it can also be negative and one can be afraid. For sure. Very sure. What can create trust in this context of keeping calm?

[46:45]

So how can one have or develop trust so one can be more at ease in this process of changes and uncertainties? What do they say in the Near East? Trust in Allah but tie up your camel. Who is he trusting in? This should be your coat of arms. A camel with an owl. Okay. Well, I think somehow we have to trust in existence.

[48:11]

And as I often say, I think the most fundamental vow we have to take is to stay alive. But of course, things are uncertain and unpredictable. And we also have to cope with that. I like the difference between our view of the future as something we are going into and the Chinese view of the future which is something that comes to us. So the future for the usual Chinese way, I don't know all Chinese, but the usual one of the basic conceptions is the future is always coming to you in its unpredictability.

[49:34]

And if that's what you feel, if that's your view, you're going to be much more attuned to the unpredictability. and if you have more of a western view we're going into a future that we want to make predictable so we buy insurance and so forth and as a result we're less aware of the unpredictable And so more surprised by the unpredictable. At least that's my experience. I wasn't surprised that I had flu for a month. I wasn't.

[50:43]

I was not surprised. I was a little surprised. I expected it the most a week. But who knows, I'm ready to go. Thanks a lot. Oh, I can't forget you. I would like to say from my experience that I have taken a different path from the one we are currently going through. From my experience I would like to say that I've gone a different way than the one we've just gone here. For a long time I was looking for the meaning of life and then somebody sat me down on a cushion practically without any connection to Buddhism, and without words.

[51:58]

Then I had the feeling and the question, what am I doing in my life? I'm running around, But nearly here, sitting down, I'm in the right location. And it was after that, then, your words and your Buddhist teaching were added. And all this Buddhist teaching was and is wonderful, but the very beginning was without words. Yeah. Thank you for letting me

[52:58]

add to your Buddhist sitting practice and yeah I'm sorry there's so many words but I think I guess I think they help but in the end what did I say to somebody the other day I said there is There is the false, but nothing is true. And that's true. And what I mean by nothing is true is, true gives you the feeling that there's something complete. But sitting gives us the chance to move beyond whether things are complete or true or anything into some kind of experience that's wider than anything else.

[54:04]

From the Buddhist point of view, all views are essentially, and all truths are not true. But they can point you away from the false. And they can point you toward a life in which you feel located. Now, may I ring the bell and then we can sit for a moment?

[55:06]

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