I'm sorry so many of us are somewhat sick. And I'm sorry I seem to be getting sick again. Usually I'm only sick once a year, but twice in a month and a half is a little too much. But I promise to get better. If I don't, you'll have an interesting practice period. Okay. Yesterday there was some problem with the word offer. I felt it during the Teisho.

[01:02]

And I asked about it afterwards and I found out, yes, there was a problem. And it's interesting to me that What seem like extremely simple words, what could be more simple than to offer incense, you know, to offer incense in any language? And it's interesting for me that totally simple, seemingly simple words like this word, to present or to give or to offer, what could be easier than, for example, to present a smoker's work? But often these simple words are, because we're not simple human beings, are complex.

[02:05]

And I simply meant the emphasis in the English word to surrender. Is there a problem with surrender? I surrender. That's a lot more than I said. Okay. Anyway, my point was, faced with sashimi, even faced with just an oriyuki meal, the most fruitful attitude is just to surrender to it.

[03:19]

Die fruchtbarste Einstellung ist, sich dem einfach zu übergeben oder sich dem hinzugeben oder zu ergeben. And Zen doesn't ask you to do it for your life. Und im Zen wirst du nicht aufgefordert, das dein ganzes Leben lang zu tun. Just for the oriyuki meal or for sashin or practice period. Sondern nur für eine oriyuki Mahlzeit oder für einen sashin oder eine Praxisperiode. And to see what that's like. Und zu schauen, wie das ist. Yeah, you have a rather safe chance to explore surrendering to the situation. And if I try to study this practice I've inherited, and I'll use Oyuki's meal again as an example, As I said yesterday it has a beginning and an end.

[04:42]

And I described it as having no middle. But it's definitely conceived of as a unit. As if once you start this point, you have to go through all the points in order to end it. And that is true of Sashin schedule. And Dieter, as Eno and I, went through the Sashin schedule fairly carefully. imagining from waking up and we decided in this Sashin to wake up at the same time as the practice period and then one thing follows after another with really out interruption

[05:45]

as much as possible until you go to bed. But of course we take into consideration how long it takes to get from this building other building and so forth. And we assume people have to go to the toilet and wash their face and so forth. But still, the emphasis is to create a unit that it's best just to do. Without thinking about it. Yeah. And the wake-up bell comes, you just get up. Now, again, we're doing this for three months for some of us or five days for others of us. Mm-hmm.

[07:20]

But still, the feeling is the same. Mm-hmm. To just enter in and try it out and see what happens. And then after sashin and after practice period, you can see how that Our life is informed differently in our usual situation. And I just used the word informed. And one or two persons from the practice period has said in relationship to yesterday's talk, I should speak about giving the sense of Dharma practice as a giving form to the world as it appears.

[08:27]

Now again, to get us all, sorry, on the same page. Yeah, in the same book, in the same library. We're on the same boat right now. Oh, on the same boat? Oh, gosh. Is it safe? Nope. Yeah, I can feel the rocking, yeah. Would you quit rocking the boat? That the... Dharma practice is to know the world as a succession of appearances.

[09:50]

Now, I chose not to say a flow of appearances. I could say that. But it's more accurate to say a succession of appearances. Now, we can again, looking at it very basically, in a non-theological sense, world that's like Buddhism, there's no creator God. In fact, you can't even say there's a beginning and end, because how can you know? So Buddhism says, like from beginninglessness, Because it gets complicated when you say there's a beginning, because then you have to worry about what was before.

[11:00]

We really don't know whether there's a beginning or not. Did any of you know? If you do, let me know. So you have two choices. You can assume there was a beginning or you can assume there wasn't a beginning. Buddhism says the wiser choice, the safer choice, is there's no beginning. So if there's no beginning, then creation is going on all the time. And clearly things change. exist in units. Once you recognize that things exist in units, then it's very easy without an electron microscope to extrapolate back to atoms or molecules or something.

[12:22]

So the basic kind of recognition that occurred over generations that things exist, happen in units. that things exist, happen in, or as, or through units, as units. So, but we exist, we don't exist in the same units as ocean waves or mountains or some kind of chemical transformation. Aber wir existieren nicht in denselben Einheiten wie die Meereswellen oder die Berge oder chemische Transformationsprozesse.

[13:29]

Aber der Buddhismus sagt, dass wir als Menschen durch Sinneseinheiten existieren. Und wir können diese Sinneseinheiten bemerken. And although they're not the same as the units of this floor and the air and so forth, still we all exist in units. So a human being is in a dance with the units of the vast expanse. Yeah, insects are another dance with the units of the cosmos. Insects are in another kind of dance with the cosmos.

[14:45]

So we're in a kind of dance with phenomena. And the dance for us to notice is appearances. Although we exist in units more subtle than just appearances, we have to start with those we can notice. So when you decide to practice the Dharma, You are first of all, as a foundation, developing the skill of noticing the world as appearances. as sensorial and perceptual appearances.

[16:04]

And so you have the most basic teachings, the vijnanas and the skandhas, are all about noticing the world as appearances. And that those appearances appear against a vast expanse. Now, a vast expanse becomes something like a god or a godhead. To relate to the vast expanse, as in Dzogchen, is to relate to the God you can't imagine. So there's a religious feeling here which we can explore.

[17:16]

Which is different than in a theological culture. So as I said last night a vast expanse a unfathomable reality An inconceivable reality. How are we going to find our way? So what did I say? Inhabit your breath. Inhabit your attention. These little steps Diese kleinen Schritte. These big steps. Diese großen Schritte. See where they go.

[18:38]

Schau, wohin sie führen. Inhabit your life. Bewohne dein Leben. So, if we're in this dance, what are our units? What are our steps? What are our appearances? Wenn wir in diesem Tanz sind, was sind unsere Einheiten? Was sind unsere Erscheinungen? What are our units? What are our steps? Yeah. Well, you can't get more basic than to notice your breath. In this vast expanse, there's a very important particular, your breath. In dieser unermesslichen Weite, da gibt es eine ganz wichtige Einzelheit, nämlich deinen Atem. And even in a way more fundamental than that is your attention.

[19:40]

Und in gewisser Weise noch grundlegender als das ist deine Aufmerksamkeit. So to notice your breath is you have to bring attention to your breath. So, if we're asking in this vast expanse, where are you going to live? I'm saying, inhabit your attention. Now, for me, this is a great gift to myself. And I'm showing you how maybe stupid I am. After all these years, decades of practicing, I haven't seen, at least for an English speaker, the tremendous value of of saying inhabit your breath instead of bring attention to your breath.

[20:54]

So it's amazing how long it takes for me to notice small differences which allow us to inhabit our practice better, fuller. So for practice you really don't want to just notice the world as appearances. Yeah, you want to more than notice you want to inhabit those appearances. And in fact, you are not just inhabiting appearances that just happen to be there and appear.

[21:58]

You're generating the appearances that appear. Okay. Okay. So once you recognize that you're generating the appearances that appear... Wenn du erkennst, dass du die Erscheinungen, die Erscheinen erzeugst. It's extremely important and helpful to intentionally or experientially generate the appearances. Es ist extrem wichtig und hilfreich, diese Erscheinungen intentional oder absichtsvoll zu erzeugen. This makes it more your experience makes your life more fully experienceable. But it also alters the pace within which you live. So I suggested that we think of the basic teaching of the four marks.

[23:21]

This we talked about in practice period. And I've been presenting the four marks because it's so basic for decades. And that they are birth, duration, dissolution and disappearance. So it's not just appearance, it's birth. It means you're participating in the birth. And then there's duration, and you are creating the duration. Because there's no duration, things are just instantaneously past and future. So the experience of duration is your experience, something you generate.

[24:30]

And because everything appears and dissolves, it's going to dissolve anyway. So you add to dissolution You wipe the slate clean. So sometimes people say, I give you too many things to do, and then I say, yes, I'm sorry, but wait a minute. Yeah, so now I'm only giving you one thing. Practice the four marks till it's your habit. I mean, don't bother if you don't want to. But if you want a faint chance at being a Buddha or enlightenment, you don't try it out.

[25:32]

There's no promise here, no guarantee. Only in the movie, Lightman Guarantee, is there a guarantee. But life is, you know, practicing the four marks is kind of joy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, so I suggested we, in the conceptual feel of English, you can do something similar in Deutsch. You can have, you know, birth, surrender, offer.

[26:51]

No, I'm just... Yeah, okay. So what I suggested is you feel your experience of generating an appearance... And... Experience, I'm sorry. Generating an appearance. Inhabiting that appearance. And releasing that appearance. So I'm suggesting you practice with these three mental postures, to generate, to inhabit, and to release. Okay. Now, once you see that and see the four marks, you can see where most of the forms of our monastic and lay practice come from.

[27:55]

The simplest example is we go to the cushion and we bow. And then we turn around and bow. And then we sit down. And one of the mottos from early Zen Buddhist practice in America was, when in doubt, bow. If you're ever in a situation and you don't know what to do, bow. In ceremonies it usually works, you know. I think, you know, what am I supposed to do next, you know, and so I bow. It's usually a safe bet. And no one knows whether it's in the routine or not. Okay, we could just go to our cushion and sit down. Big deal.

[29:22]

Why do we bother to do it? Because it's an intentional generation of an appearance. You go to your cushion and you... and basically you're generating, physically generating, you're conceptually and physically generating an appearance. And physically. You're using your body. You're not just saying, oh, now I see the cushion, I've generated an appearance. No, you're using your body to enter into the appearance. The physicality is essential. You're not just thinking it. And when you bow, which actually takes a few moments to actually bow, the cushion is appearing to you.

[30:46]

And the cushion meaning you're going to start to sit, so you're already starting to sit. And when you bow to the cushion, the body that is going to sit appears. And when you turn around and face into the room and bow to sit down, For me, I always release myself into the space as I bow. As if I'm never going to come back into this space. I'm going into Zazen and if I never come back, it's just perfectly fine. I surrender myself to Zazen. And we'll see what happens. Or we won't, anyway.

[31:49]

Okay. So, A complexity of appearance occurs when you generate an appearance. Because the object appears. You appear. The mind... The mind... The mind awareness of... of all of our activity appears, and then you release it. You release it, and in this case, turn around and bow into the room, and then you release that. And I said again, you can also feel that on your in-breath.

[33:15]

Generating, your body is generating, you're participating, you're generating an in-breath. Dein Körper bringt das hervor, du nimmst daran teil und du bringst das Einatmen hervor. And you inhabit the intention, attention that appears with the in-breath. Und du bewohnst die Intention und die Aufmerksamkeit, die mit der Einatmung erscheint. And in this case you can use the... to then exhale and feel you're releasing the in-breath. And you're inhabiting the releasing. Now, the more you do this, the more you develop a kind of wisdom body habit of generating and releasing and inhabiting the generation, generating and inhabiting the releasing.

[34:24]

For me, it's a kind of vacation. I really feel just now is enough. It can be so complete, this generating and releasing, and so fully inhabited that you don't need anything else. Mm-hmm. Now, one of the things that helps, and I always think of what I really want to talk about just as I run out of time. So I'm always one lecture behind.

[35:26]

But... Really, you need to also, as part of this practice, get so you take the names off things. We're always in the midst of appearances. Why is that not Buddhist practice? Because you're in the midst of the names of the appearances. There's no sensorial reality to this stick. If I just call it a stick. You know. Well, this is a pretty funny stick to call a stick, I have to admit.

[36:33]

I found it on the road out here. God must have made it. That was the proof of God in what, 17th century? You find a watch and you say, well, somebody made that. It must be a God. And here are the blooming winter branches. Yeah. And the mushroom that got Alice into trouble. She got bigger and bigger and she got smaller and smaller and Does everyone read Alice in Wonderland in German? Yeah, okay.

[37:34]

So when you take the names off things, you are left with their sensorial reality, their sensorial actuality. As again, Cézanne wouldn't paint outlines. Things, if they began and ended at all, began where the color changed. But there's still color. So there's a koan where Ba Ling asked, what is the school of Kanadeva? Kanadeva is one of my favorite ancestors. We chant him in the morning. I'll tell you next time so I'll be one lecture behind again.

[38:53]

But Ba Ling in this koan 13 of the Hekigan Roku says snow piled up in a silver bowl Der sagt, Schnee in einer Silberschale angehäuft. And Dungschan says, a heron hidden in moonlight. Und Dungschan sagt, ein Reiher, der sich im Mondlicht versteckt. These are names, heron, silver, bull, snow. These are names, heron, silver, bull, snow, moonlight. But they're a way of presenting the teaching of taking names off things.

[39:54]

The snow in the silver bowl. Is it snow anymore or silver? So really if you want to practice this, do it. And you want to be sensually and sensorially engaged in the appearances. Practice taking the names off things. Yeah, ten minutes a day. Or something like that. Okay? Thank you very much.

[40:42]

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