I'm always so excited to start a practice month or more intensive period of practice like this with you. Maybe excited isn't exactly the right word. Maybe deeply satisfied. And amazed that you're willing to, each of you, is willing to try to do this. I don't take it for granted at all. It's a kind of miracle that we do this together. As many of you know, I had for me a very a good, deep relationship with Ivan Illich.

[01:17]

And Bernard partly grew up with knowing him. And Ivan was a good friend of Bernard and his family. And Bernhard, der ist zum Teil fast mit ihm aufgewachsen, denn Ivan war ein sehr guter Freund seiner Familie und von ihm. And he, you know, we somehow agreed one day that practicing Buddhism and practicing Catholicism were similar in that they were a search for ultimate friendship. And one day we talked about it and agreed that practicing Buddhism and Catholicism are the same in that they are both looking for a deep friendship.

[02:19]

So we can ask maybe what he meant and what do I mean. What kind of friendship arises through practicing? Certainly we're exploring what our relationship is to others and to the world. And exploring, we could say in English at least, when others are no longer other. Yeah, when you grow up, being the father of a very young girl, Also aufwachsend, also ich bin der Vater von einem sehr kleinen Mädchen, jungen Mädchen.

[03:25]

I'm again in the midst of exploring what being a parent is. Bin ich wieder mittendrin im Entdecken, was es bedeutet, ein Eltern zu sein. And Sophia exploring what it is to be a child. Und Sophia versucht herauszufinden, was es ist, ein Kind zu sein. Yeah, and a daughter. Und eine Tochter. And of course she's under this pressure, I've mentioned pressure too. To be bigger and older and able to do things. Her life is shaped by, I will be able to do this better when I'm bigger. Of course, as you all know, when you're bigger, the promise of being an adult doesn't always fulfill itself. So our life is really an exploration of growing up, of being a child, of being an adult.

[04:28]

And our culture throws us into certain patterns that we then try to fulfill. And it often takes the exploration away. What is it really to be in some place? to be in this world with others. Now, again, I've mentioned the Greek idea of friendship. Is that affection which evolves and matures through a shared vision? I think that's a good definition of Sangha.

[05:40]

Sangha is those who mature a relationship through a shared and evolving vision. That's certainly what we're doing here. And those of you who come just for a short time, it's, you know, it's still you're engaged in what is... What is it to be alive within ourselves and with others?

[06:46]

in this shared, in this... In ourselves and in others. Well, and you can ask, do these kind of questions, what is reality, what is another person, etc. ? Can such questions produce real knowledge in a Wittgensteinian sense? Well, I don't know. It's really not so important. What's important is these questions can engage us Whether they produce knowledge, who cares? And it's a way of engaging ourselves beyond our usual thinking. And be open to the exploration that's friendship, that's marriage, that's sangha.

[08:12]

How to evolve our affection through a mutual vision. Mutual means? I mean, by mutual, each of us is independent in evolving this shared vision. And when each of us is independent, there's a vitality in the evolution of the vision. I think probably most of us have had the experience of falling in love with another person. Maybe we could say, I would venture to say, that practice is something like falling in love with the world.

[09:38]

We could define Buddha as the one who fell in love with the world. Okay, so let's take away the words falling in love. And say, maybe falling into connectedness. When we fall into love, we fall into connectedness with another person. Making that work is often, as most of us know, not so easy. Yeah, it's probably harder than Zen practice. But I think the idea of the Greek idea of friendship would be a mature stage of marriage.

[11:04]

the Greek idea of friendship, would be a mature stage of marriage. But when we instinctually and genetically fall in love, we fall into connectedness. And through that connectedness, we feel complete, completed. And as you know, the world then, strangely, it carries over to the world. The feeling carries over to the world. And the world starts feeling complete or different than it was before you fell in love. Well, enlightenment is something like falling in love with the world.

[12:12]

Or falling into connectedness with the world. And feeling completed in how we exist with others and with the world. Now, how is that possible? Practice is how it's possible. Also, praxis ist, wie es möglich sein kann. It doesn't mean we're ignoring suffering and difficulty and contradictions and so forth. Also, das heißt nicht, dass wir leiden, Widersprüche und so weiter ignorieren. We're not being, you know, idealistic or naive. Wir sind weder idealistisch noch naiv. But when you fall in love, the world is still...

[13:17]

the way it is, but you feel differently about it. Through practice and realization, the world is the same but different in our feeling. And through the difference in our feeling, to some degrees can be transformed. And through the difference in our feeling to some degree at least can be transformed. And that's again the idea of Sangha. So join with a few people at least and see if you can Make the world closer to the way you want the world to be. That possibility and that effort needs to be present.

[14:20]

Even while we carry the suffering and contradictions of our own life and the world. Yeah. So when we do something like this practice month, The first thing that we notice is the schedule. Yeah, and the schedule. The schedule isn't designed to get something done. It's not the purpose of the schedule, it's not like classes or a job or something. So first we want the schedule to be something fairly unusual. Not what you're used to.

[15:49]

Yeah, look, it's not your usual habit. It might become your habit, but for most of us, it's not our usual habit. So it actually, it takes some adjustment to find ourselves in the schedule. And the first step is to let the schedule carry you. See if you can give up your usual schedule. what you might want to do and so forth, and just do the schedule. For however long you're here now, just see if you can disappear into the schedule. And once you have the feel of it, See if you can begin to carry the schedule in yourself and with others.

[17:07]

Now the purpose of the schedule is, like I say, both horizontal and vertical. Now, in the seminar with Norman Fisher on poetry and Zen recently, I spoke about how words in a poem ideally have a verticality as well as a horizontality. By vertical I mean they're not sentenced by the sentence into a particular one meaning. The words... reach out into all the meanings that they could have before they're in the context of the sentence.

[18:19]

Into your own experience. And then pull that down into the sentence and into the next word. So our schedule here, maybe it's like some kind of line of poetry, I hope. It gets us from wake up to going to sleep. But in particular, in Zazen, it takes us out of our usual sense of space. As I said the other morning during Zazen, when you're sitting and you really let go of the sense of what you are, who you are, Wenn ihr sitzt und wirklich einmal euer Gefühl für das, was und wer ihr seid, einmal gehen lasst, und ihr einfach einmal nur schaut, was sind die Bereiche eurer Erfahrung, und was sind die Schusslinien eurer Erfahrung,

[19:54]

you find they don't fit just our usual cultural ideas or our own experience of self. We can't even, we can't really say, no one knows what this space is. It's something that doesn't fit into ideas or concepts. And so we get used to it. Used to being rather free of concepts and ideas. And there's also a sense of time that we wouldn't want to measure. So we can think of Zazen as a kind of time of verticality or a different kind of space and time in the midst of the schedule.

[21:18]

And if the schedule of the practice month disrupts our personal schedule, we're more likely to feel this different time and space this yeah what do we say we say heaven and earth and I share the same root myriad beings and I share the same body Yeah, is this true?

[22:28]

Zen is rooted in this. Yeah, that statement. Can you find that mind? Or that body and mind? In your sitting? Not just when you have a nice... outside the schedule in the garden. And even being in the garden can be deepened if you find this space and non-time in Zazen. Well, and you can find it And you can also remember it during the recitation in service.

[23:31]

There is no purpose for service. Nothing is done, nothing is achieved, nothing moves. Can you just find this even joy in something that has no purpose? It's annoying even. Can you find this verticality and horizontality in each moment of your life? Now this is also a craft of practice. A craft of seeing and knowing. A craft of the particular and the all-at-onceness. But that's, yeah, we'll... see what happens, how close we can get to that during these coming days.

[24:44]

Finding out how to make use of the schedule to find our own inner pace with the world and with others And through zazen. And through really what is in the middle of all practice. What is our habitual view and what is our worldview? What views do we bring to the world? And what views is the world ready to show us?

[25:53]

When we have this more vertical or what we call host mind, I don't want to say more. We should leave something for the other talks. Thank you.

[26:22]

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