So let's go back to these, for us, terms of here and now. Or perhaps here-ness and now-ness. Mm-hmm. And he's trying to be inconspicuous. Did you notice he put on his invisibility cloak? Not see-able. Yeah, it didn't work. Yeah, so we have these distinctions.

[01:10]

The buzzing fly does not need these distinctions. It's the buzzing fly's here-ness and now-ness is always, you know, undeniable. Die Hierheit und die Jetztheit für die summende Fliege, die lässt sich nicht verleumden. And as I said, they don't write history, so they don't have a cumulative time. Und wie ich schon gesagt habe, die schreiben keine Geschichte und sie haben auch kein Verständnis von sich anhäufender Zeit. And I would say they have a very limited sense of sequential time. And if my patience gets to an end and I'm trying to get them out the window with a fly swatter, they may have a primitive sense of sequence.

[02:26]

I mean, before they were on my nose and on the air and everything, but after one attempt with the flyswatter, they seem to stay clear for a while, so they have some sense of sequence. But if they were a cook, as I said, a buzzing fly chef, they'd have to have some sense of sequence. dann bräuchten Sie so etwas wie ein Verständnis, ein Gefühl für eine Abfolge. First you braise the onions. Erstmal schälst du die Zwiebeln.

[03:29]

And then you add the broth. And then the eggs. What are you cooking? Do you have to embarrass me? She's a former tenso and a chef. I don't know what I'm talking about. Also... I thought I was making soup. And then you add the broth and then the eggs. Bananas. Is there another translator in the room? Anyway, the order you put things in, if you're a cook, it makes a difference. So our sense of logic, of a sequence, is necessary for us. Okay. But for us, sequential time and accumulative time are not too helpful if you're a meditator.

[04:56]

Because they both inhibit your openness to what might happen. There's a logic to a sequential time. This follows that, and for some kind of reason. And if you have a cumulative time, your story accumulates. Which, what doesn't fit into your story, you tend not to notice. And in the discussion we had before lunch, one or two persons spoke about how, implicitly at least, that accumulative time and sequential time both inhibit noticing.

[06:22]

And, Kurt, in our conversation before the lunch break, one or two people talked implicitly about how the time that is piling up, or perhaps the time that is stifling, and the time that follows, the time that follows each other, how these two forms of time... Oh, again, sorry. What did they inhibit? Ah, that they inhibit what can be noticed. Yeah, so if something doesn't make sense to you or is paranormal or non-normative, you just, you most of us don't even notice it. Wenn etwas keinen Sinn für dich macht oder das außerhalb des Gewöhnlichen ist oder vielleicht sogar paranormal oder nicht normativ, dann ist es für die meisten von uns so, dass wir das noch nicht mal bemerken. And I would say that almost everybody who decides to practice and really, really decides has had experiences which didn't fit into their story and they didn't know what to do about that.

[07:36]

Or they didn't even notice that things happened that didn't fit into their story, but they sort of hovered in their outer space, the outer space of their own presence. And it may be in, I mean, I don't know if this makes sense to you, but maybe it's in kind of unwordable clusters of relationships. And it kind of presses on you, but you don't know what's pressing on you. But if you start to meditate, some friend of yours says, why don't you cross your legs and hope to die? That's a bad joke.

[09:14]

In kids in America, if one child says to the other, I promise to do it, you say, do you cross your heart and hope to die? Yes, I cross my heart and hope to die. In America, this is a proverb for children. When a child says, I promise to do this and that, then the other says, do you cross your heart and hope to die? And then the child says, yes, I cross my heart and hope to die. So sometimes I describe sashins as crossing your legs and hoping to die. I'm sorry, it just slipped out. I think I'm in America sometimes. You all look normal.

[10:16]

I know I've offended you. You don't want to look like Americans. Particularly these days. Yeah, me neither. I'm German. I'm a Berliner. Berliner had, what do they say about Berlin? If Berlin had a mountain, it would be the highest mountain. It would have... So somehow when you start to meditate, and you begin to have this sense of paratactic time, in other words, things are just beside each other, not for any logical reason or storied karmic reason, and you begin to have a feeling for this...

[11:33]

It can open the sluice gates that are upstream. Sluice gates? Yeah, like where a lot of water is held. Yeah. It can open the sluice gates for the upstream water flow. And lots of things that have been sort of pressing on you and you didn't know what they were, when you start practicing without this sense of sequential time and accumulative time, These things which your story and logic didn't allow into your experience, In a way they've been sort of upstream waiting to come down.

[12:50]

And they start coming into your experience. And trauma works the same way. things that have been traumatizing or deeply disturbing, they begin to flow into your experience because you're no longer excluding them. So both dharmas maybe and traumas start coming into your experience. In this case, I'm using the word Dharma to mean observations you've made about the way things really are, in your experience at least, which you've not been able to program, commute, compute.

[14:13]

And when I look back on my own practice, I would say just probably the first two years with just a flow of these experiences, which I hadn't been able to make sense of, started coming in. Just visual things, images, stuff. And I began to widen my own story and experience in a way that led me to keep practicing. Then I would say that the first two years, that it might just be about all the stuff that I could not draw any sense or understanding from.

[15:18]

But all these things, visual impressions or observations or experiences that suddenly all flowed into my experience. Okay. So what I'm doing here, trying to do... By the way, the word experience in the etymology in English at least means simply to try, to try something, is what experience means, experiencio. Das Wort experience im Englischen, die Etymologie des Wortes, bedeutet einfach etwas auszuprobieren. So to experience is, in English, is to try to see what's going on. Und experience, also Erfahrung im Englischen, bedeutet einfach auszuprobieren, was eigentlich los ist. For example, I mean to try to give you some kind of example that might make some resonant sense.

[16:28]

I never liked the, when I was young, I mean young, 10 years old, 15 years old, I never liked the inside-outside distinction. It always made me feel a little uncomfortable. I didn't quite understand it. And, you know, it's like getting your left hand and right hand confused, which is which. And I... Because when you turn around, the left side has gone to the other side, and you turn back, it's right, but your hands, you know, I don't know. So, left and right changed. They didn't change in my body, but they changed in the room, and I had a mole right here, still there, sort of, and I knew that was my left hand.

[17:43]

So someone would say, it's on the left, and I'd say, oh yeah, it's on the left. Well, I had the same kind of problem with inside and outside. Inside and outside. And then when I started to practice meditation, I had a more contemplative, more articulated experience of inside and outside. And in the early teachings, the early sutras and so forth, they say things like to know the world from within.

[18:45]

And we read that and we say, oh, you ought to know the word from within there, it's okay. But really, what did they mean? Okay, now when I began to have more experience of this inside-outside distinction. Finding myself in more paratactic time. Now again, I'm introducing these words, sequential time, cumulative time, paratactic time.

[19:57]

It's time for us is experience. Das ist Zeit, wie sie sich in unserer Erfahrung zeigt. Das ist nicht die Zeit da draußen in der Newtonischen Welt. Zeit ist unsere Erfahrung. Aber um Zeit zu unserer Erfahrung zu machen, müssen wir sie als Erfahrung bemerken. So underneath the, around the lakes and underneath the forest, I'm trying to show some roads which we might use to notice our experience. So when the monk is told one of the rules you take when you just become ordained, is not to see meaning in signs, as I said earlier.

[21:01]

Implicitly it means, or explicitly it means, don't locate yourself only in sequential time or accumulative time. Was das implizit oder sogar explizit bedeutet ist, verorte dich nicht ausschließlich in der sich anhäufenden Zeit und in der abfolgenden Zeit. Verorte dich zumindest während der Meditation auch in der parataktischen Zeit, in der die Dinge einfach da sind. The famous term Shikantaza, just sitting, means paratactic time. You're just noticing, not editing.

[22:02]

And these are all worked out in Buddhist terms, which I could go into, like Manas is the editing dynamic of time. And these things are all worked out, and I could go deeper into it. For example, the word mana in Buddhism means the processing time. And in Zen, or in Buddhism, it's not so much about not thinking, but more about not processing your experiences. So as I began to have more direct articulated experience of this inside-outside distinction, I actually found myself trapped in the outside of the distinction.

[23:11]

I didn't really feel myself from inside. I felt myself from outside, and I thought it was inside. But, you know, that's your... Your parents and your school and everything always treats you as an outside, behave a certain way, learn things, do things. It's always treating you as an outside measured by others. Yeah, it's not easy to get free of seeing yourself as others might see you. So you really, in meditation, one of the... You know, Zen is presented, particularly Soto-shu Zen, as if there's no stages. But this is crazy.

[24:35]

You know there have to be stages. But the emphasis is on you noticing the stages and then bringing them to your teacher or into your practice. Aber die Betonung hier liegt darauf, dass du diese Stufen selbst bemerkst und sie dann zu deinem Lehrer oder in deine Praxis hineinbringst. And we could say one stage is noticing you're stuck in the outside. You're stuck in how others might see you or you see yourself as if you were outside. Und eine dieser Stufen ist zu bemerken, dass du dich von außen her betrachtest oder dass du dich siehst, You see yourself as if you were from the outside. That's part I said. I think you added something.

[25:35]

I'm always adding something. How could I not? Because we're in the midst of this infinity of probabilities. One question, probabilities or possibilities? You can say possibilities, but at least in English, possibilities means it's possible. Options stand better? What's another word? Möglichkeiten. Wir haben da gerade im Auto drüber gesprochen.

[26:39]

Ich habe ihn das auch gefragt, ob das Wahrscheinlichkeiten sein soll. Ich hatte das Gefühl, Wahrscheinlichkeiten kommt nicht richtig an. Ich habe ihm gesagt, vielleicht sollte ich Möglichkeiten sagen. And may I say what I thought about that? Yes, of course. That's exactly what I've been wondering about. My feeling is that if... I'm just teasing you. That's good. That's good. Okay. My feeling is that if it's more difficult, probabilities are a bit like... How are we supposed to locate ourselves in probabilities? I think that's hard to feel, because it's neither completely there, nor... That's why I think the word probability is a bit difficult. That's possible. Potentialities. Yes, but that's also hard to feel, I think. Really? Yes. I don't think so. Yes. So, in any case, he really means, he explained to me, he really means probabilities. He means exactly what he says, but I can't... Should I know what happened?

[27:57]

You all have such an advantage over me. Yeah, let's leave it there. Do I have a choice? You know, my daughter, who's 17 and now Sophia, now looking at colleges right now in California. If she said to me, it's possible I could get an A, it means it's actually possible. If she studies enough or something, she might get an A. dann heißt das, dass es tatsächlich möglich wäre. Wenn sie genug lernt, dann kriegt sie vielleicht eine Eins oder eine Zwei. But if she said, it's probable I'll get an A, that means maybe that she'll be sick that day or the teacher will be in a bad mood or doesn't like her or something.

[29:03]

It's only a probability, not a possibility. Aber wenn sie sagt, es könnte sein, vielleicht auf Deutsch, es könnte sein, es ist wahrscheinlich, dass ich eine... In English, possibilities are always possible. Probabilities are not necessarily possible. So you're not in a realm of infinite possibilities. They couldn't be infinite then. You're not. infinity of likelihood, maybe probabilities.

[30:05]

I don't know what word to use. So anyway, I found myself stuck in the outside of the inside-outside distinction. Auf jeden Fall. Also, wenn irgendjemand ein besseres Wort einfällt, sagt es mir später gerne, dann können wir es ändern. Also, auf jeden Fall habe ich gemerkt, dass ich auf der Außenseite der Außen-Innen-Unterscheidung gefangen war. And I didn't know how to get past that. Und ich wusste nicht, wie ich da rauskommen konnte. Yeah, and I, you know... And so I created a metaphor, a visual metaphor. There was this glass wall. I was on one side of it and I couldn't quite get through it.

[31:07]

But I decided, okay, well, I just don't know how to get on the other side of this glass wall, but I'll stand in front of it forever, if necessary. I have one good quality I have. I'm persistent. Eine gute Eigenschaft, die ich habe, ist, dass ich ausdauernd bin. Im Grunde habe ich so eine Einstellung, ich bin immer bereit aufzugeben, aber ich mache es dann nie. Ich war einfach bereit, für immer dort zu stehen. At the same time, I'm practicing bringing attention to the inhale and bringing attention to the exhale.

[32:32]

Yeah, and in the early days, I didn't really understand. I thought, oh, I bring attention to breathing. Uh-uh, you bring attention to the exhale. And you bring attention to the inhale. And you don't bring your attention really to the inhale and exhale. You bring your attention to the physical movements that accompany the inhale and the physical movements which accompany the exhale, which are different. And after a while, and it does take a while of incubating, and incubating, yeah. You begin to notice that the bodily presence of an inhale energetically, etc., and the bodily presence and energetic aspect of the exhale are different, and they begin to be more and more different.

[33:59]

And the more you notice that they're different, you notice there's a third element, which is the mind, which stays pretty much the same in the inhale and the exhale. desto mehr bemerkst du, dass es ein drittes Element gibt, nämlich den Geist, der ziemlich gleich bleibt beim Einatmen und beim Ausatmen. And this is the same mind which can notice you're angry, notice you're more angry, notice you're really angry, but this mind isn't disturbed by the anger. Und es ist derselbe Geist, der bemerken kann, dass du zum Beispiel ärgerlich bist und noch ärgerlicher und richtig ärgerlich bist, And once you have an articulated experience, I don't know how else to say it, of this mind which isn't disturbed by anger, you can shift your sense of identity to the undisturbed mind rather than the angry mind.

[35:18]

And a virtually undisturbable mind is actually possible. And what's interesting about that, it allows you to feel things more deeply, grief and everything, because on some level you're not disturbed, which allows you to really feel the significant pain of this life. And what happens is that this indestructible spirit actually allows you to feel things even deeper. The grief and so on. And until you have this quite powerful imperturbability, you can't really let yourself feel

[36:25]

really deeply, otherwise you're just overwhelmed or you want to go crazy or you want to kill yourself or something. So all of this happens by simple things like articulating the inhale and noticing the experience of the inhale and the exhale. Starting to articulate, breath-ticulate your experience allows you to notice things. in ihren Ausprägungen zu erfahren, oder zu atemkulieren, allows you to... Notice things.

[38:03]

Dinge zu bemerken. The word notice just means to know, to know and to notice. The word notice, im Englischen, notice bedeutet einfach zu wissen, oder zu erkennen, oder zu kennen. Yeah, so you notice... your experience. And the articulation helps you notice things that were submerged, were unarticulated before. Okay, so now, We'll go one more step here. Now your reference, what you're trying to do, or what's happening, they're interrelated, is you're shifting your reference point from your personal story

[39:09]

You know, if I had a cell phone here, I have one right here. I hope you can see it. And I turn the camera on. And I sort of move it around here. It will see all of you. If I turn the camera on. No, I'm holding it this way. Can't you see that? And I turn it toward you and say, hi, hi there. But there's no self in the camera. It doesn't need a self. It's just noticing things.

[40:12]

Well, you can just notice things too without self coming in as an observer of what's being noticed. And that would be a paratactic modality of mind and noticing. Okay, I'm trying to squeeze something in here before the break. Because I'm not going to see you next year. You think I don't care, but I do. All right, so... If I'm practicing breath articulation, my reference point starts to be the activity of the inhaling and exhaling and starts being my experience of aliveness.

[41:20]

There's no real sense of being in yogic Buddhism. There's a sense of aliveness. Being is an experience of continuity. And aliveness is an experience of, oh, this moment, this moment, I'm still alive at this moment, this moment. I just got an email from my son-in-law, married to my middle daughter, Elizabeth. And his grandfather, Mead, very, very, very, very nice, sweet guy. At 94, he just died a few days ago. And the large family, Irish, were gathered around him. And he kept waking up three or four different times.

[42:50]

What am I doing here? I'm supposed to be dead. That's a very direct experience of aliveness. Well, when you begin to have a reference point of aliveness... The shell of the outside disappears, dissolves. And technically that's called the organ body. I read organ body in Buddhist texts, and Suzuki Roshi spoke about organ body. I didn't really know what it meant.

[44:00]

It took me years until I found, ah, yes, when the Your reference point is just aliveness. Organ body is code for the experience of aliveness. If words are only prescriptions and not descriptions, Und wenn Worte immer nur Verschreibungen sind, etwas, was dir verschrieben wird, Rezepte sind. Then they're process. Wenn Worte immer Rezepte sind und keine Beschreibungen, dann sind sie Prozesse. Then the words are all process, processic words. Dann sind alle Worte Prozessworte.

[45:04]

Yeah. And so aliveness is a processive word which includes everything that happens through aliveness. Und Lebendigkeit ist so ein Prozesswort, in dem alles mit eingeschlossen ist, was durch Lebendigkeit geschieht. So through breath-ticulation, also durch die Artikulation des Atems, oder durch die Atem-ticulation, I suddenly experienced the world from the inside, and the glass wall disappeared. But I didn't know that that's what I was doing, but that's what happened. That's enough for now. You know, we have to get to immediacy, time, you know.

[46:09]

So we've got something to do. Thank you very much.

[46:11]

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