Vatnar, shall we get another cat since Charlie's gone? That's the discussion. I don't want to decide that. Someone said yes? But he's not living here anymore. It goes back and forth, you know, with him. Might help with the mice. Well, Charlie was not such a big helper. No. If you get an American... He had to go through the cans of cat food by the mice. The American bobtail we had really got mice and birds. That's not so good. All day long. Anyway, that's a different discussion, isn't it? Yeah, but it's an ongoing discussion. Really? I didn't know it. I just thought of it. It's a small group, huh?

[01:10]

So your discussion seems to have run over for some of you. We went to koan number one and it's a little bit long, so this is why we started later in the discussion. But I thought it's good to read it. Okay, so what does anyone, someone have to say? What were the questions? When did you successfully practice with the phrases? Only that one? OK. In our group everyone said he or she had practiced with several phrases and also over a long time. And one aspect of our discussion was your statement this morning at the Taisho that working with Satsang is extremely important.

[02:33]

One aspect was what you said in the Taisho this morning that it is so important the working with sentinels in the group today. And yesterday you said You see, you said that still sitting joins body and mind together in a certain intention. Through intention. Well-being in the sense of non-being. Well-being. We have this expression in German, well-being. This is taken from English.

[03:35]

You use the word well-being in English? We just did in our group. But you in general? It's quite common, fairly common. Is this still well-being or is it non-being? Non-being isn't used in German too often. It makes me think When I bring body and mind together with this intention and only sit, so to speak, this falls under the category of well-being. To feel comfortable, to deal with conflicts and so on. When I just sit and join body and mind together, does this fall under the category, still fall under the category of well-being, just still sitting and joining body and mind together? And to bring in a sentence, as Roshi said this morning, Would the sentence you mentioned to bring in into this still sitting, joining body and mind together, the sentence bringing in, would that compare to the arrow which hits the eagle?

[04:52]

Then it's not about well-being, it's about non-being. And then is the question, is it about well-being or then non-being? Sentence brought in. That was your discussion? That was part of our discussion. Okay. That was about the different sentences which we worked with. Yeah, from the koan, yeah. And here too, the longer the more, we felt that there might also be a difference between staying attached to these sets or dealing with these sets in the realm of this well-being. And then we exchange something again in the toolbox and take another. But we talked about the difference when we work with sentiments and when we change sentences, like we do in our chest or our cellar where the tools are.

[06:10]

We take a different tool out and just change it and see how this feels. And it probably could be a question of courage not to put this tool away but to stick to it and stay sitting on it, on this arrow. And one of the themes was fear. Fear? Okay? Excuse me, someone else? Thanks. Well-being. There's nothing wrong with well-being, by the way. No, it's fine. I'm looking forward to lots of it. What? A small one? I want to say from our group, we had, first we all told our experiences with working with phrases, which were quite different of course, but we agreed on several aspects, one being that the sentence couldn't be just picked intellectually,

[07:40]

And there were of course different situations where how each of us came to a sentence. For example, given by you had a different intensity when he or she worked at it than picking a phrase from a book, for example. And we also noticed the difference if you pick a phrase, work with it, or stick to it, repeat it to yourself consciously, or, for example, if a phrase just pops up in a certain situation. And it may be also after a time it pops up and it may signal something. It may signal a situation where something changes or something gets in a different direction, for example. So this is where it helps. And we also agreed on that a phrase has to be You have to be able to work with it bodily, mainly by breath. Someone said it has to find a place to land in your body. And also, the phrase could be reduced further and further up until one word, which then can be breathed.

[08:47]

We agreed that these sentences, if they are successful, cannot be chosen intellectually. That it makes a difference whether you choose a sentence or whether, for example, Roshi An has a sentence, but also the intensity in which it is worked. That it also... When you choose a sentence and take it consciously, which then appears again in certain situations and also signals and shows you something, where you then pay attention or pay attention, and that he is physically That he is physically editable. You have to be able to work with him physically, with the sentence, especially through breathing. Or as someone said, that he has to find a place in the body where the sentence can land.

[09:55]

And that you also reduce sentences to some extent, always further, up to one word, that you can breathe then. These were some examples from our group. Yes, my question was, I try or I always use different precepts that you also bring up, the ones that speak to me at the first moment, the ones that have a physical resonance or, yes, in me. You choose them yourself. I take phrases which resonate in me, where I feel a resonance, which you give or find, and then I work with them. I often used it while sitting because I realized that even if I concentrate on my breathing, my thoughts are still doing something else.

[10:58]

So I thought to myself, I'd rather focus on a sentence like, for example, I found that when I'm sitting and my thoughts still go where they will and so I rather pick this sentence and concentrate on it. And I often feel that it's like a mechanic, like a cassette that spills out, that becomes independent without sinking to the physical level, for example. And I ask myself, is this like a tape recorder which sort of repeats itself, it doesn't come down to a bodily plane, so to say? Yes, I don't find it very satisfying.

[12:01]

I often ask myself, is it okay or does it have an effect? I don't find it very satisfying and ask myself, is this all right? Does it have an effect? You never find it satisfying or sometimes you don't find it satisfying? Sometimes. And so, I would say, I go in a certain direction with these sentences, but where they lead me is just open. I give to myself a direction with these sentences. But I don't yet know where this leads to. Okay. You mean you do it, but you don't feel any results? Or what do you mean by leads to? I do it and I have a picture of a result but I haven't got to it yet.

[13:15]

An idea of a result. Maybe it's better to have no idea of the result. It's like Aiming an arrow at a target that keeps moving. Instead of assuming where the arrow goes is where the target is. Okay. Apart from the sentences, it was in our group about the power of words and sentences.

[14:30]

For me personally it is interesting because I find a part of my roots here again. For me it is interesting because I find, I get access to some of my roots here. With another focus. with a different emphasis. I also come from the therapeutic side. My context or my training context is psycho-organic analysis. I come from a theoretical corner, so to say. I have a theoretical approach. Theoretical? Therapeutical. Therapeutic. Yeah. And my direction of what I represent is psychoorganic analysis. Psychoorganic analysis, yeah.

[15:32]

Und wir haben damit gearbeitet, dass jedes... We worked with that every word which you speak has a history and a... Yeah, and it contains your unconscious, psychologically. No word that you use is accidental. It has a history, it has energy and it has a connection to your unconscious. And working with these words where you stop at one word or you put the dot just earlier or you change a word You can change the energy in your body totally.

[16:40]

You could feel the words themselves where the body is. Whatever we call it, like positive or negative energy, remember? In these wisdom sentences you can set them differently, but you find them in your body. This is for me the connection with this psycho-organic, that the language gets into the body.

[17:52]

Can you give us an example of how you can use a word differently and shift the energy completely, or whatever you said, something like that? I give two examples. One example being someone says, being in therapy, I'm not sad at all. Genau, und du veränderst den Satz und sagst, ich schaue freundlich. Bitte? Ich schaue freundlich. Oder ich bin, warte mal, das Gegenteil, ich bin fröhlich oder ich schaue freundlich. You change the sentence and say, I look friendly or I'm joyful. Du veränderst es in, ich bin nicht traurig, in, ich bin freundlich.

[18:58]

You change the I'm not sad into I am friendly. You take the word I'm not out of it, out of the sentence. But you don't say I'm sad. How do you change sad into friendly? No, somebody is saying I'm not sad. And you change the sentence. You don't say I'm not sad. You say I'm happy. You change, not say, just to change. And then you have a total... You express it positively. Yeah. A lot of times some clients, they say, yes, I like you, but... You have always this but. I like you, but... I want to go in the monastery, but I cannot. And to cut off the but, to make her... The last example being, I worked with a female patient and she had a mother which had just one arm. Now the German language is so difficult to translate because

[20:24]

If we don't feel good or if we're in a bad or sad situation, we are poor at. We would say we are poor at. We're poor at it? Yeah, but not poor in the sense that we don't have enough, but poor swine or poor devil or whatever, like this. Yeah, yeah. There are the same words, poor and arm up. And arm and poor is the same. I see. In German. Let's arm up or so. Karolina's favorite line, yes. It may be difficult to bring this up now, but this woman saw in front of her mother's inner eye that she only had one arm and said again and again, she is... The situation was like this. Woman in therapy, she had this mother with just one arm and felt guilty as a child to have two arms whereas mother had just one.

[21:40]

It's not funny yet. She was sad. She was sad about herself having two arms and her mother just one arm. We worked with her sadness. And then she said again and again, And she always said, she is poor at it, yeah? And I stopped and said, poor at it. And I stopped and said, poor at it. Yeah, exactly. And then she shot hot air through her body and she laughed. And she felt a surge of heat through her body.

[22:53]

And then she laughed and said, well, my arm is at it. So you use the same words in a different way. I understand, yeah. Okay, thanks. Total change of energy. We're just stopping, arm down. Oh, wow, I can have two arms. It's great. I don't have to forget. An example for the same words was a total change of energy. So how we worked in body psychotherapy, using the energy in the words. Yeah, okay, good. Thanks. I understand. That's pretty well, anyway. All right. Someone else? No, he meant... Yes? Adding to what you have said. We had the discussion where a word begins, whether the body falls has a word before a word comes. We had the discussion of a word.

[24:00]

Where does a word begin? Does a word, before it is spoken or uttered, does it have a field which is there before it, so to say? Many of us had the experience that when they had a word, before it could be put to use... But it's sort of that they had a bodily working towards it so that one could sometimes just intuitively feel what the person would be saying. Yeah, okay. What is special about this wisdom sentence or word which is used instead or compared to an experience? And an example is for me, for example, I first have a song.

[25:17]

So I know songs with lyrics and then I'm in a situation where the song comes first and then the text comes afterwards and then the text has a certain sentence that is then the answer to a question, for example. But that comes with the physical experience and not with the word. For me, I feel a song coming, and then the words of the song, the text of the song comes, and this is the answer to a certain question or solves a problem. Yeah? The answer of an answer. It can be something which moves me deeply. It doesn't have to be a problem which is solved. But because you say, sentences are so important, where does a sentence begin? Yeah. You don't... When you say sentence, you mean a phrase.

[26:23]

I'm sorry, yes, a phrase. What we're talking about is a phrase, yeah. Sentence, it's okay, but a sentence is a kind of... Yeah, it's a complete statement with beginning and end and a verb and a noun. It's like a prison sentence. We had phrases which expressed an experience. Group head phrases, you mean? We talked in a group about it. They recollect or gather something which has been experienced. And sometimes it's the other way around, like in the koans, for example, where a sentence may move you or shake you, even if it's a seemingly silly or nonsense-giving or paradoxical sentence, which doesn't give it the usual sense.

[27:55]

Where the experience probably comes later, then. Okay. Thank you. Yes? We're talking about Wado's turning words. When you have read a koan, let's say 10, 15 years ago, and didn't think about it in the past. Perhaps you were a little angry with yourselves by not understanding it. But there was an affinity to certain sentences. stepping into their own functioning. Meine Beobachtung ist, dass diese Sätze sich selbst klären, ohne dass ich besonders bewusste Aktivität hinzugefügt hätte über die Jahre.

[29:00]

My experience is that these sentences clear up by themselves without my having put any extra activity into it. Und ich würde es auch bezeichnen als eine Form von Ländewort haben. And this is also what I would call a turning word, but just in a different temporal dimension. In other words, what you're saying is that you read a koan, perhaps, many years ago, and yet certain sentences stick in you, so they have their own energy, and they somehow lodge in you. And then they begin to work in you. Okay. And when the sentences really touch you, it's enough when you read it probably every two or three years.

[30:06]

It works in the meantime in yourself. Yeah, okay. Peter? And I got to add to this experience that when a koan about Mr. Hu, there was a sentence in it which just passed me by so quickly that I didn't even notice it. There was no resonance? There was no resonance. And suddenly in Zazen it appears, clearly observe the Dharma. And it was such an incredible tool to observe this. I had never seen it in this form before. And suddenly in Zazen it pops up, clearly observe the Dharma. And it was so impressive that I have never encountered this or met this before, this clearness.

[31:12]

Okay, yeah. Okay, someone else? Yes, Christa. Also, I also had an interesting experience. Years ago, and then, and then it was really very long, and I think I made an interesting experience. For years I used to work quite consistently with the word or phrase, just this. Different sentences appeared then afterwards. And this sunk to the ground, so to say. And now these koans appeared and I read these koans and other sentences appeared. The case itself sort of mostly passed me by because the sentences in them they just, yeah, I didn't dare to dig into them.

[32:46]

Too absolute, yes, it was too absolute for me, yeah. And one sentence was often there, what limit is to the pure wind which circles the earth? And yesterday in the morning while reading, And yesterday while reading it, the first sentence just jumped at me. And suddenly the word leer was in a new, so quite tangible and somehow clear, so quite in front of me, and in connection with the not holy.

[33:48]

And the word empty was quite near and quite clear to me and palpable and in the connection with not holy. This is present all the time, this is not holy? It has something totally liberating. It is something completely liberating It takes everything away from the feeling everything not necessary and brings me back to this arched sentence, just this And suddenly this only this becomes even clearer And suddenly this, just this, has become much clearer.

[34:52]

And this feeling that this non-holy has come with it, it has an incredible... What has come with it? This non-holy. Non-holy, yes. Makes the feeling of freedom and carelessness And what's accompanied by not holy is a feeling of freedom, of falling away of everything that's not necessary, or where you exerted yourself, or where you take special care of things, and this is all falling away, and liberating and... What was it? And joy. We're here. We won't go away. Give love me. Walk. Something else that we talked about in our group related to the embedding of the phrase is there's also a feeling that we may not, we talked about success, we may not have success in the sense of a completion with a phrase, but it may become part of a practice vocabulary, a body vocabulary for us that continues to inform our practice.

[36:35]

What was the second part? Excuse me. Continues to inform our practice. Okay. We talked about that when we have a difficult time, it helps us more to stay with the sentence. In difficult times there are not so many places to go, and then such a sentence helps as an antidote.

[37:39]

The second theme was that sentence can be an approach to the two truths. Just this or just so is an antidote more than whatever else complicated else is there. And what I myself know is that it is certainly also such a difficulty to get rid of two truths at all, because you can deal with such a sentence, so there is the sentence, I take care of myself,

[39:00]

Or is it not important to me? And when I say justice, then I don't give a shit. And that's also two truths. Can you say that in English, please? No, say that, please, and leave that one word out. A personal experience is... When it's about caring, I care for things. And when there's a sentence... Care for things. Like you care for the garden or care for about something? Yeah, I mean, you also can call it what is that for a practice? I care for other people. And then just another phrase like just this or already is, that brings me to I don't care. So these are sort of... I don't care. you work together very well yeah yeah okay okay Yes.

[40:13]

Adding to this feeling was what belonged to the feeling was like the fresh wind. Yes. Before I was practising with this sentence, the pure wind circling the earth, that remembered me. Reminded me. Reminded me, sorry, yeah. What's interesting is I work with a certain sentence and hit upon something else and this is connected then. In the autumn session you talked about the word subtle and woven in or interwoven.

[41:19]

And I was in the group which talked about the field before the word is there. And this morning when you talked about that the sentences, the phrases are so important. Do these fragments of the koans aim in the subtle way that they reach me in the subtle way? It is not so much about the words themselves but about the atmosphere or the field.

[42:43]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, when you see that no holiness... connects you to just this. You might actually play with emptiness, just this. Because it might bring just this in another direction. Or instead of emptiness, no holiness, you might try just this, no emptiness. and see what associations come up.

[43:54]

Someone else. I have something to add. In the Heart Sutra, Before I came here, I was with Anita in a sitting group and we always chanted the Heart Sutra. Before I came here, I was together with Anita in a sitting group and we all chanted the Heart Sutra. I didn't know what was behind it, beyond it. There was also an experience about the sentence, all three worlds, all Buddhas sit together. This peaceful picture of the three Buddhas was an experience for me. Okay. It was like the sentence being under the carpet or it was just chanted but never understood and never really read which brought this atmosphere about suddenly.

[45:18]

Yeah. Yeah, so it was nearly sort of a little short for me that the sentence was in it. Okay. Someone else? I personally find it always more interesting to work with sentences that appeal to me. I personally find it more and more interesting to work with phrases which come to you like they flow at you, they fly at you. For me it is good and good feeling to work with the sentence in a way that you don't tie a result or an aim to them.

[46:31]

Sometimes there are sentences that are only half sentences. For example, with you, Marlene, the old plum tree. Just to work with such a sentence and just let it into your life. without offering anything specific. It's sometimes half sentences, like the sentence of Marlene, the old plum tree, just to let them be and float in your life without tying anything to it. And from such a sentence, how should I say, To let such a sentence into your life, let it be alone and not knowing whether it leads to anything for a result. When you sense such an affinity, it clearly has to do with yourself or your psychology at least.

[47:51]

And I had made the experience that sometimes this is carried further and opens up into a wideness, a larger wideness. Okay, good, thank you. Yeah? Yes, through the Quran and also through the T-shirt. To read and understand the Quran is one thing for me. Or let's take this sentence as an example. Lea is not so sensitive. I can understand that. That is not a question in me. that this sentence penetrates me and transforms me, this is something else, and I ask myself, how does this change happen, you know, how can this sentence penetrate me, how do I get out of this understanding, so this is not only a mental understanding, it is also a different understanding, but it is still still an understanding that has a direction,

[49:32]

I'm engaged in that question, especially with the phrase, empty not holy. I can understand it, I can really understand it, but it's being penetrated by this sentence is something, is not lame. And how can I get from understanding to being penetrated by the sentence? How can the center do something with me, rather? Yes? Oh, you just were scratching your head. Evelyn? Yes? It hasn't actually at the moment nothing to do with the phrases.

[50:38]

Are you sitting there? On the weekend of the Sangha meeting, when we were working with the president of the NUKROAN and when we started, David Paul once wrote the sentence, and where is Bodhidharma right now? At the Sangha weekend, we were together, meeting the koan, Paul lifted the sentence, where is Bodhidharma right now? It was about the historical background, that Bodhidharma brought Buddhism to China, and the encounter of the individual people with Zen Buddhism. And it was about how Bodhidharma brought the Buddhism to China and the encounter of the people with that meeting of the people.

[51:42]

And memory, remembrance just rolled over me, so to say that I got to encounter or meet Zen Buddhism by and through Bodhidharma. A friend of mine had in his living room a large drawing of Bodhidharma. A sinister, ugly, rude type. Yeah? Gruesome. One who I wouldn't like to meet at night alone. And I would at that time have to do nothing with him. That weekend, the summer weekend, I noticed that I sort of put him quite far away. Eliminated. Ich kam nämlich dann über Suzuki Roshi's Gesicht zum Zen zurück.

[53:12]

I came back to Zen by Suzuki Roshi's poem. Um sein Buch zu sehen. Aber sehr stark sein... His book. Gesicht. Gesicht. My hearing. Sorry, his face. His face, yeah. Und das hat mich ziemlich erschüttert. That shocked me quite a bit. I have had several approaches and encounters with our ancestors, but him I had ignored completely. I didn't want to have him in our line of ancestors. Thank you. And since the weekend in January and with Paul's help I begin to make friends with Paul.

[54:17]

And since this January and with the help of Paul I start befriending him. With grim facial expressions and devilish eyes and the word unquenchable helps me too. grim face and devil's eyes and imperturbable, the word imperturbable. And I have already noticed that it has something to do with, and I can probably learn a lot from this question, it has something to do with the fact that I apparently, although I did not know this and I thought I had not gone somewhere on the line of an idea of holy. And it has to do with, even if I thought I hadn't, but apparently I've sort of stuck to some notion or idea of holiness. And that after nine years of meditation in this phase should have been a little bit more relaxedness or not so much grimness and probably hate.

[55:40]

Maybe the artist just had a bad day. Bad hair day. And it goes on with this friendship. Maybe I can try to stop on time according to the Eno this morning, this afternoon. This is very interesting to me and helpful to me to hear your energy about words. It makes me try to

[56:42]

think more specifically about what we mean by turning words in Zen practice. Partly it's leading you down the garden path. Do you have that expression? Probably not. To lead someone down the garden path other English speakers can help me, is to kind of take somebody down the obvious until they're trapped. Is that right? How would you say it? It's a little bit like seduction. Yeah. Well, pretty gardens. I mean, that's what Atmar's doing. He leads us in and you look at everything and it looks so nice and the pond is so pretty and then you fall in it.

[57:59]

Or, everything looks good and Atmar shows you everything and then he puts you down in the Zendo for a week. So I might say for example the rug is on the floor the microphone is on the rug And you can't deny those two statements really. The rug is on the floor. The microphone is on the rug. The microphone is recording everything. Nothing is recorded. That would be a turning word. Because The first three statements, or four, are correct, and the fourth one, or fifth one, whatever it was, what does it mean?

[59:22]

Is it also correct or incorrect? Yeah. And turning words are also a way of looking at language. Like even once you have the feeling of nothing is recorded, So instead of working from the rug to the microphone on the rug to nothing is recorded, you can work backwards and start with nothing is recorded.

[60:37]

What does it mean to say the rug is on the floor? So you bring a kind of vividness into things combined with doubt. So you could actually take it as a turning word. Nothing is recorded. Yeah, there's no karma. Collins assume, Collins assume, and...

[62:49]

And every sentence you can read with the assumption is that every sentence, not just the key sentences. Is it true or is it not true? Am I being led down the garden path? Is this the magician setting the stage for the sawing of the woman? And it's a way of... Feeling your views in your attitudes, images, words.

[64:00]

Feeling your views in your attitudes, images, words. And it probably comes from slowing down the mind, through meditation. So there's... I don't know. I don't know. You do. Maybe, I don't know, Maya I don't know, the same as Bodhidharma, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. It's like, you know, moving through a series of stage sets.

[65:13]

So, in this room... There's a feeling this is a stage set. Actually it is. It's a kind of theater for us to have a seminar. And you feel it as a stage set if it's just propped up. And it's like we go out and It's that the walls were flocked down and then flocked back up for the next scene. So there's an experience of... This is an experience of emptiness. Even if the room has been here for a long time, it's still manufactured right now in our sensibility as a stage set.

[66:26]

And what we name it gives it reality. And if we take the name away, so sometimes, you know, for instance, before I started working with phrases regularly, And, you know, again, working with phrases is most powerful when every word is a phrase, a wisdom phrase or, you know, a naming and an unnaming. I mean, working with phrases is a practice of emptiness.

[67:32]

The phrase emptiness, no holiness, is exactly the same as saying form is emptiness. So, I mean, oh, there goes our cook so we can eat. I always mention you after you leave. Yesterday I did. But no one tells you what I said. No. He's gone to make stone soup.

[68:38]

You know the story about stone soup? No, please. It's an anecdote story all over the world. But a particularly good version of it, do I have the book here? Anyway, there's a version of it where these three Zen monks go into a village. And the village is fighting with each other. No one speaks. So these three monks decide they'll make stone soup. And a little girl comes out and says, what are you guys doing? Well, we're going to make stone soup. And the girl thinks, she's my mother, I'd like to hear about that. It seems quite an inexpensive soup. So she says, don't you need a pot? So she goes home and gets a pot and brings it.

[70:01]

What are you getting a pot for? Monks are making stone soup. So she comes and brings the pot and they make a fire and they get the stone in the pot. And she says, somebody else's pot. What's going on out there? Those crazy monks are making stone soup. Well, don't they need a few carrots? So somebody brings carrots, and somebody brings something else, and pretty soon the whole village is involved in this making stone soup. This story occurs, of course, in Hungary. All over the world. Anyway, this is one good version. I might have a copy of the book upstairs. It's quite a nice book to read. Beautiful drawings. Sophia likes it.

[71:02]

I like it. So, while Peter makes stone soup, Anyway, I was walking along going, you've heard me tell this story now and then. I was walking along and I was like Clinton, I never smoked. At least I never inhaled. I really didn't, it was too harsh. But I was blowing it through my nose. So I lit a cigarette. Coming back from lunch, this was about 1960 or something. And I scrunched up the newspaper, I mean cigarette package, because it was the last cigarette. And I threw it down. And I walked about two steps and I thought, why did I throw that down?

[72:18]

So I wasn't working with the phrase, but I could feel I threw it down in some stage set. And I suddenly realized, I think this stage set is the outside. I was also in charge of cleaning up the warehouse where I worked. And I thought, well, nobody's going to sweep that up. I better throw it down inside. And I suddenly realized, because... Implicitly I was working with a phrase I didn't know it, which is, there's no outside. And since then I've never made the outside-inside distinction.

[73:20]

For me, everything is inside. I mean, practically speaking, I know that the garden is not in this room, exactly. But anyway, so the idea to try to... I'm already five minutes late. From the outside, I mean from the inside. So the idea of koans is that the idea of phrases in koans is that in the use of language is that we As you particularly said, Annetta, by others, that we carry energy in words. And implicitly in all our mental and physical activity. We're actually carrying mental postures.

[74:45]

So at each moment, there's... There's the activity of immediacy. And if you look at that immediacy with any idea of future or past, you immediately conflate it. You immediately reduce it to almost nothing. And if without ideas of inside or outside, you can... release yourself into each situation.

[76:06]

And much of your energy, most, maybe virtually all of our energy is tied up in establishing past, present and future and the subjective agency I. And that cuts you off from Interdependent causation. Okay. When you have less selfness, your energy is not involved with, tied up in, establishing a past and future your attention is not tied up in selfness.

[77:26]

Now, using the word selfness That's the problem. I struggle for a German word for that. Well, use selfness. which is not selflessness. I'm trying to make a distinction between some idea of self and no self. So we're talking about a range of a lot of selfness and less selfness. Also sozusagen eine Skala von viel und weniger, wie soll man das denn so schnell sagen?

[78:40]

Selbstheit. Okay, Selbstheit, danke. Okay, so we can just create terms. There's no word selfness in English. We just did it. Creating words to pour Buddhism into our new language. When there's less selfness, energy is freed from selfness and it can go more fully into attention. So what happens is we're mindful in a And attentive in a far more powerful and engaging way. And when there's less selfness. And less and less energy is caught in selfness.

[79:47]

Suddenly there's a flip and energy just flows into the situation. And you feel located in the situation, not somewhere else. Even mind and body, this is an experience of mind and body dropping away, Dogen's phrase. Suddenly you have what I've enacted, or tried to, when you convey the self to myriad things, Dogen says, this is delusion. When all things come forward, when myriad things, ten thousand things come forward, And what's the word I use?

[81:06]

Confirm and authenticate? Authenticate. And there's another word. Cultivate and authenticate. When all things come forward and cultivate and authenticate the self, this happens because you've released energy into the situation and the situation then begins to cultivate you. And when the situation cultivates you, you're involved, you're engaged in, or actualizing interdependent causation. So the teaching of Buddhism is interdependent.

[82:09]

Again, you have only the parts. You have nothing else but the parts interacting. And that's going on with tremendous complexity and sensitivity at each moment. Complexity and sensitivity in every moment. Without the mental defilements of judgment and comparison.

[83:12]

And we could say selfness. Without selfness, without mental defilements of judgment and comparison. Everything is cut off. And you are free and at ease. What need is there to go on distinguishing right and wrong? Distinguishing right and wrong, discriminating gain and loss. Even so, how many people are capable of this? Yeah. So this is what they mean by the pure wind circling the earth.

[84:27]

Throughout heaven and earth, what is there to be that is limited? Yeah, anyway, without taking too much time, the koan... repeatedly make statements about this. Where are your views? Your views are in your activity. They're carried in your activity. All the little movements of eyes, bodily movements, posture, how you are in the situated immediacy or not.

[85:47]

All reflect your views. All these dharmic and karmic bits. And I threw that cigarette wrapper down, cigarette package down. I threw it down within my views. I didn't throw it down in the alley, in the railroad track. I threw it down within my views. And I turned around and I went and picked it up in a new view. So the basic idea of turning words are your views are in the minutia of your activity.

[87:01]

And if you learn how to bring certain phrases carrying energy into this minutia of your views, If the words are the right words, and different phrases, traditional phrases, ones you can come up with, sometimes bring your views into relief, like a carved relief. Like a Greek freeze. Some phrases are designed to bring your views into relief. And some phrases are meant to pierce through. And some phrases are meant to put you on the other side.

[88:22]

Like the Rumi poem, I knocked and knocked on that ancient door. For years I knocked on that ancient door. When suddenly it opened, I found I was already on the other side. Some phrases are designed to do that. Yeah, so... A door is always a good place to stop. So that was a start. Thanks. Which side of the door are we on? Where is Bodhidharma now? Emptiness, no roominess. you might like to look at I really don't understand this

[89:56]

supposedly Nagaland pearl from something or other, but it's got a wonderful carved person on it. It's quite neat. It was given to me by... My dearest. Yeah. So I thought Bodhidharma might like to have a Nagaland pearl because we're talking about the Nagas. We've got the Korean far-out kanji for moo, emptiness, and we've got Bodhidharma here. Not as grim, I hope. Oh, the body diameter, excuse me.

[90:37]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.23