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Two Hands, One Mindful World
The talk focuses on Zen practices, particularly the concept of completeness and mindfulness, emphasizing the importance of using both hands for actions, as observed in traditional Zen and Japanese culture. It includes a discussion on the sensory and spatial awareness in architectural design, reflecting the cultural influence of Chinese Buddhist monks on Japanese architecture. The practice of using two hands is contrasted with Western habits, highlighting how cultural and physical environments affect Zen practices. Additionally, the talk delves into the energy dynamics in Rinzai and Soto Zen traditions, emphasizing the conscious experience of the present moment and how bodily awareness and energy can enhance practices.
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Chakra Notes: The talk references the division of the body into chakras and the importance of moving objects within the body's energy field as part of mindful practices.
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Rinzai and Soto Zen Practice: Discusses the emphasis on energy in Rinzai practice, contrasting it with the Soto lineage's focus on awareness and its impact on acting without prior thinking.
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Architecture and Zen Culture: Mentions the influence of Chinese monks on Japanese architecture, emphasizing the creation of spaces that enhance sensory experience and mindfulness.
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Eightfold Path: Briefly references 'Right speech' as a practice aspect, suggesting that nourishing speech is fundamental to mindful living, connecting to the broader concept of practicing with completeness.
This academic gathering focuses intensely on precise practices and their cultural and philosophical backgrounds, offering insights into the application of Zen principles in various environments.
AI Suggested Title: Two Hands, One Mindful World
And with adept either practice. You have your own life to lead to worry about these things. But they are a big part of Zen practice. But But some of these things are an important part of Zen practice. So I'll just mention them a little bit. One of them you know. Is the emphasis on doing things with two hands. We've talked about that. And That's when Sukhiroshi was asked, what do you notice about Americans?
[01:01]
He surprised me by saying, they do things with one hand. So, like, if somebody asked you for this, you'd pass it like that. So I watched him, and he would pick it up, and turn his body and pass it. And in traditional Zen practice, it's considered quite rude to just turn your head. Because it means you're just turning with your thinking mind to the person. And the body is experienced as extended. And you're denying the person that experience.
[02:11]
So you turn your body and there's kind of almost like a feeling of a light here. So when I realized that when Sukhirashi passed me something, it was a feeling of him passing himself. using the salt or the bell as an excuse. Und ich habe also festgestellt, dass mir etwas reicht, dass er mir sich selbst reicht und einfach nur das Salz oder irgendwas als einen Vorwand benutzt, um das zu tun. And once you get that, you see why there's no handles on Chinese and Japanese cups. With all these things are designed, so you do them with two hands. Yes, Eric? I was in Japan in February, and I was there in a university contact, and not at all in this contact.
[03:31]
It was a really nice just being in Japan, being with these people and being in this atmosphere and this architecture. I mean, not the wall in Japan, the architecture, some aspect of it. Traditional architecture. Now also some aspects of modern architecture. The support is kind of doing things with both hands and doing some support, pausing, emphasis of space, walking through different kinds of spaces. So it's very easy to practice there in Japan, but because you have to work somehow in the visited context of which you need to practice for the people. Because I just could walk and I could feel different spaces, which is not the exercise that makes the lab today. That's right. For instance, yeah. And so for me, practice with two hands is particularly, it's very difficult for me because it feels so awkward.
[04:34]
Because it contradicts everything you do normally. And everybody has to do it. So difficulty practicing things generally in a way is that it's not supported. It's not supported by society, but it's not supported by space and by other things. So you have to somehow shift in, as opposed to You have to create it from very much from your own pain. That's right. So that's what makes it so difficult. Deutsch, bitte. That's what makes it so much fun. Das ist, warum es so viel Spaß macht. I was involved in a Buddhist context in Japan, and what I noticed was that just being in Japan doesn't help you practice.
[05:39]
Just being there and also teaching, although there is no teaching here, but space is teaching. So just being there, that the people learn it, The room is designed in such a way that individuals can be experienced, or that dreams and consequences of dreams can be experienced. And that makes a big difference to practice in the West, where we create these challenges, because actually the physical environment, but also the society, as you pointed out, We will talk a little bit about why we can work against it. It is so difficult to do that. And especially the practice with the two, because I think it is very strange. I think it is very strange that two people, left-wing people, who are left-wing, have the right to do that.
[06:39]
People are considered a little dumb when they do think like that? Yeah, people are considered a little dumb when they do think like that? the kindergarten teacher said you should take things and he takes things with two hands because his parents said take things with two hands before you practice and the kindergarten teacher said no you should take one hand so you're old enough to do it with one hand you are old enough to do it with one hand pow laughter laughter Yeah, that's interesting. Where these things meet, you know, it's quite interesting. When I have to shake somebody's hand, I always shake their hand or two hands.
[07:48]
And some people find it a little much. They're startled because, you know, and I hold their hand a little bit and then they just get away. And they're like, And when they start to pull their hand away, I sort of give the feeling, this is very nice, and they sort of relax. Yeah, just since you brought up architecture. And this would be, you know, Japan is this way because Chinese monks were part of the creation of Japanese culture.
[08:52]
So this is your chance. You can do the same that the Chinese Buddhist monks did here in Austria. I was told this was the Russian zone during the war, after the war. And the Russians call this Austrian Siberia. So even in Austrian Siberia we can do this practice. But if this was, if I was a traditional architect informed by Buddhist culture, I wouldn't make one consistent space because that's a mental space. I'd make a sensorial space.
[09:54]
and I would put pauses in the space. In other words, if I look at this area, I would design it so I looked at it and paused. And if I designed that space, I would pause again. It would make me pause. And I would try to do things so that if I was here, I'd have one experience. If I walked by it over there, it'd be a different experience that I couldn't predict from here. One of the main ideas is you can't grasp a building mentally, you can only experience it physically. So you can't look at it from one side and predict what it will be like on the other side. Du kannst ein Gebäude von einer Seite anschauen und nicht vorhersehen, wie es von der anderen Seite ist.
[11:30]
And you would emphasize different smells. For instance, you'd use wood that you passed regularly. You'd pick a wood which had an odor. So when you walked by it, you'd smell the wood. So that it's actually a different way of bringing up, I'll come back to this later, but bringing objectivity into giving the present meaning. And so I'll try to speak about that later. When Eric's not here. You have to leave tomorrow, I know. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm going to continue.
[12:46]
So this sense of doing things with two hands is also the sense of the body as a as a body, I don't know how to put it, divided into chakras. So in that sense, if you pick something up, you move it into the field of the body and back out. And as I've often said, pointed out that culturally you can see it in people born in Asia that they'll hold a cup here or here.
[13:52]
There's chakras there. You almost feel like there's a little table here. When you lift it, it flaps back in. Like your lap, which disappears when you stand up. And in English, you don't have a lap unless somebody's sitting in it or there's something on it. This is not my lap, but it's only my lap if I put something on it. So the lap is an interesting example of impermanence. Because it's only a relationship, it's not part of your body. It's only a relationship, it's not part of your body.
[14:55]
Your arm is part of your body, but your lap is not part of your body. It's only a lap when it's used as a lap. But I think in German, lap is more a part of the body, right? When you stand up, it doesn't disappear. Yeah, as well. It's broader. So here's this little lap. Or they hold their cup here while they're drinking. All right. So when you understand that, lots of the rituals in practice make sense. No. So let me use that as a way to speak about bowing to you. And, you know, those of you who've I've done this before.
[16:02]
I don't mean to bore you. Like your feet, you learn to always have this distance apart. So you always stand up. So I notice, I mean, I've told you this, but I see them in service or... But you just fit in a habit of doing it. In a way, it's the parameter of your mindfulness. Das ist irgendwie eine Richtschnur deiner Achtsamkeit. And the more you can find ways to get the feeling of that, you begin to lose the sense that your feet are down a little bit.
[17:03]
Because your feet aren't down there. They're only down there if you think you're located, the observer is located in your head. When you, in your blissful action, in your action, act as if the observer is in the head. And when you act in your physical actions as if the observer were in your head, then you emphasize the visual consciousness and the thinking consciousness. And this is also considered in serious zen practice a big mistake. Und das wird in ernsthafter Seinpraxis als schwerer Fehler betrachtet. That is the heart of all of that. You feel the world, not think of seeing the world. Darum geht es beim Hara. Kannst du die Welt fühlen und nicht nur sehen und denken?
[18:25]
But none of this is written down, nor is it developed as an integral part of the Masterclass. Okay, so bypass them. If you If I walk past one. An extraordinary being is walking past. And I don't want to just think you. I want to take a moment to physically feel.
[19:27]
I'm sorry. I don't want to be physically felt. No, thank you. It's like people in America have a nice day and you say, sorry, I had a bad time. So, say that, you know, I've walked past you. You can stand. You want to stand up? Great. So, at some point, fairly near to you, I stop. Impossible to stop. If I'm in a hurry, I might... There should be enough time in the world to pause for another person. No, no, stay there. Now get up.
[20:29]
Feet this far apart. Yeah, that's good. So we stop, and then I lift my hands. So what am I doing when I lift my hands? I'm bringing this kind of feel. You know when somebody gazes at you, you can feel... you're kind of activating that feeling in your hands and you kind of bring it together here you bring your hands up through the chakras and here you've gathered after a while you actually feel it Maybe a dancer will do this. Gather your feeling here. But this is still a very personal space, personal feeling of energy.
[21:38]
But like in Rinzai school, they bow here. And they emphasize doing everything with energy. And when I was in, I practiced in Daitopaji for two and a half years, one of the main Zen monasteries. Don't go away. If you're going in the door, in Rinzai, you come to the door, step right through it, then him. In Soto school, you stop and then he taught us. And you allow yourself to feel the room without thinking the room. And then you step into that feeling. Yeah. There's a different, there's slightly different.
[22:40]
A big difference, a small difference. Okay. So, if I see you, I bring my hands up. And then I lift it up to here and again I measure this distance. Very precise. This is related to this. Your ears are in line with your shoulders. And your hips. This is all yoga, but it's not yoga for yoga class. It's yoga in everything you do. And you bring it up. And your hands, your arms are separated. As if there was an egg there. You're not thinking like this, Mama, I miss you.
[23:47]
And then you let everything disappear into the other person. And you feel that. And then there's a kind of mutuality of mind for a moment. A kind of mind-mind. And then you come back up, you complete the bow, you do each thing with a sense of completion. And then you walk on by. Okay. I don't know if this direction is interesting, but it's enough to say, not too much, but a little bit. What's that? Very much, very much. Oh, it is interesting, okay. And this is part of this practice of, which I've emphasized, if you want to get a sense of what Dharma practice is, you try to notice or you notice, feel, when situations are nourishing and when there's a feeling of completion.
[24:54]
So that's another example of a kind of rigor in Zen practice. As I said, you try to limit yourself to what you can experience. Du versuchst dich darauf zu beschränken, was du erfahren kannst. And you try to do things in a way that nourishes you. Und du versuchst Dinge so zu tun, dass sie dich nähern. Now I try to write speech would be that speech which nourishes you. Und rechte Rede wäre die Rede, die dich nährt. Right speech is part of the Eightfold Path. Didn't we talk about the Eightfold Path last year?
[26:10]
Right speech. This is one aspect of right speech. Okay. So in speaking with you, I try to stay with feeling nourished while I speak to you. And if I start feeling drained or depleted, I know we're not together anymore. Or I've lost a physical pace with what I'm saying. So strict practice would be to say, for the next four years, I will do nothing that doesn't nourish me. That's only possible for the monk and the retired. Or, and you try to do each thing in a way that it feels complete. Yeah, and now again, just to use the bell as, if I decide to pick up the bell, if I bring my hand to the bell, and I stop at the bell, and I feel the coolness of it, there's a sense of completeness.
[27:41]
Then if I lift it up, I lift it up in a way that I feel complete in this gesture. Okay. So that usually ends up in a chakra. I wouldn't feel so complete if I put it over here. I'd have to bring my spine into a kind of relationship to it, to have a feeling of completion. It's like I said the other day, I think it was, if you're in complete darkness and you are trying to find your way through a room, And there's no here-ness, visual here-ness. Then you need the now-ness of a kind of physical sense of the room in your spine.
[28:56]
brauchst du das Jetzt-Sein des Raumes in einer Art körperlichen Hinsicht in deiner Wirbelsäule. And here we could make a physical distinction then or sensorial distinction between here-ness and now-ness. Und wir könnten hier eine sensorische Unterscheidung treffen zwischen hier-sein und jetzt-sein. So the here and now are not synonyms. And then here and now are not synonyms. Also, if the bell is here, if I move it here, I can ring it more easily physically than if it's over here. And you know, you never ring a bell first. You always ring it once and once and once.
[30:09]
And that's a different feeling. I notice sometimes I will sit with some people and they'll start meditation. That's not once, once and once. Once is you have to wait for the bell to tell you when it wants to be heard. And each bell is a little different. Okay. So when you... feel the yoga of these rituals. If I pass someone, I feel I'm completing something if I bow. When I bring my hands up to here, I feel something, I get in the habit of completing things.
[31:16]
Yeah, that's all. But this sense then of turning yourself over to the field of the body in its mutual externality mutual externality the mutual externality testing the translator. There's anyway a feeling of completion Yes, I think that's enough. Yes. Yesterday you brought up the example of whistling.
[32:45]
And I really like this example, because it's... Last night, you mean. Last night, and also during the weekend. Because it's really an experience we have for trusting some kind of knowledge which is not controlled by thinking. Thinking. And for me, practice like you just talked about is a lot like... a kind of knowledge which somehow you have to trust it to be able to enter it more and more. And for me this kind of practice, as Roshi just said, is something like a knowledge that you have to trust in order to be able to enter it more and more.
[33:54]
And whistling is just like this knowledge. Like whistling in the dark. Do you have that expression, whistling in the dark? We mean the opposite of the expression. So I would suggest if you want to get in lay practice or in your life practice, you know, You want to have a sense of this daily yoga. This completeness and nourishment you notice. First you have to get a feeling for it. Like take a walk at a pace where you feel completely nourished as you're walking.
[35:04]
You start rushing and you don't feel nourished, you're just rushing. But you can go fast and still feel nourished. But first you have to discover that place and then widen it. And then I would say that you get in the habit of bringing attention to your breath. And I would say you get in the habit of feeling the presence of your spine. So many people walk around in the saddest postures. So many people walk around in sad postures.
[36:12]
You see them, you think, how can they function walking around like this? So I think the feeling is a kind of as if your spine was a space that covered your whole body. And you have a feeling of lifting yourself into the world. And that you feel each part of your body separately, if that makes sense. Yeah, if you lift a leg, you're really lifting the leg in relationship to the whole body, not just lifting your leg mentally. That practice really opened up for me when Charlotte Silver told me to come up to standing.
[37:14]
So she didn't say stand up, which is to go between this point and that point. And I suddenly felt many postures that you go through as you stand up. So you don't just stand up in a mental thing, getting from here to there. It's more a physical uncoiling. Like a snake uncoils or something. Aufrollen. Aufwinden. It's like Nagarjuna says, practice is putting a snake in bamboo.
[38:22]
If you have a bamboo stick and you have a snake, you're trying to stick it in the bamboo. He means to put your mind in your backbone. So these kind of physical practices are the substrate, the basis for all the other practices. Okay. Well, that's enough on that subject. But I hope it gives you a feeling for this. You can integrate this into your own life, but it's something you have to get the feeling of. Okay. And I find myself, I don't have any problem with doing things with two hands in any situation.
[39:34]
But I find that I have to create a pause to do it. I pause almost like I don't know what to do next. Like I'm a little lost. Which is probably the case. And then I do the action. And then people are... They feel a little lost too and are worried about you being lost and so then they're so grateful that they've received whatever you've done. And then people are... Okay, is there something else anybody wants to bring up? Let's have someone else knock on the door right now. Yes, the aspect of energy. And he has very much emphasized in my practice And also in my work in psychiatry, I work with people who kill other people who've known their own life and who, in some sense, hate their own experience.
[40:57]
And it's because of some intensity which is not there. Intensity, yeah. Sometimes it's love, sometimes it's nameless dread. Sometimes it's what? Lust. Lust. Or nameless dread. Oh, yeah. Nameless dreads. And it always gives me the most attractive, if I can give a picture, in the pen observing picture, sometimes the ox turns from black to white, depending on the depiction. And so the quality of the mind changes. And that could be something based on Well, my part is certainly also this in-depth conversation and singing, also simply because we are born in our time, because we are able to do things in our time, and also in our society, which is of great importance to us. I wanted to be able to swim, to have my own life, because I also hated it.
[42:11]
And... I thought it had something to do with the intensity of the men and women, and how they were able to withstand it. And... I don't know if you can hear me, but I can hear you. Can you hear me? Well, maybe this could be something that will come up as we go along. But I'll just, for a moment, in the context of the fact that you primarily practiced Rinzai style.
[43:12]
Rinzai... As I have practiced it in Japan and with friends of mine who are Rinzai practitioners, the emphasis on energy is an emphasis on acting ahead of thinking. So you begin to trust a kind of body-mind, body-energy. And it makes you do things with a kind of vividness. Okay, the dynamic in Dung Shan lineage, which I prefer to call it, the Soto, is also to...
[44:18]
to act free of thinking, to get in the habit of acting, ahead of thinking, or not through thinking, but the emphasis here in Dung Shan's lineage is to shift from is to at each moment shift into awareness out of consciousness. And then to pause for the situation to draw you, to lead you. But that awareness has a quality of energy, but in stillness.
[46:01]
So it's a kind of two sides of the same coin. If you go to a no play, in what no theater is in Japan, they emphasize the still moment which encapsulates the play. And they're always... If you take a picture of the Noh actors, all the pictures look posed. It looks like this.
[46:57]
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