when I give a lecture. Beforehand I have various feelings about what I'd like to speak about. And so I find that if I try to write out my feelings into words, It helps me by creating what we've been talking about, a writing space, it helps me create a speaking space. Yeah, so anyway, I write out various possibilities of how to say things and see if I can, the writing helps me discover how to say it.

[01:01]

So my thinking is not thinking. It's a feeling that doesn't, for me, happen in words. But if I'm going to speak to you, I have to make it happen in words, right? So today when I sat down, the first thing I do is turn off my e-mail. So I get no beeps from the e-mail machinery. There's no word for beep in German?

[02:21]

It's beep. Oh, it's beep. Anyway, and the first thing I noticed was there was an email from Wolfram Graubner. And he said, oh, dear Richard, I'm so glad you've made good progress on raising the payment, which I told him we think we've pretty much done. And he said, next week I couldn't come over. I'd asked him, and I asked Guido earlier, while he's here since... He's been interested in and has shown me Kugelhaus' book. And we first spoke about it in Kassel. So I said that... that you were here and you were an architect and psychotherapist and so forth.

[03:42]

And I asked him if he would be willing to come over and he said, well, I can't next week, but I could tonight. And I asked him if he would be willing to come over and he said, well, next week he has no time, but he could come tonight. And so I would like to invite him to come over this evening. If I have your permission to skip Zazen and have a discussion with him about Hugo Kugelhausen. I think for me it's very important to know the history, if something of the history we can about this inheritance we have. And so many resonances over the almost about 30 years I've been coming to Europe.

[04:55]

has led me into this field, into this field of resonances, and in Thothmos and Graf von Durkheim, And then Wolfram and Kuckelhaus, Wolfram Graubner and Kuckelhaus. And Steiner and so forth. Anyway, so it's rather remarkable that somehow we ended, I ended up here with you in this group of buildings. So, if it's okay with you, we could do that this evening in the downstairs seminar room. No, you mean all of us, right?

[06:11]

All of us, yes. Okay. I mean, we could just have a few of you, but I'd rather all of you join us. I think we should put as many chairs as possible. But some of us can sit in a cushion. I'm happy to. And he said, Richard, I only have one request. Can I speak in German? I said you can speak in Deutsch or Hungarian. And I'm pretty sure he'll choose Deutsch. Okay. Now, I feel I ought to try to untangle last tesho. See if we can get a little untangled today.

[07:29]

You know, I spoke about the various topics because it excites me or it pleases me that I found a way to speak about certain things. Many things remain sort of like closed doors for me. Stuck, rusted shut. And I push on them every now and then and suddenly one opens. And then there's a garden there or a park or other rooms. So then I want to join you in these gardens and rooms and so forth.

[08:41]

So I did find ways to speak about several topics, but I didn't find a way to put them together in one day show. My cold is still hanging on a little. So let me just start with the idea of non-duality. From the very beginning of my practice in the beginning of the 60s, ganz von Beginn meiner Praxis in den frühen 60er Jahren, da war schon irgendwie das Gefühl, dass es hier darum geht, Nicht-Dualität zu verwirklichen.

[09:55]

Aber das war für mich nur eine Vorstellung. But I did notice, for example, one thing I noticed was that I felt there was a glass wall between me and the world and other people. I mean, let's say that, first of all, I think it was pretty good that I noticed that there was this glass wall. And I just didn't feel as connected as I might be with other people and with the situation and context. So first I identified that there was this kind of glass wall, invisible wall.

[11:01]

And I made a decision, because I decided to practice, that I was going to treat it as a mental formation and not a psychological formation. So I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't know how to get a little hammer and break it or something. So all I thought I could do was just to keep noticing it. You know, I didn't have much hope for the world working or me working or anything working, so I was patient. Und ich hatte nicht viel Hoffnung, dass die Welt funktionieren würde oder ich funktionieren würde oder überhaupt irgendwas funktionieren würde.

[12:22]

Und deshalb war ich geduldig. The only choice I had when things were so bad was patience. Die einzige Wahl, die mir blieb, wenn die Dinge so schlecht waren, war geduldig zu sein. So I had patience. I kept noticing it and noticing it. And I would say that suddenly, with repeated noticing on every perception almost, suddenly after about a year and a half, it suddenly was gone. I felt I was suddenly in the same connected field with others and with the physical world. So I would say that was one of my first experiences of what is meant in Zen by non-duality.

[13:25]

So it was an experience, but it wasn't developed or articulated or reached into everything I did. And I had another experience which I've mentioned occasionally. I worked in a warehouse down by the canals and railroad tracks in San Francisco. And in the warehouse I was sort of assistant manager or something, which meant that I had to sweep the floors and things. I was often there with one of those big wide brooms after everyone else left, sweeping.

[14:25]

Yeah, and I was coming back from lunch somewhere. And I had a pack of cigarettes. And like Clinton, I didn't inhale. Which is actually true, I never, it was terrible, but I would blow it out of my nose and stuff like that. And it was the last cigarette, so I threw the package down on the railroad tracks. And I walked a couple steps. And I think because I was in the context of I had to clean up the warehouse, I had to sweep the warehouse. I thought, hey, no one's going to clean up that cigarette package. And I'm not going to start sweeping out here.

[15:35]

So I thought, well, if I turned back and picked it up. And then I... It just was clear to me that I thought there was an outside where you could just throw things. Which many large chemical companies, paper companies still believe. They just dump everything into the river. But when I recognized, of course, that I thought there was some kind of universal of an outside independent of me. So at that moment I... Well, it's all inside.

[16:56]

There's no outside. And yet, the experience was real, but the concept of it, the possible experienceable concept of it, was pretty primitive. And the experience of it was real, but the experienceable concept that I had of it, that was still quite primitive. Primitive, yeah. It's not, there's a better one. Einfach, einfach, okay. as an inside, as if I was in a big stomach, was my image. I felt I might be digested, I had to be careful.

[17:58]

But now I would say that there are no universals of time and space. And even, as I said, I think I said gravity might seem like a universal, but it's obviously different on the moon. So in various ways, the Zen practice tradition speaks about no outside. Yuan Wu says, establish a mind where there's no before and after or here and there.

[19:12]

And realize right where you stand, he says. And how do we, if the rigor of our practice is to make it experienceable, make everything experienced and experienceable, how do we do this? Now, one reason I brought up the St. Augustine of Hippo and lived in the third, the fourth century A.D. or C.E. Of Hippo, is that the place where he lived? He was bishop of Hippo. Hippo, okay. H-I-P-P-O. Okay, also, der Grund, warum ich St. Augustin von Hippo angesprochen habe, der im dritten Jahrhundert gelebt hat.

[20:19]

Because I thought that how he establishes a reading space was quite in our tradition. In fact, it could be in our tradition. Because if you're going to study these texts like Yuan Wu or Koan, Weil wenn ihr diese Texte so studiert wie Yuan Wu oder wie ein Korn, die darauf ausgerichtet sind, verinnerlicht und erinnert zu werden, so dass die fortwährend gegenwärtig sind für euch, Like somebody might have the problem of certain obsessive thinking being continually present. It can drive you nuts. But if you have certain wisdom phrases continuously present, it can drive you enlightenment.

[21:23]

So I didn't know when I was developed the ability to keep this glass wall continuously present. I was developing the ability to keep something continuously present. And so what I discovered, but didn't recognize for a long time, was that you're developing a yogic skill. of being able to keep something continuously present. So it works into the machinations? No. If I think I'm going to use a strange word, I sometimes keep an email open, not the email program, just an email open, and I

[22:51]

write the word on the email and send it to her before the talk. I should have sent machinations. Yes, you absolutely should have. Okay. Um... Um... Because if you can introduce something repeatedly into the layers of sensorial and our senses and modes of mentation, It begins to talk to, have a kind of conversation with all aspects of our life.

[23:55]

It's a way that 10,000 things can begin to come forward and illuminate us. Cultivate and authenticate. And this happens also, as I was trying to say last time, in lucid dreaming. So what St. Augustine wanted to establish was a way in which you read a text so it stayed with you and then talked with your experience as it happened.

[25:14]

Yeah. Shall I say it again? Yes, please. What St. Augustine wanted to do was establish a reading space... Like where he had a lectern, he could look at several books at once. And he read so he could memorize. And then recall in other... Und dann in anderen Kontexten das wieder aufrufen konnte. Okay, so we need to read, I mean you can read any way you want, but if you want to read a koan, or teachings of Yuan Wu, for example. Ihr könnt auf jede Weise lesen, wie ihr möchtet, aber wenn ihr einen koan lesen möchtet, oder zum Beispiel diese Lehren von Yuan Wu,

[26:18]

You have to read in a way, and often it's written in a way, so that phrases can be internalized. dann müsst ihr so lesen und oft ist es auch so geschrieben, dass Sätze verinnerlicht werden können. And if you can internalize them or embody them, they're present and begin to talk in your experience. Und wenn ihr diese Sätze verinnerlichen könnt oder verkörpern könnt, dann sind sie oft in eurer Erfahrung gegenwärtig und fangen an, dort zu sprechen. So you're not learning through reading, you're learning through injecting your reading, a wisdom reading, into your experience. It's a special kind of reading space. Okay, which we try to establish in the winter branches and things like that. Okay.

[27:19]

Now, but I also said we can take the five physical senses and spatialize them. And I think, I know for myself at least, that the way to come closer to what's meant by non-duality is to embody your experience. But that sounds like it's here in your body. And so the entry to embodying is I find spatializing.

[28:22]

It's not the only way, but I think it's the effective way I want to emphasize in these days. And the easiest of the five senses to spatialize are visual and aural, a-u-r-a-l. And then also olfactory, and if we think of touch as movement, then touch movement too. And gustatory, we'll leave till we go to a good restaurant together. She's offended because she thinks we have to go to a good restaurant and not the meal we have with her every day.

[29:37]

She's blushing even. If you've given me a chance, I was about to say it, but we have such a good meal, three meal times a day. Good, okay. She identifies with her responsibilities. This is okay. I do too. She stopped translating now. Yes. I disidentified with my responsibilities. Okay. So like when I come into a room, My sense is, and I want to do it, it's just something I do. I let my eyes, shall we say, slide over the walls and the floor. dann lasse ich meine Augen, sagen wir mal, über die Wände und den Boden gleiten.

[30:42]

Almost as if I was the architect who had designed the room. Fast als wäre ich der Architekt, der den Raum entworfen hat. And I'm checking to see if the builders got the walls and proportions and so forth the way I wanted them. In Japan, the tradition is the builder and the architect are the same person. But they're working within a cultural formula which makes that much easier. But in any case, I look at a room as if I was creating it. Now, a number of people brought up to me after the last seminar you had, when was it, yesterday or something like that,

[31:47]

The problem of already there-ness. Okay, so this room is already there. Of course, it used to be a shiner-eye, and it's now quite different. Es war natürlich mal eine Schreinerei und jetzt ist es ganz anders. But right now it has the already there-ness that we've created. Aber jetzt hat es diese schon da-heit, die wir geschaffen haben. And so if somebody didn't know it as a Schreinerei, they just see this already there-ness. Und wenn jemand den Raum nicht als Schreinerei gekannt hat, dann sehen sie diese schon da-heit. And most people who take the already there-ness as reality conflate the already there-ness with their immediate experience of the room.

[33:02]

But there's actually a gap between the already there-ness of the room and then your experience of the room. And the Zen Yogi develops the ability, the capacity, to experience the gap between the already there-ness and the experience of the room. Now, if you experience... if you know the room as your experience of the room and don't confuse it with the already there-ness, if I have that experience, for me what happens is when I step into the room,

[34:39]

It's almost as if that experience of the room is in my chest and I'm stepping into the room that is appearing from my chest. Because I'm stepping into my experience of the room as well as the already there-ness of the room. Again, it's like hearing your own hearing when you hear the bird. Now, if I'm in a room which I have, through spatializing it, have embodied it, I feel centered within the world I'm centered in.

[35:50]

And I feel located in my experience. It's the opposite of feeling alienated or even lonely. Yeah. Now you can also apply this same way of thinking to a realm of sound. And in Japan, where, you know, which I'm having lived there so long, off and on, I'm quite familiar with, They want the room to have an olfactory dimension. So they choose woods which have a scent.

[37:08]

And they also choose woods which have a scent which tends to repel insects. So that when you come into a room, it can't be too big, because if it's too big, you don't get the scent. So the size of the room is partly determined by how much the grass of the tatami and the wood is part of the experience of the room. And although the walls are all open, a lot of them, they create gradations of light so the insects tend to fly in and then when it starts getting dark they go back out. Okay.

[38:25]

I think I should stop. And... when you approach these kind of experiences, so you genuinely find yourself inseparable from your environment, As if in fact you're always living within your own experience. Which is constantly new because each moment is unique. And it's really not a question, is the world really like that?

[39:47]

The question is about, is it really like that for us in our experience and what difference does that make? As the Diamond Sutra says, experience everything as if it were a flash of lightning. The whole summary in that poem at the end of the Diamond Sutra One of the most important sutras for Zen practice is in the poem that to It's not that the world is like a drop of dew. It's not that the world is always like a flash of lightning.

[40:53]

But so the sutra says, even though it's not like that, it implies, experience it in that way. And if you discover how to experience it in that way, the path of practice opens up in more and more wondrous ways. Okay. I got partway there. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time today.

[41:37]

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