I'd like to have some discussion, but I think I'd like to bring a few more things into the arena first. I hope there's an internal discussion going on, if not yet external. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I try, I'm trying to, I always try each year, especially in the beginning of the year, six months I'm in Europe. I try to establish some teachings, views, practices. They can be the ingredients of developing our practice here in the Dharma Sangha this year, 2005.

[01:16]

Yeah, because I can see and feel how our Dharma Sangha practice in each of you is evolving, developing. And through that also, much of it in me. So anyway, I'm trying now in Austria and Berlin and here now, trying to get some basic things we can look at and develop during this year. So let me go back to who we are. And I think when we hear this dictum, Know thyself.

[02:29]

It's funny we put thy in there like it was biblical. We generally take that to mean who we are. And who we are in relationship to ourself. And in relationship to others. In relationship to our situation. And I think often in relationship to stress or, you know, difficulty. And in situations where we are exploring or finding out or wondering who we are. What is this life? And how do we pass the days? But in Berlin I tried to speak about what we are instead of who we are.

[03:49]

As Neil may remember. Sometimes the translator doesn't remember anything because it just passes through. But some of it's stuck, obviously. But I don't feel I was very successful in making clear what I mean by what we are. And what we are is in Buddhist practice a far more important question than who we are. Who we are is important, but you can't get there until you establish what you are. How do we explore this? What do I mean?

[04:50]

Well, I often say, ask yourself the question, who is breathing when you're sitting? And also ask yourself the question, what is breathing? I think most of us have a wider feeling when we ask, what is breathing? And it's clear there's just a what-ness to breathing, which isn't about who's doing it. And sometimes I translate thus-ness, which is one of the... the word used to describe the most, our experience in the most fundamental sense.

[06:05]

I translate it as hotness and So now again, I want to extend the sense of what is breathing to what we are, what you are. Let's put it, your spatial identity. Please notice that who you are is primarily a temporal identity. Who you are, just think about, notice, The sense of who you are is rooted in the past and in an expected future.

[07:22]

But you don't only have a temporal identity. You also have a, let's call it a spatial identity. What I sometimes now call a horizon of immediacy. Don't let who you are take over, crush what you are. What you are is your real resource. There's no mind without a body. The craft of practice, all the craft of practice is rooted in what you are, not who you are. The basis for knowing who you are in all situations resides in what you are, first of all.

[08:47]

And what you are is... what your senses bring to you. Your senses and the act of observing. So practice resides and is concerned with what's present in the senses and the act of observing, the activity of observing. Look at all the teachings again in the menu of the Heart Sutra.

[09:50]

They're all concerned with what you are. You can't have an experience of moment by moment existence in who you are. Man kann keine Erfahrung von... Moment by moment, noticing being present in moment by moment existence, is a physical act, a physical activity. And again, I'm playing with this term I used a minute ago.

[11:02]

Yesterday, again. A subjective object. Now, if you live in a world without a creator... Without some kind of special creation, humans were created differently than animals or dirt. And you know, I'm a big part of Bush's so-called political capital, a big part of Bush's so-called political capital, he depends on a constituency that believes in special creation.

[12:22]

Constituent Zusammensetzung? Those who vote for it. Er hängt davon ab... Wahlkreis ist das. Was? Ein Wahlkreis. Wahlkreis. The constituency for coal. Also er beruht auf einem Gefolge, das glaubt, dass... who believe we're not related to monkeys or dirt. But if you don't live in a theological world, all of this stuff is interrelated. It comes from the same place. Wenn man aber nicht in einer religiösen Welt lebt, dann sind all die Dinge miteinander verwandt, verbunden. Sie hängen alle zusammen.

[13:25]

So let's try to get a feel for that. Let's call it all objects. Versuchen wir mal dafür ein Gefühl zu bekommen. Nennen wir es einfach einmal alle Objekte. And some objects are subjective objects. They feel and observe. And animals are subjective objects. Imagine you have a porcelain cat. It's an object. And while you're dozing off, you open your eyes and this porcelain cat has become alive. Yeah, it's still an object, but now it's a subjective object. Now, I don't know if I can get the importance of this sense of It's all objects and some are subjective objects.

[14:34]

We all occupy the same world. Again, animals and us. So here in this koan scholars plow with the pen Now, just in a little phrase like that, you can take it, oh, scholars, write. But the idea of incubation is in there. Like Foucault, Michel Foucault says, writing writes writing. So not only does the scholar who writes affect the world, the act of writing itself leads to understanding and perception.

[15:44]

So writing is a way to plow yourself, to discover what you want, to discover what you feel. No. And orators plow with the tongue. And I really do discover, I'm sorry, I don't think of myself, but I haven't put rocks in my mouth, but I do discover what I'm saying in the process of saying it. Dass ich etwas entdecke. Das ist auch eine Art pflügen. Yeah, and then it says, you know, but us adepts, we just watch a white ox.

[16:57]

Aber wir adepten, wir beobachten bloß einen weißen Ochs. Now, if you incubate this corn, wenn ihr also diesen Korn mal bebrütet, you begin to notice the correspondences after a while. Dann werdet ihr nach einer Weile die... die Übereinstimmungen bemerken. Yeah, and what do oxes do? Was machen denn Ochsen? They pull the plug. Die ziehen den Pflug. And the word Niu in Chinese means ox, cow, bull, water buffalo, etc. It means all those guys, all those subjective objects. And, you know, there's blue oxes and there's a lot of stuff about oxes in China. There's blue oxes and black and yellow ones.

[18:03]

This is a white one. And white also, if you know something about Chinese culture, white is not only for virgins, as in our culture, but it's also the color a scholar wears before he has a post, an appointment. So it's the scholar without a career. And harvesting begins in springtime. I mean, you know, yeah. So the harvest begins in springtime. So the ox is a special animal. Most Chinese people think you can't eat beef or an ox. Because it helps with the plowing and the making of food, so it's disrespectful to eat the ox.

[19:08]

And it's also somehow connected with the emperor. And emperors often, in Japan and China, issued edicts that oxes, cows cannot be slaughtered or eaten. Denn in Japan und China haben die Kaiser öfters mal Erlasse erstellt, dass Ochsen und Kühe nicht gegessen werden dürfen. And, you know, the emperor in China symbolically did the first planting in the springtime. Und in China war der Kaiser symbolisch als erster das erste Planting. And in Japan, there's a day in the spring when the Japanese emperor will never travel.

[20:18]

Because I think there's a place where they open up a hole in the floor and plant seeds, plow the ground. The floor means inside? Yeah, I think inside they have a set of tatamis they remove or something. How they get something light, I don't know. I have to figure out that. Anyway, something like that. They do it on a specific day. So I'm just trying to give you a little background to say the ox is a very special animal. And white is a special color. And it means, yeah, something purer and better. So the adept lazily watches the white ox on an open ground. Yeah, but it's still an animal.

[21:37]

And animals have a different pace than we do. So an image like this is meant to work in you. Stop sometime and feel that you're watching a white ox. With the pace of a cow or bull. In an open field. I think if you even imagine this, you can feel your own pace change. Selbst wenn du dir das nur vorstellst, spürst du schon, wie sich dein eigener Schritt, dein eigener Rhythmus ändert.

[22:43]

So this koan is embedded in a sense of various kinds of time. Und dieser koan ist gebettet in der verschiedensten Gefühle, Auffassung, Verständnisse von Zeit. The time of plowing. Der Zeit von Pflügen. The way one plows one's life. Die Art und Weise, wie man sein eigenes Leben pflügt. And the pace here of another time, the ox's or water buffalo's time. Und hier dieser Schritt, der Rhythmus eines anderen Lebens, des Lebens eines Ochsen oder eines Wasserbüffels. One famous Zen teacher was asked, what about after you die? Was passiert nachdem du stirbst? You'll find me. You'll find down by the river a white ox. And, you know, again, to come back, we all are in a different time.

[23:44]

I mean, we saw it just during break in our four little naked girls. It reminds me of my daughter. I told you the story before of Sally at the San Francisco airport taking all her clothes off. She did it before we knew it. Then we said, Sally, what have you done? She was about four. And she said, I've taken my clothes off. And I said, we don't do that at the airport. And she said, doesn't everyone want to? Well, I couldn't answer honestly, yes or no. Many do.

[24:59]

So I had to say again, well, you just don't do it at the airport. They are in a different time than we are. Don't think it's an illusion. If you think it's an illusion, you're in your temporal identity, not your spatial identity. You're in clock time. And one of Ivan Illich's favorite lines is, I want to be in a world which has lost its clocks. You know, again, I've said this often, but you know your own childhood is a big percentage of your life.

[26:11]

I think we could probably say it's right brain time and not left brain time. And after some resistance from the 60s, because it became left brain, right brain stuff was such a big deal in the 60s. I know, except in contemporary research, which I think is established, it looks like they really are two different brains. But brain-like functions are throughout our bodies, so not a simple division. But I think right brain functioning is emphasized by meditation and mindfulness practice.

[27:29]

And there's a different kind of time which goes with that. If you practice you feel you're more back in the time of childhood, not childish time, but the pace of childhood. Wenn ihr praktiziert, dann habt ihr mehr das Gefühl, ihr seid in einer Kindheitzeit, also nicht einer kindlichen Zeit, sondern die Zeitempfinden vom Kindsein. Practice really does change us. Praxis ändert uns wirklich. It changes the circuitry, the emphasis on right or left brain, etc.,

[28:31]

and through intentional mind, which is prior to sensory impressions, if through intentional practice you change your fundamental views, Those views begin to change how we perceive. So this koan presumes time as ripening... We plow at the right time. Around here, you have to hay at the right time. But here, to lazily watch the white ox, which isn't plowing even,

[29:36]

To feel the pace of an animal, this kind of animal, is to feel something actually more fundamental about ourself. Closer to what I would describe as what we are. In our senses. And in a pace that arises within the horizon of immediacy. The larger, what I call somatic body, the way we feel the physicality of the world, There's something, somebody pokes something at you.

[31:10]

Out here you're not bothered, but in here it bothers you. So your body's at least this big. And what's technically called peripersonal space Meaning peripheral space. Look, like again, as I've said before, if you study the brain of a monkey who's swinging a stick, the brain indicates the body's as big as a stick can reach. Like we can feel the space of our car. But we can actually feel the space of each other too.

[32:26]

But that requires being in the pace of the white ox. So this means that the body of this statement in this koan... means the body of the patched robe mendicant or adept, is the white ox, is this larger somatic body. Now, if I want to feel the somatic body that's present in this room, I can't do it from my temporal self.

[33:38]

It's only possible from my spatial self. Excuse me, temporal? Time-based self. Okay, because... Okay, can you just say it again and make a different word? Okay. Okay. I can't feel the spatial body of us right now of what we are if I'm in the mind of who I am or I see you as who you are I can only know this spatial body when I feel what you are Ich kann diesen Raumkörper oder körperlichen Raum nur spüren, wenn ich weiß, was ihr seid. It means I can't be in a time-framed identity.

[34:42]

Das heißt, ich kann nicht in einer A temporally extended identity. Yeah, rooted in past and expectation of the future. If I can only feel our somatic body, and even know what to say, if I'm in a spatial body, a spatial identity. located in a horizon of immediacy, which includes you. And that's what the white ox represents in Zen stories.

[35:49]

The pace of another time. The pace of childhood. Or the pace of meditation when subject and object have collapsed. Or a pace somehow that can include fundamental rhythm we all have. Yeah. I still don't know if I've made very clear the difference between what we are and who we are.

[36:49]

Is it any clearer than in Berlin? More principally, but more sort of... Tangibly? Deeper palpable, probably. More palpable. Mm-hmm. And I also want to say that if I'm looking at you, it's a physical act. It's not a thinking act. I almost feel my eyes are at a substantial quality and brush on you and then brush on you. And I feel also I'm a canvas, which your phenomena is a brush brushing on me. I'm trying to give you a feeling of the physicality of what we are in existence.

[37:58]

Where we're all objects. Some of us are subjective objects. And we can observe this in a way unique to us, this existence. And we can observe in a way unique to us, this existence. That means the way we observe is unique? Yeah. Also wir können auf eine für uns einzigartige Weise beobachten wie wir sind.

[39:00]

And we can rest in this act of observing itself and not in the objects observed. Und wir können in diesem direkten beobachten und nicht in den Objekten selber ruhen. Now the last thing I'd like to offer before lunch. What do you call it? Vorspeisen or something like that? Is the different idea of future which the Chinese have. Is it we at least in English and maybe it's slightly different in German. We talk about going into the future. And you can't go into the future unless you know where you're going. I can't go to Karlsruhe unless I know what direction Karlsruhe is.

[40:03]

So our common idea of the future in English is a temporally extended future from the present. And we emphasize its expectedness, its predictability. And we know it's not predictable completely. But we try to make it predictable. With insurance and all kinds of things. And, you know, I'm stupid.

[41:08]

But I've just wanted to stick myself in this world without a predictable future. And it is stupid, I have to admit. Yeah, but I had to do it to see what it's like. I have no insurance. I have no savings. I have nothing. And I really don't want any. But now you guys think, oh shit, we're going to have to take care of him when he's old. And I'm sorry, if you do take care of me, I'll let you. But it's not that I want you to take care of me, and I'm not that far gone yet. But, you know, and we don't all have to do this, but as a practitioner of this strange precious teaching, I wanted to give myself no way out.

[42:24]

So in Chinese, the future is entirely unexpected. This is the culture in which Buddhism developed. And which Buddhism helped develop. You don't go into the future. The future comes to you. That's a very different concept. The future comes to you always in its unexpectedness. You know, it slaps you in the face. You know what it is. The future is something you grow into, not go into. Die Zukunft ist etwas, in das man hineinwächst.

[43:55]

Es ist nicht etwas, in die man hineintritt. It means the self is a construction site. Das bedeutet, dass das Selbst eine Baustelle ist. The self is always being constructed in relationship to the unexpectedness of the future. Das Selbst wird immer konstruiert, gebaut in Bezug zu diesem Unerwarteten der Zukunft. So this is a spatial sense of the future. The future is an extension of this spatial horizon of immediacy. Excuse me? The future is a spatial extension, not a temporal extension. Now, of course, we also can, Chinese people do, everyone does, have also a temporal future. But that's more a practical matter of scenarios.

[44:57]

The sense of your identity is located in the spatial context. horizon of immediacy. Which is always interacting with what you are and who you are. In this unexpectedness of the of how the world exists. So you're not surprised that you can't meet the future? Oh, I'm this kind of person, I can always... You don't know that!

[45:57]

You only know you have to be able to function in the unexpectedness of the future. So self, in that sense, is always under construction. What do we call the world? Let's sit a moment and then we'll have lunch. Lasst uns einen Moment sitzen und dann gibt es Mittagessen. This moment-by-moment existence.

[48:03]

This subjective object. Extraordinary subjective object, presence. Außergewöhnliche Subjekt-Objekt-Gegenwart. How satisfying it is. Wie befriedigend es ist. Refreshing it is, the future is. Wie erfrischend die Zukunft ist. And how refreshing it is to know our fundamental existence, our simple existence, in which we have no place to go and nothing to do.

[49:08]

when sometimes, maybe once a day at least, we know this, lazily know this white ox. Our most fundamental existence. Mm. This stillness in the midst of activity.

[51:08]

Which we learn first bodily. Eventually it is present, can be present all of our life. This precious teaching.

[51:29]

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