Well, you've all come to somehow, I think, kindly come to this Sesshin. Of course, it wasn't only kindness to me that you came. You also came for your reasons of your own. But anyway, we're here together, and the lecture is scheduled, and so you're all expecting me to say something. But because you've heard Zen is kind of kooky, you wouldn't be surprised if I get up and left now. So I'll get up and leave, but actually I'll decide to stay. Yeah, and we started, we all chanted quite nicely, I must say, in Japanese.

[01:02]

And none of you knew what you were chanting. And I've forgotten. But probably maybe that was the translation we chanted in German. Yeah. why after all these years, 50 years or so or more, why are we still chanting in Japanese? Well, one practical reason is that starting the chanting with not knowing what we're chanting is good. And then I hope that continues in the German. You sort of don't really know what the German means either. So the, you know, the koan 20 of the Shoyeroku, it's the phrase, not knowing is nearest or not knowing is most intimate.

[02:30]

And in Shoyeroku, in Koan, which number was that again? It doesn't make any difference. Oh, you didn't say it. Okay, number 20, there it says, nicht wissen kommt am nächsten, oder nicht wissen kommt am nächsten. Yeah. And that's, as an operative condition for Zen practice, that's good. But also, conceptually we do it, I guess, because, well, I mean, maybe we're just too lazy to change it. But I suppose the conceptual reason would be that this practice did is still covered with East Asian yogic worldviews.

[04:00]

But the conceptual reason for this is the reason that this practice is still covered with East Asian yogic worldviews. Yes, that's true. And that's true. I mean, look how many centuries it took the Catholic Church to stop chanting and laughing. So maybe 500 years from now you'll still be saying... I woke up this morning, well, I came to Zazen, as you might have noticed, and did the Jundo. Vielleicht habt ihr gemerkt, dass ich heute Morgen zum Zazen gekommen bin und die Begrüßungsrunde, die Jundo gemacht habe. And we didn't know before the Sashin that this double Zendo would really feel how it would feel, but it feels sort of like one Zendo.

[05:07]

Und vor dem Sashin wussten wir nicht, wie sich dieses Doppel-Zendo anfühlen würde, aber ich finde, das fühlt sich eigentlich an wie ein Zendo. I hope it feels okay to you who are in either room. Anyway, I got up and sat for an hour or so. I went back to my room and made myself some breakfast. And because, you know, I'm still maybe on the West Coast, near where Paul lives half the year. I decided I have to take a nap. And I knew that I'm scheduled to get a taste show, so I set the alarm for 8 o'clock, but I'm not sure my alarm clock was working, so I set my mind to get up at 8 o'clock.

[06:31]

And I woke up at 8 o'clock. And I actually woke up bodily in California, and I thought, oh, I have to say something for the hot drink statement. So I thought, geez, I have half an hour, so what should I say for the hot drink? And I was so convinced that the 8 o'clock was 8 o'clock in the evening that even as it was getting lighter outside, I still thought it was 8 o'clock. And I sat down at my desk and started thinking

[07:38]

Maybe it's 8 a.m. My clock said it was 8 a.m., but I still didn't quite believe it. So I knew in my experience of aliveness was a morning aliveness, I mean evening aliveness and not a morning aliveness. And then for about half an hour I thought, somehow I have to make night aliveness produce a morning teisho. And now I've sat down in this expectation that you have that I'm going to give a morning teshu. And not only am I... And may I actually look around for the hot drink?

[09:01]

I... When I give a taste show, I... You expect me to give it to you, and I expect myself to give it to you. But really what I would like to speak about, I have no idea how to speak about. Now I'm saying all this partly because I think in Sashin we're sitting there, we may even wonder sometimes, why am I sitting here? And I would suggest that as much as possible you shift your reference point from being to aliveness.

[10:08]

Now, how can such an obscure, hard to understand difference between being and aliveness be something you can distinguish sufficiently to practice? Because we take our worldview, our cultural view, our cultural worldview for granted. It's just the way it is. So we have this space that we live in, that things are the way they are, and flowers look the way they look, and so forth, and we add zen into that space.

[11:21]

But it's like trying to fit something square into a round hole. Because Zen is itself a worldview that doesn't fit into the Western worldview. Now, how do I speak about that? And why bother speaking about it? Well, I'm convinced of two things. One is transformative practice will not happen unless you feel the difference between the two worldviews. And we have an advantage. The advantage that we are in the middle of two worldviews that don't quite fit together.

[12:37]

And they create the opportunity for a shift, which we call enlightenment. Enlightenment is a shift. As I've been saying recently, it's not so important what it's a shift from and to. What's important is that it's a shift. And because when there's a shift, a real shift, for maybe only a nanosecond, but that's real experience in your bodily experience, physiological life, for a nanosecond there's no views.

[14:11]

And if you physiologically It's much more subtle than consciousness. Physiologically, you're free of views for a moment. Suddenly, you may be free. You may be free. You know, concert halls are designed for musicians to make music. Practice centers are designed for us to make Dharma music.

[15:22]

To have the chance for precipitative shifts in view. And somehow Esalen has been that for many people, perched on the edge of the California coast with the ocean banging at it. And, uh, and Michael, uh, who founded it, um, They have to change it every now and then, or repair it and so forth, because parts of the cliff on both sides of the highway keep falling down, and forest fires, you know, California.

[16:42]

And they close it, and then they lose millions of dollars, and then they reopen it. And Michael, who founded it, said that every now and then they have to change Esalen because the clips on both sides always fall down big chunks or because there are forest fires. That's just California. And then they sometimes have to close Esalen and it costs millions of dollars and then they can open it again and so on. And Michael asked me, is it okay? How do you feel about how we rebuilt it? And I look around and think, yes, this is some kind of, you know, Taoists try to, one of the differences between Taoism and Buddhist Zen is Taoists try to find a real groovy place and transform themselves, like being next to a waterfall or in the mountains or something. And one of the differences, I thought about it, one of the differences between Taoists and Buddhists is that Taoists are looking for a really great place where they can sit down and transform themselves, for example right next to a waterfall or something like that.

[18:03]

But then Buddhists try to find a really terrible place, a cemetery or something, and transform the place instead of the... In essence, somehow it's both. It's both a kind of Taoist place, which is so staggeringly beautiful that, yeah, people are ready and open. Yeah, but at the same time, it's developed a kind... People still want me to design a zendo for the place. A place where... the context is likely to precipitate or open us to unfold us to our experience.

[19:12]

So I look around and I say, well, yeah, I don't think you should have put that yurt there. But basically he intuitively keeps the configuration so that it could also be a Zen practice place. So when I first started practicing in the 60s, I recognized that Zen was articulated for a particular kind of worldview, and the worldview in turn articulated Zen practice.

[20:19]

They're both articulated through each other. So I looked carefully at the teachings and I said, there's a different worldview functioning in here. And when I carefully looked at the teachings, then I saw, hey, there is a different worldview. You look at general relativity and quantum mechanics and it's a different worldview than what we can hardly imagine. But if you look at Newton, you know, it fits into our worldview. In fact, it made our contemporary worldview. Yeah, and of course, Buddhism is now affecting our worldview.

[21:48]

Yeah, mindfulness practices and so forth. But the danger is that mindfulness practices, and some of you are good at presenting them and teaching them, inoculates us against really what Buddhism is about or can. But the danger in the practice of mindfulness, and some of you are good at practicing or teaching mindfulness, but the danger is that the practice of mindfulness can vaccinate us to feel what Buddhism really is about. But again, thousands of people are practicing mindfulness, and it's a door that's going to be kicked shut by the Western worldview from Buddhism, or it's a door we're going to stick our foot in quickly and get some Buddhism in there.

[22:50]

And millions of people practice mindfulness, and this is either... and this creates either a worldview that... Let's see... One moment. You know, this is first surfaced in the early days with the word practice. I kept thinking, why do we need the word practice? And for Dennis and Paul, I'll say, I can feel myself sitting right now in the Buddha Hall in San Francisco and seeing through the window of the grocery store in the corner and thinking about practice.

[24:07]

Why do we have the word practice to just being alive? And for Dennis and Paul, I can put myself in there again and say, I can visualize right now how I'm sitting in the San Francisco Sendo and looking out the window and seeing the supermarket on the other side of the street. And while thinking about it, why do we have this word practice? Why do we need a word instead of just being alive? But, you know, I'm slow and it took me, I would say, 10, 15 years before I kind of felt I knew the answer to that question I asked myself. At least in English, practice means to do something, to improve something that's already there. Zumindest im Englischen, aber ich glaube auch im Deutschen, bedeutet das Wort Praxis, etwas zu verbessern, etwas zu machen oder etwas zu verbessern, was schon da ist.

[25:15]

Like you get better at playing the piano. Zum Beispiel, du verbesserst dich darin, Klavier zu spielen. But that's not what practice means. Aber das ist nicht, was Praxis bedeutet. A closer word might be craft. A craft is something you do. You may practice in relationship to a craft, but a craft is an exploration, a making. And the word craft, kunstfertigkeit, handwerkskunst or kunsteinfachst, not to translate exactly, that's what you explore while you're doing it. And it's not something you explore while you're doing it and not something you just do. So it's more like if you were playing the piano, you were playing the piano, writing the music while you played the piano.

[26:16]

I mean, you didn't know quite what you were writing. You were just exploring, well, I'll try that chord, you know, etc. And you could feel the music. I mean, a whole... melody or music or sounds appeared to you in zazen and now you're trying to play them on the piano But then while you're playing them, you realize, yes, I'm writing the music, but now I have to actually make a new kind of musical instrument to play this music. I knew somebody years ago in the 60s in San Francisco who actually made the instruments for the music he played, wrote.

[27:29]

I can't remember his name right now. But he had all these, I've seen, he made all these incredible wooden things that were designed to play the music that he was writing. So that's more what the craft of Zen practice is. You're noticing... You're exploring your aliveness. But first you have to notice your aliveness.

[28:33]

And you have to make your reference point aliveness. Now here's one of these distinctions. What's the distinction between aliveness and beingness or being? You know, in the Diamond Sutra it says the Bodhisattva has no concept of a lifespan. Im Diamant Sutra heißt es, der Bodhisattva hat kein Konzept von einer Lebensspanne. That's something you read. You read the Diamond Sutra, no concept. Huh? No concept of a... I guess I'll throw this book away. Das ist was, was du einfach so lesen kannst. Ja, kein Konzept von einer Lebensspanne. Und dann sagst du, hä?

[29:34]

Das Buch schmeiß ich erstmal weg. Oh, it's just a word anyway, so I read the next word. But there's a whole world in that word. No concept of a lifespan. Is that possible? Of course we all know we have a lifespan. We were born sometime, etc., you know. Yeah, but can we just find one trick to find ourselves free of that is actually the repeated shift into aliveness only, which is then moment by moment and not about continuity. But one trick to get rid of it or to suddenly have the feeling of being free of it is the repeated shift into only living.

[30:44]

And that is then from moment to moment without the feeling of continuity. And you all know, you've experienced it doing sashins, most of you, that sashins work to put you into a moment-by-moment-by-moment-by-moment aliveness. Und ihr, diejenigen von euch, die meisten von euch, sind ja erfahrene Sashin-Sitzer. Und ihr wisst dann, dass das Sashin darauf angelegt ist, euch in diese Lebendigkeit von Moment zu Moment zu Moment zu Moment hineinzubringen. And what kind of aliveness? It's aliveness, but what kind of aliveness? Welche Art von Lebendigkeit? Okay, wir können sagen Lebendigkeit, aber welche Art von Lebendigkeit? Well, it's an attentional aliveness. And I talked about the modalities of time. There's also the modalities of aliveness, of attentional aliveness. Now, Buddhism tries to be under the radar of stories.

[32:03]

No stories added to your moment-by-moment aliveness. And the big shift, as I said in this excellent thing, from Theravada to Mahayana is not a shift from the Buddha as a focus to the Bodhisattva. Or let's say from early Buddhism to Mahayana Buddhism. It's a shift away from the story of the Buddha with an end point, nirvana. The bodhisattva is really ongoing suchness. Der Bodhisattva ist wirklich fortwährende Soheit.

[33:39]

When you can really shift to aliveness, you're shifting into the field of the Bodhisattva, Bodhisattvic ongoing suchness. Wenn du dich wirklich in Lebendigkeit hinein verlagerst, dann verlagerst du dich in das Feld von... When you shift into... The bodhisattvic ongoing suchness. It's a really shift from your individual life. Yes, you have an individual life, but more fundamentally, you're a multi-generational being. Und das ist eine Verschiebung von deinem individuellen Leben. Und ja, klar hast du ein individuelles Leben. Aber hier verlagerst du dich in dich als ein generationsübergreifendes Wesen hinein. And what does it mean to be a multigenerational being? Of course, it means your parents and grandparents and so forth.

[34:44]

Natürlich bedeutet das, dass du Eltern hast und Großeltern und so weiter. Aber ihr seid auch Teil meines generationsübergreifenden Seins jetzt. That's why I love you so much. I like me too. Okay. So it's, as you know, in Zen we hardly talk about the Buddha. Because we're not about Buddha practice enlightenment and you have nirvana. No, we're just in the moment by moment suchness of aliveness.

[35:50]

Weil es nicht darum geht, dass der Buddha und seine Erleuchtung und Nirvana und so weiter, sondern nein, es geht um die Soheit, fortwährende Soheit von Augenblick zu Augenblick. So Zen is a practice. Zen als Praxis. Zen ist eine Praxis. Actually a craft. You know, I know you don't want to sit too much longer, so I'll tell a story, and then we'll continue tomorrow. There was a sensitive young man. Oh, I guess he's about 30. To me, he seemed very young. At this meeting I had in Esalen, And he's become a scholar of transformative experience and Nietzsche and so forth. But he told a story to us. There are about 20 of us who were the...

[36:53]

in the main conversation and five or six other people. And his teacher, who was a graduate student, for this teacher, who's somebody I know, a friend of mine, And he'd never told this story before. But he felt somehow the field we had made it possible for him to talk about something he'd never told anyone. He was born and was expected to die almost immediately. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but part of it was some kind of immune, immunology problem.

[38:33]

Immunological problem. But he spent the first year, five years of his life, almost always in a hospital, wired up to machines. And finally, with various kinds of medical supports, he was able to leave the hospital when he was five or six years old. But life really was a struggle and made no sense to him. But he also felt chosen. And feeling chosen is part of being alive or being some inner respect for being alive. Even if his chosenness was that he was born to die immediately.

[39:39]

So, anyway, he lived to be about 19 and he was under watch all the time because medically, etc., he never had any opportunities to be on his own for some reason. And he had decided to kill himself. So he had to wait for a chance when he could have a car by himself, so his sister was being brought to a soccer game, so he had a car. And he knew where the key to his father's gun case was. So much for keys and gun cases. So he got a gun.

[41:03]

And he took his sister to the soccer game or something. And then he was planning to go back to the house and kill himself. And for some reason, he stopped at a bookstore. If you're going to kill yourself, you don't need a book. And he went in, and he didn't know what to do. He was just walking around, and a book fell off the shelf. As he was walking by. So he looked around. I didn't knock it down, but, you know, he picked it up.

[42:04]

And it was Nietzsche. He'd never heard of philosophy, didn't know what it was about, never heard of Nietzsche. Yeah, so he bought the book. His body had decided not to kill itself when he bought the book. We think we want to kill ourselves, so we kill the body, but it's not really the body we want to kill. It's a whole bunch of other stuff, which requires us sometimes. And when he came out of the bookstore, he was in an alley somewhere and he just started to laugh.

[43:10]

And he laughed and laughed and laughed and felt, I couldn't believe it, he felt completely free. All his stories were gone. So he decided not to kill himself. He was trying to kill the stories. And I said to him in the group, you had an enlightenment experience. He said, you're scaring the shit out of me. What am I supposed to do with that? And then he said, you're scaring me. What am I supposed to do with that? I said, well, now you have to decide.

[44:27]

This is an experience we beings, we humanoids or mutual beings have. Now you have to decide. Do you want to apply the craft? of Zen to this experience? Or Christian fundamentalism as George W. Bush did to his Enlightenment conversion experience? And there's various kinds of revelatory teachings that you can apply to such an experience. So a craft is something like, I asked Michael, did you swim off the shore here?

[45:43]

It's quite dangerous there. It's a high cliff, and then there's big stones and things like that, where the water breaks around the stone. Did you swim there? Oh, he said, oh, no, I did not as a kid. But his son did, Matthew. The insurance company stopped his son from swimming because some of the guests were trying to imitate him and insurance companies said we're not going to insure anything if you don't stop your son swimming so they stopped him. What I said If I were going to swim from Esalen to Nepenthe, say, up the coast, I would want to know something about the tides and where the stones were and currents.

[47:10]

Because I'd want to know where to enter the water where I'd be most unlikely to be dashed up against a rock. And where to enter the water and how to swim is a craft. It's not a story. So by coming to a sashin, you're deciding where to enter the water of your experience. And the craft of Zen is telling you something about how to enter the water of your experience. Don't move.

[48:21]

Don't scratch. Because your skin itself is an organ with a worldview. It's the largest organ in the body, as I've said, and it has its own worldview inside and outside. Weil eure Haut selbst ein Organ mit ihren eigenen Weltsichten ist. Wie ich gesagt habe, das ist das größte Organ eures Körpers. Und auch die Haut hat Sichtweisen, trägt Sichtweisen in sich wie innen und außen. Hidden in the process of view, operational view of Don't Scratch, And in the process, process thoughts, in the process view and the It's the knowledge or the currents, maybe, that when you begin to drop the inside-outside distinction, your skin starts to itch and have little imaginary flies and et cetera, because it says, hey, remember, you're inside here and that's outside.

[49:39]

It doesn't belong to you. So if you get the... actually get the power to just be still in the middle of the itches, imaginary and real. A mosquito in your ear and a fly in your nose. You're more likely to get past the worldview of the skin and have no inside and outside distinctions. And then you begin to swim in your experience.

[50:46]

And the distinctions of inside and outside and subject and object and so forth, which are so embedded in our culture. You begin to swim in freedom from those distinctions. And you begin to swim in attention linked to the breath. An attentional breath modality is different from an attentional taste modality or bodily modality.

[51:52]

And we can also bring attention to our heartbeat. It's somehow more scary than attention to the breath. Sashin gives you a chance to bring yourself into a variety of attentional modalities which are your experience of being alive. But the sashin gives you the opportunity to put your attention into different ways of attention that are all part of your being alive. Well, it's good I didn't save all this for tonight's hot drink statement.

[52:59]

Thank you very much.

[53:00]

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