Well, people have been coming here for many years now. I don't know how many years we've been doing it. Twelve? Eleven? Ninety-two. Okay. My goodness. What? Eleven years. Yeah. We skipped a year or two, I think. One or two years. So those of you, some of you have come to every one of the meetings. If you have something, since this will be the last one, if you have something you'd like me to speak about, I'll see if it's possible. Like, for example, something that might have been, let's say, useful to you. But you'd like to kind of give it some shape again.

[01:20]

Or some direction we haven't gone in. And if those of you who are newer would like, including anything to do with dance is all right, except I don't know too much. But I do like to dance. So anything those of you who are newer would like to... I don't know. If he's spoken about, I'll also make an effort to see what we can do. And as for me, I have some feeling of something I'd like to speak about. But, you know, it would take some cooperation among us or some, you know, field among us for me to find a way to speak about it.

[02:40]

Mm-hmm. Because there's some things you can't speak about unless there's participation with the people you're speaking with. Yeah. You know, for me, just hearing your voices and sitting here with you begins a process for me of seeing how I can come closer to what I feel that would be nice, good to speak, interesting. Phil, let's start though with any ideas you might have you'd like to bring up. Oh, I'm translating, oh, excuse me.

[04:01]

Go ahead. There is something which I'm just dealing with for some time, and it has to do with the self. I think there are, self is culturally shaped. And it's shaped by the way we are raised, or just grow up, and it's also culturally shaped. And I see in our culture, as it develops, I see a certain kind of self which is emphasized a lot. And it has to do with, I mean, the topics, the top words are, except money, the top word is success. And I see a special kind of self, how it is culturally formed.

[05:09]

And besides the word money, the second top word is success. And if that is so, if a self is culturally shaped, my question is, what kind of answer is necessary from Zen teaching to that kind of self. Because I noticed that for me, it's... It's easy to misunderstand Zen in a certain way. Because I try to, from my way I was brought up, I try to be... I'm eager to do things right.

[06:14]

Von der Art, wie ich erzogen wurde, bin ich bestrebt, Dinge richtig zu tun. And from my cultural surrounding, I try to be successful. Und von meiner kulturellen Umgebung her bemühe ich mich, erfolgreich zu sein. And I see in the traditional way of saying there is some It's possible to misunderstand Zen in a way that you try to be right and successful also in that kind of practice. My question is how can the teaching answer to that misunderstanding? Dilemma, yeah. So you could be a success in the world and fail at Zen and be perfectly balanced? There's not much consequence to failing at Zen, so this is good.

[07:27]

Okay. Anybody else have anything to say along these lines? Not in this direction, but answering the question what I'm interested in. Yesterday I gave much attention to when you said that mind, consciousness, self are functions. I understood that it's important to make clear that these are not entities or substance.

[08:47]

There's no substance. And in different traditions there are descriptions that there are actions or functions, energy movements or relations. I would like to hear more about that, to be able to somehow root that in my thinking that we are not talking about entities. Both realities in me or in my clients, both realities of the relative being, of action,

[10:10]

In my work, I'm dealing with these two realities. The one reality of thinking and acting, relative reality. Well, some kind of... And the other of simple being within us. The deeper kind of reality. Yes. And I try to work with my clients in a way that allows them to experience both realities at the same level, at the same importance somehow.

[11:42]

Not the same, but... They are free to have a choice. I don't know how this is expressed in Zen, this way of, this approach. To you, the two actualities. One is bounded by language and thinking. And the other is something not bounded by language and thinking, which you... is felt by you and the client as a deeper sense of being, something like that?

[12:49]

What would be an example of a deeper sense of being? Feeling of connectedness or without boundaries? Let me just say one thing here. I don't want to respond right away, if I can. Is there certain rules in adept Zen practice? One is you only consider that which you experience. Or you consider that which someone else experiences, if it seems to be an experience.

[14:13]

Or you consider what potentially can be experienced. But we're not concerned with ideas that fit into some sort of system of thinking if they're not experienceable. So that means that there's a certain rigor in that. If you limit yourself to that, it means your own experience proceeds, your own thinking and understanding proceeds always related to experience. then it means that your own thinking and experience always goes along with this experience. So that's just a comment.

[15:22]

Anyone else? Yesterday you said that in Buddhism the idea of permanence is repeatedly questioned. Yesterday you spoke about that in Buddhism the idea of permanence is questioned. The big no-no. The big no-no. And on the other hand, especially in Zen, the everyday practice is based on rituals that stay the same, that are the same, again and again performed. You've noticed. For me, this was a really strange contradiction yesterday, which I'm occupied with.

[16:43]

Okay, that's good. Well, since I might not in this discussion following from, what, Christina, Siegfried said. Let me respond a little bit to what you said. Okay, Zen would say that to think or function as if the world was in any way permanent is a delusion. And leads to fundamental errors in one's functioning. In other words, if you... We have two basic choices. We have the choice of a self or identity that our culture offers us. And it's a... the non-conscious choice that most of us make.

[18:07]

We are not even aware of it as a choice. But at some point, through your experience and your own honesty or... your own sense of integrity, it doesn't work. Or something seems off. So then you, what kind of, and then what, is there an alternative choice? If you're in a particular society, how do you have an alternative? Once... I mean, we can imagine a system of thinking or view that isn't wise, but it doesn't contradict reality. It isn't wise?

[19:20]

It might not be wise, it might be a stupid way of behaving, but it doesn't contradict reality. But it probably wouldn't be satisfied. But if it... assumes permanence, then it causes much deeper problems than just it's stupid or shallow or something. All right. So, even if an assumption, implicit or explicit, of permanence is a delusion, Also auch wenn eine explizite oder implizite Annahme von Dauerhaftigkeit eine Täuschung ist, wollen wir immer noch, dass die Dinge vorhersehbar sind.

[20:22]

Und wie ich gestern sagte, wir brauchen es, dass sie vorhersehbar sind, damit wir überhaupt funktionieren können. So in rejecting permanence, we're not objecting either in a practical sense that we need the world to be predictable, Or in a fundamental sense, that the world exhibits duration. If I'm making sense here.

[21:49]

So this is expressed in the two words karma and dharma. Karma means everything changes and you accumulate the effects of the change. And dharma means simultaneously things also hold in place. Okay. They hold in place. Okay. In what way do they hold in place? I mean, if we get just to refresh ourselves with very basic things, You can't really say at this moment in the present how long the present is.

[23:13]

My words are already in the past as fast as I say them. And Siegfried is trying to alter that with the tape recorder. Okay. And this immediate, so the knife edge of the present is very narrow. In measure. But we experience duration. How and where do we experience duration? Well, it's our experience. Our senses work in a way to create a duration over a certain period of time. And the different experiences we have of time like infancy or childhood or meditative differences are our own ability to expand or contract this.

[24:31]

And sometimes we can feel the world is very slowed down or even stopped. Everything is in place. Okay, so such experiences as the world being slowed down or everything in place, you'd say are more dharma than karma. Okay, so the world in some sense does stay in place. And it stays in place and somehow within our own experience. Now, can we emphasize that part of our experience rather than the part where everything's changed?

[25:37]

Okay. I laugh at myself trying to say these things. Maybe I find a simpler way to say it. But I'm also trying to find an experiential way of saying it. I'm not trying to just say something about this. I'm trying to follow my own rule, can I speak about it in terms of experience? Okay. So one of the, you could say, one of the goals of success in Zen practice is the realization of an imperturbable mind.

[26:48]

Okay. Now, this is possible to do. Or you can realize a mind that First, I think you realize a kind of background mind and then a basic mind, and through that you can realize an imperturbable mind. Fearless, clear, undisturbed mind that's always present. And part of the way you practice with this is to see if you can notice See if you can stay in touch with a mind that doesn't change much.

[27:55]

Doesn't change much. Okay. So thinking mind obviously changes a lot. So it's like asking yourself to look into a body of water and look past the waves and the insects and frogs and things and see the clear water itself. So can you look into the mind, past the thinking, and see a field of clarity of mind that isn't affected by the thinking? Now, this asks the question, does thinking condition mind?

[28:58]

Well, certainly thinking condition is thinking mind. Okay. How do you start to notice a mind which doesn't change or changes very little? One way is, let's take Sashin. You create a schedule that you turn yourself over to. A schedule that's extremely predictable. Okay. Now the act of turning yourself over to a predictable schedule and a schedule that doesn't arise from your likes and dislikes, a schedule that's rather arbitrary, a schedule that's

[30:16]

and in fact it contradicts your usual habits. This is one area we're speaking about where adept lay practice, it's hard to reproduce this unless you live in a monastery. And I would say that it's almost impossible and usually somewhat unbelievable for a lay practitioner to get a real feel for this mind. Because you need a physical feel for it. But if you live in a monastic situation for some months or years, you just do the schedule. You don't have to think about what you're going to chant, what you're going to eat, what you're going to, you know, it just appears.

[31:54]

Everything appears. And after a while, I mean, if you continue in a realm of likes and dislikes, you leave the monastery. And I think it was two years ago, didn't we? We spoke about the appearance of a body-mind and the difference between pleasure... pleasant, unpleasant, and neither. And the shift of that to like, dislike, and neutral or boring And the shift of that to greed, hate and delusion.

[32:55]

So when you begin to be able to function without delusion, That kind of subjectiveness. You open yourself to beginning to notice and evolving, generating an imperturbable mind. And a mind that holds through all situations. So you actually try to notice waking, sleeping, before and the middle of, after sexual activity and so forth.

[34:07]

Is there a mind that stays the same, even though you abandon yourself into each situation? Is there still a mind that remains the same? And that's really one of the main focuses of Zen practice. And one of the first steps toward that is the ability to just follow a schedule. It's not harming anybody. not good or bad, I mean, it's just, you turn yourself, see if you can turn yourself over to it. So it's out of that pedagogical process that small lay groups in obscure or large cities chant the same thing every day and don't know why they do it.

[35:16]

So for the small group, it may be more of a ritual than it is a practice. But perhaps if you understand the conception behind it, It makes it easier to do. Because it's outside of likes and dislikes. And that's one of the things, if you want to practice seriously, you have to decide to sit whether you want to or not. That doesn't mean you have to sit hours a day or anything.

[36:20]

But you just decide to sit, I'm going to sit 20 minutes or at least 20 minutes a day or something, no matter if I'm sick or busy or whatever. Only in that way do you have a chance to get practice outside the boundaries of thinking and self and ego and pleasure and displeasure, I mean likes and dislikes. And the more effective your practice is, the more your self, your thinking, etc., will start finding very good reasons not to do it. You have a stomachache, you might go crazy, you know, all kinds of reasons. It will make you get up late, so your whole career will fall apart if you don't go to work immediately, and so on.

[37:26]

Yes, Eric. You mean like, I didn't chant today, I'm wrong? Yes, you're wrong if you didn't chant today. LAUGHTER Yeah, of course. It's like if you have a certain structure and it's just as putting in all this, it's going to get better. Instead of bringing you to that. Yeah. Did you say everything in Deutsch?

[38:37]

Well, you just have to be smart enough to not get yourself in that trap. Also, du musst einfach schlau genug sein, damit du dich nicht in diese Falle manövrierst. We certainly can fall into it, but that's stupid. Wir können da natürlich hineinfallen, aber das ist einfach dumm. Yes? Yes? If consciousness has the function of providing us in our everyday life with predictability and reliability... Cognizable, yeah. This gives us some ground or something to hold on to.

[39:47]

Mm-hmm. And the way you talked about this schedule, the monastery schedule, where you have this strict thing of the thing. So this structure, monastery structure, takes over some part of this predictability and allows thinking to To withdraw. Yes, that's right. Yeah. If you know this, and you know how it functions, then in your lay life you can sort of begin to feel that or experiment with that. Yeah, and... I did it in little simple ways because the first five years of my practice I didn't have a monastic situation.

[40:56]

But I saw the need and I pretended San Francisco was a monastery, a rather large one, but I pretended. But for quite a while, I wouldn't make a decision. I tried to find situations where I didn't get caught in likes and dislikes. I can't remember all the different things. I did lots of things. But one I remember is that if I went to a restaurant and I thought, should I have this?

[42:00]

I would just put my finger on the menu and order whatever my finger hit. Also an eines erinnere ich mich im Restaurant, wenn ich anfing, also was möchte ich das oder das, dann habe ich einfach irgendwo hingezeigt und das habe ich dann genommen, egal ob es jetzt mir gefallen hat oder nicht. And usually, at least in American restaurants, you aim at the left side because it's cheaper on the left side. In Europe, you might get a pre-fixed meal at, you know, 50 euro or something on the left. So you have to come and look. But anyway, I did lots of things like that to take out likes and dislikes. Okay, why don't we take a break? No, Eric just mentioned to me at lunch, at lunch, no, the break.

[43:45]

When I sat down, I moved the bell from here to here or something like that. And he thought, he said, I don't know how true it is, but he used to think I was awfully pedantic. And it's true, Suzuki Roshi thought so too. One time at the break in a sashin, I was sitting on my cushion. And Suzuki Roshi happened to be sitting on his cushion too, and everyone else had gone out. Yeah, gone somewhere. And at some point, there was a big painting by Taiji Kiyokawa on the back wall of the Zendo.

[44:53]

Yes, that's right. That was the guy. A Japanese abstract painter who had given this painting to Suzuki Roshi. It was quite a big painting, you know, like much of that space back there, and it was hanging a little crooked, and I got up, Straightened it and went back and sat down. About ten minutes later, Sikorsky got up and went to his office, and as he went by, he made it crooked again. So you and Suzuki Roshi were right. But I also realized I didn't satisfy. Eric at least, in this response to the ritual, what looks like ritual side of Zen.

[46:16]

Yeah, one thing is, and I'm also mentioning this because involuntarily, when I see you, I bow to you. Yeah, to each one of you. And I have to kind of remind myself, don't do that. Yeah. And there's also, you know, there's various things in the background of this. And just, you know, and I'm mentioning it because this contrast between which I'm always in the midst of. And with adept either practice. You have your own life to lead. You don't have to worry about these things.

[47:36]

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? 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.

[48:58]

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. So you turn your body and there's kind of almost like a feeling of a light here. So when I realized that when Sukershi passed me something, there was a feeling of him passing himself using the salt or the bell as an excuse.

[50:03]

Hey, sweetheart. Excuse me. Sorry. 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? Okay. I was in Japan in February. I was there for a university contact and not at all a Buddhist contact. And what I really liked, being in Japan, being with these people and being in this atmosphere and this architecture, I mean not the modern Japanese architecture, some aspects of... Traditional architecture.

[51:14]

No, also some aspects of modern architecture. The support is kind of free. The support, doing things with both hands and hands of support, pausing, emphasis of space, walking through different kinds of spaces. So it's very easy to practice there in Japan, but because you are somehow in the physical context of which it is practiced for many people. Because I just could walk and I could feel different spaces, which is not emphasized in most of our techniques. That's right. For instance, yeah. And so it's, for me, practice to hang this particularly, it's very difficult for me because it feels so awkward. Because it contradicts everything you do normally. And everybody else is talking. So difficult to practice and say, generally, is that it's not supported.

[52:19]

It's not supported by society, but it's not supported by space and by architecture. So you have to somehow shape you. You have to script you. You have to create it from very much from your own base. 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, only in the university context, and what I noticed was that just being in Japan, that supports easily the practice. Just being there and force the teaching, although there is no teaching, but space of teaching. So just being there, that we find it difficult, but we want to help.

[53:19]

simply because in the Jewish context, for example, it is emphasized that people are forbidden to sing, that people go in two rows, or that the room is designed so that individual rows can be experienced, or that the order and sequence of rows can be experienced. And that makes a big difference from the practice in the West, where you have to create this yourself, because the physical environment and also the society, in quotation marks, They will talk about things that are against them. That's why it's so hard for me. And especially the practice with the Israelis. Because when they talk to us, it's a bit strange. The thing is, we have left-wing people with us, who don't speak, say what they have to say. Because people who are considered a little bit dumb, they think with two hands.

[54:22]

People are considered a little dumb when they do think with two hands? Yeah, people are considered a little bit dumb when they do think with two hands. The kindergarten teacher said, you should take things with two hands, because his parents said take things with two hands, because practice is written. And the kindergarten teacher says, no, you should take one hand. You're old enough to do it with one hand. You're old enough to do it with one hand. Pow. Yeah, that's interesting. Where these things meet, you know, it's quite interesting. Also es ist wirklich sehr interessant, dort wo diese Dinge aufeinandertreffen. When I have to shake somebody's hand, I always shake their hand or two hands. Also wenn ich jemanden begrüße und ihm die Hand gebe, dann mache ich es immer so, dass ich beide Hände dafür benutze.

[55:24]

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 get away. Und ich halte ihre Hand ein bisschen und manche Leute, die bringt das ziemlich aus der Fassung. Was soll das jetzt? And they're 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. Chinese monks.

[56:25]

So this is your chance. You can do the same as the Chinese Buddhist monks did. You're in Austria. I was told this was the Russian zone during the war, after the war. And the Russians called this Austrian Siberia. So even in Austrian Siberia we can do this practice. But 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. and I would put pauses in the space.

[57:44]

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.

[59:02]

And you would emphasize different smells. For instance, you'd use wood that you passed regularly. You'd pick a wood which has 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 Erich's not here. You have to leave tomorrow, I know. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm going to continue.

[60:18]

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 up. 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.

[61:24]

There's chakras there. You almost feel like there's a little table here. When you lift it, it flaps back in. It's 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.

[62:27]

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, yeah. It's broader use. Broader, yeah. 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, Sorry, those of you who've... I've done this before.

[63:35]

I don't mean to bore you. Like your feet, you learn to always have... This is the part... So you always stand up. So I notice, I mean, I tell people this, but I see them in circles or, you know, standing like this, like this. But you just sit in a habit of doing it. And in a way, it's a barometer of your mindfulness. So if you get in the habit of it, it gives you all your mindfulness, extends your being. And the more you can find ways to get the feeling of that, you begin to lose the sense that your feet are down there.

[64:47]

Because your feet aren't down there, they're They're only down there if you think you're located, the observer is located in your head. When you, in your physical actions, in your actions, act as if the observer is in the head. then you're emphasizing the visual consciousness and the thinking consciousness. And this is also considered in serious zen practice a big mistake. That's what the hara thought is all about. You feel the world, not think or see the world.

[65:48]

But none of this is written down in work, it's all an integral part of monastic practice. This is the kind of thing scholars can't ever know. They don't get a feel for certain things. Okay, so if I pass them. If you... An extraordinary thing, an extraordinary being is walking past me. And I don't want to just speak to you. Und ich möchte dich nicht nur denken.

[66:59]

I want to take a moment to physically be. Ich möchte einen Moment mir nehmen, um dich zu spüren. I'm sorry, you know, that's the way it is. Es tut mir leid, aber... You may not want to be physically felt. Das ist einfach so. No, thank you. Ich möchte nicht körperlich gespürt werden. Nein, danke. It's like we go to America, they say, have a nice day, and you say, sorry, I have other plans. Sorry. 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, you know. There should be enough time in the world to pause for another person.

[68:01]

No, no, stay there. Now get up. Feet this far apart. Yeah, that's good, okay. 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 gazing at you? 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 so maybe a dancer would do this Get your feeling here.

[69:08]

But this is still a very personal space, personal feeling of energy. But like in Rinzai school, they bow here. And they emphasize doing everything with energy. And when I was in, I practiced in Daitoku-ji for two and a half years. One of the main Zen monasteries. Don't go away. Empty. If you're going in the door, in Rinzai, you come in the door, step right through it, and then you walk. In Soto school you stop and pause and allow yourself to feel the room without thinking about it. Then you step into that feeling. There's a difference, a slightly difference.

[70:25]

There's a big difference, a small difference. Okay, so if I see you, I bring my hands up to here. I can feel something. 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. 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. And I said like this, Mama, I miss you. 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. But not in mind. And then you come back up, you complete the bow, you do each thing with a sense of completion.

[71:46]

Then you walk on by. Okay. I don't know if this direction is interesting, but I can, it's enough to say, not too much, but a little bit. What? 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. 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,

[72:51]

And you try to do things in a way that nourishes you. Now, I try to... Right speech would be that speech which nourishes you. Right speech is part of the Eightfold Path. Didn't we talk about the Eightfold Path last year? 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.

[74:19]

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. 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.

[75:23]

And I feel the coolness of it. There's a sense of completeness. And 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.

[76:28]

Then you need the now-ness of a kind of physical sense of the room in your spine. And here we could make a physical distinction then, or sensorial distinction, between here-ness and now-ness. So the here and now are not synonyms, 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 twice. You always ring it once and once and once.

[77:46]

And that's a different feeling. I notice sometimes I will sit with some people and they'll start meditation. That's three times, that's not once, once and once. Once is you have to wait for the bell to tell you when it wants to be hit. 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.

[78:47]

When I bring my hands up to here, I feel something, I get in the habit of completing things. 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

[80:00]

Yes, I think that's enough on that. Yes. Yesterday you brought up the example of whistling. Whistling. And I really like this example because it's... Last night, you mean. Last night, yeah. 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.

[81:18]

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. And whistling is just like this knowledge. It's like whistling in the dark. Do you have that expression, whistling in the dark? But we mean the opposite of the expression. So I would suggest if you want to get in your lay practice or in your life practice, 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.

[82:42]

You start rushing and you don't feel nourished, you're just rushing. So how can you 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.

[83:50]

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. So she didn't say stand up, which is to go between this point and that point.

[85:04]

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. Aufrollwinden. Aufwinden. It's like Nagarjuna says, practice is putting a snake in bamboo. If you have a bamboo stick and you have a snake, you're trying to stick it in the bamboo.

[86:09]

But 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. And I find myself, I don't have any problem with doing things with two hands in any situation. 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.

[87:26]

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 received whatever you're doing. Okay. Is there something else anybody wants to bring up? Let's have someone else not... Right now. Yes. Yeah. the aspect of energy. And he very much emphasized in my practice. And also in my work in psychiatry, I work with people who kill other people who not their own life and who, in some sense, hate their own experience.

[88:37]

And it's because of some intensity. Intensity, yeah. Sometimes it's lust, sometimes it's a nameless dread. Sometimes it's what? Lust. Lust. Or a nameless dread. Oh, yeah. Nameless dreads. And it always seems that what interests me most, in fact, is if I can either picture it in the pen ox or in pictures, sometimes the ox turns from black to white, depending on the depiction. And so the quality of the line changes. And that's the research thing based on at least as far as I understand it. I don't know if you could say more about that. Good. So my question is actually also is in in the kitchen. It's very important. It's very important. It's very important. I had no idea what to do with myself.

[89:46]

We had our own experience, because it didn't fit. And... Yes, there was a certain level of intensity in the experience that you can't hold, you can't endure. And... In Céline, in the [...] Céline, Well, maybe this could be something that will come up as we go along.

[90:48]

But I'll just, for a moment, in the context of the fact that you primarily practiced Rinzai style. 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...

[91:59]

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.

[93:42]

So it's a kind of two sides of the same coin. If you go to a no play, you know what no theater is in Japan, they emphasize the still moment which encapsulates the play. And they always emphasize If you take a picture of the Noh actors, all the pictures look posed. It looks like they...

[94:38]

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