Yeah, I wore another of Suzuki Rashi's raksus. I think it was my party raksus. Yeah. You know, a couple of sort of... Asides, I guess, asides. One is, I hope, I keep, for weeks I've been meaning to say it, but I'll say it now. I hope after the Sashin we can... fix the light sensors so the lights go on when I'm coming from Johanneshof. Because I really, I almost don't come to hot drink because I can't negotiate the first six stairs. And the light doesn't go on until I'm down on the flat.

[01:02]

So I'm... They don't need to hear the hot drinks. This is crazy. A few sides or side aspects. One is, I really hope that after the sashin we can repair the light sensors on the way, because I can't see the first few steps on the way directly behind the street at all. And sometimes I prefer to turn around on the way to the hot drink, because I don't know where to go for the first six steps. But I know we don't want every car that goes by and every hiker that goes by to light up the whole campus. There has to be some way in which it doesn't light up everybody. That's a problem. It's just hiking in the dark, you're having a nice time, and suddenly the whole campus goes on.

[02:07]

And then they think they're going to be recruited to meditate. That's right. Again, to say again, I noticed that this practice is located, articulated within and for East Asian yogic culture. So I tried to find out what that's about through Suzuki Roshi and through being in Japan.

[03:11]

Then I tried to understand the teachings in that East Asian yogic culture. Which, for example, don't make the same kind of, as I said yesterday, body-mind, subject-object, and many other basic distinctions. And then I tried to bring those back into practice here in the West. But then I had to adjust them so they... take life in the paradigms of the West.

[04:17]

And then that transforms them from the way they're actually described in East Asia. They're newly described, but from my point of view, they're the same practice, but newly described in the West. And then when I newly describe them in the West, I find there's no English words for much of it. And then I have to create words like I pointed out, like relationality instead of reality. Relationality. Das Beziehungsgeflecht, die wechselseitigen Beziehungen, statt Realität oder Wirklichkeit.

[05:39]

Or connoticing for noticing, because noticing is a form of knowing, and we don't really recognize that. Oder im Englischen die Verbindung von den zwei Wörtern to know and notice in connoticing, also wissen. Genau. Yeah. Let me do my job. No, I'm fine. Don't do my job. Her pay grade is higher than mine. Okay. Yeah. So I think, and then there's lots of things just taken for granted, which are not taken for granted by us. Yeah, so let me, and some of this is, yeah, I'm bringing up because of, For instance, on mindfulness, I have the six stations of mindfulness.

[06:59]

Because built into mindfulness practice in East Asia, there are distinctions that we don't notice. So I'm trying to unfold those distinctions in the... for us. So maybe tomorrow I can maybe I could focus on the six stations of mindfulness But today I don't know what I want to focus on, but let's start focusing.

[08:00]

I would say that there are three domains of dharmic realisational practice. And that's particularly important, useful for lay practice. So for monastic and lay practice, isn't It's something that gets initiated in a practice center, but it doesn't have to happen in a practice center. As many of you have noticed, and sometimes speak to me and Doksana about, that you start practicing and then you have experiences that you expected to happen in Zazen, but actually happen in other situations, but they're somehow anchored to the fact that you do something.

[09:18]

Of course, Zazen is a resource when you're in a crisis. Because you get used to doing Zazen. Zazen is transformative, really, for the most part, biologically, physiologically transformative, when it's a regular practice, something close to daily or more. But zazen is then really a transformative, a transforming practice that is biologically and physiologically transformative when zazen is sat almost daily or even more.

[10:28]

Zazen creates a kind of liminal, liminal? A liminal presence open to Potentialities, probabilities. Okay. Yeah. But it's a boundary, right? Liminal means... And the boundary. Yeah, but it's a boundary, but it's an overlapping boundary. We don't have that. Yeah. So, you know, I've very often said, uh, One of the turning words I've suggested is, you know, classics and just this.

[11:38]

Every time you notice something, just this. And that's, it's a good practice. It locates you in the present, in the immediacy. Yeah, and it, um, um, And it gives you a way to develop knowing the world as a series, hopefully a series for a while, of appearances. Because Zen practice won't work if you see the world as a continuity. It needs these fissures, these fissures, like cracks in a rock.

[12:45]

Okay. Or interstices, et cetera. It needs these units of appearance, appearance, appearance, for practice to lift into those appearances and, yeah. Because the Zen practice will not work if you see the world as a continuity. The Zen practice needs these, okay, what are they called now? And the interstitials, what are they called? Small advances. So, you know, maybe the first thing we should teach in the West is to notice appearances and not zazen. Vielleicht sollten wir das Erste, was wir im Westen lehren, vielleicht sollte es sein, Erscheinungen zu bemerken und nicht Sazen.

[13:51]

But maybe painful Sazen is good because I wish the bell would ring. I wish the bell would ring. I wish the bell would ring. So you're noticing appearances. So maybe instead of, I mean, that's the problem with is, is-ness. Is-ness is continuity and if-ness is moment after moment. Where are you? Now that she needs you. So it might be if this, if this, if this instead of just this.

[15:11]

Okay, vielleicht sollte das so was sein wie wenn dies, wenn dies statt nur dies, nur dies. Because each moment is a probability. You know, yeah, it's who you are, but you don't know. We're in a realm of ifs, maybes. So now, for some reason, I'd like to tell you about Mikey Siegel. And now for some reason I would like to tell you something about Mikey Siegel. Mikey Siegel. I've never known anybody named Mikey before. But anyway, Mikey Siegel is a MIT-trained engineer. A handsome, young, persuasive guy. I don't know him. I just saw him on, somebody sent me a YouTube of him.

[16:12]

Because his name kept coming up in Esalen over and over again. So I said, who is this guy? So someone sent me a YouTube. And he's created something called the Consciousness Hacking Group. And he's another group he's created called Enlightenment Engineering. And there's a sign-up sheet in the closed room.

[17:28]

Okay. Anyway... So what he does is he went on this vision quest to India and all this stuff and Santa Cruz and so forth. I was told, somebody announced to me, I've heard you were part of a Santa Cruz hippie world. I said, I was? I'm speaking about it as if it was funny, but it's also, you know, Bruce Dahmer is one of the leading people there, and Nick Herbert is a physicist I used to know. But Bruce Dahmer was just a few months ago on the cover of Scientific American as the person who's closest saying, pointing out what the origin of life was.

[18:55]

And it was a group, not a single group. I talk about it as if it would be funny, but at the same time it is so that Bruce Dahmer is someone and another together. At the same time, he was recently on the cover of Scientific America and is the one who was very close to discovering the origin of life and he worked on it together with his group. He's a very nice guy, but he looks like something from what I used to see in the 60s. Layers of clothes and claws and things. He's a very nice guy, but he's the kind of guy I've seen in the 60s. Different layers of clothes and coats and so on. And he's one of the persons who spoke a lot about Mikey Siegel. And showed a video of him, what he does. He hooks you up with a little thing on the ear, which monitors your breath and heartbeat.

[20:01]

And then you hook it up to someone else, like I could hook it up to your ear. And then it begins to monitor the heartbeat and breath of the person. And then the person who's also hooked up. And you can hook up a whole room. I'm going to get the equipment for tomorrow. I'll give you an earful. And then they add, a projection of your heartbeat and breath on a kind of, again, just like the 60s, new age colors and things floating around, geometry and music going...

[21:23]

So I've seen this video with about 30 people all hooked up and they're all watching this and pretty soon you see all of their breath and heartbeat and your heart your breath your heartbeat changes on inhales and exhales begin to sink And his software is called, you can guess, HeartSync. I just saw this video where he was chained up in a room full of people and this projection and the music was played and so on. And after a very short time you can see how the heartbeat and the breathing rhythms are synchronized by all people.

[22:34]

And now you can guess what his software is called. It's called HypeSync. And from what I've been told, it makes people feel blissed out. They feel really connected without taking ecstasy with other people. Okay. Now, if I remember correctly, there are 2.5... No. Yeah. 2.2 billion Christians in the world. Wenn ich das richtig erinnere, gibt es 2,2 Milliarden Christen auf der Welt. There's 1.5 Muslims in the world. Supposedly. I didn't count. Ich habe sie nicht gezählt, aber angeblich 1,5 Milliarden Muslims. And there's only 500 million Buddhists. Und nur 500 Millionen Buddhisten. But there's still quite a lot of people, right?

[23:36]

Aber es sind ja immer noch ziemlich viele Leute. But, as I said the other day, Facebook has 2.5 billion monthly users. Monthly users. 2.5 billion people use Facebook. And this Mikey Siegel expects his software, he hopes, will have 2.5... He wants to get more people than Facebook. 2.5 billion people. Heart-sinking. And this Mikey Siegel hopes that his software will be used by more people than Facebook. He wants more people than Facebook. So more than 2.5 billion people should use this HeartSync software. Does that make what we're doing look silly? Maybe so.

[24:44]

It took many centuries and many generations to create a religion. Really, centuries and centuries of history and generations of people until there's a few hundred million people doing something. Now, how old is Facebook? 20 years or something like that? Yeah, it started out as a Harvard undergraduate trying to figure out how to make other students connect with each other electronically. And in what, one or two decades, he can have more adherence, and adherence may be the right word, because it means to glue, and people are glued to their screens, than here.

[25:52]

In 20 years you can have a constituency as large as in Christianity. Electronically, globally. I don't know what this means. But it definitely means something. You know, I've never used Facebook. I don't even know. I have no idea how you do social media.

[27:09]

But whatever is going on, something is going on. I have never used Facebook myself. I don't know how to deal with social media. But whatever happens there, something is definitely very powerful there. Of course, these constituencies, these electronically connected constituencies, can be trolled for profit and political advantages and so forth. Politically and politically and? And Mr. Siegel expects to make a billion dollars out of this. Or several. Why stop at one? I wonder if he's interested in supporting... No. I wonder if he's interested in supporting... Because we don't have any shortcuts.

[28:23]

We have a long cut. Okay. Now, to put it more in another scale, maybe such an experience of sinking your heart and breath with others gives you some kind of experience. that is valuable, a taste of something. Even though it's an induced experience, it still is an experience. But of course, we're sitting here, right? And in fact, our breath and heartbeat are syncing.

[29:26]

One of the reasons for dynamics of ANGO practice is to get people together for long enough that they begin to feel this with each other. But, you know, but for us you discover it For yourself, you begin to feel the intimations and you begin to feel how to be present to others and so forth. And some of us are quite open to it and some of us never really get the feel of it.

[30:28]

But this kind of meeting together and speaking and practicing and then chanting together, etc., it's all to see what can be done to create this mutual body, let's call it that. So I started to say there's three domains that I would point out of realisational dharmic practice. And it's very simply you, others and phenomena. But when are you, others and phenomena a field of dharmic potentialities? Basically, it's when you feel open and aliveness and well, right now the third word doesn't appear.

[32:04]

And so we could also say that, again, trying to find words that function, your zazen practice is just you, but it's kind of like something like, Biosubjectivity or something like that. And with others, it's kind of, we could call it intersubjectivity. And this is a very clumsy word, but we don't have this as an everyday concept. And although we experience what I would call, again, a clumsy word, intra, instead of inter, intra-phenomenalities.

[33:55]

Um, um, although we do experience things like that now and then. Okay. Okay. Now, we notice when we're... Let me start this way.

[35:01]

This kind of practice in which you are open to the world as feeling and not as thinking, And let me start like this. This kind of practice, where you are open to the world as something you feel, as something you feel, and not as thinking. Can flower happen when you begin to trust your body? Now, if I'm, again, using the example of I'm carrying some things and I trip and fall on these six stairs out there, I'll probably catch myself and hopefully won't be hurt, especially if I have my third leg. So that the body, I often say it's awareness rather than consciousness, but the body is there, fit with the situation and instantly is able to make it possible for me to likely fall without hurting myself.

[36:33]

But if you're sleeping and you're supposed to get up, probably you don't want to trust your body because your body says, hey, keep sleeping. So there must be two bodies. There must be, let's call it a vital body and a sugar body. The sugar body likes sugar and sleeping a little more and so forth. And the vital body, yeah, it's different. And when you begin to feel the brightness and vividness of particularity in your experience, actually that's nourishing your vital body, your energy body.

[37:55]

So just as you need to notice when you have an anxious, kind of uneasy mind, And when you have a clear, open mind. Okay. Okay. So when we're most able to practice with others is when we feel this openness and clarity of the vital body and a calm mind.

[38:57]

So the three qualities, and I just remembered the other word. How I could forget it, I don't know. Stillness, openness, and aliveness. So when you feel a kind of bodily stillness and one of the... Do I have time? I should say something about aliveness. Because the first teaching of the Buddha is, most of you know, but some of you are new to practice, new to Sashin, is bringing attention to the breath. But as I often say, not bringing the attention to the breath, but bringing attention to each inhale and each exhale.

[40:20]

And not just to each inhale and each exhale, but the bodily movements and presence that accompany the inhale, and then the bodily movements and presence and heartbeat, which accompany the exhale. And what you're doing when you do this... If, of course, you're syncing the heart and the breath. And heart and breath with your activity. This is one of the ways we free ourselves from emotional and mental suffering. Because we experience anxiety and things like that very differently when heart, breath and phenomena are somehow activity or somehow one kind of event.

[41:46]

Because we experience something like anxiety or whatever in a completely different way when heart, breath and activity are in harmony. So you get this as a part of your experiential inventory from Zazen practice. But also what you're doing is you're infusing, soaking the body in attention. So you're not just developing a body that's synced with activity of the body and phenomena? But you're also infusing the body with attention.

[43:02]

So all of your organs, muscles, bones, everything feels alive in an intentional field. And this attentional field throughout the body also makes your body healthier. And, okay. And to create a kind of... I'm playing with words, but... an antenna, you know, an antenna, like a radio antenna? Yeah. And maybe you're creating an antennal attentional body. So I'm just playing with the... similarity of antenna and attentional, but there's some truth to that.

[44:12]

Your spine becomes a kind of an antenna. And when you feel rooted in stillness, your whole body and activity becomes a kind of antenna which is tuned in to phenomenality and tuned in to others. then your whole body and your activity becomes a kind of antenna, which is inclined or has tuned in to the phenomena and others. So when you, for example, actually feel open and still and bodily alive as an attentional activity, not as a concept, when you feel that, you can

[45:22]

you're then in a dharmic domain or realisational domain with the world and with others. And the skilled yoga practitioner can sort of turn that on or turn it off. Some people don't like it. They feel, you guys are crazy. And so you turn it off. Or it feels too intimate or is too intimate. But the practice, as I started out, is these three domains of the... intra-phenomenality, of which we can call immediacy, experiential immediacy, the field of the Brahmaviharas with others,

[46:37]

Unlimited friendliness. Unlimited empathetic joy, as you know. Joy even in the success of somebody you don't like too much. Yeah, and unlimited equanimity. This kind of in balance and calmness and in sync. And unlimited compassion. And if you read these Prajnaparamita texts as I put in that little Esalen essay, it over and over again says the Bodhisattva is infinite. always in the midst of these four Unlimiteds. And you can meter, meter, measure, meter your practice by... It's not too easy for me to feel empathetic joy.

[48:06]

And you can measure or estimate your practice if you look at it. But it's not that easy for me to feel this empathic joy. Then you know the Bodhisattva needle is near zero. But every now and then you might feel it. But every now and then you might feel it. But every now and then you might feel it. Or you feel your equanimity is disturbed or not disturbed, or you just feel undisturbable. Then you know your practice is developing. Du spürst, wann dein Gleichmut gestört oder nicht gestört wird. Und wenn du so wirst, dass du unerschütterlich bist oder unstörbar, dann merkst du, dass sich deine Praxis entwickelt. Well, you know, again, every now and then I mention that so many people think that Zen practice has no stages, like Vipassana practice and Tibetan practice tends to have stages.

[49:32]

But what Soto practice, the underlying concept of Soto practice, is each of you create your own practice. So I don't give you a koan, though I might present koans in Teisho, but it's up to you to notice them. Sometimes I'll give you a specific phrase, like already connected or something, but also these phrases are meant to be operated and developed, evolved. And in a process of practice like this, how could there not be stages?

[50:36]

If you don't notice the stages, maybe you ought to practice... with one of the Buddhist teachings, it shows you the stages. But Soto-shu kind of tells you where to enter the water of your experience. Aber die Soto-Schule zeigt dir, wo du in das Gewässer deiner Erfahrung eintreten kannst. Aber wenn die Strömungen kalt oder kräftig oder warm sind, das ist an dir, das zu bemerken. To show your sense of the stages of practice and to, you know, like that.

[51:49]

And just to swim in our mutual heart sinking. I don't know. Thank you very much.

[52:10]

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