Because my old body has so many difficulties to straighten the kimono and all these different layers, I thought I'd just try something else today. Korean monks tend to wear kind of what we call in America fat pants under their koromo. Like jogging pants? What? Is it like jogging pants, fat pants? Well, they're just big, loose, comfortable pants, but they're not like jogging, which are made of, you know, of absorbent material. Okay. Also, die koreanische Mönche tragen so bequeme, weite Hosen unter ihren Roben.

[01:03]

Mm-hmm. So anyway, maybe I'll find out what the Koreans use. I had a Korean... Sung Sung Sunin gave me a Korean outfit once, but it's disappeared along the years somewhere. Yeah, and also since I'm going to go to... I agreed to do the opening ceremony and give a talk at Leipzig on Tuesday or something like that? Saturday. Saturday? Oh, okay. And they're calling their place not a temple or a... monastery or anything. They're calling it a lab, as you saw their ad, a lab, a zen lab.

[02:08]

And they call their new place not some kind of monastery or temple or something, but you saw their advertisement or brochure, they call it a zen lab, a lab. And it's something I don't know where David and Leibniz, I mean Leipzig gang got the term, but it's something I've thought for a long time. I feel what I'm doing is a kind of science and this is my laboratory. And I don't know exactly where David and the Leipzigers have the term, but it's actually a term that I've been thinking about for a long time, because I have the feeling that what we do here is a kind of science, a kind of experimental laboratory.

[03:12]

I have to, or I'm going to, I don't have to, but I've agreed to, give a talk at Esalen, a week-long conference on the religion of no religion in Esalen in the first week or second week of December. And there's two week conferences. One is Science as mysticism. The other one is the religion of no religion. And the religion of no religion, one is led by a friend of mine, Charles Stang, who's one of the heads of the Harvard Divinity School. I like him a lot.

[04:31]

Nice guy. It's sort of funny to have a Harvard Divinity School professor talking about the religion of no religion. And I like him. He's a very nice guy. And I find it remarkable or funny that when you have the dean or the head of religious studies at Harvard University and then he organizes a conference with the title »Religion as non-religion«. And when I visited him in Massachusetts last year, just before I came here, he said the Harvard Divinity School might want to acquire my archives. And I said, archives?

[05:31]

What archives? I've got a bunch of tapes. And when I visited him a few months ago, he told me that the... How do you say it in German? die Religionswissenschaften, die Abteilung... Wie heißt das Universitätswort für Abteilung? Fakultät. Fakultät, danke. Das ist die Fakultät für Religionswissenschaften, dass die Interesse hätten, mein Archiv zu kaufen. Und ich so, was für ein Archiv? Ich habe kein Archiv, ich habe nur einen Haufen Kassetten. But these are all symptoms of the Western... preoccupation since Nietzsche and earlier with God is dead. Yeah, I mean, wondering what the heck religion is. wo wir uns die Frage stellen, was zum Kuckuck-Religion überhaupt sein soll.

[06:52]

So that's why Leipzig-Bande is calling the center, the sitting center, a Zen lab. Und deshalb nennt die Leipziger-Bande das Sitzzentrum auch Zen lab. So I happened to found another Buddha the other day, and they said they wanted me to do the opening ceremony, and I said, do you have a Buddha? And they said, no. And I said, do you want a Buddha? And they said, that's religion, isn't it? Vor ein paar Tagen habe ich zufällig einen neuen Buddha getroffen, habe den gekauft und dann habe ich jetzt die Leipziger Gruppe gekauft. I said, well, it's a piece of stone. It's actually quite heavy.

[07:53]

One of the guys put it in his suitcase. I mean, no airline would accept that suitcase. And I said, well, it's a piece of stone carved nicely to please my mirror neurons. If I had said that that way, I don't think they would have understood. But you know, what's interesting is So I've called this abstract, I have to write, the non-religion which looks religious.

[09:17]

That's Buddhism. I gave the title to the text that I have to write now for the conference, the non-religion that looks like a religion. And so I understand Buddhism. Actually, I didn't want to say anything about that, but I'm only saying that now because I'm wearing these pants. What interests me is that for some reason, religiosity in various countries of the world looks very similar. But the explanation for the religiosity or religiousness or something like that in Buddhism is so different than in Christianity.

[10:39]

But the explanation for the religiosity in Buddhism is so different than, for example, in Christianity. And let's just take a simple distinction, which could be, should be at the center of our practice. If we think right now we're in a container created separate from us, that's the sort of Western view. So if we feel this room is a container created for us, that's different than feeling it's a container which created us. And it's a container created for...

[11:50]

which created us and which we participate in its creation. Now, this just sounds like, I don't know, a playful use of pronoun or connectives. And that might sound like a playful... A playful way... But it's a huge difference. But the imperatives of our culture are so built into our thinking, it's almost impossible for us to really feel the shift bodily. Yeah, it takes repetition, repeating it, reminding yourself to get it.

[13:22]

And some of us do get it, quite a few of us get it. And it really makes a big difference in your making use of the craft of practice. It's funny, I do feel a little bit different in this outfit than the usual outfit. It's not as in-fit as the other outfit.

[14:39]

Yeah. It's not going to work. Okay. Okay. So, as someone said, right now is an instance of the Big Bang. Big Bang's in process, and we're a moment of it right now. We're an instantiation of the Big Bang. Instantiation means an instance of which is... inseparable from what it's an instance of. Yes, I've tried that often.

[15:41]

Instantiation is difficult. Can I say manifestation? Okay, why not? Girlifaciation? It's not politically correct to say man anymore. No, it's not. We have to say something else. So I'm sort of like doing a kind of pre-run of the talk I may give in And I'm doing something like a preview of the lecture that I might hold in Leipzig. If you don't feel this is created for us, but created by us, as we know that your brother made the floor along with Otmar.

[16:47]

And if you don't have the feeling that it was created for us, but one moment created the floor he said no i understand the floor oh well it's good i don't understand you said if you don't if you don't feel it's created for us or by us no yeah if you create no it's created by us that's different than knowing it's created thinking it's created for us So we've got this room they've leased in Leipzig. And when you walk into it, now I'm saying, if I were designing a Zendo, or I did design these things, here's how I would think about it.

[17:56]

Here's when you go in there, and I'm saying now, if I were to design such a room, if I were to make such a room, as I did these rooms here, if you go in there, when you open the door you are a location and your location becomes part of the location and now you want to locate yourself in that room your location and the room is a location and how can you make it a location Yeah, so then you have to... I did the same thing at the Boulder Zen Center and so forth. And then you have to feel... How wide is the door and how wide are the walls in the room and so forth?

[19:20]

And how do they affect your shoulders? And one of the typical practices and just Buddhist cultural practices is you feel that you use a door as a threshold to feel the gravity of your own body. location, actually the way you're dressed has to do with gravity. And one of the typical Buddhist exercises is that you use a door, every door, as a kind of threshold. And indeed a threshold to feel the gravitation, the gravity of the earth, really physically, the gravitation through your own body and the way you are dressed, how your clothes fall and so on. All of this has to do with gravitation.

[20:24]

And you're not separate from the interactive phenomena. So the phenomenal world is something we're interacting with or entering with, so I'm calling it interactive phenomena. And if I were to... The other day I mentioned in the first period of Zazen this statement of being in the midst of a mass extinction.

[21:25]

and if I were going to and I pointed this out before I think to point to one delusional concept it's that there's a distinction between the human and the non-human if we didn't have that distinction we wouldn't be in the midst of this and to proceed. And as I said before, if I were to point out just one blurred distinction, then I would say that the worst blurred distinction is the distinction between human and non-human. If we didn't meet this distinction in the way we meet it, then we wouldn't be in the middle of the Anthropocene. Yoga culture, the physicality of the world and your own physicality is on the same spectrum.

[22:41]

Yeah, that's why we can eat spinach, because we're on the same spectrum. Yeah, we can call it the spinach spectrum. We have to create these new Buddhist terms. Yeah. Okay. So when you come in the door of a room, if you're a practitioner, you feel yourself creating the room as you come in and how the room creates you, if it's a narrow hallway or a wide hallway, etc. So you're walking in a spatial medium. And affecting the medium, and the medium is affecting you.

[24:17]

Yeah, I remember I was in New York once. I think I was in New York, and I left a Rinzai Roshi from New York off. I brought him to the airport for some reason. And I was watching everybody in the station I watched him walk into the distance. And he didn't know. He was just walking. Though I know that he studied no theater walking. But everyone was walking differently than him. It looked like he was walking in a swimming pool. It just was different from everyone else.

[25:33]

Yeah, when I was in college, I took eight peyote a few times. You ate peyote? Yeah. I just wanted to be sure before I say that. Erase this from the tape. Yeah. And I was in Grand Central Terminal in New York. And only the black people walked like Zen monks. They were swimming through the room. All the white people were walking in some kind of architectural shape. So you come into a room and you want to look, you're a location and you want to locate the room as a location and locate yourself in the room.

[26:42]

Also, du bist ein Ort, und der Raum ist ein Ort, und jetzt schaust du, wie du den räumlichen Ort in dir als Ort verortest, wie du dich darin verortest. And the purpose of the room is you're not there to get Italian ice cream, you're there to do Zazen. Und in diesem Fall ist der Zweck des Raumes, ist nicht, um italienisches Eis zu kaufen, sondern der Zweck des Raumes ist... If you were there to get Italian ice cream, you could have a big cone in the middle of a room with a model of ice cream on it. So you're there because this is a unique moment. It's not how you're out in the street. You're now not getting ice cream. You're there to practice Sazen. So you want to awaken your mirror neurons, so you look at a Buddha and it says, hey, hey, that's good, let's sit down.

[28:23]

And now you want to awaken your mirror neurons, and then you look at a Buddha, and he says to you, hey, that's a good idea, come on, let's sit down now. But since they're not sure they want a Buddha, I'm going to suggest they have to make a large zafu and put it on the altar, and create an altar for a large zafu, and then they can go sit down. You know, all tea bowls, I mean all pottery, is made with, most of it's going to be used for food. It has glaze on it. Die meisten Töpferwaren sind für Lebensmittel gemacht und deshalb sind die alle glasiert. So, but under the glaze is clay, dirt.

[29:24]

Aber unter der Glasur, darunter ist Ton, also direkt Erde. So almost all tea bowls show you part of the clay because that's what they're all made of. And one reason I like this building and like what Hugo Kückelhaus did is he makes a point of showing you how the building is made. And one reason why I like this building so much and why I like what Hugo Kückelhaus did is because he as an architect or idea giver shows us how the building is built. Yeah. So in a Japanese house space, they have one pole which shows you how the whole house is made.

[30:26]

And that pole, you line up with your spine in the house because the spine, the pole, and the stars are connected. In a Japanese house, there is always a pillar that shows you how the whole house is built. And you align your spine with this pillar of the house, because this is the basic feeling that your spine, the pillar of the house and the stars are in connection with each other. So Atmar teaches all of us how to do this star stitch. It's a stitch like a star pattern, which connects the spine to the whole, to the, the enter, the, what did I call it? Interactivity. interactivity. You don't have to whisper. They all know.

[31:29]

The interactional phenomena. And Altmer brings us to the point of how to do this tifanade stitch on the Raxo. And he stands for a star constellation and stands for how the spine is connected to the stars. And the Phenomenality. Yeah. Okay. So that's why I kept the one beam in there from the old buildings. plane, although the Japanese builders don't like it because it doesn't look Japanese, but it's actually conceptually more Japanese than the whole rest of the send-out. And that's why I insisted that we keep the one pillar that is still from the old workshop, that we leave it as it was inside.

[32:31]

But the Japanese builders who built it don't like that I did that because it doesn't look Japanese, but when you look at it conceptually, Okay. So Suki Roshi, when he first came to America, wondered what to teach these young and youngish people. There they were, all these barbarians, and what's he going to say? And he didn't want to teach religion or religiousness. And he didn't want to teach philosophy. Or belief. Or belief. He wanted to teach experience.

[33:31]

What experience? Now, as we've been pointing out, and I hope we continue the process of discovery, that our practice is a practice of realizing actuality. Observing reality, observing actuality, and getting to know actuality and realizing actuality. So Suzuki Roshi asked himself, I'm sure, what am I going to say? What am I going to teach them? Now, as you know, I think most of us know that Tang and Song dynasty, Chinese Zen, rather separated itself from Buddhism.

[34:53]

I think most of you know that in the Chinese Tang and Song dynasty, der Zen Buddhismus ziemlich stark vom Rest des Buddhismus abgekapselt. And they emphasized the experiential dynamics of Buddhism less, more than the doctrinal aspects of Buddhism. And they made Buddhism a teaching of the present, not something that happened in India 2,500 years, or for us, 2,500 years earlier. Okay. So this practice is a multi-generational lineage.

[35:57]

That's why we chant the lineage in the morning. It's not so important who they are, though it's sort of nice to know something about some of them. And it's interesting, at least for me, and I think for all of us, when you know something about some of these people, When you chant their name, it feels a little different than if you know nothing. It's kind of magic. It's a kind of magic. But we chant the names just to physically remind ourselves that this belongs to a multi-generational being, not a single being.

[37:19]

It's like if we recognized English was a multigenerational being, a kind of being, we'd chant Shakespeare, Milton, etc., because they created the language. Goethe. Well, that would be... Yeah, that doesn't count. Well, it does count. Right now, we are an instance an instantiation, an instance of the English language and German language.

[38:21]

Okay, so if it's a multi-generational being, What connects the generations? It's not belief. It's an experience. And what is an experience of? Mind. And then it's called mind-to-mind transmission. And in Zen it is called the transfer from spirit to spirit. Okay, so what a big thing Suzuki Roshi bit off. He first got, okay, I'm going to teach these barbarians mind.

[39:24]

Yeah. And he fills my horizon, but when I see photographs of me beside him, he only came up to here. So how did he, he wanted to give us then, because mind means nothing in the dictionary or etymology of mind. I'm not teaching you or they are, he didn't teach us the dictionary meaning of mind or its etymological meaning. Yeah, I mean, we use the word kind of, she has a good mind or keep this in mind. Those are just kind of catch-all words. It's like treating you as a basket, which you don't know what you've put in the basket.

[41:02]

In English, we also use the word like this, if someone can think well, he has a good spirit. Or we use it in different ways, almost as if it were a kind of basket, and you can just put things in there. So how do we discover what mind means by discovering the experience of mind? Now, if we're going to experience an experienceable mind, we have to have a way to notice that. So Buddhism, in a way, we could say, is a highly developed way to notice interactional phenomenality. Wir könnten sagen, der Buddhismus ist eine hochgradig entwickelte, verfeinerte Art und Weise... One moment.

[42:31]

Eine hochgradig entwickelte, verfeinerte Art und Weise, die... interactivity, the way we enter activity, to discover the phenomenal world. If this is the practice of actuality, how are we going to notice actuality? I mean, it requires noticing. If this is the practice of actuality, then the question is, how do we notice actuality? You have to notice it. So it requires categories for noticing, which are consciousness, awareness, attention, knowing, and so forth. And scientists all over the world are trying to identify consciousness neurologically. And scientists all over the world are trying to identify consciousness neurologically.

[43:52]

Buddhism has developed ways for centuries now to notice knowing, to notice knowing. So we're not just conscious, we notice consciousness. How are we going to notice consciousness? We're just, oh, I'm conscious, yeah, I guess I'm conscious. I wasn't when I was asleep, quite, it was different. And in this regard, you know, don't worry about Buddhism. Study how you go to sleep. Study how you wake up. Study whether your posture is your heart's on the upper side of your body or the bedside of the body and so forth like that.

[44:53]

So early Buddhism created the five skandhas. Form, feelings, non-graspable feelings, percepts, associations, and consciousness. Yeah, so you can start noticing and deconstructing consciousness. And when you start deconstructing consciousness, you make it your own, because you put it back together in a... yeah.

[46:02]

When you deconstruct consciousness, you make it your own, because you can put it back together in a... yeah. Okay. But then you see that when you go one direction in the sequence, you produce consciousness. When you go the other direction in the sequence, you produce mind. And you're now thrown into the whole situation where, like this room, you're creating this room and the spatial... hapticity of the room and you're also creating consciousness, noticing, awareness, memory and a Zen adept is in the midst of that and knows what he or she is doing or feels directly what he or she is doing.

[47:07]

Is that too much? It's okay. And when you go in that direction, then you are in the middle again, that you are learning how to bring this space out, how to bring this space out in the moment of perception, how the space brings you out. And a advanced Zen practitioner feels or notices in the middle of this process how it works and notices what he or she is actually doing there. So that is an introduction to the teisho I was going to give about mind. And instead I talked about the Leipzig band's fear of religiosity. Yeah, and if the... A leader of this practice period invites me again.

[48:13]

Maybe it might happen that I could give part two of the experienceable mind a teisho. Okay. Dankeschön. Beautiful things.

[48:41]

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