I'm sorry you had to give up your evening sasen for coming to talking. But thank you for doing so. Yeah, I wanted to... I wanted to enter while I'm here and just arrived the other day. I wanted to enter into our practice together. Yeah, and I wanted to be part of the work week in some way. And I wanted, if there's too much work to do, I wanted to give Ottmar a chance to skip lecture on Wednesday morning. But if it pours rain... You changed it a little?

[01:04]

Skip, yeah. Yeah, okay. They understood. Okay. But if it pours rain, he's got nothing better to do. He might give it. Okay. And I did it in the evening, of course, because these work days, while it's not raining, are precious. There's a Swiss-French, French-Swiss... linguist named Fernando de Saussure. I'm not good at pronouncing it. Anyway, he died in 1913. How would you pronounce it? I didn't understand you. Fernando S-A-U-S-S-U-R-E.

[02:15]

So soon. You don't have to pronounce that. I mean, you don't have to spell it. Anyway, I mentioned him. I mentioned him not because... You know, I'm scholar, academic or something. But I want to emphasize that the degree to which this practice we're doing, this Zen Buddhist practice we're doing, is closely connected with our own Western traditions, and we can find bases for it, resonances for it in our Western intellectual history.

[03:19]

So I don't think we have to become some kind of mongrel. A mongrel is like a dog with several different kinds of dogs in it. We don't have to become mongrel Asians. Yeah. Anyway, he is considered to be one of the primary founders of modern linguistics. And one of the things he says is that one of the things was his main standpoint was That language isn't something peripheral to our world, something we use to describe the world that's out there.

[04:32]

But that language is the very categories and distinctions by which we know the world. Die Weltkennung, by which we shape the world and in fact shape our neurology, our brain, etc. But this is an observation and understanding that's been in Buddhism for centuries. And if language is the way we shape the world, notice the world, we notice the world through language categories.

[05:37]

Of course we notice the world in wider ways than just through language. But that's still in the territory of language somehow. So Zen as a Buddhist school, a Buddhist practice, So Zen as a Buddhist school, as a Buddhist practice emphasizes Since we do shape the world through language, through the conceptions of language, we can change those conceptions. We can use the structures of language to reshape how we know the world.

[06:51]

Now, enlightenment is a shift in worldviews. Erleuchtung ist ein Wechsel in den Sichtweisen der Welt. It's an enlightenment experience. It's a shift in worldviews that's durable, that's continuously present. Das ist ein Wechsel in den Sichtweisen der Welt, die von Dauer ist, die immer da ist. Many of us have changed. shifts in worldviews that could be enlightenment experiences. Maybe we have hundreds of them, thousands of them. But they're not durable. They don't stay with us and not ever present with us. They're quickly overwhelmed by the culture we live in and all the confirmations of the culture we live in through all our interactions, especially with other people.

[08:14]

It usually, very often, If you're not practicing, insights slip away. So often the practitioner finds that insights he or she had in the past come back and suddenly change things in a more fundamental way. They come back and change things in a more fundamental way. Or Or practice makes us more susceptible to new insights. That because we're practicing, more deeply penetrates us.

[09:14]

No, we only have one evening tonight, so I can't talk about all aspects of Buddhism. Much as I would like to. But I just can't do it. But... When you practice Sazen, just simply, one of the things that happens, when you can really sit still without moving, Consciousness stops moving and stops moving you. And levels of mind and associations and freedom from associations begin to be more present and more the fill of you. And so an insight reaches more of us.

[10:35]

Now, if If enlightenment experiences are world view shifts, we can... excuse the image, press our noses against the window of our worldviews. Now, Dogen says, the... the... The world of Zazen is very different from the world of other things.

[11:41]

And what he means is that the the practitioner, the adept practitioner, identifies him or herself, but is not exactly anymore a him or her. Their sense of the world, inner and outer world, their sense of the world, their feeling for the world, and it's not anymore exactly inner and outer, arises from the experiences in zazen and not from your culture. not from your lay life not from your job not from your love you may still love but your experience of the world comes from zazen not from exterior things okay

[13:06]

Now, if, again, enlightenment experiences are worldview shifts, a practice, a smart way to practice, a traditional way of practice, is put yourself in the context of worldviews. In the context of possible shifts in worldview. And you can use language to do this. You can use language that contradicts or is different from your worldviews. Now, so I think for this evening and for our work week I can give some simple examples.

[14:20]

Fairly simple examples. And doable examples. But the effects are not simple. It can be far-reaching, transformative, even enlightening. So let's take something simple and basic. Everything's changing. All of Buddhism arises from that. Truth and observation. Now, we need a number of words to give ourselves a feeling for Everything's changing. One word for everything's changing is everything's impermanent.

[15:25]

Now, although we like to think of Buddhism as, I don't know, non-intellectual, some sort of natural thing, barefoot, barefoot, He's the most creative translator of it. A lot of restaurants in America have no shoes, no service. Okay. Okay. So just as the example I give often is zazen is not just a physical posture.

[16:45]

It's also a mental posture. And the mental posture is don't move. And it's the combination, the dynamic of the posture and the intention not to move So all of Buddhism is permeated by mental and physical postures. Now, I suspect that those of you who are here for the first time are only here for work weeks, you know, etc. You may wonder about all the details, how you do or Yogi and... It can drive you nuts.

[17:51]

So part of my tissue is to give you some explanation of these details. So if we take... One word for everything's changing is everything's impermanent. So you have to bring the mental conception of impermanence, you have to intentionally bring the mental conception of impermanence into your every action. Yeah, anyone can do it. I wonder why everyone doesn't do it. But maybe it's because we're lazier.

[18:57]

Maybe it's because it goes against our feeling of how the world is. Or maybe it's because we don't take much pleasure in the little difference that occurs when we describe the world differently. But if you bring the word impermanent to everything, with a tree it's fairly easy. You see it's growing and the bark is changing and blah, blah, blah. But if it's a stone, it doesn't change very fast. But if you're a geologist or attentive, you can see. the history of the stone in the stone, of its changes. And, of course, you can move it from one place to another.

[20:00]

And Crestone Mountain Zen Center, where I just came from, is a field of stones, among other things. Because for thousands of years, stones have been rolling off the mountain. Because for thousands of years, stones have been rolling off the mountain. And Sukhyo, she says, a stone at the top of the mountain is different from a stone at the bottom of the mountain. We certainly feel differently about a stone at the top of the mountain. Okay, so everything's changing. You can bring the word impermanent into your... perceptual process.

[21:09]

And in doing it, you'll start noticing your perceptual process, which is percept, percept, percept, etc. Yeah, and then you can bring the word interdependent. And you can bring a word I created, intermergent. Because everything is continuously unique. So you can bring continuously unique into each person.

[22:13]

This is the, what's basically I'm describing Dharma practice. Yeah, okay. Okay. This work week gives us a chance to explore this. If everything's changing, we don't live in a container. Things are not entities, they're activities. So you have to again bring everything you look at, a stone, it's And this is not intellectual.

[23:17]

You look at it. You feel it as an activity. Perhaps the stone's getting a little warm in your hand. Or perhaps you can get it wet, and it's a little different. So you're applying an activity to it, but it is also, and you can see in its geology, blah, blah, blah, that it has been and still is, in fact, an activity. So when you look at something, and we have In our culture and in our language, it's shaped as an entity. And you reshape it as an activity, over and over again. Whether you know it or not, you're at the edge of enlightenment. I'm not making any promises.

[24:29]

But the edge is there. So we're not living in an envelope or a container. There's no out there. Yeah. Even a great scientist like Feynman. Feynman, F-E-Y-M-A-N. I know spelling is hard because it looks the same as German, but it doesn't sound the same anyway. So anyway, he says science is studying the world that's out there, whether we study it or not. This is not Buddhism. Yeah, the tree is out there. But the tree has been changing for a long time.

[25:31]

And its interdependence is so thorough that you can't say it's out there. It's an in there with everything else in there. Okay, now see if I can make some point here clear. So if the world is not a container, then it's malleable. You can shape it. My dough is malleable. So today we've been Making Johanneshof.

[27:00]

And Johanneshof has been here for quite a while. But before it was Johanneshof, it was a farm. And before it was a farm, it was a forest. So it was a forest and somebody cut down the trees, cleared it. That's how civilization starts. Yeah, and then it went from forest to farm. And forest to farm. And it went through anthroposophical Rudolf Steiner transformations as well, non-right angles.

[28:02]

And it's interesting that the building we Just bought, took possession of across the street. Was built for Hugo Kugelhaus to retire to. Yeah, and he partly designed it, as I understand it. And he was a master craftsman, carpenter and so forth from that period between the two world wars in Germany. which led to Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy and Charlotte Selver and Sensory Awareness and so forth. And much of Esalen Institute in California arises from that period more than it arises from Asia.

[29:07]

But Hugo Kugelhaus thought a house should be a field for the development of the senses. And that's just what the Japanese think. A house is... sense field, not a container. So they don't make permanent walls. Everything slides and there's various It's hard to say where outside and inside begin. Okay. The other day I was sitting in the Zendo in Crestone. And the service was about to begin.

[30:24]

This is an example, an anecdotal example And I noticed, you know, we have a slate floor, slate tile floor, and it's set so everything is a diamond. The squares are set like they're diamonds. And we lay the gosa mats down. We spread gosa mats, straw mats, like tatami, sort of. And we lay the gosa mats down in a certain pattern so there's enough room for rows of people to bow. And we're bowing into the smelly socks of the guy in front of you.

[31:26]

I'm learning some vocabulary here. But they were kind of adjusting them to the squares, to the triangles. And I realized they just don't understand yogic culture. Because putting the mats down is exactly the same as bowing. Okay, now let's see if I can make this point. If the world is malleable, if it's being shaped over long periods of time or momentarily. von Augenblick zu Augenblick oder auch über lange Zeitabstände.

[32:43]

Johanneshof isn't just three big shifts from forest to farm to zendo. Ist der Johanneshof nicht nur drei große Veränderungen vom Wald, Farm zu einem Zendo? The forest for centuries was incalculable numbers of conjunctions. The forest for centuries was incalculable numbers of conjunctions. of changes, of variable changes. Insects, animals, weather, One kind of tree being replaced by another kind of tree. There are literally infinite number of little changes all the time.

[33:54]

Likewise when it was a farm. I mean, they didn't farm the same way or the same crops. over the last centuries. And this building, which is once a farm and then an anthroposophical kinderheim, And now a Zen Buddhist meditation center. But those little changes are also with every percept. At least our practice is to bring interdependence changing into every person. So what does that mean? It means you don't do things, you form things.

[34:54]

When you spread the mats, you're not doing something in the world as a container. At that moment, you're actually forming the world. No one spread bowing mats in here, or futons, until we... until we made it a Zendu. And the Zabutans change this room into this room. So putting out your Zabutans, you're forming the world. And if you know you're forming the world, And when you know that you are forming the world, you are also forming the mind.

[36:08]

And you are also forming the body. So when we bow, I put my hands together, bring it up through the chakras, a book in a kind of shared space, And bow to you. I'm forming my body when I do that. I'm awakening the subtle body of the chakras. And if you know there's no way that you're not forming the world, that everything you do is forming the world, and everything you do, the way to form the world, everything... You form the world on each appearance.

[37:12]

On each percept. On each mental formation. It will change how you're in the world. Okay. So the bowing mats are... you know, the Goza bowing mats at Crestone. They're like this, you know, button without brocade. They're formed in threes. You fold them in threes. And why do you do that? Because it's a single gesture. You don't even think about it. How is it folded this way or that way? It's just a gesture. And when you pick it up,

[38:13]

It's also a gesture, single motion. So we could call it a non-discursive gesture. Yeah, how Atmar and Peter and I put on our robes. It's with our body and our head, and you get it mixed up, you can't figure out, you know, it's like, as I say, it's like trying to make a bed with yourself in it. And if you get the gestures wrong, because you're jet-lagged or whatever, you get all tangled up, you know, what to do, help me! Because it's a gesture which allows you to feel yourself forming the world. Just thinking about the world. The napkins in the Oryoki are the same. a gesture.

[39:43]

It's folded in threes, and you open it up, you fold it back in threes. And the serviettes and the Oryoki are exactly the same. You fold it, you triple it, and you unfold it again. Yes. So I've created the word be-forming. Ich habe das Wort be-forming. Yeah, be-forming. Be-formen. Be-formen. Doesn't exist in English. Well, not exist in German. Okay, because we say being. Heidegger spends all his time trying to say what being is. I think the best word in yoga culture is be-forming. Maybe it's something like pre-forming. Because you perform your mind, body and the world all at once.

[40:45]

So maybe you could use this made-up word. In whatever you're doing during the rest of this week. You're performing lunch. We're performing Zen. Because you're not doing it, you're forming it. We're forming Zen in Europe and America. And we form it in little ways, like having Zafras. So the folks in the Zendo in Crestone, when they bowed as part of the service, they had some sense, perhaps, I hope, that they were forming their mind, body, and the world.

[41:58]

in how they were bowing. But for the observant practitioner, spreading the bowing mat is exactly the same as bowing. You stand, you use it to form the mind, you use it to form the body, and you use it to form the world. And when you close it up, you fold up the world. Yeah, so it's a process of forming, folding and unfolding. Through which a new world can appear. You can shift your worldviews in a fundamental way.

[43:14]

To give up the feeling you're doing something, but to recognize you're always forming something. And that forming includes you. Body and mind. I'm sorry, I went... Well, I still have five minutes, I suppose. Thank you very much. May our intentions be the same in every life and in every place. May God bless you.

[44:05]

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