and bring attention to your digestion instead of to your breath. It might be an interesting practice to bring attention to your digestion. You might learn to eat very, very carefully. Okay. Not picking and choosing, this is a very good practice. Dieses Nichtwählen und Nichtauswählen ist eine sehr gute Praxis. But since we constantly have to choose, change is choice. Und nachdem wir eigentlich immer Wahl treffen müssen, bedeutet Veränderung auch entscheiden.

[01:13]

Not picking and choosing is about choice. How you choose. How you choose through feelings, say. Now when we end in a few minutes, all of you will probably go out one of these two doors. Someone might choose this window. Sophia would like the window. I don't think any of you will walk repeatedly into the wall. So you're making a choice. Now, if you followed too strictly the Third Patriarch's, you know, don't pick and choose, you just walk into the wall, walk into the wall, walk into the wall, until you happen to find a door and blow on it.

[02:27]

So it means how we choose. Yeah, and you need to find some kind of ways in which, again, you can, in the particularities of your life, practice these things. Right now I remember two ways that I tried to do it a lot. One is when I, in the first years of my practice, I worked at the University of California. As sort of an administrator or program developer. And I was pretty busy. And I had to eat at local restaurants and things like that.

[03:47]

And one of my practices was never to pick, I don't know how to explain exactly, pick and choose what I ate. And I don't know how to explain it. One of my exercises was not to choose what I eat. Should I have this, a sandwich with tomatoes? As soon as I had those thoughts, I would not. I stopped. I just put my finger on the menu and ate whatever my finger touched. Usually more toward the left because it was cheaper on the left side. So I did that for some years even until I could open a menu and just Something appeared I'd eaten. That's what I'll eat.

[04:48]

And I had to be on the telephone a lot. So I developed a practice of never looking up a number. Very rarely. Once I sort of had used it a few times. And I would just dial and hope it was right. And after a while it got so most of the time it was. But it's much like Japanese and Chinese people know kanji characters in their hand. So you ask a Japanese person, what is the kanji for that particular kind of tree? And they say, well, that's a... And they go, oh, it's that one.

[06:04]

Their hand remembers it, not their mind. And strangely, you know, it takes 2,000 characters to read the newspaper since MacArthur simplified things. But for a scholar, 20,000 characters, 25,000 more might be the case. Strangely, the memory can't, ordinary memory can't remember all. But the body can remember. So I used to remember my phone numbers that way, remember them by dialing them. So it was just a way, you know, I'd hold the person or the feeling in front of me and I'd just let my hand do it.

[07:14]

And it was a way of not picking and choosing. I never got the Queen Mary at sea by accident. But sometimes I did get some strange numbers. So let's sit for a few moments. Now of course it's not just the bringing of attentiveness and awareness to the

[09:28]

body and your activity. There's also the awareness of mind itself. presence of mind itself. The present isn't a thing. The present is a presence. A presence that's inseparable from mind.

[10:36]

The mind that hears these words just now. Thank you for spending this morning and this afternoon with me and with each other.

[12:51]

And how did it work with Sophia today? Pretty good? Well, fine. We'll see. Well, let's hope it works tomorrow and the next day, too. Yeah. Good evening, good morning. You know, when I come in and you're meditating, it's our custom not to bow and disturb your meditation. Like during the main part of the seminar. If I come in in the evening like this and you're not officially meditating yet, if I bow, it's nice if you greet me and I greet you.

[14:02]

I felt lonely bowing up here. Okay. And today we have this, what I call a prologue day. And here's the shards of the day. Oh, shards, what's this? The pieces of pottery left in an archaeological site. And so any of you have tomorrow any questions or questions? curiosity about these things, please ask me. And as I seem to have to keep reminding you, it helps me a lot if you give me an understanding of how you understand what I'm talking about. Because often I think I try to be as clear as possible.

[15:38]

And there's often somebody will talk to me and I find simply other ways of looking at what I said that I hadn't noticed. And as you also know, all experienced practitioners are supposed to be ready with a question or comment at a moment's notice. Did you say something different? Okay. Now I want to speak about daily practice. Ich möchte über tägliche Praxis sprechen.

[16:44]

This evening. Heute Abend. How it is central to the conception and practice of Zen Buddhism. Wie sie zentral ist für die Konzeption und die Praxis des Zen Buddhismus. No, I think all religions emphasize daily practice. And I think all the arts and sports emphasize daily practice. Almost every activity emphasizes some kind of practice. That's at least important if not necessary.

[17:45]

And there have been studies which show that at the upper level of achievement in music and art and in general and sports, Given a certain fundamental talent, success or achievement is directly correlated to the amount and length of practice. Although you have to be patient with a flat learning curve. With occasional, hopefully occasional, leaps, jumps. But in Zen, practice... In Zen we're not just practicing the teachings.

[19:14]

Or the rules or forms of a sport or a religion. We're trying to actually reproduce Buddhism ourselves. And Zen, primordially, tries to go back to the Buddha herself. and it tries and imagines itself at least as going back to the earliest teachings of the Buddha. The pre-Abhidharmic discourses of the Buddha

[20:20]

which were kind of organized and arranged during the first 150 years or so after the Buddha died. And seem to be about as close as we can get to the Buddha's actual teaching. Zen wants to go back historically to this time. The same time it wants to make use of the teachings that have been developed in the Abhidharma, systemization. And I think that studying the Abhidharma is one of the most important things we can do. If we had more of a school type thing, as I have had in the past, I would emphasize a more thorough Abhidharma study.

[21:47]

But instead, in our context, I try to take certain basic teachings and emphasize. And from the Abhidharma through the Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools, Madhyamaka and Yogacara. Zen wants to bring those teachings also into our practice. but through culling or sifting out what isn't experientially based.

[22:55]

So the means to practice the teachings after the Buddha are to practice them through our experience and prove their truth and usefulness through our experience. So Buddhism, Zen practices a selective use let's say, a selective experiential use of all the teachings since the Buddha, virtually all the teachings. But fundamentally and conceptually, Zen wants to go back to the sitting posture of the Buddha himself.

[24:12]

With the sense, if the Buddha can discover Buddhism through himself, so can we. Of course, there's his historical context and his background. But we have the context of all his teachings. You know, I was walking through San Francisco once with my daughter when she was She's now 40, so when she was three or four, I don't know. It was before we moved to Japan, so she was perhaps four.

[25:14]

And we walked past this kind of, you know, one of these portable amusement parks. They set him up, you know, in the town square and take him down. So we happened to be walking by one evening and there was one of these wheels that spins upside down and everything, you know. And I wasn't particularly interested in going on this piece of equipment. And Sally said, I want to go on that. And I said, well, no, it's too, you know, it throws you upside down and everything.

[26:31]

No, it's not for you. She said to me disdainfully, if people can do it, I can do it. Well, how can I resist a challenge like that? So I get on this darn machine and my Glasses and pencils, everything's flying out. Sally's having a great time and trying to collect my glasses and things while we're going up somewhere. So that's our spirit in Zen. If the Buddha can do it, we can do it. Yeah. Yeah, but we don't want to go into the practice with too many teachings.

[27:47]

And we certainly don't want to go into the practice with a kind of stepladder idea. Or trying to discover stages and so forth. We just want to sit down. And as I spoke here one Sunday a few weeks ago, I would put it, we want to find our seat. So we're taking this Buddha posture, this wisdom posture. And of course, I mean, you know, this is not a posture you were born in.

[28:49]

I mean, you might have been, but it would be unusual. This is a posture that was developed over centuries. And a particular kind of mind goes with this posture. As you know, mind and posture are almost inseparable. So when we sit down in this posture, we're already doing something. It's not exactly a waking posture, and it's not a sleeping posture.

[29:54]

And to the extent that it overlaps with dreaming, sleeping posture, we're awake in the midst of our dreams and other dimensions of consciousness. In the midst of our dreams and our various... Something conceptual. In all various forms of consciousness. Okay. So we're allowing, as this posture overlaps waking, dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep, we're allowing the various potentialities of mind to appear.

[30:59]

And our accumulated experience to appear. Both conscious and unconscious and non-conscious. So first of all, we're becoming familiar with ourselves, if not the Buddha. So, as this process is going on, we're also in a process of what I would call finding our seat. And the experience of finding your seat is to come to a deep sense of ease.

[32:16]

There's not much or there's no distraction. You don't feel the need to do anything. You don't feel the need to go anywhere. You feel somehow already complete. And I would describe it as you have an experience of aliveness. You feel this is what it means to be alive.

[33:40]

This is sort of, I don't know how to describe it, pure aliveness. You don't need anything. You're simply alive and you feel complete and everything in its place. Okay, so what's the importance of this? It's a recognition of order, a deep sense of order. Like you're at the center of the universe, or at least your own universe. If there's other centers, that's fine.

[34:41]

This is, you feel at the center. And so it becomes for you, as you know this experience, Fairly often. Maybe not very often in its purest state. But you touch it. You come close to it when you sit. More and more it seems to be a kind of inner settling So if you do see this is what it means to be alive, at that point you don't need anything else to prove your aliveness or something like that.

[35:56]

It becomes your experience or your source of order. or your source of what is true. Now, this is very different than looking to some kind of cosmology, as most religions do, for a sense of order. You are looking to some given teaching. Or even looking to the culture, the life our culture has offered us. You now feel you need to choose a life based on how we actually exist.

[37:07]

And not only the life that is offered to us by our cultures. So you begin to feel both part of your culture, because you know that, and simultaneously free of your culture. Because you feel in touch with a sense of order, which is your own living. Because you feel in touch with a sense of order, And you also begin to establish now a platform in the senses, a platform in the senses.

[38:12]

Let me say it that way. You become very clear. There comes to be a clarity in each of your percepts, each of your sense perceptions. Now, if we find our seat, our source of order in ourselves, in our own living, Because of the accuracy and clarity of our experience. How does that then actually... Well, let me put it another way. Then in a parallel way, we want to find the truth of the world.

[39:35]

The world, what's the world? We don't have a word for exactly what I mean. I can use Dharma, but Dharma already means what I'm talking about. So how do we find the truth, let's say, the truth of the world? So that we have what's technically called, as I spoke of today, valid cognitions. Now, can we prove these are valid cognitions? Well, first of all, because they feel like it, that's a lot. Yeah, now, a valid cognition is when you know things through awareness and not consciousness. When you have a knowing which is not

[40:51]

mediated, as I have said, by conceptual constructions. In other words, when you can hold thinking in abeyance, and just know things directly through your senses. A non-conceptual or non-dualistic knowing. And how do you know when this is happening? Well, through developing the practice of sitting and then rooted in finding your seat, you begin to establish a mind that doesn't have to think.

[42:09]

A mind that knows, but doesn't know through thinking. And when we begin to... when we taste that or... come into that, the first step, as I said, is you begin to see things with a kind of preciseness. And sometimes so precise that they're almost outlined against a background. And that outline is almost like sometimes a little aura.

[43:22]

But at least you begin to see things with kind of preciseness it appears. A little like we spoke earlier of you begin to find your mind just rests on things. When you not only have found your seat or your kind of inner rest in your sitting, your mind finds a kind of rest. And in finding its rest on each perception, on each moment, things begin again to have this preciseness, clarity, a kind of brightness to, which you can notice is not there when there's

[44:34]

any conceptual associative thinking. So this finding your seat and finding that the world itself appears vividly and it seems like truly. You have in effect then established a kind of order in your own living and thinking and perceiving, which then begins to produce its own teaching or history or wisdom.

[46:10]

And the sense of being at the source of what's true then is further confirmed by the actions and the way you lived Coming into, bringing you into a world which seems in its extensions rooted in the truth and how things actually exist. And I think if we look at that, we can understand what is the most unique aspect of Zen practice.

[47:33]

Zen is unique in the emphasis it puts on meditation itself. And in an unstructured or uncorrected mode of meditation. But it's even more unique in how it brings the teachings experientially into the practice. And how Zen brings the teaching experientially into the practice is in this use of turning words or phrases. So the effort here has been to find aspects of the sutras and discourses and other teachings.

[48:52]

Find aspects of the teachings, discourses, sutras. That... are rooted in certain insights, and now to sort of cull out those insights, and makes them a phrase, which you can find the truth of by bringing it repetitiously, mantra-like, into your practice. I told the story in the Kassel seminar because they put the poem on the announcement. of two true friendship true friendship transcends both intimacy and alienation between meeting and not meeting there is no difference

[50:03]

Zwischen treffen und nicht treffen gibt es keinen Unterschied. On the old plum tree fully blossomed auf dem alten laumen Baum voll erblüht the southern branch owns the whole of spring besitzt der südliche Zweig oder Ast dem ganzen Frühling as also does the northern branch. Okay, now, that's a poem written by Genro, an 18th century Soto Zen master. In a collection of koans done in the 18th century, 1700s. The name of the collection of koans is in English the iron flute.

[51:25]

But it really means, actual Japanese is playing a solid iron flute upside down. Backwards and upside down. It's a little too zen. But it's a nice collection of koans actually, rather late historically for sure. Also, das ist dann trotzdem eine schöne Koansammlung, auch wenn sie historisch ein bisschen spät ist. Yeah, but then it's, you know, the poem is in response to a koan, where do we meet after death?

[52:27]

Und dieses Gedicht ist aber eine Antwort auf einen koan, wo treffen wir uns nach dem Tod? Yeah, the brother monk is sick and he says, geez, if you just leave your corpse behind here, that's sick, and where will we meet? You speak a little more strongly in German. Okay, and then there's this poem as a kind of comment. Und dann ist dieses Gedicht eine Art Kommentar. Okay, but this is a good example. Also das ist jetzt ein gutes Beispiel. What could it mean between meeting and not meeting? There's no difference. Was könnte es bedeuten zwischen treffen und nicht treffen?

[53:31]

Ist kein Unterschied. Do you believe that? Glaubst du das? Practically speaking, I hope you don't. Because I want you to keep coming to seminars. I miss you. I love seeing you. But in the relationship with an asanga and with a teacher, perhaps there's some other mind in which meeting and not meeting, there's no difference. And certainly in this poem, the southern branch owns the whole of spring. This is certainly finding your seat.

[54:40]

Not only has the tree found its seat, but each branch and each blossom has found its seat. The southern branch owns the whole of spring. The northern branch owns the whole of spring. Each of you owns the whole of spring. So This kind of poem and story is actually a kind of essence of certain sutras and an enactment of certain teachings. An enactment of certain teachings.

[55:56]

An actualization of certain teachings. And so we bring this into our awareness, not into our thinking consciousness, but into our awareness, this realm of valid cognition. Between meeting and not meeting, there's no difference. So we suspend thinking and just feel it. Maybe could Genro be right? What's he talking about?

[56:57]

And the southern branch owns the whole of spring. So in this kind of way, Zen is developed to bringing the teachings from the historical Buddha and through its historical development. into our actual practice so that we realize the teachings and not follow or just understand the teachings. And the realm of this realization and the opening up of the finding our seat is the realm of daily practice.

[58:12]

So we could say almost that Zen is a school of the Buddha, not a school of Buddhism. Whether that's true or not, you know, I don't know for sure. But it's true in my experience. And I think it can be, I know it can be true in your experience. If the Buddha can do it, why can't we? You each can own the whole of Buddhism. That's what we're doing here. Owning and perhaps owning and giving away.

[59:12]

I think that's enough as a beginning of conversation about daily practice. importance historically and conceptually of daily practice for Zen Buddhism. Historically and conceptually of daily practice in Zen Buddhism. Period. Thank you very much. And thank you for translating. Thanks for speaking. And Sophia was rather quiet. Thanks for sleeping. Yeah. Did she make some noises for a while? Yes, she didn't sleep when I came down.

[60:18]

She just talked to herself to sleep. You know, there's this wonderful expression, sleeping like a baby. And sometimes I find zazen is like sleep, not sleeping, but feeling like sleeping like a baby. But watching a baby, they don't always sleep like babies. But certainly some moments you go look at them and boy, is it delicious how they look. I feel it's pretty much the same way seeing everyone sitting in sashimi. You want to do it?

[61:44]

Good morning. Guten Morgen. Hello. Hello. You came in last night? Yes. And last evening I tried to give Yes. A historical and philosophical context for our daily practice. emphasizing the way that Zen is, let's say, simply a do-it-yourself school.

[63:37]

With the feeling that, you know, while there are many forms of Buddhism, that may help many different kinds of people. There should also be a do-it-yourself school. And, yeah, it's only going to appeal to those people who somehow need to bring this teaching up from within themselves and from how we actually exist.

[64:42]

So Zen wants to go back, as I said last night, to the earliest teachings of Buddhism, Zen, as I said last night, wants to go back to the earliest teachings of Buddhism. And it wants to make use of the tradition of teachings. And particularly Zen has evolved from the Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools. But more than making use of the teachings, Zen wants to go back to the practice of the Buddha himself.

[65:44]

The practice of the Buddha himself. And it wants to measure the practice by our actual experience. So Dogen would have the daring to say, these characters, kanji characters, I don't think this is right, this is not my experience in talking about a particular sutra.

[66:45]

And so he wrote it a different way. It was later found by scholars that he was right and the earlier transcription of the sutra was wrong. Well, look, I mean, most religions you wouldn't sort of like. Let's change this. It's not my experience. Suzuki Roshi used to say, when people asked what is our practice, he would say, it's just to sit. Well, it's correct. It's okay to say it's just a sit. But it's easy to misunderstand, too.

[67:57]

Now, if that's the advice, say, like in a monastery, and the whole situation supports a particular kind of practice, and you evolve your own mind and body is in a process of evolution through Sangha life, Yeah, then just to sit may be enough to say. But I think we need a more, as primarily lay practitioners, we need a... wider understanding of just to sit.

[69:25]

And Sukhirashi tried to, yeah, at various times, kind of himself give a wide feeling for this just to sit. Because just to sit is basically a philosophical idea. I mean, it's in the context of knowing all the Buddha's teachings, sutras, you know, practices, and saying, okay, all of this comes down to, or up to, just to sit. Yeah, now, just to sit, I mean, maybe one way I can try to find the truth of this, the feeling of this,

[70:30]

is to say, we just sit because there is no alternative. Okay, then if that's the case, when you say just sit, you're sitting with a feeling of no alternatives to just sitting. Anything else you're doing is adding something. But if we want to go back to the Buddha's practice in the purest sense, Maybe we want to sit without adding anything. Without having any alternative. Okay, so now let's say, here we are right now, we together are in the process of in the midst of daily practice.

[72:12]

And of course, while each of our daily practice is different, I'm surprised, actually surprised, nicely surprised by how many of us are developing a common practice. Although you're practicing in different parts of Europe, mostly, somehow the practice here is bringing us together in a common practice. And just as the, you know, since I have this little baby, I think about babies, you know, etc., I spoke about it quite a bit in Kassel last week.

[73:23]

I'll try to spare you. Particularly the three or so of you who are from Kassel. I don't want to... But as the actual structure of the baby's brain and endocrine system and so forth. End her what? Endocrine system? Endocrine. Endocrinus. Ah, wunderbar. Während sich also dieses Kind und sein Gehirn und sein endocrinisches System sich entwickelt, is shaped through the interaction with the mother. Primarily through the mother. And the child, the infant, learns to... monitor and shape its own feelings through this relationship.

[74:36]

In this new way of being which Buddhist practice can be and is, The Sangha helps us shape our own experiences in this new territory. It shapes our old experiences in a new way, our new experiences. It shapes our present experience. And more important, supports our own personal investigations in practice.

[75:48]

So can we sit with the feeling of no alternative? Or nothing added. Or when we add something, we notice we're adding something. Now I'm adding the idea of nothing added. And how does adding to my just sitting the idea of adding nothing affect my sitting? In this kind of way we practice.

[76:49]

As I said, I put these words on the flip chart. Down here in the middle I have breath, body, mind, being space. Okay. What is daily practice? Basically, it's zazen and mindfulness practice. And depending on your situation, you emphasize one or the other more. But ideally, your mindfulness practice is rooted in zazen practice.

[78:11]

Okay. And... And daily practice is also, as I've said, adjusting your day so that you can practice. Or finding ways in any situation where you can bring a feeling of practice in. into that situation. Okay. Now mindfulness practice is to bring attention to what you're doing. And there's some extraordinary dynamic to what you bring attention to.

[79:37]

Attention itself is an extraordinary dynamic. Yeah, perhaps we can say your life is what you bring attention to. Okay, so do we bring attention to our thinking? And to the things we think about, want to think about, etc. Yeah, or can we bring our attention to our aliveness itself? Now, this going back to the historical Buddha, in the way Zen does, and to measure all the teachings through our ability to actually experience it, means that we don't have in the Zen school a god-like Buddha.

[80:56]

And we don't have saint-like bodhisattvas. The way we understand the Bodhisattvas and the Buddha is always in the realm of our own potential experience. Now, your own potential experience may not extend very far. I'm sorry, it might not. But that doesn't mean you believe something because you think, well, my experience doesn't extend that far, so I'll believe it's true because others say so.

[82:02]

No, your Buddhism, your practice is always just what your practice is. And it's not in any, fundamentally your practice is never in the categories of good or bad. If your intention is to practice, and you can sustain that intention, then your practice is never in the categories of good or bad. Now I'm trying to find a way to actually get in touch with how radical this advice just to sit is. And how... Yeah, okay, I'm seeing if I can... I'll see if I can find a way.

[83:14]

So we bring attention Yeah, let's say to again our aliveness. To our activity. To our body itself. And to our mind. How are we actually existing at this moment? Now, to bring attention to the mind, I mean, obviously, you know, what we're seeing and hearing is, yeah, our own mind.

[84:26]

You may not have a direct experience of that or feel for that. But you can practice with just reminding yourself that it has to be true. Reminding yourself that it has to be true. I am seeing you, but I am seeing my own mind see you. It doesn't diminish you, but it adds the experience of seeing you and seeing my own mind seeing you. How much of you do I know and feel through my own mind and senses?

[85:31]

Wie weit kenne ich euch oder dich, wenn ich dich durch meine eigenen Sinne wahrnehme? And how much of you escapes is beyond my own mind and senses? Und wie viel von euch entgeht mir oder ist jenseits von meinem eigenen Geist und meiner Sinne, wenn ich euch wahrnehme? This kind of question ought to inform our practice. And if these kinds of questions inform our practice, our practice will be more subtle. Now I told the story in Kassel, the kind of almost child, I mean childish story, Zen story. Of the, you know, what do you do if you're, I mean, who the heck is in this situation?

[87:10]

Not too often. What do you do if you're hanging by a rope from your teeth? Off a cliff or something. And down below is a tigger. Or maybe a poo bear. It's just as good. What do you do? Well, you know in the Zen story, you pick a flower from the cliff and smell it. And the Buddha offered a flower, you know. Well, I mean, but if you could actually do this, you'd be free of stress in your life.

[88:34]

And I gave the example also of, say, you're in an airplane that three engines are smoking and one is dead. If you start thinking about the person you would have been who was going to meet somebody at the airport, I mean, it would be hard not to have a little trace of that. But that's no longer who you are. Who you are now is a person who's in an airplane that's crashing.

[89:35]

And there's going to be a difference between the person who says, okay, this is who I am now, what do I do? The point of these stories is, can you find your identity, your identification in the immediate situation? No, I think it's helpful to understand that as an identification and not as yourself. Although when we have statements like, the self covers everything, Sukhira used to say, such a statement is identifying self and this identification through the immediate situation. I think it's useful for us, particularly in our world of psychological thinking, is to treat the functions of self as a different aspect of practice.

[91:11]

from the process of identification. So you can begin to notice in your practice what you identify with. Now what we're trying to do is anchor ourself in our actual experience. In our own being space. Now we know about other things that are going on in other parts of the world and back at home and so forth. And there's no question that those things are important and they're real, they're simultaneous.

[92:27]

And our self is tied up in that, those other spaces. Yeah. No, let's leave it at that and not try to say more about that. But even though our self is tied up in these other spaces, the way self works through identification can be changed to be essentially rooted in our actual experience.

[93:32]

Oh, we have to do it again. Okay, I'm sorry. The way self works, or in other words, self also works... has power through what it identifies with. Okay. We can, aside from working with the functions of self, we can work with what we identify with. Okay. And Zen practice says, let's identify, let's anchor ourselves in our actual experience.

[94:39]

Lasst uns doch in unserer tatsächlichen Erfahrung uns verankern. So let's develop our primary identification within our immediate situation. Lasst also unsere Hauptidentifikation uns in der unmittelbaren Situation definieren. Okay, so what's daily practice here? Daily practice in the historical context of the development of Zen.

[95:13]

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