You know, it's obvious that I'm reevaluating what I'm doing in practicing and teaching in America and Europe. And as I've said often, I came to Europe, I had no intention I came to Europe in 83 to start practicing or teaching. But it was sort of like I was at the bottom of the hill and Buddhism rolled down the hill and took me over. So I started. And I inherited this weekend seminar, week seminar institution that goes on in Europe.

[01:08]

Yeah, and there's no comparable duration of time in which you would talk and give lectures in the Chinese-Japanese tradition. And Dogen compiled lectures or sometimes one sentence delivered when everyone was standing in the kitchen. Or because nobody can sleep all those dark hours without electricity, you know, at 2 a.m.

[02:09]

in the morning. Oder weil ja, als es damals noch keine Elektrizität gab und weil man eben nicht all die dunklen Stunden überschlafen kann, gab es dann manchmal Vorträge um zwei Uhr nachts. And since the police woke me up at 11 o'clock last night, I thought it might be a good time, but I didn't know what rooms you were in. This is the only seminar in which I'm I feel like I'm presenting practice as an addition, an adjunct to what you're doing. Yeah. In the other seminars, I'm expecting, I guess... I'm mostly introducing the basic approaches to practice.

[03:29]

But I do hope it leads people to practice. And here, I don't have any hope it leads you to break. It's not because you're a bunch of weirdos. I just respect that you have your own way of relating to people, which I shouldn't interfere with too much. But I am interested in how this might make you affect your work with clients or your own life, etc., So if we do, and if I have your permission, let's try again a sangha donut.

[04:43]

Not a Berliner. In America, a Berliner is called a jelly donut. Um... So if we do do a Sangha donut discussion again, I would ask that maybe you start out with a two-fold question. And what is the role of attention in your practice? In the other fold, what is the role of intention in your life?

[06:04]

Okay. Yeah, now yesterday I spoke about this underwater feeling. which anticipated statements like of Dogen's. The true human, the whole earth in the ten directions, is the true human body. Now, what I'm trying to do is deal with a statement like this in a realistic way so that it can be something you feel or approach or imagine or practice.

[07:05]

Because my experience is, even if one only understands such a thing, and its possibilities, It does work in us. Make our world more subtle maybe. Yeah. Okay. So let me, I mentioned yesterday this, the Buddha as the one who sits at the base of the wisdom tree.

[08:12]

Because this brings us really into what practice is really about. Yeah. And I think the main obstacle to seeing what is meant in Buddhism by practice The main obstacle to what is meant by practice in Buddhism is our implicit assumption that we have an inherent nature.

[09:26]

Yeah, a destiny, a fate. And our education in our life is to develop this nature we're given at birth. Can you say it beginning again? Our life, our education, our development is to realize this nature given to us at birth. Now, not only is this a cultural assumption, but it is reinforced in every magazine article, every time you talk to somebody else, et cetera.

[10:28]

Yeah. Yeah, and it's reinforced by our simple experience of our self as being a continuous being. And there's a lot of moral revulsion or moral worry about genetic engineering and so forth. Revolt means to be against? You're revolted by, you're against. You're against, yeah. Big time. Okay. And then there's a whole, there's a lot of moral deviation and intervention against something like genetic, how do you say that in German?

[11:37]

Engineering. But genetic engineering, genetic engineering. Thank you. Against genetic engineering. that we can all, with a little genetic engineering, have brilliant children who are beautiful and so forth. It's a little too late for us, over 50. But practice seems to imagine some kind of tabula rasa where you can just, hey, I'm gonna be reborn, I'm gonna start over. And that's not a correct statement either. But in some ways it is considered a kind of rebirth.

[12:42]

A rebirth into a wisdom lineage and not a genetic lineage. And it assumes an immense capacity to evolve your, develop your, create your lived beingness. Yeah. Yeah. But it, again, requires practice. Repetitional unicking. Okay, so let me just, this is just to give you a feel for what's expected, seriously expected and possible in practice.

[13:59]

The teacher at the foot of the great wisdom tree. Intuitively. Now this means something like, I mean, I'm sure they don't have a word for in English for what is actually in the original. So it's like arises spontaneously through being faced and absorbed. Yeah, sort of like, and also through incubation, hibernation, allowing it, and so forth. Because one of the big factors is to feel you have permission.

[15:06]

Maybe one of the most significant roles, if I have a significant role here, is to give you permission. Suki Roshi gave me permission to notice this underwater feeling and not think that I was drowning or going crazy. Because it contradicted my previous concept of the body and the world. Okay, so the teacher at the foot of the great wisdom tree, intuited the five aggregates, the five skandhas, which you all know, backwards and forwards,

[16:29]

Jackson. Yes, yes. It's in my iPhone right here. Yes. Yes. One of the five... Let me see my iPhone. My good positioning system says I'm in... Yeah. And in order to manifest this for three months, he only lived through the aggregate of feelings. lebte er nur in dem Aggregat des Empfindens. He's taking on three months, three days, seven weeks, I don't care. I'll notice feeling.

[17:45]

I'll feel my thinking. I'll feel the person in front of me. Wenn du irgendeine Zeitspanne, über irgendeine Zeitspanne hinweg, drei Tage, sieben Tage, drei Monate, ist mir egal... He intuited the 12 sense organs. Now I want to come back to this 12 sense organs. I mean, what kind of Martian is this? And the 18 elements fully. He also intuited the four truths fully. And for three months, he began by living for three months only by feeling the truth of suffering.

[19:10]

You look at someone's face and you may see their joy, you may see their stillness, but you also see their suffering. And you keep uniting that until it really is happening in you. and the way that you accept it as your life also your life and accepting it in a way that you fully feel it but it doesn't unbalance you He intuited and lived fully for three months the four applications of mindfulness.

[20:24]

That's applying bodily mindfulness to the body. That's applying bodily mindfulness to feelings. And that's applying bodily mindfulness to emotions. Anger, desire, etc. And And he lived by way of feeling for three months in which mindfulness was intensely applied. Mindfulness was intensely applied to feeling for three months.

[21:37]

This list is... I have only given you about half of it. And the last thing I'll mention though is that he lived for three months by way of feeling mind only. Yeah. So actual practice that sets up enlightenment is understood to be something like this or to be like as this. And the way this happens is let's say it starts out for us as, you know, in the beginning, as a commitment to do it.

[22:55]

Because you have some conviction that it will be good for others as well as yourself. that someone in the world should do this. And if you really believe that someone ought to do this, hey, I mean, that's obvious, means you should do it. Sorry, but it is. Or at least approach it and try to help others do it or be there for others to try to realize. Now, to practice in this way To do it for yourself, that intention is not strong enough.

[24:04]

You really need the feeling that this is necessary for the world. Du brauchst wirklich das Gefühl, dass dies für die Welt notwendig ist. It's necessary for the world for someone to do it. Because if someone does it, it makes it possible. And of course you have to believe it's possible. Now when you sit down on your cushion, if you do sit down on your cushion, or in any way you decide to meditate sometimes, and meditation is not a medicine really, it's a tonic.

[25:32]

In other words, it functions through repetition. So you sit down on your cushion and maybe you can imagine it's like a potter's wheel. And your investigation of yourself sitting on the cushion is something like turning a pot, shaping a pot. And how do you shape your true human body on this Zazen wheel? You notice when you feel better practicing.

[26:56]

There has to be some kind of measure. And the most basic is feeling something like better or true or more connected. And the feeling may occur in meditation and it may occur later in the day. But it seems to happen more often when you meditate. Or you feel a kind of ease. What? some deep satisfaction or completeness.

[28:10]

And you don't say to yourself, well, these are just ephemeral things, yeah, sometimes, you know. You say, this is a possibility. I can tell you an anecdote in my own life. I haven't mentioned this for a long time, I think. And there's a kind of strange poetry, too. Yeah, I had a sister who went to... crazy enough that she had lived in a mental hospital for a couple of years. And I was the one person she felt she could turn to, and I was unable to help.

[29:18]

Yeah, and I felt completely I felt so much mental pain at that time. Continuously for more than a year. And I remember thinking I would trade any physical pain for this mental pain. But I started to practice. It didn't make much difference in the first months. But in those days I... like Clinton, never inhaled.

[30:26]

In other words, people were supposed to smoke, so I would smoke, but I just blowed out my nose. I never inhaled, I promise you. It was just too harsh. So I was walking through the streets of San Francisco and I lit a cigarette. And it was quite windy for some reason and the match burned out. And for a minute it burned me, it burned my fingers. And the poetry is, I was walking past this big brick campus of the fireman's fund insurance company.

[31:34]

I was burned, but the fireman's fund insurance company was right beside me. But at the moment, all I noticed was that I felt a rather sharp burn. And for some reason, for a moment, I felt good. And I thought, and I think this thought came from practice. If I can feel good for a fraction of a second, I can feel good all year. And I somehow I knew that was possible by that because I did feel good for a moment and within a year I'd accomplished it.

[32:58]

But I wouldn't, I'm sure, have been able to make practice work to accomplish this if I hadn't completely in that instant believed it was possible. So there's a kind of internal psychic chemistry or alchemy that has to be there to make this practice work. And it's usually simply termed the Bodhisattva vow.

[33:58]

It's the vow to realize for everyone which is the chemistry that makes practice work. Yeah, oh dear. So it would probably be good to have a break. Because you started sitting more than an hour. And So there's more I thought I should bring in, but we have more time. So maybe afterwards we can ask ourselves what is the role of intention in our practice and the role of intention in our life.

[35:01]

And of course anything else that spontaneously arises. Thank you very much.

[35:05]

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