Good morning, everyone. Guten Morgen. Oh, I said it. Yeah. During this day of Friday, before we kind of officially start the seminar in the evening, It's part of my attempt to experiment with how to teach Buddhist practice, Zen practice in the West. Because we don't have much, well, let's put it another way.

[01:01]

In the West, both the United States and Europe, There's a lot of people who want to practice Zen or Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, seriously. Yeah, and as I said the other night, it's... If you wanted to... Seriously practice Zen in the past it meant, and in Asia it meant monastic life. Lay practice was mostly a dilute form of practice. But Buddhism dilutes quite well.

[02:19]

You don't have so much an esoteric practice for the real people in another version for popular consumption. Buddhism assumes an experience of oneself through meditation, And an experience of oneself that frees one from cultural identities. Und auch eine Erfahrung von sich selber, die einen dann frei macht von kulturellen Identifikationen oder Identitäten.

[03:36]

So now on Friday, this what I call the prologue or pre-day. Also an diesem Freitag, das den ich den prologue oder vortag nenne. And was I didn't, I haven't usually... started, this is only the last year or so I've been doing this. I haven't usually started with meditation. Because I wanted us to bring our cultural identities and muddle along. And I didn't want us to kind of enter this somewhat different mind of meditation. But the main complaint I've had about the prologue day is that we don't start with meditation. So I've compromised. Instead of starting with half an hour or so, I'm starting with, let's start with less.

[05:01]

But maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe I shouldn't say how much it is. Okay, so let's sit for a little bit and then we'll start our muddled, our muddle. Are these seats saved for somebody who's... Oh.

[06:34]

So, if you're sitting too far in the back, I'd like you to move a little forward, if you would. At least a little bit. There's only us sitting here together. Yeah, right in there. Thank you.

[07:36]

Okay, why do I say muddle? Why do I say it like that? The title of this seminar is a good example of this. studying karma, studying the world and studying the self. So let's just take it as world, self and karma. Well, most of us, I mean, there's certainly not much agreement in current sociology and philosophy on what is the world, what is self, etc.

[08:59]

But we function, for the most part, as if we knew what the world is and what self is and so forth. And we can say that the experience of knowing what the world is and knowing what self is, we can call karma. Yeah, but still, if we're going to have a discussion, we have to have among ourselves some kind of agreement on these words. And what I'm talking about is actually... a big part of how Buddhism itself has developed over many centuries.

[10:18]

Because it's developed through internal to Buddhism disagreements about what self is. It's developed through internal to Buddhism itself. Okay, inside of Buddhism. Yeah, different Buddhist schools. Okay. And that paralleled, of course, the development stimulated or provoked by... each culture Buddhism developed in. So in effect, what we're doing here now is developing Buddhism or ruining it, I don't know. Yeah, now, I could just present Buddhism to you the best I can.

[11:35]

Practice. And you can do it. And for some of you, it'll probably work. But for most of us, we still practice within our own worldview. Don't realize that practice challenges our worldview and we don't let that challenge happen. Yeah. Now in the background of this for me is what's happening to America right now.

[12:36]

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to spend time on it, but I would say the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, Revolutionary War is the wars with England, and the Civil War, and this recent World Towers event are probably the three most defining events in American history. Well, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but these, as the Americans call them, the Revolutionary War, the liberation wars of the English, then these secession wars, and now the towers of the World Trade Center, are probably the most terrible experiences within the USA. America has a very shaky cultural identity because it's a mixture of so many cultures.

[13:41]

So it's mostly nationalism and not really culture. And since America right now has the predominant military power in the world, A lot of the economic power, it's a little scary. They can do what they want. So I'm thinking about how we identify ourselves. And I wonder why I never identified with, I mean, I was born in America and my ancestors been there since before it was America. But so genealogically, if there's an American, I must be one.

[14:44]

But I don't feel like an American and never did. And I refuse to participate in the society, basically. But I probably would have done that in any society, who knows? So we have this topic again, self and the world. And now people are even materialists, and we could say subtle materialists, are trying to do what I call short real-time imaging of the self-functioning. They try to get a biological picture of the self-functioning in the brain and the body.

[16:03]

You're speaking about scientists? Yeah. They do real-time imaging of the self how it functions. So is the self, in what sense is the self a material thing that can be? Yeah, and what if that's, to some extent, that has to be the case? What does that have to do with Buddhism and the self we find ourselves as Europeans or Westerners? So what I'd like to do today, because we don't have to... Starting tonight, we try to go somewhere in the seminar. But today I'd just like to raise some questions.

[17:06]

Yeah, and yeah, the questions will confuse me and probably you too. Because I don't think anybody has any, there's no common understanding of these three words, even karma. the general definition or understanding of these three words, and also not of karma. Particularly the popular idea of karma in the West. Last night when I came, arrived here, I would have liked to have, with Marie-Louise, gone out and walked around the neighborhood.

[18:38]

And, yeah, maybe found a cafe to sit down in and Have a tea or a coffee or something. Yeah, sort of looking for the world. But we have a 26, 27-month-old little girl. who is extremely independent. She thinks autonomy is the only thing that counts. So we couldn't go out and look for the world. The world was we had to stay home or stay here in this little apartment across the way.

[19:45]

And feed her and see if she'd go to bed. So that was also my world. Yeah, just the necessities we accept. And I remember going, yeah, years ago, sometime like 19... 79 or so. I was in Belize, Georgia in the Soviet Union. And it was at that time somewhat more liberal and open than the rest of the other parts of the Soviet Union I'd been in. So I went out looking for the world. At least a place to have a cup of coffee or tea. And I walked maybe two or three miles up and down streets.

[20:53]

And there was no place to have a cup of coffee or tea. The city was designed or forced to have really no place for people to congregate. You know the word conspiracy? And the word conspiration means to breathe together, conspire. Conspiracy is actually a conspiracy. And in English, conspiration means to breathe together. So it's clear that society is a little afraid of us if we get too close. If we have coffee together, we might start breathing together and conspiring. And I found it very alienating to walk around the city and have no place to enter, it was just dreary fronts of buildings.

[22:32]

I really felt quite alienated by it. Yeah. I mean, if I'd been on Mars, it would have been probably more alienating, but it was still quite, it wasn't the world for me. Yeah, and this morning when Sophia finally went out the door here, She was transfixed because she could hear the voices of children at the next door kindergarten. Voices she knew that weren't much older than her.

[23:46]

She was there. My world. But if we brought her over there, after a few kids hit on her, she'd want, my world is over there with me. So what I'm trying to say, obviously, is that the world is, first of all, a subjective experience. That we actually need. And if the world is too weird, we feel disturbed inside. Okay. So for me, anyway, I think it's useful in general, but especially if you want to practice something like Zen.

[25:20]

To explore or feel what you mean by the world. Wittgenstein says something like a word has meaning only through its practice. Wittgenstein sagt, dass ein Wort, sagt etwas so wie, ein Wort hat nur Bedeutung in seiner Ausübung. Through its structured use.

[26:21]

it has by a number of practitioners of that use, a word, it's only in that way that a word has meaning. So a word is a structured use that functions for a number of people. Yeah. A word, just if one person uses a word one way and no one else does, it has no meaning.

[27:32]

If I use the word grass to mean freedom, Well, I might, but that has no meaning. But if I give you the little Zen poem, sitting quietly doing nothing, spring comes, grass grows by itself, And you really have some kind of feeling for that little poem. Sitting quietly doing nothing. Spring comes. Grass grows by itself. So then later in the seminar, maybe I can say, yeah, the 10,000 grasses. You have a feeling of this freedom of the grasses growing and all of them are different.

[28:55]

So for a little while we've given the word grass a structured use among us. A special use actually. And Zen practice is full of such uses of words. To take a word out of its usual context, but still a familiar word. And give it a special meaning in terms of yogic experience. So recently I would like to use this time today Ich würde gerne diese Zeit heute dafür verwenden, um Dinge aufzuwerfen, von denen ich glaube, dass sie es wert sind, bemerkt zu werden, und die mir in letzter Zeit selber aufgefallen sind.

[30:30]

One of them is the distinction between an observing mind and the observing self. And I've always assumed a difference. Yeah, in my own practice. But I've never pointed out until very recently that there's a difference. Recently I realized that there's a thorough confusion between the observing self and any possibility of an observing mind. Between observing self and observing mind. Okay. I mean, we tend to, you know, you say, I did this, and you know, you observed yourself, you're aware of yourself doing this,

[31:42]

And is that awareness you? Or is that awareness Buddha mind? If it is Buddha mind, then we ought to notice when... the observing self and the observing mind are different. If observing mind could also be called what we mean by Buddha mind, then we ought to really notice in our own experience, is there a difference between observing self and observing mind?

[33:05]

And if there is a difference, then Buddha isn't way back 2,500 years ago. Or something unattainable. Or only for some spiritual hero or shero. Ha ha. We have to be politically correct nowadays. You can't say hero. And since at least as many women are practicing Zen seriously now as men, And when a Zen teacher is really good, they call him grandmotherly.

[34:07]

I'm not there yet. I'm working on it, though. Okay. Because if observing mind is Buddha mind, or something close to it, then it's already our own experience. And to know that or notice that or test that for yourself, gives you an intentional context in which to practice.

[35:10]

And that's what the pedagogy of Zen is. Das ist die Pädagogik von Zen. To create intentional context in which you practice. Okay. I think we ought to take a break. And We'll start again and I think maybe half an hour is good to have a cup of tea and so forth. And I think there's toilets way down. Germany always put toilets in the basement. In restaurants, if you go down. So you get some exercise. Okay, thanks. And I've never said it exactly like that before.

[37:35]

And I can think of some problems with that as a statement. So I myself wonder, can I take that as characteristic of Zen pedagogy? But then Tsukiroshi, my teacher, said, no gaining ideas. Is an intentional context a gaining idea? So I'm questioning myself as well, all the time. How does this work? Does it make sense? No, but I'd right now like to start with any kind of discussion we might have together.

[38:52]

And several people brought up things during the break, which it's nice if you bring it up together, so... Please say something. Quite a number of us have been practicing together for a long time and we've developed a kind of context that we understand. And for some of you it's new and it's helpful to review the context. So if you have something to bring up, I like it. Okay. Self is, according to my understanding, defined through the mind.

[40:03]

Without the mind, it means that without the mind you cannot notice or feel or remark or this self. How can I get a division between mind and self? Isn't that just a construct or just an idea? Okay, good, thanks. First of all, let me say that Each of us has to ask ourselves these questions. We have to look at our own uses of the words and compare that or understand that in the context of our experience, our actual experience, particularly through meditation.

[41:11]

And then compare that to what the teaching says. Okay. So that's what I hope we're going to do here. Okay. So I would... The way I would define, enter into this, that you've stated, is that consciousness is a function of mind. Self is a function of consciousness. And ego is a function of self. Okay. Now, if we, like today, accept that definition,

[42:13]

That way of defining them in a relationship to each other. If we have some agreement on that, you don't have to accept it fully. We can change our mind later. But if we have some agreement on that, And then I think we can look at how Zen practice is this actually consonant with Zen practice. And I created this formulation because I think, of course, I think it is. Okay, so then I should define the key definition to start with is consciousness. And I'm making a distinction between consciousness and mind.

[43:32]

When Suzuki Roshi says, don't invite your thoughts to tea. This implies that you don't have to invite your thoughts to tea. And if you don't invite your thoughts to tea, what mind is not inviting the thoughts to tea? Then are thoughts consciousness? Are thoughts consciousness? Is consciousness bigger than thoughts or is consciousness mostly just thinking? This is very important to get straight, actually.

[44:38]

I mean, you can just practice kind of like the way the teacher says. And have, I hope, a wonderful enlightenment. But if you don't get this straight, you won't know how to teach and you won't know how you got there. So when some teachers give you the advice, don't think, stop your thinking. The way I'm defining thinking and consciousness, that's not good advice. So, auf die Art und Weise wie ich denken und Bewusstsein definiere, ist das kein guter Ratschlag. The better advice is don't identify with your thinking. Da ist eben ein besserer Ratschlag, identifiziere dich nicht mit deinem Denken.

[45:41]

So, it's this kind of distinction I'm trying to make so that you can practice with confidence, I hope. Someone else? We'll come back to all of this stuff. Is there a flip chart here? You want me to write it down? Yes, ma'am. Do what my translator says. She says I should write it down. Now, of course, that leaves open what is mind.

[47:18]

My handwriting is more symbolic than clear. So someone else had a question. Marie-Louise said somebody had something about translation. Yeah? Yeah. The question is translation, yes or no. I've already made that decision.

[48:27]

But I can tell you one of the times that it was most clear to me. First, I kind of like the pace. And When I go back to America, when I have to just speak in English, I pause and nobody translates. I'm lost. What do I do next? But I pause a lot anyway when I speak English. So I don't have an appreciable sense that my lectures are longer when they're just in English. But also sometimes if I just speak English, I get going faster than most people can understand, even if they're native speakers. But the two experiences I've had once, I've been meeting with a group of Austrian psychotherapists for 12 years now or something like that.

[49:45]

And they all are quite fluent in English. So the second year they said, well, let's all, let's just have English. And I didn't know what to say. Because I couldn't feel their understanding what I was talking about. They were getting it with their heads, but not with their bodies. And I don't know what to say. I'm just sitting here, you know. So what I say comes out of a feeling I have. And I particularly have that problem in Holland.

[51:05]

Because the Dutch are very proud that they're bilingual and their second language is English. And they're offended if they feel they need translation. But when I speak to a Dutch audience, about half of them I know I'm not really getting across. So anyway, I'm honoring being in this great country. Okay, something else. You don't expect me to do all the talking, do you?

[52:25]

You actually had something at break, didn't you? Daily practice? Yes. I had a question about kind of daily practice you personally suggest to your students. Yeah. Well, it was in a conversation about Sashins. Right. And actually, I can't imagine I don't know how to teach Buddhism really without having part of the practice being Sashins.

[53:32]

And if possible, some monastic experience of a month or a few months or something. At least I want the Dharma Sangha practice to develop in the context of these nodules of Johannesof and Creston. Even though everyone can't participate in them particularly, their presence affects the whole of the Dhamma Sangha. And I think since we've had Johanneshoff, the practice in the Dhamma Sangha has more maturity. And also we do what I call practice as well.

[54:57]

Seminars practice weeks, which are something like a Sashin, but with sort of their half a Sashin, half a seminar. And we have a practice month even at Johanneshof. And a three-month practice period at Creston. In Colorado. In Colorado. But I still say the most important practice is daily practice. It's easier to do a sashin than it is to practice every day. So developing some kind of daily practice is essential if your practice is going to develop. For one reason, as I say, you're developing through, you're generating, developing through this posture.

[56:03]

Which is not the posture of sleeping or waiting. you're developing another mind, as I often say, which you're not born with. We can call it a wisdom mind. It's a cultural creation. Okay, if it's a cultural creation. Mm-hmm. does it open you up to something more fundamental than culture? Yeah, I think it does, but that's an interesting paradox.

[57:05]

Or through practice, we're trying to make a way of living, of being, That's open to possible for all of us or most of us. Which before only certain say mystics or artists experienced. And then they experience it in a very particular context of their art or of certain, some other, the framework of their experience.

[58:06]

So I would say this posture is an extraordinary human invention. And it's been introduced to the West, I would say primarily, not taking any credit, by my teachers. He really, he saw that most clearly coming to the United States. An anecdote. He was invited to Stanford University to give a talk on Buddhism. He got there and all the people were sitting in their chairs and he looked at them and looked at the teacher

[59:08]

Their teacher. And he asked them all to stand up and push their chairs to the side. He got them all to sit down. He gave them minimal instructions. Sat with them for 45 minutes. Said not a word. And got up and left. he decided yeah another anyway another anecdote there was a summer hill type school do you know what summer hill is in in in england Okay, everybody does. We let kids do anything, shit in the corner, you know, etc. There was this, anyway, a school somewhat like that on south of San Francisco.

[60:24]

It was quite an interesting school, actually. High school. So one day coming up from the monastery that we founded called Tassajara, we stopped at this school because I knew the teacher, the head of it, sort of, and he invited us to give a talk or spend the day with the kids. He looked at the school and the grounds which were littered with Coca-Cola cans, cigarette wrappers, candy bar, etc., everything. It was a mule yard.

[61:35]

A mule hoof. And he did a similar thing. He just said, okay, this team will clean up the grounds, this team will clean each room, etc. And all afternoon, all these kids did was clean. At five o'clock, the school looked quite good. He said, the school looks very nice now, and then he left. And then... And then I, years later, actually, four or five years later, this was in 1967 or something this happened, and years later, a few years ago... I met a woman who is a head of a meditation group in Seattle or someplace.

[62:42]

And she said, oh, hi, I met you years ago at the school. I said, oh, yeah, how did you get started practicing? Oh, I was so impressed with this man who got us to clean the place that I started practicing Zen. Okay, so we have this invention. And this invention somehow allows another kind of mind to develop and appear and be produced. And we begin to get a taste of it. And at first it doesn't appear much except in our meditation.

[63:46]

And I'm convinced it's also initially and partly a surfacing of the mind of deep non-dreaming sleep. A mind which is a kind of, I think, bliss or contentedness that we need every night. And I believe that this is a spirit of bliss or contentment that we simply need every night. And the sleeping pills don't reach them.

[65:01]

And it's different from our dreaming mind, which is often a lot of frustration. So if you don't meditate fairly regularly, this mind disappears beneath the surface of your life. When you get in the habit of sitting, that's virtually as deep a habit as going to sleep or washing your face, etc., It's just something you do. This more fundamental mind begins to surface into our life in a continuous way. Then this also then becomes a part of our definition, what is mind.

[66:09]

So one of the things we'll implicit in what we're talking about today is answering or having a feeling for what is mind. No. If it is in fact a more fundamental mind... Yeah. And I say if... And then, is it the world we're seeking? when I go out looking for if I did for a cafe or some place to sit down and get a feeling for Munich is that just a form of my trying to find some deeper source of order or connectedness

[67:27]

Would I say that if you have a realized zazen practice, you never need to go to a cafe. If I say that, you'll all stop practicing. No, I don't say that. But I say if you have a realized Zen practice, you won't ever feel lonely. You won't ever feel other than exactly where you are and yeah. Okay.

[68:50]

Now, that as a possibility underlines our discussion of what is the world and what is the self. What is the world? What is the self? What is the experience of being alive? In what way do we feel most fully alive? Okay. So daily practice. What? What is now the daily Zen practice? Okay. I think ideally... Oh, well. Deutsch, bitte. Was ist nun die tägliche Zen practice?

[69:53]

Eine Stunde sitzen oder zweimal 15 Minuten? Two times 15. Thank you. First of all, it has to be something you can do. To make something impossible that you don't do doesn't work. And second, you have to decide to order your day or your life in such a way that you can practice. Yeah. First we're bringing practice into our life. Later we may be bringing our life into practice. Okay, bringing practice into your life. I'd say there's two main things. I would say sitting... If possible, at least five days a week.

[71:08]

Six or seven is better. But at least four or five. And on a regular basis. So if you decide I can only manage to sit four times a week, you pick particular days and you sit. And you sit whether you want to or not. You don't sit when you like it or when it's convenient or something like that. Okay. So if you just sit when it's convenient or you feel good, well, that's fine, but that's a different kind of sitting. That's sitting controlled by the self. Which is controlled by the consciousness. Doesn't have much connection with mind. So, sitting within the realm of self, when you like to, like, etc., is part of our definition of what is mind.

[72:14]

Yes. And our definition of mind. If you want your whole life to pass through this zazen, Like you can't only sleep, you don't only sleep when you want to. I'd just say, oh, for the next two weeks, I don't think I want to sleep. I did that once. I was in a pretty funny state of mind. You really have to, you really... Your whole life passes through your sleeping and you do it every day, at least for a few hours.

[73:35]

So adept practice has to be at a level as fundamental as sleeping, waking, washing your face, etc., Okay, so there's this basic daily practice. Okay, so that you decide to do, okay, I'm going to do it five times a week, say. And I'll sit at least 20 minutes or 30 minutes. You may sit 40, but you've got to get something you're definitely going to do. Yeah, and if you can't sit for some reason, I don't know what, an emergency, you sit down for 10 minutes.

[74:39]

Because just stepping out of your situation to sit down for a few minutes changes things. And if you can't sit because your wife is giving birth to a baby and you're on the way to the hospital through a blizzard, And because you can't sit because your wife is in pain and you drive her to the hospital in a snowstorm. Which happened to us. That happened to us. you find what you need from sitting while you're driving the car. You say, okay, this next 20 minutes is a kind of zazen. Okay, so I think that for a depth practice, some basic commitment like that to something you can do regularly, whether you want to or not, healthy or sick,

[75:50]

Also in der Adeptenpraxis ist, dass man etwas findet, das man regelmäßig tut, ob man es will oder nicht. Ob man krank oder gesund ist, ob man Grippe hat oder nicht. Und die Zen-Lehrer sind ja auch berühmt dafür, dass sie in der Zen-Haltung sterben. I've been sick and I can't, you know, I can't get, but I think I'm going to die soon. Oh, up comes a leg. Also, sie fühlen sich elend, merken, dass sie gerade sterben und reißen sich zusammen und setzen sich nochmal in die Haltung. Two Zen masters who had gimp legs that never worked. Gimp? Gimp, you know, limp, it doesn't work. Also, es gab zwei Zen-Lehrer, die hatten irgendwie gelähmte Beine oder konnten nicht mehr laufen. One of them, Daito Kokushi, the founder of Daito Kokushi. He said, you didn't obey me in life, but you're going to obey me in death. So you've got a little flu, you can certainly sit up and try to sit for a few minutes.

[76:55]

Some kind of, that's an intentional context. Okay, the second thing is to practice mindfulness every day. Both as a generally trying to be mindful. But in particular, for 10 minutes or so, walking to work, or walking on the stairs, or something like that, and building. you have a concentrated period, can be short of mindfulness practice.

[77:59]

And as I say, Zen, Buddhist practice is a homeopathic medicine. And it works in very small doses. But you have to take the doses. Okay, so that's enough. We can come back to what I mean by wider sense. mindfulness practice as a daily, but let's leave that for now. Okay. Something else? Yes.

[79:17]

So I don't need to force myself to meditate. From the inside I have this urge to meditate. When I can't do it, I have this feeling something is missing. Is that kind of... I have to be suspicious that the self just wants something from me that I feel good. No, I think it sounds good, you know. You know, I don't know you. I mean, I couldn't say I don't know you because I feel you right now, your presence. But, you know, else is true, I don't know you. So I can't really say. But Sukhriya, she used to speak of an inmost request, an innermost request.

[80:19]

And that would be listening past the self to some deeper self. And for most of us it's hard to hear that inner request. Or if we hear it, we don't know how to answer it. But it seems like you're able to hear it and answer it, and this is good. So now we have... We're also staying with the topic of today. So is this inner request the self or what's that? A bigger self? We say sometimes that self covers everything.

[82:00]

Okay, what does that mean? Well, it's actually an experience we have. But what is the background of the experience? The background of the experience is the practice, not understanding, but practice of interdependence. Sorry, the background is the practice, not the understanding of, but the practice of interdependence. What do I mean by that? My legs aren't working so well these days. Most of you know I had an operation in January for prostate cancer.

[83:15]

And then as a precaution, at least a precaution, I also had seven weeks of radiation therapy. Which ended a month or so ago. And during this time, I found my legs got a little stiff and everything. They're beginning to loosen up the last week or two. Okay, so let's just put this... What do I mean by the practice, not the understanding of interdependence? We were just in Rostenberg for a couple of weeks. And our little daughter, Sophia, the person whose place this is, the hostess, named Georgia,

[84:21]

So when she came into the little apartment house they gave us to stay in, she said, this is Sophia's house. And then she said, oh, it's Giorgio's house. So she's in the in the process of differentiating the world. But as soon as she differentiates it, she feels she's going to lose it, and so she says, it's mine. So for a while, everything was Sophia's. This bell was Sophia's, you know, Sophia's. And then it became, this is Papa's bell, this is Papa Sophia's bell.

[85:47]

Yeah, it somehow became my bell, but it still belonged to her. So this kind of relationship between this connectedness was always pointing at her. So for her to say it was Giorgio's house was a little bit loosening it up a bit. But then at breakfast she decided it was very important to grind up a piece of bread With a cheese grater and a can opener. So she had all these crumbs of bread from the cheese grater which she was banging with a can opener. So I said, Sophia, this is Giorgio's table. So I said, Sophia, that's Giorgio's table.

[87:04]

Sophia's table. Giorgio's table. I said, it also belongs to the woodworker. Look, somebody made it. Then I said, look, it also belongs to the carpenter or the carpenter who made this table. Yeah, and it was once a tree. You can see the grain of the wood. And it's the lost home of birds. You know, I get a little romantic, I'm sorry. Clouds passed over this tree in Portland. And there's going to be other people who use this little apartment after we leave, and they want to use the table too, not for dents. And I said, you're seeing it with your eyes. You should treat it like it was your own eyesight. That's a quotation from Dogen. So I said, look, feel your eye.

[88:17]

So treat the table as gently as that. So I'm trying to get her to extend the sense of possessing outward. So when you begin to feel any object as a context, And not as an entity. You're experiencing interdependence. Okay, so let's take one more example before lunch.

[89:18]

You're sitting in zazen. And very commonly you hear an airplane. And I'm speaking about this again in the context of our topic. You hear an airplane. And you think for a moment, oh, that's an airplane. But basically you don't. It's just a momentary definition. Is that a thought? Strictly speaking, in Buddhism it's not a thought. A thought is part of thinking. So you have a kind of observation that takes the form of words. It's an airplane. And it influences your mind a little bit.

[90:41]

Because you don't think it's a dragon or an airplane about to crash on you. But mostly you don't think about it. It's going somewhere. It's something. It just happens. you basically mostly hear it. And you feel the air in hearing it. Because the sound is also air. And on the sound you can tell whether it's a clear day or a cloudy day. Sounds on a wet day are different than sounds on a dry day. So you're hearing the air as well as the airplane. And you're also hearing your own, as I say, hearing.

[92:07]

When you hear a bird, you're hearing the way you hear it, not the way a bird hears it. So you're hearing your own capacity to hear. Which means you're hearing your mind. And hearing the mind, when you're only hearing, is usually accompanied by a feeling of bliss. Like when I was a, yeah, in the, teenager and so forth and older, before I started practicing.

[93:17]

At night I would hear, you know, a siren, a horn, something. Or in San Francisco or Boston, a tugboat, a whistle, horn of a ship. Fog horns. I'd feel a moment of some sort of weird pleasure that would penetrate me. Not always kind of brush it. And I'd always kind of brush it off.

[94:22]

Isn't that funny? The sounds at night make me feel that way, I think. And I'd go back to my study or work or whatever I was doing in the middle of the night. But I remember sometimes it would be such a penetrating feeling that I remember thinking to myself another thought would pop up which I could die on a sound like this. And I thought to myself, how can such a thing make me feel like I'd be willing to die on such a sound? And I didn't know that what became my whole life was calling to me.

[95:41]

We say the Buddha has three bodies. Dharmakaya, a body like everything all at once. Dhammakaya is the body or space, the Sambhogakaya, which is a body of bliss or realization.

[96:09]

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