This is an old Ratsu I inherited from Suzuki Roshi. And I, it had cracked, sort of, here and here. And someone repaired it for me with cloth that looks sort of the same. Nice. And as I mentioned during the Ango Teishos, An attention-drenched culture like Japanese. I wonder why I thought of the word drenched.

[01:05]

It's like we've been living underwater for a week. You know the word drench? I think it's the same. It's the same in German? No, I mean, oh, no. Drench means to be soaked with water. Yes, that's what I'm saying. And you said that, okay. So, also, mit Aufmerksamkeit getränkte Kultur, so habe ich das Gefühl, als ob wir in der letzten Woche unter Wasser gelebt haben. So even the clothes are designed to require attention to wear. And my body, I got pretty good at it over the years. But now I'm sitting down, as you notice, I can't keep all the layers straight. My body just doesn't do it automatically. But now, as you can see, if I don't sit down now, then my body can't keep all the different layers together and doesn't do it automatically anymore.

[02:18]

So I'm often wear a raksu instead of an okesa. And thank you for letting me do that. But, you know, I think it's not something we'd think of that, I mean, in a culture which is moving more and more towards spandex. that they would design clothes specifically difficult to wear because they require a particular kind of posture the collar is not supposed to touch the neck for instance it's supposed to sit free of the neck And then they put a rather irregular flap in the upper part of the koromo, which, when you have them made in the West, they don't do that at all.

[03:20]

And then you have to stand a certain way to get the collar so it's not folded up under your koromo. And it requires a certain posture to do that. And you can even, I pointed out, see it on this pine needle stitch, which is a kind of echo, astrological patterns, is put at the top of the spine. All the clothes are designed to awaken this spot. And you can see it yourself on this kefir needle stitch on the back of the raksha, which is made after an astrological symbol.

[04:39]

And the entire clothing is laid on top of the collar, so directly on the top of the collarbone, and everything is designed to evoke this point here. Good. I'm not sure. Because the body isn't a body, it's not a thing, it's a posture. And a posture is an activity. So if we say to you, I say to you, the... The gassho is about the nose or somewhere in here, the tip of the fingers. We're not... The tradition is, we're not... The practice is, we're not... The custom is, we're not...

[05:42]

telling you how it should be, but how you explore that posture. So if I put my hands like this, First I feel, in this case, this so-called teaching staff or nyoi or back scratcher. Between my hands or somebody's hands, they seem to be mine. I guess I've been living with them a long time, so they're probably mine. And then, yeah, so that I do first. And then I, that makes my whole body feel a certain way. And then I make this a little more, slightly more vertical.

[07:14]

And then next I might lift my elbows a little. And then that affects my whole posture, which I lift through my spine. So we tend to think of the instruction as a description and the instruction is a prescription. You use the posture of the hands together to explore the elbows and the spine and so forth. So, when I look at you, I like to see an exploration going on as each posture is discovered. I first realized that from Charlotte Silver in the 60s.

[08:28]

Whose practice and wisdom actually came out of Berlin between the two wars. Well, Fritz Perls and Gestalt therapy and so forth, many things, massage, body work all started in Europe. And Charlotte Silver and Elsa Gindler, her teacher, were part of that world. And she said, when I first met her, I was in the room sitting down and she said, she didn't say stand up.

[09:37]

She said, come up to standing. So her language made a huge difference. That's one of many seemingly small things that changed my life. Come up to standing. So there's a whole series of postures you go through to get up to standing. So Charlotte had developed in her teaching sensory awareness, which is a kind of school of practice now, is an attentional practice of sensory awareness.

[10:46]

And Charlotte has developed sensory awareness and it has become a whole school, namely a practice of attention of the sensual being. One of the most difficult things, at least I feel it's difficult to practice, share, craft with you, is to shift from what seems obvious To something else which seems obvious. How is there any difference? They're both obvious. We know them well. It's a shift from something that seems obvious to something that also seems obvious. And where is the difference?

[11:48]

They both seem obvious and we both know them well. You know, I mean, when I was young, I'm still young, by the way. I'm just trying to fool you by looking old. Yeah. This is true, what I just said. Anyway, you kind of take for granted the words and phrases used to describe reality, actuality. Not actuality, reality. It seems like for hundreds or thousands of years, that's how the world is described.

[12:55]

And it's probably right, the words fit, the names fit what they're describing. So part of our practice is really peeling the words off everything. And then gluing them back on sometimes. And as I've said sort of indirectly a couple of times, one of the most difficult things for us to get free of is the assumption that body and mind are different. There's a gap, a chasm. Gap means chasm. And as I have said indirectly in recent times, one of the most difficult views, where we have the hardest time getting rid of it, is the assumption that the body and the mind are different, as if there is something like a gap between the two, or a, how do we say it again, we have the same word, schism?

[14:20]

Chasm. Chasm is like a canyon. Abgrund. Abgrund, das heißt abgrund. Aber wenn ihr damit zufrieden seid, dann ist es so. Grand canyon is a chasm. Schlucht. Okay, gut, dann passt das. Also, als ob da eine Schlucht zwischen den beiden wäre. The word gap, the etymology comes from chasm. So we feel there's a gap, sort of a gap between human and non-human. And a gap between body and mind. But of course, in East Asia, Japan, China, Korea, they can certainly make a distinction between mind and body. But it's more like a distinction between hot and cold water or something like that.

[15:35]

It's a difference in gradation and not a difference in dynamics or something like that. And since I've really basically given up on in any way trying to speak about practice without recognizing our ingrown distinction, embodied distinction between body and mind. Now I'm describing my problem because it's also your problem. If you really want to practice seriously with some depth, that's your problem.

[17:00]

So what I'm doing is, as I've said, I recognized early on that, hey, this is a different culture embedded in this teaching. It's not just something I can bring into Western culture and add it in. And as I said, Faber, what I recognized pretty early in my practice is to say, hey, there is a completely different culture embedded in this teaching. And it's not just that these are individual teachings that I can put into my own culture. So I began by studying Sukhiroshi's behavior and mind very, very carefully. I could see when he and I agreed on something completely, how we felt something. Where were you?

[18:04]

I was... You know, I've been talking for ten minutes. And I didn't want to... You were spaced out. Sorry. No. Okay, well, I think I know what you said. I don't know what I said. Don't ask me to repeat myself. When I was quite clear, we as closely as possible understood something the same way, or no, felt something the same way, Then what to do about it? I could see his path toward action was different than my path toward action. So we understand the same way, but what we thought was the conclusion was different. Then I could see how, when we had the feeling, we felt it in the same way or understood it.

[19:20]

And then I could see how his way into the action was different from mine. And although we felt it in the same way, the conclusions we drew from it were different. And Sugiyoshi, you know, as you probably know, I was walking along Bush Street one day and somebody said, I hear you're going to Japan. I said, I am? And as many of you probably know, I went through Bush Street once and someone stopped me and said, hey, I heard that you're going to Japan. And I said, really? Why do you think that? Well, Sugiyoshi just told me you're going to Japan. So I went across the street, I went up to his office and I said, am I going to Japan? He said, yes. So I was in the middle, I had a job and a wife and a And I had a grant to work on a PhD and I had to return the money and so forth.

[20:42]

And in a few weeks I was on the way to Japan. And... Jeannie... Jeannie... What was your last name? Jeannie Campbell, Dan Welch's sister, organized a going-away party for me. Were you there? No. But what Suzuki Roshi said to me, he didn't say, go study. He did say, find the best teachers, don't worry about whether it's Zen or not. And he also said, I want you to observe how we do things, meaning East Asians.

[21:44]

So that's what I did for four years. So I think Again, we have this advantage of a different worldview, which is embedded in our practice. And if you do our practice, you find yourself in some kind of disjunction with our homegrown worldview. And so we have this advantage of a different worldview, which is embedded dissonance, so ein bisschen abgesetzt von unserer Praxis steht. And what happened again when we do our practice, then what happened?

[23:05]

We're happy. You feel a dissonance. What? He knows. You feel a dissonance to our ingrown or inherited. Homegrown. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that. Let's do that. And again, I want to say, to realize that the words our culture supplies us don't actually describe The world I was living in took me years to begin to say, these words don't fit my experience. It took a kind of courage, but a courage that took me years of feeling the dissonance.

[24:13]

I mean, decades. And I took years, even decades, to really notice that the words with which I grew up, that the words with which the world is described, that they don't really describe my experience. This dissonance, it takes a certain courage to experience that. And I took decades to really allow this dissonance. So what I'm suggesting today, I think, primarily, is to notice you have a reference point. And then explore shifting that reference point. And the lesson for today is to shift your reference point from consciously confirming your experience to feeling knowing your experience.

[25:28]

Feeling knowing. And I put feeling knowing because when you know things consciously, you're confirming it by your consciousness. It fits what your consciousness tells you is real. But I want you to not need to have conscious confirming, sometimes okay, but primarily you have feeling. You know through confirming through feeling. In a simple sentence, like if you said, oh, that movie, what did you feel about it?

[26:36]

In English, that assumes you have thought about it and the feeling is addition. An addition. But if you said to somebody, well, you know, what did you think about that movie? It meant, first of all, you felt it, and then thinking is something you add to it. And you can notice in your own linguistic habits what priority you give to thinking or feeling. Now, the main experiential difference between East Asian yogurt culture and Western culture is one of East Asian yogurt culture, the reference point is feeling, not thinking.

[28:06]

If we were all East Asians, we'd be feeling what's happening here, not thinking much about what's happening here. And you'd want to find your posture even in the feeling and in the feeling with others in the room, not through, did I understand what he said? So the teacher would speak always to feeling and not thinking. And... So what I do is I am always speaking to how you do it.

[29:47]

Can you do this phrase? So let's look at the word Hishirio. which is always translated as non-thinking. Okay, but how do you do non-thinking? The assumption in such a term is that maybe you do zazen, and during zazen you have this experience of non-thinking. That is entity thinking. That's our Western culture. Now, it's true, when you do zazen, you may have a mind of non-thinking.

[30:52]

But in an action-based or enactment-based, which is more the tantric side, The term non-thinking should be the means by which you realize non-thinking, not Zazen. So as a prescriptive, operative, processive term, Thank you. I'm getting all excited here. So the operative interpretation or praxis interpretation is the definition, yeah,

[31:55]

Interpretation oder Definition. Is thinking, is noticing without thinking about. Also die Praxisdefinition ist zu bemerken ohne darüber nachzudenken. Because if you practice noticing and refraining from thinking, for us Westerners it particularly takes an active refraining from thinking in the midst of knowing, in the midst of noticing. Weil wenn du bemerkst und dich dann vom Denken abhältst, und für uns Westler braucht es tatsächlich ein aktives sich abhalten von oder ein zurücknehmen, dass du bemerkst, ohne darüber nachzudenken, inmitten des Bemerkens und dann inmitten des Wissens oder Erkennens. So you can't understand this term, you can only incubate it. So if you're serious about practice, you over and over again notice and then you pull back your thinking and just notice.

[33:25]

Now it also takes the trust that noticing is a form of knowing. If you think knowing is always only known through consciousness or confirmed by consciousness, And you're not really practicing this teaching. Thinking, you check off your experience by making it conscious or making it words. Yeah, okay, but it hinders deeper practice. Wenn du denkst, dann ist es als ob du einen Haken dran setzt an deiner Erfahrung.

[34:33]

Indem du Worte draufsetzt und dann einen Haken dran machst, ist es in Ordnung. Aber das behindert die tiefere Praxis. So, if you allow yourself to notice and then feel thinking appearing and then refraining from thinking. Wenn du zulässt, dass du bemerkst, und dann spürst, wie das Denken auftaucht, aber dich dann vom Denken abhältst. Then you are practicing the Medicine Buddha's medicinal teaching of notice without thinking. about. Now, science, any serious science, recognizes that the Newton worldview is incorrect. There's no absolute time and there's no absolute space. But in our daily experience, and in almost every scientist I know, they actually feel they're in a container space.

[35:58]

That's what their body tells them. That's how they actually feel. Aber in unserem täglichen Leben, und das für fast jeden Wissenschaftler, Wissenschaftlerin, die ich kenne, tun sie so, als ob wir in einem Raum leben, wo der Raum wie ein Behältnis ist. Das ist das, was unsere Erfahrung oder unsere Weltsicht uns immer wieder erzählt. So our experiential actuality has not caught up with what is now scientific actuality. But I want to say something about Newton, Mr. Isaac Newton. Who really... I mean, as much as anyone and more than anyone else probably created our modern world.

[37:01]

Okay, he says, he says, there's two kinds of spaces, movable space and absolute or universal space. So he says anybody who thinks the space of chairs and tables and objects is absolute space is wrong. Because this movable space is in the container of universal space. I think his perception is accurate. His interpretation is wrong. Ich glaube, dass seine Wahrnehmung zutreffend ist, aber seine Interpretation ist falsch.

[38:06]

Seine Wahrnehmung ist, er nimmt zwei unterschiedliche Räume wahr. He's right. His interpretation is wrong. And his interpretation is a perfect example of Alfred North Whitehead's misplaced concreteness. Okay, because Newton grew up in the world, lived in a world where he wasn't, he still thought the world was created separate from us. There was a beginning point.

[39:10]

But in East Asian thinking, there's no beginning point. It's always an alwaysness. And in an alwaysness, you're making it. But in East Asian culture, there is no such starting point, but there is always an eternity, and you create this eternity with it. So what do I see when I look at all of you? A lot of nice guys and gals. And you're all movable spaces. And at the same time I see the field of mind which this is all arising in. So I see the field of mind and all of you appearing in the space.

[40:25]

But because he was in a world of outside creation, he perceived what I perceived as the field of mind, he thought it was universal space. So I would say his perception was correct, his interpretation was wrong. And we have similar problems all the time, but isn't it fun? And we have similar problems all the time, but it's not fun.

[41:12]

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