Well, I'm a bit overwhelmed about, you know, what to speak about. Because I know, just as a practical matter, that many of you I'll never see again. Although next year I will do, and she's put in the schedule, what I'm calling doorstep zen. In other words, if anybody shows up at the doorstep on... on, you know, Anisov. It's a long trip, it's a nuisance, and blah, blah, blah. If somebody shows up for, during four or five days a month, I might be willing or able to speak for practice.

[01:07]

We'll see. And overwhelmed because there's so much I'd like to share with you. In this dharmic world, we're all on the edge of, or the middle of. And I know that today and tomorrow, there's not too much we can actually talk about. Some, yeah. And, you know, symbolically, we have the pre-day yesterday with Nozaz and at the beginning.

[02:16]

On Saturday and Sunday we have Zazen at the beginning for half an hour. And as I say, it probably makes no difference, but at least symbolically what it means. Hi. Hi. What it means to me is that I want to speak with you in your usual, our usual mode, modality of mind and body. And then on Saturday and Sunday we start with sinning so that I have at least the feeling maybe we're at least symbolically starting inside the dharmic realm. And there's some difference.

[03:44]

Let's see if we can explore the differences. Now the buzzing fly that I mentioned yesterday, the title of this seminar, Here and Now, the buzzing fly I mean, everything is here and now. It doesn't know anything else. Die sonnende Fliege, die kennt nur hier und jetzt und nichts anderes. Yeah. What are you doing, fly?

[04:45]

Well, here and now. I have no alternative, says the fly. Was machst du da, Fliege? Und dann sagt die Fliege, ja, hier und jetzt. Ich habe doch keine Alternative dazu, sagt sie. And so we can use that as a kind of reference point. It's interesting that we make a difference between here and now. Now, if I... Herman brought up yesterday the old phrase from... It's still fresh, you know, but just now is enough. And for me, it's been why I shared it with you, a youthful admonition, a reminder. But if I said just here is enough, that doesn't feel true.

[05:57]

Yeah. If you have to put out a fire, just here might not be enough. If all you have is a book, it might be good to have a fire extinguisher. But just now is enough. I mean, there's no alternative to just now. Your gut is now, no matter what you do. So what we're trying to do is explore our experience. Now, the physicist, a quantum physicist, who says, all we know is what we can measure. We don't know what we don't measure.

[06:58]

But for a practitioner, all we experience is what we know. Aber für einen Praktizierenden ist immer nur all das, was wir erfahren, ist das, was wir kennen oder wissen. But there's some kind of feeling about what we could experience. Es gibt schon so ein Gefühl dazu, was wir erfahren könnten. And what we could experience plays into our experience. Now, what I'm trying to say here is that if we really rigorously practice the Dharma, we really only know what we experience. Now, somebody can tell me there's a city here in Europe I haven't visited, and I accept they're probably right.

[08:38]

So there's some things that we take on that basis, like The sutras, we say, well, maybe they're right. But if we're really practicing, we keep trying to examine what we experience. Okay. So... So the buzzing fly is, let's say, aware that it's sitting on my lampshade on my desk. At least it knows to keep coming back there. So I guess because it's getting wintry and lampshade is warm,

[09:41]

So there's some kind of awareness. But we couldn't call it consciousness. And I don't think we could call it even attention. Or what we mean by attention. At least in English. I presume in German, too. Let's presume that, otherwise we have a problem. I like the way you're so good at interrupting me. No, what I mean is, you start translating, and I start too soon saying something, and you have this very gentle way of shutting me up. I like it. Good, I'm glad. Jetzt, wo waren wir?

[10:54]

Also, jedenfalls nicht das, was wir im Englischen mit Aufmerksamkeit meinen, und auch nicht, was wir im Deutschen mit Aufmerksamkeit meinen. But we function through attention. So we have this other phrase, to pause for the particular. Yeah, and Gerald, who very kindly and sweetly sends me emails a couple times a month. I'm doing this in practice now. Totally. Yeah. Maybe they're Dharma emails, D-mails. Yeah, and recently, the most recent one, he spoke to me just a few days ago about, spoke to me, wrote to me a few days ago about his use of the phrase to pause for the particulars.

[12:27]

In this world, dharmic world, where everything is an activity, there are no entities, there are only activities. In dieser darmischen Welt, wo alles Aktivität ist, da gibt es keine festen Dinge, also keine Entitäten, sondern nur Aktivitäten. It means that everything is a process. Es bedeutet, dass alles ein Prozess ist. Or everything is an operation. Operation is something you do by hand in English, by labor. Handlung? Handlung. Oder dass alles eine Handlung ist. Okay. It's fine. It's great. Okay.

[13:30]

So for, from what Daryl wrote to me, This phrase, which Gerald has known since the 80s, that seemed like a long time ago. For him, it's an operative. He's still operating it, still deploying it. It's still operating. I'm not testing you. These are new. Later, the test will come. So could you say something about how you're operating, deploying, just now is enough? I mean to pause for the particular.

[14:34]

Could you tell us how you apply this sentence to these four individualities? Yes, it begins with the fact that I have an object of perception at which I stay with my attention. It starts with my having one object of perception where I stay with my attention. And that's a form of bodily and mental causing. And when I practice it throughout the day, then it changes my pace throughout the day.

[15:35]

And I perceive other things than I usually do because of the shift in pace. This is the physical dimension and the spiritual dimension is that the mind begins to rest in and on this object. That's the body dimension and the mental dimension is that mind, so to speak, begins to rest on the object. And this resting begins to reduce the distance between here and there.

[16:50]

And this abiding begins to reduce the distance between there and here. And it's the beginning of a dissolution of, if I want to use this term, duality, I think it would be an accurate description, but really experientially it is a spatial proximity, for example. Okay. You know, years ago, I was in a German train station. And I noticed the railroad clock, big clock somewhere in the station. It would go, starting at 12, it would go tick, tick, tick.

[17:55]

And then I saw that the big clock at the station always went tick, tick, tick. I know it's different here, but do they have a different time? Different kind of time? Well, what I was seeing was the first time I'd ever seen a radio clock. And it didn't seem to be a very good radio clock because it kept getting off and then it would readjust itself and then it would go on for a while and then readjust itself.

[18:56]

The trains seemed to understand. But the trains seemed to understand. But then at some point it dawned on me, because I guessed after a while that there had to be something going on, you know, and I figured it out. But then I thought, well, the clock is moving. Half the time it's moving. But then I thought, well, the clock is moving. And I realized, actually, the other half of the time, it's still. It's not moving. So I saw the circle of the clock when its numbers are suddenly just a blank space in which time was still.

[20:03]

And I think that's what maybe pause for the particular does. You see the movement and then you feel the stillness. And that's exactly what the word Dharma means. Dharma means that which holds or is still for a moment. And then how do you perceive, you know, there's something called the two truths. And the two truths are that things are impermanent, entitylessness, etc., Fundamentally unpredictable.

[21:27]

And yet, the other side, the other truth, is that things are predictable, pretty much most of the time, relatively true. Okay, so those are called two truths. That we live in a relative world, conditioned by our consciousness. Dass wir in einer relativen Welt leben, die von unserem Bewusstsein bedingt ist. And it's very important to notice that consciousness always assumes predictability.

[22:28]

Und es ist ganz wichtig zu bemerken, dass das Bewusstsein immer von Vorhersehbarkeit ausgeht. Yeah, so how do you have an antidote to that? Implicit predictability of knowing something consciously. We could say all Buddhist teaching is dealing with the tension between fundamentally unpredictable and consciously needfully predictable. Now the Tendai school teaches the three truths. Which is just also an expression of that the two truths are only true when they're experienced simultaneously.

[23:37]

In other words, practically speaking, we live in a predictable world. The bus probably will arrive and so forth. And we kind of remember that, you know, sometimes buses don't appear. But we stand there assuming the bus is going to come. I've done this many times. But how can we really know it simultaneously? It sounds contradiction or dualistic. But as Corral just implied, the lessening of a sense of separation is a lessening of dualism.

[24:43]

A lessening of duality. No. This may seem a little strange or far-fetched to you. But this beginning, really, what is your experience after all? Breathing. Your aliveness is breathing. Atmen. Deine Lebendigkeit ist zu atmen. The first thing that happens to a baby, it either breathes or gets spanked.

[25:58]

Das erste, was mit einem Baby passiert, ist, dass es entweder atmet oder einen Klaps bekommt. So for that little baby, life started with breathing. In this unpredictable, predictable world, it started with breathing. It was in a different kind of world for a while. So this bringing attention to breathing is so fundamental and it becomes an operation or a process which widens and widens and widens. And really, when you get used to, attention is attention and breath are joined phenomena. So as I said yesterday, you feel not just breathing as a generalization again, but breathing as a physical experience.

[27:26]

You articulate your breathing with attention. And it might be happening to you right now. Why not? That's dharma. So I sometimes say breath-ticulation. Well, breath-ticulation begins to feel not, again, the generalization of breathing, but the actual physical experience of the inhale and the actual physical experience of the exhale. And even when you're doing this, what are you doing?

[28:27]

The more it's... continuously unique. You're shifting your reference point from outside as you might see yourself, as I said yesterday, or someone else might see you. And this other-directed or outer-directed or whatever kind of sense that education and parenting tries to give us, begins to give us a feeling, you're shifting the reference point, you keep shifting the reference point to the activity of breathing.

[29:50]

And then this outer reference point becomes less and less substantial. Suki Roshi said, each of you is a sheer cliff which no one can climb. In the end, nobody can really know you. You're alone. I should have known that too. So you're a sheer cliff, but you're in a mountain range. Of cliffs.

[31:09]

And you're all made of the same stuff. So this reference point to breathing also becomes the basis for able to just be alone and find everything you need. Just aliveness is enough. Einfach jetzt, oder nein, einfach Lebendigkeit ist genug. Now we're beginning to operate that phrase, just aliveness is enough.

[32:09]

Und jetzt beginnen wir mit diesem Wendesatz zu handeln. Einfach Lebendigkeit ist genug. And this experience of being uniquely alive in the exhale, uniquely alive in the inhale. And the third ingredient, the mind, which is pretty much the same with the inhale and the exhale. Und die dritte Zitat, der Geist, der mehr oder weniger gleich bleibt beim Einatmen und beim Ausatmen, das verleiht uns die Kraft für die Gleichzeitigkeit der zwei Wahrheiten. So the buzzing fly doesn't make a choice, an intentional choice.

[33:29]

We can make intentional choices. And these phrases aren't final. They're not commandments. They're just operatives. operative phrases. And they function through the pushback because, in other words, just now is enough is powerful because we often think now is not enough. And already connected, the other maybe among the three phrases that have been most utilized, operated, deployed, And the third is already connected.

[34:37]

And that phrase works in our culture because most of us assume we're separated. There's hairdryer back there. He calls himself that so I can remember his name. Just call me hairdryer. So Peter is way back there and he's not a stone. That's what Peter means. And he's not petrified. But generally most of us think Peter's way over there and I'm way over here.

[35:37]

Und trotzdem denken die meisten von uns, Peter ist ganz dahinten und ich bin ganz hier vorne. But, so already connected, push it is put functions as an antidote to assuming separation. Und zu sagen, bereits verbunden, wirkt wie ein Gegenmittel gegen die Annahme against consumption. It feels like truth to us because it's the alternative in the way we usually think. So here I'm trying to speak indirectly about that we know what we experience, but the potential experiences are also present. Yeah, you've been sitting quite a while, so I should stop soon.

[36:56]

So... So Geralt has been operating the phrase to pause for the particular. Also Geralt hat diesen Satz für die Einzelheit innezuhalten angewendet. And the pushback from there is generally when we're thinking, thinking generalizes and it generalizes in order to make things predictable because they're generally predictable. Und der Gegenwind, den wir hier erfahren, ist... Okay, so to pause for the particular is an antidote to seeing things as generally predictable.

[38:06]

So it causes us to pause and step out of generalities. And causes us to bring attention to a particularity of that moment. And literally let the particles of that particularity open up to you. Now, Dogen operated this phrase in another way.

[39:22]

Basically, he had a phrase, Mu Jo Kan. And it means something like pausing for the particular. To pause for appearance. because if we are dharmically rooted in experience and nothing else, that appearance, that experience comes to us as appearance. dann kommt die Erfahrung, sie zeigt sich uns als Erscheinung. So what's significant in the exploration and transformation of experience is how you relate to appearance. Was jetzt bedeutsam ist in der Erforschung und in der Verwandlung von Erfahrung, ist die Frage, wie du dich erinnerst.

[40:29]

So Mu Jo Kahn means to pause for the impermanence of appearance. There's always appearance, and it's particular, but now you bring to it, it's impermanent. So now to operate this phrase with more depth, we would say to pause for the impermanence of the particulars. dann würden wir sagen, für die Unbeständigkeit der Einzelheit innezuhalten. And that would be to remind yourself moment after moment, when is there not an appearance?

[41:34]

Und damit würdest du dich von Augenblick zu Augenblick erinnern. Es gibt keinen Moment ohne Erscheinung. To notice the impermanence, the appearance is impermanent now. This will change how you are in the world. Okay, time for an impermanent break. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating. You're welcome. I'm not making fun of me too much. That's to come when you start testing me. Oh, I...

[42:17]

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