Well, I heard the bell and I thought, it's for her. No, it's for me. And it's raining. I don't know. I'll ask Nicole to give the lecture. But, I don't know, here I am. And, um, You know, I'm wearing these Roxas. They were Suzuki Roshis. But for him, he only came up to here. I used to think he was bigger than me, but when I saw myself in photographs, I realized I was a bit taller. Yeah. For him, they were rather ceremonial big Rakusus for special occasions.

[01:15]

But anyway, they're easier for me to wear than Okesas sometimes. Not that you... I hope you don't get bored with my references to aging so often. But it's something I find quite amusing and interesting. One thing I pointed out, small things, but... really make a big difference. For example, in Buddhist yogic culture and in East Asian yogic culture in general, you don't dress the body, you dress the posture. But one of the things I've often said is that in an East Asian yogic culture, you don't dress the body, you dress the posture.

[02:22]

And one of the most obvious examples of it is the way the collar is supposed to not be against the neck. Yeah, so it's the spine mind, as Koan III speaks about, the spine mind which supports the neck. So there's a feeling that this is a kind of oval, and your head appears from it with the spine, and it supports the separation of heaven and earth, which were once together in Chinese concepts. So it's part of the feeling that your body is making space.

[03:28]

It isn't in space, it's making space. And as I pointed out occasionally before, the little shape, what's called the pine needle stitch, is really a kind of stellar or star astrological sign. So not only do they dress the posture, they also dress your attentional body. And so your clothes are designed to require attention.

[04:51]

So that ideally the way the robes sit on the body is always, the white collar is always very precise and so forth. But what I've noticed is, and I never would have thought this, I couldn't typically have thought my way or noticed it until it happened, Yeah, so the various layers, there's several layers here. And you're not tied off at the waist with a belt. With the OB, it feels more like you're in a sleeping bag.

[05:52]

But now, getting old, and I couldn't really... It used to be, when I sat down, all the robes were in place. Now I sit down, they're all tangled up, and I can't untangle them anymore. And if I wear a case that's one more layer, can I get these all straight? Right now, my kimono should be under my feet, but it's behind me somewhere. Jetzt zum Beispiel sollte mein Kimono eigentlich unter meinen Füßen eingefaltet sein, aber in Wirklichkeit ist er irgendwo hinter mir. Ich weiß nicht genau, wo. It would require a major shift, an event here that takes about 10 minutes to correct it.

[07:19]

Ich bräuchte jetzt hier ein Ereignis, das ungefähr 10 Minuten dauern würde, um das wieder gerade zu rücken. At least I can still sit straight and I got on the cushion pretty well. Yeah. So I thought I ought to unpack what I've been saying recently, that Zen is the practice of actuality more accurately than the practice of Buddhism. I mean, when Nicole spoke, I guess the other day, about the lived body. Did you speak about that? Lived life?

[08:24]

Lived life, yeah. Yeah, that's an example of the emphasis on the practice, what I'm calling the actuality. Now, it may sound easier to... practice actuality, then Buddhism, I have to read the text and figure out all the levels of teachings. No, we just practice actuality. That's simple. But what is actuality? That's not so easy. What is actuality? Well, it has something to do with distinctions like dressing the posture rather than the body.

[09:38]

Assuming the way you dress helps you realize a potentially realisational body. And really thinking of the torso in the clothes as a kind of sleeping bag is a way partly of using your torso to warm yourself so you don't have to Yeah, so you maintain your body temperature. Yeah, so... I think you said the other day, I heard the word while you were speaking, Dagmar, and I think you said Dagmar, you wouldn't know Dagmar except something to do with consciousness or something like that.

[11:01]

You wouldn't know what she's called. You wouldn't know what she's called, okay. I wouldn't either. That's a Dagmar. Oh, no. There's the real Dagmar. Daggone it. But it's like I said the other day in our rather lengthy house meeting, I'm sorry. But as I felt sorry for the meeting in the slightly longer house a few days ago. You do not know your birthday from your sensorium, from your actual experience. Somebody has to tell you your birthday. It's the same as saying that you don't know your birthday from the senses.

[12:06]

Someone has to tell you your birthday. And birth dates are part of governmental control of us, statecraft. You want to be able to identify each one of these creatures called us. When you were born, you didn't know any names, of course. But you began to experience categories. Because your caregivers some of us are parents, hopefully, began to treat you in certain categories, relate to you as certain categories.

[13:09]

You were cold or warm or hungry or not hungry. And it was night or day or you were sleeping or awake. And these categories, I mean, your parents were your caregivers. would say, oh, so-and-so, little, cute, wonderful Dagmar, is hungry. Look, I think she's hungry. But she didn't know she was hungry. She knew she was hungry, but she didn't know the name of hunger. And then the parents say, or the people who take care of us, say, oh, look, the little, cute Dagmar is hungry. But she didn't know she was hungry. She knew there was something, but she didn't know the word for hunger.

[14:16]

So she began to be treated in categories, like she's hungry or she's not, in named categories. But before the categories are named, There's categories of night time, day time, hungry, not hungry. So I think very early on the infant begins to feel that the world is some form of predictability. Und ich glaube, dass ein Kleinkind schon sehr früh beginnt zu spüren, dass die Welt etwas Vorhersehbares ist. And the parents are caregivers out of necessity or intelligence begin to create predictable patterns of relating to the infant.

[15:20]

And so you begin to have a sense of the infant. I'm imagining all this, but I'm not absolutely certain it's completely correct. The infant begins to have a sense of the world. And that the infant is living in some sort of the shape of the world has some predictability. No, I can say in English something like, the baby begins to know, the infant begins to know, the world has an always there-ness.

[16:26]

Whenever, you know, there's a crib and you open your eyes and then there's something that you begin to know is always there in us. Now, that's what I'd say in English. Now, there may be some slight difference between there and here in German. Yeah, no, it's different. What I'm doing is different. Yeah, okay, well, good luck. Yeah, thanks. I'm going to continue to do what I'm doing. Please, yes. Okay, so maybe... And I'm going to play with these two words. Maybe there's, in a Buddhist nursery, there would be an always-present here-ness.

[17:55]

Mm-hmm. Okay. Does it make any... Can you make this distinction, here-ness and there-ness? Yeah, now I'm starting to do what you're doing, and now it works. My hands are cold. They are. Yeah, really cold. Warm them up. Oh, I have to say something. Okay. Now, I think the baby, the infant, is taught very early a kind of the world is out there or the world is in here. In general, there seems to be in Western culture more emphasis on the reality as an outlierness. But for Buddhists it's more the world out there is an in-here-ness.

[19:13]

So let me just play with that for a little bit and then I'll try to say why I'm saying this in terms of unpacking actuality. Now, part of what I'm saying here, and I won't be able to follow up on this, because this is a one-off, this lecture, I guess. No? Depends on you. Well, you're the one that asked me, and you're busy. You're leading the practice. Yeah. I'm a guest. Okay, now I forgot what you said. Oh, you won't be able to... To follow up on these things. Yeah, well... You can follow up. Okay. So, if we want to, you know, if practice is the practice of actuality, we have to really find some way to notice our experience.

[21:03]

And words, as I've been implying by talking about infants, after a while, first there's categories you begin to look at, and then pretty soon the categories are named, and a... A view of the world is built into the names. Okay, now, examples of this Zen being a practice of actuality. Our statement is like, this very mind is Buddha. Well, how do you know what that means? Do you know what mind is?

[22:21]

This very, what is this even? This, thus, suchness. So the study of actuality is, you know, You're living in actuality, but studying it as practice is a challenge. So if you're going to practice with this very mind as Buddha, for example, you have to say that phrase to yourself because you're kind of, it's like you have to start as if you're an infant and your experiences are unnamed.

[23:37]

You're hungry and so, but you don't know what hunger is except it as your experiences. One of the requirements for somebody to do Zen practice is a pretty high degree of noticing. So when you say to yourself as a repeated phrase, and koans also use this repeated phrase as a way to practice, You say, this very mind is Buddha.

[24:41]

And you watch what you feel, you notice what you feel when you say this. And you notice what you feel when you say this word, this. What does the word this do to the sensorial field? Now you're saying this in German or English. You can practice in English as well as German, I guess. You say this in German or English. You can practice in English or German. but I can only give you examples in English, but then is. What happens when I say is? Now, neurologists are all trying to figure out what mind is, but we're trying to figure out what mind is from our actual experience.

[25:47]

This very mind is Buddha. Now, if this very mind is Buddha, we don't need Buddha. We have a mind. All we need is this very mind is capable of awakening. So to practice Zen, you really have to have an absolute, I'm sorry to use such a strong word, absolute conviction that everything you need is here. So if you practice Zen, and I'm sorry to use such a strong word, but it's really like this. If you practice Zen, then you need the absolute, complete conviction that everything you need is here.

[26:57]

You know, you have to get rid of it or at least get past the psychology. Oh, I'm not very smart. I was, you know, my parents didn't like me or, you know, I was a sick third child. They didn't want a girl and, you know, all that stuff. If this very mind is Buddha, then you need to have an absolute conviction that everything you have, everything you need is here. including enlightenment. But right now you're not saying, well, what part of my here-ness is enlightenment? You're just, heck with enlightenment, you're just noticing what your here-ness is.

[28:08]

Like this morning I said during the first period of Zazen, Your inner living space and your outer living space, which is primarily consciousness, and your inner living space is awareness and consciousness now you can ask well what is awareness somebody sent me from Crestown or Boulder recently sent me a diagram awareness is this circle and consciousness is this circle and knowing is this circle and I

[29:12]

I had to write back and say, this can't be diagrammed. Yeah, I mean, this is some kind of Western cognitive... I mean, it works in many situations, but for what we're doing, to cognize it as a diagram, all the nuance is gone. All the spectrum, the spectrum of... Yeah, okay. You do better. You finish it. But this is a typically Western way of thinking, to put something in diagrams.

[30:16]

But this is a cognitive way of understanding it, and this is helpful in many situations. But if you do that, then you lose all nuances, or you lose the spectrum that is folded in. Because when you start noticing, because we're in an experiential culture, when you're practicing Zen, you're in an experiential culture, not a cognitive culture. In a cognitive culture, you end up with it must be created, so you have to have some kind of space from which things can be created. We say, what is Buddhism, the main teaching of Buddhism? That everything is changing. But that's a cognitive statement.

[31:31]

There's no thing which changes. There's only changing and changing changes. There's no thingness. So to say everything changes is like things start with a thing and then the thing changes. That's not right. It starts with changing and ends with changing. Okay. So let's play a little bit with the word nearness and there-ness. Did you say here-ness or near-ness?

[32:34]

Here-ness and there-ness. Mm-hmm. So you're trying to, like an infant, before things are named, you're trying to get to the place before things are named, and so you just say here or here-ness. Wie ein Kleinkind versuchst du zu diesem Punkt zu kommen, bevor die Dinge benannt werden, und dann sagst du einfach, kannst du so ein Wort benutzen, zu dir selbst sagen, hier. Yeah, and you're of course seeing, and while you're saying this, there's visual going on perhaps, hearing is going on, proprioceptive sensorial experience is going on. Okay, so while you're saying here-ness, there's a certain feel to it. There's a certain feel to saying here-ness.

[33:44]

Okay, so then switch and say there-ness. Okay, so you say there-ness. And you... And when I say there-ness, I feel the Buddha and the altar there and the Shakyamuni standing and the bell and things like that. There-ness. But there's also a kind of presence which I can't say is the bell or the Shakyamuni or the Amitabha Buddha. There's a kind of presence or field in which that happens, and maybe we could call that mind. Okay, so now... I'm still playing and I switch it, so now I'm saying here-ness.

[35:12]

And looking at the Shakya, the Amitabha Buddha, in the center of the altar, if I say here-ness, here-ness, the field, the presence sort of turns inward. Now I'm suggesting you really, if we're going to practice sexuality, we really have to look at the words you're using as experience. So we're exploring not naming, but then exploring naming, but not naming too strongly. Your actual experience is more than the Amitabha or the Shakyamuni or the bell.

[36:25]

And let's call that moreness, well, let's give it the name of mind. It's not the bell, it's not the Buddha. Yeah, let's call it mind. And the only reason there's a... Maybe there's more than one, but the main reason right now for calling it mind is we have Matsu or the statements like, this very mind is Buddha. So we're trying to define the words that we've inherited from our lineage. And the only reason, or maybe there are more reasons, but at the moment the reason is that we simply call this sea a spirit, is that we have these words from the teaching line from Matsu, for example, who says, exactly this spirit is Buddha. And that we are now there to give these words a meaning.

[37:50]

So now maybe you can... Saying this often enough, sitting in your room or something, just fiddling around, you've got to do something, yeah. So you practice with there-ness and the feeling of presence. The word presence is a kind of unrefined word for mind. So you begin to feel when you say here-ness, you begin to feel an inward turning mind. And when you say for a few minutes, four or five minutes, or one or two minutes, you say there-ness, there-ness, there-ness, you feel an outward turning mind.

[39:05]

And this was basically the first thing Suzuki Roshi taught us back in 1961. Das war im Grunde genommen das allererste, was Suzuki Roshi uns 1961 beigebracht hat. It's called the granting way and the gathering in way. Das heißt der gewährende und der einsammelnde Weg. He kept telling us, for about a year or two years, he kept talking about koans in terms of this inward turn, inward turning mind and outward turning mind. And then he identified them with Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and Avalokiteshvara. They often put together in the same altar space.

[40:08]

And Avalokiteshvara is the outward turning space of Bodhisattva compassion. And the inward turning space is Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom. So we're using concepts from Buddhism in our practice of actuality. Is that wisdom and compassion are two very basic, intrinsic expressions of aliveness. Expressions of aliveness.

[41:21]

Now, what's the German word that you and Christian made up? Verlebendigen. Yeah, so there we are. See, this whole lecture is just to support that word. Okay. We can't get much more basic than this. Is that And you can begin to not only practice this sitting in your room, there-ness, here-ness. When you're with people, you can feel, do I have an outward-turning mind? Do I have an inward-turning mind?

[42:24]

And when you get more and more used to this, like you're working in the kitchen, you have an outward turning mind that doesn't lose contact with your spine. And when you are in sasana or in the study time, you emphasize this inward turning mind. And it's so inward turning that the body and mind disappear. You have Dogen casting off body and mind. So my feeling is that from

[43:27]

Infancy, babies are taught to emphasize there-ness or they're taught to emphasize here-ness. I always like it that in English only T separates there and here. If you write here, H-E-R-E, and then you put a T in parentheses, and then you write here, you have here, there. So for me, that's just fun. It connects it. So, but seeing that, I'm running out of time.

[44:51]

I have only a couple minutes if I'm going to follow the schedule, right? Yes. Yes. See? She's proud director. Okay. So in our culture, we have to start emphasizing the turning inward mind instead of the turning outward mind. They're both emphases. We do both, but one culture emphasizes one more than the other. In our culture, we may have to learn to emphasize the inner spirit more. Both are simply ways to emphasize something, but one culture emphasizes one more, another culture emphasizes the other more. So, as I said this morning during the first period of Zazenat, There's an inner living space that is not so well developed in us Westerners.

[45:55]

And in average people in East Asia it's not that well developed. They have more of a feeling for it than we do. But a realized Buddhist practitioner, a Zen practitioner, has an equally developed outer living space and inner living space and the fusion of the two. Because of this, it's one of the reasons when I first started teaching in Europe, I emphasized the turning word phrase, just now is enough. And I think it's still, you know, these decades later, still an essential practice to really feel at each moment, just now is enough.

[47:17]

It has to be. There's no alternative. Just now is enough. It really does help you come into a successive identity. Each moment is enough. Each exhale is enough. Each inhale is enough. A successive identity is the potential for a realized identity, not the continuity of identity. And it really helps you to get into a successive identity, where you have the feeling of existing from moment to moment. And this successive identity is the basis for realization, not a continuous identity. And once you establish the physiology of successive identity, dharma, dharma, dharma, moment, moment, moment.

[48:19]

Yeah, then you have to start exploring how does the thrust of my narrative identity, which is continuity, function within a successional identity. dann musst du anfangen, dir die Frage zu stellen, wie funktioniert jetzt meine Narrative, meine vielleicht biografisch-geschichtliche Identität in dieser sukzessiven Identität. Das macht Spaß, das gibt dir auch was zu tun. Ich sage immer, das kannst du machen, wenn du auf den Zahnarzt wartest. Ich höre jetzt auf. But I want to add the phrases, ordinary mind is the way. It's a famous statement of Matsu's. But it's also famous in a koan where Nanchuan... Zhaozhou asks Nanzhuang, what is the way?

[49:43]

And Nanzhuang, the disciple of Matsu, continuing the lineage, the teaching lineage, says, ordinary mind is the way. If ordinary mind is the way, then Zen is the practice of actuality. Yeah, and then extraordinary Jiaojiao says, our ancestor says, our ancestor says, Well, how do I aim for it? If ordinary mind is the way, how do I aim for ordinary mind? And Nanjuan says, if you aim for it, you're lost.

[50:45]

These guys knew what they were talking about. Or Dogen's, the entire earth is the true human body. You're telling me the time. No, no, I'm making myself. You're straightening. Straightening myself. That wasn't a signal. No, it wasn't. Shut up, would you? You're talking too long. That's what she was trying to do to me at the meeting the other night. She said, I can't translate anymore. Yeah. Is that a hint? What's the message here? Yeah. But you take this metaphor, the true human body is the entire earth. Now, I'll tell you one last thing, which is the sensorium does not make distinctions between human and non-human.

[52:12]

Go ahead. No, I'm done. Oh, really? If you're going to unpack your suitcase, unpack actuality, in my mind, you can't unpack your suitcase in a canoe. You have to wait for you in the harbor in your hotel room. And your hotel room is either Western or East Asian. And you can't unpack actuality in a Western hotel room. If you have the distinctions of human and non-human or things and activity, Buddhism doesn't work. Because this terrible distinction between human and non-human, which is part of the reason we're in the sixth extinction,

[53:47]

Weil diese Unterscheidung zwischen menschlich und nichtmenschlich, diese fürchterliche Unterscheidung, die in meinen Augen der Hauptgrund dafür ist, dass wir mitten im sechsten Atemsterben sind, ist eine konzeptuelle Unterscheidung aus einer Kultur, die auf einer Schöpfungsgeschichte oder einer Schöpferidee basiert. Das ist nicht Tatsächlichkeit. So just play with your sensorium. Listen very carefully. Do you hear a distinction between human and non-human? You just hear sounds. Do you see human, the books, the shells, the bell? Do you see human, non-human? No. It's all smooth. It's just part of your sensorium. And out there, is not reality.

[55:12]

When out there becomes relationality then you can move smoothly between outer turning mind and inner turning mind. I'm sorry, that went a little long, but I only got about so far in what I might say. But just now is enough. Thank you very much.

[56:01]

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