Good afternoon. Guten Tag. I don't know if you can imagine how this feels to me to have to give lectures so often. Ich weiß nicht, ob ihr euch vorstellen könnt, wie sich das anfühlt für mich, so oft Vorträge halten zu müssen. I don't know if I give somewhere between 200 and 300 lectures a year. And I try to let each one be not the same as the other one. And that's not really as hard as... it might seem. Because I'm easily bored. And if I said the same thing, I'd get bored with myself.

[01:03]

But also many of you are the same in the lectures, so then you'd get bored if I said the same thing. Yet still, you know, I... wonder how to speak about this, you know. And I get, you know, and I, of course, what I speak about arises from you. But I get ready to dive from my little platform here into the water. And I see it's suddenly different water. Last ten days it was one group of people. Now it's some slightly different group of people. But this week I...

[02:05]

I start talking to the people who were here last week. This week I start talking to the people who were here last week and then I see the water's changed. This goes on all year round. The water keeps changing. But when I dive in and I start swimming around underwater, various of you start appearing. And somehow the water becomes what I'm speaking with. And the water is somehow, from my feeling, our Sangha life. And I'm always asking myself, what am I doing? What are we doing? So I keep starting from beginning. What kinds of practice are there?

[03:24]

As you know, there's lay practice and monastic practice. And I'm glad to see some of the monastic pros from Crestone are helping us today, like Katrin. Being in the business world with a new business she started. Still knows how to beat a mocha kill. You don't have to do it in the office very often. Yeah, and Otmar is here from many practice periods at Creston. And others of you. And I asked, you know, we have two one days this week.

[04:48]

The 31st and the 1st. So we have a day in which I thought maybe it would be nice if Otmar gave a lecture. Yeah, he was head of the Hartford Street Sendo in San Francisco for quite a long time. And I missed most of his lectures there. So I'm happy. I can't really understand, but I will be there. In San Francisco, I could have understood that. Anyway, so there will be a seminar tomorrow and then then Atmar's talk, and then the next day I'll talk again.

[05:57]

So there's two kinds of practice and there's two kinds of practitioners. One kind of practitioner is the one who brings practice into their life. who brings practice into their life. And the other kind of practitioner is the one who brings their life into practice. And such a person might be a lay person or a monk. And most of the, let's just say many monks in Japan at least are really just bringing

[07:10]

some practice into their life. So the monastics don't have the monopoly on bringing their life into practice. So how do we bring our life into practice? Now, I... Somewhere from Castle... through three or four seminars. And one practice week and one four or five days with the Austrian psychotherapist.

[08:22]

And especially from the seminar after Kassel here. I've been speaking really about what is the Buddhist idea of self. And more particularly, what kind of self is discovered through Zen practice? And how can this discovered self be transformed? And I found myself going in this direction when I spoke about true friendship or friendship in Kassel. And I... spoke about discovering the space of the world under the consciousness dominated body.

[09:46]

Or the body, maybe true body, that's underneath our consciousness dominated body. or our consciousness-dominated mind. Now, most of the science that's now aimed at studying consciousness and the mind, concentrates on consciousness as the highest and most unique aspect of life in our cosmos. that Buddhism wouldn't say so.

[10:57]

They'd certainly say that consciousness, as Dogen says in this piece you have, makes the decision to practice. Consciousness makes the decision to practice. But it's through practice we discover our true body and true mind. Which is a mind and body freed from the were not contained within the definitions of consciousness.

[12:00]

Okay, now what I'm saying may not be completely clear, I don't know, but we'll have to go on. I can't define everything too much. So I asked, what... The other day I asked, how are we together? Wie sind wir zusammen? And I hope that for some of you, all of you, some of you, you found this question on your mind as we were here together. Und ich hoffe, dass ihr oder einige von euch diese Frage in euch gefunden habt, als wir hier zusammen waren. Ja. So, again, you're doing this strange, to me, I think, strange thing of being housewives around here.

[13:28]

Yeah, yeah. Sweeping and cleaning and so forth. Yeah, monks, I realized early on that monks were basically housewives. And I know when I was in college, I always wanted to be a housewife. When I worked in New York, I had to work in these jobs, and housewives were out in the park pushing their baby crazy. Yeah. I know the mothers might not agree, but still how it looked to me. Central Park always looked better than the office I worked in. So, being a monk and by monk now I'm using it to mean one who brings their life into practice.

[14:41]

It's a particular period of being a monk or it's not something you do all your life. This particular period of being a monk or bringing your life into practice is like washing yourself in water. the most ordinary basic activity. I mean, it's like when people are nervous or anxious, they want to wash the dishes. Well, we're not anxious particularly, but we wash the dishes. But we're... I didn't get that.

[16:08]

They want to do the dishes. Somebody is anxious. They often want to go wash the dishes or do something simple, right? And I said, we're not particularly anxious, I hope, but we still wash the dishes. The idea is The idea is we're washing ourselves with the dishes, with the sweeping, with the basic things you do as part of being alive. So now I'm asking the question, why is monastic life like this? Yeah, it may have some drawbacks. Some what?

[17:23]

Drawbacks. May have some drawbacks. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's maybe why most of the Zen artists are amateur artists. They don't have time to develop as a professional artist. They're amateur artists. Or amateur scholars. Not often they're very creative. artists and scholars and so forth. But still, why this emphasis on washing yourself in the ordinary? First of all, you want to get the habit of a kind of bodily relationship to the world.

[18:27]

A hands-on relationship to the world. I could say you just get the feel of the world as a physical object. Feel it in your... And you begin to feel... You're thinking as a physical activity, certainly, and even as a physical object. And you start to perceive your thinking as a physical activity and even as a physical object.

[19:43]

Yeah, I mentioned this the other day in my talk. Not in a different way. But I remember in 61 or so, being with Charlotte Selber, who I started practicing with at the same time as Suzuki Roshi. And she said, close your eyes. Asked us to close our eyes. So we're sitting there, you know. Then she said the word blue. And I felt it like a slowed-down physical object that came across. crossed the room and hit me and spread through my body.

[20:51]

And from that time on, my body knew something about the physicality of sound. Von diesem Moment an wusste mein Körper etwas über die Körperlichkeit des Klangs, eines Wortes und sogar des Denkens. And that little experience was a seed of developing tangibility to the world. Often such little experiences, which if you can notice them, and it helps to practice to notice them, helps the world sort of pounce on you, get a hold of you. Helps the word pounce, like a cat pounces or a lion pounces or a mouse pounces.

[22:15]

Because often insights have to kind of grab hold of you, pounce on you, take you by surprise. Often such insights have to surprise you and surprise you. And you have to be mindful enough to feel the pounds. Oh, that's something. That's something unique. Okay, so let's talk about this washing ourselves in the world. The world as a whole. But how does the world as a wholeness And a wholesomeness open up to us.

[23:29]

First through the particular. So first of all this washing ourselves in the world is to Find the particularity of each thing. Bedeutet die Besonderheit jedes Dings zu finden. Each dish, each piece of silverware. I think in Austria, didn't I speak about looking under the, through the suds of the dishwasher, which I did as a kid, the silverware? The suds of the soap bubbles.

[24:30]

Looking under the soap bubbles of consciousness at the true body of the world. So the first aspect of this washing yourself in the world as a whole is to notice, to tend to turn yourself over to the particular. ist das Besondere, die Besonderheit zu bemerken, ihr Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken. And, yeah, it's more than just being aware. I think that's right, to turn yourself over to the particular.

[25:33]

Es ist mehr als ein Gewahrsein. Es ist dieses sich der Besonderheit anheimgeben, sich ihr überlassen. To your pencil, to your desk, to your chair, to your... To your posture. This turning yourself over is one of the first steps toward non-duality. The non-duality, which frees the world into uniqueness. Okay. So the particularity, the practice of particularity is direct perception and mindfulness.

[26:35]

And the practice of direct perception we've discussed. Not in detail, but a long time ago. Not in detail recently, but a long time ago we had seminars on it. Okay. and mindfulness. And the second is to notice the impermanence of the world. Which means to notice its momentariness. As an experience it's to notice its momentariness. So here the practice of mindfulness is to notice momentariness more than continuity.

[27:42]

Here consciousness is brought into play, reminding you to notice momentariness as well as continuity. Now, as you begin to notice momentariness, you also begin to make the shift to uniqueness. And this is a crucial shift. The word crucial in English means crossroads.

[28:52]

So it's a crossroads to go from momentariness to uniqueness. When you start feeling each moment as unique, That itself is a kind of catalyst that begins to shift our notion of self. The third aspect of this washing ourselves and the world as a whole And the third aspect of purifying oneself in the world as a whole is another basic Buddhist thing, which is the teaching of interdependence.

[30:03]

The teaching of interdependence. We could call the teaching of particularity the teaching of inter-independence. Inter-independence is not such a word I know. Well, you see each thing in its particularity. And interdependence is to see each thing in its relatedness. Now, what's the practice of seeing things in its interrelatedness? This isn't just some ecological thinking. some understanding that things are interdependent, but rather to see each thing as equal to each other thing.

[31:36]

Now, that's the kind of feeling you can come to. I can't exactly say more than that, but you... You stop saying like or dislike. Now, of course we have preferences. And, you know, we want these, we want to have this building taken care of in a nice way, and that requires preferences. But our fundamental mind and the initial mind, we want to be free of preferences. Mm-hmm. When your mind is free of preferences, each thing has an equal valence.

[33:06]

Valence is a term in chemistry which means how things combine. When you have preferences, interdependence isn't really your experience. When your fundamental mind finds each thing equal, the combinatorial power of each thing, becomes infinite, virtually. I remember, yeah, I remember. You guys all have real candles on your Christmas trees.

[34:20]

If you celebrate this as either a Celtic or a Druid or a Christian ceremony. The druids were pretty mean guys, but it was a druidic type ceremony. But anyway, in America we don't have fire laws against candles on your Christmas tree. So we have electric light bulbs. And they used to be, I think some still are, they used to be, if one bulb goes out, they all go out. It was maddening.

[35:39]

You had to test every bulb to see which one was out. But we used the same image. Interdependence is something like that. When all the bulbs are equal, they all light up. Now, practice is initially restorative. Initially restorative. It restores you. Yeah, it gives you the psychological strength to really face anything that comes up.

[36:41]

Believe it or not, when you can sit without moving, without scratching, you develop tremendous psychological strength. And you begin to recognize mind. First as moods. And then you realize the moods are actually minds. And recognizing minds, you begin to see that minds can be transformed. And also you just get familiar with yourself sitting. All your past lives embedded in your present life.

[38:04]

So practice is at first restorative, and that's what our first ten days was about, entering practice. And this ten days is supposedly about the transformative practice. power aspect of practice. So now I'm speaking about the transformative aspect of the practice of interdependence when you can find a Preference. Free mind. As Sukhiyoshi said over and over again, no gaining ideas. That mind which can find the equalness of each thing,

[39:11]

the lights of the world, lights up each particular. So interdependence is a transformative practice when it arises from a mind without preferences. And it arises from a mind without purpose. And this is easier to do if you're washing yourself in the basic details, particularity of the world. This basic particularity of the world.

[40:30]

Because we're not trying to think the world. As Ivan Illich says, we can't think our way to the world we want. But we can discover the mind, which thinks the world in a new way. So that's what we can... It's transformative practice. Yeah, and so, well, we have the particular impermanence, inter... dependence. And the next fundamental idea is interpenetration.

[41:31]

And interpenetration is the experience of it is all at onceness. The simultaneous continuity and emptiness of the world. And the last I would mention would be thusness. So that's, I can't do much more. I'm running out of time. So I can come to the latter part of my little list next time.

[42:33]

But I want to say that in my series of seminars and so forth that went from here to Munich. Trying to find a way through those seminars and lectures and discussions what What does Buddhism mean by self? And what does Zen discover as self? And then, through that discovery, develop a practice

[43:35]

Now I have one of the kind of basics I would like everyone in the Dharma Sangha to be familiar with and to practice. is what I call the three functions of self, which means to shift from finding self as an entity and semi-permanent or permanent, Our actions usually imply its permanence even if we think differently.

[44:51]

And our language and culture keep reifying that delusion. So the shift from seeing self as an entity to a function is really important. And what I have asked you to notice is to see how self establishes separateness. And how self establishes connectedness. And how self establishes continuity. And how through Buddhist practice we shift the priority to connectedness and a continuity not discovered through thinking

[46:16]

but a discontinuous continuity discovered through the body. But now, after these series of seminars, I feel we've got to add a fourth Which is context. How is context established self and vice versa? And the most important way, I would say, is the embedded self. The embedded narrative of phenomena. Self has to establish meaning. A person who's amnesic can't... create meaning in the world.

[47:33]

We establish meaning through a kind of narrative.

[47:36]

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