Well, I appreciate your coming here on short notice for this seminar. And we're still trying to figure out how to use this room. We're used to, we haven't painted the wall yet, metal, not everyone, some of you know it, big metal iron fireplace. It mostly just sucked warm air up and out. And when it didn't suck warm air out and you lit a fire it filled the room with smoke.

[01:02]

Now we never tried the fire but we heard that it just filled the room with smoke. So anyway, I, you know, partly I decided to do this seminar just because I usually come in February, March, and I was missing you, so I thought I need an excuse. And I had a very good excuse. And I had a very good excuse. A good entschuldigung. Entschuldigung. I have an oral impairment for language. But anyway.

[02:03]

Because we're going to try to do a 90-day practice period here starting in mid-September. Because now I think we have sufficient facilities to have a group of people stay here for three months without leaving. And so, you know, I think we have to, we need in the long run a larger Zendo. Now, It's not obvious that we need a larger sendo. Or it's not obvious that we need a different sendo.

[03:10]

But because I think we do, and I will try to explore why that's likely the case, And I would like to build as much as possible a wood joinery, Japanese wood joinery sender. And it's again not obvious why we might do that. By the way, now that we don't have that big object there and we can sit, how is it, can you hear everywhere? Okay. So, Yeah, if we need a wood joinery Zendo, I have to turn to a wood joinery carpenter.

[04:23]

And I happen to know someone named Leonard Carpenter. Who is my, I call him my brother in outlaw. My former wife's brother. Yeah, but there's no ex with us. There's a few wives, but no. So I invited Lenny, Lynn, and his apprentice and partner Mathieu from Belgium to come and meet with us and meet with the Sangha to discuss a possible Zinda.

[05:29]

And this is a pretty big project. Because probably the wood we want is in America. And the place where they might turn it into meditation platforms and ceiling and things. would likely be in Belgium, I guess. Or both places. But that means they have to be able to move back and forth between America and Belgium, so they probably should set up a company so they can move back and forth and shift things.

[06:31]

And Lenny is thinking of retiring, and I said, not yet. Yeah, okay. Now, so today I'll try, it echoes in here. Today I'll try to, or I will speak about institutional practice and individual practice. And the relationship between them. And I'll see if I can bring that out in our discussion. And tomorrow I think maybe I will speak about individual practice as a craft.

[07:43]

No, I don't know really ever what I'll do exactly. It depends on my feeling talking here with you. So maybe I should pretend to be traditional and start with Bodhidharma. Actually I'm pretty traditional and I hide it. Or I'm, I don't know what I'm hiding, but anyway, hiding something. Okay. So the classic or iconic testing question is why did Bodhidharma come from the West? Okay. And the simple and most inclusive response, it's not really an answer, a response.

[09:05]

You don't make a distinction between response and... Not really. Really. Okay. Antwort und Reaktion. Antwort und Reaktion. Antwort und Reaktion. We are not so sophisticated in our language like you are. English is just a German dialect with a half-French vocabulary. But it's true. But Deutsch is much better on verbs. But response is a noun. Response is a noun. Anyway. He hates to not be able to translate a word. Good. Okay. The simplest and most inclusive response is, Bodhidharma came to China to find a disciple.

[10:20]

If he hadn't come to find a disciple, he probably would have stayed in India. He had a good thing going in India. Anyway, he wasn't just in China for a vacation. So let's assume he was looking, wanted to find a disciple. Yeah. Who could that be? Well, again, the simplest answer is you. And one answer, a response to the question, why did Bodhidharma come from the West, is I'm ready.

[11:21]

But this question is a kind of deck of cards, it's a deck of questions. And coming from the West, which is the autumnal direction, autumnal, autumnal, autumnal, And you know the kanji, the character for China is just a kind of square with a line through it. Which is, it's the center. So the west is something foreign. So... Another question is implied in this question. Why are we, in China in this case, practicing a foreign religion from India?

[12:25]

And we can ask the same question. Why are we practicing a foreign religion from Japan East Asia. So, I mean, these are also my questions. I mean, basically, everything I do, talk about, is a response to why am I doing this? What am I doing? And corollary, what are we doing? And since I'm sort of getting some of you to do this, I feel a big responsibility. What are we doing here?

[13:25]

Now I think for us Westerners and one of the advantages we have as Westerners in practicing Buddhism is that our assumed culture is more explicitly different than yogic culture. So the way in which Buddhism is a yogic culture can be clearer for us than in a yogic culture, like Japan.

[14:58]

For this reason, Kaz Tanahashi Sensei always says, in Japan it's best to be a Christian, in America it's best to be a Buddhist. Now, the two most useful necessary mental postures for a Western practitioner. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar, or fairly, since some people are kind of new,

[16:00]

I'm making a distinction here between a physical posture and a mental posture. And I'm making a distinction between a mental posture and an intention. An intention is something you try to do, you try to make happen. And a mental posture is something you... assume and you wait and see what happens. So we could say that a mental posture is a process of incubation, not of understanding. And not a process of understanding. Okay.

[17:11]

And the simplest example is... to catch the feeling of it, is when we do zazen. We assume, take, establish a physical posture. And a lot happens through simply repeatedly assuming this physical posture. Neuroscientists are continuously excited by what happens when you assume this posture. And one of the simplest things it does, but fewer, is definitely makes you more right-left brain balanced.

[18:15]

And eventually makes you more right-brained. Not more. It makes you right brain dominant. That's huge. Yeah. I love it when you tell stories. Thanks. Okay, so the physical posture is what you establish in Zazen. But the instruction, don't move, is a mental posture. Hold this mental posture in the midst of sitting, which includes a certain amount of moving. Du hältst diese geistige Haltung inmitten des Sitzens, das wiederum ja einiges an Bewegung einschließt.

[19:34]

And the mental posture is... There's no zazen without the mental posture of don't move. Und es gibt kein zazen ohne die geistige Haltung des beweg dich nicht. And in many ways, the physical posture is meant to support the mental posture. It's not just that the mental posture supports the physical posture. And if anything, the imperturbable mind, which is one of the main fruits of practice. That more than anything arises from the practice of don't move. You discover an actual inner stillness in the midst of activity. Yeah.

[20:42]

Develop it, evolve it, incubate it. Okay. So the two mental postures, which I think are most essential for a Westerner, One is to pause for the particular. And I've been saying this for many years. And we might refine it a little bit or take it another step and say... To pause for the pause within the pause. So that's one mental posture. Why is it a mental posture? Because you hold it as something that...

[21:42]

locates you in each moment. Which is a little bit different than intending it. Now why I emphasize differences like between intention and pause and a mental posture. Which is certainly, if Zen practice is anything, if Zen practice is anything, it's a way of bringing attention to attention. A way to bring attention to the functioning and structure of mind itself in its process.

[23:01]

Okay, now the second most important, I think, mental posture is to develop the habit of seeing everything as an activity. And not as an entity. Okay. Again, the basic philosophical evidential position of Buddhism. Is that everything is changing? Everything is changing.

[24:03]

Okay. You can see in this stone, and geologists can see how it's changed. And it's changed. It used to be in a post office that Rilke and Nietzsche used. Okay, so it changed from a 19th century, I guess, or so, Baden Post Office. And now what you do is wearing it down a little bit. So it's an activity which we are participating in by walking in on. Now, you really have to, it takes, I would say, a year or two of incubation before you really see everything as an activity without fail, automatically.

[25:26]

Because the consciously given world to us Our usual sense of an evidential world is established by consciousness. You really have to shake your head and shake your body in the midst of stillness to really get it that everything is an activity. You may think it's easy, but most of us may understand it intellectually, but if I watch your actions, you think the world is permanent. So everything is an activity.

[26:42]

Now, let me give you some examples. I'd like to come back to pause and blah, blah, blah, but I can't do everything at once. Well, no, I can't. Okay. But you're doing it at once because now you're pausing and hearing me pause in speaking. Now, one of the important things, useful things to notice as you study Dogen, is that time is ripening time. If you don't get it, the time that Dogen assumes time is ripening, you don't really get what he's talking about. In other words, sounds like Heidegger, being time is ripening time.

[27:52]

Well, maybe we can say beingness time is ripening time. You needed a problem. How do we translate it, Nicole and Christian? Seeing this? Okay, so... But space also ripens.

[28:55]

If everything is an activity, then space is an activity. I mean everything, including space. If you think we're living in an envelope and the activity is occurring in this space, this is not Buddhism. So space is also an activity. Now, I think saying space ripens is okay, but maybe the better word would be space evolves. Okay. Now, why I'm speaking about this, it has to do with institutional practice. It has to do with the site of practice.

[29:57]

Okay. Now, in the morning, when When you do the service, we do the service. You were there, some of you were there this morning. I find it a lot easier to do the service at a lower altitude. Crestdown is 80, where we live is 8,600 feet. The Zendo is about 8,500 feet, something like that. And Nine bars, I think, oh God, I'm too old to do nine bars. Yeah, but here I feel, oh, well, I'm glad it's not 18, but nine. Okay. So, if the space of the Zendo is an activity, The Zendo should be designed so that we can actualize the space.

[31:19]

It's interesting, you know, I think about Frank Gehry's buildings. And his sister is going to give Marie-Louise and Sophia and I a tour of his Los Angeles building in a week or so. So by chance, she just happened to come and see the school Maria-Louise put together in Crestone. And that was a coincidence, because you just came by at the school that Marie-Louise and Christian had put together? Yes, at Balli d'Astier. Now he clearly sees the building as a visual activity. But does he see it as a way in which the people in the building also create the space? That's the question I'm going to be asking myself when I look at his buildings.

[32:46]

Okay. In a zendo, in the morning, we do jundo. We walk what's called jundo. You walk around and greet everyone. And it is a good morning greeting. And it's also called opening the Zendo. But it's also the Zendo ought to be designed so that you can walk and in your physical activity, reproduce the building. So it's not just the walls are making the building, our activity is making the building. Now, these buildings were partly designed by Hugo Kugelhaus.

[33:49]

Who's a rather famous German builder and who developed a philosophy of space, who came out of Berlin between the wars. And Wolfram Graubner, who passed this compound on to us, was Hugo Kugelhausen's sort of protege. Now, the Schreinerei was specifically made, intended for, Kugelhaus to retire in.

[34:53]

No. but he's dead and he died before he could move into it and Bodhidharma is not dead because he's you or she's you and she wants to move into that building so can we kind of fit traditional practice space into this kind of space. Okay. So when the Jundo is done, the walking around, the greeting, the feeling is At this moment, I'm joining the walls in making this building.

[36:12]

And this face should have a feeling of traversing of a journey. And the Crestone Zendo, which Lenny built for us, are there any pictures of the Zendo in your book? You don't think so? But for example, there, I designed the Zendo. We have one, two, three, four, five, eight ceilings. No, nine ceilings. Ceilings. And the nine ceilings, three, six, seven, eight, nine ceilings, give a different sort of location to each part.

[37:22]

But the ninth ceiling, where we all do service together, joins the other eight ceilings. But it's not just a people space. I mean, it's not just a... I'm going to stop it a minute because you must be getting tired. It's not just a... I don't know how to put it. So let me say, it's also a... a square of 48 people.

[38:24]

Because there's 12 people can sit on each side. So it's a rectangle, not a square, but it's a rectangle used so that from the point of view of the person sitting, it's a square, 12 people on each side. Now there's a kind of traditional calibration in this. Okay, say that you're sitting there, I'm sitting here, and somebody's sitting here. There's a kind of mutual space established between the three. I call it a tender, tended space.

[39:26]

That is an expression of both equanimity and compassion. Now, if Neil and I were facing the wall, there'd be somebody exactly behind us on the other side of the sender. Now, traditionally, and quite a ways away, traditionally, the alert monk or practitioner, lay practitioner, feels the person bowing on the far side and bows to the wall. So while I'm sitting, he comes and sits, I bow when he comes and sits.

[40:27]

And when this person comes and sits, he bows or she bows and I bow. But the person directly opposite me sits, comes and bows, I bow. And this person bows when the person directly up. This actually happens. Not just imagination. How do you develop that kind of sensitivity? And how do you develop that kind of sensitivity? It's like knowing in a room that somebody is looking at you and your back is turned. Okay. Now, the Zendo is actually designed so that this triangulation happens. Okay. There's also a feeling of the whoever's the doshi means the person leading the service.

[41:46]

The doshi does the jundo. Mm-hmm. And there's a feeling almost like you're gathering yarn, making a string of yarn. So you're not just articulating the walls of the zendo. You're walking in the inner space of each practitioner. And if the feeling of gathering a kind of yarn that gets more and more fibers in it as you pass each person.

[42:53]

Now you may think I'm nuts. But we're talking about space as an activity. And if you are sensitive to space as an activity and not just a container, you begin to find something else is happening. Yeah, and then you have this yarn you... No stories. Yarn... Yarn you gathered, and then when you end your Jundo, you bow, and it... bringing it all into the room.

[44:00]

So I'll say one or two more things and then stop. Read things, I hope. I noticed recently... that the, because I'm not, I sort of stepped back and I'm not the abbot at Crestone anymore. So I watched this. And the technical word for the Retired abbot is the shadow that doesn't go away. Yeah. Anyway, so I can watch the service from my Zafu.

[45:06]

And then Jundo and so forth. So when Dan, who's now the Abbot, returns to his cushion, he goes up to the altar. But he comes back from the altar slightly bent forward. And if you think it's just a difference in posture, you don't understand what the service is about. And it was clear to me that this is the case because the doan Sorry to bother you with all these words. The Doan who handed incense to the dead. He or she just returned to their cushion. And didn't also lean forward.

[46:08]

Which means they don't understand space as an activity. Because what the Doshi is doing in going to the altar He or she is going to the altar. Now, when he or she arrives in front of the altar, and the adoshi doesn't know where he or she is going, You know it's time to do something, so you step aside and you say, oh yeah, I guess I'll go this way. If your mind is, oh, I'm going up to the altar, now I'm going to go back, yeah, it's dead. You're finding out at each moment, otherwise the word Dharma means nothing.

[47:28]

So you're going up to the altar. And in each transition you're sort of, oh, okay, this is what's next. There's only one next at a time. So now you've gone up to the altar. And the altar is, everything is in its place. And the Buddha or the Manjushri is in Samadhi. And you going up to the altar, again, it means nothing unless you also enter the samadhi of the Buddha. Otherwise it's just some sort of bullshit.

[48:37]

So you bow and you feel the Buddha, if it's a pretty good Buddha, and you enter the space that's meant, the mental posture that the Buddha is establishing, And entering that mental posture of the Buddha, which is called a samadhi, you now want to carry that in your body back to samadhi. the service or back to the cushion and to sit. So you feel this and you feel it between your hands again like something spongy almost.

[49:42]

You feel this space and you bend forward almost as if there was a low ceiling. But if the Doan or the Jisha just walks back, they haven't entered that space. So you go back to the altar, bringing the space, return from the altar, bringing the somatic space of the altar back with you. Now there's two layers of space in the Zendo as an activity. In fact, there's more than that, but let's just keep it simple. Okay. Now, it's not... If you have the feeling, oh, now I'm supposed to go up to the Zen altar this way, and now I come back from the altar this way, you don't feel space as an activity.

[51:09]

And you're not actualizing the space as an activity for everyone. So in this actualized space as an activity, each practitioner can find stillness. Okay. That's enough for now, huh? But you can see that designing, fitting a zendo which can can really allow practice to actualize the activity of the space, and samadhic space requires a certain kind of zendo. Now, one thing you may have noticed in the history of the development of Buddhist practice places

[52:17]

For two and a half thousand years, mostly there have been compounds. a group of buildings. Why have they been compounds? Why have they not been one big building with a Buddha Hall on the second floor and a Zendo on the first floor? Because the real defining dynamic of the compound is the space between the buildings. So the garden and the pathways and the way you experience each building It's the dynamic of the space.

[53:34]

It's the dynamic of the whole. It's architecture, everything. So luckily we have a compound here. I thought there were sort of two buildings stuck together. Johanneshof is sort of two buildings stuck together. And here we have this building, we have the former Scharnerei. And then if we buy the farm, no. Excuse me. Just teasing. Anyway, we have a compound here. Now how do we fit a practice into it? Now, it doesn't have to be laid out as a mandala. When you see mountain temples in Korea and mountain temples in Japan, you have a little valley and a mountain and hills.

[54:47]

They can't just fit a mandala in there. So the buildings are adjusted to keep the feeling of the buildings and the relationship, but also they have to deal with the landscape. And we have something like that here. And I'm stopping at a good time, 11 o'clock. Time for a break. Thank you for letting me watch. Bye. Thanks.

[55:08]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_71.35