I'll bow again. It's amazing that this works at all, so I will be a patient when it doesn't work too well. So I can see your mouth moving. If I don't see... PC disconnected, it says now. So if I don't seem to know, you can kind of move your hand or something to tell me when you've stopped talking. Okay. Yeah. Well, we have to consider how we're going to continue these talks, these Sunday talks. And I've been doing them in four-week and six-week kind of course-like units.

[01:11]

And maybe we could try six weeks. Does anybody have any preferences? You should tell the bosses at Johanneshof. Yeah, I might... Somebody asked me if I could give one talk, something like societal and ethical warriors that we need to face not only this pandemic, but probably future pandemics in this globalized world.

[02:15]

And the Anthropocene, which we're already in the middle of, And someone asked me if I could hold a lecture that speaks to the topic of being a social and ethical warrior. People who are willing to deal with the difficulties that we face not only through this pandemic, Now, for those of you who might be new to these Sunday talks, I have been talking about what's called Wado practice, which I call the phrasal path in recent Sundays. And Wado practice is a monastic practice which is evolved in ways that it can also be

[03:19]

a very powerful lay life practice. Yes. But what's interesting about these practices, I mean, interesting to me, is the way in which... Now it says the device is disconnected. The way in which your own... even if the instructions for the practice are pretty clear, the basic instructions, the instructions have to be developed through what Matisse calls the selective instinct, an instinct of what to select at each moment that arises from the fullness of your experience and not through some kind of ideas or instructions.

[04:59]

What I want to talk about is that even if the instructions for the practice are very clear, that even then it is necessary to apply the practice. And in the discussion after the talk last Sunday. Nicole mentioned that she found it particularly interesting that it ended up being an inventory of the instances of to-do appearing or to-go appearing.

[06:07]

Nicole mentioned that she found it particularly interesting that in the end, what I was talking about, that it became an inventory of it, an inventory of where the to-go, when I had the feeling of having to go somewhere or the feeling of having to do something, where these individual impulses came from. Even if you've all heard this before, let me try to set it in place for ourselves in perhaps a little new, a little different way. The Wado practice, or the phrasal path practice, is to bring your attention to, let's call it simply, the mind stream.

[07:12]

We can call it the stream of consciousness, or better, the stream of noticing, or the stream of knowing. We can call it the stream of consciousness, or better, the stream of noticing, or better, the stream of knowing. And maybe we can call it the associative stream because it's the associations that arise moment after moment through consciousness, through circumstances, through memories and anticipations. And maybe we can also call it an associative stream, because what appears there are the associations that appear from moment to moment through what we notice. No, if I try to describe it in words, Matisse says, I may talk about Matisse a bit today, Matisse says, once you name an experience, you may cease to see it.

[08:36]

So I'm naming an experience, but I'm hoping you get a feel for it and you enter through the door of the experience into an unnamed experience. So let me say, Nicole raises her eyebrows when she stops speaking. This is good. So let me say you, in a way, are entering your body into the stream of associative, into the associative stream.

[09:47]

You're entering your body into the associative stream. So it helps to have a feeling for the kind of awareness, aliveness stream of the body. Power of love. But you're entering with intentionality the contents of the stream, the associations, the noticings within this associative stream.

[10:48]

So you're noticing is not of the stream itself, which is mindfulness can be too much noticing the stream and not noticing the contents of the stream. And God understood too much in that way. Achtsamkeitspraxis kann zu sehr so verstanden werden, dass man versucht, nur den Strom selbst zu bemerken und dabei nicht so sehr die Inhalte des Stroms zu bemerken.

[11:55]

So maybe it's like you might put into the stream a special kind of net which will only catch certain things as they flow by in the associative stream. So I... I presented this as it was and as it has been a personal experience in my mid-20s, in the early 60s, of being beleaguered by too much to do and too many places to go. So at that time I'd practiced Zazen enough that I had established a bodily connection sense of continuity, of awareness, moment after moment.

[13:24]

And then I could intentionally form a little net to put into the stream to catch the fish or crabs or sharks or whatever that swam along with to-dos and to-goes. And then it was possible for me to grasp the intention to bring a very specific network into my spirit stream and thus to fish out certain fish or sharks or whatever from the stream. and every time I have to do something appeared to do, it was part of a particular tapestry or topology in the stream and in my own experience and in the circumstances of my experience which made me understand the context in which that need to do something arose.

[14:43]

Und jedes Mal, wenn das Gefühl auftauchte, jetzt muss ich das und das machen, jedes Mal, wenn so ein Zutunsgefühl auftauchte, dann hatte dieses spezielle Gefühl eine ganz eigene Topologie, eine ganz eigene So I really began to see the... the psychology, the habit, the memories, etc., the various triggers or causes of this to-do or to-go when they arose. And in this way, it was really possible for me, the specific, the psychology that was in it, the particular psychology... Hello?

[15:59]

Can you say it again? And I... Oh, say it again. Anyway, being able to see the patterns allowed me to also act on the to-dos that were necessary and withdraw energy, attentional energy, relevant energy, from the ones that were just psychological or just social pressure or something. So then to the previous sentence, because I was able to recognize the specific patterns and so on, the psychology of these individual to-do's, the kind of feeling and emotion that was in there, and started studying, it was possible for me to identify the to-do's that I really had to do. So on the one hand, you're developing a bodily, something you learn and get a feel for in meditation and then evolve in your daily life.

[17:06]

Also einerseits entwickelst du dabei etwas, wofür du in der Meditation ein Gefühl entwickelst und dann in deinem täglichen Leben ausfaltest oder dort weiterträgst und entwickelst. You're getting a bodily feel for being in the field and stream of awareness and aliveness, which is not the same as the stream of consciousness. Du bekommst ein körperliches Gefühl dafür, im Strom des Gewahrseins zu sein und im Strom der Lebendigkeit. Und das ist nicht dasselbe wie der Strom des Bewusstseins. And at the same time you're getting a feel for how intentionality in the form of this particular kind of net which catches particular things in the stream.

[18:25]

So you're developing an intentionality that functions within the stream as well as functions through noticing the stream. These are biological or neurological yogic skills. And these are biological or yogic abilities.

[19:29]

Which don't just come genetically naturally. There are genetic potentialities which Zen sets out to develop and evolve. Let me say some commentators say all this came from the... influences of East Asian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean cultures and Indian in the West, which has been going on for centuries, some centuries. And let me say something general about it. Some commentators or scholars assume or say that all these ideas come from the Chinese or Japanese East Asian area and that they have been there for centuries and that they now influence the Western ideas.

[20:41]

I think from about the mid-1700s, it became a fashion in palaces and castles in Europe to have a Chinese room, which was often actually Japanese, with Japanese screens and pottery from China and so forth. It was like... To kind of create, when you had a lot of rooms, you created one room, which was this alternative world. And since the 1700s, for example, it was fashionable in palaces or castles, especially when you have so many rooms available, then it was fashionable to choose a certain room from it and to set up a Chinese room in it. It was mostly a Japanese room. And those rooms kept expanding until they touched more and more of the whole culture. But I don't think that's the whole story, even though it's a very interesting story.

[22:12]

My own feeling is that as science waxed, as science developed, and as the belief in science developed, and as Abrahamic religious beliefs waned, My own point of view is that since science has developed so much and the Abrahamic religious beliefs have become less and less, Experience became actual experience, livable, actualizable experience became the touchstone of reality or relationality. And my experience is much of what I am finding out

[23:32]

which coincides with Dharma practice arises from really asking the question, what is experience? What is experience? So Zen and Buddhist monastic practice developed as kind of laboratories to explore what is experience? What are the presentialities of experience? Zen and Buddhist monasteries developed as something like laboratories for the question, what is experience and what are the potentials of experience? What is possible in experience? What can be experienced?

[24:56]

Proust, whom I discovered when I was about 18 or 19, although Proust was somewhat influenced by Asian thinking and Bergson and so forth, still he's really basically trying to look at experience. And Proust, although he was influenced by Asian thoughts and Bergson and so on, his basic question is actually the question, what is experience? And he thought of his novel and his writing as a magnifying glass to enter into experience with more fullness. Er hat seinen Roman und all seine Schriften verstanden wie eine Lupe oder ein Mikroskop um vollständiger oder genauer in die Erfahrung hineinzuschauen.

[26:06]

And he used a lot of images from photography. And he says something once, you know, I didn't know that other than the person I was having a meal with, I didn't notice the other guests because I was looking at them with x-ray vision. Er sagt zum Beispiel so etwas wie, außer der andere Mensch, mit dem ich zusammen gegessen habe, außerdem habe ich die anderen Gäste nicht wahrgenommen, weil ich sie mir mit Röntgenaugen angeschaut habe. Ja, and the... He uses also the image of a stereoscope which still existed when I was a kid where you have two photographs you put in a thing and you look at them and it merges the two photographs and makes them look three-dimensional.

[27:12]

And he also uses the image of a stereoscope, which was always there when I was a child. And that's such a glasses, such a frame, where you put two photographs in and they are put together in a way that you get a three-dimensional impression. Yes, that's it. So he says, with stereoscopic vision, I could see two aspects of a person at once or a situation at once and yet still see them in a three-dimensionality. And he says something like, for example, with this stereoscopic vision, it was possible for me to see two aspects, two different faces or aspects of this person at once and still see them in their three-dimensionality. He also says, hearing in her voice the prisms and crystallizations of the secret life which none of us knew about.

[28:21]

Und er schreibt auch solche Sätze wie zum Beispiel in ihrer Stimme die Prismen, die Lichtunterteilungen, die unterschiedlichen Schattierungen, die Prismen und die Kristallisationen der Aspekte zu sehen, ihres inneren geheimen Lebens, über die niemand von uns etwas wusste. Now, I don't think that's a description of most of our, of any of us practically, experience. He said to Celeste, the woman who took care of him the last 10 years or so of his life, I don't remember. He said, you'll miss this old guy or something like that. You won't find any others like me.

[29:23]

He died a little while after that. I understand that to be something like we're each a prime number, only able to be divided by ourselves or one. And the discovery how each of us are a prime number is something like what Zen practice, is in a way what Zen practice is about. I'm appealing now to the mathematical sensitivity and sensibility of Brian.

[30:24]

Brian can hear me. Well, you can hear me too, Nico. You can't hear me now? I can. I'm supposed to stop. Yes. Thank you. This is pantomime. Exactly, stop interrupting me. But if this is also Proust's experience, you know, if Zen is about... exploring the full range of experience actually the full range of experience relevant to realization or enlightenment But that is Proust's experience. And the question behind it is to explore all the aspects of the experience that are relevant for realization and enlightenment.

[31:39]

Yes. And Matisse says he wants to see in a way that compresses space and then he disappears into that compression. And Matisse says something like, to see in a way that the space becomes denser and then to see into this density. He says things something like, he compresses experience and assimilates it so it flows naturally from his heart. Er sagt so etwas wie, dass er die Erfahrung verdichtet und dann sich aneignet oder assimiliert, so dass die Erfahrung aus seinem Herzen herausfließt.

[32:49]

And then to complete, oh dear, oh dear, what can the matter be? Time is running. And then... Then we have to bring in, at least mentioned, to fill out the picture, quantum physicists. They imagine... The world is a wave function which has no limit or as many worlds or as ten dimensions which are not within our sensorial experience. But it does seem to be mathematically and experientially evidential. Sie verstehen die Welt in Wellenfunktionen, die keine Grenzen haben und in vielen Dimensionen, die in unserer sinnlichen Erfahrung nicht abgebildet werden und die aber dennoch mathematisch und auch sonst physikalisch für die es Evidenzen gibt, Hinweise gibt.

[34:07]

Yeah, and then we have even a fourth. Let's take the I Ching, which I discovered, the I Ching, the Book of Changes, it's translated as, which I discovered in my maybe early 20s. And I saw a copy in a bookstore window when it was closed on a Sunday, and I thought, something's there I need to know about. And maybe to add a fourth, let's talk about the I Ching, which is usually translated as the book of change. And I discovered it in my twenties when I was around 20 and found it in a closed, in the window of a closed bookstore and had a strong feeling that there was something lying there that I absolutely had to see. Because the basic vision, view, idea behind the I Ching is that circumstances, the ingredients that appear in your life,

[35:25]

can transform you. It's not just nature or nurture. It's that some things can happen which transform you. It's that the circumstances and the ingredients of your life can transform you. It's not just the genetic arrangement and then the way we grow up that makes us, but that there are some things that can transform or transform us. And the 50 yarrow stalks, which are used more fully than the three coins, which can also be used, the 50 yarrow stalks are used successively with the hands, left hand, right hand, sorting them out, and doing it much of the time with your eyes closed reveals the... Lines which reflect you in some way or discover you.

[36:39]

And the 50, I don't know how they are called in German, I think they are sticks that are used there, that are used more than the three coins, the three coins that you can also use, they are used alternately with the right and the left hand and used in a way that almost with closed eyes, in such a dim state, And when I first very carefully did through the I Ching, I was Ting the cauldron. Cauldron, what's that again? Oh, thank you. Brian, you can hear me. It's a pot in which you cook things or mix things. James would love to have a cauldron. James is someone who's sitting here, yeah.

[37:44]

So you, I feel right now, and in these Sunday talks, I'm in the, through you, I'm in a cauldron teaching myself. And I want to thank you for you all helping me teach myself. So we have an expression in Zen, you can't push a person over a cliff on level ground. And first that extols the virtues and qualities of imperturbability and equanimity, which are the qualities that can free you from suffering.

[39:01]

And first of all, the essential aspects of equality and equality are the basis for ending suffering. But characteristic of Zen yogic stories, it also means that a cliff is code for transformation. And that's very typical or characteristic of these Zen stories. What that also means is that the cliff, which means so much, represents transformation or transformation. that even on level ground, the cliff, the cliff is from the top it's danger, from the bottom it's challenge, the cliff of transformation is present even on level ground.

[40:24]

Gleichzeitig bedeutet das auch, dass selbst auf ebenem Boden und die Klippe hier ist von oben betrachtet, ist die Klippe eine Gefahr. Von unten betrachtet ist die Klippe eine Herausforderung. Und dass es selbst auf ebenem Boden eine Klippe gibt, eine Transformation möglich ist. Which means that the ingredients of enlightenment or realization are present in every situation, they're just not in the pattern that we recognize or that shifts us into transformation. From the point of view of Zen Buddhism, the status quo believing in the status quo or wanting to return to the status quo as normalcy is pretty much equivalent to believing in God.

[41:43]

From the point of view of Zen Buddhism or Buddhism, The status quo is an accident. Again, from the point of view of Buddhism, each moment is a moment of potentiality, of probability, of impermanence. Aus der Perspektive des Buddhismus ist jeder Augenblick ein Augenblick von Potenzialen, Möglichkeiten, Wahrscheinlichkeiten und Probability, Potentiality.

[42:55]

Brian, what was the third? Probability, Potentiality, Impermanence. Probability, Potentiality, Impermanence. Thank you, Brian. Okay, I'm supposed to stop soon, and I will try to make soon pretty true. Okay, so... So I intended, of course... to, I hope to at least, speak about kin hin. And kin hin is clearly, again, a monastic practice. But if we're going to understand how The fruits of monastic practice can be lay practice.

[44:11]

Lay practices, we first of all have to understand what monastic practice really is. Aber wenn wir versuchen wollen herauszufinden, wie die Früchte der klösterlichen Praxis zu einer Laienpraxis werden können, zu einer Praxis, die auch im Alltagsleben umgesetzt werden kann, dann müssen wir erstmal verstehen, was klösterliche Praxis überhaupt ist. And thread is the same word as suture or sutra. Thread, suture and sutra and thread are the same word etymologically. So for the Zen practitioner, qin hin is a chance to have a break after 30 or 40 minutes of sitting, where you get up and walk slowly.

[45:16]

Yes, and it's also a chance to continue, imperturbably continue the mind of Zazen while walking. And it's also a way to join your gestural space with the other persons who are walking with you. And let me say that Tsukiroshi taught us three ways of doing this slow walking called Kinyin. And so the two more complex ways of doing it, we just didn't have the attentional capacity to do it, and they were eliminated after a while, and we only did the one we do today in our lineage.

[46:51]

And I'll just give a brief description now and then stop. And I guess I'll have to come back to Kin Hint next Sunday. So very simply, as you lift your heel, you're walking. As you lift your heel, you inhale. Ganz einfach. Wenn du deine Ferse hebst, dann beim Gehen, wenn du deine Ferse hebst, dann atmest du ein. And as you exhale, you step forward with the alternate foot.

[48:13]

Half a foot, you step forward. Only half a foot though, so your heel is about where the arch of your foot is. And as Suzuki Roshi used to say, we measure our body with our body. So your ankles are this far apart. At any time during the day, you should be able to sweep your hands between your feet and they just brush the two sides of the ankle. And the gassho is generally that distance from the face. And the gassho is usually exactly one fist-width away from the nose, from the face.

[49:45]

Yeah, there's a kind of, you're entering into a... Matisse again spoke about how to enter into the rhythm and pulse of phenomenality. And part of that is knowing your own rhythms and pulse. Yes, as Mathis said, you enter the rhythms and the pulsation of all phenomena. And part of it is to get to know your own rhythms, your own pulses. So as you lift your heel and inhale, you're doing what's called heel breathing, which is you bring that feeling up your spine and across your head as if you're bringing an attentional weight up through your body, an attentionality up through your body, and then bringing it to the hara and then stepping forward with the out-breath.

[50:49]

So it's not... Oh, that's enough to translate it. So when you inhale, you lift your breath and at the same time you lift the energy of your intentionality through the heel, through the spine, through your scapula and let it come back when you exhale. So you're not just stepping forward on the exhale, you're stepping forward with the flow of intentionality coming into the hara. Yeah, and... We could say that bringing the breath, the attentionality of the breath, the metabolic attentionality of the breath up through the spine is threading the needle of the spine.

[52:06]

And when you bring this metabolic, physically connected attention of your energy or intention with the inhalation up through the spine, then And this developing the attentionality of the body is to simultaneously evolve the experiential the experiential potentials of attentionality? Through qin hin you're basically teaching the body and attentionality to know the world in slow motion.

[53:23]

And I think what Proust and Matisse did was they saw the world in slow motion. And that's also, I think we can do this too. It's the range of experience. And what happens when we bring this into lay life and into our life through living in a monastery and doing five and seven day sushins as we do at this center, Crestown and in Europe. And yeah, my whole life is to do these things with you because it's such, well, fun is a big word. Thank you.

[54:45]

And I think we can bring this potential of experience, which is also possible for us, to develop. We can bring this potential of experience, for example, to experience the world as in a time loop, also into our lives. This can be developed in the lay life and in the monastery life. Well, again, it turned out to be an hour. I'm sorry, but I'll keep aiming at 45 minutes. Thank you so much for translating, even though I couldn't hear a word you said.

[55:51]

Nicole, it looked nice. And your birthday is coming up, right? Oh, my goodness, and you're getting to be mid-30s or something like that, right? Oh, late 30s? Oh, happy birthday. Thank you.

[56:11]

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