So I want to stay with this phrase, just this. Ich möchte bei diesem Satz bleiben, nur das. We can call it a Dharma door or even a Dharani door. Wir können das eine Dharma-Tür oder sogar eine Dharani-Tür nennen. Because you've added something. Yeah, added something. a way to bring attention to things. And this, you know, this, if you add it on a large percentage of your perceptions. Yeah, it has a transformative effect. It's kind of magic that such a simple thing has been discovered. that we started out with this phrase,

[01:24]

as a way to notice change. And how to notice change in each particular. Sort of as if we could discover units of change. And in a way we're also noticing what stays for a moment. So the whole scene, the whole scene of the present stays for a moment. At each brush stroke. I used an example the other day in the weekend seminar. Of how, yeah, painters of the last century.

[02:27]

Seven years ago, it was this century. Yeah, I used particularly the example of Cézanne. He didn't paint objects, really. What he painted was how we see objects. I contrasted it with this painting. paintings I've been studying in this immense book of Leonardo da Vinci that was given to me last year. He extraordinarily painted objects.

[03:27]

But painted them extraordinarily well, it implies. Yeah. But his emphasis was not how he saw the object. So Cezanne and Matisse and others almost leave the object incomplete So if you participate in how to see it, you complete the object. And I think it's part of my feeling that such painters are... precursors of our interest in our practicing Buddhism.

[04:44]

They preceded us, ancestors of what they led to. Or they were part of what led to. are practicing Buddhism. In other words, my view is that It's primarily the West which has led us to our ability to practice Buddhism, not just because we encountered an Asian teaching. Yeah, so I used the example of how as a kid I was always surprised that... Yeah, but why do these people paint flower pots all the time?

[05:52]

Yeah, mostly people I knew, when they took pictures, they would take... picture of who was sitting at the breakfast table, not the flower pot on the breakfast table. But they painted, and Matisse particularly painted the space in which objects appeared. But each object is painted with the same brush strokes and everything is treated equally. So in this practice of just this, you don't make one thing more important than another. You're not applying just this only to interesting things. You apply the brush stroke of just this to each thing that happens to be noticed.

[07:05]

Now this is a Dharma door. Because you enter into You enter into a dharmic realm. Yeah, dharma realm, a dharma space. Yeah. And you don't know exactly what you're going to find there. So you stick to this practice of just this. And you see where it leads.

[08:06]

And you see what develops from doing it. Now a practice like this is so fertile, it actually can be a practice all your life, but as a primary practice, it can be a practice for a year or two. Yeah, okay. Now what you're doing is you're, you're, using a phrase like this to focus attention. And you're also using a phrase to inflect attention.

[09:09]

Inflect is like to bend, to to change. Inflect. Yeah. Anyway, for some reason, attention is very sensitive to words. And it's not, you know, like words in sentences and thinking and discursive thinking. It's almost as if, in fact they do, I think, words have a bodily dimension.

[10:16]

Maybe a biological dimension. They are so much a part of our... even the development of our brain as an infant, that they have a somatic quality. So you want to experiment with whether you use a German phrase, a similar phrase, or whether you use English, or sometimes one and sometimes the other. Yeah, since English is a German dialect, you know. At least the most fundamental words are related to German words.

[11:34]

Yeah, maybe it... Often the German words and English words work in a similar way. Now Swiss German, we don't know how it fits in at all. Okay. Yeah. So let's bring... just this into our zazen. Also lasst uns nur das in unser zazen bringen. So let's apply it to our breathing. So when you exhale, you say just this. In your inhale, just this. Yeah. Exhale, just this.

[12:35]

And you'll find that your breathing is slightly... different when you say just this with the exhale and inhale. And it's different than if you counter. exhales is the custom. You'll see that the mind that accompanies the attention The mind that accompanies the attention is slightly different.

[13:41]

Attention is obviously probably the most important. powerful, accessible aspect of mind. And it's the main way we participate with our mind. With the mind. But we can say that attention isn't the whole of the mind. And attention carries the mind with it. Carries the mind with it. And sometimes One kind of attention carries a different kind of, different aspects of the mind with it.

[14:55]

So, at least in English, if you switch from just this to only this, So, I think if you try on the exhale, at least in English, only this. And then on the inhale, only this. a somewhat different kind of mind arises.

[15:58]

And if a clarity arises on the inhale, this little spotlight of awareness that Erhard mentioned yesterday. This is a kind of little bubble of clarity comes up with the inhale. And then it can sort of spread out. And it can last longer than the Now, have we discovered a new dharma?

[17:02]

In other words, we started out this practice to notice change in units. We have a feeling that the whole present is present. Present with some duration. But that's actually a kind of averaging process. Averaging? Like you average, make an average. Anybody know how to say an averaging process? Ein durchschnittlicher, ein allgemeiner Prozess. Ein durchschnittlicher Prozess. Okay. But the particulars you don't know. So just this lets you enter into the particulars.

[18:04]

of the present. And some particulars have a different quality of duration than others. Yeah, and so you begin to feel the scene before you, almost as if you were painting it. Some things had a stronger presence in creating the scene than others. Yeah, I mean, Picasso wrote once that he has a feeling for something and he starts painting it. And he paints the foreground and into the background and so forth.

[19:21]

And finally he finds the painting leads him to a little red barn or something over in the far right. Yeah, and he didn't, when he first... felt that he didn't know what he was really feeling was the presence of the red barn in the scene. He had to paint his way to it. And my daughter, Elizabeth, The 27-year-old, I guess she is. When I was younger, I was always shocked when parents didn't know their children's age. Anyway, she discovered that if she liked a particular painting, But she went through a museum.

[20:29]

But she had a feeling she liked it, but she wanted to know, feel more into how she liked it. She found if she came back in the next days, And drew the painting. The act of drawing it brought her into how the painting affected her. And after a while, the phrase just this begins to do something just like this. You begin to... feel into how the present has its duration.

[21:36]

And how the present is sort of hooked to you. Some aspects are hooked to you, and you're hooked to it more than others. In Japanese aesthetics and Japanese Buddhism, this is called a ma-point. A point in the midst of that sort of holds the whole space together. And in each moment, the Ma point moves a bit. Right now, in this room, there's a ma-point.

[22:36]

Ideally, I'm speaking to and feeling the movement of the ma-point. Now, this kind of topography of... of the particular. I don't know any way to enter into except with this dharma door practiced like just this. So, again, we started out with just this as a way to enter into the particulars of change.

[23:37]

And into the dimension of what holds. but we end up maybe discovering dharmas. Or even generating dharmas. In other words, In the way we notice, we generate a dharma. No, no, we're really into, as Peter said yesterday, it's a construct. And here we're... Yeah, we're... generating dharmas in our own experience.

[25:02]

It's not like they're there like atoms or molecules or something. We generate the atom or the molecule. We can still call it what's real because it's what is making us real at this moment. So you're really participating in how we exist. Now going back to our breathing and only this as well as just this. Now say that you find after a while of doing this that actually a kind of clarity arises with your exhale or your inhale.

[26:07]

And as you continue, that clarity gets stronger and stronger. It's almost like you're bathed in a kind of light. No, this is not something you can grasp. But it's clearly not apart from you. It's part of... breathing, attention, the phrase, and so forth. And the teaching says that dharma is a kind of light. No, maybe, yeah. Maybe I should stop.

[27:20]

There are so many more interesting topics that I haven't gotten to. But I should follow the schedule. Thanks very much.

[27:27]

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