Although I always come in a little late or about the time during the meditation period. Every now and then I feel I have to apologize for that and sort of explain And I hesitate to explain because it is an explanation, but it's not entirely believable even to me. Yeah. It's that... I mean, I feel the results, so I am confident in the results that I'm explaining, but not in what can really be true.

[01:09]

which is that if I come to join you for the half-hour meditation, what my experience is that our minds mix together. Yeah, can that be true? That's my experience. And then if I have to speak, as I'm supposed to do today, I have to somehow extract my mind from the mix with your minds and and take a somewhat outside position. So it's both the sense of an outside position from which I have a perspective from which I can speak.

[02:30]

But it's also that I have to speak, I have to find a way to meet your minds again. Your individual minds and your, now to some extent, mutual mind. And I'm speaking about this also because as we were driving down here from Hanover with Gerald, It took you a long time to get me to how to pronounce even Geralt, which I'm not sure I do perfectly.

[03:51]

It's better than Jerry, no Gerald. Thanks, I heard the emphasis. I've never called you Jerry though, have I? Right. Okay. Because when we were driving down, and Nicole translated in Hanover too, I don't know, during the drive or afterwards, I said, you know, sometimes I feel what I spoke about in Hannover I should bring into this seminar more from perhaps a psychologist's point of view.

[05:01]

But I don't like to repeat myself. And from my own experience, I don't repeat myself. But sometimes it sounds like I repeat myself to somebody who's just listening. And then if there's some of you, like Lina and Paul, who are here, I think, oh, I can't say those same old things again. They have to say something new. Yeah. So, but Nicole said what you haven't spoken about is the actual experience of non-duality.

[06:27]

And I said, well, that's not, I mean, psychotherapists aren't Buddhists necessarily. non-duality is a little bit too Buddhist a topic. Yeah, so that sort of incubated for a while. And I thought, well, Maybe it's okay. So I, as something decided that I, as the agent of that something, would speak about non-duality.

[07:28]

Because, well, obviously, the relationship between client and therapist or group therapy is some, I mean, the more it had dimensions of non-duality, the better. Yeah. But you can see I have problems with English already. Because if non-duality is the absence of dimensions, how can I say there's dimensions to non-duality.

[08:45]

I mean I'm presenting this not, you know, to try to be philosophical about language or something. But just to find ways to point out the tangential relationship that language has to our actual experience. sondern einfach um die tangenzielle, die sich gerade in einem Punkt berührende Beziehung hervorzuheben, die die Sprache zu unserer Erfahrung hat. Yeah, and technically a tangent is reach it, touches a circle, a line at only one point. And that's something, that image is accurate somehow because the complexity of the feelings we have or experience we have touches words usually in only one or two points.

[10:06]

And maybe then we build a whole kind of benefits of language on that one point which now is moving away from the let's say circle of experience, sphere of experience. Okay, okay. So I can ask, I mean there's... Some of you are new to me, but many of you I've known for a long time. And really, what is it for us to know each other?

[11:11]

And how much of the knowing of each other occurs outside of knowing? I mean the way people start, you know, the way people, elderly people, start looking like they're dogs or cats. I mean, younger people, they don't get that influence, but elderly... So, I mean, I'm sort of joking and sort of serious. What kind of knowing is going on between the pet and the... or the pet and the owner, the parent.

[12:19]

The parent owner. Now, all I can say is that in Buddhism, there's an assumption that much of our... knowing is occurring outside of our certainly conscious knowing. And one thing I've been pointing out recently is that we have the cultural dictum from Socrates and so forth to know in English to know thyself and somehow thy sounds better than one to know oneself to know thyself whatever the hell that is thyself you don't have to translate that

[13:36]

But for a Buddhist you have to add a new kind of in the West that you cannot know yourself through consciousness. So I mean if Plato had taken that as a footnote You can't know the I-Self through consciousness. He would have had to say, oh, well, then we have to have a wider way of knowing than consciousness. A knowing that isn't experienceable through consciousness. And if Plato got that footnote straight, we'd all be Buddhist today in the West. Well, I don't know, but anyway, I just rewrote history.

[14:54]

But it's an exceedingly important footnote. If we can't know ourselves through consciousness, we have to know ourselves through something wider than consciousness. Now, I think we can go, I like to go, I find I need to go back often to similar, back often to the same statement of Dogen or Yuan Wu or somebody. Because even after years of speaking about it, I always feel I haven't penetrated the statement fully.

[15:57]

So let me speak about the statement I mentioned last year here in Kassel. And I mentioned in Rostenberg earlier this year. Okay, it's a statement some of you will remember. Sometimes I, Ehe, enter... Go ahead. Sometimes I, Ehe, enter an ultimate state and offer you profound discussion while simply wishing you to be steadily intimate with your field of mind. Steadily intimate with your field of mind.

[17:44]

Okay. Now, I have to say, because, you know, I am linguistically impaired, I have to say this in English. Weil ich ja sprachlich ein bisschen behindert bin, muss ich das auf Englisch sagen. And she has to translate it into Deutsch. Und sie muss das ins Deutsche übersetzen. And so we have a word like sometimes. Also gibt es da so ein Wort wie manchmal. Sometimes I wonder what's in this sometimes. Well, I know enough about Buddhism to know that what he means is something like among the possible times that I can inhabit, I choose a particular one. And... Maybe one of the entries is to simply recognize that in a yoga culture, particularly Buddhist yoga culture, the only things that are real are the connections.

[19:15]

So sometimes I'm in love. Sometimes I'm irritated. So from the point of view of if you think in terms of relationships and not units like time, sometimes I'm at love, that's love times. Sometimes I'm irritated. That's time which is irritated. And we sort of think there's some pure time, which there ain't. But I also know in Buddhism and for Dogen, he assumed there's various times that we can enter so I came into this room from Dogen and my point of view this room represents a particular time

[20:40]

A certain kind of topography of time. Or a certain kind of dimensioned, already dimensioned, or in the process of being dimensioned time. Yeah, Dogen says, two, three words that have stayed with me for 50 years. Arrival hinders arrival. So, I mean, maybe you could understand that like we turn this microphone on And turning the microphone on hinders turning the microphone on. For a moment or two, the microphone's in the process of being turned on.

[22:00]

And that hinders, in a sense, it's being turned on. So I'm just trying to find ways to give you a feeling for this significantly different world in which Buddhism developed and created. Because if we can get together as Westerners a feeling of this significantly different world, which was both the context for the development of Buddhism but also the creation of Buddhism through its development.

[23:08]

So if we get a feeling for this significantly different world, I have a supply. If we can get a feel for this significantly different world then we may say, oh, Buddhism makes sense in this world. I think I'll practice it. So again, I come into the room and I arrive in the room. What?

[24:40]

The same word. I come into the room and I arrive in the room. Okay. So, and in... A rival creates a rival. I'm changing what... That's not what Dogen said, but I'm saying it. So I'm in the territory of another time topography or something like that. And I can call it time instead of space. I can call it either, but I'm calling it time because it's a sequential topography. It's a durative topography.

[25:41]

So I arrive in a way incrementally or little by little into the situation. And so I arrive in a way incrementally or little by little into the situation. And as I arrive, ideally we all start to arrive together. And we have an expression in English to get ourselves all on the same page. But I could say maybe to get us all in the same arriving. Okay, so all of that is in this first word, sometimes. All das verbirgt sich in diesem ersten Wort manchmal.

[27:01]

Which, unless you have some kind of like feeling for each syllable arriving. Wenn du, du brauchst ein Gefühl dafür, dass jede Silbe ankommt. And the actual experiential, not intellectual, experiential content of a word like sometimes. Zen, as a Buddhist school created in Yuan and Tang and Sun dynasties primarily, in China is rather different than the other schools of Buddhism. Yeah, I'd have to think about what it shares with other, primarily Chinese.

[28:12]

But anyway, aside from that, there's some significant differences that Zen Buddhism has because it's Chinese. What did you say about Chinese? Forget about it. And one of them is the strong emphasis on practicing together with others. Chinese Buddhism would almost assume you cannot do it on your own. They'd say it's like you can't produce a language on your own.

[29:17]

You can't sit around and talk to your hand on your hat all alone. And language develops in you yourself by speaking it and writing it with others. So Chinese Zen developed ways to practice together and even an architecture which enhances practicing together. And so the Chinese Zen Buddhism has developed ways to practice together, and even an architecture that amplifies the practice together. So another emphasis of Zen is it is, like all Buddhism, has a philosophical component.

[31:06]

And emphasizes logic and so forth like late Indian Buddhism does. Logic as well as late Indian Buddhism is a highly developed form of logic. Okay. But Zen emphasizes none of it's important unless it's experienced. Yeah. The only... What... What... confirms the teaching is your ability to experience. Which means my obligation as a Zen teacher is to only speak about absolutely only speak about any things I've experienced.

[32:18]

That's one of the rules of being a Zen teacher. And then to speak in a way that, find a way to speak that you can experience it yourself. And as much as possible, speak from my experience of the teaching right now as I'm speaking. And that experience with Suzuki Roshi is one of the reasons I started practicing Buddhism. I've been to the lectures of various philosophers and theologians and so forth. But when I met Suzuki Roshi, he was the only person I'd ever met who was what he was saying.

[33:18]

So if your view is, and the emphasis on realization in practice is that you experience each step, each movement, each gesture, each word, etc. It's an experience, not... Each word is an experience. Wenn deine Sichtweise ist und deine Verwirklichung in der Praxis ist, erfährst du jeden Schritt, jedes Wort, jede Geste, alles, was du tust, erfährst. It's an experience, not intellectual. It's not an intellectual idea. Alright, so sometimes... is not just a kind of word that locates you somewhere.

[34:22]

Sometimes, I mean, in music. But sometimes is experienced as some and times And I think that most of us, you know, we have to live in the West, we have jobs and do things and get on buses and all that stuff. So you can't easily step out of Norbert and Angela can't step out of their front door and say, Sidewalk. Cars. Blue. Green. Oh, that sky. But you can try that on for five or ten minutes.

[35:24]

Why the hell not? I mean, excuse my mind. Because... Once you get a feel for that, it is possible to sort of be like that all the time. You move as rapidly as anyone else, but in a kind of time that's touching you and brushing you all the time. Du bewegst dich genauso schnell wie jeder andere auch, aber du bist immer in einer Zeit, die dich die ganze Zeit über berührt und über dich hinwegfährt. Yeah, almost, you know, it's almost like you're walking underwater. You could feel everything that happened.

[36:25]

Hast du als würdest du unter Wasser gehen und du kannst alles spüren, was geschieht. Okay, so that's a look at the first two words sometimes. Das ist ein Blick auf diese ersten zwei Worte im Englischen einige Zeit. And now Dogen says, I, I, eh, hey. Jetzt sagt Dogen, ich, eh, hey. Now I might say, I, Dick Baker. Ich würde vielleicht sagen, ich, Dick Baker. Or I might say, I, the one who sometimes people call Roshi. Or I, Johannes Hof, where I live. So he chooses the word Ehe from Eheji. And he chooses the word Eheji. So it's like he could choose different times and now he's saying I can choose different people who I might be identified as.

[37:35]

And I so strongly, I was at a place, a restaurant a while ago and someone came up to me from, said to me, have you ever been in San Francisco? And I said, well, yes. He was here in Germany, France, across the line. And I said, yes. And then this person said to me, are you Richard Baker? I actually thought I was there quite anonymously, but, you know, here's this guy who said this.

[38:37]

And I don't like to be so zenny, but I couldn't stop myself from saying, well, sometimes. Yeah, for your sake right now, yes, I'm Richard Baker. Then... Dogen says, I enter an ultimate state. Ultimative, yeah. And what he means is, among the possible samadhis, he enters a particular samadhi. Yes, and

[39:38]

How many of us walk into a room and think, what samadhi shall I enter? How many of us even ever entered samadhi? Or if you have, have you known it's samadhi? And are there various samadhis? And who the hell has a choice? Okay, Dogen did. All right, so Dogen enters, he arrives. Arrival enhances, creates survival. And he feels the situation and decides, somehow he lets something decide that he will enter, relate to this situation through a concentration, a non-dual concentration,

[41:08]

that he feels is appropriate at that moment, he lets it happen, a kind of, a particular samadhi. Can you translate all that? Okay. Now I've got a real team working here. She's had the most practice, years. But not recently. And then he says in a very relaxed way, I offer you profound discussion. And the profound discussion isn't like, I'm being profound and I'm smart and I'm offering you profound discussion.

[42:25]

But because I've arrived in this assembly, and assembled this assembly in a samadhi, from that samadhi a certain discussion will appear Yeah, and then he says, in a rather relaxed way, simply wishing you, you who are here in the assembly, to be profoundly To simply be steadily intimate with your field of mind.

[43:33]

He doesn't say, you should try to understand what I'm talking about. He doesn't say you should try to remember what I'm talking about. Just be intimate with your field of mind during this time together. Okay. So this last phrase is what I want to emphasize. is to be steadily, repeatedly, steadily, continuously, intimate, intimate with your field of mind. You want to kind of resist the conflationary process of consciousness.

[45:02]

I mean, consciousness thinks, hey, words belong to me. What is all this... You're trying to take words into another category than consciousness. Language is constructed in consciousness. The self is constructed in consciousness. And so there's a tendency for words when you use them and try to use them experientially or as I say in an incubatory way as you put them in the field of mind and allow the field to incubate them and you can't avoid putting to some extent the meaning of the mind into the incubatory field

[46:24]

But really what you're doing is putting the feel, the F-E-E-L in English, the feel of the word into the incubatory field, F-I-E-L-D. And this is your active participation in creating language. If I give you again, as I have repeatedly, a phrase like already connected, that those two words can be arrows, potential arrows, But more important than what they point to because we're using language here outside of

[47:44]

We're using words here outside of language, sentence structures and so forth. We're using them in this case to point attention toward connectedness and to function in the faith that there's already connectedness. And this faith, this attention brought to the necessary faith that there's already connectedness, creates a kind of debate. Is there connectedness? Is there not connectedness? I have these experiences of connectedness.

[48:56]

These feelings are stronger than those feelings. And all of that territory of feeling is wider than the word already or connected. So learning to work with phrases in Zen practice, which is another unique aspect of Zen practice, you learn to develop the feel of the phrase and the words And it's that feel of the phrase and the words that you incubate. Okay. So I think it's time to take a break a little later than time to take a break.

[50:32]

And so I'd like to have any kind of anything that occurred to you during this hour. We might speak a little about when we come back. But also I want to, if I can, look a little more at what it means to be steadily intimate with your field of mind. Okay, thank you very much for your profound attention. And your wonderful translation.

[51:19]

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