The sense of intimacy, and I'm finishing with saying this, is this intimacy of being in the midst of one and many. sameness and difference acceptance and completion timelessness and time order and disorder at each moment things have a certain but there's always the possibility of disorder. There's no absolute predictability. We don't know what will happen next, really. We may want it to be predictable, We know it's unpredictable.

[01:06]

That kind of predictable, but we know it's unpredictable. Order and yet there's chaos. And yet we try to bring things into order and to completion. This is what this intimately communicated means by intimacy. The intimacy of finding ourselves within this dynamic of accepting and yet completing. Accepting and yet transforming. This assumes way of viewing the world assumes that being alive is an activity.

[02:11]

We each have to look deeply into what this activity is and entering into this dynamic of Acceptance and completing. Accepting and opening ourselves. This is the dynamic that's at the root of the enlightenment practice in Buddhism. How we can accept ourselves as we are and always know that enlightenment is there. our potentiality. This should be well known and understood and practiced. Thank you. May our intentions be the same as that of every god and every hortus, with the true merit of the Buddha-Rigas.

[03:31]

Suryo muhen se gandho, varno muhshe se gandhan. Amor Morioh Shegan Peku Butsu Domo Jo Shegan Jo I believe in Jesus Christ. [...] Mm-hmm.

[04:37]

Chant Chant Chant Ne ga wa kuwa no rai no shin jutsu bi wo geshita te ima tsuran. Ein unübertroffener, durchdenkerler und vollkommener Dharma findet sich auch in hunderttausend Millionen Kalpas nur selten. Nun, da ich ihn sehen und anhören, erinnern und annehmen kann, gelobe ich, die Wahrheit des Tathagata zu erfahren. Well, here I am lucky to be sitting with you again.

[06:45]

And I'm approaching your time zone. Zeitzone. And I also appreciated... seeing a few of you in Dzogchen this morning. One person mentioned that they find The chanting a little too Japanese sometimes. I know you may feel that way and you're completely right. But for me it's just no longer Japanese, it's just an habit.

[07:49]

Many years ago I decided to just have the beginning of lecture chanting in English and no like we just did. But I don't know, I didn't like it. After a few months I stopped because it was... It was too much like thinking. Or rather, I kind of liked them saying something mysterious at the beginning. Maybe if we start out with something incomprehensible, my lectures seem better after that. So it's an improvement.

[08:54]

At least I'm slightly more comprehensible than the Japanese. How do you mean? You are slightly more comprehensible. Yeah, we start out with incomprehensible Japanese and then you come to the left somewhat. Yeah, you think, well, I couldn't understand the Japanese, but at least I can sort of understand him. Anyway, I didn't like it, so I went back to chanting. One thing I'd like you to think about for this afternoon or you could give me your advice on. Some more people are joining us on Friday evening. Thirty or so people. Thirty-eight are joining.

[09:54]

So, So what should we do? I can't repeat all of what we've talked about. But maybe some parts I should... so we can continue with these virgins. So maybe you can give me some advice. What would you like to see us how to bring them into what we've been talking about.

[10:58]

Now let me come back to this, what I've been emphasized yesterday, that practice is to go very slowly and thoroughly in each of our acts. And this really essential dynamic of what appears and completing. Accepting and completing. We can put various words on either side of that equation. And you have to Find out for yourself.

[12:18]

This craft of practice. And this is... It's more of a physical feeling than a mental act. Yeah. Maybe instead of acceptance we could change it to welcome. Or yes. Someone told me they welcome everything, what they like, and they say yes to what they don't like. Is the only way to say welcome, to say guten tag? You could say good day, but it might be evening. For me, I don't know what time of day it is, so I don't know what I would say.

[13:37]

But welcome anyway. And I practiced for a long time with disciplining myself to have my first reaction to whatever came up, no matter what it was, welcome. I made it my habit. And again, it was a mental decision to do this. But the doing of it was more like a physical act. Welcome. Or accept. Or yes. Before I worked with welcome, I worked with yes. I learned to say yes to everything.

[14:38]

Sometimes I said no after I said yes. Would you do this? Yes. But really I don't have time, I'm sorry, I can't do it. But I said yes first, because I wanted that frame, that kind of mind. Somehow yes reaches out into the world. So we could say accept and instead of complete we could say accept and absorb. We could say absorb instead of complete. So what appears and then absorb.

[15:45]

Or what appears and then absorb. And I think with the word settle you can see it's more of a physical experience than a mental act. So you let it settle in you. In the situation. And this is accepting yourself as first cause. Again, if we get it right, that this situation we ourselves has to be the sufficient and necessary cause, the necessary condition.

[16:51]

This is the pedagogy of enlightenment. In other words, if you don't have this view, Buddhist enlightenment makes no sense. So this tremendous Sukershi used to say, in Buddhism everything points toward you. And the more you can feel, And the more you can feel it, the more it shows you. Everything in the world makes it possible that this moment becomes possible. Yamada Mubanroshe said that. And you are this moment that everything is working in combination to make this possible.

[17:59]

And there's a kind of, as he said, dignity in this. Thank you. So let's go back to the Sandokai. Many, sameness, or oneness, and intimacy, or handshake. Sandokai. We chant. We don't chant it here, do we, very often? Oh, you do?

[19:00]

Okay. We recite it too. And it's one of the teachings for transmission in our lineage. And maybe we can chant it in German, but I'm not satisfied yet with the English, If I can work on it, we can then have a German version. So we could translate this title, Sandokai, as the intimacy of the one and the many. The intimacy of the one and the many. And then the next line, the first line of the Sandokai,

[20:03]

He's the great sage of India. the teaching of the great sage of India, is intimately transmitted from west to east. So this intimately transmitted, intimately communicated, has to be understood as The intimacy of the one and the many. So this is also the intimacy of what appears and letting it settle.

[21:22]

Or knowing yourself as the... sufficient cause, the necessary condition, knowing that you are the dignity of this moment, that everything is simultaneously working to make this moment possible. And this moment isn't somewhere else. This moment is you. Now I'm trying to give you a feeling for the worldview of these ancients. Because if you don't get the worldview, it's pretty hard to get what they were teaching.

[22:31]

So intimately transmitted, Could mean that I tell you a secret. Or, you know, I I warm hand to warm hand, we say. And that's okay. But it has a more extensive meaning. Of both of us, of each of us, all of us. Being able to open ourselves to everything all at once, working to make this moment possible. And that's also a shift from past cause to present cause. We're talking about causation and...

[23:33]

Realization. Causation and enlightenment. And we haven't gotten... We're getting close to enlightenment. I hope, all of us. But we're still on... We're talking about causation. The condition of knowing you're the first cause. And by first cause, I've just created a little phrase, two words, to mean you know that whatever happens, you are the cause. You're the first cause. Even if a truck runs into you, still, what happens at that moment, you cause how you... accept this truck running into you.

[24:57]

How you survive. Get out of the way. Because always some kind of truck is running into us. Or life is running into us. Or if we're not careful, a car could run into us. So I'm speaking here about this cause. If you're the cause, what is the cause? What are you looking at? Okay, so one of the things we look at is that many things cause you. Many things cause the... This sound to appear.

[26:04]

As I said, the sound itself. As I said, the sound itself. The air, my mind, my hands. And it itself is not graspable. You can't get hold of that sound very easily. Actually, the tape recorder just got hold of it. Aye. See? But it's different on the tape. And if somebody listens to that handshake driving... on the Autobahn. If they listen to that handshake driving on the Autobahn. Oh, it's a different handshake. Different hand clap or handshake. So each moment is also this ephemeral.

[27:28]

Ephemeral means intangible, like a ghost is ephemeral. It's only there for a moment. Yeah, also jeder Augenblick ist flüchtig. So if you look at yourself, many causes have conditioned you. Long tracks, iron tracks lead to your life at this moment. And many things have happened to you. And you're a particular kind of person with habits.

[28:37]

And we can look at those past causes. Those causes from the past. The tracks lead into this present moment. And the present moment conditions the past causes. So we have the present cause. It's just like at the moment of death in the teaching of rebirth. Very subtle states of mind. are available to you at the moment of death. Whether you believe in rebirth or not, that's true. And those subtle states of mind are more accessible to you then than they are now. And right at that moment, if you notice these subtle states of mind, if you have the clarity to notice these states of mind, and stabilize yourself and hold yourself in these

[29:59]

clear states of mind. You transform your karma. And at that moment, no matter what your life was like, the teaching is you can secure a favorable rebirth. Of course you If your life is such a mess, you can't notice these subtle states of mind. Then your practice and your previous karma helps you whether you notice or not these states of mind. But the point is that karma is conditional if you notice, if you're in, the present cause. If you notice the present cause.

[31:15]

So what's subtle about the teaching of rebirth in Buddhism is that it doesn't depend on whether you're reborn or not. because it's a teaching you can pull out of that last moment of your living into this moment where those subtle modes of mind are available. This is understanding the pedagogy of enlightenment. What a good Zen practice and what a good Zen teacher is trying to get you into this place.

[32:22]

Whether you recognize the light of mind or the nourishment of the heart in each moment, is really up to you and up to your practice up to this moment. If you only notice the past cause, then you're mostly conditioned by your karma. Then there's lots of psychological techniques we can...

[33:26]

we can develop from Buddhism to work with the conditioning of our karma. And that's good to do. Yeah, or even work as I have and others have, as a therapist. But the basic teaching of Buddhism is to... is to... is to... How can I find the word? To... To recognize... the opportunity of the present cause. Of the present cause. The present cause which can... recondition your conditioned karma.

[34:43]

Yeah. Again, karma in Buddhism is not deterministic, but conditional. So the way in which it's transformable or conditional is found in the present moment. It's conditioned from the past, but conditional in the present moment. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. It's conditioned from the past and yet conditional in the present moment. And every time you see the present moment as cause, you keep loosening up your karma.

[35:54]

It's kind of stuck together like stuff on the side of a dish. And it's hard to clean up. But if you let it soak in water, it's softer, easier to wash. I just washed the dishes this morning. So the more you notice the present cause, you're sort of soaking your karma in water. You notice the koan of Joshu. I think it's Joshu. Have you, yeah? Have you, he asked the monk, have you had your breakfast? The monk says, yes. And Zhaozhou says, go wash your bowls.

[36:56]

The monk thinks he's accomplished something, so I've had my breakfast. At this moment, there should be no head, so go wash your bowls. Hmm. So I hope you understand what I mean by present cause. But that's also included in this intimacy. To find yourself mixing present cause with past cause. Just what appears is present cause. You see, this is a kind of philosophy. But a kind of philosophy you can practice.

[38:18]

So again, the first teaching of the Buddha starts with right views. And this means the attitudes, the views you bring to each moment. Because mind is inseparable from body and each moment. So again, we have the intimacy of past cause and present cause. Or the intimacy of welcoming what's hard to welcome. or the intimacy of welcoming, accepting, and settling, absorbing, completing. What that means, you're going to have to find that out for yourself. And the more developed form of this teaching is in the genjō koan, of knowing each thing is particular and universal.

[39:34]

And that is the same teaching as everything all at once is making this moment possible. That's the teaching of the universal in particular. And then to complete what appears. But this complete what appears, it means to... What appears? whatever I'm feeling something from all of you and this sort of grey light of this day and my own past causes that brought me here and just the way I'm breathing All of that's folding into me right now, each moment folding in, folding in.

[40:58]

And I hold it. And past cause and present cause flows together. And then I outfold it. It comes out in my speaking. Or just my being manifested here. At death you practice Because these practices, again, are brought back from the moment of death, brought back into the present moment. And a practice for dying. I talked to an astronaut once.

[42:01]

A friend of mine, Rusty Schweig. And he said, when you're going to have liftoff, you have many practice liftoffs before. So, and they always are throwing monk's wrenches, I mean monkey wrenches, into the process. Yeah, no, something's always going wrong. Yeah, so you prepare and you figure out what to do because this engine isn't firing or something. But they're all simulated mistakes. And he says, when you lift off finally, nothing happens, so it's real easy. So the real thing becomes quite easy. So if you bring your practice in each moment, perhaps death will be a liftoff. No problem. Oh, did I die?

[43:22]

That was a snap. Who knows? So this practice of infolding, holding, outfolding, which I can speak about in so many ways because it's central to realization practice, but I only speak about it today in this way, And when you die, you go in full. When you feel you're dying, you enter into the process. By going in folding, holding, in folding. And you consciously begin to dissolve the constituents.

[44:32]

You begin to dissolve the constituents of of the four elements, the five skandhas and the eight vijnanas. And the four elements. Usually you start with the elements, work with the vijnanas and then the skandhas. And so the The Heart Sutra we chant every day is a menu card for death. It gives you instructions on how to die. I hope I'm not being depressing here. I don't feel depressing at all. Okay. But you can also practice this more wisdom practice of enfold, holding, returning to emptiness, enfolding even more deeply.

[45:52]

Okay. So I was at the Oxen the other day when I first arrived. Yeah, I had to make sure I was here. So I went shopping first in Rickenback. And I got some little things, you know. And then I came back and I stopped at the oxen. Ein Pils, bitte. And I had some kind of It said terrine in America. Terrine would be a soup, but here it was some kind of fish cake or something. Yeah, and I like not knowing what I'm getting. So in America I'd know that's boring, but here it looks like soup, so I order it.

[46:53]

What is it? Fish cake. What? Pastete. In Japanese it's fish cake. German, Japanese, fish cake. So anyway, it's always fun. I don't know what it is, so I have to eat it. It's quite interesting. Anyway, so then I thought I have to practice for the seminar for this week. So I began weaving mind and phenomena together.

[47:56]

Here we're shifting from everyday practice to adept practice. Like everyday practice is to sit as well as you can. And let whatever happens flow through you. To, as I say, leave yourself profoundly alone. Find some ease and nourishment in your practice. And Notice to what extent you can trust just being here.

[49:01]

And that's, we could call it everyday practice of zazen. But then you can also Again, as I said, come into a kind of immobility in your sitting. Where you really feel deeply still. And this beginning practice of breath, where you imagine your breath going out in an oval and coming in from the bottom. Which is what I'm calling everyday practice. Stabilizes your breathing. Takes your breathing out of your chest and moves it into your diaphragm. And it helps you not cut off your breathing if you become concentrated.

[50:18]

So that helps you to cut off, to not cut off your breath if you become concentrated. Now, adept practice is when that shifts so it becomes a subtle breath in your backbone. And you begin to feel an oval. This oval extends all the way through your body and even into the world. So... So you can have a beginning and an adept practice of weaving, not only weaving mind and body together with your breath, but also weaving mind and phenomena together. So I found in this practice a sudden intimacy with the whole landscape.

[51:50]

The fence, some sort of fence with wrought iron flowers painted red. And sort of old-fashioned lanterns, lanterns, you know, with ganter, goose, right? Ganter is the name of a beer, I guess. Yeah, but it also means goose, doesn't it? Ganter? Oh yeah, it's the male goose. Yeah, see? Learned something. I didn't know. So there's these lanterns saying goose. And then there's these farmhouse-like buildings. And there the shape of my mind.

[52:54]

And the hills. And the clouds are almost so big and like they want to caress the earth. And all this feels like the echo of my mind. Like in that thing I put in the... in the... Afternoon seminar, a flip chart. Yeah, from the Avatamsaka Sutra. The mind, the echo, the mind as an echo. Everything brings mind back to you. Like, saying something at the side of a barn, it comes back, hello, hello.

[54:05]

Everything starts saying hello to you. And yet at the same time in this intimacy of the shape of the mind, extending. Everything seems taking care of itself. Like my mind is taking care of itself. Like the tree is rooted in the sky as well as rooted in the earth. And I similarly feel rooted in the earth, in the sky. Okay, so we can have this kind of experience.

[55:06]

You just have to cultivate the weaving of mind and phenomena. It makes everything feel familiar, intimate. You feel the sameness of everything. And this is the way things are. Always it's there. Always it's here. Or you can imagine, as I suggested, what the mind is clear water. So these are basic practices.

[56:08]

Not so far off, not Siddhartha, no. Avantamsaka Sutra. But here we're discussing them in a reasonable way. You are not as far away as you are described in the Avatamsaka Sutra. Here it is discussed in an achievable possibility. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about Nanchuan and Jiaojiao and things as I still wait. They've been waiting since the 8th century. And you've been waiting since the 8th century. We've been waiting since the 8th century, not just you. Sorry. Thank you very much. Mit dem Parenverdienst des Bruderiges.

[57:19]

Jujol murer den Zeigando, Bonon mul gilden Zeiganda. The leading beings are countless. I promise to save them. Their desires are indescribable. I promise to give them an end. The dharmas, the intangibles, you can go on with these to be a version, but it is very, very difficult to reach. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

[59:52]

Amen. Nei gao wa kuwa nyo rai wo shinjitsu ngi wo keshita te mazu ran. Ain ungetroffner, durchdringender und vollkommener dama. Finds himself also in hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas, only rarely, Now can easily see and hear, remember and accept, I believe, to learn the truth of the Tathagatan. You know, if I look at what we're doing and I'm doing from some kind of outside position, sometimes it seems, I guess it can seem pretty strange.

[61:48]

An American in Germany wearing Japanese clothes. But it's come to be quite natural for me, so I don't feel so funny. I remember Sukershi, when he first was in America, people would say, Oh, your sleeves are so long. Isn't it inconvenient? And he always found it very strange. He'd forgotten he was Japanese. And he never found the sleeves inconvenient. It was just the clothes he wore. And yet he was conscious of being Japanese, intentionally Japanese.

[63:09]

He tells the story of when he went to, seeing in Yokohama, which is maybe the biggest port for exporting, importing things in Japan, And it's not so far away from where he... and also it's where Sojiji is, one of the big temples, head temples, where he practiced. Sojiji. Sojiji. I went there once, boy. I was shocked. Because I was used to Zen being fairly simple, you know. And I took, when I first went to Japan, I went by ship. And the ship came into Yokohama, so I got off and went to visit Sojiji.

[64:33]

And it's a huge place, all built of cement. But it looks like it's built of wood, but it's built of cement. Or anyway, it's huge and it's kind of a joke in Japan in Buddhist circles because it's so big and cement and everything. And inside they have all these hanging things like made of wood but painted gold so you have the air is kind of filled with gold flakes. And in the buildings they have things hanging down from wood that were painted with gold or are painted and then it gives such a feeling as if there were such gold flakes everywhere in the rooms.

[65:42]

Now I kind of like it, but in those days I thought, oh, this is terrible. It's something like a religion. So Gigi wasn't like that when Sukershi was young because this was built after the war. But he never did like Sojiji much, for other reasons. Anyway, he was in Yokohama and he saw all these things, many cups and things like that, being imported, exported to the United States and Europe. And he was quite embarrassed or ashamed of them. Because they were too Japanese. Or they were meant to attract foreigners.

[66:45]

They were made to attract foreigners. And he thought, I wish Western people could see real Japanese things. And it's funny what kind of things inspire us. Because this was part of his inspiration to come to the West. I think maybe he thought he should be imported as a real Japanese. In any case, he decided to... He thought... that he should study Zen, and maybe when he understood Zen thoroughly, he could go to America.

[68:04]

So he was very sensitive, too, when he was in America, finally, about what kind of things were on the altar and so forth. So when I at some point gave him a Raku made by Mr. Raku, a Raku tea bowl, I was somehow intuitively being his disciple. I was intuitively being his disciple by giving him this teabow because he wanted this kind of, not what he saw in Yokohama, but this kind of more truly Japanese...

[69:11]

tea bowl to come to America. And he felt that if things that are truly Japanese came to America and Europe, they wouldn't be seen as Japanese anymore. In a way, that's happened. Even if you go to this pottery show up here in the... on the street here in Großherrschwand once a year they have it? I would say more than half of the pottery is basically Japanese influenced. And people are there, oh, it's just our European pottery maybe, something modern.

[70:20]

And I think he hoped Buddhism, something like that would happen to Buddhism. It would just be our human culture. Not something special or Japanese. What did it feel to you growing up with a father practicing Buddhism? Did you think he was doing something strange? What are you doing here? What happened? For many years he told me what he did or what he is doing and honestly I didn't understand him quite much. But everything he told me was what you are doing, just do it.

[71:24]

Nothing else. his basic sentence for me all these years. Deutsch, bitte. Es war eigentlich sehr merkwürdig, was Neil, mein Vater, mir all die Jahre erzählte, was er machte. Ich fand das, ich habe es eigentlich nicht verstanden. Es kam mir sehr merkwürdig vor, aber er hat mir immer versucht, so seine Well, I'm glad you showed up here anyway. So I've forgotten about whether in the afternoon I wear

[72:26]

western clothes and in the morning I wear these clothes. Suzuki said when various rivers flow into the ocean they forget their names. So he wanted us to practice so that we forgot whether we were Japanese or American and just flowed into the ocean of practice. And for a while we might look Japanese or American. Or German. But eventually we'll make... Zen Buddhism, our own.

[73:36]

And the Japanese went through that for a while. All, for instance, early practitioners of Zen had to do everything in Chinese, had to write in Chinese and so forth. And all serious poetry was written in Japanese, not In Chinese, not Japanese. Dogen was one of the first people to write about Buddhism in Japanese. And so the Japanese made Buddhism their own. So maybe at this stage it looks this way or that way. And I'm Suzuki Rishi's disciple.

[74:38]

So I inherited some of the same thing he works with, what is Japanese, what is Western. And when he agreed to come to America, the Japanese... headquarters, Buddhist headquarters, gave him money to buy Western clothes. But when they saw him at the airport, he was wearing his robes. I don't think he gave them the money back, though. He would spend it on something more important. But he said, I'm Japanese, so I'm a monk.

[75:58]

I will dress this way. Mm-hmm. So when he got to America, people said, why are you wearing those inconvenient sleeves? Okay, but... So I have confidence that underlying Buddhism is this experience of enlightenment and the experience of original mind. And original mind and enlightenment are quite free of culture.

[76:59]

So I'm trying to think about what... how to talk about enlightenment in some realistic sense in our culture. So, you know, I think we can... Maybe explore this more carefully in the afternoon, because through looking at the fundamentals of Zen practice I wrote on the flipchart. And maybe we can look at this in more detail this afternoon, also on the basis of what I wrote about the fundamentals of Zen on the flipchart. Now, some commentators, Chinese, Japanese, and others, think that meditation practice, Zen practice, is a cause of enlightenment.

[78:11]

But I don't think so. I don't think you can cause enlightenment. And this is our theme for some reason this week, causation and enlightenment. enlightenment realization. I don't think you can cause enlightenment. But you can create the conditions that if you have an enlightenment experience, you're more likely to notice it. Then you're more likely to experience it. more fully.

[79:13]

And you're definitely more likely to mature the experience. Now enlightenment, if my way of understanding the tradition of enlightenment practice in Zen Buddhism, is that there is, first of all, sudden enlightenment. And the enlightenment experience tends to be sudden. And the emphasis, as I said the other day, in Chinese Buddhism is on a sudden experience.

[80:24]

And even in Chinese portraits there's some Do you build the poem gradually through the experience of writing, or does the poem appear to you in its entirety, and then you write the poem? It's the same with Chinese poem art. It's practically built up, piece by piece, and then the poem suddenly appears as a whole, and then it's written down. So this way of looking at things is prior to Zen practice in China and permeates the way of looking at things in China. But it's still... Whether it has a cultural dimension, still, cultural aspect, still enlightenment is sudden. But sudden enlightenment is quite common and not limited to Buddhism.

[81:29]

As I've often said, I think most artists are actually artists because they had some kind of enlightenment experience. They have some experience in their art of forgetting themselves or transforming themselves through the art that's almost addictive. And you experienced something in your artist tradition that you could have forgotten and that then led to you getting attached to it and that you became greedy for it. Okay, I'll start. to tell you something I found out the other day, aside from this subject, about addiction, smoking. The scientist... The scientist who, a friend of mine, went to his lecture, the scientist who discovered how cigarettes are addicting.

[83:01]

and exposed the cigarette company's secret research about it, said there's many things that make us feel good. Like having a new sweater. Or a particularly sunny day or something. That smoking inhibits your experience of feeling good from a new sweater. I don't understand. In other words, there's certain ways in which we start to feel good because we have a new sweater. So smoking makes it five times harder to feel good, or something like that, if you have a new sweater. So the ordinary things that make us feel good have to be, you have to have five sweaters instead of one.

[84:13]

Or it can't just be a sunny day. You have to be in Florida. Or the Canary Islands or something. So the only way you can make yourself feel good easily is by smoking. Because it not only makes you feel good, but it prevents you from feeling good in other ways. Anyway, I never, I just found that out the other day, so I'm telling you. At least that's what this guy says. And it is true that, I know it is true though, that if you start to practice, smaller and smaller things start making you feel good.

[85:24]

Okay. So what I see happens, again going back to artists and enlightenment experiences, is that often they have these experiences when they're young. And they paint or write poems coming out of that kind of experience the rest of their life. And they seldom mature the experience. But Buddhism emphasizes this kind of experience, but maturing the experience. And having many kinds of enlightenment experiences.

[86:28]

So, I mean, I don't know. I think so many of us who practice wait for some big life-changing experience. And sometimes this does happen. And in Zen practice, the use of phrases is one of the main ways to shift one's views. So if you want to practice in the traditional way, Based on the possibility of sudden enlightenment, you work with a phrase, repeating it to confront your usual views. It can be something as simple as just do it. Yeah. And this shift may be, you know, you can hardly believe it's important, but later in life you see that, yes, some change occurred at that moment.

[88:10]

I think it's rather boring to talk about enlightenment. But I think that one, it's the topic of this seminar. And two, I think you should have a general picture of how enlightenment is understood in Buddhism. At least my understanding of how it occurs. So sudden enlightenment is one. And the enactment of enlightenment is a second way of looking at enlightenment. And we can understand the enactment of enlightenment as a kind of gradual enlightenment.

[89:15]

Enactment means this growing into it. No, enact means you Yeah, we've had the trouble in German with this word before. To enact something is like in Tibetan Buddhism. You imagine you're the deity and that you enact it and you may become the deity. In general, Tantric Buddhism emphasizes enactment as the core of practice, while Zen, for instance, emphasizes Zazen as the core of practice. But when we do zazen, you're enacting the posture of a Buddha. When you take a phrase, Just now is enough, nothing to do, no place to go, etc.

[90:26]

This very mind is Buddha. Or not mind, not Buddha, not things. or not knowing is nearest, these phrases all not only precipitate enlightenment, they enact enlightenment. You can just use the word enact, of course. So you act from views that are based on enlightenment.

[91:30]

And the way we try to construct things here or the way we try to construct a sashin is it's based on if you were enlightened, the sashin would be a snap. basiert darauf, dass wenn ihr erleuchtet wäret, wäre das ein Kinderspiel. So if you do a sashin, you're actually putting yourself in a situation where you can do it most easily if you if you are close to what it means to be enlightened. So one of the differences between what I'm calling everyday practice and adept practice, you don't have to think that Oh, I'm only doing everyday practice.

[92:37]

This is a lower form. If karma practice, you have to do karma practice. But karma practice... begins to, after a while, open you to Dharma practice. And Dharma practice is an enactment of enlightenment. When you practice substituting present cause for past cause. So every time you emphasize present cause more than past cause, you're enacting enlightenment. Mm-hmm. So that's the second form of enlightenment practice.

[93:52]

One is sudden, and the teachings that go with that. And one is enactment, which is in effect a kind of gradual enlightenment. And these two flow together. Because the process of enacting enlightenment is also the process of maturing enlightenment. So there's two more categories. One is the basic condition of enlightenment. And the So fourth is prior enlightenment. Okay, the basic condition of enlightenment is the statement that we're already enlightened.

[94:59]

Is it what Buddhism means by enlightenment? is the way we actually already exist. If we would let that

[95:12]

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