Well, I'm trying to, I want to speak to your activity and not to your knowledge. Or I want to speak to your activity and not your mind. Or perhaps through the knowledge of the mind, I want to speak into your activity. The activity, of course, body and mind. And not just now, at this moment also, I hope, in at least some parts of your future activity. Yeah, and that's the process of, that's the territory of teaching Buddhism.

[01:01]

But to some degree I am speaking into your activity now and what comes from now. Although I don't think about the responsibility much as this is just what I do. At the same time behind it I feel this, you know, awfully big responsibility that I'm speaking into your activity. But, I mean, really, if we're going to practice Zen, that's what I have to speak to.

[02:33]

And at the same time, as I said yesterday, you know, when I start a tesho, I always feel, how can I do this? And part of that feeling is that I feel this responsibility to the teaching. To me, and this is, you know, I... I think other people feel the same way, but for me it's the most precious treasure. So I feel that we're in the midst of this treasure together. And the word treasure is used at a key point also in this koan.

[03:47]

And from that I feel this responsibility to be as clear and accurate as possible. So that it enhances and benefits your activity. I don't want to put mud into your activity. Something nicer than that. Okay, so let me continue in this instructional mode. I first spoke and what I'm speaking about is the process of entering the experience of appearance, appearance through our perceptual and cognitive activity,

[05:25]

And then so that the first thing I mentioned was to take an inventory of your perceptual and cognitive activity. And the second thing was to add knowledge to that. The process of adding knowledge. Knowledge as a concept that you enter into your activity. So then the third, which I never got to over the last three days or so, was the simple example of examples. Yeah. Someone said to me in Turkestan to think impermanence into a stone.

[06:39]

Basically, that's just exactly right. Because there's many things we know which are not immediately experienceable. If we know that a stone is a perfect example of impermanence, Yeah. Then, despite mountains, then if we can't experience the impermanence of a stone, we have to think ourselves into it. As this person said, the Molecules or atoms, you know, something like that. You know that's going on.

[08:05]

But you can also... You can see the geology and the history in its patterns and colors and so forth. And perhaps this stone is on your desk. Yeah, well, it's only impermanently on your desk probably. And wherever it used to be was obviously not permanent. So that also is impermanence. And it's a different look and different lights. Sometimes it might be warm or cold.

[09:24]

Those are all actually dimensions of impermanence. If it's sitting on a high desert mountain, it will age differently than sitting on a high mountain. usually above the snow-lined mountain. So the tradition is, actually, to take some simple example that's a little hard to think of as impermanent, And notice that it's an example actually of impermanence. And if you do that, with two or three things, it's your choice. Und wenn du das mit zwei oder drei Dingen so machst, das kann deine Wahl sein.

[10:45]

Wenn du das eine Weile lang machst, das ist irgendwie nett, da ist eine gewisse Poesie darin, das zu tun. Das Gefühl wird dann sehr viel leichter auf andere Dinge auszudehnen sein. Or, you know, sometimes, I mean, I do this now and then, just, you know, what the heck, you have to do something now and then. I take the window as an example of impermanence. It's kind of permanent, it's just there. And yet, through the window, the leaves are blowing back and forth. In fact, in English, it's called a window. Wind-do. You don't have to translate it. Once it was called a wind-augen, a eye, a wind-eye.

[11:48]

And it was once also called a wind door, but now it's called a window. So even that, I mean, even the word is impermanent. And it shows you the impermanence of wind and the leaves. And my window was just cleaned. And to clean it, you had to reverse the sides. These German windows are so wonderfully complicated. In America you'd have to get a ladder and climb up on the other side. Climbing up on a ladder is fun too, but you know...

[13:05]

So for me the frame of the window becomes somehow an example in its staying there all the time, an example of at least showing me impermanence. And I think of many of Matisse's paintings. Which he paints what's outside a window. So there's a window or Paris outside the window. And then he paints the window frame within the frame of the painting. And implied clearly by Matisse that all is within the frame of the mind. So clearly the frame of the window reminds us of the framing of the mind.

[14:33]

So, I mean, this is easy and maybe even amusing to do. It falls into the category in Buddhism of direct perception. in which you use a contemplated perception to add to that direct perception a teaching, Four Noble Truths or Skandhas or something. And the basic idea is if you're going to hold the teaching before you, you develop the ability to do that by taking a few particular contexts, situations, objects,

[15:50]

and hold them before you in the concentration of direct perception. And that begins again to extend into how you perceive other things. So very simply you practice with examples. And then those examples begin to work in all examples. Okay. Now What I would call in this particular way I'm formulating the process of appearance. What I'm calling the fourth step is the

[17:16]

My old saw, or what I've often, often mentioned in recent years, is the pause for the particular. And this pause for the particulars I keep bringing up because it's the pivotal point, it's the shift point. in knowing appearance. Okay. So when you pause for the particular... You can use the particular to help you pause.

[18:34]

So instead of saying pause for the particular, we could say particular for the pause. People get the idea. Thank you. Particular for the Paulins. Einzelheiten für das Innerhalten. Okay. So. Good. Oh, I don't know. Oh, good enough. So, you know, some people have said to me, this process requires patience. You have to be patient a minute to let the particular... bring you into the same space as the pause.

[19:37]

It takes some patience to let the particular create a pause. And some people told me that you need patience. You need patience to give the individual the opportunity to bring you into the pause or to create the pause. Because the key is to let the body occupy the same space as the pause. Yeah, but I think words have all these filaments that lead into other things. So I want to be careful always how the coin of a word is spent in other contexts. And so patience usually means the patience to endure suffering and so forth.

[20:42]

That's where it comes from. And so sometimes I would try wait, wait for the pause, wait for the particulars. But the etymology of wait is to watch out for hostile action. So the basic language level, wait is the opposite of welcome. Wait is to be watchful and expect something bad to happen. To be wary. Yeah, it's the same. Okay. So, you want to try? Okay.

[21:42]

Okay, wonderful. Anyway, so maybe it would be better to say to reside in the pause. Or to occupy the pause. Yeah. So... So to pause for the particular, to reside in the pause. So I'm trying to use all these different words so they play in your activity. And out of some of these English words, maybe some German words will stick or... Lots of you practice Buddhism in English and do your life in German.

[23:06]

Dan Lusthaus, who's a quite extraordinary scholar of Buddhism, Der in Lusthaus, der ein ziemlich außergewöhnlicher Gelehrter des Buddhismus ist. Der sagt so etwas wie, wegen der yogischen Erfahrung ist der Buddhismus hat das Verlangen danach, einen Wortschatz zu bilden, ein Vokabular herauszubilden. Buddhism is compelled to create a vocabulary for modalities of experience beyond the closure of consciousness.

[24:07]

Yeah, modalities of knowing outside the closure of consciousness. And that's, if you really get that, that's at the basis of all Buddhist terminology. Prajna is such an example. Prajna is not a wisdom in the category of consciousness. So it's not only that Buddhism is compelled to create a vocabulary of knowing outside the modalities of consciousness.

[25:08]

Buddhism also needs to use language outside the closure of consciousness. So to put it simply, instead of using language and particular words, as tools of definition, You use language as tools of attention. You use them for their directionality. Yeah, that's enough. I think you can work with this difference by thinking of it as tools of attention instead of tools of definition.

[26:20]

And that's much of what I spoke about yesterday. And this is a big part of what I spoke about yesterday. To use words to deflect this light and stream of consciousness. Into the wisdom of awareness. So that's exactly what I'm trying to do with a phrase like pause for the particular. So at the center of knowing what Buddhism means by appearance is for you to become very familiar with this pause for the particular.

[27:37]

To occupy the same space as the particular. And what happens when you do this? You generate a field of mind. A spatial field of mind. So you're not in... And you generate what I've been calling in various ways perceptual immediacy. That's one entry to this. Or spatial immediacy.

[28:38]

In contrast to temporal immediacy. An example of temporal immediacy was getting ready to go to the airplane when you're a little late. If someone's trying to get you to the airport, would you stop this spatial immediacy stuff and pack your bag? Now, this is Sorry. I don't know what you said, so I'm glad it's not bad, I guess. And this is, you know, all this, particularly in the 60s and 70s in the San Francisco area, there was a whole lot of right brain, left brain stuff. Right brain, left brain.

[29:42]

And it's too simple and I try to avoid talking about it. But it is clear there's hemispheric differences in how we function. So, I mean, I think that it actually goes back a long time. I think in the early 1700s, somebody named Maynard Dupuy said, we're homo duplex. I don't know what that would mean in today's thinking, but... Yeah, we're all homo duplex. With an emphasis. Anyway, what he meant by, because he discovered what happens when the two sides of the brain, I think it was he, are severed. And you develop two different personalities.

[31:01]

But when they're not severed, they function together to enhance each other. I think in the beginning of the 1800s is the first use in English of Homo sapiens. Which means wise humans. Sapiens means wise. Which is extremely doubtful. And I think Henri Bergson in the our French philosopher is important to Proust, in the, probably the 1900s, coined homo...

[32:08]

Faber, the tool-making person. So maybe we're... So maybe we're homo-yogic. Tell your family, what are you doing? I'm homo-yogic. Really? I should have guessed. But what you're probably doing, I mean most human beings, in at least Western cultures, are left brain, left hemisphere dominant. And it's clear over many centuries The language brain, the language has changed the anatomical structures and cellular networks of the brain.

[33:40]

So I'm convinced that yogic practice also changes the anatomical structures and cellular networks of the brain and the body and so forth. As I said the other day. But, although that is something that happens at least to a small degree over decades, and when I say small degree, I'm probably being conservative and consoling. Consoling so you don't get nervous you're going to become who you're not. Or not yet. Okay. But in any case... It's clear that such a simple thing as shifting attention through the pause for the particular.

[35:04]

From where the left brain orders our life, gives an associative order to our life, And the sort of bad luck I've had in recent days have shaken up my associative order a bit. I mean, I want my car to have wheels. Yeah, basic things like that. We lost one yesterday. And I want my computer to have boots. I mean, at least boot. Yeah. And I want my toothbrush to be in the same place I put it last night.

[36:14]

Yeah. And then... So... When things get disordered like that, you have to kind of like shift to a spatial immediacy. To shift to, oh, everything's in place. So even by if... Initially in our practice, we're using the attentional tool of language to shift from, let's say simply, temporal immediacy to actually a spatial immediacy.

[37:27]

And that is also a shift from left hemisphere dominance to right hemisphere dominance. So I think clearly practice shifts you to right hemisphere dominance. And if zazen is also a surfacing of the non-dreaming deep sleep, The bliss of non-dreaming deep sleep. Yeah. So if you do that and you make this shift to more left hemisphere dominance... You're changing the hemispheric balance.

[38:39]

You're kind of rebalancing, remapping, rewiring the way you function. That's one reason I feel this responsibility in how I speak with you. This is not child's play. Perhaps it's the play of wisdom. But it's at the center of our life and our activity. So I think you can feel the spatial immediacy in a where, where, not when, where you can't open your mouth.

[39:59]

A tongueless man can speak. Where you lift your legs without rising, There's no comparison, rising, fall, up, down, etc. A legless man can walk. Now, I can make some comments about it, like no comparisons or spatial immediacy, etc., And I'm using language as an attentional tool here and not a definitive tool. But still, the full feel and flowering of a phrase, of a two-fold phrase like this,

[40:59]

Aber dennoch ist das vollständige Gefühl und auch das Erblühen eines zweifältigen Satzes so wie diesem Can't simply be explained metaphorically or in any way really. Das kann nicht einfach auf metaphorischer Weise oder eigentlich auf keine Weise erklärt werden. Yeah. It's a phrase which goes beyond the modalities of the closure of consciousness. It's intended to not be something you can grasp. But in a strange way, it's something you can feel something when you bring it into your activity. But in a very strange way, is that something where you can feel something when you influence it in your activity?

[42:26]

Okay, thank you. Okay.

[42:43]

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