Hello, everyone. I apologize, as usual, that I can't speak German. But luckily, I have a very good friend who speaks German better than I speak English. Now I suppose I'm supposed to introduce you to Zen Buddhism in some way. And I just found out a few minutes ago that this lecture is introduced as the miracle of consciousness.

[01:02]

It's not my fault. I live in America. I don't know what you mean. Hmm. But it's a fairly safe title because this is a miracle. And there's some kind of consciousness here. In fact, our life, I would say, Well, Ulrike and I had a discussion about this word today, driving here, but our life is confounded in mystery. And I'm using the word confounded to mean

[02:03]

founded in mystery and founded through mystery. And I should, of course I should say what I mean by that. We have a very productive kind of consciousness. It builds civilizations. And the effort of our consciousness is always to understand and make clear to To understand and make clear.

[03:28]

But when we dream, things are not so clear. And there's a sense in which... Zen could be understood as trying to make everything clear. And there are practices in which you begin to be able to stay in your dream time and not move it into your conscious time. And so it looks like in a way that the effort even of Zen is to make everything, to make understanding reach to everything. And that is also sometimes implied by Buddha as being called all-knowing.

[04:45]

And the emphasis on wisdom, which is seen as a kind of knowing. But it's not the kind of knowing that most of us mean by knowing. So what I again said that our life is founded in or confounded in mystery. Because the very nature of our productive consciousness is it's quite narrow. If we imagine some great sea creature, some whale, and some people say that whales and dolphins may never sleep,

[06:08]

They live on a waterbed. They're always supported by this water. So they don't need to sleep. They're living on a waterbed. So if we imagined such a water creature, which didn't have to sleep, we might think that their consciousness was 24 hours like our consciousness. But I think their consciousness would have to be different. So I guess what I'm saying here is that it's the nature of human beings, not being water creatures,

[07:30]

But the price of our consciousness, which is so productive, which produces civilization, can't understand everything. The kind of consciousness we have can't understand everything. And the attempt to bring everything into this kind of consciousness is a mistake many of us make. Part of the mystery of our life is that we need this other consciousness of sleep. Okay. So now what Buddhism has done as chosen to do as essential to life,

[08:55]

is to introduce another kind of consciousness. Maybe a kind of whale consciousness. And I think that's one reason we like our pets. because it's a kind of alchemy of looking at your dog and feeling another kind of consciousness. Which often calms you down. I mean, life looks so simple to a dog. Or a fish. So when I met Suzuki Roshi, my teacher, it was sort of like I was meeting this wonderful dog.

[10:20]

I'm sorry, Suzuki Roshi. I never thought I'd call him a dog. A hund. Om, maybe, but not hund. Om ah hund. You don't need to translate that. Or maybe he was like this fish swimming through the life I began to see in San Francisco when I met him. So he not only taught me quite a bit about meditation practice, about the spiritual craft of Buddhism, But he introduced me to another kind of mind that I'd never met before.

[11:42]

That I'm still studying. And it's a kind of mystery, this other kind of mind. And it's a kind of mystery, this other kind of mind. Now I remember as a kid when I used to wash the dishes quite a bit. That was one of my jobs, I had to wash the dishes. And then I grew up to be a kind of monk. And really being a monk is learning how to be a housewife. And so you continue washing the dishes. But when I washed the dishes, I used to become quite fascinated for some reason with the silverware underneath the soap suds.

[12:49]

And they all thought I was procrastinating because I would take hours to wash the dishes. And they would come in to see what the heck I was still doing out there. And I was supposed to be doing my schoolwork or going to bed or something. And I would have two water glasses looking through the suds at the silverware. And I also believed that I was procrastinating But at the same time, I was somehow caught by looking through the suds at the silverware laying rather motionless at the bottom.

[14:04]

Mm-hmm, yeah, I know. And I realize now I was looking at another kind of mind. But the certain quality of the water, which is like this other kind of mind, the water that in this case just accepted the silverware, And it just remained there very still. Now when I come to do a lecture like this, of course I'm invited by Uwe and Zeitblas because supposedly I can bring you something. And I have spent quite a lot of time practicing and thinking about Zen, so I can bring you something.

[15:21]

But mostly when I come here to come here like this evening to give you a lecture. I kind of check my understanding at the door. I sort of leave it there with my shoes. They told me not to bring my shoes in here. Because for me, practicing Zen is being... It's not that I practice and bring you something. It's that being here with you is practicing.

[16:32]

And being here with you is finding out something within you about Zen practice. Now if we don't have the idea here of, and I'm using the English word, understanding, We have something more like maybe instanding. Everything that happens is inside your life. There's really nothing that's outside your life.

[17:50]

When you die, you die inside your life. Death isn't something that comes from outside and takes you away. You die inside your life. My senior disciple just died in September of AIDS. And he was head of a hospice for people, a home, and he called it Maitri, a home and hospice for people with AIDS. And when at some point we realized I came back from being in actually Asia and Europe and came back in early September, I think.

[19:02]

And he He had certain things to do. We had to pass on the succession and the abbotship of this place to his disciple and my disciple. So then we did those things. And then he had, the feeling we had, he and I talked about it, was that this was the end of dying. Dying being a language, it's a word. And once he finished the things he had to do, dying as a word was over.

[20:21]

And then he faced the mystery. And he did it within intent, not within cognitive thinking. And the intent moved, worked, existed right under the cognitive thinking and the medicine he was taking. So we finished the ceremony on a Saturday, I believe, of succession. And then he sat up in bed on, well, Sunday I spent with him with our disciple, his disciple and mine.

[21:28]

And then Monday he sat up in bed and Tuesday and just greeted. I mean, people were waiting from, you know, eight or nine in the morning till three in the afternoon to be in line to see him and say goodbye. And he smiled and said hello to everybody and, you know, it's quite wonderful. On Sunday at one point I was sitting beside his bed and he was, you know, seemed to be sleeping. And I said to him, I sort of murmured to him, I wish there was something, is there something I can do for you, Isan? Is there anything I can do for you? And a pause, and then his head came up.

[22:50]

He said, you mean something more? And another point I said to him, I wish I could trade places with you. He said, you'll get your chance. and the last day in the afternoon on Wednesday after he did the things he had to in the morning he rolled over in bed and began concentrating And you could interrupt him, but basically he just concentrated. Just as he decided to do. To live within his own choice. within his own choice and then within the mystery of this life.

[24:14]

So he concentrated and this concentration, this intent, which is not willpower, a deep intent, by midnight he died. Around six in the afternoon, he had to go to the toilet. He got up, he started to get up, and he looked and his whole bed was surrounded by people. And he looked around and he said, is someone dying around here? And then he laughed and then he went to the toilet and came back. His humor never left him. And then just before he died, he sat up, looked deeply in people's eyes and died.

[25:31]

You're in this place now. You don't know it, most of you, but that's where you are. This kind of maybe deep consciousness. So I guess I'm trying to give you a feeling for this by saying you're standing in your life. Sometimes I talk about space connecting.

[26:36]

I say that's an important sense. Not that space separates us, but space connects us. But what I'd like to say this evening is that space belongs to you. Doesn't just connect you, it also belongs to you. Mm-hmm. So the question, who am I, doesn't interest me as much as the question, what is life? Mm-hmm. What kind of I do I need to look at the question, what is life? Mm-hmm. Now I think that the better word than understanding, if I don't use in standing, is perhaps acceptance.

[27:56]

Now not accept, and I don't know if I can give you a feeling of this acceptance, it's not acceptance as you just accept anything. Or you're subject to anything. I came in here yesterday from the United States and landed in Frankfurt. And we drove, Ulrich and I, drove to Weimar. And I got to see Goethe's house and things like that. And see what the world looked like in 1920 and 1930. I hope former East Germany has sense enough not to change everything.

[29:11]

You'd pay a fortune in New York for a facade like some of those buildings have. If there's a treasure over there in East Germany. A time warp. Yeah. And driving from Weimar this afternoon here, there was a lot of fog. Fog and pollution and smog and so forth. Smog. A lot of smog. I say I know a few words.

[30:26]

And we saw, my gosh, four accidents at least with six or eight cars and trucks and everything. And the fog was pretty thick. And when you could see a car, when there was a car ahead of you, you could see its taillights, you felt like there was some kind of definition to where you were. But sometimes there was no car ahead of you. And you couldn't tell whether the fog was thick or thin, so you didn't know whether there might be a car only 10 feet ahead of you that you couldn't see, or 100 feet ahead of you that you couldn't see.

[31:31]

Now this has something to do with the what is seen as the essential nature and miracle of consciousness in Buddhism. Now, as long as I was able to have a subject-object relationship of myself and the car ahead, I had a feeling of location. But when there's no car out there, I didn't know where I was. Now in In the West, we have a kind of principle of logic called the excluded middle.

[32:51]

It's either this or it's that. Buddhism says, uh-uh. Buddhism says, no, no. Buddhism is the law of the included middle. It's this and that's not so important. It's this middle which you can't exclude. If you take this and that and push it far enough away into the fog, You don't know where you are anymore. And you have no ability to define where you are. Buddhism says this is the essential nature of consciousness. This is what the middle way means.

[34:07]

It's not a harmony of opposites. The middle way is to be in the middle where there's only suchness. Where you can't reach very far into the mystery. And where you can find your comfort without anxiety in this included middle. Which we call suchness. Or emptiness. And emptiness, although it's transcendental, shunyata is translated as emptiness. It means something more like the fullness of indeterminacy. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. You're not trying to fix yourself by the car ahead or the car behind or some subject-object relationship.

[35:28]

You're not trying to understand everything to make it clear. You're interested in being vivid in the middle of the fog. You find your own vividness and clarity in the middle of the fog. And these moments of consciousness... when you find a kind of vividness of being alive without the need to hold this or that, is dharma or emptiness. And this requires a kind of acceptance. Acceptance in the sense that you're not grasping to try to understand or hold on to.

[36:42]

And you can let go to that extent without anxiety. Or you can handle the anxiety. But the anxiety becomes the water you swim in. Your own discursive, discriminating thoughts become the path. When you really realize you can't get hold of these things anyway, even if you're anxious, you swim in that anxiety. So that One of the great obstacles of practice is we call delusion.

[37:49]

Delusion or ignorance. And ignorance or delusion means that you take the world as being permanent in some way. That each thing has an inherent mark or an inherent existence. That the world exists out there somewhere. And you're only a visitor And this is called the imaginary world or delusion in Buddhism. And that's to try to make things determinate. To try to make things determinate. So, instead of indeterminate.

[39:07]

From your own vividness you make things clear for a moment, but everything is only clear for a moment. But the clarity is you, not what you see. You are like a light that shines on things. So one is delusion is one of the great obstacles of practice. Now the other obstacle in practice is the frustration of existence. Disillusionment. So first you live in an illusion that everything is fixed and permanent. But finally you open your eyes and you see the world as it is.

[40:20]

And you see what we human beings do to each other. And you see the suffering. And the poisons of greed, hate and delusion. It's better to be deluded. To not see. And when you start to see, it's very disillusioning. So how do you found your life not in delusion and not in being disillusioned once you open your eyes? Because you don't want to close your eyes to this world and what we human beings do to each other. But at the same time, you owe more to yourself and to your friends than disillusionment.

[41:50]

Now, there's no easy answer to what I've just presented. There's no formula in Buddhism or in Zen that makes us all work out. Formula. Formula? Formula, like a chemical formula. There's no formula. You said that? Oh, okay. Well, I don't know as much German as that. So a kind of, you need a kind of deep trust in this life, deeper than the frustrations of this life.

[43:03]

But you don't jump to conclusions too much. That you have a kind of deep patience. That you can endure this life. Mm-hmm. On the one hand everything is empty. On the other hand we're giving form to things all the time. We have to endure both the giving of emptiness and the giving of form. And in Buddhism we think this endurance is a kind of acceptance or patience. almost as if you were willing to swim in non-understanding.

[44:23]

You don't have to understand all the time. That's why we sleep. We need a break from understanding. Because the kind of productive consciousness we have makes us suffer. But this kind of productive consciousness we have isn't all of life. That's a very narrow view of life. So sometimes you let yourself out of this productive consciousness. And you're not going to go crazy. Though sometimes craziness is defined when you lose touch with your controlling productive consciousness. But that's one reason we do meditation, because you begin to have a kind of trust in the stuff of us.

[45:45]

In a funny way, you, first stage, rely on your own body. Not in the thinking, but just the stuff of you, the precious stuff of you in the world. So it's, again, as if you could let your... I don't know why Jesus uses a fish. Is it because he's a fisherman or some other reason? But in any case, in Buddhism, the fish or animal consciousness represents another kind of depth that's in human consciousness that animals give us a sense of.

[46:47]

They don't read the newspaper. So we think they're lesser because they don't read the newspaper. They just may be smarter not to make newspapers in the first place. Or maybe they just don't need to come out of the mystery. But our genius is that we can come out of the mystery. And coming out of it makes us suffer. Now there's a story in Buddhism that there's a turtle seeking enlightenment.

[47:50]

Translate that, okay. And someone haphazardly throws a ring, like a life saver ring or something. And it's said the turtle has as much chance to reach enlightenment As it has to, by chance, put its head through this ring that's floating randomly in the ocean. But what happens if the intent of this turtle is deep enough? It starts to go to the surface once and its head goes right through the ring. I think that's what happened to me when I looked into the dishwater. I could see that ring floating down there And when I saw Suzuki Roshi, I saw this ring floating

[49:03]

Now, we try to reach this mind often with TV and alcohol and all kinds of things we use to try to reach this mind which doesn't have to understand. And this mind that doesn't have to understand is called in Buddhism the Tathagata Garbha. Tathagatagarbha means suchness womb. The womb of suchness. And it means when you can begin to let yourself swim. The actual technical word is course. Do you have course here? When you can let yourself swim in the excluded middle,

[50:30]

Swim in the now included middle where you don't have to know whether the car is out there or here. And you can let suchness or indeterminacy, the indeterminacy of the world, be your very stuff. This is a kind of womb where understanding floats in it. Another kind of understanding floats in it. And you begin to have a feeling, I mean, I think it's true, my experience is it's true, you begin to have a feeling for life.

[51:45]

As if life and the world was touching your belly. And your belly was touching life and the world and you didn't feel excluded from anything you felt everything is inside your life nothing happens outside your life it's a kind of space You can hold in place. You can feel, maybe not use the word space, but place.

[52:48]

You can feel everything in place. You can feel everything in place. You feel it with your body. You feel it with your mind. Everything right now in this room is inherently in place. And you right now are in place inside your life. And it's a kind of acceptance in which you don't have to discriminate too much. And then the things that you have to discriminate about arise from this acceptance. And you discriminate differently when the things in your world arise from acceptance. Arise in their own clarity from this indeterminacy. Okay, I think that's the best feeling I can give you for at least one aspect of practice.

[54:18]

A fundamental, the fundamental aspect of practice. We could say the miracle of consciousness, which I see right here. And I guess some of you are coming to the seminar. I don't think all of you are coming to the seminar tomorrow. But Buddhism is an embrace of spiritual reality, shall we say, and a spiritual craft. And I'll try during the seminar to give those of you who can come some feeling of this spiritual craft and this spiritual reality.

[55:31]

Thank you very much. Vielen Dank. Now, I was asked by Uwe if I could talk for an hour. That's about right. 908. And if then we could have a break. And anybody who wants to stay, we could have some discussion if you want. I'm sure lots of you have things to do and it's rather late and warm in here, but anybody who wants to stay, we can have some discussion. Thank you very much.

[56:32]

Okay, what would you like to know or not know? Okay, so what would you like to know or not to know? Yes, I have a question. Well, this here and there between pre-illusion and desillusion actually leads me to set myself apart with Zen, with the intention of achieving a special spiritual attitude. But now you have written so much, Well, I'm torn between this illusion, what this illusion now is and love. Well, in Suzuki Roshi's book, I don't think he says just sit down and forget about it.

[57:52]

But if you can really sit down and forget about it, very good. You can teach me your secret later. You know, to try to give you a feeling for what I talked about this evening is pretty iffy. Yeah. Iffy the first time I found a word she doesn't know If lots of it Yeah, I mean it's we're used to thinking in this or that right and

[59:17]

And this is more like this, this, this, this. And it's hard, it's not something by its nature that's in language. So my effort, my trying to give you a feeling for it, I mean I don't, you know, if you have some, give me a feeling back, I would appreciate it. In other words, in addition to any question or discussion you want, if you have some comment about what gave you... If you could catch the feeling or you couldn't or anything you want to say.

[60:46]

It made sense or not. Feedback. Anyway, please. What else? Yes. Yes. Oh, you're welcome. Something else? But I would like to say and share basically what touched me very much, that a lot of what you said is something I'm dealing with right now.

[61:57]

So I'm quite amazed about that. Thank you for helping. Vielen Dank für deine Hilfe. That's true, though, you know. I also were touched not by what you really are starting, but just the way you feel it, what it is. And I feel very, very good today. That's why my brain is also working and a little bit I want to say that in German. Do you want to say that in German? I repeat briefly what was said in German.

[63:18]

I also felt very addressed and now less about the content, as well as the way you said it. I am in a very good mood and feel good. Yeah, I understand that greed. But the territory of koan practice and the territory of Zen is more like the feeling you said you had from this evening, and to actually begin to know the fabric of non-cognitive feeling, And be able to find your location in that non-cognitive feeling.

[64:34]

Because whatever I said arose from that non-cognitive feeling. So you'll find the, let's see, there's a capping verse in a capping verse in a, it's used in koans. Or a line, they're called capping verses, but they're just maybe a phrase. Which is, I can show you the two mandarin ducks I've embroidered. I can show you the two mandarin ducks I've embroidered.

[65:52]

Embroidered means two ducks, like then duck. I can show you these two mandarin ducks I've embroidered. But I can never show you the needle with which I stitched them. So if the way of working with koans is to begin to see the fabric of non-cognitive feeling as the basis and source of thought, and the basis of understanding. And instead of bringing your thinking to the koan, you are able to bring a staying in place in this non-cognitive feeling,

[66:59]

and allow understanding to arise from that. It's not so different from an artist, a painter, who turns on the radio and leaves it on to occupy his cognitive mind while he paints from somewhere else. So giving a lecture, I have to occupy your cognitive thinking where you get greedy. And I let you be occupied with the greed. So if you're sufficiently distracted, I can use a little acupuncture and poke you or something like that.

[68:11]

So I can feel, ooh, I can, yes. I feel relieved that there is this place where we simply should not go on or should understand and want what we want, that is also here And I think that I also have it, because I was very touched in that moment From that moment, in the next moment, comes the second . I felt relieved when you said that we have a place and yet it's not necessary to ask for more. I just think it's greediness. And in that moment, there was something more than killing weeds.

[69:38]

I just, I said, I want a home. But such a, not even a second. And then the doubt comes in. Am I really in this water of what you said, or the walls don't want to come out of the next step? And I see I have these problems. But I also don't want to come out of the mystery. Mystery. It causes me so much. Yes, that's the problem with trying to understand. You have some little taste. And that taste actually is going on all the time. But it usually doesn't reach our tongue. But then occasionally it reaches our tongue. But because we're always so used to this or that, And we don't know how to stay in the excluded middle.

[70:54]

We don't know how to stay in indeterminacy. And we're so insecure. We say, oh, was it really that? I want to glue that taste onto my tongue and clamp my teeth down on it and all you do is bite your tongue so anyway we always do that So somehow you've just got to relax. Sleep like a baby. Live like a baby. Zen is basically realizing uncorrected state of mind. Well, you just relax and get the taste of things.

[72:18]

Anywhere a tendency is to be so insecure and critical It's like, what is language? Language is your mind. It's your shiny mind. And it gets out there and turns into language. And then it begins to have literature and so forth. And psychology. And then this language which is your mind begins to criticize your mind. Hey, you're not so good after all.

[73:20]

Hey, du bist eigentlich überhaupt nicht gut. But it's just you. Ist ja immer nur du. Yeah. Just see the shininess of it and don't listen to all those words all the time. Versuch einfach das Strahlende daran zu sehen und nicht immer nur all die Worte. Okay. Yes. Glaubst du, dass das Bewusstsein von einem Baby noch mehr in der Welt ist? Do you think that the consciousness of a baby is more in this excluded middle? Yes. Yes. I don't think it's the mature consciousness of a realized person. But I think babies and young children are definitely more embedded in the mystery than we are. And I think the turning point is not when they get language, but when they get a self-critical language of past and future.

[74:32]

They begin to think of how they were in the past and how they will be in the future. As soon as that process starts, they lose the mystery. They're no longer swimming in indeterminacy. Waking up and seeing their pillow Wonderful pillow. Yeah, I have a little daughter named Nora. See if I can remember what she said to me. But she was about, let's see, this was three years ago and she's six, so she's about three years old. And I was driving along with her, I think, at Christmas time in San Francisco.

[76:02]

And she said she wanted to do something or something. And I said, well, when you grow up, you can do something. And she said, I don't want to grow up. And she has an older sister who's 12. And of course at that time was nine. And I said, why do you not want to grow up? She said, I want to remain a kid because my sister's a kid. And I thought that was very compassionate. Especially since they fight so much. And then she turned sort of sotto voce to the window, passenger window. And she said kind of like to nobody.

[77:12]

When you grow up, you have to keep your name. I thought, whoa. Isn't that what you say in German? When you grow up, you have to keep your... She just said to the window, when you grow up, you have to keep your name. But when you die, you know yourself. I thought, shit. I'm just kidding. I thought... I'm going to use that in a lecture I thought that was great even though you're grown up you don't have to keep your name and you're dying right now so you can know yourself it's true

[78:24]

So, excuse me for being so serious. What else? Because the child still remembers the womb and I don't. Well, I don't know. It's very comfortable for me. Do I have to answer that question? How many hours is it good to sit? What do you mean? Anyway. You can sit on a chair.

[79:39]

Yeah. Well, then sit in a chair. The thing about this posture, what's good about it? And it helps to sit with others. But let me say something about this posture, okay? You can sit in a chair, you can lie on your back. It's just that this posture allows you to be extremely relaxed once you get used to it.

[80:47]

And it actually helps to learn it through sitting with others. There's some physical permission you get from others that allows you to settle in your posture and not be sitting in your mind anymore. And this posture remains pretty uncomfortable as long as you're sitting in your mind. But you can sit, you know, this way is quite good too. But you can, Zen isn't dependent on any particular posture. So walking, standing, all are zazen postures actually.

[81:55]

It's just, this is a shortcut. This is a shortcut. Because if you can let your body be still, It's much easier to let the subtle fabric of feeling be still. It's hard to solve a calculus problem when you're running for a bus. So posture does make a difference. And there's a wonderful power and strength to the posture, particularly in the Siddha tradition.

[83:00]

In the yogic tradition. But there's other kinds of Zen. It's just this is what I know. And I really would like to be able to introduce as many people as want to know about this posture, even if you only catch it for a moment. Because if you catch it, it's present on every moment. And I recommend actually that people catch it when they look out a window. Or every time you go up and down stairs. Every stairway is a monastery. Nobody bothers you on the stairway usually.

[84:03]

And this place has lots of stairways. so when you leave this room you can go up a little monastery of the stairs and down and you can feel your breath and body and let thinking disappear you just get used to it at different moments during your day of being a fish again So maybe I should stop soon. Anybody, a couple more, one or two more questions? Okay. You have said in your lecture that you have practised many kinds of learning, that you also learn something about learning practice.

[85:29]

You said during the lecture that actually lecturing is a way for you to practice Zen and that during each lecturing you learn something about Zen. So I would like to ask you what did you learn tonight about Zen? Most of the lecture. In other words, I came here with a certain kind of feeling and a few things that caught that feeling from me. And I didn't really know what I was going to say. And being here with you allowed me to reach more deeply into that than I could if I was sitting by myself in my room.

[86:39]

It's like each one of you is a kind of space I can let myself into. Or let non-self in. And I try to do that without being intrusive. Anyway, I appreciate you letting me practice with you this evening. And I hope I can practice with you again. Thank you very much.

[87:30]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_69.64