So I have to start somewhere, so I might as well start with the title of the seminar. The gate, what do you call it? The gate of each moment, is that right? Well, we're all sitting here, maybe. I wonder what kind of gate are sitting here together. Now, since we have to start somewhere, titles are useful. Subject is useful. And how can we make this subject... Yeah, something we can practice with.

[01:02]

Some kind of territory we can practice with. Yeah, a concept that we can... we can hold and... concept that we can hold and it can work in our thinking and in our attitudes and in our practice. The gate of each moment may serve this purpose. Now, I'm interested in the verticality of words. More than or in addition to the horizontality of words. Now, what I mean by that is the word in the sentence disappears into the context of the sentence.

[02:21]

And you don't... Yeah, it just slides right past. it's a kind of bridge over the thinking that went into the word and poets try to change that a famous first line of Walt Whitman's poem Und eine ganz berühmte, eine berühmte erste Zeile eines Getichts von Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman.

[03:21]

Von Walt Whitman. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed. Wird der Flieder andauern in dem Hof blühend. So flieder. Yeah, so first we have when lilacs last. You may not build it. Last, last. It has two meanings. When lilacs last, when the duration, and when lilacs formerly last. I thought it doesn't work in German, but in English... you stop it last, and you can feel the heavy smell of lilacs lasting.

[04:26]

And then the next feeling, They don't last. It was a long time ago they bloomed. Und dann ist als nächstes dieses Gefühl, sie dauern nicht und es ist schon sehr lange her, dass sie geblüht haben. And door and yard, unusual combination even in English, the door and the yard. Und auch in Englisch ist das eine sehr merkwürdige Kombination, das door und der Hof. Bloomed. When lilacs last and the door yard bloomed. You don't have to translate that. So let's just take the word now. Yeah, now just slides right past. It's now.

[05:27]

But now means just this. Or, no, here, let's see, it means here, this. Aber jetzt bedeutet hier das. And it has the sense of... The roots also have he, she pronouns in it. Und... And it also means what remains, what's left over. So now has in it the sense of an observer of just this which remains.

[06:28]

And that's quite a different feeling than, oh, it's now. This is a now we somehow feel together, it has some duration. So as I said earlier in the day, it's something amazing actually that The present has duration. It doesn't make sense in physics, you know, in science. I told you often this time, I asked my father, I said to my father when I was, I don't know, let's say I was 12, but actually I think I was So I told my father, there's no such thing as 12 o'clock.

[07:42]

And he said, well, he asked for an explanation. And I said, well, it's a minute to twelve, and then it's a half a minute to twelve. And then it's a millionth of a second before twelve, and then it's a millionth of a second after twelve. Where is twelve? It has no duration. And my father said, he gave me a good answer, he said, something that's approached and then passed, we say exists. But really, why does 12 o'clock or now have duration? If we're going to speak about the gate of each moment, the gate has to be big enough for us to get in.

[09:01]

What happened to that gate? Gone. Gone. And we're here. Right. Yeah. And then we chant every morning, gate, no, gate, gate, para gate, gone, gone, gone beyond. It means something slightly different, but you know, when gate last and the gate bloomed. Yeah. So instead of saying now, I would like to say, for example, here present. I'm trying to, if I say the here present. I'm trying to give us a sense that it's here and present to us.

[10:02]

There's no word here present in English. But I use it. I'm using it now to stop us It doesn't just flow past like now. Shall we do this now? Shall we do this in the here present? So it stops, you think. And you feel the verticality of the word, or you feel the work that went into noticing things. So let's look at these words then.

[11:11]

Let's see what the verticality of these words can be. The gate of each moment. gate is actually means something like empty space and it means a lane or path or something you can separate to make space So I suppose a gate makes space in a fence. But a gate is an empty space or something that makes space. Yeah, this is in English, of course. And each surprisingly has the same, similar kind of meaning.

[12:20]

Each means, of course, one of more than two or three. So it's something consistent. considered individually. That has the form of something of other things. So it can mean form or body. So the form that differentiates it but is similar to another form. And moment now, moment doesn't work very well for us. Because it means to push away. And we want something that pushes towards me.

[13:34]

And the, we're going to do all these words in a minute, the, the means so or thus. So thus, the empty space, the form of going through. So, so, der leere Raum, die Form durchzugehen. And something like those kind of words are close to what Buddhism means by Dharma. And if we have to speak of the gate of each moment, this clearly means something like Dharma. Now, in a big general sense, Dharma means the truth, the teaching. But in a practical sense, Dharma means something that holds in the midst of everything changing.

[14:56]

So again, it means something like duration. What has duration in the midst of everything changing? And of course this is our experience. It's within our experience. That's where duration is, is in our experience. And if duration is in our experience, then in some funny way we're in charge of the world. für diese Welt verantwortlich. Wir haben ganz sicherlich, sind wir verantwortlich für die Erfahrungen, die wir machen. Now maybe when we have horizontal eyes and not vertical eyes, the world just slides by.

[16:06]

Maybe if our senses can feel the verticality of each moment, So the Dharma, again, in the big sense is something like truth, the law, that things, each moment, exists for a moment. It stays in the midst of what changes. And we can do something with it. We can make it stay and we can do something with it staying.

[17:09]

Thus we can say it's a gate. So gate of each moment is a door. technical definition of a Dharma. But how do we notice the gate of each moment? Yeah, each moment goes by pretty fast. Yeah. If you drive a car, you see one landscape. A bicycle, another landscape. Of course, walking, another landscape. Walking up here, I have to be very careful not to step on these poor, slow snails. Even if I'm paying attention and going at the pace of walking still,

[18:16]

The snails are hard to avoid sometimes. On the edge of the path in the grass. And of course the snails are in an entirely different pace. What pace will we notice the gates of each moment? And at different paces, we'll probably notice different gates. at the pace of the stillness of sitting meditation, some gates may appear that won't appear, say, to mindfulness.

[19:29]

Some gates don't appear to the stillness of meditation even. Sometimes it Even in meditation, things slip past without our being able to see them. I've found obvious things about practice that have been right under my meditating nose. Turn it inside. which I really don't notice for 10 years or 20 years.

[20:32]

Now, I'm not trying to discourage you. or mean let's practice together 10 years because I like you so much and we don't have to separate but yeah I'm saying that partly actually but really I mean the fullness of the fullness of the potentiality, the full potentialities of this life reach from the beginning to the end. If we find the pace of how things actually exist, we never run out of uniqueness. We never come to the end of things being unique and different.

[21:34]

Yeah, so... When you practice meditation, you're putting yourself in a place, you're developing within meditation the ability to notice. First we count our breaths. Yeah, because we can't notice anything else. And it's hard to even notice our breaths. As we spoke earlier, you go back to your thinking. Because what we're used to noticing is thinking. So in a way we have to break the habit of noticing thinking and develop the ability to notice our breath or stay with that breath.

[22:50]

And if in that process we develop One point in this ability for the mind to be still. To rest where it's put. We start noticing something, things that it was before we went by. On our Zafu is faster than a Porsche. Some of us have high-speed Zafu. And we go right past things. So we begin to notice gates that belong to the mind of meditation.

[24:07]

And then we notice gates that take time to gather. You have to be patient while things form themselves. Like if you're, you know, a simple example, you're sitting still. Samadhi has begun to form itself. You're feeling clear and empty. And then you say, oh, I'm in samadhi. And then you say, oh, I'm in samadhi. goes away. Because you didn't let it gather. But it also is a meditation, a yogic skill, when you can notice samadhi and still let it gather.

[25:15]

Then we can say, and this is something that Giorgio brought up earlier in the day, we have an observing mind, but not so much an observing self. This is a very important distinction in the American practice. Because many people It's a real basic confusion. They say, who's doing this? With the sense that any observer, any observation has to be a who which observes. Who is sitting? Who is noticing that you have no self?

[26:21]

The observing mind notices the absence of self. Now I'll get another basic idea we need to get the feeling of. Again, we're not speaking about entities. We're speaking about, we don't have a word for it, directionality. If you're moving in the direction of less self-referential thinking, that functions like having no self. If you're moving in the direction of lots of self-referential thinking, then you have a strong sense of self.

[27:38]

So if you think in terms of absolutely no self or self, then there's no practice. It's not an either or entry. It is either. It is black or white. It is or it is not. There's more isness and less isness. You're really good. You're good. So the observing mind begins to be present when we have less self-referential thinking. And we observe, we have an experience of observing what's whatever.

[28:42]

But this observing mind isn't functioning primarily through our personal history. There's a quality of detachment. Now here's another vertical word. The Japanese word soku-rei is translated as detached. But it actually means detached, yet not separate from. And this is already a kind of corner. How can we be detached yet not separate from?

[29:58]

Well, the observing mind is one example. You feel really present. Everything feels part of you. So man fühlt sich wirklich gegenwärtig und alles fühlt sich an, als wäre es ein Teil von dir, von mir. Habt ihr gesehen, wozu mich das Englisch zwingt? Also es zwingt mich dazu, ein Du, ein Fürwort zu verwenden. In an observing mind, Everything feels not separate from that which is observing.

[30:59]

Because normally I have to say, it doesn't feel separate from you, but... it's not you it doesn't feel separate from, it doesn't feel separate from that which is observing. You can explore this peculiar power of words to shape our observation and thinking. to see the power of words and to feel them, is one of the steps to finding yourself free of words. But when we meditate tomorrow, are we planning to have meditation in the morning before breakfast?

[32:00]

Yeah, that's what we usually do. Yeah, okay. So at that time or when we start the seminar at 9.30 or 10? 9.30. Is that what we've done over the years, 9.30? Okay, 9.30, when we started 9.30? Ask. Who is breathing? Bring your attention to your breath and ask, who is breathing? And then bring the attention, attention to yourself. the breath and ask what is breathing.

[33:18]

And I think you'll find there's a big difference between asking what is breathing and who is breathing. And what sounds like it will be more... and materialistic. But try it out and see. Dogen defines... Dogen's phrase is... To complete that which appears. It's a definition of a Dharma. Something appears and we can complete it. And he goes on to complete it knowing that things are particular and unique.

[34:37]

Particular and unique. And... It's translated universal. Yeah, it makes conceptual sense, particular and universal. But particular, we can know what's particular. This is a particular paper clip holder. I mean bell. It's even signed by the person who made it. So it's a particular bell. In what sense is it a universal bell? It sounds nice, universal, but... You can't practice with it.

[35:53]

It's not universal. It's in a context of all-at-once-ness. It's simultaneously related to everything at this moment. Like if I put this down too hard, it hurts a Chinaman. Whoever is on the opposite side of the earth. An American. An American. They say if everybody in China jumped at once, there'd be earthquakes and tidal waves.

[36:55]

If everybody jumped off a chair. They almost had that problem on the Golden Gate Bridge. They had a big celebration of it. 100 years of the Golden Gate Bridge or something. And I don't remember how many people, but like 10,000 people were on the bridge. And the engineers are sitting there, and they suddenly realized the bridge does not have this capacity. They never thought about it. And they didn't know what to do. They thought if they announce it, like everybody should leave the bridge, if they start running, that's the end of the bridge.

[37:57]

So you had two or three engineers sitting in a window looking down at the bridge all with their fingers crossed hoping that people would get off. So there's this All at once. Everything is interrelated. And at the same time, very particular and unique. It appears and we can complete it and release it. But how... How even do we notice things as appearing? This in itself is a practice.

[39:09]

Because my senses want to give me a picture. Okay. So what I've tried to bring up this evening is that in some kind of scientific and Buddhist way, each thing exists momentarily. But that momentariness is something that we're participating in. And there's a certain elasticity to the presence and depth. And in that sense that each that duration is something we experience, something we can enter or feel even inseparable from, but in different minds we notice different gates,

[40:42]

For the poet or the painter, only in certain minds does the gate open to the muses. Or Suzuki Roshi used to say, when is a tree a tree? And when is a tree a poem? Sometimes every tree is a poem. So what is the difference between the gate when the tree is a tree and when it's a bone? And this isn't just a mechanical kind of off and on switch gate. Like some sort of computer switch, I'm present or I'm not present. What about the gate of generosity? Yeah, I was just in Vienna. And there's a lot of people lot of people walking by.

[42:18]

Pixie's funny. I try to use my little bit of German and you put me in my place. And there's these days lots of beggars in the streets. And, you know, you can just walk by them. Or you can give them some money. Or say you don't have any money and you'd like to, but you've given all your change away in small bills. But I swear the beggar can feel when you're willing to give and when you're not willing to give. So I'm sure if I was a beggar, I'd be happier to sit among people who are willing to give. Even if they don't give, then people won't give.

[43:34]

And every beggar I see, I know, could easily be me. Easily be me. I mean, really. Very small differences allow you to... I've known quite a few homeless people. Friends or Zen practitioners who became homeless. So in a way then we have a kind of generosity gate. That if you feel generous there's different gates present. Or gratitude. Suffering. Or mindfulness or meditation?

[44:55]

What are the gates of each moment? Okay, so I think that's enough for this evening. Thank you very much for being here. And thank you for translating. You're welcome. So maybe you could explain about sasen tomorrow morning and things like that. Okay. Michael, can you explain how to do sasen tomorrow? If you feel like it, you can come to the sasen tomorrow morning. I'm thinking about it. Okay. We could also make intervals. No, no, I can do it. Well, good. 30, 30? That means we have to do it at 6.40, right? So 20 to 7, it's 40 minutes to 20 to 7.

[46:07]

Then it's from 20 to 7 to half past eight G-minutes. Can I interrupt a second? Yes. I don't want anybody to feel expected to go to Zaza. I would like you to sit with us at the beginning of each session in the morning and afternoon. But I don't like to make anybody feel they have to sit. But if you want to come, then that's really very nice.

[47:11]

And I won't look under your bed to see why you decided. I wanted to say, it's just as clear to come to breakfast and at half past ten the actual seminar begins. And another question is, as far as eating is concerned, has emerged, who comes, or who doesn't take part in breakfast or lunch or dinner? First of all, who doesn't take part in breakfast tomorrow? One, two. But otherwise at all times of the day everyone takes part. Ich glaube, es ist gut, wenn wir das Schritt für Schritt machen, sonst kann man... Okay, wer nimmt nicht am Mittagessen teil? Eins.

[48:12]

Und Frühstück? Und Abendessen, nehmen wir alle Abendessen teil, die hier sind? Du nicht? Okay. Okay, das heißt, zwei Personen nicht beim Frühstück, eine Person nicht, also marginale Menge. Gut. May I say something about that? The cook, Marc, really wants us to be on time for the meals. So that we don't come in, but when it's 8 o'clock for breakfast, that we are all there within 10 minutes, we eat the same thing in the winter. And the other thing is, please, the cars downstairs, not downstairs, next to the road, but really at the parking lot. Good evening. We have to close down a bit. And I think it's 11.30 in the afternoon. Who of you would like to leave the room?

[49:14]

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