We're still chanting in Japanese just now before we chant in English. In Germany, we chant in Japanese and then in Deutsch. Yeah, and in a way, I don't really know why we don't just drop the Japanese. I think some of you would say you like doing it that way. And I guess... I mean, that's how I learned it. I mean, we used to do it with no translation. It was all Japanese. When I was ordained, it was all in Japanese. Actually, I kept saying yes, yes. I didn't know what I was saying yes to. But at some point, we translated things. And I guess I do it because it's a kind of... arbitrary recognition that this is an experiment.

[01:04]

It's a kind of homage to our tradition, but also an acknowledgment that it's somewhat arbitrary. We don't have to chant in Japanese. We know what it means mostly. Am I speaking loudly enough? Sometimes I mumble, I know. Mark says, mm-hmm. Mark, I don't want to mumble when you're here for the first time in a long time. But I'm very grateful as usual for your willingness to participate in this experiment. Everything we do is arbitrary. We could do it some other way. But together we do, it creates some kind of field of practice. You know, and I have the experience of living, living, living, practicing living in the way as it, in the world as it actually exists.

[02:16]

And because I have this feeling, I want to share it with you and exist alongside you or with you. And I know when I was younger, I, you know, I've been younger for a lot of years, but I was way younger. Most of my life I've been younger than now. I can say my stuff. Anyway, when I was 20 or so, you know. Yeah, and in paradise to stay, that's from a poem. Twenty and a lover and in paradise to stay. On the rude is something rather embarrassing. I couldn't find any ground under my feet or where, you know, and I didn't know how to make sense of the world or what I knew and didn't know and didn't like our society and couldn't find a place in our society or in usual things you're supposed to do or want to do.

[03:37]

But now I don't have that feeling. And the feeling, I know it arises through this arbitrary experiment called Buddhism, arbitrary for us. And I'm really happy to be, feel very lucky to be doing it with you. And I have to find a topic, you know, today's the seven day, zero, two, five, and seven, so it's the seven day, I think, I guess, I have to speak about something. So I ask a number of you, whoever happens to be near, what should I speak about tomorrow or today? And some of you look to your own practice, make suggestions. Some of you look to Buddhism and make suggestions. Some of you look to what I said before and say, that was okay. So I know, so I listen.

[04:38]

I listen to the day, too. We're getting near the mid-practice period day. Almost there. And I would guess that some of you have been feeling that you've left home. And maybe now some of you are thinking, oh, pretty soon I'll be going home. And maybe some of you feel, to some extent, you feel a bit like home here. And somehow this practice may have settled, zazen and practice may have settled into you in a way that the practice itself feels more like home. And the sky today is nearly the same color as the snow of the mountain, mountains. It almost looks like there's pieces of sky scattered on the mountainside, the pinyon, juniper-forested mountainside.

[05:50]

Yeah. It's not yet the equinox. March 20th is the equinox. We still have longer nights. So what in this situation should I speak about? And what I feel is, and I never know, you know, and it's, Dogen said, as you know, I mentioned it the other day, or someone mentioned it, life, or practice rather, is one continuous mistake. Now, I said the other day we can think of that as that one way to look at that is the involuntary, the path of the involuntary. Lucretius, sorry, no, my mind has wandered around.

[06:57]

Lucretius, who wrote in the century before Christ, and wrote on the nature of things or the nature of the world or universe or something. He said, I voyage in the unvisited. I voyage in the unvisited. Yeah, that's like one continuous mistake. I voyage in the unvisited. Or we would say uniqueness or something like that. I voyage in the unvisited. It's a good way for... And Dogen also said, if you shoot an arrow at a target, I don't know, I think he says 99 times or something, and you miss it for 98 times, and on the 99th time you hit it, all 99 times hit the target. So we could say from this point of view that practice is the practice of noticing your mistakes.

[07:58]

Because mistakes and the unvisited and the thought that makes you think, the observation that makes you think, are all rather related along with randomness. You know, I read the other day that when they developed the iPod Shuffle. The iPod Shuffle. Shuffles work for dance in English, too. You see all those little iPods dancing. The iPod Shuffle, it was at first truly random. But when it's truly random, it makes patterns. And so people began to complain to Apple, there's patterns here. I keep getting Al Green, or I keep getting Beethoven or something. So they had to make it less random. They had to put an algorithm in that made it less random in that it avoided patterns.

[09:07]

Because everybody saw patterns. Because our tendency is to see patterns. How to let things be really random and not see patterns as, ah, there's a higher order or something. So what I'm speaking about here really are mistakes, shifts, voyaging in the unvisited, and the craft of practice, the craft of practice to locate yourself in a kind of chaos or randomness. And I know if I have to find a topic for for what we're speaking about, I can't, you know, I don't have a prepared course. You know, I think about, sometimes it would be good if we talked about this or that at some point in the practice period, but for the most part I just, I don't know. And to find something, I have to allow a lot of randomness or chaos even, in... What should I speak about?

[10:16]

I don't know. Something sort of appears. You know, I don't know if it's good, but I noticed, like, last te-show I felt it was quite important to me what I discovered in that te-show. But for, I think, most of you, the feeling is the previous two or three were more in accord with your practice. So anyway, today I'm speaking about shifts. shifts being able to notice shifts the three worlds this morning i was bowing you know i bow when i come in in the morning three times but you know i actually don't know whether borrowed bob three times or two times this morning did i bow two or three times what three three i really don't know something yeah well that's good well that must be i must have bowed three times but sometimes You know, I get in a kind of, let's say, with big words, samadhi, one taste, and I feel so concentrated.

[11:24]

I'm just, you know, one of the things, one of the teachings when you bow is you plunge into the bow. You say to yourself, plunging into the bow, disappearing into the bow. So I sometimes plunge into the bow. I don't even have to say it anymore. I just, I don't know what I'm doing, you know. So let's say it's the samadhi of one taste, right? So when I feel concentrated like that, I don't have any idea. Was this two bows? I don't know. So sometimes I encourage the doan to put the stick away so I sort of know what's going on. But sometimes I do three bows. And it doesn't feel like I'm less concentrated or I'm more located in the room or something, where I feel the divisions between the bows. And then maybe three, maybe it was only two I should do, and then I do four bows.

[12:26]

So this is, you know, what do I find from this? Why am I talking about this? Because by noticing my mistakes And it's a kind of mistake to think I've done two bows when I've done three, or to think I should do a fourth when I've already done two. I don't know. It's all kinds of mistakes. But what I notice is the different kind of concentration. So if I notice that I have no idea how many times I bowed, then I have to say, okay, I better locate myself in the room Well, that's a kind of locating yourself in rupadhatu, in form. So we could take the things I teach, repeat, rather, at least, often perceptual immediacy and spatial immediacy.

[13:29]

And we can take them as almost the same sometimes in the way you can practice them. But let's make them distinct. So perceptual immediacy is a kind of one-pointedness. You're located in perceptual immediacy, the particulars. So we can say that's like rupadhatu, the form realm. Now, these three worlds, they're not exactly in the hidden among the pinions and junipers. They're your experience. So why does Buddhism bother to say, I mean, is it a philosophical thing? There's three worlds, and most animals and people are human kindred kind, are... in kamadhatu, the desire realm? Or is it just, you know, they're not real.

[14:39]

They're about as real as a dream. But they can shape our experience. They can have something to do with what world we live in. They certainly have something to do with what world I live in compared to when I was 20 and not in paradise to stay. I recently started reading Dante, and I never read Dante much, you know. And the 15th canto really appeals to me. And I've read it in three or four different translations. I can't read it in the Tuscan Italian vernacular of 700 years ago. I read it in translation. I know a couple of the translators. There's one point near the end of the canto where he says, I can't talk anymore and I can't walk with you any longer because I see over there smoke again arising from the sand.

[15:47]

I mean, this is like, what world? I mean, Dante wrote this when he was 35 or so. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here will be. I can't speak more. I can't walk with you. I see smoke again rising from the sand. What? That's impermanence. But what a world view as heaven and hell present. Until we have the three worlds. You know, I do. So how do we find this? How can we locate this in our experience and really have a feel for it? So again, you can feel when I'm bowing, I can feel, for example, or when I'm chanting, I can allow attention to flow only into the sound.

[16:55]

arising, mind arising on the sound. Or it can flow into the chanting together, that sound. Or it can flow into other sense of the meaning. You can make these shifts. And practice is, you know, it's kind of like noticing mistakes too. Practice is to Niels Bohr says, the scientist says, an expert is someone who's very good at mistakes in a very narrow field, who notices mistakes in a very narrow field. And Sukyoshi would agree with that, although he says in the expert mind there's few, et cetera. But there is an expertise that arises from noticing mistakes. path of noticing mistakes. If you try to practice to do everything right, your practice is going to be dead.

[18:01]

You've got to practice in a kind of openness, a randomness, a taking chances, a voyaging in the unvisited. And not try to keep visiting the visited. So you can look at yourself in your breath. You can feel that move. It's one of your treasures. To locate the breath. Not even yourself in the breath, to locate breath. To be located within breath. Or you can shift to being located in the pace of your activity. You can shift to perceptual immediacy, the form realm. Or you can shift to spatial immediacy, which is the boundaries of form dissolve.

[19:09]

Or you erase the boundaries of perceptual immediacy, and maybe that's more like plunging into the bow of one taste. Now, you have to find your own way in German or English or, you know, whatever language you want. How to acknowledge these distinctions? We have this wonderful phrase, Dungschans, I'm always close to this. Now, I'm always close to this as a concept, but it's a concept which points to no categories. You know, it's his response to a rather subtle question, but simply put, what does not fall into any categories? He says, I'm always close to this. So the phrase, I'm always close to this, which points to non-conceptuality, and non-conceptuality is the arupadhatu, erasing boundaries.

[20:14]

So I'm always close to this is a form which allows you to feel the intimacy of closeness that's non-conceptual. So I'm always close to this. Is abandon all form ye who enter here. A positive kind of with no ground under your feet. I'm always close to this. But mind itself is a boundary. I'm always close to this is within mind. So even the category of mind can be released even though you're still within mind.

[21:25]

You can release the category of mind. This is the formless realm. Arupadhat. And you can begin to find yourself in this releasing of, dissolving of boundaries with others. You can find yourself in form with others. And you can find yourself, well, maybe now, right, we're thinking about going home and And the gray sky is a little depressive, and associative mind is present. So now you feel yourself shifted into kamadhatu. You can even use the word, I don't know if there's any parallel in village, but you can use the English word experience, because experience means both immediate experience and accumulated experience.

[22:28]

And when you just see the word experience, you don't know he has a lot of experience. Usually means accumulated experience. He experienced it. Direct experience is not accumulated experience. Direct experience is voyaging in the unvisited. So you can shift back and forth between the two senses of experience. You can on each appearance, on an appearance you can feel what arises, associations. Then you can locate yourself in the mind in which associations arise, and we can call that rupadhatu. Or you can let, in the presence of the mind in which associations arise, more stable than the associations.

[23:33]

Or you can locate yourself, find yourself located in the discursive thinking that arises through associations and presence and the loss of presence, the clarity of meditative presence. So just with the word experience, you can discover the shift from direct experience to accumulated experience, to accumulated experience that leads to discursive thinking, a sensorially defined world. So right there you can experience the three worlds. And you can begin to feel the shift. And feeling the shift, feeling the edges, find yourself located and find a practice usefulness to this, you know, strange distinctions that aren't here in the mountains and forest.

[24:55]

Kamadhatu, Rupadhatu, Arupadhatu. So the openness of the unvisited, openness of Noticing and willingness to be in the middle of what you're not sure of is also way-seeking mind. I think that's enough for today. Thank you very much. Let our attention neatly penetrate.

[26:05]

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