You don't have to bow back. But bowing is at the center of the practice of shared embodiment. So maybe I can say something about it. It's really not bowing to, it's bowing with. By the way, it's nice of you to ask me to speak again about whatever. It's nice of you to ask me to speak again about whatever. And I know one thing that was of interest is how we conceive of space in, conceive of, make use of space in Zen practice.

[01:07]

And how the body is space. And at Hayashi Sensei's seminar in the afternoon yesterday, she made clear, quite clear, how the separate intelligence of the body and how that separate intelligence, I call it that, can be discovered and used. And there was also a brief back and forth during the seminar. about whether the representatives in a constellation should be called representatives or roles.

[02:29]

Is it a role representing an identity? Or is it a representing of an identity? I actually think this is quite important. And I can't speak to how it feels in Deutsch, but in English getting these terms right is very important. Und ich weiß nicht, wie sich das im Deutschen anfühlt, aber im Englischen ist es ziemlich wichtig, diese Begriffe richtig zu benutzen. Because they direct attention. Weil die Aufmerksamkeit... And if you direct attention like that, it goes this way. If you direct attention like this, it's going over there. Und wenn du die Aufmerksamkeit auf diese eine Art und Weise ausrichtest, dann geht es dahin.

[03:29]

Und wenn du sie nur ein bisschen anders ausrichtest, dann ist sie letztlich da ganz hinten. So with that feeling, I thought this morning, how can I speak about the body in a way that's effective for you, useful for you? Okay. Because consciousness has an inside and outside. But the mind, now again, I will try to during the bit of time we have. I'll try to make as clear as I can how I'm using a word like mind.

[04:33]

So consciousness creates a feeling of inside and outside. But of course you can express That's usually our externalized consciousness. But when you draw, collapse externalized consciousness, what you have is maybe awareness. Or a bodily, a bodily awareness. Yeah, now when we say embody, we're implying, now I'm trying to use in English the language itself, words themselves.

[05:38]

Ich versuche jetzt im Englischen die Worte selbst zu benutzen. To suss out. Yeah. Tease out. What we really think. Um heraus zu kristallisieren oder auszusortieren, Now I'm speaking about this also frankly to confuse you. Because if I can confuse you a little bit, I'm also trying to be clear. I'm clearly trying to confuse you. Because if you're a little confused, you may try to, what the heck's going on here? Okay, so if we use the word embody, it implies that mind is more basic than body.

[07:05]

We embody mind. We don't end mind body. There's no such word as end mind, but end body and end, it both means end, so you can end mind. There is this word Vergeistigen nicht, but in this word Verkörpern, in English, there is this M in front of it, and the M means in. And that's why you could maybe also speak of it in English in Mainz. But anyway, since Aristotle and Plato, English has not developed to talk about these things.

[08:17]

So we have to find neologians, we have to find ways to kind of like get at a territory that isn't in words. Neologians is a newly coined word. Oh, neologism, okay, yeah. So maybe we should think of mind, big capital mind, as mind, big mind is Big mind is, I don't like using big mind. That already has too many conventional Zen meanings. So, I don't know, I'll say something right now.

[09:19]

The fullest sense of mind expresses itself through mentation. The fullest sense of mind expresses itself through the body. So mentation is an expression of mind and the body is an expression of mind. So this isn't to say the body has mind loaned from the brain or something, on loan from the brain. The body itself is a mind.

[10:23]

And it knows things. And again, if you forgive me for referring to Hayashi sensei so often. Yesterday she did a kind of dance of where she wanted to go but her hands were ahead of her head. But she had the faith and knowledge that her body already knew. And that if she explored or let her body speak with her, speak as her, she could discover how she really felt about something. Okay, now, while consciousness has an inside and outside, a there-ness and a here-ness, yeah, yeah.

[11:43]

Um, Yuan Wu just disappeared in my mind, so I'll say it. Yuan Wu just disappeared in my mind, so I'll say it. He says, generate a mind which has neither here nor there nor past or future and realize immediately. So again, this is an assumption that mind, we can participate in how our mind functions.

[12:47]

So although consciousness has a inside and outside, something like that. mind, the fullest sense of mind, has realms of activity, but they're not divided simply into inside and outside. Okay, so let me try to give you some examples. Let me try to give you a few examples. Again, for some of you this is familiar, for some of you not. Okay. We started out, I said something about bound. These... Hands are outside my body, I guess.

[13:59]

I mean, they're my body, but I can see them. And my right hand can decide it's the self and it can feel the left hand. And the left hand can be the object of my right hand. Oh, but then I can change and make my left hand the boss. It feels the right hand. What's going on here? What is self? And what am I putting into one hand to make it feel like itself, etc.? Okay, now... I think what I heard again is that Hayashi Sensei did a little miniature monastery last night or something like that.

[15:18]

Yeah, when I tried to tease out what she meant this morning. She said, the best part of monastery life. She's right. Whenever we meet someone, we greet them with a bow. It's such a habit that at the Delta counter in Zurich, I do it, but they think, oh, okay. So, the sense of a bow, and again, Oh, I'm sorry.

[16:31]

Generally, our feet are this far apart. And our hand and our gassho is this far from our nose. I'm again not trying to teach you anything about Zen practice. It looks like it, I know. I'm measuring the body with the body. And by giving the body certain mental postures, my mind will be in my body. So if I'm going to practice mind, etc., it ought to at least be in my feet too. And one of the signs that your practice is working is your feet are always warm and your hands are always warm. So again, what is the body and what is the space of the body and the mind in the body?

[17:43]

I'm speaking about this because to me, a constellation is the mind in the body, and through the craft of the constellating process, the present mind and the past mind are opened up, touched. Even the future mind is in some ways the parameters are also implied. Not in the sense of fate and destiny but because there are

[18:46]

In this immediacy there's a potentiality of a variety of parameters that could be acted out. And the body often always knows this. And I think that's again what something Hayashi Sensei was demonstrating in her future dance. So again, I'm just trying to give you a feeling for the body.

[20:13]

In this case, in Zen practice. But a feeling that also, I think, at a conceptual level, carries over into consolation practice. Okay, so the full bow starts here. And you're bringing your hands together. Okay. And you bring your hands up. Where are you bringing them? Up through the chakras. And maybe you've noticed sometimes you can find a little kind of spongy stuff between your hands, you know, like healer's hat, you know.

[21:16]

So you feel that little spongy stuff. And that spongy stuff is also related to the chakras. So you kind of get a little bunch of spongy stuff and you pull it up through the chakras. And some schools of Zen do it a little differently but our school brings it up to the heart chakra. And that lifts it into shared space. And then if someone else, if you're bind to someone else in that shared space, then you disappear into that mutual space. And you design the monastery grounds, On practical reasons, there has to be plumbing, there has to be a roof over your head to keep you dry.

[22:41]

But the design is very much to increase the number of times you bow to each other. So the buildings are arranged so that the buildings where most people would be coming from go toward buildings where less people would be coming from. So you have to bow a lot. Because it's all about, as often as possible, generating this mutual space and disappearing into it. Till you feel this mutual space all the time. It's almost like you're walking along in other people's mutual space brushes.

[23:43]

The other day I was in the busy, what's that main drag, Bahnhofstrasse. And it was so full of people that I went back and forth about 20 minutes just bumping into people from New Jersey. It was completely satisfying. I wasn't going anywhere. I just walked like a... Now you may think I'm a little creep. And you actually might be right. But I discovered Zen, so I'm controlling. Thank you. Okay.

[25:24]

Now when we meditate, again, when I watch those of you do the thing that struck me the most at the beginning is you come up at least the one most of the ways I've seen it done you come up behind the person and put your hands on their back ist, dass du dich hinter eine Person stellst und dann deine Hände auf deren Rücken legst. Und zwar nicht auf die Vorderseite, wo das Bewusstsein der Menschen lebt. Und im Zen sprechen wir davon, einen Ochsen rückwärts zu reiten. That means using consciousness in the opposite way than it's usually used.

[26:52]

All right, so you walk behind and you put both hands on the person. And then you let sort of something lead you. Sort of let something lead you. And then when there's a feeling, not conscious, a feeling, you stop. Now, there may be other ways to do it, but I think they're probably interrelated with what I'm saying. And so when we sit, we put our hands together. And our thumbs lightly together. And one of the first instructions Suzuki Roshi gave me was to put your mind, the mind in your hands.

[28:06]

I had no idea what he was talking about. No one ever told me that in college. And I sort of visualized sticking my brain in my hands. Um... But your hand is your mind. And your thumbs are a barometer of your mind. And you begin to develop a, through the hand, through the posture, a kind of, you know, in Zen we don't like to talk about the chakras. I mean Zen most wants to show the teaching and doesn't want to explicate the teaching in stages.

[29:11]

But I found to be in a non-monastic context with lay people I have to be more explicit. So with the hands, you begin to create a kind of chakra field. You begin, as you practice, various things happen, which I won't go into, but the chakras kind of become activated one after another. But this is also in Zen practice and in the yoga culture hidden in ordinary activity or part of ordinary activity.

[30:21]

As I've often said, somebody asked Suzuki Roshi when he first came to America, What do you notice about them being in America? They didn't, I mean, they expected something like the pine cones are really big compared to Japan. California, we have pine cones, you know, that would kill you if they fell on you. But he said, well, you guys all do things with one hand. Okay, so I watched him.

[31:29]

If you asked him, could I have the salt, please? He would pick up the salt with two hands. And he would pull it into his body. Literally kind of empowering it and activating the chakra field. And then he would turn, he wouldn't just hand it. And then he would turn his body almost as if there was a light here, he was shining at the other person. And then he would pass it. And you want some? It's not salt anyway. So the passing of the salt was a chance to pass himself.

[32:50]

The salt was unimportant. So that's why I noticed when people do a consolation, they use both hands on the person's back. Because you're already starting to pass yourself to the other person. Or pass some kind of feeling to the other person. Or at least establishing already some mutual space. Now again, if I speak about this, well, let me say about You go to an ordinary Japanese restaurant.

[34:11]

And you can tell who is first and second, maybe third generation Japanese. Nisei, Sansei. by how they hold their teacup. If you still have a connection with Japan through your parents and grandparents, first, The Japanese are smart enough. I mean, it's an undeveloped country, so they don't know how to make handles. Or maybe they're smart enough to know not to put handles on things. So you have to pick up your pick up with two hands. And it's often made that you have to handle it carefully so that the heat is, you can relate to the heat.

[35:13]

So the Japanese person who still has a connection with Japan will hold the cup here with two hands. And what's here? A little chakra shelf. And then you bring it up and you drink. And then you put it here. What's here? A little chakra shelf. What are you doing?

[36:33]

You're drinking tea and you're activating the chakras. Absolutely, that's what you're doing. And the oryoki practice, which you don't know, but it's the eating out of primarily three bowls. And the first bowl, now again, I'm not trying to, if you come to visit me, I'm not expecting you to eat with the Oriyokis. These are just examples of the way things can be. Okay, so, The first bowl has no base. It's just round. So you have to have another little bowl underneath it or it falls over. And you have to be careful. Then you have a little lacquered piece of paper that falls up that's your table.

[37:37]

And it's made too small for the three bowls. So you have to kind of balance everything. And then the first bowl, the reason it has no base is because it represents Buddha's skull. Yeah, so you're eating out of Buddha's skull. So you kind of at least bow to it every time you pick it up and put it down. And then you have chopsticks and a spoon and so forth. And you wash the bowls at the end, rinse them and sort of wash them right there.

[38:55]

And dry. But the whole Uruki, again, pick up the bowls, you bring it here, you hold it here, you put them down. It's all a chakra practice. And it also requires a density of attention. Because, I mean, eating out of somebody's skull, anybody's skull, Buddha's skull, there's a density of attention to that. And then everything is a balancing act. The bowls are small and they're full of food and you've got chopsticks and you really have to pay attention. I'm a little worried about when I get much older and start shaking and trembling how the hell I'm going to eat.

[40:09]

Anyway, it requires a density of attention to do it, and you can't, it's not a way of eating where you chat with your friends. So, yeah, it's not a, it's not a, a real key clutch. So there's no speaking because you can't speak, so it's a silent meal. So you can use the equipment of an encounter of a situation, chairs, room, walls, to create a mental space. That's neither inside nor outside.

[41:40]

Is this inside? I'm out. People are coming and serving me food, etc. What's inside? What's outside? And it's designed so the food has to be served to you. So it's an intersubjective work. inner subchakra space. OK. Good. Thanks. Yeah.

[42:50]

Of course, there's tons, tons, tons, lots of things I could talk about. but I want to keep I think maybe it's most I don't know interesting to me right now but useful too perhaps to you in the little time I have and I stay in the same vein yeah yeah Now, I talked yesterday about durative space. and performative space, durative time and performative time.

[44:04]

Now, performative time, now what, here's what I'm, what's partly implied by what I'm saying here, is that time is time being time, is the time of self and of being. And the self is most profoundly discovered in performative time. Und das Selbst wird zutiefst in dem, was ich Ausführungszeit nenne, entdeckt. Now, this performative time is also where the space of movement meets. Space and movement meet.

[45:16]

In other words, space is the realm of movement. Space is the realm of separateness and connectedness. And Being time is the realm of being. Now, again, I'm speaking here and making use of, for a yogi, maybe we could almost say all thinking is mental postures. And since these things are just, you're not born speaking language. But very quickly, if you grow up with people, you learn a language. And language has changed our brain and blah, blah, blah.

[46:35]

But it's still something you learn. And mental postures are something you learn. And... I suppose I'm responding here to you think it's not natural to learn mental postures, but it actually is in some ways just as natural as learning anything. And one way we learn is through cognition and conceptions. Okay. Now, when I'm walking we could also say walking is footing.

[47:50]

And walking is flooring. So you have the feeling of okay, when you're walking, that you're flooring. Flooring is coming up and helping your foot. And there's a certain aliveness in footing, feeling yourself foot the floor. Now, footing and flooring is part of the practice of Kenyan walking meditation. And footing and flooring requires a density of attention. And a density of attention is performative time.

[48:54]

And a density of attention allows us into the present as a flow of presence. Okay. Let me hold this at this point and bring up something else for a moment. Okay. You all know that's a bell. It could be, as we just discovered, a teacup. It could be to remind me of her head. But in any case, mind arose simultaneously with the object of the bell. In other words, I know this bell only because my mind, my sensorium, et cetera, perceives it.

[50:15]

So there's a simultaneous arising of mind and mind object. Also gibt es ein gleichzeitiges Auftauchen von Geist und Geistesobjekt. All objects are mind objects. All objects are sensorial objects. Geistesobjekte sind Sinnesobjekte. So there's a simultaneous arising of, it's called simultaneous arising. Also gibt es ein gleichzeitiges Auftauchen und das wird auch gleichzeitiges Auftauchen genannt. So there's a simultaneous arising of the object and the mind. It's just a fact. And it's a fact of non-duality. But it's an unnoticed non-duality. Most of us don't notice that mind arises simultaneously with the object of mind.

[51:27]

So one of the things, one of the whisperings of wisdom you have to develop and listen to is that mind arises simultaneously with the object of mind. Not the whole, not all the phenomena doesn't arise. All the phenomena doesn't arise. Only the portions of phenomena that the body and the mind decide to bring into presence. So say you're in a cafe. And you're sitting there having a cafe latte. And you're looking around at the cafe.

[52:40]

Now the construction boss of the cafe is the mind. That room is being constructed by the mind. The architect of the room. The contractor could tell you, well, you didn't notice this and that, but you did notice some things. And if it's well designed, it's well thought through in what you will notice. Now, you don't have to be a yogi to do this. You just have to like cafe. You notice that your mind has constructed the room. And the construction boss, the mind, is also a visionary.

[53:58]

An architect of future possibilities. Because when you get up to say go to the toilet or get a napkin or something, Your body walks between the chairs. You could do it almost with your eyes shut. Because your body already knows the layout. like in a hotel room you can get up after being there only a few minutes and turning off the light and going to bed and you get up and you can walk straight to the bathroom and not run into too many things so the body already knows.

[55:05]

And then you've bought a bunch of things and will they fit in my backpack and bicycle? There's no way you're going to get that in my backpack and bicycle. But the body already knows you can do it. that's why you didn't buy that last toaster and then you get on your bike and you find you're riding oh yes my body remembered I had to do an errand so I took this route instead of the other route Even before you leave the cafe, the body's already figured out which path you're going to take home.

[56:08]

Okay, okay. So now we got the bell, we got the mind, and the bell, et cetera. And let's call it an emphasis field. the mind and the mind object have arisen simultaneously and you can shift the field more toward mind or more toward the object now until you have this experience you can't do this So usual consciousness has mind entirely shifted toward the object.

[57:25]

I mean, if I took a photograph of all of you right now, the camera in the photograph, the camera would be invisible. But we're taking photographs where we see the camera. The mind is the camera. And Van Gogh does a very interesting thing. He paints I love this painting. I have certain painters I've learned a lot from. Van Gogh is one. He paints so that the first reality is that it's made of paint. Er malt so, dass die erste Wirklichkeit ist, dass das Gemälde aus Farbe ist.

[58:33]

He doesn't try to hide the paint and show you the scene. Er versucht nicht die Farbe zu verbergen, um die Landschaft hervorzuheben. He shows you the paint. Sondern er zeigt dir die Farbe. So you have an experience. Hey, this is real. That's real paint. Also hast du eine Erfahrung. Oh, das ist real. Das ist echte Farbe. And then you see his brush strokes. They're vertical usually. And it's the same brush stroke whether he's painting a little thing or a big thing. So you feel him there. The rhythm of his painting. And so, hey, this is real. A real person painted this in real paint. And then you have the feeling, hey, this is something real. This is a real person who painted something real. That sense of reality extends into the scene and you see all this stuff.

[59:38]

Lot of wheat and trees and leaves. But he mostly doesn't create pictorial space. And pictorial space represents consciousness. So you see the brushstrokes, you see the paint he's made it from. And then you see a mass of stuff, leaves and I don't know, various things, right? And you have to sort it out. And that's again a little bit, excuse me for stretching this so far, a little like consolation.

[60:40]

Because you are creating an activity without the pictorial space of ordinary consciousness. You can shift the emphasis to mind away from the object. And then every object that appears is appearing really strongly in mind. Now you really feel the non-duality. You really feel the connectedness. So much so, that like if a bird is there and it takes off, you feel yourself almost lift off with the bird because there's so much connection.

[61:48]

So there's various ways to establish this kind of connection, this connectedness. And there's... One of the ways is to really get used to the fact that, like right now, you are all arising in this mind. So I don't even want to call it my mind because it belongs to you too because, hey, I see you all in it, as it. So I have an immediate, tangible experience of being Okay, now let me tell you something about a tobacco plant.

[62:51]

Tobacco plants are fertilized or pollinated by night-flying moths. And the night flying moths lay eggs on the tobacco plant. And the tobacco plant, when there are too many eggs being laid, The tobacco plant closes its flowers at night and starts opening them during the day. Now plants have to have strategies that we don't have to have, maybe not, because we can move.

[63:55]

So botanical intelligence has to be related to, I can't move, I've got to solve the problems in one place. So we can move and we're more genetically determined. But a plant is more... But a plant is more circumstantially determined. Yeah, okay. So the plant... starts opening its flowers in the daytime. So then it's pollinated by hummingbirds. It's not as effective as the night moths, but it works okay.

[65:14]

But then the moth's eggs start turning into caterpillars. She's a Buddhist, not a botanist. Mars is not the same as moth. A moth and several moths are moths. Well, then that was good. I just didn't know that they would turn into caterpillars. Butterflies turn into caterpillars in late age. No, that I know. Anyway. Okay. Okay. So the... Then a lot of caterpillars start eating the leaves.

[66:24]

So the tobacco plant releases an aromatic smell that attracts parasitic wasps. attracts parasitic wasps, which lays eggs in the caterpillars and kills the caterpillars. And then the moth, the tobacco plant also makes sugary hairs, It's another line of defense. Grows sugary hairs that the caterpillars really like. Which when digested create a really smelly smell.

[67:25]

that lizards like. So then the lizards come and eat the caterpillars. Okay. Now Peter Nick, my friend, who's a botanist, says, when you look at the organism of the plant, of the tobacco plant, what is the organism of the tobacco plant? It's lizards, moths, caterpillars, flowers that bloom at night, flowers that bloom in the daytime, hummingbirds, there's no way you can see the organism of a plant at any one time. And the whole plant exists in an aromatic aura. So the organism, the plant, you're only seeing part of it whenever you see it.

[68:59]

And mostly you're only seeing, as Peter Nick says, the track of the plant. it's like you see the track of a fox in the snow but you don't see the fox you only see the track of the fox so when you see the organism of the you can't see the organism of the plant When you look at a plant, mostly you're seeing the track of the plant. Well, in our lives, most of us, much of what we see of a person is the track of the person. You don't see their parents, their lovers, their friends.

[70:01]

You don't see their traumas. It's not so obvious. And sometimes if you sit still, Like in Zazen, the track of the being you are is sitting still. And the organism that you are can appear in Zazen. At least you see much of it more fully. And when we stand still or sit, stand still, when we stand still in a constellation, The track of each of us somehow becomes more apparent.

[71:13]

No, there's other things I could say, but that's a good way to end. You didn't expect me to end with a tobacco plant.

[71:20]

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