I try to obviously teach, talk, relate to these Dharma practice, this practice of the Dharma with you in some way that resonates with your own experience. And maybe I can find a way, if I speak about this again, I inevitably will, probably. Inevitably and probably, they don't quite get together. Maybe I can find a more resonant way to speak about it. Let me get ahead of myself now. to where I'd like to go with you at some point.

[01:14]

There's a woman named Jill Price. Some of you may have heard of her. She was born, I think, in 1965. And she seemed to have been very attached to where she lived in New Jersey or someplace. And I think her father got a job in the entertainment industry or something in Los Angeles. Und ich glaube, ihr Vater hat einen Job in der Unterhaltungsindustrie in Los Angeles bekommen. And they had to move. Und sie mussten umziehen. And she missed being in New Jersey so much. They'd gotten a house she particularly liked, I guess, as a kid, and a garden and so forth.

[02:17]

Und sie hat so sehr vermisst, in New Jersey zu sein. Sie hatten ein Haus und einen Garten dort. So for some reason she started writing a diary, I think with her dominant hand. And at some point, I think when she was 14 years old or something, there was suddenly this flip, and she could remember everything that she'd ever done on any day. And I mean, when people started interviewing her, because it would drive me a little bit nuts, I mean more than a little bit. She would say something like, well, that was the day President Johnson did such and such. And the interviewer would say, well, actually, that was the next day.

[03:21]

And then they would go and check, and it was announced in the newspaper as the next day that actually it happened the day she remembered. So she describes it as having a split screen. One screen can see everything that's ever happened to her, and the other screen is what's going on in the present. And they've developed a medical term for it, but she's the only person I can apply the term to. The reason I'm mentioning it is I think we can think of this not as though this peculiar person, Jill Price, with some kind of different brain wiring than we had.

[04:44]

that I think all of us are in some sort of similar situation. We have a split screen and we have our present screen. But we don't see the split screen. She happens to see it, we don't see it. But much of this practice Dung Shan said that he had an enlightenment experience on a bridge as he was leaving his teaching. He felt the bridge flowed more than the river. And he said to himself, I meet myself everywhere I go. And this meeting includes everything I see.

[06:12]

This is, again, his recognition of the world as a gesture. Das ist sein Erkennen der Welt als Geste. Where the things got loose, like you in the room, and is the bridge flowing or is the water flowing? Wo die Dinge losgelöst sind, so wie du und das Zimmer, und plötzlich auf einmal fließt die Brücke, nicht der Fluss. We can have this kind of experience. Anybody, we all have, maybe. You've had the experience on a bridge and Vienna. But the question is, does it occur to you within circumstances which make you see everything differently?

[07:12]

Would you say I meet myself everywhere I go? And everything I see, everything I meet includes, and this meeting includes everything I see. Yeah, so you're living in a somewhat, it's the same, but it's somehow experientially really different. And some people say this is only an epistemic difference, but I think it also affects your biology. Okay, so the point here is this concept that we talked about before.

[08:16]

And while the skandhas were presumably spoken about by the historical Buddha, he never mentioned anything like the alaya vijnanas. This was a teaching developed by the Yogacara school much later. In the third or fourth century, I guess, of the common era. Okay. But it is a way to open a practice related to what we do discover.

[09:28]

Krista said earlier, the problem she has is trusting this subliminal experience. And you really do have to kind of practice that trusting. And you can't absolutely trust. I mean, even some enlightenment is false. But it seems so real and convinces you that you assume it's real. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, and there's a craft to trusting it. I trust it.

[10:37]

My practice is really kind of kooky, but it's what I, you know. Kooky. Is it in the dictionary? It's in the urban dictionary. Okay. Kooky just means a little crazy. Also, meine Praxis ist wirklich ein bisschen deppert. She's funny. Mr. Reichenstein. Ha, ha, ha. I'm outnumbered here. It's not a fair fight. You left me out of town. But there are many ways I practice developing trust. One way is I don't make any decisions.

[11:41]

It's possible, and I do whatever occurs to me. I do have to adjust this within the shape of my schedule. But simple things like, should I wear this shirt or should I not wear a shirt? I just, if I pick up a shirt, I wear it. I don't think, should I wear a shirt, should I not? I just wear whatever I touch. And sometimes I wear the wrong thing, and I think, well, I was wrong to trust that. It's actually freezing cold and raining, and I'm in a summer shirt. But I've learned when I can trust and when I can't trust.

[12:48]

And I've gotten so that I almost don't have to think about anything. I don't make any thinking decisions. I just do. Because I trust that, and I've had many very specific experiences of it, that... that there's a decisional process going on, but it's just outside of consciousness. And I have to acknowledge that and let that split screen, which I can't see, that decisional process to go on. It's like having an intuition that the world as objectified by the senses is a cultural, acculturated, karmic stream and not reality. So this whole, what we've been talking about, mind and consciousness and seeing it, etc.

[14:20]

This is all about... finding yourself engaged in consciousness in a way that consciousness is permeable. Yeah, and as Dzogchen again said, and this meeting includes everything I see. And what he means is that this meeting includes includes a knowing that isn't just limited to consciousness.

[15:26]

Okay, so let's go back to the foil again. Now, if you are going to make a robot, you could teach a robot to function in presence. You could program a robot so it wouldn't bump into this pillar and so it would duck under the stairs and open the door and so forth. Some people would say, hey, the robot's conscious. I wouldn't go out of consciousness at all. It's just algorithmically adjusted to presence.

[16:27]

But we do have to teach ourselves to go through doors and not windows. But we also have to teach ourselves to go through doors and not through windows. Suzuki Roshi used to say to me sometimes, in Dokusan, you came into the door, but you'd better be ready to go out the window. Sometimes he'd reverse it. You climbed into the window, but you're going to have to go out the door. And he said this to me always when he didn't want me to feel too secure in the relationship in a superficial way. Okay. So, but this foil, this presentness, which you could teach a robot, is also kind of like a dock over a river.

[17:56]

or a bridge over a river. Or an anchor or something in a river. In other words, consciousness is driven by acculturation and by and by the senses, and by karma, etc. And how do you get a perspective? First of all, I'm talking about consciousness as Again, you just have to be a little patient. Please be patient. You don't have to be. So I ask you to be patient a little bit. I'm trying to find a way to say these things. Yeah.

[19:17]

So consciousness is flowing along in a stream, creating continuity. And one of the most in-depth discussions over centuries in Buddhism is how to express, deal with, experience continuity, which is also discontinuity. So there's the continuity, the stream of consciousness, which has your habits and culture and sensorial experience in it. But presentness is a stopped tissue. Okay. And it's also maybe a kind of aesthetic tissue. It's an appreciation of everything in its presentness.

[20:35]

Yeah, it's again like Yamada Mumen Roshi saying, the most fundamental thing a practitioner has to know is that everything, all at once, is working to make this moment possible. Now that's in contrast to my karma from the past or the way I was acculturated and so forth. So this present moment, the presentness, is also this aesthetic appreciative tissue that everything, all at once is created. Now the robot doesn't know this. And most people don't know it either, even if they are not robots.

[21:54]

And to become aware of it is partly to become aware of the whole world as a gesture. So if you, again, let's go back a bit, the first thing to know is consciousness is seeable. In fact, as I said, there's no alternative to seeing it. How could you not see it? Being conscious is to see it. But we're seeing it, but we're not seeing it. We're not seeing it as a participatory immediacy.

[23:07]

So how can we shift from the seeing of it, which is a not seeing of it, into a participatory immediacy? Now I think of these words as little keys. Ich denke, für mich sind diese Wörter wie Schlüssel oder Tasten. How can we see what we're not seeing? Wie können wir das sehen, was wir nicht sehen? We are seeing what we are not seeing. So these are words that I hope ferret around in your experience. Also ich hoffe, das sind Worte, die in eurer Erfahrung herumwieseln. And then I say, and what we don't see is that it's a participatory immediacy. Okay, now what's the advantage of seeing it as a participatory immediacy? Well, first of all, it is an immediacy no matter what you say.

[24:09]

Most of us aren't educated, aren't energetically located in the medias. But now Buddhism assumes... I'll get well, don't worry. Buddhism assumes it is an immediacy. And again, as I said slightly differently the other day, that this immediacy is how we actually exist. In itself, it makes logical sense. But it also makes experiential sense. Because if you're present at the, what I call, zero-time cone, like an ice cream cone, in this present moment is zero time.

[25:57]

When you are present in this zero, in the zero funnel or funnel, and this here is zero time, But if you can locate yourself in that cone, the whole idea of the split screen of Jill Price flows up through that cone. So, first of all, in fact, the world functions through this momentary immediacy. And now what Buddhism adds to that, not just knowing that evidentially and philosophically, but can it be participatory?

[27:05]

And one of the experiences of making it participatory is to feel yourself in this gestural immediacy. So again, you know conceptually it's seeable. So you try to make it experiential. So you just present yourself again with this question over and over again. And you use the developed articulation of the five skandhas To feel yourself nosing it. That means knowing it with your nose.

[28:07]

Yeah. And I think that some people say that smell is probably our most basic sense. Dogs are good at it. So generally, we conflate our senses, it all turns into brain patterns, and we don't really rest in the smell of the world. In Japanese carpentry, like we just built the zendo, it's completely designed and built with materials to have a particular smell for a zendo. And this isn't adding perfume.

[29:19]

This is the wood itself smells. So you really take a little bit, I may not sound a little kooky, but you just walk along and say, maybe I'm a dog, what's going on? I realized in high school sometime that I knew people's moods when I met them. And their state of mind. So I said, how do I know this? So I experimented and I discovered I knew it as soon as I got within nosing range.

[30:23]

in range to smell the person. And I experimented with that, and I was going, get out of the range, I wouldn't know what's going on, move into the range, and I think they're pretty upset. But you can't tell somebody, you know. Don't you have the expression in German, the smell of a person? Yes, I can smell somebody. It means I don't like them. Oh, well, sometimes you like them when you smell them. And I've discovered I could really smell craziness. When a person's real schizophrenic and on the edge, whoa, they're an unpleasant old... But the practice of Zen is simply...

[31:44]

to separate these senses and to practice each sense separately and then be able to bring them together and not let them conflate into a brain burden. So I don't want to say you're walking along seeing things, maybe you're walking along eyeing things. Yeah, I try to say things that don't make... The sentence turns it into a linguistic phrasal quality. So I feel like I'm earing, earing the world. Not hearing it, but earing it. And I find in that process that I keep developing my ability to let it happen. which is really to be located in stillness.

[33:15]

Stillness is present in activity. And eventually I find, suddenly, oh yeah, I'm seeing consciousness I see the stream of it, and I see the presentness of it as an appreciative aesthetic. And by locating myself in the presentness and not in consciousness as a stream, I feel that process slows down consciousness until it fills up presence.

[34:22]

And all of that is experientially in the statement of the context of Dongshan on a bridge and feeling the bridge was flowing. He says, and this meeting includes everything I see. So he says, in fact, pointing out to you, somewhat obviously, that the bridge itself was his meeting, which includes everything. So this presentness which foiled us,

[35:23]

and which could be learned by a robot, is also a way to transform the stream of consciousness into the field of the presentness. And in that very act, to know that you're participating in constructing the present and constructing the consciousness of the present. So I said that I would try to speak about the construction of consciousness. And maybe I've done it as well as I can this time. And maybe I can find some more resonant ways to speak about it.

[36:48]

And you wanted me to speak about harmony. Okay. The human body clearly has to be at some kind of reciprocity or harmony. Muss in einer Art von Reziprozität oder Harmonie sein. My harmonic reciprocity is a little chilled right now. In the cold. Meine harmonische Reziprozität ist etwas abgekühlt durch meine Erkältung. But perhaps it will reestablish itself.

[37:49]

And the cold will go away. All right. The Chinese have this macroscopic, microscopic view of the world. And you see it in the... throwing the... stocks of the I Ching. So somehow the details of situations will reveal or awaken the same sensitivity in your same modality, sensitive modality of mind through circumstances. Well, I'll just say some more things. Okay. So the Chinese Buddhism is imbued with the idea of harmony, which is a, did I say this earlier, a regulation, a regulatory process.

[39:17]

I did talk about it. So that regulatory process is based on the idea of a microcosm, that the human being and the macrocosm are versions of each other. So that's called harmony or heavenly, harmony with heaven in Chinese. But it actually couldn't be what Hegel says, that being is intermediate, being is indeterminate immediacy. Hegel sagt, dass das Sein ist eine vermittelnde Unmittelbarkeit.

[40:30]

Unentschlossene Unmittelbarkeit ist keine Harmonie. Undeterminierte, nicht festgelegte Unmittelbarkeit ist nicht Harmonie. immediacy is not harmony. Okay. Japanese, Chinese Buddhist practice would tend to develop the teaching so they would assume that harmony would prevail. I would say we would say something more like chaos will prevail, but we can make chaos less likely. But the Chinese would say harmony is more likely. So some of the teachings aren't developed as thoroughly as I think they could be because they assume harmony is going to do the work.

[41:36]

And 40 years ago, Norman Fisher intuited that problem, as I did too, but I didn't know how to respond to his question. Because I wasn't sophisticated enough in my practice to observe yet the Chinese ideas of harmony affecting the dynamic of the practice. Weil ich meine Praxis nicht weit genug entwickelt war, dass ich entdecken hätte können, wie diese chinesische Vorstellung der Harmonie in der Praxis sich ausdrückt. Okay. The process of seeing consciousness and participating in it, being all things at once, even in the midst of whatever dynamic it is, isn't that harmony?

[43:05]

No. It's your intention, but it's not governed by the situation. No, it's not. Well, the Chinese would say it's governed by the situation. As your own health is governed by, if you're not healthy, you're going to die. And you try to be healthy. But trying to be healthy is not the same as the Chinese idea of harmony controlling your health. I don't understand the idea of harmony.

[44:09]

I'm sorry. Your body is functioning right now? Yes. Okay, we can call that harmony. If it gets out of harmony, you get a cold, you get... Some disease, it's out of harmony. Your body is already trying to re-establish harmony, which we could call health, which means wholeness. Okay, that's clear to you? Yes, but what governs what? your body governs itself to try to establish harmony. The Chinese feel the cosmos governs itself to establish harmony. And I think that's a mistake. And it's present in Buddhist teachings. That's a Chinese cultural overlay on Buddhist teachings.

[45:28]

I don't think Dignaga would agree. But Chinese Buddhism never really related to the later developments of Indian Buddhism. But the Chinese Buddhism has never really been associated with the later developments of Indian Buddhism. This all-at-onceness, which creates the moment, is a different thing from moment to moment. This is different from moment to moment. That's right. Is that the difference to the idea of a kind of firm harmony? Yeah.

[46:28]

All at once, the Chinese would say, is governed by heaven. And what they mean is it's governed by, it'll be regulated so it all comes out okay. The Chinese would say that all of this is suddenly regulated by harmony, so that it results as okay. So you think that because it is a completely different game from moment to moment, I have the opportunity to create. Am I also involved in the creation? By that, from moment to moment, something different can appear. This makes it possible that I create. Yes, that's true. And the emphasis in our way of practice, I think, should be on the actual uniqueness of every moment. How can it be otherwise? Yes. But as soon as you recognize that, Buddha is pushed into the past.

[47:30]

Now, most Buddhist schools view the Buddha as the goal. But if everything's unique, Buddha can't be the goal. So one of the distinctive aspects of Zen... Now I would say there's secret Zen and public Zen. Public Zen went along with reincarnation, etc., in Chinese, but the Chinese version of reincarnation of ancestors. Also die öffentliche Version des chinesischen Buddhismus zum Beispiel hat die Idee der Reinkarnation weitergetragen, jedoch verbunden mit der Vorstellung mit den Ahnen.

[48:42]

But the more astute Zen teachers only gave lip service to Reincarnation. Aber die besseren Lehrer, die haben dem einfach nur Lippenbekenntnisse dazu abgelegt. So, I mean, as a friend of mine said to me once, if you can get people to believe in reincarnation, you can get them to believe in anything. So the societal strategy in Chinese Buddhism... Now, Bob Thurman would say, you know who Bob Thurman is? Oh, Bob Thurman. What? A Buddhist scholar. Yeah, a Buddhist scholar. What? He's the father. Father of Uma Thurman, who I knew when she was a pretty little teenager. We were in Harvard together at the same time.

[49:44]

And Bob Thurman said, really, Buddhist institutions are think tanks disguised to survive in the society as a religion. The strategy of Buddhism was to create gates just for the emperor, even though the emperor never went through them. Every temple has an imperial gate, any big temple. And then to say, everything we do in this temple accumulates merit, which we'll transfer to the emperor. Strictly speaking, for the more astute Zen teachers, this was nonsense. But then you got the emperor to support the temples. Every major temple in Japan has white lines in the outside wall, five white lines.

[51:07]

That means it has received imperial support. But you can't expect a bunch of half-formed people starting to practice Zen to build a temple with Zendos and all that stuff. You need outside support. And I've considered offering merit to President Carter or President Obama. I don't want to offer merit to Trump. But the Chinese strategy was to take something everyone wants to believe.

[52:10]

like reincarnation, and then say it's true, and then you can get them to believe other things, and then the concept of merit comes in, and then you can offer merit, transfer merit to other people. So I've removed as much as possible any reference to merit in our practices. Look, you were going to say something else. I forgot. Please in Deutsch first. So it's right that harmony is only the cultural overlap of Chinese Buddhism. The regulatory harmony is a cultural overlap.

[53:32]

And if we bring a different view from phenomenology and science into practice, it's going to change in significant ways the dynamic of the teaching. And if we genuinely try to develop a generational multi-generational lay practice, then we're going to have to alter how we establish, how we establish the practice of incubation which some teachers you cannot realize them without incubation I mean real in the situation incubation how do we bring that into lay people's lives because it's simply not a matter of understanding it's a matter of

[54:50]

kind of attentionisticry. Attentionisticry means I made that up. You can tell I made it up. Nobody would say such a word. So attentionisticry, I mean the chemistry that develops through attention. And we have to develop ways to establish a resonance with others that isn't affected by likes and dislikes or preferences. And Zen monastic practice is designed to do that. Und die sein monastische Praxis ist so angelegt, dass sie das tut.

[56:04]

How can we design lay practices that do this? Und wie können wir die lay Praxis auf diese Weise formen, dass sie das tut? Yes. Also, ich praktiziere offensichtlich auch den Marktplatz. What I really do is practicing in the marketplace. I'm not living in a monastery. I've noticed. And before I mentioned to Christine that in my life I have created a situation. And you also asked me, what's the matter? What's going on? And I try to bring it out in words. which requires this incubatory process second after second after singing.

[57:25]

And it's about seeing consciousness. I have to see consciousness. The situation forced me to exactly create that. Not only the situation, but the participatory creation of every... And this is so interesting. And this is so interesting. Okay, good luck. I think we have to... I think we have to try, like you're saying.

[58:33]

But different, excuse me for saying the tautological obvious, different is different. And I know, I mean, in fact, Suzuki Roshi said to me, after I'd been practicing five years in San Francisco, In my experience, this was a turning point in my own practice. I pretended San Francisco was a monastery. And one of the things I worked with for years was no place to go and nothing to do. Which I really got to be able to say that on every perceptual moment. And I tried to articulate every other practice I could into experience. Und ich versuchte, jede andere Praxis, die ich konnte, in Erfahrung zu artikulieren.

[59:46]

And I would only have a job, I would only have a family life, which allowed me to practice this way. Und ich hatte nur einen Beruf und ein Familienleben, das mir das erlaubt hat, das zu tun. And Suzuki, she said to me, you're the only practitioner who's making lay practice work. And then he said, sequentially at some point, but I would like to have a place to meet, practice with people person to person, somewhere. So I spent the next year and a half or so hunting for a place. And we looked at various places, north and south of San Francisco and so forth. And we found Tassajara, 160 miles south of San Francisco.

[60:47]

I showed it to Suzuki Roshi. And we started practice periods there in 1966. and it completely transformed my practice. Even though Sikriyoshi said my practice was... I was the only person being able to do it, being at Tassajara not only transferred it, transformed everyone else's practice, and my practice with them, it transformed my practice, and that experience has shaped my life. So I was completely happy and quite fine and had various kind of transforming experiences before I started Tassajara.

[62:01]

But I was so powerfully confronted with how it changed everyone else's practice and how it changed my practice, which I didn't expect it to. That I've spent the last 50 years creating places like Creston and Tassajara, and then Manasov. So lay practitioners can have a monastic component in their practice. so that lay practitioners can have a monastic component in their lay practice. Even a Sashin is a monastic component.

[63:01]

I don't know the answer. I just know it's going to be a lay practice, and we have to try to see how it's going to work. I don't know the answer. I just know it's going to be a lay practice, and we have to try to see how it's going to work. I am very happy that you show us the deconstruction of all terms of God. I'm very grateful how you show to us the deconstruction of all terms of God, of theology, and that you describe it as a practice or body work. And that you phrase this as practice and as embodiment. And you do it. And you instruct us and you show us how to do it. I try. Yes.

[64:01]

In Kasahara, there's a transmission. Wow! Could you maybe say, in a short way, what exactly was this transformative effect that Tassajara had? In short. In short, please. I have a pill here. . I don't know. It's something like the difference between feeling a tree, its stillness, rooted stillness, and its moving leaves. And being the tree.

[65:19]

I'm saying, yes. Oh, I forgot. I didn't forget, but I forgot. I'm optimistic that we will make this work with a lay practice. Of course, being in a close connection with a monastic place. In my professional life I have been asked very often why in all that requirements and many things to do I was never burned out. And for me, this has a lot to do with that during the time of monastic practice, I got very familiar with the territory of the Leipzig.

[66:37]

It even feels like a very enlivening basic ground to move outside of that. Maybe it's similar to when you have small children. This is also a territory where likes and dislikes that you may have don't work. And if in the marketplace, in your job, you lose yourself into that you don't want some things, you lose so much energy in that. And I think some young people may be led astray when they are taught that they just have to find out what they like or would like to become.

[68:09]

and to learn both hands and then also to experience that basically this time in this village actually deepened this territory, what the monastery started with. It was not an interruption or that it got worse, but that is already written here. And having known both ways of experience, monastic practice and professional life, I find that there is no contradiction, but my professional life allowed me to deepen the experiences I had in monastic practice. And this makes me optimistic that we will be able to do that. We want to have both the monastic practice center and also the possibility of trial of our practice in professional outside life. And one sentence, I just read Wittgenstein before I came to Vienna.

[69:40]

And even though he was a pacifist, let's assume, on the first day when the war was declared, he enlisted. Enlisted, yeah. And until the last day of the war, he was on the battleground. And when he was asked why he did that, he said, I needed this to... This was to sculpture his character, a test for his character. Fire alarm. So being in the world and not losing contact to this is also a kind of test for my practice. I'm glad you don't have to go to war. Sukhiroshi made a similar decision

[70:54]

wouldn't fight in the war, but he became a chaplain just because he felt he should be with the troops to sort of like participate in what his generation was doing. Horrible as it was, yes. So there is a deep faith consent to what you are saying. Without my time in the monastery in Rochester Zen Center, I couldn't be like how it now is. And at the same time, my practice remains very alive. At the same time, my practice stays alive in that way.

[72:18]

But it's absolutely necessary to plug in or to go back to these roots. Okay, I think this is a good point to end. Yeah, and it's of course more complicated than monastic and lay, but we enter the field, need to make the field work for us. Okay, thank you very much. I hope this worked also for those of you who aren't worried about monasticism or sangha practice centers.

[73:23]

Because this is simply about various ways to look at being alive. And the constellation practice is opening up the filament of the presentness. A filament is like a cellophane. Ah, also die Konstellationsarbeit, die eröffnet die Folienschicht des Gegenwärtigseins. Den Blätterteig des Gegenwärtigseins. Okay.

[74:25]

We're a little solemn right now, I'm sorry. In the beginning you talked about this difference between Martians and non-Martians. The difficulty to communicate, to understand each other. Now we are in the midst of planning an attack to the Martians. From the Martians to the... Non-Martians. Non-Martians. Okay. Okay, well, I was clearly not saying which of us are Martians.

[75:36]

Thanks for translating. You're welcome. Someone told me yesterday they like her Austrian way of translating. I don't know quite what that means, but it must be true.

[76:01]

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