You're all so far away. Can you hear okay in the back still? The same? Okay. We inherited this space. Technically we purchased it. But if you know the layers of causal precedence that led us to this space. It's really we inherited it. So we have these two spaces. And we're Trying to learn how to use them. Or let them show us how they can be used.

[01:05]

So this sashin is part of the construction project of the Zendo and the Dharma Hall. Yeah, and that's intrinsic to our practice, actually. Now there's other possibilities for configuration. Maybe we'll try a different one tomorrow. Maybe I could swing on a trapeze or something. I don't think we'll try that, actually. I'm too old to do that. And there's one of the founders peering out there, Peter. Yeah. Hi, Peter. So yesterday someone gave me the image of circling.

[02:12]

As if I was, during the talk yesterday, circling a potential topic. At least that's one way to understand it. And then maybe we'll discover what that topic is if we circle it often enough. Or maybe it's just circling. Yeah, or squaring. Yeah, sort of doing something together. And clearly, one of the things I'm doing, by the way I'm speaking, is to try to illustrate something about practice.

[03:20]

But for me circling, my own experience of this circling is more like I was looking for a runway or landing field. I'm looking for a runway, a landing field in your experience. In your experience to date and in your practice to date. And in one day, and in one day of experience of one day of sushimsa and so on. And I hope that in this sashin we at least make one or two runways. Because I can feel myself looking for the words or phrases or views

[04:38]

in which I can land some Buddhist airplanes. Now, I don't want to land on runways going east toward Asia. That's too easy. And also it's deceptive. Because so many things, as I think I said yesterday in various ways, have the same words, but what's living in those words is different. And from the time I first started studying, examining, investigating Asian ways of thinking and being,

[06:02]

I was struck powerfully by the differences. And partly during the many years I've been, half a century or more than that, I've been practicing, I tried to sometimes minimize the differences. Simple differences. Like we count in the West, one, two, three, four, et cetera. They count in Asia, one, two, three, four, five. You did it right. I hope so. We can exaggerate those kind of differences, but maybe not. So one of the themes of my recent observations about practice is the differences are greater and more interpenetrating than I imagined even.

[07:30]

That means that unless you really rigorously look at it, we are actually all practicing a rather convenient form of well-being practice. Und das bedeutet, dass wenn du nicht wirklich rigoros, also sehr, sehr sorgfältig dir das alles anschaust, dann praktizieren wir eigentlich alle mehr oder weniger eine Art des Wohlfühl-Buddhismus. And that, what's wrong with that, what the heck, you know. But I would like to see us practice Buddhism as it was developed and appended.

[08:53]

Buddhism is inherently a transformative practice. Based on the awakening of Buddha. An assumption that needs to permeate everything we do in practice is that the potential for this transformative awakening is always, always present. Well, these penetrating differences between our Western views and East Asian views give us so many opportunities for transformation. Because we could say enlightenment is something like a landslide, no, a mindslide.

[10:03]

Well, yeah, okay. You know, a little pebble somewhere is loosened and then the whole thing starts shifting. Because part of so-called enlightenment experiences is the courage to notice differences that make a difference. Because once you really notice a difference, it makes a difference. Suddenly, a whole hillside of differences that make a difference become apparent. So to make practice work, the main dynamic is commitment, and the second probably is courage.

[11:32]

And the second is courage. So I'm looking for runways. Or mind ways. Or perhaps samadhi lanes with no lights. Where you have to land in the dark. Like a CIA plane coming in. And I have to sneak these planes into my own runways or samadhi lanes myself, because if I'm looking too carefully, no, no, I say, no landing field here.

[12:43]

And I myself have to... Now, I quoted and misquoted the poet David White last night. Uh... He said, here is a powerful stranger. He said, here is a powerful stranger. And we have to ask permission to land. Hey, powerful stranger, can I land here?

[13:50]

But here is like that. Because here conforms to Japanese ways, thinking, Asian ways, Maui ways, all the ways and cultures that don't even exist yet. Those ways are somehow present in any here. So when you really land in here, you're landing in a here with some cultural lights, but not fully illuminated. So I think each of us too in our own practice of course are wondering really can these Buddhist airplanes used to flying in, well, let's call it thinner air.

[15:17]

Can they land in us? And as I said, we don't want runways headed toward the east. Let's have runways headed toward the west. But let's try to land on these western runways Buddhist airplanes. But let's try, on this western runway, let's try to land Buddhist planes there. And as they're landing, we have to see, oh, jeez, the runway has to be a little different for this to land. Please, clear the, you know.

[16:19]

And while they're landing, we may notice that the runway has to be a little different so that they can land at all, and then we have to change it quickly. No, I said a few moments ago that this sashin is part of the construction project of building this zendo and dharma hall. And that's not just a metaphor or analogy or something. It's for me a fact. Und das ist nicht nur eine Metapher oder eine Analogie oder so, sondern für mich ist das eine Tatsache. I designed this Zendo and this space too with the help of many people. Ich habe diesen Zendo und auch diesen Raum hier mit Hilfe von vielen Leuten entworfen. And of course we thought a great deal about what will be the path of King Hin and so forth.

[17:23]

You know, we could have crammed some more seats in there, but we thought, no, no, 36, right? 36 seats in the Zendo. What has it got to be? So imagining the movements in the Zendo, the Zendo to be, we came up with this design. A design for sleeping with the Tansu in the back, the lower one for your bedding and the upper one for your personal effects. So the wall tans, tan is the platform. So the wall tans are designed for sleeping and sitting and living.

[18:25]

Und so sind diese Tans an der Wand, die sind darauf angelegt, dass man darauf schlafen kann, sleeping and eating, right? And living. Schlafen und essen und leben kann. And the center tans are designed for primarily sitting and eating. Und die mittleren tans sind hauptsächlich zum Sitzen und Essen entworfen. Now, one of the basics I'd like to get across and the basics I'm speaking here about is, again, every time I say it, I find nuances. The basics are views Views are the views implied in language.

[19:57]

Maybe views covers it. Which allow us to land some Buddhist airplanes on them. Okay. So one of them is, I can say it in as few words as possible, all phenomenalized space is gestural space. And one of them is, and if I can say this with as few words as possible, is that every phenomenalized space is a gestural space. Okay, so again, all phenomenalized space is gestural space. I mean, this floor, as I say sometimes, is a gesture.

[21:02]

It was a gesture made a long time ago, but then sanded by a friend of Nicole's. From Oldenburg, is that right? Oh, okay. And it's still a gestural space. You don't see it moving, but... If you hold your hand out to shape mine, but don't move it. Just hold it. And I do that. It still adjusts you even though she hasn't moved her hand. So when I put my foot down on the floor, I'm one half of a floor shake or a handshake.

[22:02]

I mean, I feel a little silly saying these silly things. But to really get into the habits of your lived life that all space is gestural space. That the Zendo and this room is an ongoing construction project, it hasn't stopped. So we imagined again the Kin Hen and so forth. And the food serving.

[23:30]

But I wanted to leave quite a lot of it to us to participate in how we continued this construction project. So I don't want to figure out everything in advance. And I want us to kind of have it half done and follow up and things like that, because maybe you can see your own practice as a construction product. So people have been asking me forever, how are we going to serve food? Well, let's see what happens when they walk in with the pots. So the other day I said, well, let's have, let's start with the two, well, we decided on four servers, so we start with two in one lane, two in the other lane, with the lights on.

[24:36]

And maybe they both then, both on both the two aisles, go down together, kind of showing the food, bringing the food into the room, and then start serving back toward the altar, toward the south door. But when I saw it, I mean, to do it that way would be a rather formal Japanese way of doing it. But a little bit like being in a too fancy restaurant where they come in with all the food at once under a piece of metal and all the waiters lift it off at once.

[26:00]

Noblen? Yeah. And it also felt a little too militaristic. So now I suggested we start at the south end of the room where the altar is and just serve as we go down. So I suggested we eliminate the too formal Japanese way of doing it. But to do it in a concerted way or Yeah, in a concerted way together is also very East Asian.

[27:11]

Because the temples of practice centers of Japan and China are all designed so it makes you tend to do things together. There are no shortcuts between buildings. The paths come together, everybody needs to walk near each other and then the paths separate if necessary. Because, I mean, we do build a shared biological resonant field. Denn wir bauen ein gemeinsames biologisches Resonanzfeld.

[28:27]

And if you really catch, as I've said pretty often, if you really catch the feel of that field, it even appears in Kaufhof in Apotheke. So it is traditional to do things in a concerted way. And I don't know if concerted works with concert hall. Not the same way, no. Because the Zendo is considered to be a kind of concert hall where you do things in a concerted way. And there's a kind of soundless music we all hear and feel. So the last thing in this maybe I could mention today that might be useful is the ma board.

[29:39]

I call it the ma board. That's the meal board. Ich nenne das das Ma-Brett, also das Essbrett. Or the eating board, we call it. Ja, das Essbrett. And calling it the Ma-Board, Ma is a Japanese word. Also wenn wir das das Ma-Brett nennen, und Ma ist ein japanisches Wort. It means that for this East Asian way of looking at things, all space is ma. proportionate, proportionalized space. So the eating board or the mob board

[30:40]

is the place where the activity of eating meets the activity of zazen. This is the place where the activity of eating meets the activity of zazen. So on one side of the board, in the aisles and so forth, is the activity of the Zendo. So if the Eno gets up and does something, goes somewhere during Zazen, he's in the activity space and not in the Zazen space, and you just ignore it. It's in a different realm. So this board divides zazen or somatic space from activity space. And it's disguised as an eating board.

[32:04]

And it's just the width of the monk's bowl's eating mat. So it's disguised with the measurement of the eating mat of the monk's bowls. So it's disguised with the measurement of the eating mat of the monk's bowls. And traditionally you try to lift yourself over it and not put your feet on it and so forth. But that's based on the assumption that we're all young male monks. People have trouble with push-ups.

[33:12]

It's not so easy, like me. I used to be able to do 25, even 50 push-ups. Now two or three is a stretch. It's so embarrassing. Not for him, though. So we have to figure out, we're going to learn how to make use of this mob board with the sense that divides activity from somatic space. Yeah, and I could work out some suggestions. But I just want to see what people do. Some people climb up on it like it was a jungle gym. It's interesting.

[34:27]

Okay. So moving this around is part of gestural space. And I left the altar, the design of the altar, to now to see how how will we have incense offerings. No, this is all part of the, you know, when you started chanting, you chanted first in Japanese. I don't know why the heck you chanted in Japanese. You don't understand what it means. But you all did it. So I'm more surprised. So it's a kind of concession or acknowledgement that this practice has come to us through many causal layers including And the alternative is to be sort of somehow completely secular, but that doesn't feel like it works either, loses an emotional quality.

[35:52]

So I think you've understood well enough that this is a construction project under construction. Dass das hier ein Konstruktionsprojekt ist, das sich fortwährend im Konstruieren befindet oder in der Konstruktion befindet. It started with the dimensions of the room. Es begann mit den Maßen des Raumes. And started with the dimensions of several zendas I've designed and built in the past. And it started with moving the east wall a couple of meters. And then it took shape as carpentry for a while.

[37:11]

Now it's taking shape through our activity. This will go on endlessly. Because when I step down here, I'm stepping into gestural space. Weil wenn ich hier herunter trete, dann trete ich in gestischen Raum hinein. Ich sitze hier mit euch in gestischem Raum. Den wir alle individuell gestalten oder machen, und das ist eine absolute Tatsache. And the feeling that you are always making space with your every gesture and thought is an essential aspect, ingredient of realizable practice.

[38:27]

Okay? Thank you very much.

[38:50]

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