You know the name of the game in Buddhism is immediacy. And everything comes back to and comes forward to and over to immediacy. Also auf jeden Fall der Referenzpunkt ist Unmittelbarkeit. Wie finden wir uns in der Unmittelbarkeit? Wie finden wir Haftung in Unmittelbarkeit? Nachdem Unmittelbarkeit gar nicht existiert. I mean, if we just look at the word, at least the English word, immediacy, it means immediacy, no middle. The German, by the way, is the same. That's good enough. And no medium, no medium for the present to occupy.

[01:03]

And present, another word for immediacy, the present, as I said a little while ago, just means kind of usefully what is put before us. What is near at hand is another way of understanding the etymology of present. But, you know, I'm not in any way except minimally a believer in fate. There's certainly genetic proclivities, but for me there's no fate. Es gibt sicherlich sowas wie genetische Neigungen, aber es gibt für mich nicht so etwas wie Schicksal.

[02:26]

And yet it's interesting how certain insights or recognitions when you're young hover in the background of your life. Und trotzdem ist es interessant, wie bestimmte Einsichten oder Erkenntnisse, die vielleicht mal geschehen sind, als du jung warst, wie die im Hintergrund deines Lebens umherschwebt. and such a hovering for me is a story I've told you now and then some of you is when I was I think eight I don't know I'll have to sort of see if I can visualize the context in which I asked my father this question. If I can visualize the context, because we get moving every few years, I can determine what age I was.

[03:30]

But just to start this conversation that we're having, I'll repeat this story. So I said to my father, I said, there's no 12 o'clock. And he being a scientist, engineer, and seemed to be able to answer most questions, I asked him. And so I said, there's no 12 o'clock, and he said, what do you mean? I said, well, it's a minute to 12, and half a minute to 12, and a millionth of a second to 12, and then a millionth of a second after 12, there's no 12. So I said, so 12 doesn't exist, and if 12 doesn't exist, no time exists.

[04:35]

But he said, When something is approached and passed, we can say that what is approached and passed exists, if only momentarily. And I thought conceptually that was, you know, okay, I accepted it. But, and I, if I'd had it. a more proactive relationship with my father, I would have explored it more with him experientially perhaps.

[05:45]

What is the experiential approaching and passing? But this stayed with me anyway, this... There's no 12 o'clock. And I think implicitly, when I started practicing Zen, it was like, can I go further into this question, this observation that there's no 12 o'clock? Now, here I am after all these years, and I'm saying immediacy is the name of the game. And that's like saying, there's no 12 o'clock is the name of the game. But clearly, we have an experience of a present. Yeah.

[06:45]

Let me just say something about words in general. Words appear in our consciousness and we use them consciously. And words appear in our dreams and have a different associative meaning in our dreams than they do in consciousness. So a dream, a word in a dictionary, it has its associational filaments, homophonic and so forth, but the dreams, there aren't dreams there. In the dictionary. In the dictionary. But when we speak, when we use words, I think our dreams are hidden in the words we use consciously. Aber ich glaube, dass wenn wir sprechen, unsere Träume in den Worten verborgen sind, die wir im Bewusstsein verwenden.

[08:27]

And if you listen carefully to people and they say the most mundane things, like, you know, it's a nice day today or something, you can almost feel the dreams in their words. Und wenn du sorgfältig zuhörst, wenn jemand spricht, selbst wenn du die... So I find that Zazen awakens me to words, my own words, which have hidden in them realisational possibilities as well as lots of emotional and psychological baggage. And the words have in them. Hidden in them, insights or realisational possibilities as well as psychological and emotional baggage.

[09:36]

In the words, I notice, there are both potentials of realization as well as a lot of psychological or emotional baggage. And it's interesting that the tea house is sort of part of Zen practice. The tea ceremony or tea practice as we know it in Japan was developed from the Chinese tea practice, but in Japan was developed primarily in Zen institutions. And the tea house is developed as a space as a non-being space. It's an idea that those who go into the tea house, you have to bend down and get through the little path as if it was a forest.

[10:54]

So we are entering a potential realm where they shed being itself. So you're together, male and female, with a sense of non-being. And as a breeze is a secret of the wind, In Zen temples, the garden is a kind of secret of nature brought into the temple. So we're at the early centuries and trying to develop yourself. I'm a very positive guy, even though I don't believe in anything.

[12:06]

We're in the early centuries of developing this site, and we're trying to bring the breeze of the garden and the realisational space of the Zendo into a... that actualises... are awareness. And to design such a space, you have to engage people's immediacy. So if the present doesn't exist in any physical sense, or for a physicist, it does exist, as I said earlier today, in our sensorial field. And we can study how our sensorial field is articulated through the five and sixth sense.

[13:29]

And we can study how our sensorial field is articulated through the five and sixth sense. So, and part of this practice is the Vijñanas. And it's interesting that when using my very usual example, when you hear a bird and In that hearing, you recognize you're not hearing the bird, really. You're hearing your own hearing of the bird. That's an experience of immediacy. Because what you're hearing is what's actually happening.

[14:32]

happening is you're hearing your own hearing. And that's often an experience accompanied by bliss. So you know you find traction in immediacy when you have a continuous or continuous or evolving experience of bliss. So even if this present doesn't exist in any kind of factual, I don't know what to say, it exists and it doesn't exist, Weil selbst wenn diese Gegenwart nicht existiert in einer gewissen Tatsächlichkeit und ich weiß nicht, wie ich das sagen soll, existiert und existiert nicht, ist der Bereich aller

[15:47]

And it's the realm of all originality. Now, I often say the four conditions and potentials of practice are that That realization is possible. That freedom from emotional and mental suffering is possible. That it's possible to practice in a way that is beneficial to others and to everything. And fourth, that it's possible to live as... that one can live as close as possible to how things actually exist.

[17:13]

And that last wisdom is to find yourself in the midst, located in the medias, Now, how do you get some traction and immediacy, snow tires? How do you get your DPS, your Dharma Positioning System? tuned in to immediacy. Well, the physical practice, I would say, is the experience, what I say, and I've approached this from various ways, the viscosity of space.

[18:21]

And although we don't feel it, we feel gravity. Somehow getting a sense of the practice of immediacy, getting out of thinking mind into this yogic bodily space, The example I gave on Friday was to feel like you're, as if you're a swimmer and your swimming was creating the water you were swimming in. Das Beispiel, das ich am Freitag verwendet habe, ist vielleicht so ein Gefühl zu haben, als wenn du ein Schwimmer wärst und dass du, während du schwimmst, das Wasser erschaffst, in dem du schwimmst.

[19:23]

So if you begin to feel this kind of, if not viscosity like molasses, but there's some kind of feel of space as if it were water. And then, so this spatiality would be one way, one dimension of immediacy. And patiality or pace would be another dimension, a second dimension of immediacy. The experiential succession, the experienced succession of instants.

[20:34]

The experienceable succession of instants. And it's interesting that an instant is a moment of time. Und es ist interessant, dass ein Moment, ein Moment der Zeit... But the word actually etymologically means to stand in, to instand. Das englische Wort instant bedeutet in der Etymologie tatsächlich darin zu stehen. Ja. So then the question is, and for a Buddhist practitioner, and Buddhism in general, how do we live as closely as possible to how things actually exist? Is to live in the midst of each instant.

[21:35]

And that's what I mean by patiality. Not to discover you're in a mental world just going this way and that way, etc. Physically, you feel each instant. And the instance approaching 12 and following 12. And what's the entry to that? A very simple, again, all these Dharma doors, the entry is so similar.

[22:48]

Is the practice of each attentional hale. cognizant attention, experienced attention, attentional attention, that you develop and evolve through being present to each exhale. the movements, the chemistry of it, and then being present to each exhale, the movement, the chemistry of it, like that. If you really do that, your thinking just doesn't run all over the place because it's located in each breath.

[23:51]

So when you develop attention so it's located in each breath, your attention just doesn't go to distracted thoughts anymore. No, where's the cost-benefit here? This is from my conversation with Eric the other day. Well, it's... most of the time our thinking is just simply more interesting and kind of exciting and it's full of anxieties and possibilities and you know, etc. And how boring it is to be involved in immediacy. Yes. But when you find yourself actually located in the immediacy, thinking seems like some sort of thin, dreamy stuff.

[25:29]

It's a waste of time. And there's a kind of biological, physiological satisfaction, actual bliss in just being in each breath. And when you find the circumstances, what's instant and circumstance, what stands around you, You find, as I said earlier, that you're living in a multidimensional, multivalent, three-dimensional plus world. It's so engaging.

[26:31]

The rest isn't so interesting. A Proust is another person, like Pessoa, who I would say was enlightened. Not exactly Buddhist enlightenment, but enlightenment that happens to us human beings. And he was walking along with his friend, a lover. Und er ist mit seinem Freund, seinem Liebhaber, einem Musiker, die Straße entlang gegangen. And he stopped and looked at a flower. And this is very Proustian, but that's what he did.

[27:33]

He stopped and looked at a flower. Und es ist sehr typisch Proust. Also er hat inne gehalten und hat sich eine Blume angeschaut. And if it's Proust, it probably had a fragrance and all kinds of things. Nachdem wir hier über Proust sprechen, hatte die Blume wahrscheinlich auch einen Duft und alles Mögliche Weitere, was mit ihr passiert ist. And so his friend, you know, like got 10, 20 feet ahead of him and waited and waited. And his friend? He didn't move. So he walked around the block and came back half an hour later and Proust was still transfixed. Something... When you're gazed with immediacy, something like that happens, which things about what you might do or what people... It's just like... They're kind of dead to the world that's usual.

[28:33]

At least at some moments. So those are two dimensions of immediacy, to get traction in immediacy. And the third dimension of immediacy is indeterminacy. Everything is actually unpredictable, and you don't know what's going to happen. So you feel the viscosity of space, you feel the succession of instance, as really your experience, and at the same time, at any moment, it could all fall apart. And you know the future is simply, the present is uninsurable. And you feel that indeterminacy is a wonderful kind of freedom.

[29:58]

Okay, so that's the physical practice of gaining some immediacy. gaining some traction and immediacy. Now I'd like to emphasize the intentional practice of realizing immediacy. First, there's the concept. You recognize that the present that you experience is a durative presence. It has a duration that depends on you. It's a duration that exists in your sensorial field.

[31:15]

And that's why we can experience time as a child, which a year takes a year to pass by. And sometimes in Zazen or in Sashin a period of Zazen can go by in like two or three minutes or it can feel like several hours. Because the present is is a duration that depends on your sensorial field. So that's the concept you bring to the present. Hey, this is a sensorial field, this present. Das ist das Konzept, das du in deine Erfahrung bringst.

[32:24]

Das ist ein Sinnesfeld, in deine Gegenwart bringst. Das ist eine Dauer, die im Sinnesfeld stattfindet. And in fact it's a construct. I'm constructing it. Und tatsächlich ist es auch ein Konstrukt. Ich konstruiere das. Not the ego self I. Nicht das ego selbst. The ego self I is always constructing a future based on the past. But the subtle observer, which is not the self, recognizes this is a construct which you can participate in. Okay, so that's the concept. Now, how do you engage this concept of immediacy? The engagement is attentional attention.

[33:26]

You simply bring attention in more and more easy pace into the details of the world. Nicole and I and Christian Dillow were in, my two directors directing me, and supporting me because I'm slow and old, in Kyoto in Japan in November. And I think I've been in Europe before, so I spoke to you about the Kleenex episode and things like that, right?

[34:39]

Well, you know, I have Kleenexes all the time because my nose is always running. So one thing I noticed as Kyoto is, you know, that more and more, Eric and Christine and I were there, what, 20 years, 30 years ago? Yeah. 82? 92. Quite a while ago. And there's more buildings, and there's more of everything everywhere. Yeah, and my house, where my house used to be, which had been Gary Snyder, the poet's house, the space was right there, but now it was lots of buildings, and the space of the house remained. I mean, the width of the house remained. It was no longer rural feeling or agricultural feeling or it was in the Bandu forest behind it was gone.

[35:52]

But the dimensions of the space were still there. And it now was called Love Longing Bar. And now it was called You know, this is not sequential in Japanese ideographic thinking. It's love, and you said, longing, and a good drink, bar. And in Japanese, it doesn't have to fit in the sequence, but there are just these individual signs. That's love, and then longing, and then a good drink, a bar. So anyway, but the temple, the Jodo Shinshu temple up the hill, the son of the man, the brother of the girl who was my daughter's companion in kindergarten was head of the temple now.

[37:23]

And he remembered me. Yeah, okay. So my point is Kyoto has changed a lot, but what hasn't changed is the attentional bandwidth. The attentional bandwidth is just way wider than ours. You can feel it on the streets, etc. There's kind of an attentional awareness in cars and stuff, but it's an attentional field that's different than New Yorker. So I was really touched by the bandwidth remains. That remained the same. Ich war wirklich berührt davon, dass die Bandbreite dieselbe geblieben war, dass das gleich geblieben war.

[38:53]

But if you don't have, again, a creator space, aber nochmal, wenn du nicht so etwas wie einen Gottes- oder Schöpferraum hast, and all you have is this space, and there's no outside to this space, und alles, was du hast, dieser Raum ist, und es gibt nichts außerhalb von diesem Raum, the entire culture is teaching you how to be attentive to this space. Und die ganze Kultur bringt dir bei, wie du diesem Raum gegenüber aufmerksam sein kannst. It's perhaps the main reason Japan's crafts, detailed crafts, are so exquisite. Und es ist vielleicht der Hauptgrund dafür, dass die Detailgenauigkeit in der Handwerkskunst der Japaner, in den unterschiedlichen Handwerkskünsten, so hervorstechend, so exquisit ist. So the Kleenex story. My daughter Sally came and joined us for a while. She was our guide, partly, when we were in Japan together.

[39:54]

But Sally and Nicole and Christian decided to abandon me to go to a museum on an island. So they went, and what's the museum? It's a big space with water rolling around on the floor. And what's the museum? It's a big space with water rolling around on the floor. And I'm supposed to go, you know, but they went and it's fine. I'm sure it's very beautiful. So they abandoned this elderly gent in Kyoto. So I'm walking along the street and it's a sunny day.

[40:57]

And I'm getting a Kleenex out of my pocket. And somehow one got loose and it went blowing down the street. And just then a family of two adults and three children on bicycles came up behind me. And two people in front of me as the Kleenex went by, because it was kind of windy, they all started chasing the Kleenex. The kids and the bicycles and they finally caught the Kleenex and they brought it back to me and handed it to me. And even if it could have been a used Kleenex, they would have brought it back.

[42:09]

This would not happen in New York. Okay, so The attentional bandwidth is one way to speak about how one engages immediacy. An engaged immediacy is much more satisfying than unengaged immediacy. Yeah, and it's much easier then to understand from a culture point of view why you can sort of talk about not thinking or not identifying with your thinking.

[43:19]

So the practice is, first of all, to recognize the concept that the present is a participatory duration. That it's engaged with attentional attention. And it's enacted and evolved through Hishirio. It's enacted and evolved through noticing without thinking. Because as soon as you think in the usual way, you're outside of immediacy.

[44:35]

You've heard this huge click. You've heard this loud click. And you're, whoa, what happened to me? I was in immediacy for a while and it was sweet. Okay. Now, what is going to be the content of the wisdom of immediacy? Also, was ist jetzt der Inhalt oder die Weisheit der Unmittelbarkeit? Now that we recognize that it's a participatory, durative present. Jetzt, wo wir erkannt haben, dass das eine Gegenwart ist, die eine Dauer hat und an der man teilnehmen kann.

[45:41]

That you've engaged you, sir, the... Buddha, you nature, has engaged with attention. It's like you recognize the concept is a house. And then with attention you start living in the house. And then with noticing without thinking, you begin to design, develop the house. Now, Again, this isn't fate. This isn't about the world is out there, you know, created by someone else. You're creating it. And how are you going to furnish this house?

[46:44]

Like how are you going to get traction immediacy? Now how are you going to furnish immediacy? Now that you're exploring immediacy with noticing, connoticing without thinking, You actually have a choice of how you're going to furnish immediacy. And if you're wise, you furnish it with wisdom. No, I mean, you're going to give it some structure.

[47:46]

Because whatever happens in immediacy precipitates and anticipates what happens next. And it's all unpredictable, but why not for now? recognize the unpredictability and furnish it with a little wisdom. So you bring the attention into this space that realization, enlightenment is possible. If you don't think realization is possible, your practice is never going to develop. It's not about thinking, I want to be enlightened because, you know, that's the big prize in the star in the forehead or something like that.

[48:51]

It's just that transformation is possible. And unless you know that, you're not going to notice that little transformative sprouts that occur in the soil of your lived life. And in a similar way, you know, you believe and you know that it's actually possible to be free of emotional and mental suffering. And if you don't believe that, you will not notice the possibilities of that emerging always. The grass in front of our place where most of the rooms are down there in the Schloss area,

[50:02]

has recently been mowed. But already, though it's only a day or two ago they mowed it, little white flowers are sticking out higher than the grass. And somehow to become fruit, to really find yourself free of emotional and mental suffering. I could see that Sukhirushi was free, so that really gave me the impetus, hey, it's possible. Didn't mean he didn't feel outrage about what's going on in the world or didn't suffer with the world. But basically, emotionally, he wasn't.

[51:14]

He was always in a kind of a lackluster mood. And unless you know that, you don't notice the little white flowers that grow in the midst of your life. And then beneficent practice. It means, you know the world is a mess. It really is a mess. And since I read quite a bit, I notice that writers of all centuries, as they get older, they say the world is a mess. They grow out of the hope of youth. But I'm convinced now that it really is a mess.

[52:17]

But compassion is To do something, to believe you have to do something to make it better. Suzuki Roshi was born and grew up in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War. And he grew up simultaneously in the Second World War. And in a terrible imperial time of Japan. And a shift from he almost grew up really in samurai culture into modern culture.

[53:23]

And he recognized he could do almost nothing to improve things in Japan. Though he really believed, and I know he believed, that one of the few possibilities of making things better was the wisdom of Buddhism. So he needed, knew it needed, he felt it needed new soil. And he decided intuitively that the new soil was in this newly forming, still newly forming country, which had been his enemy, his country's enemy. And his belief that you had to do something, that compassion brought him to America, and that's why we're sitting here. Can we bring this practice, this wisdom, into our immediacy?

[54:53]

This beneficial, beneficent practice. Which is as close, the fourth wisdom, as close as possible to how things actually exist. Wie, und das ist die vierte Weisheit, so nah wie möglich dran ist, wie die Dinge tatsächlich existieren. To find yourself located in immediacy. Dich in der Ermittelbarkeit verortet zu finden. Okay? Thank you very much. Vielen Dank.

[55:34]

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