And as you know, I'm always trying to find ways to... Could you go tell them that we're having a lecture and that we can hear their voices, but it'd be good if they spoke in hushed tones. They should talk, be able to talk. Thank you. Um... So I'm always trying to find ways that we can practice these teachings and these also conceptual shifts. For example, the one I'm speaking about primarily now is the conceptual shift from entity to activity. And I think that That seems to be a particularly difficult one.

[01:23]

Conceptually it's graspable fairly easily. But it really has life when it's conceptually embodied. And that seems to be more difficult. And why? I guess partly because we grow up thinking that body and mind are different. Und warum? Ich glaube zum einen, weil wir aufgewachsen sind mit dem Glauben oder dem Verständnis, dass Körper und Geist voneinander verschieden sind. But there are two categories that at least belong to us. Aber dass das zwei Kategorien sind, die zumindest zu uns gehören. But phenomena is a category that doesn't even belong to us in the sense we grow up with.

[02:28]

And I mean, it belongs to God or something like that. And I mean, even Louis Agassiz, who was a really brilliant scientist in the early part of the 20th century. Late 19th, early 20th. He was a believer in separate creation. And in that belief opposed to Darwin.

[03:31]

But if you believe that everything Aye. Were they upset? They were sorry. Sorry and upset. Yeah. I mean, if you believe that everything is separately created, trees, foxes, etc., And you think then, of course, you're a separate creation and a special one. And you really don't feel related to the phenomenal world.

[04:34]

Thank you, Dieter. You're welcome. And even though we know that's not the case nowadays, most of us, but it's still present in our activity, our thinking. And even if most of us today know that this is not true, it is still present in our activity. The simple instructions for anapanasati, breath practice, say that bring attention to the physicality of the breath.

[05:58]

I think that sort of we think we bring attention from, I don't know, like the lamp or the wall, and then we observe breath as if it were a kind of thing. So as we might bring attention to the glass, we bring attention to our breath. But if you're a glassblower, you bring attention to the glass in a different way. It's one reason I like helping people. but I also like the fact that I can have glasses, water glasses that he made.

[07:28]

I feel the activity of the glass making in my glass using and glass filling and glass from drinking, etc. Ich spüre die Aktivität des Glasmachens im Glas benutzen und aus dem Glas trinken, und so weiter, und das Glas aufzufüllen. Now, if you're a glass, not a glass blower, you probably, it's pretty hard to bring your attention to the activity of the glass. But you can bring your attention to the activity of the glass in the sense that you're noticing it, you're picking it up, it's resting on a shelf or a table, and the table is an activity that's supporting the glass and so forth.

[08:37]

We must do a little work keep reminding ourselves that this glass is an activity just in sitting on a table. Now I'm trying to think of examples that can get this across to us. Now, the Japanese robes, for instance, Buddhist robes, define, assume a definition of the body.

[09:43]

The Japanese robes, the Buddhist robes, go from a certain assumption, a certain definition of the body. Yeah, so the Japanese clothes, including Issey Miyake and even things like that, hang on the body. I'm not saying we should start making our clothes this way, but I'm trying to use an example. They hang on the body and are the opposite of spandex. And they hang from this point, this axis and atlas vertebrae. So they make a collar, which requires quite a bit of attention to get right when you wear it. And so far, I've never seen a Western, European or American tailor who's very good at making robes makes this complicated collar.

[11:12]

The collar is partly made this way so your head is free and it comes out of your clothes without being bound by the clothes. But if you don't get a feel for that, of how the upright spine holds your clothes in place, Your clothes never, robes never look too particularly good on Westerners.

[12:30]

People whose robes always look a little askew, they just haven't learned how to make their body fit the concept of the yogurt concept of these clothes. And this inner collar, which is not exactly a collar, which is a big flap, also requires a lot of attention to hang it up on a hanger in the closet. So Western tailors, when they make Japanese robes or our sitting robes, they just always eliminate that color. They just don't understand what it's for. They think it's a lot of trouble, and it is.

[13:31]

But it's a lot of trouble because it's supposed to be a lot of trouble. It requires you to bring attention to your clothes in a certain way and arrange the body to hold the clothes in place. And the use of an obi, the wide belt, kind of belt, It's not around the soft part of the waist, which turns your body into two weather zones, one that's cold below and warm above or vice versa.

[14:46]

It's not for that. No, it doesn't do that. Our belts tie around our navel and close off the lower part of our body from the upper part of our body. The obi is meant to, on the one hand, create one climate zone, like a sleeping bag would inside your clothes. And it's also assumed you walk from your hips and not, you know, like this, but you kind of move like that. I'm not saying we all should change, but I'm trying to give an example of a culture which assumes activity is interrelated with activity.

[15:59]

Ich will damit gar nicht sagen, dass wir uns alle verändern müssen, sondern ich versuche einfach ein Beispiel aus einer Kultur zu geben, in der davon ausgegangen wird, dass Aktivität mit Aktivität wechselseitig verbunden ist. Ja, so the, again, the breathing, the basic Anapasati breathing teachings, don't really say bring attention to the breath. It says bring attention to the physical sensations and experiences of breathing. sondern es heißt, bring die Aufmerksamkeit zu den körperlichen Empfindungen, sensations and experiences of breathing, which then assumes you will explore the physical experiences of breathing. And bring your attention to those experiences.

[17:17]

And then notice that it's not just in-breath, out-breath, in-breath, out-breath. It's this kind of physical experience of in-breath, this kind of physical experience of an out-breath, and so forth. Now that's coded in the teachings also by saying, notice when you have a short breath and notice when you have a long breath. But that's really a code for noticing the entire physicality of the breath. Now if you spill water on the floor which I in the apartment in Freiburg I seem to do all the time And then the floor gets very slippery.

[18:33]

I was just there, so I know. So I can't get the water off the floor without a vehicle for the water to be transferred to somewhere else. Sure. So I could use a scoop, I suppose. Or I could use some kind of sponge and then wring it out and then wring it out. Or I can use a bunch of paper towels and throw them away or something. But that's like attention. It needs some kind of sponge or towel or breath movements or something to get attention from one vehicle to the next.

[19:39]

So you can think of activity as an interactivity or activity as a container for attention. So if you bring attention just to a glass already made, Wenn du die Aufmerksamkeit einfach zu einem Glas bringst, das schon fertig ist. Then you have to train yourself, keep reminding yourself that the glass is sitting on a table or a shelf, etc. And that shelf is a kind of activity and you're wanting to do something with the glass is a kind of activity.

[20:45]

So your attention, the attention of you flows into the activity of mind the presence and activity of mind in deciding to use the glass, the activity of mind in noticing the glass and planning to use it, and flows into the activity of the physical world in supporting the glass. sitting on a shelf, etc. I asked someone the other day to go get something that was under a book.

[21:51]

Ich habe vor kurzem jemanden gebeten, etwas zu holen, das unter einem Buch lag. And my watch was sitting on top of the book. Und meine Uhr lag auf dem Buch. And when I went later to see if they had found what I asked them to find, yes, the watch had been slid off the book and the book was a little bit to the side. Da war die Uhr, war von dem Buch runtergerutscht und das Buch lag ein bisschen zur Seite, als ich geguckt habe, ob die Person gefunden hat, was ich sie gebeten habe zu finden. Now I'm afraid I'm telling you things that are going to make you want to say, I'm stopping practicing Zen today. He wants me to be a robot. Like one of those robot dancers. Like what's his name does so well? Kai Eichermann. Okay. Okay. But it is actually something like that.

[23:10]

I'm sorry. If a person who feels everything is an activity goes to the table where the watch and book and so forth are, and first feels themselves as a stopped activity. If you're going to put, you know, the fourth of the four marks is disappearance. These are surgical practices to perform operations on our mental habits. They're using a hammer or mallet there, reminds me. Ezra Pond says, the sculptor sees the form in the air before he takes his hand to mallet.

[24:19]

Der Skulpturkünstler sieht seine Hand in der Luft, bevor er den Hammer ergreift. He sees the stone or the wood and he sees the form in the air. And then he sees the form in the air before he takes his hand to mallet. Also er sieht die Form in der Luft, bevor er mit der Hand den Hammer ergreift. So that's something like dharmas. Again, they're like a musical note. It has a beginning, a duration, and an end. Or a painter's brushstroke. The application held a moment, pulled away from the canvas. These are dharmas.

[25:30]

And they're in music and art partly because it's the basis of much creativity is this beginning, middle and end. And last time I spoke, I talked about the surgery of the five dharmas. And now I'm speaking about the surgical dynamics of the four marks. And the four marks are birth, duration, dissolution, disappearance. Und die vier Kennzeichen sind Geburt, Dauer, Auflösen und Verschwinden.

[26:35]

Now, I think most people see that and they think, hmm, okay, but they maybe sort of wonder why it's disappearance twice, dissolution and dissolution, dissolution and disappearance. But for the yogic practitioner, it's clear. It's birth or appearance. It's duration. And every musical note will eventually end unless it's a traffic jam. So the note ending is dissolution. And what's disappearance? You disappear. This is the practice of emptiness.

[27:45]

When you complete something, it's complete and it gives you the freedom of disappearance. As the Genjo Goan is, complete that which appears. which is to disappear. The freedom of disappearance. So every time you do something, I mean, we do bows, you know, in mealtime, we lean forward and we lean back, completing it, and then we put our hands down. Now, you may not want to do that. But when you don't want to, you're sort of going on, your stream of continuity is pulling you away from completion. So if I bow and I come back and then stop, I'm complete.

[29:04]

I'm free. So I go forward. come back, and a feeling of freedom comes over me. There's no more continuum. There's nowhere to go. Then there's the next move. And all of the criticism Zen gets and Buddhism gets that it's too formal and it's kind of Catholic and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, except it's not in Latin. It's in Japanese. And all of the criticism Zen gets Die das Zen abbekommt, das zu formell oder zu katholisch ist oder so.

[30:14]

It's not in Latin. No more in Latin, but at least we still chant in Japanese. We must be crazy. Ja, wir rezitieren nicht auf Japanisch. Wir rezitieren immer noch auf Japanisch. Okay. So the four marks are meant to be practiced. And the practice is this completion, the disappearance. The dissolution happens in the world. The disappearance is you And that freedom is one of the seeds and sources of imperturbable mind. Because that freedom is also a kind of stillness. So to practice the Dharma as appearances which have a beginning and an end is to practice a disappearance

[31:45]

at each moment, each Dharma moment. And this is not a matter of it takes a lot of time, it's going to slow you way down, although sometimes we practice it slowly until we get the feel of it, in Kinyin, for example. But it's not about fast or slow. Because in this realm, it's about time and timelessness, and timelessness takes no time. Sorry. Now, when I was leaving the apartment, which I have to winterize, close up for six months, etc., etc., I closed it, locked it, blah, blah, blah, put down the shutters, blah, blah, blah, got in the car, started driving away.

[33:03]

I got half a block and I realized I hadn't turned off the hot water boiler. But it's not really serious because it's Japanese and they've built in ways in which it will turn itself off eventually and not burn the building down, I hope. But it's not so bad, because it's a Japanese kettle, and they have built in such a mechanism, that it hopefully, at least, somehow makes itself out, and doesn't break down the whole building. I could have left it, and sometimes I have. Sorry. But this time, my practice is to complete things, so I turned the car around, went back, unlocked the apartment, and turned the water boiler off. No, I study these things too, as you know. So I knew when I left the apartment, something hadn't been done.

[34:20]

And I knew when I came out of the door of the apartment that something hadn't been done yet. And I'm pretty thorough when I leave and haven't done everything, but at least enough to leave the apartment for now. Well, okay. Why did I remember, feel that something was missing? Well, one reason is because I've closed up the apartment often and I sort of know the routine. My body knows the routine better than my consciousness. And also I said to myself a couple of times as I had a last cup of tea, please, Dickie Bird, remember. to unplug the water boiler.

[35:55]

That's what I call myself privately. So my body knows the routine and my body heard the instruction, please unplug the water boiler. Okay, this tells us something about practice. Because when you start relating to the worlds, the physicality of the world, So probably most of the time, if I'd gone to get something from under the book, which had a watch on top of it, I would have gone and

[37:04]

felt first of all, really this takes no time, felt first of all the activity of this living body. Because through long practice, attention fills my this breathing body. And it's very satisfying to have attention filling the body. So I don't mind standing for a moment in front of the watch and the book and the papers. So I stand there a moment. And then I see the watch as its own activity. Independent of the book underneath and the paper. So I move the watch.

[38:28]

And then I complete that and disappear. Then I move the book. And I complete that and disappear. And then I take the piece of paper I'm looking for. And I might leave it so whoever's desk this is knows that somebody was messing with their desk. Or I imagine myself in a spy novel and I don't want it known, so I put the book in the watch exactly back. Oder ich stelle mir vor, ich bin in so einem Spionageroman und möchte nicht, dass irgendjemand weiß, dass ich da was gemacht habe, und dann lege ich das Buch und die Uhr ganz genau zurück. And make sure that little tiny thing, which is at a funny angle, is placed there, which... No, I'm just kidding.

[39:31]

Und stelle sicher, dass dieses kleine merkwürdige Ding, das in einem Winkel da lag... But if you really embody the physicality of the world... then the world has an unbelievable vitality. There's no in-betweenness. And then in this vitality, which gives an aliveness to the world and an aliveness to you, Und diese Vitalität, die der Welt eine Lebendigkeit verleiht und auch dir Lebendigkeit gibt. It becomes more and more clear how the body knows how to close the apartment better than I do. If I is my consciousness. Wird immer klarer, wie der Körper besser weiß, wie man dieses Apartment öffnet.

[40:39]

And this is also a teaching about the path or the innermost request. Because if you really, your body really knows your innermost request. And when your consciousness doesn't know your innermost request, There's a certain tension or dissonance in your feeling. Like you haven't quite, you're not quite following the path. And sometimes you have to turn back and not go to your apartment, but go to your zazen. And ask yourself in zazen, is the path which I feel, am I on it?

[41:58]

Sometimes these writing practices where you write down first thing that comes to mind, first thing that comes to mind, all over the place, What comes to mind sometimes is not what you thought. It's like a little seismograph. Or an innermost mind graph. And you can see, ah, something's going on there that my consciousness hadn't noticed. And that little bit of dissonance, did I forget something? Is something missing? You're not quite fully on the path yet. And the courage of the past takes courage.

[43:00]

Thank you very much. We would do our best to do the same every season.

[43:26]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.56