I always would like to say something useful since you're all sitting here. But I'm not always sure I can say something useful. Yeah, because I also would like to share what's going on with me just now I mean, going on with my own attempt to find a way to share and speak about practice in the West. Because, you know, I actually learn, if I find some way to share what I'm practicing with myself, it helps me, I learn quite a bit.

[01:12]

Hmm. So, I mean, excuse me for saying something so silly, but, you know, if you each have an arm, I will have one or two of them. And, you know, if I think to move my arm, I can move. We do this all the time, right? But I think for me it's quite remarkable. I'm always surprised. That I can think a thought and this stuff moves. Of course it's not just stuff, it's a kind of body-mind responding to a mind-body.

[02:25]

But anyway, it's some extraordinary power, actually, a mystery, that I can think a thought and my arm moves. We're basically happy beings, you know, we're human beings. Given that, it's surprising, we're not happy very much of the time. The Buddha said, you know, that we suffer because there's some cause of suffering. Implied in that first and second of the noble truths is that happiness isn't caused.

[03:43]

Happiness is there when we remove the cause of suffering. And I think that's true. If you remove the cause of suffering some causeless happiness arises. But it's something subtle. It's something subtle like our mind moving our arm or our arm moving our mind. So likewise I can bring my mind my attention to my breath. I can make my breath get deeper or shallow.

[04:49]

But actually what I'm doing, in fact, is bringing my attention to the muscles of the chest and the diaphragm. It's not quite so easy to bring one's attention to breath itself, not to the muscles that control the breath. It's kind of a soft target. But if you can bring your mind, your attention to your breath, there's some power in it that's similar to the power of being able to move the arm.

[05:50]

I always say, you know, Anyone can do this. And I guarantee you, if you find your mind resting in your breath throughout the 24 hours, it will change your life and other people's lives too. Since anyone can do it and it's not that difficult to do the problem is having the intention the strong enough intention to do it. So liegt offensichtlich die Schwierigkeit darin, eine Intention zu haben, eine Intention, die stark genug ist.

[06:55]

And the kind of faith required that there's some value in doing it. Und es ist auch ein Glaube erforderlich, dass darin auch ein Wert liegt. The problem is it's not the usual kind of value. Das Problem ist jedoch, dass es nicht ein gewöhnlicher Wert ist. But it's hard to appreciate obvious things. I mean most of our life is this immense, fantastic array of obvious things that we take for granted. The other day there was a rather interesting Japanese man named Ishii. He means stone in Japanese. And he was at the Ruta Center of the Durkheim folks.

[07:58]

And it's quite near our Yohannesov Center. So he came over for lunch. He practices some kind of mixture of Tai Chi and traditional Japanese dancing. He's full of alertness and energy. Quite funny. And he was talking about the... different kinds of farms in the area. And one of the farms is the forest where he browses for food. Browse, in English at least, cows graze and deers browse. They eat bushes and things like that. And he described certain plants he finds and then he, I think, soaks or cooks with ash from a fire.

[09:21]

And it takes some kind of poison out of the plant and then you can eat it. There's a seat right here if you'd like. But if you sit there, you have to translate. When she gets tired. So this image of this guy going out in the woods and picking things and then knowing which ones you can't eat unless you soak them in ash. And Gural said, How do you know to do that?

[10:34]

How do we figure those things out? And I can remember this with Sukhirashi. I used to walk sometimes and he'd pick something and he would do the same thing. He'd know which ones he had to soak in ash. And then they were quite edible, little ferns. I don't think it's myself. I don't think it's a hit or miss type thing. Hit or miss means you try this and it doesn't work, you try that. I mean, I don't think our ancient ancestors would eat this and three people would die. Okay, we're not going to eat that. I mean, we would have lost a lot of people if that's how we discovered what to eat. I think some people would develop an intuition like Yixi's to know that I think we can eat and I think we should do that too.

[11:57]

So when I eat an apple, to me it's an incredible cultural artifact. I mean, a great deal went into deciding apples are edible and then cultivating them, having orchards and so forth. And I find the same as true of language. So I'm trying to find ways to discover language that helps us be sensitive to ourselves in the ways that allow us to practice or in the ways that allow us maybe we could call practice learning how to live.

[12:59]

Learning how to live is like understanding the value of bringing your attention to your breath. Kind of knowledge that gets into you so that you just do it. And you don't measure it by the usual value, you just do it. But you know, you can not only bring this sense of attention to your breath, and if you look at it, actually, it's a kind of location.

[14:18]

There's some kind of observer or witness which has taken a sense of location and put it in your breath. Now, that's actually a rather big step because you've in fact taken your sense of location when you do that out of your thinking Now it would be quite easy to do if your sense of location was also your sense of identification. But we usually identify with our thinking. So if you do bring your sense of location to your breath, it won't stay there very long.

[15:30]

Because your sense of location tends to go back to your sense of identification. Now, I'm not going to try to sort this all out this evening. But we've talked about something quite simple, just moving your arm. But if we look carefully at it, like we might look carefully at this plant and say yes I can eat that if I do this to it we look carefully and we see oh yes there is some kind of witnessing activity and there is a sense of identification that we have with our thinking or with something And there seems to be a sense of location that's not the same as the sense of identification.

[16:50]

I mean, this is you. I mean, I'm talking about us, you and me and so forth. So this is just simply studying that which you are. Noticing that which you are. And if you really start noticing, oh yes, I have a witnessing activity. And I can, from the point of view of that witnessing activity, Move my sense of location, a sense of location, into my breath. But that sense of location keeps popping back into my thoughts. It doesn't stay very long, it pops back into my thoughts.

[18:00]

What does that tell you? It tells you who you think you are as your thoughts. So you may have some beliefs of body, mind, or related, or one, or something like that. And this body is also you? But if your thoughts won't stay in your breath, that's just an idea you have. Someone told you you believed. And Dogen said, the Buddha said, it's nearly the same. Buddha said, and Dogen and Buddha are almost the same, that is a cause of suffering. And this cause of suffering, I mean, there are various, but probably the most potent is what we identify with.

[19:05]

So you may think this is your body or this body is you. But if such a simple thing as having your attention in your breath is not possible, it means you don't really think this body is you. You don't really think your thoughts are you. Which, well, this is quite common. Strictly speaking, you're not practicing Buddhism when you do that, or you're just trying to practice Buddhism, moderately, successfully perhaps. So I often speak about shifting your sense of continuity out of your thinking into your body. And that's a good way to understand it, I think.

[20:18]

To not try to get rid of your continuity in your thoughts. That's rather scary. Even if we really can't ever be happy in any substantial way through our thoughts. So we need some other way to establish continuity. And one of those ways is to bring your sense of continuity to your breath.

[21:22]

First you're shifting the sense of location to your breath. You can feel your breath. You're conscious of your breath. I'm conscious now speaking of my breath. That means I've shifted a certain sense of conscious location to my breath. The next step is can you shift a sense of identity to this breath? Maybe you can just use a little pedagogy. Just tell yourself, this is me. Yeah, breath is me.

[22:23]

I mean, you have to use simple techniques. This is no big deal. So I give you a very deep, profound mantra. Breath is me. Me breath, me breath. Sounds like some Indian movie. Who dat? Me breath. But that would be good. Is your name John? No, me breath. But it's not so different than when the Buddha was asked, who are you? They said, Buddha was quite an extraordinary fellow. And they said, are you a sage? Some kind of king? No. Well, what are you? Who are you? He said, I am awake. That's exactly the same as answering me breath.

[23:34]

If somebody said to you, who are you, and you forgot for a moment who you are, and you were so concentrated on your breath, you said, who me? Oh, me breath. Sounded good the way you said it, yeah. Yeah. So tonight I want to emphasize not just continuity, but a sense of text. It's surprising how, you know, I'm sure some of you are Christians. Even if you're in this Buddhist center. But you know, really, as Harold Bloom points out, what we know of Christ is a literary figure.

[24:42]

He's the creation of the Gospel of St. Mark, I believe. There's a book about him. And it's like King Lear is somebody we know from Shakespeare. Young Werther is from Goethe. I'm not trying to argue with Goethe or Christianity. But just pointing out the power of the text, even the written text. The text that we've created and then these figures that appear in the text begin to appear in us. So I think you can look back even in your own life and think of, yes, there were certain figures present from my reading that influenced me deeply, that helped invent me.

[25:57]

And we could say in practice we're trying to invent ourselves from another kind of text. Yeah, so we're not... Yeah, so what would be this other kind of text? And when you see somebody just reading a book, often there's considerable happiness in it, being engaged in reading something. But when you shift your attention to your breath,

[26:58]

And the more you sense your breath is also you. And one way to come to that again is to keep discovering your moment by moment continuity in your breath. And in a light manner. And in like manner you can find a continuity in your physical body. Now, that's good enough to say. And you can use certain verbal phrases to try to remind yourself. In other words, you can use the power we have in language to turn it to concentrating on the body instead of identifying with language itself. Thinking is a great and powerful tool, capacity we have. Denken ist ein großartiges, kraftvolles Werkzeug, das wir haben.

[28:30]

But it gets a little bit too much involved in itself as if it were our self. Aber es dreht sich ein bisschen zu sehr um uns selbst, als ob wir das tatsächlich selbst wären. We have a kind of problem with double identity. Und wir haben da ein Problem mit einer Art Doppelidentität. We identify with thinking as our self And we try to establish a kind of narrative unity in our thinking. That's one identification. And we also identify our thinking as a description of the world. We think that what we think is what the world is like.

[29:31]

And our thinking is pretty much limited to our senses and thinking together are pretty much limited to giving us a three-dimensional world. And because we so believe that three-dimensional world, we don't feel connected to the world very much. We all feel separated because that's what a three-dimensional world looks like. So this double identity of self and world as thinking is a useful tool, but it's not where we should discover the whole of our life. So you're moving again your sense of continuity to your breath and your body.

[30:41]

And you can intellectually understand it, I think. I mean, if you spend some time thinking about it, it makes a good deal of sense. Of course you don't know really what happens if you do it. And Buddhism is really just again a pedagogy. It doesn't tell you what the world is, but it tells you how to change your world so you can find out what it is. So in a way it's like not telling you what's in the book, but it's telling you how to read the book. To change the text that you're reading. So when you begin to move your continuity and sense of identity into your breath and body, you're changing also the text that you are engaged with.

[32:04]

Now, you practice Zen, maybe practice meditation, so you're more concentrated, so you have some calmness, and some silence, And so forth. But if we achieve some kind of calmness and stillness and silence, and concentration, we could say that that would be the practice of well-being. It will definitely increase your sense of well-being. You'll feel calmer, obviously.

[33:29]

If you feel more still, calm, your sense of well-being will be increased. But Buddhism isn't just about increasing your sense of well-being. It's coming to know your true being. And to know your true being, then concentration is a way of engaging with the text. Stillness is a way to observe and absorb. So the more you feel still inside and you have a physical and mental stillness that begin to come together, you find you can see the world much more clearly.

[34:31]

I mean, if I move this around like this, it's hard for you to see it. If I hold it still, it's much easier. And if I move myself around, it's hard for me to see it, but if I'm still and it's still, I can see things much more clearly. I'm sorry this is so obvious. I apologize for giving such a... But it makes such a difference if you really believe that and find a kind of stillness in yourself and a stillness in mind, body and the world. Then non-dualism begins to make some sense.

[35:33]

Non-dualism just means, most simply, it's not a three-dimensional world. Dualism is a three-dimensional world. So when you begin to have this feeling of stillness where the three-dimensional world softens, There's much more feeling of connectedness. And that comes out when you're calm, too. Because the calmness that can come from practice allows a kind of touching. Calmness, I mean, if there's an animal that's upset or something and you approach it with some calmness, there's a feeling of touching, connectedness or pace or patience.

[36:58]

So practice is to notice these simple things And also to find how to bring them into your life. Find the strength to bring them into your life. And the subtlety. I mean, you get to know the feeling of this silence. Even... When you're speaking and doing things, it comes from silence. And silence allows you to rest. Because everything you look at, even a flower that's growing, it's also at rest. It's not relaxed, but it's at rest.

[38:05]

The word aesthetic means to place one's attention. Its roots mean to place one's attention. This is like, you know, I'm speaking about the wisdom in the ashes and the fern or the wisdom in the apple. Here's this immense wisdom in language. And as I've been saying recently, any little child can learn language. Most people learn to speak, but they don't really learn the text of language itself. Our ancestors who put this language together, it is an artifact. And put this language together, I mean, I can't, I still, I, words like overwhelmed or astonished don't convey my feeling.

[39:36]

How do they do it? I just take a trivial word like trivial. Nehmen wir nur einmal so ein triviales Wort wie trivial. Trivial means three roads, tri-via. Und trivial bedeutet drei Wege. And so the word trivial means nothing is trivial. Und so bedeutet das Wort trivial, dass nichts trivial ist. Every moment, every trivial moment is a turning, a change of direction. Our life is in the details. And these little details, yes, and our life course is set. And the wisdom is often hidden, like in the word trivial. Oh, it's just trivial things. It was a trivial thing that changed my life.

[40:42]

I actually looked at that flower for a while. Or aesthetic. It means to place one's attention on. To place your attention and allow all your senses to come through that point. I mean the aesthetic act is such an extraordinary act. and although there may be a lot of other elements about it it always comes down to one person liking something and not liking something to allow the beauty to come in by how you place your attention

[41:45]

And the other word I'm bringing up is appreciation Appreciation means something like to see the value of in-betweenness To see the value of how things are related And then you appreciate. You feel like appreciating an apple. But in English, appreciation also means when you appreciate it, it grows in value. So, it's used in the stock market a lot. My stocks have appreciated, means they've increased in value. But it's rooted in, when you know the value of something, that value increases.

[43:02]

So, okay. Let me review a minute and then end. I think I should end, shouldn't I? Well, maybe I'm supposed to talk a little bit longer, but... Okay. Okay. We've noticed that our sense of identification tends to be in our thinking. And we're struggling. I think if you notice, there's a kind of struggling, even competition, in which we're trying to establish a narrative coherence. And we have to do something like that.

[44:14]

That's natural, especially for us Westerners. But let's not put all our eggs in one basket. You have the same expression in German? Put all your eggs in one basket? What are you doing? Put everything on one horse. Don't put everything on one horse. It might run off. So... So put some of your eggs or horses in your breath. Horse power. And as I said, you can understand this intellectually.

[45:16]

But we have to find some kind of way to do it. A way to check up on it. A way to give ourselves a certain satisfaction while we're doing it. And what I keep coming back to as useful is the word nourishment. Is to Try to do things in a way that nourishes you. Try to walk, talk. Just stand in front of someone in a way you feel nourished as you're standing. I think this is a great secret. And the other of these two, for me, key words to bring practice to life, he said, do you need a watch?

[46:44]

He was worried I was going to talk longer than the tape. I would hold that when you have a sense of nourishment, in what you're doing. And when you have a sense of completeness in each moment, this would be an exact definition of an aesthetic act. And nourishment is an act. You have to bring yourself into a place where you feel nourished. It doesn't just happen automatically, usually. Dogen said something very interesting

[47:45]

And Buddhism, and especially Zen, is often taught in images. So they don't have to talk for 40 minutes. They can just give you an image. So Dogen said, the moon reflects in the water. And the water is not broken. So one teaching of this simple image the moon being enlightenment and the water being us or our mind is that the moon doesn't break the water. In other words, you don't change much through enlightenment.

[49:00]

I mean, we have these big hopes for enlightenment will improve everything. Yes. Sukhiroshi said, if you liked sake a lot before you were enlightened, after you're enlightened, you'll have a hard time getting past the sake shop. But the other teaching in the image is, is the moon reflecting in our water? So it's not so much to change, to expect enlightenment to change the water. But let's find that water of the mind, our life space, which reflects the moon. and Dogen goes on to say even when the moon is reflected in a tiny drop of water the depth of that water is the height of the moon and even no matter how much enlightenment is in us it's also at the same time full enlightenment

[50:23]

So you can take an image like that and just hold it and it reminds you of the teaching. And you can begin to notice when the water of your being, your life space, feels like it's reflecting the moon. And this is close to this feeling of nourishment and completeness. Now the two other practice words I would like to give you tonight are alignment and attunement. Alignment means you feel Your relationship to things.

[51:55]

Ishii was talking, this Japanese fellow, Ishii was talking about feeling how two cows stand next to each other or how he stands next to the two cows. What makes us alive is our whole situation. A dead body is just stuck. And what makes it alive is we can't say what it is. We can't say where its boundaries are. It includes an occasional apple. It includes all the feelings we have with other people. where we situate ourselves through other people.

[53:03]

And we usually situate ourselves with other people through our thoughts. But the yoga practice is to situate yourself with other people through the actual physicality of the work. Maybe you could think of your backbone as a kind of antenna. Not some kind of rigid car antenna, but antenna. So in every situation you feel your alignment in the situation. When you look at a flower, there's a kind of alignment, there's a kind of presence or energy.

[54:07]

And let that energy or physicality or presence speak to your own body. Now the word nourishment comes in because your body, if you practice alignment, your body starts to be nourished. And alignment and nourishment and alignment and attunement begin to give you a feeling for your larger body. I like these, again, these kind of statements that you can skip right over until you look carefully at them. For instance, another statement of Dogen's. The coming and going of birth and death is our true human body.

[55:12]

True human body. This is quite interesting. This isn't our true human body. It's the whole situation, the coming and going of birth and death, which is our true human body. What makes this thing, this corpse come alive, it's not just some kind of individual body, but the whole coming and going of birth and death of all of us. So Dogen says, the coming and going of birth and death is our true human body. And it is where ordinary people wander about. It is also, he says, where great sages are illuminated. So this is another kind of faith if you really want to practice Buddhism.

[56:34]

You have to recognize that if Buddhas were possible in the past, they are possible in the present. To practice Buddhism with any depth, you have to imagine that there are Buddhas present today. Well, this is a world where Buddhas could be present. Now, this is a kind of leap. It's a kind of imagination or vision. But really, practicing Buddhism doesn't make any sense unless you... can actually imagine this world as a place where Buddhas could be present. So when you begin to read the text of the world, and you know when you really read a text which has some kind of originality in it, and any great text has an originality, even weirdness in it,

[57:40]

It makes you start to read yourself. You read the text, the text reads you. And it draws the world into you. and draws the world out of you. So I can't promise you what will happen if you start reading the text of your senses of placing your attention in your breath of placing your attention where there's nourishment and completeness And a sense of alignment and attunement. This you can discover. If you do it, you discover. You are reading the text of the world differently.

[58:57]

And in fact, you are creating a Buddha field. Buddha field means to live in such a way that you could recognize a Buddha if he or she appeared. Or to create a world where a Buddha might want to live. Sukhira, she used to say, the Buddha is good because people are good. So it's not because, oh, we're in such a miserable state, a Buddha better come.

[60:03]

No, no, Buddha is good because people are good. Because our true human body is all of us in the coming and going of life and death. So the goodness of people is the practice of Buddhism. But this is something you have to discover through what nourishes you and completes you. And commit yourself to this vision. It's a kind of vision, but it's a known potential as well, as I said. You can imagine it's possible. Excuse me? You can imagine it's possible. Yeah, so now have faith in it. Yeah.

[61:18]

So why don't we sit for a few moments? Thank you for translating. Thank you.

[61:31]

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