I couldn't, I can't explain why. But I somehow feel this Buddha is going to, new Buddha, is going to be good for you. And to the extent that... of viable Buddhist centers are important in Europe. It'll be good for Europe, too. And to the extent that viable... Viable means functioning, healthy functioning. That healthy and functioning Buddhist centers in Europe are important, I think, is also good for Europe. I think it's a little strange. I think this, I don't know why, but I feel this. Dogen said that when you understand discontinuity, When you understand discontinuity, the notion of self does not come up.

[01:28]

And ideas of name and gain don't arise. Yeah. Very optimistic of Dogen to say this. Yeah, but there's truth in it. And he's commenting, when he says this, he's commenting on Nagarjuna's statement that the mind that sees fully into the uncertain world of birth and death Der Geist, der vollständig in die unsichere Welt von Geburt und Tod hinein sieht.

[02:43]

The mind that sees fully into the uncertain world of birth and death is the thought of enlightenment. Das ist dieser Geist, ist der Gedanke der Erleuchtung. It's interesting he says, the mind that knows the uncertainty of birth and death. The mind that knows is the thought of enlightenment. Although this is English and not the Japanese of Dogen, Still we can, by noticing such differences, the mind of becomes the thought of. These kinds of distinctions can teach us something. So I'll try to speak about this today as well as I can.

[03:49]

After this Sashinan, I realized yesterday, on Tuesday, Barely a day after the Sashin, I fly back to America. I immediately want to charter an Airbus. I know you have busy schedules, but we could all get on the Airbus. Cushions all along the side. You must strap yourself in. No, no. But on the other hand, it's quite good that we have the difference in these two places.

[04:58]

And I come back in the end of February for ten days or so, I think. And I think I'd like to do that practice week before the weekend as a Dogen study time. Maybe if you agree, we can put that in the schedule then. So in one part of me, we'll be counting the days in the back of my mind. I'll be counting the days till I come back. In one part of my mind I would count the days until I can return here. Now I want to go back to Charlotte Silver a moment.

[06:32]

Because, you know, I'm interested in why did saying something like come up to standing And her language, I think in German as well as English, her native tongue is German, is as creative as her physical teaching. But she said, this short phrase, come up to standing. And after the experience of doing that, I never again was in the same way in a mental passage of time.

[07:42]

I began a physical passage in the world. She also said she asked us to close our eyes. So I closed my eyes and said, good boy. And she said, blue. And a packet of energy came across the room that looked sort of like the word blue. and hit me and spread all over me.

[08:49]

And so I also felt the physicality of what's usually mental phenomena, like words. So, you know, I was... I wasn't practicing Zen yet. I was just wandering down the street in San Francisco. And I'd seen this brochure in a dentist's office. Yeah. In a doctor's office. And... I mean, doctors lead to enlightenment and good experiences. Good doctors, yeah. At least other people. So, I'd seen that Charlotte was giving this weekend seminar with Alan Watts.

[09:59]

So I knew Alan slightly, so I thought, oh, I'll go. But basically I was just walking down the street and I went in this little wooden painted house. And then the word blue hit me like a little ball of lightning. Yeah. So why? I mean, I'd heard the word blue before. So it has to have something to do with Charlotte. Not only the way she said it, but some confidence in her that was outside the usual way we establish confidence. And this new kind of confidence or this

[11:07]

real fundamental kind of confidence she had, or security, within, I could say, today, discontinuity, pervaded the room. Let me feel in a way I hadn't before. No, it's not a big deal, but it's a small deal that has lasted all my life. So what happens when Eijo goes to see Dogen, and Dogen says a single needle pierces many holes, myriad holes? Yeah, so why does Eijo suddenly stop visiting other teachers and say, okay, I stay with Dogen?

[12:39]

Yeah. Now, Sukhiroshi spoke about a word nabu. A nabu means you have to wash. It means to refine silk. You have to wash silk over and over again, he says. I don't know the process. Before it becomes soft enough to be able to weave it. And plain white enough and absorbent enough to be able to dye. And Nabu is also used, the same word is used, he says, to temper steel, iron.

[13:58]

When you heat it up quite hot, very, very hot, and pound it, it becomes strong. But if it's cold and you pound it, it doesn't become strong. So this word nabu means as one word used for practice. How we both become soft and absorbent like silk and strong like steel. And I suppose it helped that I had a very, very difficult time.

[15:04]

I felt like I was being pounded with steel for the year or so before I met Charlotte. Yeah, I was at a point where Because nothing made sense, I was willing to make sense of things in a new way. So are facing our personal situation and difficulties and whatever happens to us, is a kind of tempering and softening. And so here she says, it's very funny, she says, so our ego gets less and our personality gets stronger. He says ego hides our personality.

[16:20]

He says when you see calligraphy and it's too formal or too natural, You can see the person sticking to some idea of naturalness or formality. But when the calligraphers been softened up like silk or toughened up like steel. You see the calligrapher's unique personality in his or her calligraphy.

[17:23]

These distinctions I'm making a little hard to understand, but I think it's useful to see life in this kind of detail. Many of us come into practice after our adult life is well underway. Many of us are practicing quite seriously. I think we're doing, Dharma Sangha in Europe is doing quite well. And Johanneshof is developing pretty well, I think.

[18:39]

I don't think we're fully on the right track yet, but, you know, we're doing pretty well. And when we come into a real practice situation, and we have the opportunity to open ourselves to practice with others, this can be a deep experience. And practice itself is a process of change. But as I've spoken recently to some of you, we're often ourselves in a process of change.

[19:42]

That's independent, quite independent. Its roots are different than practice. And all change is a process of from-to. And the from always has built into it what you're going to. And practice also is a from-to process. And sometimes they don't fit together so well. Your process of change, if you start to practice, then requires a change in direction. So it's quite a serious question. How do we, as adept lay practitioners... bring practice into our already formed lives.

[21:15]

Yeah. I wanted to say about our choreography of doing things together to begin to feel our Sangha body. Our entrainment. Entrainment, you know the word? It means when two grandfather clocks swing together or two bicycle riders help each other with their... I'll just say entrainment.

[22:18]

Our entrainment. It's like when two people pull each other together, without being attached to each other. Yeah, so sometimes we organize it in quite a lot of detail. And the detail is to bring awareness into the detail. And sometimes we don't organize it. Like passing the chanting cards. You just come in and do it. And the hot drink we do that way. But it's interesting to watch actually. Because there's no rules about how to do it. So people don't know quite what to do.

[23:19]

I always find it quite funny. And there's a tendency for people to try to do it the formal way. Because you can't have no way. You have to do it some way. So, although we think our way is too formal sometimes, When we make it informal, it immediately starts following the formal way. But that's typical of Zen, to create some things very formal and some things quite informal and then see what happens. Yeah.

[24:27]

So when you take the sutra card, you don't bow and things like that. But some people bow. You don't have to bow, but people don't know what they bow. The secret rule in Zen monasteries is, when in doubt, bow. The secret rule in Zen monasteries is, when in doubt, bow. Now I wanted to speak also, I don't know how far I'm going to get today here, about body, speech and mind. These are the mysteries I particularly emphasized in Tantric Buddhism. The boundless mysteries of body, speech and mind.

[25:44]

And that's one of the reasons we chant. Because this process of entrainment is also that we chant, we say something together. We bring our body sound into entrainment. And speech is interesting because it's when the mind and body come together. Your lips and cheeks are... full of a thousand alphabets. They're ready to speak. It's interesting when you phone somebody up who's asleep.

[26:45]

They wake up and they think, I don't want them to know I'm asleep. So they, I'm sure they clear themselves and they say, hello. And then I say, were you sleeping? No. Isn't it true? Very difficult. Because your speech has melted out of your mouth. You can't bring it back instantly.

[27:46]

I mean, your mind wakes up and says, now I'm going to answer the question. It's like giving a kiss to somebody who's asleep. It's like kissing a wet fish or something. But when you're awake and your mouth is full of language, it's much nicer to kiss. So you can see what I mean by body, speech and mind maybe. Okay, I think perhaps I have been emphasizing too much uncorrecting mind as the main posture, mental posture of Zazen.

[29:11]

So we've been muddling around in the closets of reality. So maybe I should talk about process or something more clear. Again, let's imagine the mind is a liquid. And when the mind, any state of mind, becomes still, it tends to settle. It's just like you take a glass of water and put mud or something in it and sit it down, or this pond out here, and if it's still, the mud settles to the bottom.

[30:33]

And water tends to purify itself. You dump a bunch of rain on the and it comes up and springs all clean. And the mind has the similar qualities. But some things don't settle. So although you sit still and your mind becomes still, some things don't settle. And practice allows us to see those things that don't settle.

[31:34]

And what is it that doesn't settle? Again, as I've spoken to some of you, at various times, one thing is the narrative self doesn't settle. And the world identified with thoughts doesn't settle. And some of you in the Zendo during Sashina are looking around too much. When you have a need to look around, it means your mind is trying to find continuity in external phenomena. So unless you're the Tanto or the Eno, and it's your responsibility to look around sometimes, the rule is you never look around.

[33:04]

So you don't satisfy the need to create continuity through the external world. And so you begin to feel what's going on, but So in order to break up those things which don't settle, We need some insight. Like Dogen says, an insight into an understanding of discontinuity.

[34:05]

When you understand discontinuity, he says, The notion of self does not come up. Or as I have often been saying recently, when you can bring your sense of location to your breath, And in fact, it's one of the easiest things in the world to do. But to keep your sense of location with your breath is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. Almost immediately the sense of location goes back to your thinking.

[35:16]

And as I've been describing this to try to give you an understanding of it, What's happening is you're shifting your sense of location. You feel, oh, now I'm present in my breath. But you haven't shifted your sense of identity. So the sense of location as soon as it gets a chance goes back to your thinking. And as long as that's happening to you, you know that you function through a belief in a permanent self.

[36:19]

You may have an intellectual understanding of discontinuity and impermanence. But you don't have the understanding of discontinuity that Dogen means because the notion of self keeps coming up. And the narrative self shapes your thoughts. Okay. Now, if you're going to break up the sense of self, which if you really see discontinuity, you can see there can't be a permanent or continuous self.

[37:40]

This means then that you have to find some other way to establish continuity. Now at one time there was a kind of morality of obedience. And in the West and in the East you identified with the group. But since Kant and his man named Schneewind says Kant invented autonomy. In other words, the morality of self-governance. Self-governance.

[38:58]

Yeah, how to say it in German in one word? Self-control. Selbstbestimmung vielleicht. Selbstbestimmung. But anyway, I mean, you may think I'm talking philosophy. Vielleicht denkt ihr jetzt, dass ich über Philosophie spreche. But I'm just describing how we exist. Ich beschreibe stattdessen nur, wie wir existieren. Because all public space as we know it depends on self-governance. All democratic governments depend on self-government. So we cannot give up our autonomy. And we can't just obey or be part of the group. So it means that if we give up our belief in the continuity of self, it is much more incumbent upon us as contemporary practitioners

[40:02]

It's much more expected. It depends much more on us. To find a deeper sense, a spiritual sense, maybe, of continuity. No, okay. So that for us would be Zen mind. So again, as I started to say yesterday, we need perhaps two natures. One nature that functions in the usual way we see the world. through a narrative self, and through the external world seen as a container.

[41:21]

And this functions very well. I mean, what's amazing about our power to envision the world And what is so amazing about our strength and ability to imagine the world is that we can actually imagine a world that is wrong and live in it moderately happily. We may destroy our environment and the planet and other human beings, but we can do it. And we, in fact, are. If you want to look at what's happening to our environment and species on Earth, we're doing a pretty good job of destroying it. So we have a world we're living in that is destroying our world. So some of us, for some reason, are too existentially honest

[42:23]

Or too psychologically fragile. Or whatever to live a falsehood. So we start to practice. Out of some intuition we need to find out how we actually exist. Yeah, but the world is not flat. No matter how many people say it is. Okay. So we need one nature that functions in the usual way, compassionately, with others' vision of the world. And you need another way to function. Wir brauchen aber eben noch eine andere Art zu funktionieren, die eben mehr in Übereinstimmung ist damit, wie die Welt tatsächlich ist.

[44:01]

Und das ist die Vision und Praxis des Buddhismus. So to do this, you have to bring attention to your world to see how it actually exists. And many of us feel, you know, often when we feel we need attention, it's because we don't give attention to our world. It's amazing what a big change it makes in your world when you simply give attention to it. So the way you break up those things that don't sink in the liquid of mind The two main ways are insights into how things exist.

[45:13]

As Nagarjuna says, to really see in things. to the uncertain world of birth and death. To have a mind, to generate a mind that recognizes the uncertain...

[45:45]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.33