Yes, the question still concerned me. You spoke of the peripersonal space. Peripersonal, yes. And whether it is the same in Zazen, this peripersonal space, which can enlarge when we have an instrument, a car around us, for example. And what happens in Zazen? I tried that. a little bit, yes, to understand, and in the evening after this thought I thought, yes, it is the same, but then later the question came, where is the limit, where is the limit and the question why would the room then be bigger, what would be the instrument that would enlarge this personal space and I could not find a limit and then the next morning

[01:03]

everything turned around. I then had the feeling that it was not the same as in this examination of the peripersonal space, but when I sat down in the morning, I had the feeling, I don't know if I can remove the picture of the box, that the opens, but turns around and melts to a minimal point and actually the outside, which was outside of the box before, is now everything, so there is no more inside and outside. When I sit very centered, then there is only this mini point, the box just twisted around and was, yes, this point. I was hoping you were going to translate it yourself. Well, I can put it down to one sentence. Can you translate it yourself?

[02:10]

I can try. I dedicated my thinking in the question of if the very personal space, do you call it space? Her personal space is the same when we sit together. Yes, I ask that. Yeah, so I questioned that, whether it would be the same, and in the evening of that day I thought, yes, yeah, it must be the same, but afterwards I thought, no, perhaps not, because I can't find a boundary, and what instrument is it that widens the space, because sitting zazen is not my boundary, it's not here. But I couldn't find it. Inconceivable. Yeah. But the next morning it turned around in my mind.

[03:12]

I thought, it's not the same, but concentrate myself or centrate? Concentrate, center. center, center myself, it happens that my boundaries are getting out, the inner side gets outside, and the boundary is melting into a tiny, tiny point, the tiniest point, whatever. And so there is no inner and outside anymore. It's just because the inside was ungestülpt. Ungestülpt, yeah. Inside out. Is it like that? Yes, it's like that. You play the viola, right?

[04:15]

In an orchestra or a group? I suppose if I played the viola, which I certainly don't. Is it big? How big is it? How big is it? Little one? Violin? Okay, so... I guess I would imagine, have an image of the peripersonal space as a body while you're playing, because it must be something like that. And once I kind of had that image, I let the image jump to the whole orchestra. And then I'd let it feel that the body was the whole orchestra. Then I'd bring it into this little dot, and I'd play from there and open it back up.

[05:18]

That's the kind of things I play with anyway. And it's actually rooted in this practice of Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara, folding the world in and folding the world out. And why in Zen we usually have Manjushri or Avalokiteshvara, and the Buddha. Because there are two practices. I mean, they're one practice, but expressed in two bodhisattvas. And in koans, it's the blue-clip records particularly, as most of you know, it's expressed as... gathering in which is manjushri or wisdom and compassion which is folding out so this basic thing you've noticed in practice is rooted in much of

[06:42]

the teaching and practice of Zen. Okay. I have two more wishes. The morning service, I have two wishes concerning the morning service, and this morning service is very important to me. But I don't understand the text. I don't think there is any translation that says that this is the first and that is the second.

[07:57]

The great ability of these very complicated things You have the capacity to put difficult things into easy things and into images I can work with over weeks. For example, the image with this billboard. The second is the Sutra. If I understood correctly, Knatán comes from the Mahayana tradition and he has presented different sutras in different small books. And my request would be that, I can't remember now, but many years ago there was a seminar about the heart sutra.

[08:58]

And my wish would be that there would be a seminar about the various basic sutras. And like Thich Nhat Hanh, this is what I wish, he wrote many books about the different sutras, and years ago you gave a seminar on the Heart Sutra, and I wish you mehr davon oder sowas. Right now? Right now? Right now? So what are you asking? You want me to give a seminar next year in the Heart Sutra and you promise to sign up. Well, Yudita's not here, but she'll be back. She's figuring out my schedule. All about the Diamond Sutra and all the sutra about the breath, yeah. Well, I could if I'm asked I could.

[10:08]

I'm not in the service itself. what the texts are about is not so important to me. I'm interested in the practice of the texts. So the practice of the menu of the Heart Sutra The Heart Sutra is a kind of menu. Yeah. Is that the teachings that are embedded in the Heart Sutra are not present when we chant?

[11:13]

Or they're present only because you get so familiar with the phrases, that they begin to work in you. Now, I've had people come to me in Doksan who don't know the meaning of the Japanese, and it wasn't in English. and they actually ask me about something, and they say, I hear it in this, and they seem to, the phrase seems to be what they have felt. So the content of the sutras isn't so important as the texture. of the sound.

[12:23]

And I don't know how to create as well the texture in English or German as the Sino-Japanese already creates. So as I said the other day, the sense of creating a sound body I think it works better if we chant at least part of the time in the sign of Japanese. Again, because we have this new figure.

[13:39]

You know, the service is... I said the other day, the service is more complicated than anyone can do. Like a piece of music that no one could play. But you can try to play it. So let me just for the heck of it, I've never done this before. throw out some of the images on which the service is based. Now, again, in the Avantam Saka Sutra, it tries to characterize the sound body as a lattice, a lattice, like a garden woven together like pieces of wood woven together in a garden.

[14:51]

Like a net, but a lattice. I think in physics a lattice is molecules held in a certain spatial pattern. Okay. So the image in the Avatamsaka Sutra is the sound body is a lattice of crystals. A net of crystals. And I've tried different images But the crystal one I don't like, it's kind of like rocks. But actually, when I imagine the sound as crystals, it really, maybe it's an early radio, it really has some power as an image for me.

[15:53]

And I have tried to work with different images, but when I imagine this sound as a crystal, then it has a... Then it works? Yeah, for me it works. I've tried, when I know an image, I try various versions of it to see which one holds together. It's kind of fun for me to try out these things. Hope you don't mind. And as I've told a number of you, because one or two of you asked about bowing in the Zendo and things, and if someone asked, what are we bowing to? Well, the basic... one of the basic ideas, my legs are getting so creepy, it's hard for me to bother.

[17:14]

Ideally, your hands are up here. Everything is a yoga posture. Everything's a posture. Your hands are here. This is all arbitrary. All these rules are arbitrary. But you have to put your hand somewhere, so why not here? And then you can argue with it. I like it better here. I like it better this way. But then you have to deal with the argument. There's actually some physiological reason because here you're really related to the heart chakra. And Rinzai Chakra tends to bow from here. So the bow is basically a gesture up through this space, this auric space, up through the space, gathering in your body to here, to here, through the chakras, to here, and then bringing it up into a kind of, we feel, a kind of clarity that you can share.

[18:31]

And then from that, ideally, you come down with your back straight. Hard for me. I used to be able to do it easily. Then you come forward and you touch your elbows first. You don't leave it with your hands because that leaves us thinking. You leave it with your elbows because not too many people think through their elbows. But we all think through our hands. It does that when you put out the whole arm or your touchy arm. And then you always wanted us to do it three times. He thought we didn't bow enough. And he had a teacher who got a callus on his forehead because his teacher made him bow so much.

[19:38]

So when you come down, as much as possible, and then you lift the Buddha up on your hands, just to make sure he's there or she's there. Are you there? Then, when you stand up, you stand up inside the Buddha. So you're not bowing to the Buddha, you're bringing the Buddha into yourself. Okay, so the Buddha is, and you can see in this new figure, this line from the second toe, I pointed out to some people, it's obvious, so from the second toe through the body all the way up through the... through the leg, knee, up to the Buddha on the top. And that's there so that you can line your spine up with it. So the person who is leading the service is supposed to ideally, with their own body, create a relationship with the figure.

[21:09]

And if I'm looking for a figure for us, I look for a practice figure that you can do that with. Some figures you can't do that with. They're just pretty, but they're not really... And like Catholic cathedrals, particularly in the early Middle Ages, were based, as far as I know, based on a chakra system. And the shape of the door like this is meant to awaken your aura as you go through it. But in Zen, in Buddhism, you don't shape the building that way.

[22:10]

You shape the altar that way and expect to bring it into your body, not get it from the building, but bring it into your body. So if I'm leading the service, for instance, I try to establish this kind of relationship. My body just does it. And what Susanna said, ideally, you just, as much as possible, lessen all the senses or bring all the senses, including seeing, into sound. Because here what we're doing is concentrating on sound. Now do you see what I mean? That the service is actually, the concept of the service is more difficult as you can do. You can only do little parts of it.

[23:14]

Now, once you enter the service, you enter a structured space. The first structure is simply when you cross the line of the Buddha, you bow. In case it's arbitrary. To show it's arbitrary, the doshi can just walk back and forth. But the jisha can't. If the jisha is lighting a candle, the jisha shouldn't. To stand in front of the altar, they should keep one foot placed and reach forward and do what they have to do. Because they should be located here and not stepped into the space of the altar.

[24:18]

The structure could be anything. The point is, in all these things, is that all is based on the idea that you already have a structure. When you walk in a room, you have an image of the room and you imagine that's the room. So the sutra Or the service is asking you to imagine a different kind of space than you usually imagine. And the difference is the point. Okay. So, your cushion... In particular, the jisya cushion, for instance.

[25:28]

The jisya standing here, the altar is there. The jisya has to, in the middle of the service, go up to the altar. The jisya just doesn't go. The jisya steps back as if the cushion had a door. Is that out of the door of the cushion? And then you go around the cushion. It's a structured space, an invisibly structured space. And it feels actually, to me, it feels good to do it. And then you begin to feel in other spaces. I go into the kitchen. I see in the morning what space the two cooks have structured. And every morning it's a little different. The cooked structure, a different space in the kitchen. For me, it feels good. For example, when I go into the kitchen in the morning, I can feel what kind of room the cooks have there.

[26:33]

Okay. Now, the movements of the doshis and all of us, actually, ideally should be movements which don't anticipate the next movement. Okay, now this is getting at something I talked about in some seminars recently of this fellow who first pointed out Benjamin Leavitt. Sorry, I didn't get that. This person who in San Francisco in the 70s pointed out a man named Benjamin Leavitt. Pointed out that the body knows when it's going to act. about 500 milliseconds before the mind knows. So consciousness has the sensation of deciding, but actually it's editing. Das Bewusstsein hat die Möglichkeit zu entscheiden, aber eigentlich formt das nur oder es editiert nur noch.

[27:54]

So if I'm... You're the Buddha. If you're the Buddha and I'm here and I'm going to go around the cushion this way, right? Ideally, when I step back out of the door of my cushion, you can't tell from my body that I'm next going to go this direction. There should be a stopped feeling in every step. Now, service is used to teach this to you if you pick up on the image and feel it. Some people do, some people don't. Normally, what I'm presenting to you is only taught In transmission, the people are just before they become teachers.

[29:08]

So ideally, I step back And I could go any direction. This is also called Nirvana. Because it's like the last thing you'll do while you're alive. So you do each ceremony. like you were nowhere else, that there was nowhere else to be. So that's expressed in, you stop, you're not going anywhere. I like in English that nowhere is also now here. And in English, nowhere also means nowhere.

[30:21]

So then if I turn and go here, and if you notice in services, if you ever go to Japan, the doshis walk in the funniest way. They look hot when they walk. So there's almost the feeling that You're going downhill and just let your body carry you. But at each step, you might just start going backwards suddenly. And actually, in ceremonies, sometimes it says, like if I'm a bit old, sometimes I go back, I'm supposed to go back, and I turn and I'm supposed to say a poem spontaneously. Not supposed to, but there's an opportunity.

[31:28]

So this kind of way of walking, which is also very closely related to the no theater. The same training. And one interesting thing about watching the Noh, which I deeply like, you can take a photograph of a Noh actor anytime, and it's a great photograph. And as you probably know, the known stage is divided into a smaller front stage where you're in the time space of the audience. And when you step back in the stage, in the bigger part, you're in a timeless space where the grandmother can appear.

[32:38]

And the good no actor has to... I have a feeling of being in the present here and being in a timeless space, just stepping back. And we talked yesterday about sculpting and constellation work of Bart Hellinger. But when you step back into this part of the stage, in the audience, you're really engaged. images start appearing in your likened constellation.

[33:46]

So in a way, the ideas that Bart Hellinger is working with are very similar to the ideas that no theater tries to work with in creating a space which people suddenly have actual images of their own grandmother or whatever. Now, this whole event of the service is considered a body. Generally, it is a body and not a mind. We generally in Buddhism call it a body and not a mind. We call it a body because it's located in space. It has boundaries and it has physical expression. And the training in the services which is given to people before they are transmitted, is how this body is brought into the doshi, doshi means the person doing the service, on the doshi's body and then

[35:07]

opened up into the whole service. Now the question is, is this all a bunch of nonsense or not? At first you sort of know about it and feel it. and has generally talked to people who clearly have already got the feel of it. But knowing it, feeling it, somehow over the years it develops. Okay, that's enough for all that. And so the meaning of the sutra in that is only a part of it.

[36:23]

Okay. I think I have a first-generation question. Oh, really? At last. It's hard for me to start on purpose. It's difficult for me to sit without intention. And I ask myself, is it possible to have intentions that don't disturb the meditation? Do you mean intentions or expectations? without expectations. But what comes up is I enjoy to experience and to explore these things in meditation.

[37:28]

And I don't know, is that allowed, or should I just pass these ideas on and just go deeper? Is it allowed? To explore the things, or should she let them pass while I don't invite you past it? Yeah. I like the word allowed, though. It suggests the Buddhist police are lurking. That's probably my translation. Peering into your meditation. That's not allowed. You can do whatever you want. So the advice is to let things come and go. Let discursive thinking come and go.

[38:50]

But images, yeah, I think it's good actually to explore them sometime. And it's useful to explore one's psychological processes sometimes, particularly, as I mentioned, to find the triggers what initially starts a mood or a process. And of course we sit with some intention. deep intention. And the view of Mahayana Buddhism is that you can't really have realization without your intention being the benefit of others and yourself. And it's pretty difficult not to have some expectations or hopes.

[40:02]

I wish something interesting would happen. Maybe enlightenment or something. But as much as possible you want to come to most of your mind feeling is without expectations. So maybe if once a week you notice you have a little expectation, that's not too often, but it's all right. But mostly just notice it. And slowly the mind without expectation gets wider.

[40:47]

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