I've been trying to, you know, speak about something that I haven't yet figured out, I haven't yet spoken about. It's arising from trying to speak about the process of questioning in practice. But it keeps getting distracted by things, and I give a different talk. Well, the topic is actually of questioning as a tool. It's just very rich and it leads in lots of directions.

[01:09]

Like I get distracted by tassels. Why do Chinese and Japanese things and sometimes Western things have tassels? Maybe I should hang them off my ears. Those are called earrings, aren't they? And I have a beautiful Chinese magnifying glass from my aging eyes that Marie Louise gave me. And it has a tassel, too. Someone gave me a little hand drum that's exactly like the one that the Dalai Lama often uses when he's doing ceremonies. And I like it a lot.

[02:15]

But I don't want to use it during a lecture because you'd all think I'm imitating the Dalai Lama. But it's a little skull drum type thing with Anyway, it's a small one. I have a couple of big ones, but this is a small one. So I use it often when I'm, you know, sitting and kind of wondering what I should speak about. Yeah, when I sort of like need a little space to absorb or not get distracted, I pick up the drum and then I go back to work. And you have to hold it.

[03:19]

Like many of these things, you can't really, like the arioki, it doesn't really fit on the mat. If you have one of the little lacquer mats. And there's really no place to hold it exactly. You've got to hold it kind of loosely, partly on the drum and partly on this tassel, which is swinging around. You know things like that. To hold your finger and just let your finger flip. You can't have your mind in your finger to do that. If you have your mind in your finger, it won't flip. So there's little drummers like that.

[04:20]

You know, they swing back and forth and hit the two skull parts. And if you have any mind in it, it doesn't quite work. You just have to kind of... Yeah, that's good. So that's, you know, like, good for preparing a talk, a Zen talk, because I shouldn't have my mind in it and... Why does it have a tail? Is it an animal-like quality? Or is it to make it a relational object?

[05:20]

Or is it to increase the peripersonal space of the object? We talked about that the other day. The peripersonal space is like knowing in your body the shape of your car. Dieser peripersonale Raum, über den haben wir unlängst gesprochen, und das ist wie das Wissen um die Größe des Autos. And I think the addiction, one of the addictive aspects of computer games, I've never played one so I don't really know I'm just guessing I guess it's an addictive extension of peripersonal space into the computer And it's probably rather an ecstatic power feeling.

[06:32]

Maybe because it's may be dangerous because it's not easily translatable into your ordinary circumstances. But tassels are not too dangerous an extension of my peripersonal space, my peripheral space. But I think tassels also are... a vertical element.

[07:34]

A vertical element. Verticality happens by itself because of gravity. And this is really, even though I hold it this way, it's essentially horizontal because I'm in control of it. Because you're in control of it, it's horizontal. I can extend it into space, but this just keeps hanging down. So it's actually a kind of interesting comment on the relationship between what we control and what we don't control. So, yeah. Proust has an interesting beginning to some long essay or something he wrote, I don't remember. Many talks.

[08:51]

It's an anecdote he tells that I particularly like. He remembers years ago, at that time for him years ago, When he was reading and the cook came in with some food and it annoyed him that she came in with food. Because she interrupted his reading. When he was sitting by the in a chair by the window in a late morning before lunch.

[09:51]

She brought his lunch in on a tray and put it down, and he didn't really want to be interrupted. But he put his book down and ate his lunch. Years later, when he's relating this story, He couldn't remember at all what he was reading That had been interrupted and forgotten But he remembered almost all the details of the room, the cook, the tray, the meal, the trees, and the season outside the window.

[10:59]

So what is, what, what... What memory is functioning here? Welche Erinnerung ist hier am Werk? Now again, let's go back to this example of Sophia. Jetzt gehen wir nochmal zurück zu dem Beispiel von Sophia. Because, you know, if I puzzle over an example and... you know, it takes me time to actually see the elements. Wenn ich so über ein... So I'm apologizing for bringing it up to you three or four times. But I've brought it up continuously in myself or in whatever this location is.

[11:59]

And, yeah, so Sophia comes back in April, April, May? April. April, from being away for six months. Eight. Eight months? Eight months. I need her. Also, Sophia kommt im April zurück zum Johanneshof, nachdem sie acht Monate weg war. And she clearly remembers the apartment with her body. Und ganz eindeutig erinnert sie die Wohnung mit ihrem Körper. But she says she doesn't remember anything. Und sie sagt, sie erinnert sich an gar nichts. Where is it? What place is this? Was ist das für ein Ort? But what memory is functioning here? Yeah, okay. So then I watched her the other day and Marie-Louise has also done that.

[13:18]

What I was watching, as I said, she had a whole bunch of shoes out and was trying them on and trying on shoes on top of shoes and describing every detail to herself. Okay, so I would say what she's doing is she's articulating bodily knowing in terms of memory accessible consciousness. So next year when we come back, she'll probably have a memory accessible consciousness of the apartment. Und wenn wir das nächste Jahr zurückkommen, dann wird sie eine durch das Bewusstsein zugängliche Erinnerung von der Wohnung haben.

[14:27]

So she's articulating memory, accessible. She's articulating bodily knowing in terms of consciousness. Sie artikuliert Körperwissen im Sinne des Bewusstseins. And she's articulating consciousness in terms of bodily knowing. And I'm afraid what happens in this process for most of us, because of the way our culture is calibrated, tuned, And she'll more and more forget her bodily knowing and really only know consciousness accessible memory. Okay.

[15:35]

So, for example, if you are used to always having weather reports, Pretty soon, you won't be so sensitive to knowing what the weather is going to do through your own body. I suppose if I was a serious farmer... I would tell my offspring, you're not allowed to look at a weather report until you're 35. Because not only will you not know the weather through your body and what's going to happen,

[16:41]

You will not only not know the weather through your body and know what will happen. the ants knew whether the weather, winter, was going to be particularly cold or not. Months in advance. You know, dogs, I think dogs, I can't remember, know in advance in some intakes before an earthquake happens. These are anyway, whether it's accurate or not, are what I mean by bodily knowing. So to develop your bodily knowing as an accessible Maybe we should call it a K-knowing instead of just a knowing.

[18:04]

Like the German K. Yeah, I think you have to maybe deprive yourself of the usual ways we know things. Because we do get trained a certain way. I remember I took two classical music composers. You took them. I took them to the Fillmore Ballroom in San Francisco. Ballroom? Yeah, it's where... You're too young. Sorry. It's where, you know, San Francisco rock and roll... I know the Fillmore from the poster. From the poster?

[19:07]

Oh, yeah, we had the posters up from... I saved the old posters. And the Avalon Ballroom. Well, we're run by friends of mine, so I brought these two composers, happened to be in San Francisco. With a good friend of mine, we went inside. And it was the first time any of us had heard the Doors. Who is the singer? Jim Morrison. Jim Morrison, thanks. I couldn't remember. But it was the first time he'd appeared in San Francisco at the beginning of his career. My friend Earl and I We were entranced by this noise in the music and the guy. And the two classical musicians really said, help, help, and they ran out, actually ran out.

[20:14]

Their ears were trained, calibrated, Their consciousness accessible memory related to the ears didn't allow this sound. But a primitive guy like me who in college used to sleep with two speakers on either side of his pillow and turn the volume up full. We thought, well, this guy is better than we usually see at the Fillmore. Thank you. Yeah. So the Lankavatara Sutra has something called the syllable body, the name body, and the phrase or sentence body.

[21:49]

And it makes some outlandish comments that when you really understand Simultaneously, the syllable body, the name body, and the phrase body, this is the mind and body of a fully enlightened person. If you simultaneously understand them? Yeah, actualized. Okay, so I'm trying to get somewhere. I don't know if I'm making much progress, but we'll stumble along here. What is the syllable body?

[22:57]

Well, it's a way to refer to the bodily knowing when Sophia, for instance, knew the apartment. It doesn't just hear the word music, it hears mew and sick. Also das hört nicht einfach nur das Wort Musik, sondern das hört Mu und Sik. And Mu is very, I'm sorry you such a Zen thing, Mu and Sik are very much bodily intonations.

[24:00]

But once it's hooked together as a name, music, Then it brings up a different kind of memory, a different kind of bodily space. And it's not yet a word, but it's a name. Es ist noch nicht ein Wort, aber es ist ein Name. Like if I say, Eva brought us tea and cakes today. Is that right? You did? Und wenn ich also sage, Eva hat uns heute Tee und Kuchen gebracht. And Eva as a name is much more than just this object which brought us cakes.

[25:04]

Also, Eva als Name ist viel mehr als dieses Objekt, das die Treppe raufkam und uns Kuchen gebracht hat. Okay, so, but brat and tea and Eva, when they're words, they're just part of the sentence. Wenn sie aber nur Worte sind und einfach nur Teil dieses Satzes sind... Then we could substitute Beata or... And we can simply replace it with Beate or Judita or Nicole. Yes, but it's a difference. If Nicole brought the cakes, the verticality of the word Nicole stretches in many directions, in different directions than the verticality of Eva. You go in different directions. So names jump out of sentences.

[26:09]

They don't stay stuck in sentences. Once a name becomes a word, then it's sentenced to the sentence. Imprisoned in the sentence, yeah. Okay. Okay, now in the syllable body, the territory of bodily knowing, which maybe I'd like to try calling for today the matrix, which the root in English means womb and mother and a woven material.

[27:17]

In the bodily matrix, the territory of bodily knowing, Time and space are stretched out. I mean, this is the territory of peripersonal space, the shape of your car. You don't know it consciously, you know it in this bodily knowing. And this is where you know the weather before it changes. This is where you know, not consciously, but know that you're going to get the flu perhaps in a couple of days.

[28:26]

Und das ist auch dort, wo ihr wisst, nicht mit dem Bewusstsein, aber dass ihr die Krippe in einigen Tagen bekommt. So that's what I mean, time and space are stretched out. You have the sense of the auric body. The what, auric? Auric. Aura, yes. Das ist, was ich verstehe, unter Raum und Zeit sind ausgedehnt. Also ihr habt das Gefühl für den Aura-Körper. Yeah, and the... auric body and this body which knows that you're going to get the flu or a headache in a while. It's like a different kind of memory. It's memory, but it's not consciously accessible memory. Now, you know, I've recently been making use of this observation of Benjamin Leavitt in the 70s in San Francisco.

[30:04]

Is that you're, if you wire the body up, the... Seventies. The body, she thinks everything happened to me in the sixties. Even in the 50s. We won't talk about the 40s and the 30s. And in the 20s, talk to my mother. Or my babysitter. Okay, so he showed that the body... is already moving the arm before consciousness gets the information. There's about a half a second, a 500 milliseconds delay. Before the consciousness sends the information.

[31:09]

Before the consciousness then makes the editing decision to let the arm move. So I in my own thinking call this Leavitt space. The space before consciousness knows. Now many of our practices are actually designed to hold you or enter you into what I'm calling Leavitt space. The space before consciousness arises. Now we can call Leavitt space also the field of mind. Before the contents of consciousness arise.

[32:27]

Okay, now what if you said, oh my goodness, I'd really like to know a lot about Leavitt Space. Okay. Okay. Yeah, and you have to employ the Zen technique of asking questions. Also, dann müsst ihr die Zen-Technik des Fragenstellens anwenden. What is Lebet-Space? Was ist Lebet-Raum? Now, how much time do we have? Not enough time, of course. Also, wie viel Zeit haben wir? Nein, nicht genug, natürlich. If the Eno could just turn on Lebit Space, we could go on for a while. She pulls a lever and we're all Lebit Space. She can do it, actually, but I don't ask her to very much. Then you'd have to, you know, words, Sophia's using words.

[33:51]

And she's using words, both German and English. And she's articulating her bodily actions in terms of consciousness. Language consciousness. And what is a word? A word is a repeated pattern repeated through the socializing processes of speech and reading, a word rises out of a whole sociolinguistic context that mostly describes the form of our whole world to us.

[35:05]

So a single word is tied to the whole sociolinguistic context which gives it meaning. But it doesn't actually describe the whole world. And it's very difficult to use words because they always refer back to this sociolinguistic context. That's where they take their meaning. Okay, so let's take a word like in Buddhism, one-pointedness. Can you understand it from the point of view of one and pointedness?

[36:16]

How do you say that in German? I don't know. Könnt ihr das jetzt von dem Gesichtspunkt von Einsgerichtetheit verstehen? Well, I don't think so, because one and pointed and all, it comes out of a context that's not the context of practice. A social context which isn't practice. Oh dear. Oh ye. You have to put your hands over your eyes. So what we need is maybe not words but signs.

[37:23]

Finely tuned feelings or signs that rise maybe come out of not a sociolinguistic context but a sangha semiotic practice context. Okay. So what is one-pointedness? Well, it's an experiential territory. that the word points to but doesn't describe. It doesn't represent, the word doesn't represent the experience. Das Wort repräsentiert die Erfahrung nicht.

[38:36]

Now, some words do represent experience, like buzz represents buzzing. And murmur, in English, murmur is the sound of a stream of conversation, murmuring. But most words are not onomatopoeic like that. They're just concepts. So how are we going to reach into our experience to find a territory of meaning like a word? So what you're really doing to actualize your experience in practice, to actualize your experience in practice,

[39:40]

Sorry, I'm not good at this one. To actualize your experience. Okay, the two wings here. Now I'm already starting a third lecture here. And the second one has just been abbreviated. So I think I have to stop. So we need an epilogue. One-pointedness is something like the experience of the point-field shift.

[40:59]

A point and there's a field. So if I try to describe it in words, one-pointedness is something like... The focus on a point which is simultaneously the holding and knowing of a whole field. Or if I use the term all-at-onceness. An essential, actually experiential term for Buddhism. Das ist eigentlich ein wirklich auf Erfahrung berufender Begriff des Buddhismus.

[42:04]

But all at once is actually a finely tuned feeling in between other feelings. Aber alles auf einmalheit ist eigentlich ein ganz fein eingestelltes Gefühl zwischen oder mitten unter anderen Gefühlen. Or, you know, as I spoke the other day, that all words or verbs in Buddhism. We don't, in a sense, object is not an object. It doesn't represent the object. Repräsentiert ein Objekt nicht wirklich ein Objekt. Like buzz represents buzz. So wie summen, summen repräsentiert. You mean in America flies buzz and in Germany they zoom?

[43:05]

Ja. We're cousins. Also ihr glaubt, also wirklich in Amerika buzzen die Fliegen und in Deutschland summen die? I can remember there was a German fly in Creston and it zoomed. I brought it with me in my luggage. Zoom, it came out of my suitcase. So a word, a sense object releases as it appears. Ein Sinnesobjekt lässt los, sobald es auftaucht. So actualized emptiness would be when all mental and sense objects... All mental objects and sense... So actualized emptiness... Aktualisierte Leerheit... Would be when all sense objects... Ist, wenn alle Sinnesobjekte... And all mental objects... Und alle mentalen Objekte...

[44:09]

are at the moment of our perception are released into the field of knowing. So everything that appears is at the same time released. So every object is an activity or is a non-object being released Or a relational object, which is really more of the tassel than the stick. And when that is your habit, you're not anymore in a sociolinguistic environment. You're in a bodily knowing which is only secondarily the locus of the present, or the ecstatic focus of reading or something, or the half-known present of ordinary consciousness.

[45:17]

You know, as they say, be here now. Yeah, okay, that's enough. You can see we need a few more lectures to kind of get into this. So just think of this as a kind of game. Don't take any of this seriously. Maybe it'll come back later. Thanks a lot.

[45:54]

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