Every now and then I think I should speak about Sangha itself as well as the teaching. Because our ability to continue a Sangha is inseparable from our ability to continue a teaching. So we have to have at least some people who make an effort to understand how it's put together and how it can continue. And how a physical location relates to the continuation of a Sangha. Teachers often took the name of the

[01:03]

place where they were, like I might be called in China, Quellenweg Roshi. And the Globe Theater, I've spoken about this, not here, I think, but the Globe Theater in England made Shakespeare possible. There was no public theater in Europe. It was all done in palaces and things like that until England started public theaters where anyone could go to. And the several theaters, there were quite a few, they were started, first ones were started when Shakespeare was a teenager. Created the opportunity and the talent around Shakespeare to actually Shakespeare transformed English language.

[02:42]

And one guy in Los Angeles starting a gallery created the Los Angeles and California art scene. Creating a way for artists to get together and know each other and be influenced by each other. So the relationship between a teaching and a sangha and a site for practice are complex and not absolutely essential but pretty close to that.

[03:48]

So if we can have a develop a relationship and commitment to a site and to teaching and to those who practice together, we have a chance of continuing the teaching. And I don't think there's any doubt in this world, and it's what has motivated me from high school years, That the world needs a more sophisticated, more inclusive, more true to the way things are worldview. That the world needs a more sophisticated, more inclusive, more true to the way things

[04:54]

Yeah, and Buddhism is the closest I've found to such a worldview. Basically, all of the teaching arises from the wisdom of knowing that the world is interactively interdependent. And im Grunde genommen entstehen alle Lehren, alle Weisheit aus der Tatsache, dass die Welt interagierend wechselseitig bedingt ist. Now, I spoke near the end of the letter, part of my test show yesterday. Während des letzten Teils meines test shows gestern was the, about the, I talked about the Alaya Vijnana. Da habe ich über das Alaya Vijnana gesprochen. one of the most profound ideas in Buddhism.

[06:07]

But I don't want it to be just an idea of trying to complete the picture of what a human being is. I want it to be a practice, to be approached through a practice we can do. So if wisdom is the realization And the realization of interactive interdependence. Let's start with the most basic starting point I can think of. Which I don't think you can even say is Buddhism.

[07:14]

And what I would say is our basic aliveness. And if you see your basic aliveness as a spectrum of being alive, And one end of the spectrum is Buddha. Because if Buddha is anything, he represents being most fully alive. Most fully alive in the context of this interdependent alive world. So we can all start on the spectrum of Buddha Him or herself.

[08:30]

So können wir alle am Ende des Spektrums beginnen, an dem Buddha selbst steht. Yeah, a Buddha doesn't have a gender or has all genders. Nowadays they keep increasing how many genders there are. Der oder die Buddha hat kein Geschlecht. Also heutzutage gibt es ja immer mehr Geschlechtsmöglichkeiten. And he does wear various kinds of clothes. Und er trägt auch unterschiedlichste Arten von Kleidung. So let's start with our basic aliveness. Also beginnen wir mal mit unserer grundlegenden Lebendigkeit. And this you can notice. Und das kannst du bemerken. And what I've been suggesting is you notice it and this, what I'm speaking about is partly a review of what we've been talking about. We can notice our aliveness as also time. So I'm calling that, I've been calling that bodily time. Und das habe ich leibliche Zeit genannt.

[09:49]

Which you've discovered how to translate. Ja. Yeah, it took me years to myself in English to settle on the phrase bodily time. Und auch ich habe Jahre im Englischen gebraucht, um zu diesem Ausdruck im Englischen bodily time, leibliche Zeit, zu kommen. But it's something... It's something you already are. And you can notice it. And I think when we call it bodily time, it gives us a depth which isn't there if we just say aliveness or bodily aliveness. Because when we say bodily time, it's immediately your own time, you are time. Yeah, and it's immediately a contrast with clock time.

[10:59]

Ivan Illich used to say, I want a clock which has lost its hours. So, So bodily time is, again, a reference point. A resource. A location. Whatever happens, you can bring your attention to bodily time. And maybe Zazen helps us develop this territory of experience.

[11:59]

Where you can shift your attention from problems, anxieties, discussions with others or whatever. To a location which is potentially imperturbable. It's a location that's always there. And practicing still sitting helps create a stillness which is, again, potentially a realizable imperturbability. So the concept of aliveness as an experienceable location that you bring attention to, then suddenly becomes a resource of even imperturbability.

[13:29]

So you keep reminding yourself of this imperturbable location. And you feel it as a location. And it's, of course, you have to find techniques to notice it. And it helps to have techniques to bring attention to this bodily location. And as a review and as you almost all know, the basic yogic practice of bringing attention to the body is to use the bridge and river of the breath. So you again form an intention to bring attention to the breath.

[14:46]

And you concentrate on the intention more than the success of the attention. And eventually you make this remarkable shift where attention simply rests in the body. Rests in the breath, rests in the body, and then in phenomena. And this simple and essential yogic skill immediately locates us in the Buddha body and the practice of it is the Dharma and the feeling of the location being in the breath, body and phenomena locates you in an interactive way with the

[15:50]

so-called physical things of the world. For your sense of location includes your location wider and wider. And many of the what we can call wisdom practices are how to include your location as beingness. And Heidegger's contribution to Western philosophy, there are many, but I would say the main one, is that being is not your being. being is always being with there's no being which isn't being with being with others being with the instrumentality of this physical world

[17:19]

the usability of this physical world. And that simple truth and Heidegger's emphasis that being is always being with, which I call beingness, This all included in and folds out from this simple practice of bringing having an intention to bring attention to the breath, body and phenomena. So this yogic breath it's common sense isn't it to have your attention be you yourself

[18:41]

So you also can, as I've said earlier, you can bring attention to attention. When I was in Vienna last year, I spoke at Cottage Casa. And I said that Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are three categories of being alive. Do you remember? Okay. So here we've got a very simple concept, aliveness. And noticing aliveness... And noticing aliveness is attention. And having attention transformed bodily aliveness into a sphere of attention.

[19:57]

And that is also developed through practicing Zazen. And the practice of it in all circumstances deeply empowers our Zazen. Okay. So we have a word here, aliveness. We're all alive. But now we add the idea that aliveness can be a location. It is a location, but we can have the concept of it being a location. And to feel it as a location, we need attention. And feeling it as a location, the location becomes attention itself. And we can feel the spectrum of aliveness.

[21:19]

Sometimes we feel sort of lousy, sometimes we feel better. Sometimes our heart is agitated. Sometimes our breath is fast. Sometimes our mouth is dry. You begin to notice these various manifestations of aliveness. And you begin to find ways to notice your aliveness. Ways to notice aliveness. Like the pulse of the breath. Pulse of the heart. your metabolic pulse and the relationship sometimes there is a phase synchrony between the breath and the heart but usually only in non-dreaming deep sleep but it also

[22:44]

But it also happens in zazen. So this is another way in which I am quite sure we can speak about non-dreaming deep sleep surfacing in zazen. And in teachings prior to Buddhism, prior to the historical Buddha, Non-dreaming deep sleep was considered the bliss that we need every day. We're not conscious of it, but it is a bliss that can be part of our life. And it's another way of saying that when zazen becomes subtly and then more and more apparently blissful feeling.

[24:05]

And I would say we could describe that as a deeper and deeper integration of our aliveness. Okay, so now you've established yourself. Well, now you know you can establish yourself. It's a possibility fully in aliveness. And you can call it Buddhism if you want. Or somebody can say, what do you practice? I practice full aliveness. Yeah, that's good enough.

[25:07]

So once you really find yourself regularly located and relocatable in aliveness... That becomes a known, experienceable territory and resource. And then you can more clearly feel Contextual time. Which is also not clock time. So calling it bodily time allows us to notice the difference between bodily time and the time of the context in which we're embedded. How can you say this again?

[26:12]

Use calling bodily aliveness bodily time creates the possibility of noticing conceptually that every context we're in is usually a somewhat different time than bodily time. None of them And every context has its own contextual time. And none of the contexts are Greenwich Mean Time. I mean, Greenwich Mean Time. Except by accident sometimes. So you begin through these simple concepts of

[27:14]

consciousness, time, aliveness. You begin to recognize that your living, your time of beingness is various. And then you find this dissonance and assonance and rhythm with or through contextual time. And then you find this dissonance and assonance and this rhythm with and through the contextual time. As Sukhiroshi always used to say, chant with your ears.

[28:24]

And I think most people took that to mean something like listen to other people chanting. And he meant something more like, feel your voice enter into the shared voice that you hear. And then return that shared voice to your own voice. If he'd meant listen with your ears, he would have said that.

[29:29]

So what he meant by saying chant with your ears was to enter into the world in which we're embedded. And when you begin to experience that, you begin to understand why so much of Buddhism is enveloped in chanting practice. Why the concept and practice of mantra can call forth an inner body, a shared inner body. And can be used to call forth various practices. Okay, so now, We're starting with, again, something so basic, just aliveness.

[30:48]

We're adding some things to it, location, time. And experiencing it as a particularity. And through the particularity of your bodily time, moving into noticing contextual bodily time. And to notice that when you're in contextual time, you're simultaneously just by your very presence in the sonata or something like that of composable time. As soon as you're standing or sitting Seza here in service, Your sitting, your posture, enters you into contextual time.

[32:05]

You start to compose contextual time. And you can particularly feel when you start to chant. entering into, I'm composing our shared contextual time. Okay. Now, Dogen said that clock time is getting the best of us. Okay, so contextual time allows us to get a feel for what I'm calling gestational time. Die kontextuelle Zeit lässt zu, dass wir ein Gefühl für das bekommen, was sich Austragungszeit nennt.

[33:22]

It's even like an experienceable space which turns into time. Das ist sogar so etwas wie ein erfahrbarer Raum, der sich in Zeit verwandelt. And it's where your childhood resides and still influences you. And it's where your karma resides. And it's where your innermost request resides. And a teaching like, you know, interdependence. And we can think of gestational time as our relationship to interdependence. And gestational time assumes your trust in... incubation in contrast to understanding.

[34:31]

And you can use it to put questions in. Where is my watch? Didn't work. I spent a week in gestational times asking where the heck is my watch. But somehow mentioning it to you made me realize you were the last resort, so there must be another possibility. But I can enter in a question like what is Buddha? What kind of human being do I wish existed on this planet? idealistic questions we have as a child.

[35:45]

Or adults think they're idealistic. I don't think they're idealistic. I think they're a dynamic of our beingness. But if you want results, you're impatient. It's not so good. But if you have patience to live with the possibility of the kind of human being you want on this planet, you're much more likely to notice such a person if such a person appears in your life. And you're much more likely to notice in the spectrum of aliveness those aspects that are potentially we can call Buddha. Yeah, that's enough for today, I think. I hope this afternoon you can ask me some questions.

[37:20]

Like, how do we continue the practice? What ideas you have about it? What do you think we should, you should do about it? Was glaubt ihr, dass wir tun sollten, oder dass du dazu tun solltest? And questions like, I spent a lot of time in contextual time, but I can't get myself into bodily time. Oder so Fragen wie zum Beispiel, ich habe schon viel Zeit in der kontextuellen Zeit verbracht, aber ich kriege mich nicht in die leibliche Zeit. Imprisoned in contextual time, terrible. Ja, kontextuellen Zeit gefangen, das ist schrecklich. Hey, the secret door is bodily time. The key is bodily time. Thank you very much.

[38:13]

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