It was like this. You didn't talk much in your group? No, a little bit saturated. The beginning was like this. Then what happened? The result was also like this. I mean, you now have to define body and self. I have to? Yes. This has been the first question. So now the body and self must be defined. And the next question in our group was, why is the body lived? Why is it a lived body? Who lives the body? What is it that lives the body? That was the question. That was silence. Alexander. Yes?

[01:03]

I wasn't going to say that. He said that there wasn't so much silence in our group. He was not even in the same group and you're already passing the baton? We tried... What koan? From the self that authenticates and cultivates. It could be a koan. It's not a koan formally, but... It's in the genjo koan. It's in the classical of Dogon called the genjo koan, yeah. Yeah. That's what Dogen Gensho calls koan, but it's actually not koan.

[02:07]

You could call it koan. And we tried to describe our understanding of the body. And it was something like this. Shall I try? Yes, please. So I said that... He makes life difficult. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, even now I couldn't say anything if there wasn't a body who... That's right.

[03:08]

But what I mean is that every normal sentence is somehow impossible to be produced by the self or by a mental self, because it's too... I mean, I couldn't speak fluently and you couldn't understand me fluently. there wasn't a bigger understanding, a bigger way of understanding than in the mental way. And from there on, when I realized this, I mean, then everything becomes, could somehow shift, because then the whole thing is like more being than being built up by a self. So if you see it that way, then everything could turn around, in the sense that it is more of an event than you yourself create or construct or believe to create. Okay.

[04:14]

Yes. So if anyone from the group would like to add something. We also had the example of if somebody was to hold a speech, let's say on Monday morning, and he could sit down on Sunday afternoon make a great speech and on Monday he steps forward to the desk and holds the speech. Or he could just, without big preparation, go there and pick the words from the situation. And we try to relate this to the topic of the lived body. Is it more living body if you do it the second way than the first? We talked about if I brew a cup of tea, did I pick the tea, the flavour, for example?

[05:24]

Or did the flavour pick me? We have, for example, For example, if someone holds a speech on Monday morning, then he could sit down on Monday afternoon and formulate the speech and then hold it on Monday, or he could just step into the speech without much preparation and find his words from the situation. We have also tried to bring this topic to the body. These observations are good. The question is, making these observations, and sorting them out, are we able to make them mean anything?

[06:36]

to our life, in our life. If these observations have validity and we do or don't live that way, say we don't live that way, like Frank said, can we Turn it around? How would we turn it around? What means do you use to turn it around? Yeah, so... In our discussion we had similar topics or similar questions and we asked us the question, what about something like the lived mind? Can we separate a lived body from a lived mind or is there a way that a lived mind goes together with a lived body or is there somehow a separate

[07:48]

lived mind and lived body, something like that. And we ended also up starting from this dogma phrase that we also could call lived body something like lived space or experienced space. That's quite different than living in the thinking mind, identification in the thinking mind. Yes. So we had... similar questions, also more questions than answers, and we asked ourselves the question, is there also something like a living spirit next to the living body, and does a living spirit always belong to the living body, how does a living spirit work, and how does a living spirit support, or a spirit, or what kind of spirit supports the living body,

[08:52]

what kind of spirit separates us from the living body and based on the sentence by Dogen we came to the conclusion that there is also something like a living body has something to do with living space or experienceable space Someone else. Thank you. We also had questions, for example, a question like, what is a body?

[10:00]

How do I experience my body? I have another example. I concentrate on the elbow and look at the body from the elbow. I look at the body from the thinking. For example, the difference, do I observe my body out of my thinking mind or, for example, do I observe my body from a position, from a spot like the elbow? Do I use a spot like that to observe the body? Yes. Then we realized that if we If we are able to have the identification more in the body, or in the feeling of the body, that we then are not so dependent

[11:13]

We are not so focused on outside circumstances. Like preference or emotions. Okay. No one else? We tried to define the body and had great difficulties. So we had a hard time in the beginning to just define what body is because very quickly the borders became very open and fluent. So we couldn't exactly say what the body is without naming the rest of the world as well. Also the separation between spirit and body as a lived life was almost impossible.

[12:43]

We could do it by definition, but it was always body and spirit. Also the definition of mind or by itself was difficult because as a lived mind it was always at least part of the body or the body was involved. And as you said earlier, every physical activity also has a mental activity and vice versa. And another important aspect was that we use a lot of force to create this separation again and again. Also, we are putting in a lot of effort to somehow separate ourselves from the rest of the world and we probably would treat the world differently if we wouldn't do that. We started with the question, what moved us most in your talk?

[14:13]

And one movement was the poem that went deeper than the skin. And another, the idea, how would we, our seminar, how does it work exactly simultaneously with Roshi's seminar? How would that look? We once made an idea of what our seminar would look like. And we thought about this question, how would our seminar look like in the difference of the seminar, the topic you gave us? What is the body?

[15:39]

Does the body stop here where I can touch the body? Mr. Michael, the question is about what is with the self. For example, it touched me that, as Roger said, the attention is on the self. I asked myself the question, you told us to move the observation to the Self. What is the Self? To move the observation to the body. And there was the question, what's the Self, what's the body? and I only used it as an example that I feel that my body is a kind of shell and that it is limited as a shell.

[16:56]

I have this feeling that my body is somehow like a container and it ends where the container ends, where the skin ends. but the living body, well, I only had an experience about it, and I brought it into connection with a living body, so that when I drive to work by car, and there are different ways to work, And the lift body, when I try to work by car, and there are different ways of going there. And I can make the decision, do I take the short way, which is not so nice, or do I take a longer way, which is probably nicer. And I just step aside and I take the first gear and the car goes.

[18:25]

And it doesn't go, it doesn't bump against the wall. And this is somehow like a lived body. You let your body decide which route to take. I like it that you say, you step aside. It sounds dangerous. Off goes the barge. It's probably my translation. But it's good actually, because there is experience of stepping aside and letting something else do it, by choosing the tea. How does it feel when I am in a friend's body?

[19:26]

How does it feel when I am in a sangha body? How does it feel to concentrate on these different bodies that we live in? And another question is to concentrate on the different bodies we might live in, like living in a sangha body, for example, or in a friendship, the body of a friendship. I think you covered most of it. Anyone else want to say something? I was touched by what you told about Sophie, how she said to her mother, I love you. It may be very profound, but I don't like to say it too little.

[20:30]

And the way you told it, how her body burns to her mother, And the mind makes a distinction and says, yes, I only love you a little bit. Then I had the feeling, I know that from myself. I combined that with the question, how did I get here, to Johanneshof? So that my body now sits here. Who decides that? Yes, and I think it's also love that decides that. That's not my head. Max, would you like to say something? Okay. I was moved by the story you told us about Sophia saying to Mother Louise, I love you, I love you just that much, and how her body expresses a laugh, and how she kind of, her thinking mind expresses a laugh, and I forget that I...

[21:32]

use that not enough in my life to say something, I love you, and that it was love that brought me to Johanneshof. So, so ungefähr. Anyone else? When we had our discussion, this body, this living body, was still full of the poem that brought me to tears. The tears came out. Because it opened a room in me where longing for intimacy is.

[22:37]

Because it opened a space inside myself, a space of intimacy. And then I thought, that's amazing. There was this poet who had a physical and physical experience. and there has been a poet and he had a mental and a bodily experience and has the ability to put that in words and in a rhythm and this is how the mental path goes, it goes to you and it sinks down into your body and maybe stirs up your body and then it comes back out of you and goes way out of you into my body. And that's astonishing, yeah, that something like that happens.

[23:55]

Yeah. There's a lot of internal, physical rhyme in the poem, like somewhere I have never, have and never, make the body do the same thing, have never traveled. So there is this place in this poem somewhere where I have not yet wandered, where I was not yet in the second century. Or, rendering breath, rendering death and forever. Rendering death and forever have a similar atmosphere of words. Yes, it's mental, but it's clearly the physicality of the words is given primacy over the mental quality of the words. Yes, that is mental, but primarily it is the physicality, the physicality of the words.

[25:13]

Now, it's obvious that Chinese and Japanese are very, the language is much more physical than our language. And if you ask a Chinese person, a Japanese person, about a particular character, kanji, They will say, do their finger. Oh yes, that one. And I think you may find you know more phone numbers in your hand than in your thinking. You mean you can dial certain numbers that you can't quite remember, but if you start dialing them, your hand dials.

[26:19]

Do you have that experience? So your memory capacity, can we turn some lights on back there? Is it possible? I mean, if they want to hide in the dark, it's all right. That's better. But now you've got us out. Just wait. What would you have to change? Change the switch again, he said. No, leave it on. Now wait. Okay. You know, when I started practicing... 45, 50 years ago.

[27:47]

In most people's thinking, the body-mind distinction was still very sharp. Very, very sharp. I mean, for people who have had philosophical interests, it's been a long time that the body-mind distinction has been... the dualism of body-mind has been... explored or denied. But now the whole kind of contemporary world health food stores, and new age, and you know, et cetera.

[28:54]

Meditation. Let there be new age light. This building has a personality. How long do you really have to wait? We could have two or three more bulbs up there, too, couldn't we? And back there, too. Yeah. You don't have to translate that. I got it as the work leader, yeah. But even though it's now much more commonplace that body-mind is not dualism, it's still built into our thinking and built into our functioning.

[29:57]

So, you know, If you want to practice, you have to look at the obviousness of the distinctions. And then begin to see how you can bring it into your practice. Now, Frank said, someone said, who lives the body? And then he qualified that.

[31:01]

But it's a question that comes up a lot. Who's doing this? Who's living the body? Who's doing Zazen? But you understand it's a false question. If it has a reality to you, it can, in the way you think about things, have a reality. But if you think it's really real, then it's equivalent to believing in God. To think someone, there has to be a who, who does what we do, is simply there has to be a God that created us. It's basically the same thing. And it's implicit in a theological culture. I don't mean there aren't more subtle ways to believe in God.

[32:03]

imagine a God or feel the presence of a God. But the sense of a creator God or somebody who does the world and then we, there's something that does us, about part of the same way of thinking. But you can take examples from, you know, ordinary examples, most completely ordinary examples from our own experience, For example, walking along the street and slipping on ice and falling. And very often, most of the time, in fact, we catch ourselves and don't hurt ourselves. Who did that? The body did it. You can't say a who did it.

[33:29]

No who sat and said, okay, now I have to put my elbow this way and I have to do this. There's no who that did it. Okay, now if you really know that there's no who that's doing you, And again, like Suzuki Roshi used to say, in Japanese we can't even say, my stomach. If you say, stomach feels sick. Nobody imagines you're talking about someone else's stomach. But we say things like my stomach, my head, etc. At least in English we do. Do you say it in German too? Sure. Sure.

[34:31]

It's a bad habit. It's a habit that keeps reinforcing the idea there's a who that's doing this. And I joke often about my daughter. coming in from outside. My daughter, who's now 43. And I say, what's the weather like? And she says, it's raining. I said, it's raining? And I say, Sally, would you go out and find that it for me? And she says, Dad, don't be so zen. But... Why do we have to say it rains?

[35:35]

Why can't we just say raining? And again, I don't know about German, but English always has to have a subject who's doing the raining. Who the hell is doing the raining, you know? So, you know, really to really practice this, you have to kind of like get out of your language habits. You know, I try the sort of stupid ways. People say, are you Richard Baker? I'm in the doctor's office, dentist's office. Are you Richard Baker? And I can't really bring myself to say yes. Because I don't really know. So I say sometimes.

[36:38]

And it's sort of stupid, but I just can't bring myself to say in some continuous sense I'm Richard Baker. And it's really hard for me to say in this continuity, yes, I am Richard Baker. Sometimes I say I am Zen Tatsu Myo-Yu. But there's a friend of mine who knows my name is Zen Tatsu and calls me Hotzi Totsi. So I've tried that at the dentist. I'm hotsy-totsy, but it doesn't work to her. And gerunds, in English, gerunds are like I-N-G endings, like, as I say, instead of saying tree, say treeing. A gerund.

[37:40]

The gerundium is... It's like I-N-G, doing and seeing and so forth. Yes, for example, a tree or a tree or something like that. Ah, okay. So when you look at a tree, you say to yourself, you don't say, oh, there's a tree, you say, there's treeing. Yeah, so the baumen, yeah, so there's not the... Yeah, like that. Now, I think the fact that... Utah and Alexander noticed that they let the tea decide, or the car, the body decide,

[38:57]

Which route you're taking or which tea you drink. Now, I think probably everyone notices that kind of thing. But I think people who practice probably notice it more than others. than most people. And the people who practice more seriously probably experiment more with letting the body do it. And the people who practice seriously, who experience it more, let the body do it. Letting the hand dial the telephone number, even if you don't know quite what it is. It used to be an expensive habit, because calls were expensive. I used to just do it, and if it was wrong, I'd do it again, if it was wrong.

[40:03]

But after three long-distance calls across the Atlantic, I would... Bad hand. It used to cost like $50 for a phone. Not a long phone call to the United States, but back and forth. Now it's my phone, three cents a minute. The idea that people just were duped into paying for distance when there's no electronic distance, it was a shock. People were duped, deceived by long distance companies into paying for distance when there's no electronic distance. I dial Crestone and as my finger comes off the last number, it rings in Crestone.

[41:18]

That's not distance. I once tried to edit something back and forth from New York to San Francisco. And the hours I needed to edit do it over the phone. In those days, it was cheaper to fly my body round trip than to fly my voice, to send my voice on the phone. So the round trip on the airplane was cheaper than five hours on the phone. That simply was not a dishonesty, but we were willing to be fooled by the phone company because we thought long calls cost more than short calls.

[42:31]

So we still are fooled by many things. So I think one way to practice is to see when you can let your body do things. Let's say your body, that's too simple, but let your body do things rather than your thinking or yourself. Trust the body to do it.

[43:50]

And sometimes, yeah, it's sometimes, you know, it doesn't do it as well as if you planned it mentally. And sometimes the body doesn't do it as well as if you planned it mentally. And what Alexander said about giving a talk, do you give a talk, prepare it on Sunday and give it on Monday, or do you just... as we say, wing it. Well, it's probably necessary to do some combination of both. Now, Kaz Tanahashi Sensei, who's a, you know, been the source of now about four, three books, or four books on Dogen.

[44:54]

I just spent a few days with him in Crestone recently, just before we left. And he said to my surprise, as far as they know, Dogen prepared all his talks on Sunday, or in advance, and read them. And, you know, perhaps he had some way of reading them, which wasn't as dead as usually it is. I knew a poet, a woman poet who was the poet laureate of England. And I know a woman who... The poet?

[46:01]

Laureate means the kind of chosen poet as the English poet. Like we have a poet laureate in America and things. And she would not... give a talk without reading it. So everyone was bored with their talks. No one wanted to ever give talks. We used to beg her, just get up and talk because you're great. If she was... So we hope Dogen didn't give boring talks. But Kaas speculated that Dogen had no good students, so he couldn't just talk because there was no inspiration coming from the group. Something I never thought of. Das ist etwas, worüber ich noch nie nachgedacht habe.

[47:07]

This is why we like Dogen so much. But the point is correct, that you cannot give a talk freely without any preparation or with very little, unless the people you're talking with are participating. And they're sitting nearby. That's why I'm only speaking to you right here, to Utah. Sorry. Anyway, I just actually really like being near. And if I could do it, I'd have you all sitting in my lap or I'd sit on your lap. Together we have quite a big lap. The key to this is attention.

[48:16]

and continuity. And what do you give attention to? And what do you give continuous or implicit attention to? Now, if you establish, you know, and this is very basic and I don't have a flip chart, but maybe tomorrow, if you establish your sense of continuity in your thinking, This is not what Buddhism means by a lived body. Now, it's a fairly common term in English-written Buddhism. philosophy.

[49:37]

The lived body, but they mean usually the body that has experiences things. No, but that's not exactly what Buddhism means. The Buddha in making the shift from the self, some kind of permanent self, Some kind of mental self. To treating implicitly, taking the body as self. So he's not saying, from the point of view of practice, in Zen practice, Of course, we don't really know what the Buddha said, but I'm assuming that what he meant.

[50:49]

When he was speaking about no self, or non-self, or freedom from self, he meant freedom from the presumed continuity of self. So what he was saying is that we don't have a continuous self or realization is to be free from a continuous self. Not that in some way we have to have way of giving meaning to things, which is, we can also call, part of the definition of self.

[51:51]

Now, if we really want to get into practice, we probably do, as Frank says, have to define self and body and so forth. The best we can, at least. And what time am I supposed to stop now that I see Frank with me, his watch? What? Four to six. Four to six, okay. You have to make dinner? But we don't have to eat tonight. Now, in general, in Buddhism, there isn't the distinction between mind and matter, mind and body, like we have it. In Buddhism in general there is no such distinction You can certainly find words for mind and body, but they're considered just aspects of each other.

[53:00]

There's no mental activity without a body. But why do we shift our attention to the mental activity when the foundation is the body? How can we change that habit? And habit means where we live, habitation. And habit, das meint, da wo wir leben. How can we inhabit the body instead of the mind? Wie können wir aus dieser Gewohnheit Körper leben, anstelle aus der Gewohnheit Geist? Not even inhabit the mind. Nicht nur den, inhabit ist bewohnen, nicht nur den Geist bewohnen.

[54:09]

but to inhabit a very small portion of the mind, the observing function of the mind which accumulates experience. Okay, now if we define the self, in this way, one of the ways to define itself. The observing part of the mind that accumulates experience. Okay, why then, then we can ask if we come to that definition? Why do we identify with our accumulated experience? Now, right now, Sophia is going through a stage of being extremely self-willed. And we're trying to get her to accumulate some experience which makes her not so self-willed.

[55:33]

So to get her to have some kind of behavior that's responsible, in a way, we have to create a self. And we have to create a self in order to make her so responsible We do have to get her to identify with her experience. What kind of person are you? Why do you treat your mother or father this way? Okay, so if the identification with self is so basic as that, that it goes back to... learning to behave as a child, as an infant, how do we get free of that? Okay, now, so, now what we sort of like found our way into, is that there's the accumulated experience

[56:56]

of our behavior and thinking, which shapes our sense of self, And makes us identify with self. So that's one way we're Embedded, even locked into self. Okay, but we're also locked into self because we're authenticated as self. Okay. Whatever we said this morning for authenticate.

[58:05]

Authentifizierung. Okay. We believe that we're self. Wir glauben, wir sind dieses Selbst. So here, point again is is the continuity. What is our experience of continuity from moment to moment? Okay, now what's the alternative? Is there an alternative? And if there's an alternative, how do we... Realize this alternative. Okay. Well, the main shift, the main move, that I repeated very often, very basic,

[59:07]

is to discover your continuity in your breath. And as I've said some hundreds of times, It's very easy to bring your attention to your breath for a short time. It's very difficult to bring your attention to your breath continuously. And look at, I even say, your attention. So we can ask this basic fundamental question. Why is something so easy to do for a short time so difficult to do for a long time? Yes, you too. A question that fits right into that topic, is it about effort?

[60:21]

The eightfold path. The wide effort is one of the points in the eightfold path. The thousands of myriads... I don't have it anymore. To stomp on the myriads of things is deception. And if you do it willingly, it's in the middle of nowhere. And in the Eight-Way Path there is right effort. And if we make an effort, it's not... Like it is mentioned in the Eightfold Path, the right effort, and in relation to this delusion, to bring the self forward, to discover the world, that's delusion. Is that already an effort? Okay. Let's forget about the translation in the Eightfold Path of effort.

[61:56]

We can think of it as energy or intention, etc. Okay. And it's much better to work. I don't know how you work with it in German, but in Deutsch, but in English, it's much better to have a feeling of willingness than will. In German, And if you say effort, usually then there's someone who's making the effort, someone doing the effort, and that's a problem immediately. Okay, so let me go again. So if we have this question, and I'll come back. If we have this question, why is it so easy to, why is something so easy to do for a short time virtually impossible to do for a long time?

[63:10]

It's simply more fundamental than, well, I forget, or it's so exciting to think. You'd rather... Think the most dumb, compulsive, nowhere thinking than to stay with your breath. Du denkst eher das dümmste Zeug als bei deinem Atem zu bleiben. We suddenly feel dead if we're alive. We're not alive unless we're thinking. Wir fühlen uns plötzlich tot. Wir sind nicht lebendig, wenn wir nicht denken. Okay. So the reason is that, I'm sure the reason is, is that we establish our continuity from moment to moment in our thinking.

[64:19]

And if we don't do that, we start feeling like we're crazy or we don't know where we are or we're something. No, we need to distract ourselves. And all of those really are disguises of establishing our continuity of self continuity of being in our thinking as self. And so you have to break the habit of identifying with thinking, identifying with self. And the easiest way to do that is to have an intention to bring your attention Now, I really say we could end the seminar right now.

[65:42]

And I would ask you all to come back when you have satisfactorily established your sense of continuity in your breath. Andreas claims I'd never see him again. But I'd accept you even if you are, you know, even if your breath is... Yeah, et cetera. Okay. But this, please, please, please take this on as a task or an intention. Because it's like going backstage. You're in the theater and you're watching all this stuff. Suddenly you're backstage and you see what's really going on. Suddenly you're behind the stage, behind the scenes.

[66:54]

And much of Buddhism suddenly becomes clear. Once you have established your continuity in your breath. And then you think when you want to think. But you don't think to identify yourself from moment to moment. So once you stop identifying with the continuity of self in thinking, it's easy to let your attention, rest in your breath. Then things like one-pointedness, non-interfering, observing consciousness, becomes just the way you function.

[68:11]

And then, because the continuity of attention is in the breath, the continuity of attention can then be easily in the body and in phenomena. And you feel at ease in your body. The world actually becomes shinier, brighter, Blissful. Such a simple thing. And what you've done, the key is, the shift of attention, continuous attention, from self and mind to the body and phenomena.

[69:22]

Now, that opens you up to what Buddhism means by the lived body. The body which lives through continuous attention. Now I don't know how to say it in English, but instead of living as the body, The body just happens to be around, but you live through the body. And you end up having a lot... Your thinking becomes a lot clearer. Dein Denken wird klarer. It's not tied up in psychology, feelings, emotions, and so forth.

[70:42]

Now, where is Sophia? Who says, I only want to love you as much as I want. I'll only love you as much as I want to. What about that part of us? What happens to our emotions and our behavioral definitions, etc.? Those are all questions we can look at. And the whole fascicle of the Genjo koan, I don't know how much we can Xerox and give you tomorrow, but at least... Maybe all of it or maybe a page or two. And give you, I hope, tonight so you can have it for tomorrow's study time. And don't worry about understanding it. We have it in German, right? Don't worry about understanding it. Just get familiar with it. And you'll probably find that cultivate, authenticate is not the way it's translated in German.

[72:07]

The Japanese word, it's often translated, you should translate it, identify. Yeah, sometimes it's usually most commonly just cultivate. But the Japanese word means a number of things, but includes cultivate and authenticate. But just remember, again, these texts are meant to be understood through familiarity, through repetition, through holding them before you. Any good Buddhist text doesn't make sense when you first read it. Then if you think, well, I'm just not smart enough for this or something.

[73:17]

Just remember, it's have faith. It's written for human beings. You happen to be one. But it's written for human beings who hold the text and let it live in the body. And then let the world start speaking to you through the text held in front of you. Okay, that's enough. Oops! Sorry. Could be worse. Thanks.

[74:17]

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