You don't have to say that and do it. It's all clear enough, right? Well, let me say, you know, I'm not encouraging anybody to come to Creston. And I'm not saying if you want your practice to work, you better come to Creston. If I want to say that, I will. And there are some individuals who I might say that to, but in general I wouldn't say that. Because the whole effort, the effort of my life, the effort of my life is to understand what works at Crestone or in monastic life so that we can develop our lay practice.

[01:13]

And it's possible Nicole could contribute to that to say why she finds Why she's at Creston. I mean, most of you, but not all of you know Nicole. But she started practicing entirely by chance, a kind of lottery. she came to Johanneshof. She had no particular interest in Buddhism. Maybe the reverse. But she wanted to get away from her family. Put that on tape, don't... Or she needed a change when she was 17 or 18.

[02:19]

She was a very good student and thinking of being a scientist. But her father wanted, but she wanted to do something else for a while. So her father, who's a very nice person and a banker, knew some sort of friend who was a little bit new agey. And said, you know, my daughter, blah, blah, blah. And so the guy gave her a whole bunch of brochures. And he said, Yeah, from Alexander Technique to Zen. And so she went through and she didn't know.

[03:28]

How did she know, you know? So she just... picked one and it happened to be Johanneshof. And off she went. Her father delivered her, suspiciously, I think. And left her there. And here was this nice young woman who wanted to practice. Usually people 18 don't show up at Johanneshof. So I got to know her a bit, of course, not so well at first. And I encouraged her to finish college and so forth. But through her interest in Zen, her new interest in Zen, she got interested in psychology and then she... got a degree in psychology.

[04:30]

And being quite a good student, her professors were planning her academic career. But at some point she decided it was actually more the contact she had with other people and her... And the life of practice was more interesting than being an academic. So she was at Creston this last two or three years. She's 28 or 29 now. And she wanted to be ordained. Not just a lay ordination, but as a monk. And I was quite hesitant to do it.

[05:38]

Because she might want to continue her academic career, she might want to be married, you know, and so forth. So I put it off for a year or two. And told her all the bad things, all the problems and so forth. Yeah, you know, once you're ordained, fully ordained, you have to make decisions with your teacher and with the Sangha and stuff like that. And I said, you don't want those problems. Finally, she's decided she did. So after a year or so again, then I ordained her. And she seems to be doing okay. But it's not like being an ordained Catholic priest. monastic life because you can decide I don't want to do this anymore and you fold your robes up and you put them in a drawer and you can go do something else.

[06:57]

There's no, it's not It's not, you're not vowing to do the ideal life, you're vowing to do it, a practice life for as long as it works for you. But at the present time Nicole is exploring why this life works for her. But mostly she doesn't want to intellectualize it. She just wants to follow her feeling and see, as long as it works, where her feeling leads her.

[07:58]

It would probably be a mistake at this point for her to step outside it and try to study what she's doing. She better just do it at this point. You know, I've been doing this 50 years. And sometimes I kind of step outside so I can teach and look at what I'm doing, but mostly I have to stay in the situation. And if I don't stay in the situation, I can't teach. Yeah, but, so it's a kind of delicate balance for me to observe what we're doing, but mostly to stay in is a skill I have to develop in order to teach.

[09:02]

One thing I liked about this title, once Andreas told me what it was, was that it is both In our usual, it's a title that is one foot in our usual way of thinking and one foot in Buddhism. I mean, if I was looking for a Zen title, I might have had the no quality of non-being. Non-being. And maybe none of you would be here. Oh, gosh, I'm like, no quality of non-being. Or just now non-being.

[10:19]

Anyway, so this is good. It causes a certain conversation. Someone else want to say something? Yes, Dorothea. Dorothea, by the way, can I say? after many years of possible sabbaticals and et cetera, et cetera, is now seems to be going to Crestone next year. practice period. She's organized her school district, she's organized her partner, she's organized, etc. It's taken a few years. Yes, decades. Okay, here we go. Okay. This morning we talked about how to bring practice into lay life. And if I understood this right, you said that to take the appearance as a Dharma?

[11:40]

Yeah, appearance as, yeah. And that this is easier to experience in a monastery than in everyday life? Yeah. And you brought the example of taking a thing with both hands. And then I thought about how also is it possible to experience things as a Dharma. If there are other examples. And, for example, if you could see the in-things, the activity, the impermanence in the things? Yes. My question is, are these examples to see things as a Dhamma?

[13:03]

And for me, this is experienceable. What other examples might there be? Are there other examples? You'll find out. Is it so that to see things as activity or as impermanent as the Dhamma, is it that? That's my question. I want to speak about these things. I want to speak about them with you though. I don't want to speak at you or to you.

[14:11]

I want to speak with you. And if I find I'm speaking at you, it's going to make some of you inside at least go away. And to speak with you, we have to come to some kind of mutual A mutual way of looking at the world. So, what are the territories of practice? The most common... description of the territories, the most common pointing out of the territories of practice.

[15:22]

Our body, speech and mind. Okay. Now you can stop and ask yourself, as you should ask yourself, I mean as a practitioner you should ask yourself, why this division? It's a, you know, we don't want at this stage to be a believer type of Buddhist. The believer type of Buddhist says, oh, body, speech and mind, that's what the Buddhist says, well, good. But the practitioner... The serious practitioner tries to recreate Buddhism for him or herself.

[16:29]

Okay, so that person says, that's odd, body, yeah, body and mind, I understand, but why speech? Well, Anyway, that itself is a kind of question you can put to yourself. Just notice your own lived activity. And how much of it is in the category of body. But it's not only in the category of body. It's also Body is more than just body. What is the more than just body?

[17:31]

Well, it's something like mind. And mind, it's where there's no mind. there's no mind without a body. There are bodies which seem to have forgotten they had a mind. But, okay, so then you look at your experience and say, does it all fall into the categories of body and mind? Well, well, Yeah, but if I express something, it affects the mind. It affects the body. It is an inseparable part of phenomena. Because there's not just body and mind.

[18:48]

There's also phenomena. Your circumstances. And those circumstances are most related to you through speech. Speech means, in this case, speaking to yourself as well as speaking aloud or something. Okay. So, yeah? I don't get this. Why aren't you relating to your senses? Why aren't you relating to speech? Yes, I mean, for example, if you're a blind person, and you want to walk across this room, you either have to reach your hands out or you have to have developed a

[19:51]

pretty big sensitivity, which allows you to not walk into that pillar. And I think the ears for a very sensitive person can hear a pillar. But that's a kind of speech. You have to articulate the world in some way to function in it. Okay. The senses... are a form of articulation. So the speech also represents the articulation of the senses, hearing, etc. And that articulation is communication to yourself. And that communication to yourself is speech.

[21:12]

Yeah, okay. You're not entirely satisfied, but... What? It's not about satisfaction, it's about quite understanding. It's not about satisfaction, it's about quite understanding. Okay, I understand. Okay. Anyway, these are categories which include everything. So you have to kind of be imaginative in how you define the categories. Because body and mind are part of phenomena through articulation. because body and mind are phenomena through the articulation.

[22:15]

Yes, okay. I'm trying to resist repeating myself. But I've been speaking about Buddhism for so many years, it's really rather difficult not to repeat myself occasionally. But strictly to get us all on the same page, I have to perhaps repeat myself.

[23:16]

One of the categories of practice If I try to look at what are the basic categories of practice, and I'm now looking at it differently than body, speech and mind, one very basic category is How does Buddhism differ from most other and usual ways of looking at the world? The most usual way of looking at the world is that it's more or less More or less permanent.

[24:34]

And that's all over the world, people in every culture, people to various degrees, but people take this as a basic. And you have to. I mean, if Heinrich really wanted to fool us, wanted to fool us Heinrich and he had a seminar of blind people here he would every half hour or so move the pillars and So we'd all get to know where the pillars are and then next 30 minutes later he'd move them six inches that way and that one three feet that way. And this is actually an experiment that Piaget did, a famous child psychologist. He was working with a he was in Seattle or some place in the United States and working with a blind child studying a blind child and he was watching this little kid who was still an infant which means not speaking infant is not speaking

[26:27]

So you had this blind infant still crawling. And he watched this kid, this infant, crawling around the room and finding things on the floor and doing things. And at some point it was bedtime. And the child was playing with some sort of doll or stuffed animal or something. And the infant was brought to bed. And the next morning brought down and put on the floor. And Piaget was watching. And the little blind infant went right over to the stuffed animal that had left the evening before and found it.

[27:33]

And Piaget supposedly said, Eureka, object permanence. Not Eureka, Eureka. Eureka, Eureka. Because in Piaget's theory, at some point, the infant has to learn that things are more or less permanent, even if you're blind. Okay. But things are not permanent. They're only relatively permanent. Okay. So, how do you go from the... experience of things as relatively permanent to the experience of things as relatively permanent.

[28:52]

I said the same thing, right? But the emphasis in one is on relatively, and the emphasis in the other is relatively permanent, and the other is relatively permanent. Because everyone knows things are... relatively permanent. Or otherwise your mothers and fathers and grandfathers would still be living. Gertrude Stein, you know, said a rose is a rose is a rose. A San Franciscan American, I believe, who lived in Paris and was a friend of Picasso.

[30:05]

And she said there's some things human nature can't understand. That we all have to die to make space for others human nature can't understand. By human nature we all want to live as long as possible. But the mind can know that There'd be no room for anybody else if we lived forever. I thought this was rather amusing, a simple example that Gertrude Stein came up with. And I have another vivid example of it. Henri Louise recognized in Freiburg a few months, a couple of months ago when she was here.

[31:15]

Her piano teacher when she was eight. He, it's not surprising, did not recognize her. Because she has been relatively permanent. But he has been relatively permanent. He still looked pretty much the same as when she was eight. So she saw him and he didn't know who she was, but we sort of became friends and he came to our house and he gave Sophia piano lessons, etc. He was quite a good pianist. And he studied eight years with Michelangeli, a rather famous, I guess, Italian pianist.

[32:27]

And this guy is quite crazy and wonderful, but I won't tell you any stories about him. But he told a story about his brother. Anyway, his brother was on an airplane. And it looked like it could crash. They were having trouble with an engine or landing gear or something. And they were circling an airport and they didn't know how long they could circle it and there was a bad weather. And the man next to his brother, Clement's brother, was really terrified. And Clement's brother said, you know, calm down, we may not crash, etc.

[33:44]

And the guy was, again, just completely frightened. So Clement's brother said to him, look, if it will make you feel better, write a note to somebody you love and give it to me and I'll deliver it. The guy said, oh, that's so nice of you. So he wrote a note and gave it to him and then he calmed down. Now this is a good example of someone who, human nature, was not going to let him believe he was going to crash. And Clement's brother was more like, well, it might happen.

[34:47]

But, you know, with global warming and the environmental, does that thing that's going on right now? We're sort of all passing notes to each other while we're crashing. Did you know how bad global warming is? Russia is burning. Pakistan is flooded. Et cetera. So it's our human nature to really emphasize predictability. Also ist es unsere menschliche Natur, die Vorhersagbarkeit zu betonen. Were you born in China? Bist du in China geboren worden? Bist du in China geboren? So you speak Chinese and so forth. How old were you when you came? Bist du gewesen, als du hierher kamst? 30.

[35:58]

30? Oh my God, you look like younger than 30 now. Oh, okay. Well, I'm told, I don't know if this is true or true of all of China, but in the West, we say we're going into the future. Because we say that, we plan for the future we're going into. We get insurance and all kinds of things. We plan for as predictable a future as we can manage. But I'm told that one of the images in China is not that you go into the future.

[36:56]

But the future comes to you in its unpredictability. So you have to already be ready to meet the future, not plan for the future. So that you have to be ready to meet the future and not to plan for it. Now, whether this is true or not, it illustrates the difference between slightly different views about the same situation. Now, I'm speaking now to what Dorothea brought up.

[37:58]

Is viewing entities as activities An example of what? An enactment ritual or something. To see a dharma. Yes, okay, yeah. Okay, yes, to see, well, first of all, dharma means something very simple. basically, to see things in units. Okay. But why is there an emphasis on seeing things in units? Because that's the way things exist. It's the closest we can get experientially to how things actually exist.

[39:07]

Okay, so things... So the usual way of viewing things is things are relatively permanent. And that's the way consciousness functions. Consciousness is a selective knowing which emphasizes the predictability of objects and not their disappearance. So you have to, in consciousness, we have to function through consciousness. Without the predictability of consciousness, you couldn't function. I park my rented car out here in front, and I hope it's still there when I go out.

[40:23]

And if it's not, I will... be somewhat concerned. And then if I go into town to explain to the sixth. What a strange name for rent rent. Sixth. Sixth. Sixth. Bavarian name I think. It's a Bavarian name. Nothing to do with the number six. Sixth. Sixth. Anyway, if I go into sixth and they close their office, When I go to report my missing car and the office is also missing. And Heinrich refuses to go with me this time and show me where it might be. I might check into the nearest mental hospital. So the world... We function in a implicitly predictable world.

[41:43]

Okay, so what's the value... What's the value or usefulness of emphasizing the unpredictability? Because we have a choice. Are we going to emphasize predictability or are we going to emphasize relatively predictability? Well, Buddhism has discovered it makes a huge difference. And this present that we want to be predictable about doesn't even exist. It's, as I say, a minute, one millionth of a second before twelve, and then it's a millionth of a second after twelve, and there was no twelve.

[42:53]

So why do we experience a present? Because our senses are basically scanning. And they create a durative present. And that experience of duration is our experience. And it's reinforced by the implicit permanence of objects. And it's also reinforced by, for most of us, an assumption of unity. An assumption of a ground of being. I remember once many years ago I was

[43:57]

walking along back to my warehouse where I worked. And like Clinton I never inhaled, but in those days I was smoking. But I did occasionally inhale what he said he didn't. But I never inhaled cigarettes. But I just blow it out, because you're supposed to smoke in those days, so I blow it out my nose. But I never actually inhaled. And... And so I threw this package of cigarettes down when I'd finished it on the railroad tracks. And I went back to the warehouse where I was often in charge of cleaning the warehouse. And I stopped. I was just about to go in the door of the warehouse.

[45:13]

I stopped and I thought, I wouldn't throw that down in the warehouse. Because I know I'd have to clean it up. So I thought, why did I throw it down in the railroad tracks? I thought, God might clear it up. With a huge broom. Or... Or perhaps the great guarantor of all wellness would clean it up. Or nature would somehow absorb it and take care of it. Like we dump all kinds of dirty water in the ground and it pops up as clean water. And people really believed in my lifetime that you dump as much oil as much anything into the ground, and it would all be taken care of.

[46:39]

It's all happened in my lifetime. And in 62 or 63, Rachel Carson wrote a book called Timeless Spring. And she pointed out that first time, big time for everyone, that DDT was killing all the birds. It wasn't just disappearing. into the environment. It was reappearing throughout the environment. Yeah, okay. Okay, so again, we're talking about the difference between seeing things as permanent or seeing things as impermanent.

[48:15]

How do we establish the world as permanent? Through the selectivity of the way consciousness functions. Because objects mostly seem to be permanent. And because we have an assumption of some kind of unity or ground of being behind things. There's an expression in Zen Buddhism. The jewel hidden in the mountain of form. The jewel hidden in the mountain of form. Now, even some contemporary Zen teachers talk about how we discover the jewel.

[49:25]

As if it were some kind of inwardness. But the jewel is the mountain of form. And it's hidden because it is the mountain of form. So then from the point of view of practice, How do you know the mountain as the jewel? Okay, and it's this kind of worldview problem that many, if not most of the phrases of Zen koans are where they're located. Das ist da, wo viele, wenn nicht die allermeisten der Zen-Sätze in den Koans verörtlicht sind.

[50:27]

Und eine Art, damit zu praktizieren, ist zu versuchen, to see entities as activities. Or rather, not to see activities as entities. Okay. Is this crystal clear? Or clear enough. I sort of sometimes feel I'm hitting my head against the wall. When I'm in the next mental hospital, you know. Okay, so let's have a break. And we can talk about this some more. Thanks for translating.

[51:33]

You're welcome.

[51:34]

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