This is an interesting and rather difficult seminar for me to do because it's a real problem. In other words, I feel that the future of Buddhism the future of Buddhism in its entirety in the world will be influenced by Buddhism in the West. It already is. And Buddhism in the West will be, as I said, will be likely a lay adept, Sandra. If I have a life work, it is to carry that as far as I can during my lifetime.

[01:01]

Okay. And as I said earlier, there's no traditional models by which to develop this. But even if there are no traditional metaphors or models, still, in order to think creatively, we probably need to create metaphors and models. We have to create new models. Okay, so just a little bit ago I created a model of how you can see, experience a tree as activity and not as an entity.

[02:24]

Gerade vor kurzem habe ich jetzt also dieses Modell dafür geschaffen, wie du einen Baum als Aktivität sehen kannst und nicht als Entität. Yeah. And once you see that as a model, then instead of starting with the tree as a model, Okay, now let me bring in a basic Buddhist idea here. Which is the idea of negation. Basic to... Basic to Buddhism. Okay. It's when a practitioner is given as a beginning koan mu.

[03:50]

Mu, which means no and also means emptiness. Yeah. And then the practice is to bring that no or emptiness into each situation. So whatever appears, you say mu. You say no. Okay. Now, I've been saying recently the basic attitude of a Buddhist is on each appearance. The first attitude is acceptance. The second attitude is what is it? To question it. And the third attitude is no harm.

[04:51]

Now, you can use this also as a model for encountering each appearance. So whatever appears, you say, welcome, or yes. Okay, now, but we really have no choice except to accept. Okay, but then we don't want to accept in some conceptual framework. Then we're not accepting what appears, we're accepting the concept. So you want to negate the concept of appearance. Also müsstest du das Konzept der Erscheinung verneinen. And that's in, like, what is it?

[06:13]

So ist das in dieser Frage, was ist das? Okay, and whatever your process is, acceptance, what is it, you want to not cause harm. This doesn't mean you're not going to cause harm. There's no way in this world of interdependence not to sometimes cause harm. But your intention can be to cause no harm. No. Just imagine if in this world every person had these three feelings. They accepted whatever appeared. Ah, without criticizing, without anything, just accept it.

[07:25]

Welcome. You can use a word like welcome. Then next you say, what is it? You don't automatically think you know, you each moment say, what is it? And then whatever you feel, you try to cause no harm. Now, if everyone in the world in every encounter had the feeling, I'll try to cause no harm, we would be definitely in a different world. To some extent, we do have this feeling. I mean, in society and civilizations work because to some degree everyone has such a feeling. If you're driving and a bicycle goes across you, there's a law and things like that, but basically you don't want to cause harm.

[08:34]

Okay. So that's in a way commonplace. What makes it yogic is the concept and practice of bringing it into each momentary appearance. Even if it's a bell. You know, my feeling is no harm. What is it? And okay, I accept you. You're cold. Okay, now I'm using those three words or three ideas. And what do those three words do? They make attention flow in to the immediate situation. So if we're using these three phrases, words, ideas, and we remind ourselves to remind ourselves to bring them to each situation,

[10:03]

We're simultaneously bringing our attention away from the stream of thought or something like that. So if you keep trying to just bring three little words, I mean, you can bring the word watermelon if you want. Everything you see, say watermelon. It would have some of the same effect. Yeah. It's not very subtle. She doesn't believe it. She won't trust it. I look at Daniel and I say, Wassermelon. Hey, it's kind of neat, you suddenly appear as a new kind of Daniel.

[11:28]

Then there's Wassermelon, then I negate Wassermelon, and wow. Okay, now what I'm showing you is the concept behind Wassermelon. the functioning behind a practice like bringing three concepts into each moment. Okay. If I bring Mu into each moment, it's doing the same thing. It in effect makes me bring attention away from other things into the present situation. Even if I say no. No. No. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes, I'm saying no, but somehow I'm bringing attention to the immediate situation through saying no.

[12:56]

Okay. This is a negation of everything that isn't what you're looking at. If I say this is a microphone, I'm negating everything that isn't a microphone. Now, if I say that's a pillar, we think we're pointing out a pillar. dann denken wir, wir verweisen damit auf eine Säule. Aber tatsächlich verweist du damit auch auf alles, was keine Säule ist. Und das zu bemerken, das wird verändern, wie du darauf als eine Säule verweist. pointing out everything through yes or no or mu.

[14:11]

I'm not only bringing attention into each situation. I'm noticing the world as appearance. Because how finely tuned are my moos? Do I say, when I look at you, I'm sorry to say moo. Moo. Moo. There used to be cows in here, right? Moo. Moo. Okay, so if I say mu, that's at one level. But if I immediately have a thought, you're his partner. That defines you in terms of him. dann definiert dich das hinsichtlich... In Bezug auf ihn, danke.

[15:29]

And you may like being defined in terms of him sometimes, but maybe not all the time. Okay, so... So I... When I notice that I think of you in terms of him, if I also negate that, then I feel you in the way you were maybe when he fell in love with you. Because he fell in love with you when you weren't identified through him. Denn er hat sich ja in dich verliebt, als du noch nichts über ihn identifiziert hast. Okay, so. In other words, there are many layers at which you, as your attention becomes more subtle, which you can negate.

[16:45]

That sounds strange, doesn't it? To negate more subtle levels of attention. But there's two aspects of that. One aspect is negation has a positive effect. Another aspect is we in fact are always negating. So, if you say I love this person, You're also saying, I don't love all the other persons. But you're not really saying you don't love all the other persons. Okay, so you begin to be aware of a spectrum. Through negating.

[17:51]

And you become more and more subtle at noticing appearance. So until every percept is an appearance. And each cognition is an appearance. So right now, each of you is an appearance. Okay. But you also appear as a group. So I can feel you as a group. And then I can negate that and feel you as an individual. And then I can actually negate you as an individual and then you appear as a group. Okay. When we do service in the zendo or buddha hall or whatever it is, sorry Jeff, give you a little demonstration.

[19:21]

So here we have this, the urine, nicely lit incense. Is that sugar in there or salt? Is that yours? No, we have no other stuff. The most common thing to use if you don't use hardwood ash is rice. Because rice is not messy. So people travel with rice. with their incense burner, if they have a traveling incense burner. Put rice in. If you travel with ash. Ash is dust. Okay. So the feeling in practice, like I'm doing service, is you want to be, the idea is you want to be nowhere at all.

[20:33]

Die Idee in der Praxis, wenn du zum Beispiel diesen Service, also die Rezitation machst, da ist die Idee, du willst nirgendwo sein. You want all possibilities to be present. Du willst, dass alle Möglichkeiten gegenwärtig sind. I can go right, I can go left, etc. Ich könnte mich nach rechts wenden oder nach links gehen und so weiter. I remember I watched Suki Roshi do the T-Series running once. And a professional tea ceremony person, you know, teacher, came and did tea ceremony for us. And then she asked politely for Tsukiroshi if he would make us a cup of tea. And it was nice to watch her make tea. All her motions were very beautiful, and one followed the other, and one floated the other. And when you pick up things in tea ceremony, you often pick them up this way.

[21:58]

Because if you pick them up this way and you try the difference, it immediately engages usual consciousness. And if you use your body instead of your hand, you know, like that, it's a different feeling. There's an interesting aspect. When you make the tea, you ideally have lots of tiny bubbles on the surface. And if you have your tea bowl and you whisk it like this, it doesn't make small bubbles. Your mind is holding... Just let your mind not hold the stick. The whisk.

[23:05]

And the whisk just sort of does it on its own loosely. On a small level. But this is an example of seeing the world as activity. Because this is part of the activity. And the boundaries between your hand and the stick, you want to let the stick do itself too. It has its own identity. Yeah, I've been, she's been, hits the bells at Johannesov, and everyone starts out hitting them like this, and after a while you have to hit it loosely and let the stick hit it. And you don't hit it.

[24:07]

You let the stick hit it. That's not so easy to do. Okay, so... This woman did it very nicely. So there's a flow of how you go from one physical activity to the next. There's a flow of object to object. And she did that very well. But you could see her learned behavior. And when she did it, it was really refreshing. Because he helped the bamboo ladle. And you reach to the top for one kind of water and you reach to the bottom for another kind of water.

[25:13]

And he didn't know, when he saw it, he thought, he doesn't know what he's going to do next. And then when he did it, you went along with him. So this practice of appearance and what is it is also not to know what it is. Okay. Then you're really in the world of appearances. Because you appear and what you're going to do appears.

[26:28]

The object appears. Now, last night I went into this thing about hearing music and hearing, not only just hearing, hearing, but feeling the musicians making the music. And yesterday evening I got into this thing where it was about not only listening to the music, but also And through that, feeling the notes before they appear, it's almost like you're making the music too. Now, I would call that something like depth mindfulness. Sometimes I speak about micro mindfulness, sometimes meta mindfulness. So I never said this before, but I thought of this term maybe to try to describe the depth of mindfulness.

[27:48]

Yeah. So everything, the basic view of Buddhism, The fundamental truth, the conventional truth. The fundamental truth is everything appears through everything else. Nothing comes from itself. Everything comes from something else. Appearance is interdependent appearance. So when you know appearance, how much do you know the interdependent appearance? And there's layers and layers of interdependence. Again, at this moment, there's layers of the way each of you is influencing the other person by the posture, by your feeling, by your attentiveness, or whatever.

[29:03]

So depth mindfulness is to feel into those layers. And if you're identified through your thoughts, past, present and future, your self-referential thinking, There is no depth of mindfulness. There's only surface mindfulness. It doesn't mean I'm saying that surface mindfulness is something bad. It is the way we function. We accept that too. Sometimes it's the best way to function and sometimes it's the necessary way to function.

[30:05]

The point in Buddhism is it should be the only way to function. So if you're really in the world of appearances, the world of activity, Things are known through their activity. And the activity is a succession of activities. So if you immediately know what you're doing or what this is, there's no succession. There's only some sort of static, implicitly permanent object of perception. Okay, so this requires a significant bodily and mental shift. And how do we practice it? Okay, so I watched Suzuki in the tea ceremony. Each step, he was able to go to mu, to go to zero.

[31:40]

Okay, so here we are at this altar. Hello. Hello. So I'm going up to the altar. I've gone up to the altar 1,743 times this year already. More than that. I know where I'm going. But I'm supposed to not know where I'm going. I'm supposed to be in zero state. But if I've done it a thousand times, how do I get into zero state?

[32:42]

It's real simple. Negation. I'm ready to go to the altar. I'm standing here blissed out. Everyone is here, and they rang the doorbell to do something. I'm in the middle of service. Oh, we're in the middle of service. So my body takes over. And I move to the side. But just as I start to go up, right? My impulse, my body knows where to go. I negate. In other words, it's not that you always want to be in zero state. Or in other words, it doesn't mean that you always want to be in the zero spirit.

[33:53]

That would be crazy. I'd have to use drugs, you know, propofol or whatever the stuff that... That would be crazy. I'd have to... Propofol, okay. That would be crazy. I'd have to probably take drugs or something. That's what they gave me via the guys. That's what they gave me. Three minutes you're out and then they... And you say, when are you going to do it? They say, it's over. I said, oh. So I'm not doing that. And my body knows it's going to be over. So... In the moment it starts to move toward the altar, I simultaneously negate that. But still go up to the altar. Then there's a moment I deny.

[34:55]

At each moment, what to do? This is... This is a practice to enter into the world as appearances and not as something conceptual. I already understood that. And when the Zen teachers say, know the world non-conceptually, As Yuan Wu, the compiler of the Buddha truck. He says, create a mind that is neither here nor there. Neither before nor after. Doesn't mean you're blissed out with proper food. It means, I don't want to really know the name, that you're always there means that you use before and after and here and there to enter into a freedom from here and there.

[36:20]

Does that make sense? Do you get it? Well, I feel he's there, right? And I'm here. But I have that thought and I negate it. And suddenly I feel connected in a different way. Or I think, well, after this, you know, whatever, there's going to be lunch. There's nothing wrong with thinking that. In fact, it's wonderful that I think it. Because then I can negate it. And if I negate it, then I suddenly... How?

[37:23]

I've seen too many American Indian movies. Me, Hondo. Yes. Howling Wolf. Howling Wolf. Your name is better than mine. How, in fact, do you get this? What you just said. Well, I think the simplest example is I'm ready to go, right? I feel the impulse to move because my body knows that I always go to the right, to the left. Do you get what I mean? What do we do? Deny yourself a right turn. Really?

[38:32]

I thought I would turn left. No, you don't deny yourself a right turn. Okay, if the impulse comes to go left, that impulse is a mental formation, a bodily and mental formation. my body. So I negate that bodily mental formation and still move left. Then I know my body starts to go, but I don't go until I negate going forward, and then I go forward. This sounds kind of crazy. It was a... There was a famous basketball player.

[39:45]

I can't remember what his name was. And he was famous for leaping up and doing all kinds of strange things and then putting the ball in the cup. And some sports person, commentator, Sports journalists said to him, how do you plan those moves? He said, hell, I don't plan those moves. If I planned those moves, then everyone would know what I was going to do. Because I don't know, they won't know. Because I don't know it, they don't know it either. And that's exactly right. ordinary people have a very good taste of what you're telling about.

[40:45]

I hope so. There's a football player here in Hanover, his name is Jerry Steiner, and the people, they love him because he don't know what he's doing next with the ball. And the people was really excited. They love him. Well, there's a lot of overlap between the demands of high-end sports and meditation practice. And in the martial arts, You also want to not have your opponent know what you're going to do next. David Beck with his partner sit in a completely dark room in the dark facing each other cross-legged and each tries to attack the other and each tries to block the attack

[41:53]

And if you think for a moment what you're going to do, the other person anticipates. So it's a kind of freedom. Are we free to go to lunch soon? I don't know. In this... How do you negate this by speaking a phrase? Or how do you negate what action you do to negate? Can you say it in German first? ... [...] So again, how do you negate that?

[43:11]

Do you say a phrase or how do you initiate the negation process? You negate one mental formation with another mental formation. But you discover how to do this by doing it. And it's more subtle than I can attach words to it. But if you have an intention you can discover it. And what's important is the incubation of the practice. What's important is not that you do it once or twice. Yeah, I've been doing service for, you know, 45, 47 years or something like that. And I still find the process in service.

[44:16]

Sometimes I forget to negate. Sometimes I don't. And I notice the difference in the feeling. And it evolves. And it evolves a particular way of being in the world. And I still notice in this process, in service, that sometimes I negate it, and sometimes I forget to negate it, and then I notice the difference. And all this develops. In the end, this is a different way of being in the world. In this section of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Yeah. He says, everything is just a flashing into the vast phenomenal world. Where is it? I don't know. You've got German.

[45:18]

I've got English. It's a kind of world. Everything. It's the beginning of a paragraph. Okay. She has it here in With my bionic eyes, everything is completely clear, except close-up. You can't see a damn thing. Now, what he's saying is, everything is just a flashing into the vast phenomenal world. It means momentariness, momentariness, momentariness. And he says, that's the freedom of our activity and of our being. Yeah. All of this is, I could read all of it, but I won't, because I don't like reading during a talk.

[46:22]

Everything is an independent existence because it's flashing into the vast phenomenal world. Alles ist eine unabhängige Existenz. Let me read it. I really trust you. Everything has an independent existence. Because it's a flashing into the vast phenomenal world. Yeah. I've dropped off body and mind, said Dogen.

[47:46]

Because you think you have a body or mind, you have lonely feelings. But when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, You become very strong. And your existence becomes meaningful. This was Dogen's enlightenment. Okay. Now... That might be Dogen's enlightenment, but look, it sounds quite accessible. It can be right here in our activity. Now he's speaking about the freedom of independence. The independence that we realize through flashing into the vast phenomenal world.

[49:00]

We have things to do. That's the conventional world. The fundamental world is to realize simultaneously we're only flashing into the vast phenomenal universe. At each moment, that's how we're born, and that will be how we die. Your death will be just a flashing into the vast phenomenal universe. So Buddhism understands that as the fundamental truth. And how do you know that fundamental truth in the relative world?

[50:10]

Okay. Just a couple of things about the individual. The individual, a couple of things, one thing. We think one of the definitions of the individual since about the 12th century is that the individual is prior to society. That is actually a kind of wonderful freedom. And the concept of human rights is based on an international court and all that. This government is illegal because it doesn't recognize individual human rights.

[51:12]

And Aristotle saw the basic unit of existence is the city. The basic unit of existence is the city. Because it's through the city that you develop your culture, your identity, and so forth. And that's also true. You weren't born into a vacuum. So you can have a whole political world based on, as China does, that the basic unit of existence is the city or the culture. Also kannst du eine ganze politische Welt darauf basieren lassen, und China tut das so, dass die grundlegende Einheit der Existenz die Stadt ist.

[52:21]

But Western Europe and America has the concept, which is true, that the individual predated society. There is no way you can be prior to your parents or your tribe or whatever. But the idea has tremendous power and wonderful power. And society can't take your individual power rights away. And that's the way it's supposed to be in the West, and I like it. I'm always implicitly fighting with society.

[53:25]

Yeah, that's old-fashioned fighting. Um... But I didn't mention that. No. Um... Um... And that's one reason I'm a Buddhist. Okay. So you can see that these ideas, neither is entirely true. The basic unit of existence is the culture or the city. or the basic unit of existence is the individual who has rights independent of the culture and the society. Of course they overlap.

[54:26]

It's not black and white. It's on a spectrum. But where you are on the spectrum makes a big difference. Politically, socially, etc. But Buddhism says the basic unit is flashing into the vast phenomenal universe. That's your independence and your freedom. To know this moment by moment flashing into existence. Okay. Now, I think we have to look at this, what is the mountain path and city path, in sort of as subtle a way as we can.

[55:32]

And I don't know if I can get there with you. And why I want to get there with you and not just by myself. Und der Grund, warum ich da aber mit euch hingehen möchte und nicht nur allein, ist, weil wir gemeinsam sehr viel klüger sind als ich allein. Aber noch wichtiger als das ist, dass wir einen kreativen Prozess gemeinsam haben. Und in diesem spezifischen Fall sind wir die Zutaten der Situation. We don't just have a personal, private, individual, mundane life. And mundane is a wonderful word. Because it actually means belonging to the world. In the arms of the world.

[56:45]

But it came to mean not in the church. So it came to mean not part of God or not spiritual. So in English, at least, mundane is like pedestrian or something not very interesting. Yeah, but in fact, it's wonderful to belong to the world. To have your cappuccino with others. Okay. So it's not just that we have a career or a family and obligations and we have to earn some money to live, etc.

[58:04]

And that's why we're not at the monastery. Implies the monastery is a better life. But it's not a better life. And it's not meant to be a substitute life. You don't stay in Buddhist monasteries all your life, just for a while. So we don't just choose mundane life because we have a job and a family. We choose mundane life because it's deeply satisfying. But in some ways it's also not satisfying. So what role does Sangha and semi-monastic life have in relationship to mundane life in the positive sense of mundane?

[59:17]

Okay, and if we have the two truths, in the past, the two truths were conventional life in 10th century China. In the past, there were these two truths. It was about conventional life in the 12th century. Yeah, or first century. In the 12th or first century in China. Okay, and that conventional life is contrasted with fundamental truth, fundamental life. But these are not two separate things. They fold in and out of each other. That's my palm. If I negate my palm, there's the back of my hand. So these are two truths because they're one truth folded in two parts.

[60:31]

Okay, if one of the parts is the Western concept of the individual, which is very different from the concept of conventional life when the two truths were developed as a practice. then the dynamic in the West of the relationship between the two truths is different. And this difference we have to understand if we're going to have an adept lay sangha that survives. Please wait. After lunch? Could you just repeat the last sentence?

[61:47]

She just repeated it for me. Which one? Well, what did you say is different in the West? I'll come back to it. Definitely, I'll come back to it. Okay. And I wanted, really, I wish we had three mornings squeezed into one. In the spatial immediacy of one morning. Because I wanted to also hear from all and each of you. who are, in fact, this adept lay sangha. And maybe in this afternoon, David could tell us something about his feeling of being a monk at Tassajara for some years and now being a lay person. And valuing Suzuki Roshi's teachings that he first heard in San Francisco and Tassajara, that he spent much of his time the last 19 years

[62:54]

putting together an archive of Suzuki Roshi's teaching. And he's put it together for the lei sangha as well as for monastic practice. What are we doing here, meeting in Hannover? In Heinrich von Hannover's former barn. So let's have lunch. And how long should we take? Two hours, two and a half hours, three hours?

[63:37]

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