So let's continue to whatever extent we want to, the discussion we started. Or anything you have that's come up from your reading the text. Okay. Ja, also vom Textlesen her ist bei mir die Frage aufgetaucht So from reading the text, the question that arose for me is the question, what's Dogen's understanding, what are the ingredients of Dogen's here, the word here?

[01:06]

And for the explanation, it seems to me to be a term that appears again and again in Gensokyo. It always refers to the fact that you find it directly under your feet or here is the place, here unfolds the path and several turns in this way. So just to say that came up as a question because it seems to me that throughout the text he refers over and over again to this gesture of saying it begins under your feet or here is the place. It says so in this text. Here the way unfolds. And here seems to be a reference point for him. Yeah, okay. Chosan. [...]

[02:09]

What's the ceremony you ask the teacher? Chosan. Chosan and socha. Chosan. Chosan. Okay. In the Chosan ceremony, I ask Sugirashi, how will I find my way? It's very solemn, everybody's asking questions, you know. And he said, under your feet. And I mean, from one point of view, this is a ridiculous, obvious answer. Where else? But in that kind of context with what I meant, it has a relevance that has stayed with me since then. Yeah, so Dogen means, let's say, most simply, he means an inseparability from immediacy, a non-dual inseparability from immediacy, or something like that.

[03:45]

Yeah, but what that means, I'll speak about it in a bit. Okay, yes. I find it interesting that Dogen speaks of the thought of death, I find it interesting, Dogen speaks about birth and death and that being the one side and then practice. And how that refers to the practice of no life span. I find it interesting too. It's food for rumination. Yes. What is noticeable, of course, is the lighting.

[05:09]

Of course, what's obvious is that enlightenment is important in the Gensokyo. Yes. But what I've experienced, or heard... Is that enlightenment is the main hindrance for enlightenment, that when you seek for enlightenment or you want enlightenment, it's ridiculous and that wanting enlightenment can hinder enlightenment. Yes. Oftentimes I have the feeling that the way we approach the topic is entirely inadequate.

[06:26]

Because you're not enlightened yet, you mean? No, but because our concepts just don't really fit, they don't... Are within the Dharma Sangha or just in general? And they don't seem to relate to or reflect really what's going on. And I feel reminded of Huan Po who says yes and he will Like an outbreak of telling his disciples just stop seeking for it. And now I look at the text and I see the way of enlightenment. To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. For me that points to that there's something to be justified here.

[07:56]

Justified in the sense of bringing order? How to approach the way of enlightenment? So let's say that very simply, Dogen says in this fascicle, the practice of Buddha's way is the way of enlightenment. Now we have to try to makes sense of what he's saying. And in one sense we can say that in this fascicle, because he's speaking about enlightenment, he's trying to show enlightenment.

[09:09]

So he's trying to let us see something about what Martin Luther is about in what he says in the festival. So let me again That's rather a picture I have to build up a bit, so let me come to it before we end. Das ist ein Bild, das ich ein bisschen aufbauen muss. Also lasst mich darauf zurückkommen, bevor wir hier abschließen. And I promise that if I do do that, you'll all be enlightened at the end. Ich verspreche, wenn ich das tue, dann seid ihr am Ende alle erleuchtet. You'll be cheering and throwing hats at me. Ich werde hier tanzen und Hüte in die Luft schmeißen und so.

[10:12]

Yes, we can. I read the text last night before falling asleep, and while I was falling asleep... And then I noticed a sentence which I've never noticed before, which is, a Buddha does not necessarily notice that he's enlightened, or that he's a Buddha. Do you hear that? Boy, I write that down. So the text puts you to sleep at that moment. No later. But it is popping out. Yes. Okay, good.

[11:14]

Next. Yes, Susan. I'd like to repeat what I said before and this is something quite new for me. For many years I haven't had a relationship to my body, to the body in the way that many people have a relationship to their body. And that was quite confusing for me. And somehow I have a feeling right now that this body is arising right now.

[12:16]

that somehow it becomes meaningful or sensible for another. This is really like a change with which I have to live for the first time. That's really a change that now first of all I have to learn to live with. You had a body since you were born, I think. And your parents bathed you and you later bathed yourself and you dressed yourself. What was the experience of not having a body in the sense that you feel now? That is a useful, not so easy, maybe useful or

[13:52]

That makes sense. That it is an instrument that makes sense or meaningful. Not just that it makes sense for me, but makes sense in general. That's how you used to feel or how you feel now? Now. Now. So before it was just something that you needed to walk around with. And I couldn't get my feet on the ground, so to speak. And that shift has happened partly through practicing. So the shift has been happening for some time, if I'm noticing you accurately. Oh, okay. Well, it's a nice appearance. We like you. Okay, someone else?

[15:34]

Yes? Are you trying to monopolize the time? Okay, monopolize away. If all things or all appearances are Buddha-Dharma, Then enlightenment and illusion are equally present, exist equally. But that would mean that there would have to be some kind of super or meta enlightenment or something that includes both enlightenment and delusion. Yeah, something like that. Would I say that?

[16:50]

I wouldn't say that. I don't know, what occurs to me right now is the possibility of washing your face exists whether you wash your face or not. But there's no meta field of washing your face hovering above you. Waiting when you're not looking to wash your face. Waiting Though some parents do act that way. But if we follow that idea of washing your face, the possibility to wash the face, do you know that in the diade of enlightenment there is the possibility of blinding, and in the enlightenment there is the possibility of blinding?

[18:30]

But in this diet of enlightenment and delusion, then there would be in enlightenment the possibility of delusion and in delusion the possibility of enlightenment. Of course. Of course. And there's the feel of having washed your face but not bothering to do it. You all lost your tongues. Yes. You know, there was a, many years ago, in the 60s sometime, George Leonard, I have to find out what it was, was a friend of mine.

[20:14]

He wrote some books about education and other things. And one of the things he noticed was that one of the things he spoke about was a film he saw He made the film? No, he spoke about the film. And in it somebody had for some reason I mentioned this before to the Sangha, but not for a long time. But anyway, he slowed the film down. I mean, until there was film, you couldn't do this, of course. He slowed the... Someone took a film and then for some reason slowed it way, way down so people moved, you know, like that, you know.

[21:33]

And if I remember correctly, it was a film of someone giving a lecture. And he saw that shortly after the lecture started, everyone in the room, and I remember it was a room like of 50 or 60 people or something or more, was functioning in a very coordinated way. So one person would be moving like this and over there someone else would be moving like this and it was all coordinated. And there was the voice of the person speaking.

[22:39]

And someone lit a cigarette. And they entirely took the cigarette out of the pack and brought it up in the same rhythm as the entire room was moving. Now I'm not sure this is true, but I think it's the case. And I wrote about it recently, or note about it, to Peter Nick, who's a leading research botanist, biologist, and head of the botany department in Karlsruhe.

[23:49]

Yeah, and he is a polymath who speaks Russian and some Japanese and works with people in China and research projects and so forth. Polymath is a word just for languages or for one? No, somebody who sort of knows everything. I know him just by accident because he happens to be my neighbor in Freiburg. And we've become very close friends. Anyway, he's actually given a talk once at Johanneshof. Were you there? Anyway, what I said to him, and he said he agrees with me,

[24:52]

If you have a context of plants, the plants develop in that context something like we could say a field of coherences. Dann entwickeln die Pflanzen in diesem Zusammenhangsgefüge so etwas, könnten wir sagen, wie ein Feld von Kohärenz. Maybe it's something like gardeners talk about, companion planting. Und Gärtner sprechen über sowas wie, wie heißt es? Partnerpflanzen. Partnerpflanzen, danke. you plant plants which help each other and which one keeps the insects away and the other, you know. And he's very involved in, and one of the leading people researching, how sense, S-C-E-N-T, and other modules,

[26:15]

modulations of a plant communicate to other plants in ways that they function together. Und er ist sehr involviert damit und ist quasi führend auf dem Gebiet, dass er untersucht, wie Gerüche, kann es denn sein, Düfte, wie Düfte von einer Pflanze zur anderen sich verbreiten und die Pflanzen koordinieren. So you can't say that the individual plant is intelligent. Like you can't say an individual termite or ant is intelligent, but somehow an ant here functions in relationship to an ant here. So there seems to be some kind of field established that uses information in a way that we could call intelligence, but is not the intelligence of the separate parts. So what I said to Peter in my note to him the other day,

[27:49]

Do you think that plants in a shared context establish a field of information which actually functions as a kind of shared intelligence? kind of intelligence. And he wrote back to me, well, it depends on how you define consciousness and intelligence, but basically, yes. And if I define intelligence in terms of etymology, means, as I've said, to walk into. So in that sense, the plants individually seem to walk into a field which then benefits all of them. In dem Sinne scheinen die Pflanzen in ein Feld hineinzutreten, das dann ihnen allen zugute kommt.

[29:32]

But then the question is, of course, is when do plants do that and when do they not do that and what are the conditions that allow that to happen? Und dann stellt sich aber natürlich die Frage, wann machen die Pflanzen das und wann machen sie es nicht? Und was sind die Bedingungen, die zulassen, dass das geschieht? Now, going back to this slowed down motion film, it seems like there's some kind of, that film is an example, field of shared bodily, a kind of common mudrik behavior happens. Dogen speaks about, because establishing monastic life was extremely important to Dogen, And he emphasized it because he was very critical of monastic life at the time in Heian period Japan.

[30:50]

In the earlier period. So he wanted to do what he thought was Sung Dynasty monasticism. And it's clear that Zen developed a kind of monasticism which was different in China. The Chinese Zen developed a kind of monasticism which was different from earlier monasticism. You know in Japan the word for beautiful and clean is the same word. And so he didn't think the Chinese kept themselves very clean. So he emphasized having a washroom and bathing regularly and washing your feet regularly.

[32:14]

He really was proud, supposedly, of reintroducing a way to use a stick to clean the teeth. And that was part of his monastic rules. And that was part of his monastic rules. It's one reason I'm happy my translator's name is Baden. I mean, Ms. Bath here. Has anybody ever called you Ms. Bath before? No, it's the first time. Okay. But one of the reasons he emphasized monastic life, for example, one of the things he said is that the self assimilates itself to others.

[33:29]

The self adjusts itself to others, but much more than adjust, assimilates, it overlaps, includes. The self enters into the self of others, and others enter into oneself. What was the last thing? The self... The two alternatives, that's all. Okay. And when he speaks about the practice of the Buddha way is the non-duality of self, other and others.

[34:55]

So he says that in this Vengeful Column. The absence of self and other is a condition for practicing the Buddha way. Okay. So he saw, as far as I can understand what he saw, he saw that the monastic life allowed you to create a field of mutual assimilation. So it was a kind of meta-identity. And the precept, I spoke about this in the With the branches, I consider it took me years to see it, but the far-out concept that there's a generational precept body.

[36:22]

I spoke about this in the Winter Twigs, and it took me years to really see it. This concept, this really extensive concept, that there is a blessing, a generationally-advanced body of blessing. In other words, Buddhism doesn't have a pope. There's no institutional central headquarters, there's no Vatican. But what does unite Buddhists everywhere? basically a shared conception of what is a human being. And that shared conception is rooted in the precepts, what you hold before, precept, sept is to hold. So if all of us here have these precepts, not that we follow, but that we embody, we hold them in our activity.

[37:47]

And that's what, of course, these raksas, most of us have, many of us have, represent. That we've taken the precepts. And it's even expressed in sewing, if you make it yourself. Okay, so it's a sense that The degree to which this is a multi-generational pre-sexual body is called the blood lineage. Now Richard and I share a name, but not much genetic overlap for some centuries probably. But if we share precepts in the sense that we decide to live that way,

[39:02]

In Buddhism, it's called the blood lineage. We don't share blood, but it's called the blood lineage. So Buddhism has this Zen particularly, this way out idea, I think it's way out at least, not in usual sociological texts. If a significant or any part of a population embodies the precepts. And that embodiment is conveyed. What's the word? Authenticating and cultivating

[40:11]

the horizontal lineage. And in an overlapping way cultivates the next generation lineage. This is called the multi-generational precept body. So the lineage of teacher-disciple is one concept of lineage And another concept of the lineage, an overlapping and a meta-concept of the lineage, is this vertical lineage

[41:46]

the horizontal lineage becomes a vertical lineage through generations. It's a kind of societal dimension rather than individual dimension. And it's the vision of how Buddhism can transform society as well as the individual. And so Dogen's effort to establish a Heiji was also an effort to establish a society which continued the precepts. And was also an effort to To transform society as well as the individuals.

[43:13]

And how can he pass this vision on? Well, I mean, he would be very happy to see the barbarians of the Eastern Reich are now practicing. I think they thought of us all as barbarians. Okay. So we are accomplishing in our own way Döding's vision. So what he tried to do again in establishing a monastery, and he went to the area where the Heiji is, because he wanted to be in the mountains and isolated from the high society of Kyoto.

[44:34]

Society he was born into and lived within when he first came back from China. Okay. So again, in my primitive way, I'm trying to see if I can speak about this. So he saw the monastic life in its possibilities of assimilating self into others and others into self, as creating a field of enlightenment.

[45:38]

So he would also say, I think, when you When a practitioner enters the world through knowing the world as appearances, And when you get the habituation of knowing the world as appearances, And you empty the world and you simultaneously empty the appearances.

[46:52]

There's a kind of technical word called kenosis, which means to empty things. A knowing which is empty, kenosis. Okay, that when you practice in a monastery or in any other circumstances, emptying appearances of substantiality, you're creating a field of a non-dual field which is free from the duality of self and other. And creating this field free of self and other,

[47:55]

And again, this doesn't mean it's always your experience. Well, it can be or could be always your experience to various degrees. But it's more in the context of we need to sleep sometimes as well as be awake. And now it's up for the practitioner, you need meditation as part of your lived life. So there's sleeping and waking and zazen. And zazen is an absorption, a subsumption of your experience.

[49:05]

Subsumption means to absorb from underneath. Zazen is an absorption, a subsumption of your experience. It's maybe in contrast to reductionism. It epitomizes through absorbing your experience, not in reducing it. So that the habit of meditating regularly absorbs and unifies in a way waking and sleeping and generates waking and sleeping as a field of enlightenment.

[50:10]

In other words, the practice of Buddha's way is to generate a field of enlightenment. What a lovely tiny human being. And so again, The conception of the monastery is to be a field of and for enlightenment. Now you may not create a self which notices you're enlightened. But you're functioning in a field of enlightenment. No. And he would... His idea was, and my idea is too, that once you know that field, you function that... That becomes your way of functioning to...

[51:17]

significant degrees in your ordinary life. So if you also, again, practice emptying appearances, That practice establishes a field of enlightenment. So I think Dogen would say, not only does it create the likelihood that you will have an enlightenment experience, and that enlightenment experience will become an enlightening experience within your activity, But even if you don't have a specifically identifiable experience of enlightenment, if you're functioning within the field of enlightenment, it becomes

[53:00]

a functioning within the field and through the field of enlightenment. So again, it's maybe like the field or the context of plants. None of the plants are intelligent exactly or enlightened. I have a tulip that's enlightened though. Anyway, even though the plants don't know they're creating a field of intelligence they create another dimension they create a dimension given certain circumstances, which functions intelligently.

[54:07]

So part of the sense of the teaching that these folks and Mahayana folks and Zen folks are trying to do is deal with the idea that everyone is already in my... And part of what these Marayana people and the Zen people are trying to do is simply to deal with this idea that everyone is enlightened. It's partly that if we're so interrelated, if one person is enlightened, it somehow is interrelated with everyone. But a more sophisticated and realistic way of looking at it is certain conditions create a field of enlightenment which a society or a whole society or at least a sangha or some persons can function within.

[55:09]

And the concept is, if there's some persons or some groups of persons which function as fully as possible in the way human beings ought to be and actually exist, Und das Konzept dabei ist, dass wenn einige Menschen oder eine Gruppe von Menschen so vollständig wie möglich auf die Art und Weise funktionieren, wie Menschen das am besten sollten, dass das dann Auswirkungen auf die gesamte Gesellschaft hat. Or at least it's the best we can do to affect the whole society. So we could say the Genjo Koan is a teaching about what is the field of enlightenment. So it starts out when all things are the Buddha Dharma.

[56:35]

There's delusion and enlightenment. You know, sentient beings and... Buddhas. And what's the second one? And practice in birth and death. And given that, even with the Buddha Dharma, those things all exist, now let's take the next step and when the duality of non-self is not present, you begin to create a field which can transform the whole situation. And given that all things are Buddha-Dharma, if the dynamic of no self is present, then we can create a field that begins to realize the dynamic of Buddha-Dharma or enlightenment. So again we could say the profundity of the ordinary moment is given to the becomes the profundity of every moment.

[57:45]

And that is communicated into the field of enlightenment. Yeah, I think that was rather clumsy in how I presented that, but... I've never said that before, Jeff. I'll improve. Okay. Am I making any sense? Okay. All right, thank you. Hi, you... I wish I could speak German so I could talk with her. She's not so sure, but you know.

[58:49]

So you can see that this small shift from the 10,000 things to the 10,000 dharmas is Dogen's shift from their things and appearances, that's an important thing to function, but now to empty them creates a field of enlightenment. And creates a field of enlightenment for yourself. So now wisdom practice is to find ways to create a field of enlightenment for yourself. And we can say that the field of enlightenment calls forth the laya vijnana. In other words, if the field of enlightenment is a particular configuration within immediacy, the Alaya Vishnayana as the accumulated experience of your lived life,

[60:33]

within the infinity of its patterns, some of the patterns can be called enlightened. And what happens with field intelligence or field knowing And what happens with this field intelligence or the field knowledge is that the field knowledge calls forth information from the environment information embedded in fields. In other words, a field, an assimilated field, has a dynamic, an activity, because it is an activity.

[61:56]

We can even say, trying to use language from physics and neuroscience, it creates a quantum field. that's not comprehensible by consciousness. One of the things that interests me is how when you, which I do occasionally, I haven't for some years, but I did recently, spend time with scientists who are at the edge of trying to figure out how to describe what's unknown to us or barely known. I mentioned this in the winter branches. Is it... their effort is not simply to explain the quantum phenomena of the collapse of the wave and stuff like that.

[63:25]

Through consciousness. The collapse of the wave. The collapse of the wave. The collapse of the wave. they're also experimenting with the edge of where language can go because they don't know where they're trying to do, in effect, the things that we're doing. So their language is not just expressing, it's not just exploring what they see in their experiment or through their colliders and so forth. Their effort also becomes an experiment and how you say certain things. And I think people wouldn't explain things as particles anymore.

[64:35]

But they're more waves or fields. But the concept of a particle led them to trying to split atoms and so forth. So now there's new concepts which grew out of the previous concepts because their experiments are showing them the previous concepts were limited. And Buddhism develops the same way. In a very simple way. And in other words, what Eric brought up earlier. In our attempt to find for our practice helps finding some language that helps develop our practice.

[66:11]

And then that development may say, hey, that language is wrong, it's got to be more subtle. I think maybe in the upcoming seminar with the psychotherapist I should speak in some detail about the vijnana. Because it's a concept that you wouldn't think up on your own. But when you bring that concept into your lived practice, it's extraordinarily fruitful. Okay. So again, I guess to say one last thing, what interests me is that a dynamic of knowing is knowing and assimilating and acting is developed through field awareness that isn't possible through individual consciousness.

[67:35]

What interests me is a dynamic of realization, And so I'm very grateful to share the field of practice with you. And with Tara too. She sometimes wonders, you know, I don't. So maybe we can hear a bell and then we can end. No need to assume the posture. I will depend on your mental postures for assimilation. Ah.

[68:44]

So some kind of field is functioning right now. And although I'm speaking, we don't have to mention or speak about it. But as in the story of Dung Shan and his teachers, he said he didn't hear the teaching of sentient, of insentient beings. And his teacher said, although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which is. Although you do not consciously know the field that's always being generated,

[72:05]

The field of enlightenment is to the practice of the Buddha's way as the field of enlightenment is not to hinder acting within the fields of knowing we are always generating. Ask her if she wants to read the path.

[73:24]

Nope. Thank you, Christina and Dick Cole for translating.

[73:52]

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