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Ephemeral Reality: Zen's Evenflow Perception

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RB-03758

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Seminar_What_Is_Reality?

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The talk explores the experience of reality through the lens of Zen philosophy, emphasizing the concept of "appearing" as opposed to a static, "permanent" world. It highlights the distinction between pure being and everyday human existence and discusses practice as a tool for perceiving continuous change and impermanence. The speaker also delves into the practice of field perception, likening it to an experiential understanding that goes beyond the conventional five senses, supported by concepts from Japanese culture, such as "ma" and participation through the "hara."

  • Dharma (Buddhist Philosophy): Discussed as a practice centered on experiencing the world as continuously appearing rather than implicitly permanent.
  • Japanese Concept of "Ma": Explained as an awareness of the space or field an object occupies, relevant to field perception practice.
  • Hara (Japanese Culture): Mentioned as a traditional Japanese reference point for gut perception, used metaphorically in the talk to describe non-thinking perception.
  • Haragai (Japanese Business Terminology): Introduced as a term for participating in meetings with gut feeling rather than cognitive input, illustrating cultural differences in perception.

AI Suggested Title: Ephemeral Reality: Zen's Evenflow Perception

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Transcript: 

...city, sister village in France. And she just was, I guess, a little surprised to find a Buddhist center in the middle of this little village, Ireland. So she's bringing back a report, perhaps, to her. And Iris, our kindergarten teacher. Yeah. Well, I used the example of the other day, Iris, of sitting with all of you in the midst of the local dialect around the fire. Yeah. Now, again, I use the example of Sophia composing herself.

[01:23]

Now, we discussed what compose is maybe in German. This doesn't sound right. Yeah. Okay, good, I like all this. Because it makes so clear that what we're talking about doesn't exactly fit English or German. So we have to, you know, of course, you find a territory of experience through practice that doesn't fit into your language. I'm already going to have a problem with the being who came out of the forest and each of us as human beings.

[02:45]

Sorry, I already had a problem? I will have a problem with the being who comes out of the forest. And just a human being. Now, how are we going to make the distinction? When the person comes out of the forest, we maybe have some feeling of, maybe we could say, pure beings. It's the man you meet in the forest when you're lost. We're meeting the human being, you said. We're meeting pure being, the true being. Mm-hmm. and not just a human being.

[03:59]

How do we distinguish between pure being and our usual sense of being? So we could say being thus or thus being or something like that. I haven't found what phrase I want to use. Yeah, neither does it exist in German. Thus, you can't say thus being? So sein. So sein or sein so. I like so sein better than English. Dieses so sein gefällt mir besser als das Englische. So sein. I don't know what it means, but it sounds good. So sein. Also ich weiß nicht, was es bedeutet, aber es klingt gut. So sein, ja, ja. Can't she so sein?

[05:03]

What? Can't she so sein? Oh, yeah. Can't she so sein? I don't know. Can't you understand? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can't she so sein? Can't she so sein? It can just be like that if you make it sound a little bit different. Yeah. So again, let's go back to Sophia composing herself. One of the many things I have people saying to me who practice, who start to practice, who practice for a while, is that I'm too open. It makes me vulnerable to practice. I don't have the usual way of separating myself. And I think you do need some way to seal yourself.

[06:26]

But not armor yourself. And I think this sense that I saw in Sophia of composing herself is something like sealing yourself. I mean, and it's close also to this word I've used the other day, which is translated as detached. Sokure. That I mentioned the other day. But it really means detached yet not separate from. And this is something also like sealed.

[07:31]

Now here I'm trying to speak to the craft or process of another way of perceiving. Things appear. Things appear. Okay. Now, if you have the sense of the world as a container or or permanent, implicitly permanent. We're too smart to think it's explicitly permanent, but we're not so evolved that we don't find it implicitly permanent. We're not so... We haven't practiced so much.

[08:50]

So our cultures always, our habits, our personal habits, are always making the world seem implicitly permanent. Okay. So you have a choice between feeling the world as permanent or the world as appearing. If you really have the sense of implicit impermanence, then you don't have a sense of the world as appearing. If you have a sense or a feeling that the world is implicitly permanent, then you don't have the feeling that it appears. And that's one choice you can make. An appearance is something like, you know, simply you can practice it, practice the feeling by closing your eyes and opening them.

[09:50]

If I close my eyes and open them, you appear. I close them again. You appear. It's slightly different each time. If I just keep my eyes open, it doesn't seem like there's any change. If I close my eyes and then turn here and then open them, it's quite different. It's not clear what connection there is between this and this. So if you experience everything, not just know that everything changes, but you experience everything as changing, then you don't have this implicit sense of permanence.

[11:08]

Things always seem to be appearing even when you have your eyes open. And the idea of dharma is rooted in the idea that everything is continuously appearing. Okay, so at the center of the idea of dharma, dharma as a practice, Is this sense of actually experiencing the world as appearing, not just knowing it changes, but experiencing it as appearing? Okay, so you have that choice. then you also have a choice of how it appears.

[12:19]

It's not just, you know, if you don't have a choice about how it appears, then again you just have a sense of there-ness and implicit permanence. So again, going back to this sense of being sealed or composing yourself, or feeling composed, or feeling yourself in your breath and in your body. And, you know, they often say, and they've done studies which show that shy children are children who have usually too much input. They don't seal themselves. So they're put into a situation with a bunch of kids, and they...

[13:27]

They get too much all at once, so they act shy, because they get too much input all at once. And if I had a child like that, I would try to teach them to compose themselves quickly in each situation. If you can find this place where you're detached yet not separate from. There's an urgent request. lösen kann, aber dennoch nicht getrennt sein von ist. Yes. Ich hatte eine Idee, vielleicht sich versammeln oder sich sammeln.

[14:36]

Also sammeln, this is an example for this composed. Sammeln oder wie man sich sammeln kann oder versammeln kann. It was a vocabulary suggestion. Okay. Danke. All right, thanks. And I mean, I think those of you who, perhaps Katrin, in your work, or those of you who are doctors, you have to be with people all the time, and somehow you have to be detached, yet not separate. You can't lose yourself in the suffering or difficulties of the people around you, and yet you can't be separate from them. So this ability to feel a certain composure in the midst of situations is part of the act of perceiving the world in the way I'm speaking about.

[15:40]

Now, I spoke about seeing things, knowing things as a field, And I think you can practice with it. And you'll see that it requires a non-thinking. I mean, you can try it. I mean, one of my common examples is you try it with a tree. Also mein gewöhnliches Beispiel ist, dass ihr das mit einem Baum versucht.

[16:49]

You look at particular leaves or the branches or whatever. Ihr schaut spezifische Blätter oder Äste an. And then you shift to the whole of the tree all at once. Und dann wechselt ihr zu der Ganzheit oder dem Ganzen von dem Baum auf einmal. When you're looking at the leaf, say, At the same time, you're in the background, you're feeling the whole tree. Okay, so I'm suggesting you bring the background, what's in the background, to the foreground. So you feel the tree. Now, in my own experience, when I feel the field, I actually feel it in the bones of my cheeks. So this supports your feeling there's more than five or six senses.

[17:54]

One of the senses, I think clearly, is your bones. Now, I'm told if you have a hearing aid, you can actually attach that hearing aid to the bone somewhere. It doesn't have to be in the ear. Is that true? That's the cochlear implant that Nathan has. Yeah. Yeah, Nathan, yeah. That's what the little boy from Berlin has. Yeah. And Ivan Illich... Ivan Ilyich, who died a while ago, he told me that because of this cancer he didn't treat, it hung off his face like a grapefruit. It destroyed his hearing. Doctors said he didn't have hearing. But he learned to hear through his bones. So he heard pretty well. Okay. But in any case, in our chanting, certainly in the services, you know, the chanting works well when we chant with our bones.

[19:38]

You can feel it moving around. But in any case, whatever about all that, when I feel a field perception, I tend to feel it in my bones, particularly in my cheekbones. So I can move from... seeing something in particular, I just move to this feeling and the field perception appears. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it seems funny to say these things, but is this the way it is? But you do when you have that feeling.

[20:47]

Like, say that I feel this, which I do. And I'm walking around the building. I'm not really looking much, but actually I've got a little antenna here. And it's something like that. But I feel my whole body walking around the building. It's not my senses walking around the building. Okay. Now let's go back to the tree. You see the particular of the tree, then you see the field of the tree.

[21:50]

And not just the field of the tree, but you can the space the tree occupies as well. Actually, in yogic culture of Japan, they have a word for this. It's called ma. Ma is to know the field of something. So there would be a sense that in this room there's a ma quality dimension, aspect, that you can know. And this ma quality is also part of the idea of hara, to know through your hara, your gut. Ma is a quality of power?

[22:59]

Ma is related to also the feeling of knowing through your gut and not through your thinking or usual perception. And there's actually, believe it or not, a business term, haragai, which means to participate in a business meeting with your hara and not with your thinking. Es gibt sogar einen Wirtschaftsausdruck, Haragai auf Japanisch. Und das heißt, dass man in einer Besprechung, you're in a meeting with this hara-file, dass man in einer Besprechung mit diesem hara-gefühl sitzt oder teilnimmt. And I'm mentioning this only to say that in a culture like Japan, rooted in yogic Buddhist tradition, there's different words than we have for how we experience things.

[24:03]

Okay, so how did we get here? You're not interested in Japan particularly, probably? I hope not. I don't want you all to go to Japan. Stay here, please. And though I speak positively about Japan, don't worry, Japan has lots of things that aren't so positive. So stay here. But we got here because we wondered if in all of our situations our state of mind is what's most influential at work or home or with people, etc.

[25:09]

We got to this point by noticing that whatever our situation, our state of mind is perhaps the most influential thing. And then we noticed that, or maybe we noticed that it's the identity of mind with thinking That makes it hard for us to participate in mind, except through thinking. Maybe say it again, a little bit different.

[26:24]

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