Often I wonder before I start a lecture, can I do this? But I think you're all waiting down here, so I say, okay, I'll give it a shot. And I wonder, because sometimes I can barely think, barely recognize what I want to speak about. I can feel it, but I can't recognize how I can say it. And that doesn't mean that I think it's difficult. The difficulty is mostly its unfamiliarity. So this morning, Ryuten Roshi Paul asked me, could you say something more about the platform?

[01:32]

Yeah. And yesterday I was appreciated and was impressed by your noticing the difference between impermanence as a concept and momentariness as an activity. So then I have to find a way to say something that, you know, on some level I take for granted but have never spoken about. And then I think of poor Nicole who has to find a way to describe it too.

[02:33]

Do you say poor Nicole when I say that? I say that, yeah, and I feel it. Okay. Although this has happened many times, and after a while we become familiar with something, a way of looking at things, A way of looking at things. And that way of looking at things becomes a teaching. And then it often becomes a kind of technical term in the way we practice here in the Dharma Sangha. But it's a process of noticing... This is a kind of long introduction, but I'm sorry.

[03:55]

Go ahead. But it's a process of noticing things in one's own practice. Or noticing things that are in the tradition. Dogen or Dharmakirti, etc. And then finding a way for it to be in our language, in the paradigms of our our European and American language. Okay, so I'm... I said it would be good to bring the... Well, first let me say, this koan starts out with the hundred negations.

[05:19]

Apart from the four propositions and beyond the hundred negations, what is the great living meaning of Buddhism? So finally, we're in the third day now, is it? Third day? Yeah. Third? Okay. Anyway, we're finally getting to the first sentences of the Quran. But actually, in addition to trying to find a way to speak about what's often, what sometimes is unfamiliar, I'm trying to speak in the midst of what is the practice of the 100 negations. Because of course in a koan like this we're not we have to look at what does he mean by apart from and beyond.

[06:40]

Does he mean let's forget about it? Or does he mean after having developed the practice of the four propositions and the hundred negations? Are we moving through this as a practice? What does it mean? So that feeling is held in what I'm speaking like one of these platforms. Okay, yes, impermanence is a concept. And concepts in Buddhism are usually often called, in later Buddhism, universals. Yeah, they're generalizations.

[08:03]

Someone said it's a concept of a leaf is putting a lot of unequal leaves in the same box. So since everything is unique and an activity, concepts are generalizations, are universals and not true. So maybe it's hard to experience impermanence. if it's not true, as a concept. Now, there's a long history of, as long as Western philosophy, of thinking about concepts and also in cognitive science and so forth. Yeah, and I'm only slightly familiar with this history.

[09:09]

But... The way we use concepts in Zen practice is enter them into the stream of our activity. When you take the precepts you take and hold them in your activity And then your activity flows around the precepts. And maybe it flows around like stones in a stream. Or perhaps it flows around like a box in the stream and fills the box.

[10:14]

Yeah, or perhaps it flows around, it's like a dam and it blocks the flow. So Sukhirashi has a wonderful bit about his teacher speaking about a stone in the air. There's an invisible stone in the air. And no one can see it, but everyone walks around it. And this can mean many things.

[11:25]

This can be our worldview. We're always walking around it, and there it is, and we don't see it. Okay, so the idea of a platform is to put a concept into the flow of activity and hold it there. This is just at the center of our practice. You make clear the concepts of the five skandhas. And then you hold the concepts of the five skandhas. In your activity. And your activity begins to inform you and make you notice the concepts.

[12:26]

Okay, like if you had no idea that you were going to die. And those who die young seem to live as if they're never going to die. Or sometimes. So if you had the idea you're never going to die, you'd definitely live. it would affect how you lived. And this recent movie, which I haven't seen, I think it's called Benjamin Button. The conceit of the movie is Benjamin Button gets younger. And I bet it's hard to make a stable relationship when you're getting younger and she's getting older.

[13:36]

It might work for a while. So basically this is the concept of getting younger influences everything he does. So in that sense we experience a concept. We experience it in how it affects the flow of our activity. So, you know, just now is enough. You've taken several concepts, put them together. Or metaphors. And it influences how you notice the present.

[14:39]

Okay. Now, arrive. The etymology of arrive is to reach shore after a journey. But if you use arriving to describe each moment, You're basically using a metaphor of arriving after a journey. And you're applying that metaphor to this moment where there's been no journey. But it may make you notice the momentariness of just now.

[15:41]

So the whole process in Zen of Wado, teaching phrases, wisdom phrases, is to enter something into the stream of activity. Sometimes it might dam the activity. Sometimes it might just be a grid. Sometimes it might be a reflector. Manchmal ist es so etwas wie ein Spiegel. Or a sluice? No. I was trying to see where we'd stop.

[16:43]

A sluice is like in mining or something where you take a stream and divert it down another direction. Okay. A diversion. To divert the stream. Ja, okay. Oder so etwas wie eine Weiche kann es auch sein. Yeah, so... Different wisdom phrases, wados, are meant to divert the flow of activity. Yeah, and as these opening phrases are. Where a tongueless... Where a... Where you can't open your mouth, where you can't open your mouth, a tongueless person can speak. Where you lift your legs without rising, a legless man can walk.

[17:46]

Okay, now that's specifically designed to enter into the flow of your activity. If you try to think it, it's like a nonsense. But if you sense the metaphor... And what the metaphor must be in contrast to. And then you let your activity flow around it, something begins to appear maybe. Hey, we've gotten almost to the two different beginnings of the koan. Today, thanks. Yeah. Next year we'll be at the end of the koan. Or maybe Sunday. All right. Okay. Now, when you're taking the inventory of, I'm just making an example, when you're taking the inventory of your cognitive and perceptual activity, if you want to make the inventory more subtle,

[19:28]

And of course you do. You hold in the midst of the study and the inventory the non-perdurance of the present. Okay. Pre-durance means it endures, it has duration. In German it's clear. So we know the present is momentary. Things are instantly past. As I said many years ago as a child, I noticed that there's five minutes to twelve, there's half a second to twelve, there's a millionth of a second to twelve, and then there's a millionth of a second after twelve.

[20:52]

Twelve doesn't exist. That very thinking is at the root of the idea of emptiness. Okay. So you can know that there's no duration to the presence. This is very basic Buddhism. I've repeated it many times. But you experience a duration. So that duration is within your experience. Our process, our sensorial process of scanning, psychotic scanning and so forth.

[21:55]

So wie unsere sensorischen Abläufe, wie zum Beispiel das Scannen, also das sakkadische Scannen. All right. Now, if, as you're noticing your cognitive and perceptual activity, in the midst of that knowing, in the midst of that activity of noticing, when a perception arises, how you cognize it, etc., you hold the concept of the non-perdurance of the present. Well, if you really can do that, You hold it as a presence in your mind, sometimes more presence, sometimes less.

[22:59]

It makes everything, it can make everything quite bright. Each percept is quite bright. The lamp, even without the light on, shines. Or the stone on the table, or the flower in the vase. Or the vase. Everything has a momentary shine or can. Or this is a taste, a flavor of emptiness. Because if you keep holding that concept of non-perduence as a presence in your mind, it may make you begin to notice that the largest percentage of the object is actually your own experience.

[24:22]

you begin to feel the sensorial and mental experience of the object. I sometimes to myself call this three-fourth emptiness. Because one-fourth is the object. Or something, I don't care, 0.073, I don't know. I never measured it that exactly. Yeah, but let's say one-fourth is the object. And three-fourths, the experience of duration, And that's not graspable, it's empty. It's not permanent. It has no substantiality.

[25:40]

So it's three-fourths empty. Now, in this I'm trying to familiarize you also with how Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka school has developed the concept of emptiness. If I call this a stick, I'm also saying it's not all the other things it could be. It's not Nicole. Well, yeah, it's not Nicole. Et cetera. So I'm negating everything it isn't.

[26:40]

So to call this a stick is also a process of negation. Anyway, now, what we would like to come to if we're going to penetrate this koan, is what is the heck or even hell the use of negating, of understanding negating? Was zur Hölle ist überhaupt, wozu soll es gut sein, dass man die Verneinung versteht? Why is the central koan of Zen Buddhism sometimes Mu? Not Mu as the idea of emptiness, but Mu as to everything that appears, no, not.

[27:45]

Why is Nagarjuna's process of teaching of negation at the center of Zen practice? That's what we'd like to get to through this koan. Hmm. Now, you have to have some, it's helpful to have some way to remind yourself of impermanence, interdependence, and so forth. Momentariness. Interdependence. Yeah. So I have a practice of whenever you see something, This cushion, it's interdependent.

[29:05]

Not only is it obviously constructed and now covered, but it's sitting on the floor. It's dependent on the floor and so forth. And it's also, again, it's a representation within my sensorium. And it's also impermanent. I could move it. And in the mornings we move it. So, I mean, there's various ways to look at its impermanence.

[30:07]

I tend, as a reminder, to use the idea of move. And it's also momentary. And so I tend to blink when I see it. Oh, it's only a moment. Augenblick. So my habit is when I look at an object, I look and see it's interdependent. So I use look and then I use feel for feeling my experience of it in my mind and body. And I use the word move to, I could move it, you know.

[31:16]

To remind myself it's impermanent. And I use the idea of blink to notice that it's momentary. Now, you can do whatever you want. You may think I'm nuts or silly at least. But I really want to have always present in myself that things are impermanent, mind also, interdependent and momentary. And so I have to have some way to put that into the flow of consciousness. Which is, you know, the main job, almost the only job of consciousness, is to make the world seem permanent and predictable.

[32:18]

So it's like you're putting a dam, you're cutting off the flow of consciousness. So you're deflecting the flow of consciousness into awareness. And so all of this kind of activity that I'm describing now is in the koan over and over again as to cut off. And cut off maybe too disciplined or too aggressive. But it's code for deflect, notice, etc., Yeah, I still haven't gotten to my examples yet.

[33:45]

I blame you. You bring up all these other considerations. You can, Roshi. You shouldn't have brought up the platform. So let's make use of concepts which can transform us. Like already connected. And I think you may notice that while activity is something like beating a drum, So in some ways you may be able to notice momentariness.

[35:12]

You can also hold the concept of momentariness in the flow of your activity like the non-perduence of the present. So you can almost see and feel the momentariness of the present. So you can experience the momentariness both through noticing the beat of the drum, the heartbeat, the breath, But you can also use it as a concept and notice a momentariness which is outside usually the closure of the senses.

[36:18]

As most of you know, I'm slowly becoming bionic. I'm trying to keep up with Arnold. Terminator 3. Well anyway, I have two plastic lenses in my eyes now. Actually, this ear is plastic. No, it's not. And I have two implanted teeth. What's very interesting about the implanted teeth, I find? One is they cost an arm and a leg. It took me four or five years to actually do it.

[37:50]

But it's the latest fashion and the dentist wanted me to be fashionable. But I think this is worth saying. I discovered, you know, your teeth seem sort of dead, right? They're just stones. But I've actually discovered that the teeth participate in creating a field of awareness in the mouth. Which the tongue participates in getting out of the way when the teeth come chomping down, you know, when the tongue gets out of the way. Mostly. Well, my tongue doesn't get out of the way so well back here where the two implants are.

[38:52]

Meine Zunge macht sich da hinten, wo die beiden Implantate sind, aber nicht so gut aus dem Staub. And my tongue knows everything that's going on in my mouth, where food is, etc., but doesn't know when there's food up here. Meine Zunge weiß zum Beispiel auch, die weiß alles, was in meinem Mund so passiert, wo die Nahrung ist und so weiter, aber sie weiß das nicht so genau, wenn das Essen da oben in der Implantatecke ist. So there's a bodily field of awareness in my mouth. It looks like it's just air in there. But it's not just air. It's a bodily field of awareness. And that bodily field of awareness extends around the whole body. It's not just in the mouth. And what I notice with my new eyes Well, it makes me feel younger, like Ben Button. Because things look the way they used to do when I was young.

[40:05]

Hey, and I'm disappointed when I look in the mirror. It's a serious problem. But I can see into objects with much more precision. Into the shades inside the tree and so forth. And then I feel more located in the world. And practice also makes our senses in general less bionic and more subtle. And we really feel into the details of the world with more thoroughness and preciseness.

[41:22]

And that makes us feel more how thoroughly we belong. Now, I'll try to finish right in a moment. So you may have noticed that concepts are more spatial than temporal. In other words, concepts are, when you experience them, are more of a spatial experience.

[42:23]

Yeah. Activity is activity and also a concept. But in the midst of activity, you don't experience it as a concept. But if I say, stop your activity, you'll suddenly feel the space of the stopped activity. where a person can't open his mouth, it's not when you can't open your mouth. It's where, which is a spatial word. Yes, that's enough.

[43:31]

Spatial. Spatial. How is your existence, spatial as well as temporal? What would that mean? Please put that into the flow of your activity as a little platform. Spatial as well as temporal. Thank you.

[44:24]

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