One problem with not seeing you every day, every minute, at least regularly, is that I have to introduce practices and teachings much faster than you can practice them. That's partly because So some assembly of teachings need to be available so that you can focus on one or two that touch you.

[01:11]

And this is partly because a certain collection or constitution of teachings must be accessible so that you can focus one or two that touch you. But it's also the case that I'm sitting here with you, so I have to say something. And if I just repeat myself over and over again, I mean, say the same sentence or something, I think it would be kind of discouraging for some of you. But what I said this morning is enough for at least the next few months. In other words, if you're really going to chew on actuality and truth as two doors within consciousness,

[02:16]

This is going to take quite a lot of entry into the ingredients of your immediacy. Because if we do take the koan as the topic of this seminar, the usual emphasis of this koan is how do you make your actual life your koan?

[03:38]

In other words, how do you make the actual details, moment by moment, details of your life the koan? But what are the details of your life? I like the word details. I'm fond of various words. Details is nice because it's from tailored to be a tailor to cut things up. If it gets too cold, we can close some doors. So it starts out with when all things are the Buddha Dharma. There is delusion and enlightenment.

[04:52]

There is practice and birth and death. And there are Buddhas and sentient beings. Now some translators try to sort of clean up that text or make it more sound like Buddhism, kind of consistent with Buddhism. So the second sequence says something like, but when things are without self, then there's no delusions. But he starts out saying, when all things are the Buddha Dharma, there is also delusion and enlightenment.

[05:58]

And Buddhas and sentient beings And practice and birth and death. He couples these practice with birth and death. Sometimes translators put a comma after practice and then and birth and death. But that's not what Dogen intends, I'm pretty sure. He's balancing delusion and enlightenment. Practice and birth and death. and how is if enlightenment is a kind of antidote we could say or alternative to delusion how is practice an antidote or

[07:23]

Alternative to birth and death. Alternative. So if I ask you and you're thinking about it, you may hope I speak about various things in the... But the genjo koan is not structured through its placement on a page. Or being one of the bundled fascicles. The fascicle means not chapters, it's a bundle, it's various texts bundled together, but not in the sense that it makes one book.

[08:59]

It's a kind of collage. Is it the same? Saint word in German? In Latin. Let's return to the source. So as Eric said earlier in the day, The way I was speaking this morning, it makes truth not some kind of absolute thing outside us, but something that can't be separate from our immediacy. And that's the thrust of the first sentence of the Genshin Impact. When all things are the Buddha Dharma, then there is delusion and enlightenment, practice and birth and death, and Buddhas and sentient beings.

[10:28]

So now maybe I'm going to just say this first sentence over and over again. And you can leave anytime you want to. And while you're gone, I'll be sitting here saying the same sentence over and over again. Because in a way the structure of this koan has a month or two between each sentence. And he's written this Genjo koan. And he wrote it for a lay person, Tokusan, I forget his name. It must have been someone who's a lay person whose practice he particularly felt evolved with.

[11:55]

And as you probably all know he started writing He actually wrote these things up. I mean, it's not just like he was serious, just to rap, riff and rap. He began to compose these and then give them as lectures. But sometimes, in this case, send it to a favored lay person. But he composed, I think, he started about when he was 34, I believe. They think that he... over the years compiled about, got composed about 50 vesicles.

[13:06]

He was 34, supposedly, when he started. Of course, the Japanese who are doing it makes him 35, but that's... Because in Japan they count your age from conception. So when you're born, you're what? I have that problem in Germany too because I go on it because the second floor is the first floor in Germany. Which floor am I on? Which floor am I in? How old am I? I don't know. So by the end of his life, some people think he wanted to make a hundred fascicles.

[14:20]

But now they think there's about 90 maybe, in any case about at least 80 some. I guess there's what you call a fascicle. Anyway, since they're not chapters of a book, they're separate texts. Each one is the whole practice. And he completely, and he for some reason, I think it's obvious, favored the Gensokon, because when he did arrange them as 75 fascicles, I believe, he put Gensokon first. So the Genjō-kon is kind of the GPS territory of the Hōshō-bōgenzo.

[15:31]

The global positioning system of Buddhism. Because he saw this as, you know, each fascicle, and particularly the Gandhikon, as the whole of what you need to know and need to practice to be completely fully engaged in Buddhism and in your own amiz. And I've been using this phrase a little bit off and on the last, I don't know, year or some months or something, something like fully engaged in your own immediacy.

[17:03]

So when I say that, I mean it's such a kind of challenge. A challenge to myself and a challenge to you. Is it possible to be fully engaged in your own immediacy? Inseparably, your immediacy and also not your immediacy. How to get there? Yeah, well this isn't just an innocent question. Because intention shapes our life. As I illustrated mind over matter by lifting my arm. It's the shape you give to using the door of consciousness and the shape you give to mind as an intention

[18:33]

can affect you. It does affect you physically, mentally, your health. So you need to really to do something like this, take care of the door of consciousness. How consciousness is the... is part of the shape of how the world is also you. Now again, as I started to say what Eric said earlier in the day, about the truth being something like the truth being inseparable from our situation, it's not an out thereness.

[19:51]

So if the Again, for some of you who weren't here this morning, I'm using the word koan to mean, among many things, to mean at least the location of the truth. And also then how you locate the truth. So then we can say what is the path to the truth.

[20:51]

What is the way on which and through which we locate the truth? Well, you need to start with some sappy stuff. Yeah, what... as I often say, to get in the habit of saying welcome to whatever appears. Or to say yes to whatever appears. So I would say that the path to the location of the truth is acceptance and trusting. And that's again what the first sentence says. In some of the translations it says, if all things are the Buddha Dharma. And that's not a good translation in English. It should be when all things, because there's no alternative from the point of view of Dogen as a practitioner.

[22:18]

All things are the Buddha Dharma. They can't be anything else. There's just a way to name all things. So when all things are the Buddha Dharma, I told you I keep repeating myself. Okay. So then you have to ask yourself, when are all things Buddha terms? So again, we're talking about shaping the doorway of consciousness. So you enter the mix of ingredients which is immediacy. And immediacy, the word is right there, we don't need anything else.

[23:19]

no in between, in the middle. So, You've already gotten the Buddha Dharma because you all know the word immediacy, even studying a little English, and it contains the whole of Buddhism, so you can stop now. If you imagine, can it really be possible? The ancient etymology of this word, immediacy, can it really be possible? There's no in-betweenness? As Susanne said earlier, she got this phrase already connected. And she found it didn't immediately open itself to her.

[24:55]

It stood in front of me as like opposed to me. Oh, that's good. I'm glad you just stayed in front of me. If your intention is there, you stay in front of it. You can think you're going to obstruct me, but I'm going to be here as long as you are obstructing me. And now, after several years of practice, He shifted into resonant body. Now this is good. It's taken several years to go from already connected to resonant body. I wish you all this extraordinary luck.

[26:07]

Because it really, this is the way practice opens up. There's months of your lived life within the intention that all things of the Buddha Dharma between paragraphs, between sentences. Between words. Between actualized and truth. So if the path to and within the location of the truth is a path of accepting and trusting.

[27:13]

This isn't so easy to do. And the initial moment of consciousness There has to be acceptance. Nothing else works. If you always say, okay, you better go do something else than practice dharma. but of course if all things are delusion and enlightenment then that delusion is okay it's also the Buddha Dharma yeah

[28:29]

It's not so easy to practice acceptance and welcoming and trusting. And it doesn't happen through generalities or generalizing your experience. It happens through really being the tailor in the midst of the details of the fabric of your life. So before you can practice the details, You have to do the detailing. Do we have some tailors here? Christian Dillow's mother is a tailor.

[29:55]

And he's full of thinking right on the lines of what he learned from his mother about Taylor. So if you're going to be present enough in the the minuscule initial moments of appearance you have to develop those attentional skills.

[30:58]

So this koan in Dovian is assuming you've had enough monastic or zazen experience to develop those initials, attentional skills. So now what you may notice in what I'm doing is that I'm saying the same sentence over and over again in different ways. Yeah. And I'm just trying to create an atmosphere where you can notice the same sentence over and over again. So you asked me in a sense to keep talking, so I'm talking.

[32:00]

And you may be thinking, you're asking, well, I hope he covers more of the territory of the Ganges of Poland than the first time I saw this. But if I take you seriously as practitioners, which I do, I have to speak about quite a lot of things before we even get to the first sentence. And you, I hope, you could say to me, oh, you don't need to talk about anything else, just let me work on that first sentence. Or let me for the next unspecified length of time let me chew on the word actualize. And then maybe I can start chewing on the vocation of the truth Now, as I said this morning, we can also translate genjo as to complete that which appears.

[33:35]

Because again, words in a culture which emphasizes the contextuality of words. Look, word genjo means actualization. and also actualize and also realization and also verification and also to complete. So how do you verify completion? So from that emphasis on the presence of meanings, we have to complete that which appears.

[34:57]

in this human world of ours. Now, how are we doing for legs? Maybe we should have a break? Yeah. And she always says yes, and I always listen to it. Thank you. Thank you for translating again. Thank you. So what do any of you think, feel, say about what I've said so far? Was denkt, fühlt, sagt ihr oder einige von euch zu dem, was ich gesagt habe?

[36:16]

Was du gesagt hast, Roshi, hat mich sehr an meinen Beruf erinnert. What you said, Roshi, reminded me a lot on my profession. Also ich habe diesen seltsamen Beruf Wirtschaftsprüfung und was da... They have this strange profession of being an auditor. The characteristic of that profession is that problems arise. Das ist für den Praktizierenden sehr unangenehm, für die Wirtschaftsprüfung praktizierenden Menschen sehr unangenehm. And for the practitioner of auditing, is that the word? That is really unpleasant. Denn man versucht natürlich in dem Beruf, man versucht die Dinge vorzubereiten, man versucht die Dinge gut abzuwickeln und sozusagen alles, um die Probleme aus dem Weg zu kriegen.

[37:25]

Because in that profession it's all about you're trying to prepare things really well, to have the processes all clear and so forth, and you do anything you possibly can to avoid having problems. And even it's unavoidable that something will happen and it destroys your whole nicely set up and thought through structure and then something arises which you have no solution for. And since I've been doing this for a long time, I've learned that a concept that helps is I see the profession as being a troubleshooter.

[38:38]

And this is also something that I say to my young colleagues when they are frustrated that five minutes before getting ready, everything suddenly falls apart and then a question arises that no one can solve. I say, that's just the way it is. We are troubleshooters. This is what we do. And I tell my young colleagues about that too. When five minutes before having the whole project finished, suddenly a question arises which they have no solution for and sort of takes the whole thing apart, then I tell them, well, that's just what we do. We are troubleshooters. And when you experience this profession with the awareness that you are a troubleshooter, then it is clear that the problems will arise and that you... But when it's clear that this profession is about troubleshooting, then it's part of the conception that the problems will arise and that then of course you learn what works and what doesn't work.

[39:46]

And the reason I'm expounding on that is because I think for our Western practice, the territory of accepting and knowing that there will always be things arising that are difficult to accept, I think that's a really important territory. And the answer that you gave, or rather, I think it's just important to look at it and to take it in, always when you have the feeling, ah, that shouldn't actually be the case. So that this is also simply... an important signal for the practice, that exactly then one is called upon to accept or perhaps to say more welcome, because as a medical examiner I can't accept either, because everything will be torn apart, but I can say welcome.

[41:04]

the response you've given to that about welcoming and accepting, I think then even when something arises that is very difficult to accept, and as an auditor it may not be possible for me to accept a certain problem that destroys the whole system, but I can welcome it. Okay. And then the problem is the people you work for, the companies and so forth. hope you don't find any trouble and they want to shoot the troubleshooter if you find trouble. For many companies the auditor is the most feared person of the year. No, we just help.

[42:11]

We just help, okay. But we call you for help quite often. What do we do? We don't understand our books. Okay, someone else? I said a few things. I've become a student again. I've become a student again. And at the university I'm visiting a neuro-scientist who shows the newest scientific results.

[43:22]

I'll come back to that point later, but I'll say up front that the Buddhist practice here has helped me a lot understanding that. Oh, that's nice. Yes. Du hast vorhin von der Unmittelbarkeit gesprochen und die neueste Forschung sagt, glatt weg, es gibt es auch nur so. You spoke about immediacy and the newest neuroscience shows that there is nothing but that. that distinguishes us from other beings, is constantly changing. and constantly sends into the neocortex and receives from the neocortex.

[44:49]

And according to new neuroscience, we cannot influence that. The only possibility is that we decide what we might accept, use, what we might focus on. And what you said before, Does that need something like attention, respect, humility for what we are doing here? And so all we can do, our only possibility is to choose what we accept, what we make use of.

[46:04]

And then for what you've presented here, does that take something like respect or humility or awe? Awe, A-W-E? Yeah. Yes. Just for fun, there's 3,000 people every week who listen to these lectures. And she said the professor who's teaching that course He said that when he teaches it at his university, then there are at the most between 5 and 20 students.

[47:07]

So he's teaching it online or something like that? He has a foundation professor So when he teaches at the foundation he has 3,000 people and when he teaches at the university he has... Yes, that was true of the conference I was just at. Thank you, thank you. Yes, Thakur. I actually am also currently wondering or dealing with accepting and I seem to have no choice about it reluctantly sorry I told you that I find accepting a really difficult topic.

[48:34]

But also that I can see that it's the basis for immediacy. But I recently had this quote from a South American doctor which went I love or I accept the part of me that has created this situation. And that sentence somehow touched me. And I think, with that sentence I can, or in contrast, I work relatively often when I have a very uncomfortable situation that I don't like, because it's just hard to remember that

[49:45]

And I work with that sentence every time I find myself again in one of these unpleasant situations. Because when I say that, then I feel that it's easier for me to make the situation my own and to accept that part of its creation is through my conditioning and so forth. I came to a psychiatric clinic and the head of the clinic only worked with the patient's file. He worked with every single file so that he really said, I accept you like this, I love you. I want to get you healed in this situation. Die Menschen waren auf eine gewisse Zeit beeilt, also nicht, sagt man, und die Klinik wurde gestoßen.

[50:54]

Das ist natürlich schon erstaunlich. There's a whole story about this particular doctor who is supposedly a psychiatrist and worked in a closed psychiatric hospital. psychiatric clinic or something? Yes, clinic. And it is said that he only worked with documents of the patients and that with each of their files he went, okay, I love this person, I love the part that has created the situation, and I fully accept them. And it is said that in his presence all of the patients got healed and that they had no problem anymore and that the clinic was closed.

[52:01]

And even if only a small percentage of that is true, I think it's amazing. Yeah, we need such people. Okay, but you just illustrated what I started speaking about this morning. Your attitude is to let your actual situation, which includes resisting, accepting, So we can say that's your actuality, an aspect of your actuality. And you're letting that actuality tell you something. Instruct. Then you're using an instruction, like a dharma instruction, which is, I have to accept, I have to be able to accept this.

[53:23]

You're letting the situation instruct you, and you're bringing instruction to the situation to try to mediate it. And the willingness to accept that being instructed by and to instruct in a turn is the basic posture mentally about the posture of the Getshokon. As I brought up this morning, I have this question about entities.

[54:40]

Widersprüchlichkeiten auszufliessen. And my experience is that through forming entities, we tend in our daily lives to exclude our own contradictory aspects. At least. At least. I think that this leads to a situation of accepting that completely also means the opposite or the contradiction, to take part in it. But to accept the situation fully can also mean to accept its contradictoriness and to take that with one.

[55:42]

And in my practice I would describe that as a polar contrast, a complement. Or maybe polar opposition or something. And to include that somehow, even if in terms of my thinking or my head, it's just contradictory. Well, that's what the first statement of this koan says, basically. And as you rose up earlier, I said consciousness is something like a corset. Yeah, languages, yeah.

[56:44]

And you said something similar just now. And Dogen calls consciousness sometimes baskets and cages. We try to put things in baskets and the cages. In English, cage has two meanings in this context. One is, it's like a cage, like for an animal or something. But it also means to fool, to cage somebody is to fool. Not that that's necessarily, no, but... But it is interesting, I watched... nuances in words if we use them with a larger feeling and context.

[57:50]

Okay, someone else. How do you confront evil? How do you go about When there is a man who is not shaking your hand, who would in other situations kill me because I'm a woman. And do I trick him? Don't I trick him? What about acceptance in this situation? It's difficult.

[58:54]

That's why I'm bringing it up. I brought it here because I don't know what to do. I'm treating the children. That's difficult enough. I'm treating the women. Where are you doing this? In Berlin. In Berlin, yeah. And what? Well, it's probably better not to kill him. Yes, but what about acceptance? In other countries, I treated the predators because it was a war situation. But this special problem with women... And not shaking hands or whatsoever. Not carrying a wheel.

[59:56]

What do I do? Well, I mean, I don't have any answers to such... Yeah, I have questions. But you certainly have to accept. I mean, if a tiger is leaping at you, you have to accept that the tiger is leaping at you. Because it's a tiger. Yeah, it's a tiger. It's a tiger in the city. And you don't say, well, hello tiger, hi tiger. We have bears in Kresto. And usually, if you make god noises or you stand, they go off. And now and then they don't. And then you have to say, well, I accept you, but I'm heading this direction. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a terrible situation.

[61:00]

That's all you can accept. It's a terrible situation. and that your acceptance of him is not going to make any difference. Very, very little. I'm sorry. I'm glad you're trying to help. I'm sorry, but I'm glad that you're trying to help. Two years ago, 11 years ago, I couldn't sit for more than 20 minutes. Before I left the US, I couldn't sit for more than 20 minutes. And after year 9, 10, 11, I started to resign. I stopped seeing anybody on that subject. It's just, I live with it. Forget it. A friend passing by giving me a visiting card of a physiotherapist and you have to go there.

[62:07]

And I said, well, I gave up on that one. And she said, you can call, she said, you can call me and tell him. So I thought about it, and after 10 days, I thought like, well, do this acceptance, why don't I just go there? So I actually go there, at least. I don't have to go there again. So let's see. So I went and showed that guy my folder with what treatments and clinics and specialists in Vienna and Munich. I have a treatment that maybe nobody has done yet. So I said, what would that be? So he said... Are you patient and courageous?

[63:15]

He asked if I had the courage and if I also had good nerves. And I said, yes. Then he said, you can treat it rectally. I was very shocked. He told me, you can do something by yourself. working only rectal, from behind. I felt like, I don't know that tough, but Buddhism, acceptance. Yes, of course, but why not? The next day, I could sit already half an hour and get only one more treatment. And ever since, I can sit 45 minutes. I stand up because of other pains, but that's fine. Thank you. It's here. We should introduce him to every Buddhist community. His living is assured. And this fellow lives in Vienna? Ten minutes from my apartment in the town, from our house.

[64:26]

Ten minutes to walk. And for 11 years I went all places. You walked right by the house and didn't know you were there. I didn't know you were there. Interesting. Yes, Rosa? Yes. I have a tendency to somehow connect accepting with thinking that then it will get better that's not your service that may not work that way okay Regina In such situations, I'd like to respond to what you brought up, Mike, and I try to show in such situations that I am not composed in that way. Let's go back to what Dogen was intending when he wrote the Genshokon.

[66:04]

Because Dogen's intention is part of the text. And a text, a Buddhist text or a koan text, particularly koans, assumes you are identifying with the intention of the There's no way, of course, you can write everything. So you don't try to write everything. You write within the assumption that the reader is going to try to feel what your intention must be. So Dogen says, let's leave the first phrase off, there is delusion and enlightenment.

[67:15]

And practice and birth and death. And sentient beings and Buddhists. Okay. Now, what is that? That is a description of the world from the point of view of a Buddhist practitioner. So we have here, not only is there enlightenment, but there is also in fact delusion. And there are of course sentient life, sentient beings, And there are also Buddhas.

[68:31]

Now, the question is, can you accept this? It's not saying there's only enlightenment or there's no illusion. It's just saying it's all there. But it's also saying also that in addition to delusion, there's enlightenment. So he's saying, if you want to practice this code, Also sagt er, wenn du diesen Polen praktizieren willst, wenn du diese Lehre praktizieren willst, dann solltest du nicht nur Verblendung akzeptieren, sondern auch akzeptieren, dass es Erleuchtung gibt. Und das allein ist schon eine Herausforderung. Do you really feel that there is enlightenment in this world?

[69:43]

Do you feel it's only for special people? Geniuses or something? Do you assume that it's only back in the past in the Dharma ancestors or the historical Buddha? And how do you deal with the fact that you know people who aren't enlightened and you may even be quite sure you're not? It's clear you still have a mental and emotional suffering. And by definition, if you still have mental and emotional suffering, you're not enlightened. It doesn't mean you don't feel grief, for example.

[70:59]

But you don't suffer from the grief. You just accept the grief. It's horrible. In my case, my friend, I really didn't want to die. I died. So you have to deal with delusion and enlightenment. Even if I'm not deluded, I'm still unenlightened. Okay, now, however we understand the media system, I'd like to go into it a little more tomorrow.

[72:08]

And what is your name? Krista. We have lots of Kristas here. That's a nice name, isn't it? Krista. As she said, from a neuroscientific point of view, there's nothing but immediacy, and neither that doesn't exist. So if, and from the point of view of a physicist, there's no present, As I've told you often, quite often, my recognition when I was a kid that there's no 12 o'clock. That there's a minute, there's a fraction of a second before 12, and then suddenly a fraction of a second and there was no 12.

[73:10]

So there's no entity or activity involved. So if even in the present, even from a scientist's point of view, a physicist, there's no present. there's only your experience. As you brought up scanning, there's only your experience of a present that occurs within your senses. So if enlightenment, if you decide, yes, something like enlightenment does exist, or has some meaning.

[74:27]

And you know there's no future where it could be. And there may have been people in the past but still that's not now. So the basic attitude is if enlightenment exists it has to be here dann ist die grundlegende Haltung, dass wenn Erleuchtung existiert, du erfährst sie vielleicht nicht und du weißt vielleicht nicht, was es ist. Sie kann verborgen sein, aber selbst wenn sie verborgen ist, ist sie hier. Wenn wir mit diesem ersten Satz arbeiten wollen, You have to bring these two polarities together. I didn't say bipolar.

[75:28]

Polarities. You said two polarities. Well, bipolar is a technical term. Yeah, I didn't say bipolar. Oh, you didn't, okay. Oh, I see. Oh, bipolar, okay. Sorry, you know, my German is not very detailed. Okay. So you need to form the view that it can't be that whatever enlightenment is, it's already here. And if it's already here, there's no need to seek it because it's already here. So what am I talking about?

[76:30]

I'm talking again about mental postures. Okay, so there's intentions and there's vows And more strongly formed even, I would say, there's mental postures. So Dogen says that delusion and enlightenment practice and birth and death, and Buddhas and sentient beings. Now you have the same problem with Buddhas and sentient beings as you have with delusion and enlightenment. Are there Is there something called a Buddha, an awakened person?

[77:42]

And I can guarantee you as much as I can guarantee anything that there are. I know a number of persons who I would say by any way I'd like to determine are enlightened. But you, the practitioner, have to come to this yourself. Do I live in a world where there's Buddhas and sentients? So that's a kind of profundity of acceptance. What kind of words do you use? Now let's look again at practice and birth and death.

[79:04]

Why does Dogen pair? We can see why he pairs delusion and enlightenment. Why does he pair Practice and birth and death. So here he's defining right in the beginning of this text what he means by practice. And he's in a way speaking from the Dhamma Sutra. Because one of the things the Dhamma teacher just says is for a practitioner there's no idea of a lifespan.

[80:09]

So no idea of birth and death? So then can you This is a challenge thrown down, in a sense, a challenge for you, for each, for me. Can we really experience ourselves, accept ourselves, as in the midst of obviously birth and death, but at the same time with the mental posture, a realized mental posture of no idea even of what I've spent I mean, you're alive as long as you're alive and you'll never know if you're dead. I mean, I'm sort of joking, but it's true.

[81:19]

You won't know you're dead. Okay, so then you can say, this is what Dogen's expecting of the person who's got to practice this karma. So then you look at your own practice. Do sometimes in whatever we call practice, and especially Zazen, Do you sometimes feel the freedom of no lifespan? No comparisons. All you feel is, if anything, is an experience of aliveness. And you accept that so thoroughly you don't need anything else. Okay, so that's again what Dogen is asking of us. So he has said, now the first phrase which I've left out of what I've said so far When all things are the Buddha Dharma.

[82:41]

We can even say, even when all things in English are the Buddha Dharma. there is still delusion and enlightenment. So the first posture he's asking up here, mental posture, bodily-mind posture, is that you accept that all things are the Buddha Dharma. Okay, now you have to figure out how to accept that. It's an instruction that helps you actualize your life in a way that the actuality of your life teaches you. We're using the same words in a little different ways and saying something simple and profound at the same time.

[83:57]

So now you're asking yourself with Are all things the Buddhadharma for me? This is accepting that there is at some level an out there-ness. And that you have a genetic, a genetic, I didn't say identity. somewhere between proclivity and identity. But the ingredients you are genetically and the ingredients of immediacy And the ingredients of the meat you see when you know them as known in between.

[85:16]

This is the knowing all things of Buddha Dharma. Okay. So then we have again, what is appearance? What appears to us? Now, this whole 25 years ago, this whole study of consciousness, which is new, Was initiated by, what was his name, I forget his name now, who wrote an article about what it must mean to be a Vat. Because in those days, 25 and more years ago, it was called the C word because no one knew what to do with it.

[86:33]

It was kind of new age to study consciousness. But now that it has been in this conference, which I've attended for the 22 years it's been happening, 1,200 people were at it, and I don't know, 50 or more neuroscientists. And now there's a general acceptance that consciousness can be studied. but almost and completely only from the outside with wires and things and only in contrast to matter and

[87:53]

within a causal assumption framework that somehow consciousness must have arisen from matter. And then you get like every molecule is sort of partly conscious or something like that. Yeah, Buddhism would just say there is consciousness, there is matter, let's see what the ingredients are. Among these 1200 people, with 1200 a variety of consciousnesses walking around, including 500 people in the hotel, There was no general understanding or awareness at all that perhaps there's a way to study consciousness from the inside.

[89:20]

Which in fact is the history of Buddhism. So the question then is, can you subjectively study consciousness objectively. And that's also the teaching of Buddhism. And that's all assumed as part of this Dogen's Genjuku. Okay. So we're starting out when all things are the Pitta Dharma. And we're starting out with then seeing the world as it actually exists, to the extent that we can say that, in a series, a succession of appearances.

[90:50]

And I get bored with myself bringing this up all the time. But it is the skill you need. Okay, now I said it was started by this guy, I'll find out by tomorrow, who wrote about what is the world of a bat in contrast to the world of a sentient human being. Well, you can be sure a Fledermaus flying around in this room, which may happen occasionally, is in a different world than we are.

[91:56]

And he's much more modest than we are. He doesn't think the entire universe is created in his image. This has never occurred to him. But we are no different than the bat. I usually use dragonflies. Imagine What a world a dragonfly lives in with all its little eyes. It lives in a world that's its world. So there's the dragonfly's world, there's the bat's world, there's the ant that I interrupted, his grave is right here.

[93:05]

So Dogen is assuming there's an infinity of worlds right here without even the idea of multiple worlds. Dogen geht davon aus, dass es eine Unendlichkeit von Welten gibt, genau hier, ohne diese Vorstellung von multiplen Welten. Dogen geht davon aus, dass wir in diesem Mysterium von tatsächlich multiplen Welten leben. Now it's also assumed in Buddhism that we live in these multiple worlds that are outside of our knowing but are still somehow part of our knowing. And we maybe can speak about that a bit tomorrow. Okay. So let's talk about appearance for just a minute and then we'll stop.

[94:22]

Okay, Hans Jörg brought up he's been practicing and noticing his spine. Okay, so and in contrast to the anatomical spine he learned as a medical student. Okay, well, the anatomical spine doesn't appear to me very often, except in the skeleton that hung in my father's laboratory office as a teacher. Okay. A skeleton, a skeleton. It's not like I'm being friinated. Oh, that's a skeleton. So, if I look at the appearance of the spine, and as you all know, I practice with that myself,

[95:30]

What is the appearance of the spine? And how do I complete that which appears? Well, I have some feeling of the spine when I first sit down, like I have... So there's a kind of uprightness to the spine. It feels better when I kind of space the vertebrae. And I get used to doing that. And I do it sometimes sitting in a car or walking along the street. So there's a kind of uprightness that's part of the appearance of the spine. And there's a kind of energy. And then there's Well, I could hardly notice the spine without awareness.

[96:52]

So there's a kind of mind that's part of the appearance of the spine. Mind is part of the appearance. So mind also appears on the spine. And I can feel the spine creates a kind of space in which I'm existing. And I can feel the spine influences the space, helps create the space I'm living in. And I can feel how the noticing the spine is rooted based, bonded with breath. Because not only can I breathe in my lungs, as a mental posture I can breathe through my spine.

[97:57]

So this is the appearance of the spine. How do you complete the appearance of the spine? I'll leave that up to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for traveling.

[98:34]

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