Now if I come in here and I sit with you I straighten up and look at you I stop inside for a moment and I can feel These ribbons. That's Ma. And that way of perceiving arises out of deciding that this has no existence and this has no existence. You've got to perceive this. Diese Art von Wahrnehmung entsteht jetzt aus der Einsicht, dass beide Objekte einfach nicht aus sich heraus existieren, sondern nur was zwischen diesen beiden existiert. So you begin to perceive, so you don't look at this and you don't look at that, you get in the habit of looking at both at the same time.

[01:06]

So man macht es sich zur Angewohnheit, beides gleichzeitig zu sehen. A way of looking at the room at the same time. All of that falls into the category of worldview. If you change the worldview, the basic way you see things, you really change the world. You begin to perceive differently. And the word tantra means a weaving. And so you're constantly seeing a weaving. And finding yourself in the middle of the fabric.

[02:14]

And in the spaces between the threads. And you're one of the threads. And you're the spaces between the threads. And it's okay. I don't know if that's as much as I can give you a feeling for now. But getting used to this way of thinking and feeling is what is meant by the Buddhist formula Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. It's a way of perceiving. It's not an intellectual, philosophical idea.

[03:16]

That's only one little surface. It's form. Then the form of all the ribbons. Then they're not graspable, empty. And yet you give it form. And the first two parameters, generosity and conduct, means in the most deep sense, you're giving emptiness all the time. And you're giving form. So I look at you I'm willing to give you the form you want me to have. That's generosity. What is your name? Hans. So I look at you. Hans. I accept you just as you want to be Hans.

[04:18]

So, Hans, ich akzeptiere dich, so wie du Hans sein möchtest. And I feel my body say, Hans. Mein Körper sagt auch Hans. But I also know Hans is just an idea. Und dann weiß ich auch, Hans ist nur eine Idee. So when I look at you, I see Hans, and I see no Hans. Yeah. Who's that? Mm-hmm. I see many Hanses appearing and disappearing. And sometimes I see which of the Hanses you like the best. And I have to decide which of the Hanses I want to react to. Mostly out of kindness we react to the hands the person wants us to react to.

[05:30]

Sometimes we react to the hands you'd really like us to see. And we allow these many selves of ourselves to be perceived by others. So you begin to feel at ease without everything being fixed. And even to see the phenomenal world as an uneven and weaving tapestry, Which is sometimes continuous and sometimes discontinuous. And when you can get used to that, that's good. Okay, thank you very much. Vielen Dank. And we don't know.

[07:01]

And they don't contradict each other. And they both need space. So this evening and until tomorrow morning, please, if you can, stay with the feeling of knowing and not knowing. Good practice is, what is it? So you look at something, you say, it is what, and what is it? Hmm. Please take your time and stretch a little and come up close and let's sit together.

[08:58]

Thank you. Good morning, good morning Now, as you've heard me say quite a few times, I'm always in the dilemma of how to teach people who are serious about practicing to generally see a cake.

[10:53]

Thank you. And I need your help in this dear, for you to let me know what works and what doesn't work for you. Because there's also no tradition of teaching the things I'm trying to teach in the context of people you don't see very often. But if I respect, because I do lay practice, then I don't want to dilute the teaching for you. Now also where I have great sympathy for the people who are just starting.

[12:08]

Because, partly because I've been just starting for 30 years. You could keep starting over. At the same time, the people who have been practicing more, I can hear them, what they need more with my body. Because they've been practicing longer, so I can feel their communication more. That makes sense. So one thing I do sometimes is I take one of the sticks I have and beat you now.

[13:28]

And this one was given to me, most of them were by Suzuki Roshi. Actually, this form has two sources. One is a back scratcher. And because it can reach anywhere, it's a teaching staff. And if it can scratch my back, scratch yours. Wow. And also, often, this shape is a mushroom shape. Is it?

[14:30]

Yeah, it's a... Is that a mushroom? Yeah. Pills? I thought that was a beard. I'm going to a bar now. They'll give me a mushroom. And the mushroom built way back when it represented a transcendental experience through psychedelics. That would appear to be a problem at the White School. But in a way, what Buddhism has decided and made a decision, in fact, made in India prior to Buddhism, in the lineage developed in Buddhism, decided what

[15:34]

Any experience is a capacity of human beings not related to taking psychedelic drugs. And it has to do with the way you view and experience the world. Anyway, sometimes I take a staff like this, and I pass it around, and I ask each of you, when you get the staff, to say something. But this many people, if I start still this evening, that's what must happen. But still I wouldn't do it. Maybe not all at once. Now, one student, One koan, one of the key phrases, koan, is, and a very common statement within Zen Buddhism, is this matter is not within words and phrases.

[17:23]

But without words and phrases, you'll never understand. That's the basic problem with teaching. So I guess the Certainly one of the main things I can give you a feeling for in practice is the degree to which the path is the body. And the degree to which the mind is the body. And the degree to which the mind is discovered most easily through the body.

[18:42]

Another phrase, key statement from a poem This is a question. In what world will you place mind and body? What world do you place mind and body? Can you determine? Now a phrase like that is not meant to be understood. right away. Someone asked me actually to speak a little bit about koans. So I think the easiest thing to do is to give you some phrases of koans.

[19:50]

So a phrase like that, and in what world do you place mind and body? It's a statement you just stable. And you have to have a certain amount of faith in it that It makes some sense somehow. I mean, the first thing, most of us might respond, I didn't know I had a choice what world that place might provide. So practicing with a koan in the most fundamental ways, it's really just a way of looking very thoroughly

[21:22]

or at yourself, or at the world. And the assumption that while there's a phrase, you can't eat painted cakes. You can't eat a painting of cakes. But then it's also said, oh, yes, you can. Painted cakes are delicious. And the idea that you could separate the world into parts is not correct. So painted cakes mean words. And in English it means painted words. But words also are part of the world.

[22:27]

So how do you enter those worlds, the words, at a level that you understand differently than just ordinary thinking? Actually, you know, it's funny, it's... If in zazen your mouth becomes calm... When you're thinking or feeling or understanding something... When you're talking, you're at a speed or at a speed tends to rise into words.

[23:33]

And if your mouth is calm, doesn't need to speak, that understanding rises toward words, goes back into another kind of understanding. And using that as an example to show you how physical this practice is supposed to be. When you're sitting, when you're practicing, and you are paying attention to your breath, let me say something about your posture for a moment.

[24:42]

General, you're sitting pretty good. I would suppose the main thing I know is this. Most of you have your arms too far forward. If your arms here, it closes your chest and foot. And if your shoulders are forward, or your arms pull you forward, Maybe you put your arms to your back like that first. And then you bring them forward and see if you can let them come straight down from your shoulders. So your elbows are beside your body.

[25:45]

And there's a little space between your arms and your body. Then your hand's going to come. What? You actually interfere with the way you breathe. But when you are sitting in zazen, and you've brought your attention to your breathing, you're trying to, you can try to locate in your breath the point that's a kind of stillness. You feel a kind of physical stillness in your breath.

[27:02]

For example, if right now in this room, and I stop for a moment, there'll be a moment of stillness in this room. that it's there for only a moment and then go. Could you feel it? It's like that kind of stillness, but in your body. So you're sitting and you're breathing. It takes a while to get settled. And bring your attention to your breath. And then you feel there's suddenly a little moment of stillness, and you try to stay in that moment of stillness.

[28:13]

But if you try too hard, you won't be still. So it's a subtle matter of noticing and not interfering with. So one of the basic simple things in practice, which takes a long time, is to sit and actually relax in your sitting. A lot of people are 30 or 40 or 50 years old and can't relax enough to go to the toilet. They need three cigarettes, closed door, two magazines. So it actually takes us a long time, decades, to learn simple things like how to go to the toilet.

[29:26]

Joe, how are you going to learn how to sit on the toilet of your cushion? And let everything go. So really your practice is simple and it's difficult, just waxing and pushing. And the attitude of koan practice is not different from any other kind of Buddhism. It's really a skill of noticing that point where you don't feel at ease and yet you can almost

[30:31]

I suppose the style of colon practice is to notice that point and then to stay with that point in the difficulty of it and in the possible resolution. And though yesterday I likened Buddha's practice to the examination of the world and matter, the physics, physicists, Basically, Buddhist practice could be more like to a naturalist or biologist studying an animal.

[31:45]

Or you just watch an animal in the woods, a badger or something like that. Jane Goodall watched a girl watch a woman watch a girl, chimpanzees. You just watch the chimpanzee that you are. And the badger is running around in your body. You don't think about it too much. It's in this koan where it says this matter is, this is not fundamentally a matter of words and phrases. This matter is not found in words and phrases.

[32:55]

But without words and phrases, we'll never understand. It also said, don't bring your own understanding to words and phrases. It means, look at the words and phrases as if they were a strange, that just came out of the woods that you don't know what they are. You don't bring your own meaning, stick to your own meaning, the word pray. Okay, and this is a typical example the emphasis on emptiness or indeterminacy when you look at the world.

[34:05]

So in koans, for example, always the context has more power over the words than the words have over the context. Male typically use a word that means the opposite, but to put it in a context which forces its meaning to be something else. And the woman can really use words like that commonly when we're in love. You might call somebody you love either a very endearing name or a very shitty name, but you both mean, in both cases, you mean you love the person.

[35:10]

Yes. I don't know what she said, but it sounded good. Dear, I'm so helpless among you. You all understand English and German? You have such sympathy, kindness to this dumb American Buddhist. She didn't translate that. So you have to read koans and study Buddhism a bit like you're in love with it.

[36:25]

It's a little like, you know, if you're not in love, you hear the songs of all these love songs constantly on the radio. They sound completely grippy. But then when you fall in love, they go, oh, glad someone's parables they can never hear. So you have to sort of fall in love with koans, otherwise they just sound bleh. So you're just trying to sit still enough to watch yourself.

[37:42]

And what you will begin to find, because I think it helps to have some suggestion about what you'll find. Isn't this a very strong, indivisible relationship, though it's not immediately apparent, between your body and your thinking. It's almost like first you notice thinking like seeing a beam of light, Then you notice you don't see the beam of light until it's shining on something, hitting something.

[38:54]

Hitting the air even. And then you see that you can actually make a mirror or lens and the light becomes much clearer focused. And that your body in its stillness and locating a kind of point of stillness becomes a kind of lens that focuses this thinking. Then after a while you notice that the lens and the thinking and the light, all of it. And you can begin to find out that you think differently and you absorb what you think differently depending on how you allow

[40:09]

Your body and state of mind cooperate. Now, on my point, with this thing, this own magnetic view, I think, has appeared. Our doubt is up. We are caught up in our doubt. I hope that makes some sense. I hope that makes sense. Yes. So love and practice, you do it a little bit every day. And this morning we sat almost 40 minutes. This is about as long as anybody ever sits. If you do practice a little bit every day, you become very familiar with yourself.

[41:40]

And it's important not to interfere too much. Not to try too hard. You sit down in the larger context of trying. But in specific, you don't try. You leave yourself alone. And you don't want to sit too long. Now, one of the reasons we sit as a habit 30 or 40 minutes... I don't have my little drawing. I want to dance, a bit of disco dance. Oh, there it is. Dead ball time.

[42:43]

In a way, when you do zazen, if this is your primary process here, as I said, Your sense of location might be down here. Okay? Sense of location may be here. Not always in the primary closet. And you have a rubber band that attaches it here. Now, this sense of This rubber band becomes, as you practice, and you become more familiar with yourself, you can actually attach this rubber band to emptiness.

[44:13]

You don't need something to attach it to, and yet you can locate yourself. But at first, when you're practicing, you find you can move this around, but you keep it attached to your primary process. Sometimes you can go all the way down here, or here, over here. Well, one of the reasons you recit 30 or 40 minutes as a habit is there's a certain reality associated with your simple physicality. That's why people commonly, when they're really under a lot of stress or having an anxiety attack, go and wash the dishes.

[45:32]

Try to stand up here. You're kind of stressed, so you just wash the dishes. And then wash your dishes and take a shower. So there's a, when you do zazen and you have the habit of sitting always 30 minutes or 40 minutes. Once you really have that habit. Even if you sat three or four hours for chapter one, you can sit for hours. There's still a rhythm of starting zazen, letting go into, letting lots of things just float up, and then after a period of 40 minutes, reattaching to your regular big block for the khali.

[46:34]

So I know some people, when they meditate first, often it's beginners do this more than more adept people. If I really concentrate and lose my ordinary sense, for instance, a common experience is you after a while can't tell where your hands are. Or if your thumbs are touching or not touching, they're separated.

[47:42]

It feels like it's about six feet between your thumbs. And you kind of look down to see that they're only separated by about that much. That's a common thing. As that can happen to your thumbs, sometimes it can happen to your whole body. And if you ask me, am I sitting straight? No, sir, you're sitting straight. I feel like I'm way over here. So I'll look more carefully, and yes, you're about this much to the side.

[48:38]

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