Yeah, the young man, boy, young man, Mac Murphy, who was here until yesterday, I guess. Yesterday. How old is he, 16 or 17, something like that? I don't think he's ever sat before, though his father sits hours a day. It's just a kind of habit. But he came to the lecture twice. And he said he enjoyed the sitting before the lecture. But when I came in, it interrupted his sitting. He said, what you said the second day didn't interrupt it so much.

[01:03]

So I'm here to interrupt your sitting again. And I'm looking forward to this afternoon when we have some kind of comment, question, something or other from each of us. We start at 3 or something like that? 3.20 and we end at 8.20. Last time it took quite a long time. No one's allowed to move the whole time. Actually, it would be good to have such a rule. It would be quite short then. 25, 35 minutes, it would be over.

[02:05]

And I wish I had a lot more time for this topic of Sangha. Of course we have the rest of our lives. So I'll speak about it, knowing we have the rest of our lives. So again, let's go back to the fluidity of the body. When you don't see it as a container, but you see it as appearances, like the moon. It appears in your eyes. I mean, what you see is the moon in your eyes or heart. No, you see it in the pond or something.

[03:18]

Yeah, and you're only seeing the reflection. Or you see... only... at most only half of it. And you see... So even the full moon is only half the moon. So some feeling like that is good as an image of the body. Your body is appearing in you all the time. And only part of it at any time. And it appears in others. And how it appears in others reflects back on us.

[04:20]

And we're always flowing between our individual sense of identity and our social and societal sense of identity. For example, someone will speak quite freely to me in Doksan, and when there's a big group of people, they can't say a thing. Or you can speak to yourself, but sometimes not to others. And this is a kind of flow into different ways we appear. So let's have a, you know, in this sense of a sangha, we need, understanding sangha, we also need the sense of the fluid, not a container, but the fluidity of our embodiment.

[05:48]

Now what we've established so far, I've tried to establish so far, is that whatever Sangha is, it's rooted, necessarily rooted in your experience. And it's rooted in the understanding that the recognition of the capacity for transformation, our capacity for transformation. I really shouldn't say our, because the capacity for transformation is everywhere.

[06:53]

For a kind of alchemy of transformation. Through practice coupled with vision. You really need to really know believe in this capacity for transformation. This alchemy that's possible through practice and vision. Now, first of all, we have to clear the field for Sangha. Open ourselves to Sangha.

[08:02]

Yeah, and we want to... We have to have some kind of... We need to want to do it or feel it. Feel. Feel... It's goodness. Yeah, I remember when I was first practicing, what I noticed is, I mentioned before to you, that this glass wall that seemed to be between me and others... Und ich erinnere mich daran, als ich am Anfang meines Praktizierens, was ich bemerkte, und ich habe euch davon schon erzählt, da war so eine Glaswand zwischen mir und den anderen.

[09:02]

Yeah, I noticed it before I started to practice. Ich bemerkte das, bevor ich anfing zu praktizieren. But I don't know why. I didn't really... I mean, I knew it, and I didn't believe it. Ich wusste es, aber ich glaubte nicht wirklich daran. Or it was... It was in glass, it was invisible, so I wasn't sure about it. But somehow when I started to practice, mindfulness made me feel it. And a growing intimacy, increasing intimacy with myself, made me realize I didn't have this intimacy with others or with the world. It was somewhere out there or other.

[10:06]

I guess we could call this practice when, I don't know if this works in German, but when others are no longer other. I think it's really strange we call other people other. It's all right. There's no other word. Others. Yeah, weird. I don't know. Does it sound weird in German, too? Others. I don't call myself other. So what I had to do is, first I had to notice this kind of glass wall. Then I had to kind of notice it and then stay aware of it. Then I had to start noticing when it was strongly present When it was weakly present.

[11:27]

When it was not present at all. What its boundaries were. When it was triggered or when it would appear. Was it always there? Was it mostly there only when I noticed it? What made me notice it? Anxiety or what? Yeah. And I kind of started to kind of press on it. I actually had the feeling of kind of leaning on it or pressing on it. And one day I just noticed it was gone. Well, there was a territory in which I could act which was wider than between me and the wall.

[12:43]

Okay, so I gave you the statement of Yuan Wu as the... one of the compilers and authors of the Blue Cliff Records. He said, don't set up here and there. It sounds interesting. It sounds zenny anyway. But how can you not set up here and there? I mean, we live in a conceptual envelope. By necessity, actually, we have to have a conceptual envelope. I notice... Sorry, I always have to say something about Sophia.

[13:54]

My two older daughters here, they... Once they were conscious enough to know about it, they objected to my speaking about them. But they're so mature now that I could tell you a number of stories. They wouldn't mind. But maybe we don't have that much time. But the other day I noticed Sophia in her, you know, the kangaroo bag. She actually grasped conceptually what it was.

[15:04]

She saw it was a piece of cloth and there was two sides to it. And she saw that it was possible to climb out. So she immediately started trying to figure out how to climb out. It was clear to me she didn't really try to climb out until she had a conceptual grasp of that she was in a bag. Before that, I think she just thought the bag was some kind of part of her body. It was just there. So now she knew it was a bag she was in. And she also understood that sometimes she's not in the bag.

[16:13]

So if you notice that sometimes you're behind the glass wall and sometimes you're not, this is a conceptual framework. Yeah, but practice is to use a conceptual framework. Not get stuck in a conceptual framework. Yeah, but how do we not set up here and there? To get out of the bag or through the door, etc. Yeah, so you need some kind of pressure point. Yes, some kind of... I don't know what word to use. Actualizing point. So, if there's neither... here nor there, then everything is, well, you could say everything is far.

[17:39]

But since here and there separate us, if you take away the separation, what we have is nearness. Sorry. If you take away here and there, which separate us, what you have is nearness. So the actualizing point could be perhaps nearness. Yeah, so... So I'm trying to show you an example, give you an example of a Zen technique. You try to use language or concept to transform language and concept. There's the ordering codes of society.

[18:45]

And then there's pure experience. Pure experience, which is a a kind of intimacy, that's not caught in the ordering codes of society and culture. Now, these are just words, unless you practice mindfulness. Yeah, but you can also catch the feeling just noticing the difference between sleeping, dreaming mind and waking mind. And dreaming, there's the ordering codes of culture and so forth are not present in the usual way.

[19:49]

No, I use some technical phrase like ordering codes. Okay. So maybe you can feel the contrast between that and something close to pure experience. Now, if you just notice the difference between dreaming mind and waking mind, You can feel this possibility. If you bring that knowledge into your activity, you can begin to feel some difference between pure experience, what I'll call right now pure experience, and your

[20:51]

Your societal identity and your subjectivity. Your subjectivity in the sense of trying to make the world subject to you. Yeah, okay. And mindfulness, mindfulness brings us this intimacy. So into our mindfulness practice, which opens easily sometimes, usually, to a word like nearness, so maybe it will work for you. You take the word nearness and you just you know, add it to every perception and every noticing.

[22:07]

And you notice when you have an experience of nearness. Okay, now let me come back to that. Okay, it's a German word, too, huh? Somehow, yeah. You know the story where OK comes from? No. Well, there's a bunch of stories, but one of them is there's some German guy in Chicago. A German guy who lived in Chicago. His name was something like Oscar Kramer. And he had some business and warehouse, and when everything was all right, he put his initials on the bottom, O.K.

[23:09]

Anyway, that's one of about three stories. So O.K. belongs in the German language. Okay. So let's go back to clear the field for Sangha. We live in a conceptual envelope. How do we clear this envelope? Well, first you have to get rid of something like the glass wall. As I said, you notice when it's more strongly present, more weakly present, and so forth.

[24:11]

And that should be part of, can be, could be, should be part of your practice. And then you need to free yourself from the pouring in of karma. Now that's, I think, it's possible. And the key is to see, really feel the pendulum of likes and dislikes. And recognize it's possible to get out of the pendulum of likes and dislikes. This pendulum of likes and dislikes, which is also a kind of funnel

[25:12]

Is that aspect of consciousness of mind which opens us to karma? Our accumulated karma. Through likes and dislikes all kinds of self-aggrandizing ideas come in. Okay. Yeah, so we've discussed that. So you develop a practice of first taking a notice, an inventory of how much... Your thought patterns are involved with likes and dislikes. Then you make an intention to free yourself of that. And then you find an actualizing point.

[26:29]

Notice when it's more the case and less the case and so forth. And you can be either, it can be as simple as neither like nor dislike. Und das kann so einfach sein wie weder mögen noch nicht mögen. Until you get the actual experience of looking at something, feeling something, without either liking it or disliking it. Bis ihr dieses Gefühl einfach an den Punkt gelangt, wo ihr etwas anschauen könnt und es weder mögt noch nicht mögt. Yeah, this is clearing the field for Sangha. For the vision of Sangha. And the hope of Sangha. And the already... shoots, new shoots, new plants of Sangha you intimate in yourself, feel in yourself. Then you want to free yourself from associative mind.

[27:42]

No, that's not right. You want to be able to shift from associative mind to bare perception. You want to be able to let in the associations as you wish. but you want to be able to establish yourself sometimes in bare perception. The third skanda. Just seeing, just hearing. Like that. Yeah, so those three things, getting rid of the wall, not being so open to likes and dislikes, the karma flow through likes and dislikes, and not so caught in a mind of constant associations.

[29:11]

And if you can do that, then it's possible. Even if it's only possible a little bit, it's possible. And a little bit makes a big difference. If you keep practicing, a little bit is always a promise that it opens up. And then you want to bring in a teaching. You've got an open field, bring a teaching into it. A correlate teaching. Correlate means it correlates with other things. Again, I'm looking for words here that I can turn into technical terms. Like today, I thought, maybe I should say a correlate teaching.

[30:25]

Castaneda is always good on language and English. We could use his language, an assemblage point. Wir könnten auch seine Sprache verwenden, so einen Sammlungspunkt. Or maybe that's too much his now, we should say an assembling point. Oder vielleicht ist das zu sehr jetzt seine Sprache, ein Punkt, wo sich etwas zusammenfügt. Or integrating. Oder ein integrierender, ein Integrationspunkt. So. Okay, now the main two teachings to bring in, I think as far as we're concerned here, and here I'm just trying, because, you know, again, we don't have so much time, I'm trying to give you an outline of practice which

[31:33]

Yeah, be useful the rest of your life. I know it'll be any way it's useful to me the rest of my life. And if my life was going to be as long as most of yours, it'd be useful for that length of time too. And if my life will be as long as yours, then it will be useful. Is that what I said? I said it's not important. The two teachings I would bring in are the Four Noble Truths. Let's be basic. The Four Noble Truths. And the six paramitas. Okay. Four noble truths. So it means that this space that's now present If not free of karma, moving in the direction of freedom from karma.

[32:55]

Moving in the direction of less association. And you bring a teaching into this space. In diesen Raum hinein bringst du eine Lehre. Und wenn Yuan Wu sagt, bring nicht hier und dort hinein, dann spricht er über diesen Raum. Das ist eines der Dinge, über die er spricht. Denn diese einfachen Belehrungen haben so viele Facetten. So let's bring in the four noble truths. An awareness always of the suffering, actual suffering of us human beings. Yeah, we feel that in people. Our lives aren't so long. We're likely to get sick.

[34:07]

We always, no matter how successful we are, have a sense of failure. Yeah. Even our sense of success is often temporary. So... Then we also feel this other window in the door of the Four Noble Truths. Through that opening or window. We also simultaneously know that everything has a cause. And because it has a cause, there's a freedom from causes. And a freedom from suffering. And what's that space in between causes and suffering? And the last noble truth, a teaching, some teaching. Yeah, it's the eightfold path, but we can substitute some other teachings in that.

[35:30]

So let's put in the six parameters. And I've taught that a lot, so I won't say much about it. To be present in each moment, open to another person, Now without a feeling of boundaries. Both with a feeling of generosity and receiving, willing to learn. As best we can at least to have this attitude. And have the patience and energy that allows this to happen. and the meditation and wisdom that support this patience and energy. Okay, now let me come back. So there is a kind of prescription for making space for Sangha. This transformative bodhisattva practice.

[36:50]

Okay, now let me come back fairly briefly, to nearness. How can we practice not setting up here and there? So the assemblage point or the integrating point, I suggested, could be nearness. Also dieser Punkt des Zusammenfügens, der Integration, ich habe gesagt, das könnte nahe sein. So you bring, so you see if you can notice nearness. Also ihr bemerkt nahe sein. So this is not just bare attention. Und das ist nicht einfach nur mehr reine Aufmerksamkeit.

[37:52]

Or Gestalt or field knowing. Ein Gestalt- oder Feldwissen. But rather, like right now, my voice is in your hearing, in your ear, in your body. So wie jetzt gerade meine Stimme in eurem Ohr, in eurem Körper ist. It's not over here, it's in your ear. Es ist nicht hier bei mir, es ist in eurem Ohr. So is the water outside. So ist auch das Wasser dort draußen. It's not outside, it's near. Es ist nicht dort draußen, es ist nahe. And your feet and your bottom and your body is on the cushion. Und eure Füße und der Körper, die sind auf dem Kissen. There's a nearness both of voice and sitting. And if there's thoughts too, you know, you feel their nearness. And the air, it's in your nostrils and lungs, it's near. So you get in the habit of noticing nearness.

[39:02]

You're getting, again, out of generalization. You get in the habit of nearness. As a Japanese poem says, I noticed I'm picking the flower. I noticed it's scent on my sleeve. So instead of speaking, oh, I noticed the smell of the flower, that's some kind of generalization. But the scent on the sleeve. I know, you know, I wear these robes quite a lot. And I go into a room, some other room, and people say, oh, I smell the Zendo.

[40:09]

Because the incense is in the clothes. So this kind of particularity or nearness So this is called in Japanese poetry hon-i, almost like honey. Which means poetic essences. But they got these poetic essences from Buddhism. This idea of poetic essences from Buddhism. Oh, that's, I think so. And so when you Get in the habit of practicing nearness.

[41:13]

Not just bare attention, but nearness. You're opening yourself to poetic essences. And what Shunzai, you don't need to know who he is, would say, original heart. Somehow through nearness, subject and object dissolve, and we begin to feel not only the nearness of each sense, But the in-betweenness. I like the word in English, I think I mentioned, interest. Interest means the in-betweenness of is and inter. Inter. And in Japanese, ningen means the space of a person.

[42:27]

And the gen part can also be ma, the ma of a person, the interconnectedness of space. So we come into a kind of alchemy here through nearness. An alchemy also of in-betweenness. Which opens not only our original mind, but our original heart. Which are both realized through practice. Discovered through practice. Actualized through practice. Not our habituated heart. Demarcated, delimited by our social and individual identity.

[43:40]

But the heart that is one with the vision of Sangha. Our hope and desire for something like Sangha. So Sangha becomes a real, actual, practical practice. Which through mindfulness and meditation we have the skills to realize. The forge and bellows. Okay. the pause, the gap, the in-betweenness, in which Sangha flowers, and Buddha nature flowers, and our true body appears.

[45:29]

Thank you. Thank you for translating.

[45:44]

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