Yeah, I think as I understand Heidegger, it is the situation of human beings. Because we live in time in the shadow of death. And not death as some imagined... but death as time. In other words, time itself, which is the shelter of being, which has to always contain at its heart nothing. And this always contains nothing in the heart.

[01:05]

And no matter what, this is our condition and our gift as human beings, because we have language, And the craft is whether or not we awaken it and know it. And whether or not we're willing to live it and whether or not we can make it alive moment after moment in our living. In Zen, the tradition is you die intentionally. You're forced on you. It's not forced on you. I mean, you can be, but... So when you know your life is near the end, you intentionally die.

[02:13]

And I believe in Europe, and Ivan Illich talks about this, in Europe... A good death was considered an intentional death. And I believe, and in the Middle Ages, and Ivan Illich has spoken about it, a good death was this intentional death. Or the conscious death. A deliberate death. A deliberate death. And the point here is that death here is not something later coming. But it's the mechanism by which time and being turns. aber das ist der Mechanismus, in der Zeit und Sein sich wendet.

[03:19]

Can I say one more? Yeah. There's a phrase, to be willing to die and yet gladly remain alive. Und da gibt es einen Satz, gewollt sein, zu sterben, aber trotzdem... and yet gladly remain alive. So I bring that saying of Heidegger's Up as a kind of... commentary to these last Dogen sayings that I want to share with you this morning. I bring this from Heidegger here as a commentary to what we spoke about this morning. And again, as I was listening to Baker Oshii in the last hour, I felt like, oh, I don't have to say anything now, because mostly it seems once you start listening to Dogen, you hear how everywhere in different words, using different concepts, he is expressing the same truth.

[04:33]

Expressing the same truth always with different words and different concepts. It's as if you could take something from Dogen and attach it to something else from Dogen as its commentary. And so I felt like some of the things that I wanted to say in relation to these sayings are already Baker Roshi was talking about this morning in relation to the other sayings. So I don't have to do too much more but just read these to you. And maybe in the difference in the words we get a different kind of a feeling or see the same thing from another angle. So these two sayings are both from the essay Uji, Being Time.

[05:54]

The first one is the way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. Do we have that? I think that's in the long hand. Yeah, it's the middle one. I'm talking about the last, the second two. So, you know, in classical Buddhism, in Indian Buddhism from the beginning, the Buddha was at some pains to argue against the very existence of the self.

[07:20]

So Buddhism is famous for non-self or un-self. Before the time of the Buddha, the word Atman or the self was always at the heart of religious life. And the Buddha's point was that there is no substantial existing thing called the self. So he talked about anatman, the non-self. So that it's like we were discussing the other day, we think in terms of containers and entities.

[08:28]

And in fact, language in the conventional sense and grammar in the conventional sense only works that way according to entities and containers. And thought and conceptualization works according to that way also. And the Buddha was arguing that that whole way of arraying the world is the cause of our imprisonment and our suffering. So we needed to see that these containers are conceptual, not real. They're a way to facilitate thought, but They don't refer to real things.

[09:52]

So he talked about the non-self. The ongoing process of coming and going. Being and nothing that must always cooperate together. Sein und nichts, das muss immer miteinander kooperieren. But in Zen language, the self is reintroduced as a term. Aber in der Zen-Sprache wird das selbst wieder eingeführt als ein Begriff. So sometimes the other Buddhists, when they hear Zen language talking about the self, they're surprised. Oh, I thought Buddhism doesn't believe in the self. And it's kind of a genius of Zen language to use the word self to refer to not-self.

[10:53]

Because not-self gets frozen into a kind of doctrine. And the term, the self, used in Zen and used by Dogen, the term self, as used in Zen and as used in Dogen, is also not fixed. It's a term that is used in various ways. But maybe we could say it refers to the... momentary process of meeting.

[12:08]

Of things arising together. And creating a world. That then falls away. Giving rise to a new world. And it's the self because it's what we are. We are that. And with our thinking and our language we organize it in a particular way. But it is this marvelous arising and falling away which really could be organized in many, many ways. So, the self, you and I, the way our self

[13:21]

sets itself forward, creates beauty, is this whole world. The whole world is the ornamentation of the self. is the ornamentation of the self. And we could see this strictly from the point of view of our side as if the whole world were a figment of our imagination. But that would be to reduce what is meant here.

[14:39]

Because there is no from our side. There is no side that's our side. There is just the arising. And we can't say it's ourself. And we can't say it's not ourself. So, as I said the other day, when you hear a bird song when you hear the sound of the mower you can't say it's inside and that the outside doesn't exist and you can't say it's outside either because without your awareness it doesn't exist either So in this way we flow in and out of the world.

[15:53]

And the world flows in and out of us. And we are continuously renewed and created by what we encounter. And what we encounter is brought to life by our awareness. And I think that's partly how I understand Heidegger's essay about the thing. And that's why he speaks about death and the shelter of being and so forth in the context of that essay. It's as if the world wanted a way to express itself. As a consequence of its being. And so we appeared.

[17:14]

With this mission. To bring our own lives alive. For the sake of the world. So to me this is the whole... Energy that creates something like Zen practice or the practice of another religious tradition. It's the energy that produces language for human beings. That produces language. art, and anything that we make and that we do, the creative spirit that is so much a necessity for human beings, comes from this, that's our nature.

[18:23]

to live in the shrine of nothing. To be unique in living in the shelter of being. So the entire world is the self arrayed, set forth. Das ist das Selbst, das sich selber da hinzufügt. And as we were saying a minute ago, this is always true. And whenever any of us take one step or utter one word, we bring it alive. But when we intentionally practice it.

[19:38]

Then we can speak freely. And we can walk unencumbered. And we can walk without encumbrance, without being paralyzed or stuck. The picture in the hallway of Crestone is really remarkable. I like to take pictures. I don't do it very often, but I enjoy taking pictures. But it's very hard to take a picture like that. My pictures don't come out that way. And I think I need a better camera.

[20:49]

Probably works, yes. And I think I need a better camera. Because in that picture the vividness of the image is really strong. So this to me is like the world arrayed, the self arrayed. It's such a beautiful image like that. And then this morning, earlier, I was looking out the window where we were staying and seeing how beautiful the village looks, the farmhouses and the hills and the trees. And it was almost as clear an image as in that photograph. So I realized, oh, it's an image.

[21:51]

Like the photograph. It's not on paper, but it's an image. On some other sort of paper. And then a few days before, it was hazy outside. There was some fog. And I was looking also in the same place. And it was also very beautiful. But not nearly as distinct. Because of the quality of the light. So the whole world is constantly the self set forth.

[22:52]

In every act of perception and in every thought there is so much that we can appreciate. I'm thinking of the character in the novel Catch-22, an old novel. Ich denke an diesen Charakter in dieser Novelle, an diesem Roman Catch-22. Yeah, that's the name of it, Catch-22. It's an American war novel of the Second World War. Es ist eigentlich eine Komödie über den Zweiten Weltkrieg. And one of the characters in the novel is an officer. And I guess it's based on the reality that in armies officers are always concerned about their position.

[24:12]

So this officer, whatever happened, anything that happened, it was always in one of two categories. It was either a feather in his cap, Das war entweder eine Feder in seiner Mütze. You have an expression like that in German, a feather in your cap. It means something really good for me. Das bedeutet so viel wie, das ist etwas sehr Gutes für mich. It was either a feather in his cap or a black eye. Das war entweder eine Feder in seiner Mütze oder ein schwarzes Auge. And a black eye means something that makes me look bad. So whatever happened, it was either a feather in my cap or a black eye. So I think actually this is fairly typical.

[25:14]

One can live in the world in that way. Always looking for a feather in your cap or a black eye. Always look for a feather in your hat or a black eye. As many feathers as possible and as few black eyes as possible. Then it becomes impossible to appreciate the beauty of the world. In other words, the more we reduce and hold to a limited view of the self, And we human beings are sophisticated and tricky.

[26:18]

So we have many clever ways of reducing things to ourselves. When we do that, it's hard to see that the world is the self arrayed and the self is the world arrayed. That the world is the self arrayed or set forth. The second saying on the page is also from the time being. You may suppose that time is only passing away and not understand that time never arrives. So just the first sentence.

[27:47]

You may suppose that time is only passing away and not understand that time never arrives. So again, Bekaroshi was talking about this toward the end of his remarks earlier. In European languages, the past is on the far left. And the timeline goes from left to right. The future is over here. We're going in that direction. We're right here in the present and the past is over there. So the past is behind us as we walk. We're walking in the present and the future is up ahead.

[28:51]

But of course this is completely fiction. Because at every moment time is always in the shadow of nothing. And it's actually very funny to read early Buddhist philosophy. When they tried to explain this. Because they said, well, if things arise and pass away instantaneously. then how could they ever be there at all? So they said, well, things arise and then they cease.

[29:54]

But in order to be there at all, they must abide at least for a very short amount of time. So they arise and then they abide and then they pass away. But then abiding itself the abiding itself arises, abides and passes away. Because if anything could abide, then this wouldn't make any sense to the Buddhists. So then you can see how this could go on. And it does in Buddhist philosophy. So this is what Dogen is talking about. Time never arrives. Das ist das, was Dogen sagt, wenn er sagt, die Zeit erscheint nie.

[30:57]

So wie wir eben gehört haben, ist es immer entweder ein Augenblick vorher oder ein Augenblick nach Mitternacht. And this is why nothing is the shelter of being. So although, the second sentence says, although understanding itself is time, although understanding itself is time, understanding does not depend on its own arrival. So this seems like a great place to end the seminar.

[32:03]

In which we've been spending a long and thorough weekend trying to understand something. which I think is the unique human project to try to understand something. And understanding itself is time. It's not understanding something and gaining dominion over it. For human beings, understanding is being in time. For human beings, understanding is being in time. And to try to understand, that's our style of being in time.

[33:05]

And understanding does not depend on its own arrival. Und das Verstehen hängt nicht von seinem eigenen Ankommen ab. Because understanding never really arrives. Weil das Verstehen selber nie ankommt. So don't worry. Also macht euch keine Sorgen. If you think that someone understands and there's something to be understood, you're incorrect. Wenn du denkst, jemand versteht und es gibt da was zu verstehen, dann seid ihr nicht richtig. Understanding does not depend on its own arrival. Das Verstehen hängt nicht von seinem eigenen Ankommen ab. So I'll end with just a few, a short poem. Ich ende mit ein paar kurzen Gedichten. So these are two poems, one after the other, very short. And no translation.

[34:19]

Rest. Thank you. I'm sorry if I made it more difficult. No, it's okay. I'm getting into it. Occupy your life. Embrace it until there's no one around to explain. Quiet settles on the grasses like morning frost by the sea Memories times graven image on the soul, a painting of Isness's nonentity, an endless unreasonable sorrow you feel in the enclosure of perception itself. And the next poem. In a finger snap, the mind brightens.

[35:21]

Time's trapdoor opens as the music plays. Never would be a measure of the feeling of knowing time, of being bottled up within it. Can I say something in the language of what we've been talking about? When you were a new young student practitioner, I immediately had the sense that you could arrive in the way habe ich sofort gemerkt, dass du ankommen kannst auf eine Art. And I hoped and I thought probably you'll know not to abide in that arriving. Und ich hoffe, dass du in diesem Ankommen nicht verweilen würdest.

[36:28]

And I think I was right. Und ich glaube, ich war richtig. And I'm very happy to have a comrade in this way. And I am very happy to have such a comrade. And I am very grateful that you share our Dharma practice with us and that you continue with it. Yes, this is my idea of a good time. Okay. Das ist meine Vorstellung einer guten Zeit. This is the best. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody.

[37:10]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.16