So mainly today I'm trying to talk about my experience, talk about things in a way that raises questions. To question fundamental reality, fundamental existence, is the most fertile basis for practice. So to question or look at the obvious, One thing I say most often is, pointing out that the main job of self in our society, the function of self, is to separate us from others.

[01:18]

And then the injunction, the command or request, the injunction is that we learn how to function as an independent self. So my six-year-old daughter is definitely learning how to function as an independent self. As my older daughter, I told you the story, when we told her she had to do things and we made her, she said, it's too late now, I belong to you. Her mother and I said, we made you, you have to do what we say, you belong to us. She said, it's too late now.

[02:32]

I belong to me. Well, this is actually, some cultures wouldn't make this statement. When do we have collective experience? Well, in our society it's sports events. And I find it very odd that on the surface of it that persons feel so loyal to Liverpool because they happen to live in Liverpool. Or whatever team city you belong to. But when I stop and say, oh, well, probably it's rooted in a deep need for collective experience and a shared identity.

[03:35]

So we find excuses to create a collective identity. And then, as we know in Fussball, the Fans often fight with each other. And if we look at Kosovo, the Albanians and the Muslims and the Serbs, I mean, they don't feel their bodies are entwined with each other. Or they feel negatively entwined. So we're very quick to create and take sides.

[04:55]

We're very quick to create and take sides. Now, okay. My guess is that in the Middle Ages, in Europe, people primarily felt a subjective space. What do I mean by subjective space? Now I'm talking about this in relationship to practice and to Sangha. Now we feel our bodies are somehow entwined with our family members. Now, we know that Andreas feels entwined with his grandson. He's quite capable of feeling love and affection and compassion for any little kid.

[06:39]

But he couldn't deny that he feels more immediately entwined with his grandson. But you don't have the experience, you don't have the responsibility of a parent, exactly. What you feel in a very, I think, human experience. human and fundamental way entwined with your grandson. And I would call that subjective space. And we feel a tribal identification with other Englishmen or Germans or Irishmen. And if Valentin is anything like...

[07:43]

Joyce, he wanted to get out of Ireland, so he wasn't entwined. But then he wrote about Ireland and Dublin in such detail, you can recreate a map from his... And then, on the other hand, you wrote so much in detail about Irland Dublin that you could already make a map out of your novel. Now, in Japan, I think even today, most space is primarily subjective space. Yeah, now, I mean, I've talked about this before. I want to bring it up again, because I bring it up to myself, too, to kind of look at the ingredients of how we understand...

[08:54]

the territory in which we exist. In which we exist. I mean, Again, there's almost no public space in Japan. No. This is getting to be sort of less true. And... But if you look carefully at the public space in Japan, it's really not exactly public. No, again, as I've said, I hate to repeat myself, but I think that public space is primarily a creation of recent European...

[10:07]

culture, particularly the British colonial empire. And I really saw it clearly when I was in Bali I could see them trying to make public space so they could have tourists, but they didn't really know how to create public space. Yeah, I mean, you have to kind of pry subjective space apart to fit in public space. Now, what is the simple difference? In public space, anyone has a right to enter.

[11:11]

In Japan you don't have a right to enter a restaurant, really. You have to enter by rights, R-I-T-E, not R-I-G-H-T. It's a ritualized space. But if you go anywhere where it's really Japanese space and not westernized space for tourists. You're not really welcome unless you're initiated, unless you've been introduced. All space, mainly, The basic understanding of space in Japan is it's defined through other people.

[12:39]

It doesn't belong to any person. It only belongs to certain people. We have this big, in Crestown, we have this big great Pyrenees mountain dog. Leo knows Igor well. His name is Igor. And his father's name was Horse. If he were standing here, he'd be about like this tall. Okay. But he only knows subjective space.

[13:49]

And when I take him down to the main house, he has key trees and bushes he has to pee on. He's creating it. We say he makes this little puddle. Yeah. Yeah, the same meaning. Okay. When I said it, it wasn't funny, though. And he's clearly saying, hey, this is my subjective space. Strange dogs, coyotes, foxes are not welcome. But all the children... I fathered in the community are welcome. Which is quite a few. Until we fixed him. We actually didn't really... We tied him off so he... Like, you know, the veterinarian said, I've never tied off, you know, tied off.

[15:05]

Yeah, you tie it instead of cutting the testicles off. And the veterinarian said, I've never done this, but I had it done to me, so I guess I can do it to a dog. So it's about sterilization, in the sense, in contrast to castration, and that's what's in there. More doctors say, well, I've never done it to a dog, but since it was done to me, I think I can do it to a dog too. So he still likes to escape, but he doesn't cause so many familial crises. But really, his kids can come up. And they can go past the signs, but other dogs are kind of... This is subjective space. And I suppose that we mark our territory in other ways, that's all. Okay. So we don't define ourselves, we Westerners, through...

[16:14]

Only through subjective space of our family and tribe. But we define ourselves as well in public space. Which is a semiotic space. A semiotic space of signs. A semiotic space, a space determined by signs. We dress a certain way when we're outside of the house. So we make a distinction between public space and private space. Now the importance of this I can't really bring forth during this short seminar. One of the things you're trying to do in practice

[17:20]

It's free yourself from cultural identifications. Yes, and identifications you've established through public space. Fair identifications you've established through subjective space. It's funny, we used to have, I think, most of the world only had subjective space. A familial or tribally defined space. Now we have public space.

[18:30]

Which allows us to have democracies and voting and the idea of humanity, a common humanity. So our political definitions depend on public space. And the idea that the United States can go in and create public space and a democracy in a culture which has no idea what that is, is nuts. People can have the idea of it. But it probably takes several generations of defining yourself through public space before it's really generally understood and inactable space. So now our main definition is public space.

[19:54]

But now we sociologists recognize, oh, well, there's also intersubjective space. But before a public space, there would never have been an idea of intersubjective space, because all space was subjective. Okay, now, of course, all the time I'm saying Is the Sangha public space? Is it intersubjective space? Is it an entirely different category? Now I want to say that because it interests me.

[21:07]

And it pertains to some extent. And I'm trying to these things for decades now, seemed important to me. I found them to be important. I'm trying to figure out now when the idea in the West started of a clear boundary between inside and outside. Which we take for granted, but it wasn't the case in earlier centuries. How do we cross this space that separates us? Or how do we articulate this space that already connects us?

[22:15]

Very different. No. Space both separates and connects. But the cultural way we emphasize it changes everything. Now, western public space traditionally was watched space. One of the first examples of public space is the creation of plazas in European cities. I think in the 1500s it was King Ferdinand of Spain required every Spanish city to have a plaza.

[23:28]

Yeah. So Santa Fe, New Mexico and Taos both have plazas. That's nice. Taos. and Santa Fe, New Mexico, both have plazas. And so does Brussels. Yeah, and lots of cities. Forest Hat, Waldshut. Waldshut, yeah. It's a plaza. Okay, but the plaza was originally meant to protect the mayor's house. Der Platz war jedoch ursprünglich dafür gedacht oder gemacht, um das Haus des Bürgermeisters zu beschützen.

[24:29]

And isn't the Bürgermeister's house usually on the plaza in Germany? Und ist nicht das Haus des Bürgermeisters gewöhnlich am Platz? That's where you can have troops surround the mayor's house to protect it. Or arrest him. What? Or arrest him. Or arrest him. Yeah. And that's going on in the Ukraine right now. Yeah. They've got... The police and the army are both trying to capture the office in the mayor's house. So they were trying to capture the office in the mayor's house. Then we have the beautiful city of Paris with its plaza with straight streets going off in all directions. You know what that's for. That's because of the rifle.

[25:29]

So you can control crowds by shooting down these long straight streets. So it's mostly about social control. So what do we decorate our plazas with? Soldiers on horses. Or women squirting water from their breasts. So we eroticize and militarize public space. You just don't see it in Asia. They don't have soldiers on horses in the middle of towns. And you don't have, you know, the erotic fountains.

[26:47]

So it's just like, why do we do it this way and they do it, they don't do that. Well, I think because they didn't have and didn't create a public space, they didn't have to have the same mechanisms of control. They had other mechanisms of control. So we have a lot of ideas like this that we take for granted. And then we have the private space of reading. And it's sometimes nice to go into public space, a cafe, and then read a book. And then you have some kind of rubbing excitement and tension between The private space and the public space.

[27:54]

And your cappuccino. And so you've defined yourself partly through public space. So you bring yourself into public space where that definition is supported semiotically. You have a beautiful hat on or a nice shirt or something. While you're reading your book. And then, so you bring your public definition of self into, and then you go into the books, books which have defined yourself. Now, the movie director, Scorsese... who's certainly one of the great movie directors, contemporary movie directors, says his parents and his family, they could read, but they'd never read.

[29:15]

And he said, I define myself not ever through books, but only through television and movies. So we define, we think of ourselves as private persons, but try to think about yourself, how much you really are defined through public space. Now, where does Sangha come in? And Sangha defines itself through the Zendo. The source of the Sangha is the Sender. Or the source of the Sangha is Zazen. And even if you don't do zazen and you're a practicing Buddhist, in a way you're really still defining yourself through somebody's meditation.

[30:31]

So when you step into the zendo, ideally, You're stepping out of subjective space. Out of tribal space. Out of familial space. And out of public space. Where are you? It interests me that I have never asked a single person to wear a sitting robe in the Zendo. But all the zendos in which I have practiced, people pretty soon all want to have sitting robes. I think that's interesting.

[31:41]

For some reason, the vote of the practitioners is to vote for taking off our usual clothes when we are in the Zender. There's no rule about that. But... Not everyone, but a large number of people after a while say, I want to get a sitting robe. So somehow this is an implicit, to me, feeling people have. of they want to somehow shed their usual definitions when they go to the zindo. This is also the custom.

[32:45]

You know, if you're married, you don't wear a wedding ring in the zendo when you're practicing. And you don't usually wear jewelry and so forth. Okay, now these are symbolic acts to not wear a wedding ring in the zendo. But a different feeling goes with it. Now... We'll take a break in a minute. Now when we sit... A very common experience. So common, I hate to mention it.

[33:47]

But again, let's get the ingredients clear here. After a while, you often, people often feel, a practitioner often feels, that the usual boundaries of his or her body aren't the same. In a way, you feel your, some kind of territory of knowing and experience Extends into space. Mhm. Mhm. Now, we tend to think, oh, that's just a Zazen experience.

[34:59]

Or it's like a dream. No, it's not real. Because it's not real. within the boundaries of the body. And it doesn't fit in public space. And we define our world sort of as the neutral shared space of the public. And then our private space. But maybe our private space is also a non-neutral shared space. It's very interesting how, I mean, I've never, don't really know what my space and my space, and there's another one, YouTube, I don't really know what these are.

[36:08]

It's interesting. I really don't know what these institutions, YouTube, MySpace and so on, really are. I do read about them, but I don't know how to do it. You have to enter or join or something. I do read about them, but I really don't know how to enter or join or something. But I've read about it. And people seem to treat it as an extended private space and not as public space. This is quite interesting. So I guess teenagers put all kinds of information about themselves on the computer which they might not tell their parents or friends. And the government of course is scanning that stuff and arrests people now and then. But this is a real shift in what we think is public and private.

[37:27]

So when you're doing zazen, and you feel, sometimes your body feels very merged and condensed, The distinction between the left leg and the right leg kind of disappear. And it's just a bodily territory. and a somatic space. Now it may be that when we sleep we enter some kind of somatic merged space which actually allows dreams which don't have to be physically inactable in the world To begin to have some vividness.

[38:37]

Sometimes it feels like real events happen in dreams. So in Zazen you've decided to not move for a certain length of time. You've decided to refrain from inactable space. And just sit still. And maybe, again, our legs feel merged. Yeah, which is the left, which is the right, who knows? And that space feeling of merged somatic space can become the whole body.

[39:55]

It can feel concentrated or opened up. How do we define ourselves in this space? It's not public. It's not subjective. It's where Buddhas define themselves. It's where the Sangha defines itself. Let's make it a little Zen here. Young men addressed his practitioners. And he said... Cut it in two.

[41:02]

Break it into three. That's kind of interesting. Cut it in two. Break it into three. Where is my sewing kit? Where are my nostrils? Pick up all these pieces and bring them to me. Then he paused. Then he looked around and said, above, below, in between. He's talking about a certain kind of space. Yeah. Cut it in two. Break it into three. Oh, but get me my sewing kit so I can sew it back together. And where are my nostrils? Where, you know, nostrils are like an airplane hanger.

[42:08]

Like a little cave. And air goes in and out. Are the nostrils the activity or are the nostrils the shape? What are the nostrils, the hole or the nose? Can you break it up into pieces? He says, bring all these pieces to me. Above, below, in between. Yes.

[42:31]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_77.75