as a subject I suppose I'm not capable of objectivity but some kind of sense of objectivity we need unless we have some assumption, anyway, of objectivity, it's hard for us to exist in the world, I think. Yeah, so I'm, you know, I'm, you know, decided today to try to explore this in the context of our shared feelings. Und ich habe mich entschlossen, das am heutigen Tag zu erforschen im Kontext unseres miteinander geteilten Bedeutung oder Sins.

[01:08]

Eigentlich des Fühlens. I have to find out, of course, how to say this. And we have to find out in our own experience A way in which we can relate to, let's call it, the other. Other people, phenomena, etc. What is outside? Although all we know, perceptually and conceptually, Perceptually.

[02:18]

Is our own mind and sensorium. Sensorium, the whole sensory system. Yes. Still, it can't be, you know, subjectively one-sided. We need some sense of the world as... independent from us and related to us.

[03:27]

And I think if we don't think of meditation as meditation or contemplation, but rather absorption, which is closer in English to what jhana, chan and zen mean, then I think we see that the need to have periods of absorption is something that's just part of everybody's life. We do have a variety of realities. And I use reality to mean something false.

[04:30]

If I want to emphasize it being closer to things as they are, I would say actuality. But we need a sense of the real reality. even if it's not the actual. So maybe we could say practice is bringing the sense of the real and the actual closer together. Okay. Now we all weave varieties of realities and varieties of versions of the world together.

[05:55]

Yildir spoke about her mother. and who has one view of, one version of reality, which is not hill truth or horse, but it works for her. Is that correct? And in some other version she can play chess very well. Does she beat you? She beats everyone. Do you know about the story about Bobby Fischer hiding in Germany? Do you know who Bobby Fischer is? He's a chess master, one of the greatest ones probably ever.

[07:03]

His first cousin used to practice with me in San Francisco. Practiced then, yeah. She's a Dane now, I believe. Anyway, he was quite eccentric. And he disappeared at some point and he had lived anonymously in a farmhouse in Germany. This is just an anecdote. And at some point, after some months, the farmer got suspicious. I don't know how, but he kind of peeked in through the closed blinds and saw a chess set set up. And I guess when he came out and played in the local village, he just was too good. He couldn't hide how good he was.

[08:11]

And the eccentric behavior in his good chess playing, the former guest and... shortly after Bobby moved somewhere else. Yeah, it's too bad he didn't have a chance to play with your mother. Okay. And Christa related one experience, you know, we could say of reality in the amusement park. Without Orson Welles. And another experience, where was it, where you felt so satisfied? In a junior camp, that's right.

[09:19]

Yeah, and one of the problems is, how do we put these... I mean, one problem you had, it seemed, were these were divergent enough experiences of reality that you wondered, is it worth it? And the experiences weren't that good. And you asked yourself, is this really worth it? So I'm asking ourselves, asking myself the question, how do we decide what is reality? What is actual? We need some pivot, some place that we measure turn our various views on.

[10:20]

But I think in Zen practice, the two are the experience of absorption And the third skanda of percept only, perception only. Now I think, you know, when people, the often ritualized behavior is a form of absorption. Ritualized behavior is a form of absorption. I think reading the newspaper in the morning as a thing you have to do every morning. I know people who have nowhere, where they are, have to have the New York Times in the morning.

[11:25]

Yeah, or you have to have a coffee. Yeah. One of the founders of Starbucks, believe it or not, is a close friend of mine, a practicing Buddhist who comes to Sashin's. And I don't know the other founders, there were five, but it did start in Seattle, but it did come from a sense of the society needs something like a certain kind of cup of coffee in a certain ritualized way. And the main founder's obvious extraordinary business sense is still rooted in this, I think, experience. I noticed that there's now a Starbucks caddy corner from the opera in Vienna.

[12:48]

I'm not recommending Starbucks, I'm just talking. Are you sure? Make a pretty good cup of coffee then. But they're selling lifestyle, like McDonald's is selling lifestyle. Okay. Or smoking a cigarette is a kind of meditation or absorption. Yeah, you don't think so? Oh, yes, I do. I don't recognize you. Oh, not that cigarette.

[13:50]

I mean, given that it's a very good way to dose yourself, very specifically with nicotine, Which is in liquid form used as an insecticide. And not to discourage any of you. But it does allow you to dose yourself very precisely with the hit you need. But it allows you to dose yourself But I don't think it's just about that. It's also about that it has a specific, fairly specific length of time. It's like a stick of incense. And I'm not kidding when I call it a special breathing practice. You have to stop, you have to change your breath, you have to deal with this little fire that lasts a particular length of time.

[15:08]

I'm beginning to like the idea. So I think... I don't think so. Do you want more anecdotes? No. One of the founders of the wife of the owner was a practicing Buddhist. I can't remember her name now. Of Chesterfield, I believe. Anyway, Liggett and Myers. I knew her quite well. I can't remember her name now. She's dead now. And she supposedly pushed her husband out of an airplane. But anyway, that's another story. They didn't get along. It was called an accident. She was very nice, though.

[16:28]

I liked her. I was happy I wasn't her husband. This is Viennese humor. Well, you know, I'm picking up something here from you all. All right. No, the people who own these cigarette companies really know that they're dosing you. They really know it and they lied about it. Terrible. What means dose? To take a certain amount of medicine or drugs or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I think tai chi, yoga are also means of absorbing.

[17:37]

The Chinese people doing tai chi in the morning, it's not just about the tai chi. It's about the time of day, the ritual. I think watching the TV news, especially in America, is a ritualized absorption. And the newscasters have to, in America, they have to represent a kind of ideal person. Person who you might model yourself on. whose status is slightly higher than yours, but not enough higher to make you nervous or jealous.

[18:45]

So I think somehow the... The television networks know this, and if you look at the television news that way as a ritualized behavior, it's understandable why there's not much information in it. So I'm talking about absorption as this outward movement and inward movement. Looking at the world, the news, the newspaper, sitting in a cafe, In a cafe, the waitress that sees you every day or the people you have a drink with, it's all a kind of, in this context, a kind of sangha.

[20:02]

You often want the same waiter or waitress who already knows what you want. So I would say that, again, it's a process of extending your consciousness, awareness outward. It's different to have a cup of a melange in a cafe than to have a melange at home. And so you're extending your consciousness outward and at the same time drawing it inward and making sense of the world. And you don't accept it whole hog.

[21:17]

Whole hog is, you know, a pig, hog. And whole hog is an expression that means you don't accept the official version completely. It's also an expression like Let's have the whole meal and two desserts. That would be to go whole hog. In Zen monasteries, the teacher often takes you out and sees how much they can get you to eat and drink and etc. and see if you know your limits. What's funny? Yes, it's true. Okay. So in some funny way, I would say the outward movement is a subjectifying, a subjective experience of the world.

[22:43]

And drawing it in is an objectifying process. Because it's the drawing in which becomes the reality check. And I would say that, I mean, I've often, and from the Buddhist point of view, seen these activities, obviously, as I'm speaking. of having a cigarette or reading the newspaper or having a cup of coffee in a cafe as forms of religion. Or religious behavior, at least.

[23:44]

And I would understand that my measure of them would be if they're ritualized and if they are processes of absorption, a combination of an outward movement of consciousness, awareness, and an inner drawing in. My measure of whether they're religious behavior or not is if they're ritualized and if they are acts of absorption. of an outer movement of attention and an inward movement of attention. Now I would say again, what Buddhism does, what Zen does, as a practice of things as they are, or to accumulate these various threads which are woven into the fabric of our everyday life, separate these threads

[24:57]

and put them on the loom of Zazen mind. What is the... The Shoyaroku, the Book of Serenity, says something like continuously reality runs her loom and shuttle. Weaving the ancient brocade and incorporating the forms of spring. Did I mention that the other day in the seminar?

[26:15]

No. So you have this image of weaving in the word tantra and sutra. Oh, our sutra is sewing. Tantra means weaving. So the image of weaving is central to Buddhism. So continuously reality runs her loom and shuttle. Weaving the ancient brocade in this Buddhist case the lineage teachings Incorporating the forms of spring, the singular, always changing reality. Okay. So I would say that, you know, the the development of the understanding of the practice of sitting meditation can be understood as rooted in

[27:47]

activities we already do in daily life, but to bring those strands or threads together on the loom of stillness, the loom of sasen mind, weaving a new fabric, hopefully clearer and more objective. And I think some of you will find, maybe most of you will find, that if you bring a problem or something that's concerning you into meditation, you have a feeling of coming to a deeper decision about it than you do in ordinary thinking. Now, if you had that experience, then you're having an experience that is expected from the conception of meditation.

[29:00]

Which is through absorption, through not the absorption of reading a newspaper center, but pure absorption, the outward forms of your life cohere in a more integrated sense and have a greater clarity and preciseness and a more clearly related to possible actions. And for that reason alone, a certain portion of meditation is this kind of reality check. A process of putting your life in order through the Zazen mind.

[30:22]

Yeah, okay. Now let me, we should take a break in a minute. But let me say something about this practice of stillness. Now the practice of stillness as a mode, a way of concentrating within your ordinary daily life. as they say in the four noble postures of walking, sitting, standing, and reclining, with the sense that each posture represents a different mind, just as zazen represents a different mind,

[31:31]

You take the absorption in ease and stillness, discovered and embodied through this posture. into your daily life of walking, sitting, standing, and reclining. Now, how do you bring this into your daily life? And the most common question I'm asked in seminars and certainly in sushins is, how do I bring this or sustain this feeling practice in my ordinary life? Now, the deepest and most basic answer as Yuan Wu pointed out to us when I told you is uninterrupted resting in the fullness of mind.

[32:57]

Our great potential. Now, and I describe that as a feeling for, for example, the stillness of the tree when the tree, whether the tree is moving or still. Now, how do you do that? How do you replicate a stillness you feel in yourself in the world? Because initially this doesn't happen automatically. You have to seek this stillness in the world. Maybe you try standing in front of a tree for a while until you feel its stillness.

[33:57]

Vielleicht versuchst du eine Weile vor dem Baum zu stehen, bis du seine Stille fühlen kannst. Wie der Baum oder der Busch in die Stille zurückkehrt. Er bewegt sich und bewegt sich. Wie entdeckst du das durch deine eigene Erfahrung? I think probably just feeling the stillness in your hara, part of the reason this hara, which is the body, can move around. It's fun to watch B-grade samurai movies. And you have funny little samurais all dressed up in medieval costume.

[35:26]

Running down the, usually the paths of monasteries, because it's the only place they can really film these things so they look right. With their little beer belly completely still, flat with the earth. So they run, keep the beer belly still. while they're twirling their sword. And there's a habit of walking, even the Japanese shoes, which are supposed to be, you know these things Japanese wear, wooden geta or rubber ones. They're traditionally worn shorter than your foot. If they're longer than your foot, they swing around at the back.

[36:30]

If they're shorter, then you have to lift your feet and let them sort of slide and then put your feet down. So you have to walk like this. You don't walk like this. So these shoes are Hara-creating shoes. And you can really run in them. You get used to them. You can run in them. They're great. I like them. The wooden ones with the little... Es sind so kleine Holzbrettchen mit zwei Stöcken, also so zwei kleinen Holzklötzchen, denen man steht wie auf einer Plattform. So there's this emphasis in yoga cultures of keeping this area still, actually in the way you walk and run.

[37:32]

So you can feel it by making that sense of a still center in your body, or pushing your breath down to that point as a habit. until the hara comes alive or you can find this sense of stillness in your breath itself And if you kind of get in the habit also of the Dharma pause, a little pause at each moment in your activity. Feeling of a certain pause and you breathe into that pause. Maybe even breathe in and out the object that you're apprehending, noticing.

[38:41]

It's some ways of establishing, discovering the stillness in the other. And in another person, it's a way of drawing out their stillness, even when they aren't experiencing it. So this may seem irrelevant to the discussion of self, but I would maintain it's actually a form, it's a dynamic of self. A dynamic of self. Of how you discover yourself in the world and in relationship to the other. Okay, that's enough. Okay, that's enough. and I copied out.

[39:56]

We haven't been able to We definitely use our calendar and wear our suits. That might be a bigger conversion than the religious conversion. Observing the reality of physical existence. is the same as observing the Buddha. Can that be true? This wouldn't want to lose us. What is the reality of physical existence? How can we understand the reality of physical existence in a way that it is also the Buddha?

[41:03]

That's the koan of this first line. Now, if you're going to read in the Zen style, And the way this is meant to be read, although these are actually from letters that Yuan Wu wrote to people, so they had the actual letters. But the custom, if you're really practicing, and again, remember that books and letters and things like that were rare. They were hard to get hold of. So the custom was to write in a way that a page or something was, you know, enough for weeks. So if you wanted to read this as a practice style, you wouldn't go ahead with the next sentence until you really contemplated this sentence.

[42:15]

And it's the best way to read a sutra. Which is you read a line or a paragraph or one little part. And you don't go ahead until you've practiced it or come to the conclusion you can't practice. And from that feeling of practice, you go to the next line. The only long sutra I've read that way is the Lankavatara Sutra. It took me about two and a half years. Every day I read a line in the morning and a line at noon time.

[43:24]

Then you proceed, not through an intellectual understanding, but a practice understanding from line to line. Colons, you don't read exactly that way. Koans, you go through the koan and get a feel for the whole of the koan. It's usually only two or three pages. Just a kind of lightly read picture of the koan, feel for the koan. then you notice where you stick and where the lines stick to you or stick in you or don't make sense then you stay with those lines longer using them as gate phrases maybe over some Weeks or days.

[44:52]

Then you go back to the koan, the beginning. And read each section as I just spoke about reading the sutra. And if you can, you also go over the koan with the teacher. Well, today we'll read this as we might read a koan, getting an overall picture of it. Observing the reality, actually a physical existence. is the same as observing the Buddha. Then worldly phenomena and the Buddha Dharma are fused into singular whole and all at once.

[45:53]

Then you'll be completely free and at ease. Imagine if you were to put on clothes. This is great potential and great function. Go directly to your personal existence. In the field of the five postures. Now this is exactly what I'm teaching the five skandhas. Now, you'll find the five skandhas in the Abhidharma and other presentations of this teaching. as a form of delusion or a form of self.

[47:06]

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