Thank you for coming here from Austria and Switzerland and Germany and from America. Well, from me, from America. Danke, dass ihr hierher gekommen seid aus Österreich, der Schweiz, Deutschland und so wie ich aus Amerika. And I often find it funny, sometimes I just forget about it, we do it so often, but funny that we start out chanting in Sino-Japanese. But I tried once, years ago, starting out in English and it didn't work. Because immediately we started out in consciousness. And starting out in this language most of us don't understand what we just said except we have a translation.

[01:08]

So the main experience is just chanting together, doing something together with our voices. And then the main experience is that we just do something together, that we recite together with our voices. Yeah, and also I suppose it's a reminder that we're in this, we're practicing this in-betweenness of Asian worldviews and Western worldviews. Yeah, but trying to take what's happening out of usual consciousness is maybe an example of the practice of wisdom. So the title of this seminar is The Practice of Wisdom.

[02:09]

And wisdom is a fruit of practice. But wisdom is also a way of practice, the way of practicing. Or the craft of practice is rooted in realizing wisdom. Now, you know, I In my shift many years ago from teaching primarily in the United States and teaching primarily to the majority of people with quite a lot of monastic experience,

[03:18]

To practicing in Europe, where... I said that already. where people don't have monastic practice. I can just move my lips and you can talk. She knows German much better than I do. Thomas, is that you leaning against the wall? Are you okay? He's really white. Oh. Dizzy. Dizzy. Oh, I'm sorry.

[04:26]

Would you? Okay. Thank you. So when I started teaching in Europe to practitioners who had little monastic practice experience I started finding it necessary to explain more what to explain more about the teaching than is commonly done for sure in Japan.

[05:28]

In Japan and China too I think the tradition is to get it through observation in your body. In Japan, and I think also in China, there is the tradition that you mainly understand it through the body, through observation and through the body. But getting it through the body and through observation requires a lot of contact with other practitioners and a teacher usually. But to understand something about the observation and through the body, And a way of practicing together, which usually is what we call monasticism. Since the fact is, and I'm convinced it will continue to be so, that as you heard me say many, many times, we're a lay, sometimes monastic community.

[06:50]

So the last few years, a couple of years I think only, I really started emphasizing the craft of practice. And my emphasis on the craft of practice is to discover a way of presenting teachings as a craft that you can bring into your daily lives. Yeah, and I've been doing that inadvertently, inadvertently, sort of by accident, through the circumstances, it means.

[07:58]

I've been doing that inadvertently, you know, through wisdom phrases and so forth like that, to try to make myself clear. But again, in the last couple of years I've been trying to look at all the teachings through look at all the teachings as a craft. So instead of having a title or an additional title to the practice of wisdom we could have practice as wisdom. And wisdom is usually first understood through consciousness.

[09:04]

Although just sitting, zazen, sitting, doing still sitting, Becomes a form of wisdom. And this morning I'd like to see if I can make that clear. But more subtle advanced states, advanced, more subtle and developed aspects of wisdom. Don't just develop through doing Zazen. You have to discover a way to whisper wisdom into your ear. Into your own ear. To remind yourself of wisdom. Okay, so again, I want to see if in these few days we have, I can speak about that with you.

[10:37]

And maybe in the more seminar type of meetings we have in the afternoon, which Atmar gets us started within and through. We can emphasize looking at the craft of a practice. Okay. Okay. So, since some of you are pretty new, let me start with zazen itself. Yeah. Zaz means sitting, absorption. And just zaz or zazen?

[11:46]

Zazen is sitting. Zen is absorption. So zazen means sitting and absorption. So what happens when we do sitting absorption? Is it hard to translate? It's uncomfortable. It sounds funny? Yeah, it doesn't quite do the same thing. You know, one reason I emphasize words and we have the problem or advantage of being translated Is there several hundred thousand words in English? Many hundred thousand. And several hundred thousand in German. Yeah, but the distinctions that...

[12:47]

Every word is a distinction. There's a new distinction, different distinction. Yeah, but almost none of those distinctions are accurate for our practice. Because the different distinctions we're trying to make in practice are really accurate. bodily based and not mentally based, consciously based. So by giving attention to words and speaking about the etymology of words often, I'm not so much trying to inform you or telling you about what I looked up.

[14:18]

But I'm trying to make the point that we've got to kind of feel our way into our own experience and the words come afterwards. Or you can use words, which is partly the practice of wisdom, to lead yourself into experience. But then you've got to let go of the leash or the lead and just find out what's there in the midst of that experience. So what are the basic rules of Zazen? They're pretty minimal. It's take a posture, an upright posture, where you can feel yourself through and through and then don't move and as I for some of you have said so often there's the physical posture of upright sitting

[16:04]

And then there's the mental posture or mental position, mental posture of don't move. So, practice is bringing those two together and an interaction between those two. Zazen practices. So, what happens if you have this mental posture, don't move, joined to the upright posture of sitting? Was geschieht, wenn ihr diese geistige Haltung, bewege dich nicht, mit der aufrechten Haltung verbindet?

[17:08]

Die geistige Haltung, bewege dich nicht, wird zu einer Okay, so we could say this is the first accomplishment, perhaps, of zazen. Through still sitting, in which you don't move, you develop an attentional sphere. You develop an intentional sphere, which is an intentional body location. Du entwickelst eine Aufmerksamkeitssphäre, die so etwas ist wie ein mit Aufmerksamkeit gefüllter körperlicher Raum ist.

[18:21]

Now I've already created a few terms here. Ich habe jetzt schon hier ein paar Begriffe kreiert. An attentional sphere. And an attentional, bodily location. And ideally, you continue Zazen practice until you're always located in this attentional sphere. Let me say that, as you know, I just flew from the United States the other day. I guess Wednesday you picked me up, or Thursday? Thursday. Okay, so I came on Thursday. And my circadian rhythms, circadian means circling through the day, the 24-hour day,

[19:25]

are still largely in Colorado. In fact, right now, I would be about 10 o'clock at night rather deeply in sleep. And if I fall over, like Thomas, you'll know what happened. Okay. Okay, so I'm trying to adjust my bodily rhythms to your bodily rhythms. rooted in this local time. Yeah. So the rhythms of our Our geographical location are part of our bodily time.

[21:14]

And I've been speaking a lot during the practice period here in this room and in Sashin about bodily time. And one of the aims of, fruits of Zazen practice is to locate yourself in bodily time. But not in societal time. Again, I'm trying to find ways to express the differences. Let's call societal time clock time. A time we all agree on. A time in which we can be late, for instance, or out of time, have no time. But Dogen says in Uji, you are time and you cannot be independent of time.

[22:19]

But Dogen says in Uji, you are time and you cannot be independent of time. Time cannot leave you. You can't be out of time. You are time. So you can start reminding yourself every time you say to yourself, geez, I don't have time, you have to stop and say, I am time, so it's impossible for me not to have time until I die. Now, to remind yourself that you are time is wisdom. Because you are not the comparative societal time. your bodily breath metabolic time your circadian time and this okay so I'll come back to this

[23:37]

Because, first of all, I mean, obviously there's also contextual time. Which is not the same as societal clock time. Because right now I'm in a contextual time established by us together. But if I talk for three hours, you'll start thinking, hey, clock time is better than contextual time. But at present, one of the things that happens is as soon as I walk in the room, I establish an image of all of you. And I try to speak into that image as a way of discovering and developing a shared contextual time. als eine Art und Weise, eine gemeinsame kontextuelle Zeit zu entdecken und zu entwickeln.

[25:32]

Which is also our chanting together. And that's part of establishing a shared contextual time. Das ist Teil dessen, eine gemeinsame kontextuelle Zeit herzustellen. But I can't enter contextual time, every context is different. It's not... A clock time is general. Every context is different. As soon as we stop talking here and do something else, we're in a different contextual time. Okay, but if I'm... If I find myself located in comparative societal time, it externalizes my sense of time. And then it's very difficult to experience different contextual times.

[26:34]

And then it's very difficult to notice different contextual times. Really, my own experience is, and the teaching is, that I can experience the many differentiated contextual times. If I'm first of all located in bodily time. And with the real feeling I cannot be out of time. And what happens in the world and thinking doesn't bother me much because what I am is bodily time. Okay, so one of the fruits of Zazen practice as it gives you the opportunity to establish yourself in bodily time.

[28:05]

And that means you have to practice the wisdom of bringing attention back to bodily time in a way like every time it goes to societal or clock time. And that requires that you practice the wisdom, to bring your attention back to the physical time, every time you notice that you slip into the social clock time. Okay, so through Zazen practice we're discovering an attentional sphere. An attentional sphere that becomes our bodily location. And that location will free us from a great deal of mental suffering. Because comparative thinking, angst, anxiety, etc., often arises from comparisons.

[29:09]

Angst und ganz vieles geistiges Leid, Angst, Befürchtungen und so hauptsächlich aus der vergleichenden Zeit aufsteigen. And ideas about who you are, etc. Und Vorstellungen davon, wer du bist und so. Now, Nicole is right now the translator. Nicole ist jetzt Übersetzerin. Thank you very much. Okay. During the practice period, she was the Ino. Während der Praxisperiode war sie Ino. After the practice period, we had no other choice. So we said, hey, could you be the tenso? And she said, I don't know how to cook. Why are you asking me? And anyway, I don't like cooking. But then she started doing it and she likes it. So when she was Eno, people had expectations of her. Enos are supposed to behave certain ways. And Jonas is the Eno now.

[30:25]

So suddenly Jonas, who used to be happily, blissfully in bodily time, is now the Eno. And he now has to think about, am I a good Eno? What do other people think of me as Eno? And when he was blissfully in bodily time, he had none of those thoughts. So, if either of you have thoughts about I'm Eno, I'm Tenzo, etc., you just shift to bodily time and say, oh, I'm fine. Okay, so it is a kind of wisdom to see the actuality of bodily time. And make that your primary experienced location.

[31:42]

And to do that requires reminding yourself of that over and over again. Because we've developed in the Western world probably the most developed mental culture in history. And we identify ourselves and think of ourselves in a mentally based way. Who you are is how you think of yourself and how others think of you. And we measure ourselves and decide on careers based on how others will think of us and how we'll think of ourselves.

[33:09]

There's no way to avoid that. That's our culture. But we can shift the location of this kind of thinking. By through Zazen establishing an attentional sphere as the body. And this becomes the basis for practicing wisdom. And becomes an expression you'll find over time, of wisdom itself.

[34:12]

Okay. So again, you're sitting down to do Zazen. And I think for lay people, once a day or so is enough. But in a seminar or in a practice week or a practice period we try to create the conditions for and enough zazen for is that we experience ourselves largely or more through zazen than through our ordinary consciousness. Okay, so several times a day and throughout the day through mindfulness practice.

[35:15]

You're trying to establish a continuous attentional sphere, bodily location. There I've created a compound noun, a hyphenated noun. An attentional sphere, bodily location. Now, I'm saying it that way rather than saying body-mind or something. let me say again in German, eine Aufmerksamkeitssphäre im Körperraum.

[36:18]

Und ich sage das lieber so, als körperliche Achtsamkeit und so zu beschreiben. Because maybe the four words give you more of a craft-like entrance to it. Weil vielleicht diese vier Worte euch eher einen... You can say to yourself, at least in English, ASBL. Yeah, I mean, what are you doing? Oh, I'm ASBL. Yeah. AWOL means what? Absent without leave in the military. And that's the opposite of attentional body.

[37:19]

Some forms of Buddhism do more like that. They create syllables to represent spheres of experience. But if you find some way to remind yourself of that an attentional sphere bodily location And sometimes I've given you the phrase to use, no other location mind.

[38:21]

And that's a similar overlapping practice. Okay. All right. So again, Clock time, I have to stop soon. Okay, so you're sitting in an upright posture and not moving. And that begins to give you the experience of an attentional sphere. Because you want to move. That means you want to get out of this attentional sphere. So you begin to notice its boundaries. Or you want to scratch. Or you start thinking about past, present and future.

[39:34]

And you're no longer in an attentional sphere. Okay, so if you keep bringing yourself back to this attentional sphere, locating yourself in bodily time, and the primary technique for doing this is to form an intention to bring attention to the breath. So the intention is a mental posture, like don't move. So you create a bodily posture, a mental posture that I will bring attention to the breath. And you primarily reinforce that mental posture. You don't worry too much about whether you're successful or not at bringing attention to the breath.

[41:00]

When you notice you haven't brought attention to the breath for several months, You don't say, what a bad practitioner I am, you poor old fool. That comparative thinking doesn't help. You just reinforce the intention to bring attention to the bread. And that effort of bringing attention to the breath and then to the body and to your phenomenal location also establishes this attentional sphere of a bodily location.

[42:11]

And that's the main thing you want to do. The entire time you're practicing, you want to develop this attentional sphere, bodily location. Now, what happens is the thinking you usually do, you know, about this, that and the other thing, past, present and future, is drawn into this bodily location. The word incorporate means to make into a body. Incorporate. In English. So you're literally incorporating your thinking. You start developing a bodily-based thinking. Not a You know, the words don't work.

[43:38]

I can say not a mentally based thinking, but bodily based thinking is also mental, but not a, you know, you understand what I mean. Now, if you achieve this, you'll discover that bodily-based thinking is more intelligent. it's more in touch with the reality of situations. And if you try to make a big decision, I think you'll find it's always a better decision through bodily-based thinking than thinking-thinking. So now, being located in bodily-based thinking is already the first steps of practice as wisdom.

[44:40]

And it's much easier to be free of bodily-based thinking than abstract thinking-thinking. And what are the results, some of the fruit of bodily-based thinking? Maybe this afternoon or maybe when tomorrow clock time puts us together, we'll talk about that. Thank you very much. Thanks for translating.

[45:48]

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