So we have this big, big topic today. Yeah. He's been translating me a few times. This is a new first time streaming, right? Yes. Are your parents watching? I hope so. Hi, Stefan. Yeah. My parents are not like me. From another dimension within myself, perhaps. But I called, in the sort of subtitle way, or description of the title, I called wisdom a kind of looking around for wisdom.

[01:05]

So since there's no transcendent or metaphysical sphere, whatever his wisdom has to be like, And I've spent the last 65 years or so sort of looking around for wisdom. And mostly looking around feeling around in the dark. But when I met Suzuki Roshi, there was a feeling of a path opened up.

[02:09]

So I've been exploring, you know, on the one hand, I think much of what I will say today, we'll see, is pretty simple. But it's taken me many years to discover how to practice with a real attunement. So I started with Zazen practice, of course. That's what Sukhiroshi offered, and so we sat together. And I would say that what In the end, or in the beginning and the end, Zazen shows us, teaches us the skills of attentionality.

[03:35]

Intentionality. Der Intentionalität. Yeah, and equanimity. Das Gleichmuts. And stillness. Und der Stille. So this is my recommendation to you sitting here and anybody else who's hearing this, that it's really helpful to discover stillness equanimity, realized equanimity, intentionality, and attentionality. So wisdom isn't out there, some kind of thing to be discovered. It's how the world is or functions when it functions to the benefit of the world itself.

[04:49]

Es ist eher so was, wie die Welt ist oder wie die Welt funktioniert, wenn sie zum Wohle der Welt selbst funktioniert. And wisdom is about the world. Und bei Weisheit, da geht es um die Welt. And naturally so, in different world views, wisdom will be different. It's not some universal truth. But, I mean, from the point of view of Buddhism, it's rooted in the universal truths. everything changes and everything that follows from your really accepting and enacting, everything changes.

[06:01]

So the practice of wisdom has to include that everything changes. Die Praxis der Weisheit muss mit einbeziehen, dass alles sich verändert. And the four tenets I often mention are, as I feel, are the sort of essences of Buddhist practice. Und die vier tenets, ich weiß nicht wo es ist, And sorry to go over them again with you, but I would like you to really, really accept it and get it.

[07:07]

That everything changes is understood in Buddhist practice as transformation is possible. You can change yourself. You can have an intention to change yourself, and it's possible. The second tenet is it's possible, believe it or not, to be free of suffering. Okay, and third, it's possible to live in as beneficial a way as possible. And fourth, it's possible to live as close as possible to how things actually exist.

[08:17]

So I would suggest practicing with these four tenets. Whenever you're doing something that doesn't seem to feel related to these four, you sort of check up on what you're doing, thinking, acting. So the practice of wisdom depends on knowing these four are possible. Now I considered speaking about Plato and Aristotle's view of wisdom, et cetera. But you can look that up or figure that out for yourself. I think in the essence of the understanding in Buddhism in the 10th of the 5th Paramita, 6th Paramita, is that we can live close to how things actually exist, how the world actually is.

[09:59]

And that's very, basically a scientific, also a scientific view of the world. So if you have this, the skills of attentionality, intentionality, equanimity, and Stillness. And these are not limited to zazen, but boy, it's the shortcut to realizing these four. So let me start with the simplest definition of zazen. Zazen is the physical posture somewhat close to vertical sleeping, but you're not supposed to sleep.

[11:04]

And if you do try to sit still and awake, you discover your spine. Your spine is, you know, the name of the game. And the awareness and attentionality awakening in the spine changes your relationship to the brain drain of consciousness. Brain drain. The brain drain is a word used, for instance, in Russia now. All the smart people are not all. There must be some left who can get out or getting out.

[12:27]

That's called the brain drain. All the IT people and stuff like that. Okay. So sitting still. neurologically through the spine rewires you. And it doesn't happen just because you're a nice guy and you do nice things. You actually have to sit fairly regularly to be rewired by the spine.

[13:30]

Okay. So my definition of Zazen is the physical posture being rewired by the spine. And as I said in the recent Zazen Kai, the The conception, the intention to sit still. To don't move. Now, we think of don't move as just a thought. Yeah, it's a dispensable thought, something like that.

[14:33]

But in the embodied world of relationality, of interdependent relationality, the shapes of mind shape the world. Aber in der verkörperten Welt der Beziehungshaftigkeit, der zueinander abhängigen Beziehungshaftigkeit, bringt das die... The shapes of mind shape the world. Yeah. So it's a conception, and I always emphasize that Buddhism is a practice of attentionality, not conceptuality. Okay, but it's better to think of it maybe as a mental formation or a kind of

[15:40]

road sign, a direction, a directive. Yeah, there's a long stretch going across Nevada in the United States, which is endlessly sameness. And they have signs every 10 miles or so, don't fall asleep. I don't know. And this is a conception of cars and sleepiness and so forth. But really, it's just a direction. Wake up. Life is in danger. Yeah, it is. Don't move is a body shaping and mind shaping intention.

[16:51]

Also, bewege dich nicht, das ist eine körperformende und geistformende Intention. And Zazen becomes a realized Zazen when at some point you actually realize not moving. Even in the midst of your heart beating and your breathing and your metabolism, you know, going around, you still feel. Now, this is an experience. You feel not moving. auch inmitten deines Herzschlags, deines Metabolismus, deines ganzen Körpers, da spürst du, du bewegst dich nicht. Now, this not moving as a mind shape, body and mind shape, I would say these things,

[18:01]

You really get the physicality of it in zazen, but it's present in your daily activity. We could say one of the measures or signs of realization is a person who you can sense in everything they do. There's a not moving. Now, I'm convinced of this because I've been working with this, doing this for 60 years or more. And it's not learned through smarts. It's learned through intention and repetition.

[19:05]

Repetition, which is not repetitive. Now, when repetition doesn't feel new each time, you're just in your brain. There's a uniqueness to each moment. In fact, it's only your brain which says, oh God, not again, same, same. But if you're actually experientially present, which is part of what you learn through the attentionality of Zazen, Just being in one spot is a kind of newness.

[20:32]

Okay, so what I've been trying to do, not knowing much of the time what I was doing, is trying to catch you in the net of yogic culture. Yeah, I'm a fisher. No, Jesus was a fisherman. I'm fishy. No, I'm not fishy. You don't have to translate. Yeah. So I've discovered that I can't explain it conceptually. I can't talk about it much. I can talk about the different Go game and chess, the chess game. But we need some mind shape. that catches us into yogic culture.

[21:48]

So what I practice with now or discovered only a few months ago Is that through practice I've discovered learning, no, discovered living in between my hands. So, I mean, I could also say living is living, living. Ich könnte auch sagen, Leben ist das Leben zu leben. So, living is no big deal. You're just living, living, but you're the enactment of living and you're the participant and the subject and object.

[22:56]

So, if living is living living, you can just, that's a useful thing to keep in mind. Oh, what a big deal, I want, no. Well, if you're going to be a professor, but first of all, living is living, living. Having enough to eat and a place to sleep helps, but still, that's also living, living. So from very early on with Suzuki Hiroshi, I could see it in him, feel it in him, that he lived within a kind of spatial unit.

[24:04]

we can say presence, but a kind of spatial unit that went everywhere he went. That was part of anywhere he went. Nicole tells me it's a problem when I add new versions of the same thing and but you're handling it pretty well thank you yeah um okay so another term i could use would be maybe i'm trying to discover these terms inner handedness can you do that one Yeah.

[25:28]

Inner handedness. Also in den Händen. Anybody have any ideas? Inner. Handedness. Innenhandig. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now, if you do that, if you kind of have a feeling for Yeah, and I guarantee you, the more you feel that, your body will begin to exhibit it. Your hands will start feeling connected, sort of some kind of healing elasticity. Your body will try to live the space of this in-betweenness. Now maybe you too, you're going to Marseille on a bicycle tomorrow or something? And you're going where?

[26:40]

To France on a bus? I don't know where. You're just going to get in between the handlebars and find out what happens, right? This is real inner handedness. They're going to be living between the handlebars, right? I think of mountain climbers sometimes. They really have to practice the successional path. This handhold, this handhold. They're not like runners. Each one better be firm. So it's conceptually very similar to the successional path in Buddhism.

[28:00]

So maybe being on a bicycle for most of a day or some days is a practice of discovering the experience of living between your hands, with your feet doing some of the work. So now, if you take seriously what I'm saying, as practice, and you feel your living, living, is happening between your hands or arms, etc. It will also begin to shape the body in a yogic way. Now, if you also feel this unit of, I don't know what to call it, this kind of spatial unit, you feel you're living.

[29:25]

Maybe one reason you like going around the world camping is you bring your little spatial unit and put a tent up and you don't need anything else, right? Maybe the reason why you like to fight is because you really like to build this little spatial unity and you don't have to do anything else, you just build it up and live in it. Maybe. What are you doing? I'm in my Buddhist wisdom tent. Yes, when someone asks you, what are you doing, you can answer, yes, I'm in my Buddhist wisdom tent. Okay. So you begin to, this will begin to change or evolve how you function within space. Now, in Buddhism, there's no Newtonian envelope space.

[30:33]

In Buddhism, there's not something like a Newtonian envelope. Envelope-like? Like an envelope for a letter? Yeah, so not something like a Newtonian envelope. It's a medium, actually a kind of pulsating medium. It's really more like a medium, a pulsating medium. inseparable from you and everything else in its mutuality. And you begin to feel this spatial medium. And that's what the gestural path of Buddhism is about, awakening this spatial medium. You're breathing it and you're living it. So just as you could bring don't move into all your movements as well.

[32:09]

That's a kind of secret of practice. And if everything is original mind or everything is Buddha or awakening, hey, then we need some sort of tools to notice how everything is original mind or awakening. And what I'm trying to say is these attentional, intentional tools are holding particular attitudes or shapes of mind in all your actions. You can think about whatever you want, TV series, the next one, addictive one, etc. They run the plot so they overlap, so everyone gets addicted. But if you keep in mind this inner handedness,

[33:29]

This medium of space which turns here into now. You are now practicing wisdom. The skill to hold an intention is the tool of wisdom. And your patience, one of the parameters, your patience to stay with it allows this wisdom to be seeded and grow. So I, not really an hour or so ago exploring Plato, Aristotle, wisdom, prajna, I thought the best I can do is give an instance

[34:57]

of wisdom practice. So wisdom is maybe first of all to know everything's a construct and you're participating in the Reconstruction. And the means to do that is to bring the body-mind field into each situation. And I suggest you do it.

[36:24]

Okay. Max? Great. I'm glad your name isn't Min. Minimum. Minimum? No, no. Max? Okay, thank you very much. So you're supposed to make an announcement now, since you're taking Nicole's place or creating your own place, that we'll meet again in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes? In 15 minutes. In 15 minutes we'll meet again. Okay. To question and answer. Okay, thank you very much.

[37:13]

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