There's so much I'd like to say and there's so much I don't know how to say, but we'll get started. We're in a kind of mandala. And if we can really feel that the differences within the mandala are not differences in kind, but differences in function or position. Differences in function, not in kind. And differences in positioning. Now, I mean, I think... I guess what I'm finding, what I'm feeling in our mandala is that our practice is evolved enough and mature enough that the problems in it now are for each of us and what I'm noticing myself too, of course, is problems in...

[01:47]

our habitualized way of knowing the world. Should I have said it differently? Yes. Yes. Oh, goodness sakes. I can barely say it at all. Anyway. Yeah, and I think that our habitualized way of thinking actually doesn't give room to the teachings and the practices. And I tried to suggest that yesterday by saying in ways that the air we breathe is not fuel

[02:53]

The air is not ours only when we breathe it, it's ours all the time. Sometimes the air helps the plants on the altar a little bit in the flame and sometimes it helps us. And that's really rooted in a very, like, this terrible term, a human being, which always says there are things which are not human. And as I said yesterday, or implied at least, that I think this habit of thinking in difference in kind is one of the things that prevents us from knowing our interiority, knowing interiority.

[04:20]

What does it do? Is that differences in kind? What hinders us from knowing interiority? Yeah. And it's all rooted. If we look at it, it's all rooted. The shift in perception can be explored simply by creatively exploring the difference between entities and activities. It's hard for us to get it, but really in Buddhism there's no concept of time. In the sense that we say in English at least, time waits for no man, and I presume not for women either.

[05:23]

They don't have such expressions. Because time is positioning. This is in that position, you're in that position. And the relationships are what we call time, but it's just differences in position. Because time is nothing else than the positions that take things in and the network of relationships between the things. That is now in that position, that is in that position. And the change of relationships is what we call time. That's what Dogen talks about. Time, but he talks about time that matures. It's not out there happening whether you like it or not. It's something that matures. And what he means is really quite simple to a farmer, for sure, is when are the positions right, sun, rain, soil, to plant? And for a Zen practitioner or a Zen teacher, it's not about we're spending time together, we're in positions together.

[06:55]

And a good teacher should know when the other practitioners are in a position to, hey, I'm going to do this for my life. And a good teacher should recognize when practitioners are at a point where they say, hey, this is what I do with my life. So-called aha moments. But for women, no, everything is an aha moment. Oh shit, or aha, or whatever. But then basically everything is an aha moment, or an oh shit moment, or an aha moment. Yeah, it's translated as time when you make a translation, but experientially it's different.

[08:20]

It's hard to get a feeling for the difference. Okay, so there's all these neuroscientists now and neurologists and so forth trying to understand what consciousness is. And they're looking for consciousness as a kind of entity event. Which can be measured, etc. But let's look at it another way. Let's just take this wonderful word, Tathagatagarbha. Which means, it's a name for the Buddha. And it's a name for the universe.

[09:24]

And it means womb, embryo, movement. So here we can look at some categories. So you have, you know, excuse me for being so basic, but Entschuldigung, dass ich so grundsätzlich dran gehe, aber du hast da ein Sperma und du hast da eine Eizelle. Das eine noch das andere ist bewusst, jedenfalls nicht so wie wir es verstehen. Aber wenn du die zusammenführst und die einander mögen, und du sie dann in eine Gebärmutter hineintust, they know how to produce consciousness. How do they know that? I mean, that's the wrong question to ask. It's not about knowing, it's about a successional repetition.

[10:28]

It's not about knowing, it's about a successional repetition. Again, if everything's an activity and there are no entities, then what you have is successional repetition. Or repetition which doesn't have a successional dynamic. But when there's a successional dynamic of repetition or receptivity, perhaps it's successional receptivity, and there's a womb, it kind of helps. Consciousness is produced.

[11:34]

Intelligence is produced. Awareness is produced. Wow! Okay. Maybe we could recognize that what's going on is all related to successional receptivity. Vielleicht könnten wir daraus schließen, dass alles, was passiert, in Beziehung steht zu... Give me a moment. Aufeinander folgende... I'm giving you a moment. Thank you. Aufeinander eine Empfänglichkeit, in der es eine Abfolge gibt. Okay. So perhaps as this is a basic idea within the overall conception of Buddhism, since there's no space outside for a creator,

[12:36]

And coming out of a worldview where there's no outside space for a creator, then everything is creative. Because there is creation. Then everything is a participant in this creativity. So how do we, if everything is repetition, a kind of repetition or change, How do we create successional repetition or receptivity? Yeah, and how do we create a womb? Well, the concept of a mandala is how you create a womb.

[13:57]

And perhaps zazen is a kind of womb. If we try to recreate the thinking which led to the understanding of just sitting, doing nothing, is a womb-like behavior. And when I mentioned silken and waiting yesterday, Yes, silken, but my emphasis was really not, and it was a mistake to say silken, I guess, because then we think of it as a sensation, as something which has definition. As a sensation and something that has... That has succession.

[15:11]

Okay. Yeah. So I'd like to, you know, in English at least, the word the Buddha is one who is awake. And clearly, awareness is related to awakeness. And waiting, the word wait, has the same etymology as awareness and awake. And waiting literally means to observe carefully. So even silverware and stoneware means things that have to be taken care of carefully, observed carefully. The wear of silverware.

[16:23]

The wear of silverware means awake. It means you have to take care of it through awakeness. Like dishes and things like that. So waiting is in practice a kind of awareness. And I call it sometimes, you know, plant time. Plants which just can't move, they're just beside each other, and they have to wait for this fertility to happen. Okay, so how do we create womb-like conditions to know the ultimate truth or to know reality or to know emptiness? And then the question is, how do we create these birth-like circumstances to... What was your list?

[17:37]

To create awareness? I'll have to go slower, I guess. Awareness, I didn't get all of it. And reality, to create reality and so on. Okay. Okay. So again, trying to recreate the thinking that arises when there's no outside space and everything is a here-ness. Then those who, so that there's no such thing as sitting doing nothing. You know the little poem, Sitting Doing Nothing? Zen poem. Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes. Grass grows by itself. Maybe enlightenment grows by itself. Vielleicht wächst auch Erleuchtung von selbst.

[18:58]

But if you're always thinking in categories and comparisons, you're not going to be in that fertile plant time where things do happen through your leaving them alone. We could say Zazen is a form of profoundly leaving oneself alone. To expect nothing of waiting, but to trust waiting. So again, trying to recreate the world and practices arising from this culture embedded in change.

[20:00]

Okay, we could say something like, we notice that when people sit still and have a mental posture of not moving, Things seem to happen. It actually seems to be a practice of longevity. People who do this seem to live longer. We don't have sociologists studying it, but yes, we all notice it culturally. And they tend to be healthier. Yeah, and they tend to have less mental and emotional suffering. What's going on?

[21:05]

Well, it must be some kind of embryo-womb-like activity. Now, what can we bring into this situation once you're born and you're out of the womb? can we create womb-like situations for us human beings, us mutual beings. Und was können wir, nachdem du geboren bist, was können wir tun, um diese Umstände zu schaffen? Können wir gebärmutterartige Umstände oder embryoartige Umstände für uns Menschen schaffen? Okay, so let's articulate teachings and practices so that it increases the womb-like dynamics. Strangely enough, even though we're doing this because we can see it benefits people, if you do it, if it's done with an idea of it's going to help you, it doesn't work very well.

[22:12]

We've learned over some centuries that it's best to not have any idea of its benefit, no gaining idea, as Sukhira always said, no idea of it being beneficial, except to do it. Grass grows by itself. Okay. So Zazen, Sashin, Ango, 98 practice periods, are all attempts to create wound-like conditions for Buddhists. Now, when I said yesterday, notice, let's emphasize noticing inhales.

[23:41]

The downward flow of the breath and the upward movement of the body in the inhale And to notice too how the mind and attentional acuity changes in the process of the very inhale. What are you doing there? Well, if you're doing it because it gives you well-being or something like that, fine.

[24:43]

But you may not notice that you're adding to your actual experience. And if you do that because it's good for you, then that's okay. But you may not notice that you add something to your actual experience. What is... What is our life? It's our actual experience. How do we get ourselves in the midst of actual experience? Well, one thing that Zazen and Sashin does, it actually adds to our actual experience. We each begin to have experiences that we wouldn't have had if we didn't do Zazen. And those actual experiences become part of our inventory of what it is to be alive.

[25:47]

Confusion and anxiety and so forth. You experience them, but they're hard to be clear about what's going on. But the more you find yourself in actual experience, And two keys to that are noticing when you feel nourished and, as I've said for many years, and noticing when you feel complete. And the practitioner tries to guide the path of his life through the mandala of immediacy. The pylons, remember, which you race between?

[26:51]

The pylons, or the gates, are the experience of nourishment. And ideally, you only do things in a way that you feel nourished by doing them. You make that a rule. We could define a Buddha as one, a person who only does things through nourishment. Or performs no act without it feeling complete. I think we can say that's what realization, real realization, means. So it means that, yeah, if you know that and you believe that, hey, you've got some kind of territory to feel your way to a realized life.

[28:16]

the other day I spoke about the three dimensions of immediacy. It's something I've been trying to speak about only for the last few months and most of these few months I've been in America. Or what used to be called America. That was a political comment. Okay. So the three dimensions of immediacy and now I think I've added a fourth. Now, since most large number of you haven't been present, I have to run through it and run through aspects of it in short form.

[29:49]

I said to my father when I was eight or nine years old, There's no 12 o'clock. And he said, why do you say that? And I said, it's a minute to 12, or half a minute to 12, a millionth of a second to 12, and then it's a millionth of a second after 12. There's no 12. He being an engineer and a scientist, he said, well, we can say that something that's approached and passed has an existence. And I would call that a small enlightenment experience. Now, why am I saying that to you? Because I want us to notice we all have small enlightenment experiences. And maybe large ones, too.

[31:02]

But I'm sure that you're here because you've had small, at least small, enlightenment experiences. Now, why do I call this question and answer with my father a small enlightenment experience. Well, because at the time I didn't think anything of it. I just noticed that I noticed that and I noticed what he said. Then I thought a lot about what was the minute before 12 and the millionth of a second before 12. What were they? But because I... Not because it was a big experience when it happened, but because I never forgot it, and it's been part of my... functioning ever since.

[32:15]

So such enlightenment experiences are like you put a stone in the stream and the water then from then on goes around that stone. So my life has gone around that, flowed around that ever since then. Mein Leben ist seither immer um das herum geflossen. Okay, so next step. There is no immediacy. No dimensions to immediacy. In a physical sense or... from a point of view of physics. But there is our experience of immediacy.

[33:19]

And that experience is within our sensorium. Okay. So, it's a fact, it's in our sensorium. It's a durative experience through our sensory. If it's our experience, we've constructed it. From the ingredients that we choose and put into it or that happen through our cultural proclivities. So we can say immediacy doesn't exist, but what we experience as immediacy is something we're constructing. Participating in constructing. That's also the concept of a mandala.

[34:27]

This immediacy can also be a mandala, which is a womb-like source of realization. Okay, so a little, still trying to be brief. So the first dimension that I'm emphasizing of Medici is spatiality. And right now, there's spatiality functioning.

[35:29]

Right now, there's spatiality functioning. How I'm sitting, how she's sitting, how you're sitting, and so forth. The floor, the knots in the floor, and so forth. And when I get up, I will continue to shape this proportionate or non-proportionate, depending on how I function, space. Now, if I experience that with sufficient complexity or detail, it'll take all my attentional resources. dann wird das all meine Aufmerksamkeitsressourcen brauchen. And those attentional resources then won't be so available to past, future, worries, who am I, you know, all that crap.

[36:31]

I mean, it's not crap, it's our life. Excuse me. Diese Aufmerksamkeitsressourcen stehen dann nicht mehr so zur Verfügung für Vergangenheit, Zukunft und wer ich bin und so weiter und all diesen Mist. Also, Entschuldigung, das ist unser Leben. I mean, the Buddha doesn't worry about, did someone like me in the past? He might notice somebody didn't like him, but who the heck cares, really? Okay. So the second dimension is what I call patiality or succession. And the third is uncertainty. So there's space, and there's succession, positioning, And there's uncertainty.

[37:44]

We don't know what's going to happen, really. And the fourth dimension that I'm adding since yesterday, something like that, is thusness. And they work together as pairs. Spatiality and are not really different, but we can experience them differently. And uncertainty or indeterminacy, we don't really know what's happening. And the fourth I've added is thusness. It's a kind of antidote to uncertainty. Es ist eine Art Gegenmittel zur Ungewissheit.

[38:50]

I tend to get frustrated when things don't work. I'm putting on some article of clothing and it's all tangled up and I can't untangle it easily. I shake it, it's not untangled. Yeah, I get frustrated. It's the first thing I noticed as a child that annoys me. It's frustration. But my antidote is thusness. Well, it's tangled up. Thus it is, so what the hell? It's a kind of mathematics. Like that. Okay, we're really running out of time. I mean running out of legs. It's the position of the legs which is time at this point. And if spatiality, I'll just give you a headline.

[39:56]

A body line. If spatiality is a dimension of immediacy, an experiential dimension of immediacy, and everything's an activity, spatiality isn't just some kind of like, I'm walking in space. It's a power. Because I can't experience spatiality if I'm not accommodating or open. And if immediacy is constantly an experience of spatiality to me, it's an experience which is showing me openness. Und wenn Unmittelbarkeit fortwährend eine Erfahrung für mich ist, dann ist es eine Erfahrung, die mir Offenheit zeigt.

[41:05]

It's a process of accommodating to the world. Es ist ein Prozess, sich der Welt anzupassen. And that accommodation, and that accommodation successively repeated is a form of incubation. And to repeat this adaptation in the sequence is a form of incubation. It's the womb of the embryo of immediacy. The mandala of immediacy. So, please, find this actual experience in your sasen practice. Without naming it or languaging it. Just wait in the midst of it.

[42:07]

Thank you very much. I don't know. I don't know.

[42:27]

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