You know, especially when I am trying to find a new way to speak about something that's new or I haven't spoken about before. I feel like I've got a feel, an image of a building, let's say a building, sort of building in my mind. I say mind, but I mean feeling, mind, body. I have this image. And that the building is only sketched in, or it's not really at all complete. And when I come down, I have a feeling, can we build this building today? And I need your help in building it.

[01:17]

For example, if I can feel you thinking, oh, we need a wall there. Or you say, geez, over there, that needs another support. Then if I feel that, then it gives me a sense of how to build a building with you. Let's just take, for example... A sentence. We are the shape we have. Yeah, and I would say in English, I mean, it can't be philosophically examined, but I would say in English, we are the shapes we take.

[02:33]

And you can't examine that philosophically, but in English you could say, we are the structure or the form that we take in. Yesterday I mentioned the think tank. And as I've often pointed out, the root of the word body in English is a brewing vat. Now, I think we really need to get, even if I repeat these things a lot, really get and feel the difference, the sense, the difference. A brewing vat, you know, where you're turning malt into beer, has to have an inside and outside and temperature, different temperature.

[03:37]

I think think tank has the same kind of image in it. You get a bunch of people in a room together and they spend the afternoon or whatever and they throw a lot of ideas around and something new comes up. It's basically the same image of what thinking or what a human being is. I remember an anecdote I heard about the... What was it called in Germany where Gropius was? Bauhaus? The Bauhaus. Paul Klee was one of the people who lived there. A painter.

[04:53]

A Swiss painter. And... They would have discussions about what they're supposed to do next and, you know, etc. The whole group would meet. And supposedly Clay, who they respected a lot, never said much. And they would say to him, you know, tell us what you think tomorrow morning, Paul. And he would sleep on it and come up with his view the next day. And in the anecdote, the person who told me this said that, yeah, they usually followed what Klee suggested.

[06:06]

Now that's a different image. Clay sleeping on it, that's not really a think tank. This doesn't have an outside-inside emphasis. But it's rather to change your state of mind or something and let some other kind of thinking happen. Kind of other kind of thinking or mind. And if you read stories about major insights that scientists have had, never think tank type, they're usually this other mode of mind they let happen. Think tanks probably only work when there's a lot of discursive thinking.

[07:22]

The best a bunch of people who are stuck in discursive thinking can do is tank themselves up. Okay. Notice I said guys, not gals. Okay. Okay. The yogic image of the body, which is also our practice, is closest to the Chinese definition.

[08:25]

The body is a share of the whole. Yes. And there's no inside-outside distinction in this. share of the whole. Now if you really have this kind of feeling, you don't so much say, what's going on inside of me, or what is my inner, I know, etc. Yeah. So going back to the I am the shape I have or I am the shape I take.

[09:30]

I have the shape I have. I am the shape I have. So if you really think about I am the shape I have, you say things like I have a body. You say things like I have a body. We can think that way and it has some reality if we think that way. But it's quite different when you say, I am a body.

[10:31]

And what is the body? The body is the lived body. What did Sophia say in this regard? I am the body. That's what she said. I asked her, do you have a body or are you a body? She's a real sensuous little girl. She says, I am a body. No. So I say, I... We... We... I am the shape I take. No, I don't mean that, you know, if you're a boy and you act like a girl, you're going to turn into a girl.

[11:34]

Or if you're a girl and you act like a boy, you're going to turn into a boy. Although I always tell my daughters, I always say, when I was a little girl, I did such and such. Yeah. You know, if you're a boy and you act like a girl or vice versa, it might help. But probably you're mostly going to stay a boy or a girl. So I don't mean in that sense you are the shape you take. So how can, what can I, I can, I'm trying to give, I'm trying to create terminology here.

[12:36]

Kind of terminology, maybe a mandat. a yogic language. Now, in tantric Buddhism, yogic language is mantra, mudra, and mandalas. In yogic culture. In tantric, I said, language. The language... The yogic language is mudra, mandala and mantra. In tantric, the yogic language is mandala, mudra and mantra. And where does that come from?

[13:38]

Well, they say, for instance, the practitioner's breath is the practitioner's speech, their breath, is the cosmic breath of Vairochana. I don't want to do what I did last Teisho and give you too many observations and not enough structure. But if you say that your breath is the breath of the Vajrasattva Buddha, where's inside, not inside? And why do you need a language of mandala, mudra, etc.? Why can't you just talk? Oh dear, can we ever answer this?

[14:40]

I've never gone quite this far in the Dharma Sangha practice, what I'm talking about now. Maybe I feel this is where you're at now and this is what I should talk about. Okay, so let me give you an example of more of what I mean by you. You are the shape you take. We have out here in our Zendo pond a frog. More than one, probably. A what? A frog. More than one, perhaps. Yeah. And you can hear him or her in the morning sometimes. And you can hear him or her in the morning sometimes.

[16:07]

They're sweet guys. I like them. Frog sounds. Yeah, I mean, look, there's your... Basho, the famous poet, was enlightened. on frog sounds. First he had old, I guess he had frog jump in water sound. And then he added to make it a haiku, old pond. And then he added, to put it in a haiku, Alter Teich. This little poem was a big experience for me in college, actually. You know, Reischauer, the man who was, you know, ambassador to Japan, et cetera, was the teacher at college.

[17:20]

So Reischauer, he was the... Botschafter für Amerika in Japan und der war dann auch Lehrer im College. And he was giving a lecture and I was in this big lecture with a lot of people. Und er hat diesen Vortrag gehalten mit vielen Leuten und ich war einer von denen. And, you know, I was sort of like as usual, kind of like half there. Und wie immer war ich bloß nur halb dabei. Also halb abgetreten und... And he said, oh, there's this famous, most famous of all haiku. And he said, old pond, frog jump in, water sound. And suddenly it hit me, and there was kind of light appearing.

[18:22]

I was going, womp, womp, womp. It was great. And rush hour is saying, I could hear him distantly somewhere saying, saying, no, I don't know what this poem means. I don't even know why they even like it. I mean, what's this all about? A frog jumps in a pond. Who cares? You know, I'm saying, whoa, whoa. I had a fresh frosh feeling. And I was a freshman. Yeah, like that fresh frog, fresh man, you know.

[19:28]

So we have our new friendly frog out here. He's actually the cousin of Basho. In the morning, you may hear her. Now, are you the frog? Also, bist du der Frosch? If you have the definition of yourself or your experience of yourself is, I am the shapes I take. Wenn du die Erfahrung von dir hast, dass du... It's not about non-dualism and subject-object disappears and stuff like that. I'm a person and I'm separate yet, but I can have a freedom from dualism. You are the sound of the frog. Du bist das Geräusch des Frosches.

[20:37]

Das ist alles. That's the feeling. Das ist das Gefühl. When you get up, the frog gets up. Und wenn du aufstehst, steht der Frosch auf. And all the rustling robed sounds get up. There's not a you that's a brewing vat getting up. There's a field that consolidates in this location. Also, wenn du aufstehst, dann steht auch das Rascheln aller oben auf. Es ist nicht ein Braufass. It's a consolidating of? Of this location. Es ist ein Zusammenführen, ein Konsolidieren von diesem Ort. So just like a dream, yeah, might stay with us, might stay with you all day long? And you might say, you probably wouldn't say, the dream's not me. Though I love it when somebody says something to me quite simple and accurate. I love it when someone says to me something quite simple and very accurate.

[21:47]

Recently a woman said to me in a seminar, you know, when I wake up in the morning and I have a good dream, I feel that's me. But when I wake up in the morning and I have a bad dream, I say, that's not me. I wouldn't do that. But why do we think that way? This is the kind of study we have to notice in the details of our own thinking and acting. So just as the dream stays with us throughout the day, the frog sound stays with us. You don't stop being the frog when the frog stops. So if you are sitting and you happen to feel you're the frog,

[23:03]

If you want to make it easier for yourself to work up to this, you say, I'm also the frog. And if you want to make it easier for you to work on it, then you can say, I am also the frog. But you don't want to turn completely into a frog, then you'd have to be awakened by some damsel's kiss. No one's kissing me. But if you have that experience, let's call it a kind of insight or a shift in view. You could call it a small enlightenment experience, a realization experience. You know that now, you have a taste of that. But the whole context of your life, your thinking habits, the people you relate to, the people you love, they simply don't believe you're a frog.

[24:47]

So you lose the feeling. Maybe we have thousands actually of such insights. That just get paved over. And practice is to notice that kind of insight. or that observation from another worldview, and find a way to bring that into your meditation, into your mindfulness, into your daily life. So, yeah, that's what robes are all about.

[26:02]

That's what this old drama I have now... And that's what it's about with the little drum that I have. Or this stick. So this stick, and I've already told you so many times, has the iconography of no inside and no outside. The lotus embryo goes in my hand, your hand or this hand. The bud is here, the seed pod is here. And obviously there's something missing. The bloom. The bloom is you. The bloom, the iconography means that you're looking at it, my using it, it is the bloom. There's no inside and outside. We'll see. So practice, if I try to give you a structure of practice, to put what I'm talking about in some context, maybe the first step in practice is the recognition of, you know, asking yourself what kind of human being you are.

[27:40]

Which assumes already the possibility you have a choice about what kind of human being you are. And what kind of human being you are in the context of other human beings. And what kind of human being we all are together somehow. I call that the first step in practice. That kind of feeling. Now, there may be other first steps. Some buddy, some friend may bring you to the Zendo. But the step I'm describing is the first step that becomes a basis for the rest of your practice.

[28:48]

It's a kind of... It's a version of the Bodhisattva vow. The vow to... No, we don't want to use the word save. The vow to... actualize realization with all sentient beings. So if you examine really this question, what is a human being and what is the context of human beings, What's the context of human beings? The context of all of us together. What kind of human being are we within other human beings?

[29:52]

That concern carried to its, I think, ultimate conclusion, That concern, that interest, that condition carried to its ultimate form is I vow to actualize realization with every sentient, each sentient being. Now that doesn't mean you have to say, well, once I'm realized, then I'm gonna go out and actualize realization in everybody else.

[31:12]

Does not. Doesn't mean that. Nothing ever happened. It's more like the feeling as unrealized as I am if I have to think comparatively. with this person right in front of me with this person right in front of me I will actualize realization with this person failed again But Bodhisattvas don't give up.

[32:13]

Yeah, another chance to fail again. Dogen says life is one continuous mistake. Fail again. But you can look at it another way. Tried again. So that's the first step in practice. And that can become the basis of your whole practice. The second step is something like noticing the difference between Zazen mind and ordinary mind. Maybe the third step in practice is you start noticing the difference between your habitual worldview.

[33:15]

And the worldview that seems to be appearing, surfacing in Zazen and in the teaching And then maybe the fourth step in practice is something like you begin to see the teachings and insights that arise in your practice. Begin to embody this new worldview. I'm calling it the yogic worldview. Or this worldview based on enlightenment. Now the fifth step in practice is what I'm talking about now.

[34:23]

Is the meticulous meticulous? Finicky. Very careful in exact detail. Okay. The meticulous... bringing these insights and these teachings into your each act. These insights are insights because you've embodied them, you've tasted them. But they don't extend into all your acts and into all your world view and all your relationships. And if you're married, you'll discover that The hardest territory to bring the insights into is the spousal relationship.

[35:39]

So it's a very fruitful field of practice. Okay. So now I'm talking about this, what I'm calling fifth stage of practice, structure of practice. Now, if any of your knees are in your ears, you can move, please. And because I have a couple more things I should try to do, because we're not going to see each other for a while.

[36:39]

No, the cosmic breath of Virochana. So the cosmic breath of Vairochana. Vairochana is the Adi Buddha. Vairochana is the Adi Buddha. Adi Buddha means a primordial Buddha. That's how it's translated. Adi Buddha means the original Buddha, like the translation. Okay, now there's a shift from the historical Buddha to the Buddha as enlightenment itself. If Buddha is enlightenment itself, that potential for enlightenment has to be everywhere. In the frog sound. In the person you just met.

[37:44]

Or just meeting. So Buddha shifts with Mahayana from the historical Buddha to Buddha as space itself. Or everything all at once. The interpenetration of everything in its interdependence. Now this shouldn't be just a philosophy. It should be an experience. There's an experiential content to an Adi Buddha. Sometimes Samantabhadra is called the experiential, the Bodhisattva or Buddha, Samantabhadra is called the experiential content of the Adi Buddha.

[38:47]

Okay, so what am I saying here? I'm just trying to give you some of the Buddhist terminology. But this is experiential terminology. Das ist aber eine Erfahrungsterminologie, die man nicht ganz mit Sprache erreichen kann. So, if Buddhism is, if the Buddha is space itself, or everything in its interconnectedness, Realizing everything is in connectedness, interconnectedness is enlightenment.

[39:48]

Or we can just try to have a technical term, all at onceness. How do you experience all at onceness? I can make up that word, all at onceness. Now in this sense, an inner mandala is a yogic posture. Inneres mandala, eine yogische Haltung. What is the inner mandala you have at the moment you fall in love? Was ist das innere mandala, das man hat in dem Moment, wo man sich verliebt? What is the inner mandala you have when you recognize a kind of great ease in your body and in the world? Was ist das innere mandala, wenn man in seinem Körper eine große... Now that's what I'm calling this fifth stage of practice.

[40:56]

It exists in all the other stages. But now your practice is developed enough to really bring these insights into each perceptual moment. So now you understand, if space itself is the Buddha, then your breath is the breath of the Buddha. You're the sound of the frog. Now Chandrakirti says, a knot made by space can only be untied by space.

[42:01]

Chandrakirti says, a knot made by space Much of the teaching is contained in that little phrase of Chandrakirti's. At the center of every ceremony in yogic Japan, The primary ritual act is you gather a bunch of grass in your hand and you cut it. As G. Spencer Brown says, you draw a line and you've created the universe. You cut the grass. Du schneidest das Gras.

[43:07]

Du hast eine Linie gezogen. Man bindet das in einen Knoten. Und überall in Tempeln und in Schreinen sieht man dieses Gras zu einem Knoten zusammengefüllt. Und was macht man dann? Verbrannt man es. If you grow up with that as the central ritual act of your life, you're living in a different world view. I watched at the first Kalachakra ceremony in Europe, in Switzerland, I don't know, a lot of years ago. And His Holiness invited us back to watch them making the mandala. meticulously done with sand and jewels and stuff for some days

[44:17]

And it's the pattern for a visualization of several levels. And then when it's over, they just simply tip it and it's all sand. In such a world, the frog is us. This is our breath, the breath, but also the breath of space itself or the Buddha. So, you know, I can express this some other way to try to say a knot made by space. Yeah, we're all sitting here on this floor.

[45:43]

Is that really what we're doing? Actually, more scientifically, we're all falling through space. We're all falling together right now through space. It's just that we're all falling at the same speed and the floor is falling at the same speed. Yes, you can feel you're on the floor, but you can also feel everything's falling at the same speed. Okay. Last part. Going back to focus and sight. I'm not going to use locus anymore because, you know, that's a toilet around here. And matrix.

[46:47]

Matrix of bodily knowing. Now I'm trying to again create some space here. an accessible territory of practice. Now by focus and sight and matrix, I mean three territories of practice. And it corresponds rather closely to the Lankavatara, to the sutra, the syllable body, the name body, and the sentence body.

[47:54]

It simply says, know them all at once. That's not being stuck in discursive thinking in a think tank. Das heißt, nicht in diskursiven Dingen in einem think tank zu stecken. That's more like I'm noticing your syllables, baby. Das ist mehr so wie ich bemerke deine Silben, baby. I can hear you humming. Ich höre dein Summen. Oh yeah, zoom again. So we have Proust's focus on the book and the locus or site of the room. We have Proust's focus on the book and we have the place, the place, the room, the room.

[49:05]

And we have Sophia's bodily knowing of the apartment, but not a mental knowing. We can all understand those. Something like our own experience. As Judith pointed out yesterday. I'm very sorry I didn't hear the rest of your questions, but Just move in. Then we won't have a problem. But ask the people who move in here. It doesn't get any better. Excuse me? Ask the people who live here. It doesn't get any better. It's the same old stuff. Same old, same old. Okay. So the focus, now I'm going to speak about these three in yogic terms.

[50:11]

The locus, the focus rather, is like one-pointedness. Now one-pointedness is again one of those terms you have to find really what it means. And it's an experience that your mind stays wherever you put it. It's not an experience of concentration. It's an experience that your mind just stays where it's put. No effort. And things, comparisons, self, everything's forgotten. Time kind of disappears. Okay, so if you're really deeply engaged in a book, you disappear.

[51:21]

It's just, you know, there's a taste of some kind of ecstasy. Now in a yogic practice, you don't need the book. Wherever your mind rests is blissful. Okay, now what do I mean by the sight or the unmentionable word? Also, was verstehe ich unter Platz, Ort oder diesem unerwähnbaren Wort? I mean something close to what Heidegger speaks about, the dwelling, the gathering in. Etwas dem sehr nahe, was Heidegger unter, kennt ihr das Wort, wie er das nennt, verweilt?

[52:28]

Gathering in? Dwelling. But he has probably German terms. Oh, yeah, but I'm sorry, I can't help you. I neither. And the word dharma means what holds, what stays. So by the sight... of your life, of the dharmic site, by dharmic site, I don't mean just the present that you're thinking in, what you're going to do next, etc. I mean that ability to be in this situation and let it gather. To know that space in which it just gathers. Folds into you and you release it.

[53:31]

Now, what pace is that? That's not a discursive thinking pace. That's another kind of pace. In that pace, you can also think discursively. In that space, you can also think discursively. It's a little bit like you can chant and think about something else while you're chanting. But if you get too involved in what you're thinking about, then you lose your chanting. And you lose the energy of the chanting. So you can keep the sense of the cushion of the senses. In a big storm, you know, you can just kind of let the whole storm take over your senses.

[54:49]

You can kind of just lay back in your senses and let the storm But if you really feel that every moment like that, every moment is just a gathering into the cushion of the senses. Okay, and the fourth, I mean the third is this bodily knowing. Dogen speaks about the intimacy between teacher and disciple is the intimacy of a bodily knowing as if the skin were off.

[55:52]

as if the skin were off. And Dogen has terms like the skin being off. And they usually translate it like it means you're not thinking or something. But that's okay, but it actually means something like you really feel like your skin is off and there's just a skinless body in the world. Das ist schon okay so, aber das fühlt sich wirklich an, als sei ein hautloser Körper in der Welt. And this is also the territory of the field of mind when you step, that backward step out of the contents of mind. Und das ist auch dieses Geistesfeld, das man betritt, wenn man I think this is also the territory that systemic psychotherapists, constellation sculpture work, so-called, has discovered.

[57:11]

And it's a place that the Japanese theater, the Noh theater in particular, has discovered. As I said the other day, you step back on the stage to the larger part of the stage. And you're in the stage, the space of bodily knowing where time disappears. And you step forward to the smaller part of the stage and you're in the foreground mind of the present of the audience. You just take a step back and your body moves what I would call into, using our new term, lebet space.

[58:13]

Stepping out of the contents of mind, you step into a space some fractions of a second before consciousness occurs. The yogic skill is to know how to stay there. That's also, you know, sometimes I think what Arnie Mandel discovered, how he could relate to people in a coma, something like that too. This other kind of intimacy. And we have a famous phrase which tries to reach into this in a koan. Heaven and earth and I share the same root.

[59:47]

Myriad things and I share the same body. And here's what I tried to suggest the other day with the verticality of the tassel. And such a simple thing they're trying to point out that at each moment there's a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension. In the horizontal dimension is like the site in which the world gathers into one body. where the site where everything gathers into one body and the vertical dimension the dimension in which words jump out of sentences where heaven and earth and I share the same root

[60:54]

is to step back into this space of bodily knowing. Into, let's say, the field of mind. where time and space is stretched out in us beyond consciousness. Okay, thank you very much. God bless you.

[62:02]

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