Well, before I speak about the perfections which go beyond, as they're called, I would appreciate having some discussion. Yeah, and also, since this is our last afternoon, last period of time together, if you can give me any sense of what aspects of what we talked about have been useful and so forth. That helps me too. Because Angela whispered to me earlier that maybe I could come back next year. So I need some reinforcement. Okay, what else?

[01:13]

What should we talk about? The translator also can say something. Most of what you said this morning was very clear and understandable for me. I got a little bit confused, and I'm always confused about these terms of coming to the phenomena or to the being. I don't know what this is.

[02:26]

There's no description. There's no word. It's a kind of... I don't know. But I think it's about phenomenon or... Do you understand what I mean? You, you're German, Deutsch. Well, sometimes I find it very clear that I always become unclear about what it means to get to the phenomena or to get to the being. Because as you experience it, the consciousness stops looking at itself. I can't describe it. I know them, but I can't describe them in words. In other words, if you were going to talk about this, you wouldn't bring in phenomena as much as I did.

[03:30]

Perhaps because this is connected with some pre-telegram, some paradigm. And you would say that non-dual is something like, how do you talk about that? What's that got to do with anything? That's exactly right. If you think you understand non-duality, you don't. Or it's, you know, close to that. If you all said, ah, yeah, non-dual, of course, groovy. I mean... Wenn ihr alle sagen würdet, ja klar, nicht zu alt, das ist cool.

[04:34]

Cool, I didn't say that. Ja, Gregory Bateson, when he taught in America, his complaint was, als Gregory Bateson in Amerika gelehrt hat, da war seine Beschwerde, that the American students agreed to easily. Oh, yeah, yeah, thanks, I understand that. Like, like, like. And he knows they don't understand, but if they don't know they don't understand, how can you do any teaching? Okay, someone else? I haven't forgotten. Yeah, maybe then I say something.

[05:34]

Yeah. Since you asked what has been useful, for me it has been very useful to talk about these four foundational teachings of impermanence, interdependence, and so on. Constructs. Yeah, everything is a construct and everything is mind, so projection of mind. And it has been helpful insofar as that I think or feel that taking, using that as a view that precedes perception really also clears my psychological space quite a bit. So, I mean, I'm not a psychotherapist, but these views clearly help me within my psychological space and maybe will help as an attitude that one can bring into encountering another person. Are you able to translate that? I do want to. I'm finished.

[06:35]

But there's one thing to add. Well, but she hasn't translated it. We just need a good, we need a really powerful name for that list. Okay. Oh, yeah, give me the name. What do you want to call it? Like the fourfold, manifold, big-time powers. They all have these great names for these lists. Really? Oh, yeah. Okay. What I said is that these four fundamental teachings of Buddhism have helped me a lot, that interdependence, that everything is a construct, that everything is a projection of the spirit. And that I realize that to put them in front of my perception, to allow them to go ahead of my perception as a view that helps me to clarify my psychological space and that in the encounter with others Good, thanks.

[07:50]

I found it very helpful this whole week to clarify things that were actually self-evident to me. I always thought I was working with awareness, I called it, with awareness and knew what it was. So I found this entire weekend very helpful and so far as that it helped me to clarify things that I thought were clear before, but now I'm actually clear about. I used to think that I know what awareness are. Yeah, Bewusstheit, can I say consciousness or Bewusstheit? Yes, consciousness. I used to think I know what it was. Is this now an activity or is it a passivity, an attitude?

[09:25]

Is it a quality of consciousness? There are more things that I may not necessarily have to know, but that have arisen as questions for me. So I had moments when I thought, oh yeah, that's very clear for me now. I got that and I can take it home. And then again, it all confused me again and I wasn't so sure anymore. And now I'm more in a mode of, well, having questions around these things. Like, for example, when I say awareness, is that an attitude? Is that an activity? Is that a state? So I'm within just holding a question. Yeah, good. That's good. I really appreciate this because it gets more and more differentiated. Yes, it is both pleasant and unpleasant in a certain sense, when there is such a consciousness that is suddenly dissolved again.

[10:46]

And that is comfortable as well as uncomfortable, and so far there is a kind of security that then again disperses again. I would like to add something that has been bothering me for some time now, and the word has fallen again yesterday, the social body. I'd like to add something that I've been dealing with for quite a while and the cue is the word the social body. I'm not so sure what in its entirety you mean by saying social body. But in psychotherapy I'd say we probably work with refining what I call the social habit energies. Oh yes, and to perceive those.

[12:00]

Yes, and to perceive those and maybe to also change them. So what I'm interested in is from the point of Buddhism, how important is the social body and the development of the social body? Sometimes when you speak about it, there is this tiny little implicit kind of touch, as if it's supposed to disappear. Yes, sort of like the social body.

[13:16]

How is the interaction, or how does Roshi see the interaction and the meaning of the development of the social body, the knowledge of the social body, and how important is it to us? which I try to build up through meditation. So a bit of distance to the social body. So what do you think about the interdependent relationship between the social body and the development and perception of the social body and what I'm trying to cultivate in meditation, which is to a certain extent also a kind of distance to the social body? So everything is interdependent and interdependent.

[14:20]

And interpenetrating. And interpenetrating, yeah. Can you think of an easier question? I'm waiting for this answer. Oh, really? Oh, dear. Okay. But then we'll take the rest of the seminar. So let me put it off for a moment, a little bit, and also when I do speak about it, please remind me of any aspects that I should speak about.

[15:27]

And... Let me say to the two of you I do sessions with quite often. One reason I do something like this is not only just because Norbert and Angela ask me to, and I can't refuse. Difficult. But also because, you know, I won't do Saschins with most of you and some of you, and so I have to do something else, you know. But am I correct that you two feel this is a good addition to also practicing in sashins and so forth? Someone else? Yeah. The eightfold path begins with the right view, but at the same time the right view can also be the result of an examination or a process.

[16:43]

So it's beginning and end at the same time. So on the Eightfold Path, which begins with right views, but on the other hand, right views also is the result of a process, so it's the beginning and the end point. Yeah, in a way, yeah. So a kind of feeling as if I'm grabbing into something empty, Give me a fixed point and I'll... Leverage. Leverage. Did you read my piece? Yes. The truth of it is the fixed point. So the second question is, if everything is changing, what about the Four Noble Truths? The only thing that doesn't change is the statement that everything changes.

[18:06]

And the statement that everything changes has four aspects called Four Noble Truths. Okay. So the other thing that interests me is the difference between reality and truth. And in Germany it is clearly that what works has an effect and what is true is what is true. That is what I believe, for example, what is true. So the German word for reality, Wirklichkeit, it has the part, something that has effect. So that which is Wirklich has effect. Works. Works. And, yeah, but truth, yeah. And is there a distinction in Buddhism? Well, one has to avoid the use of reality in Buddhism as a word.

[19:28]

Because the dictionary definition and the most common definition is that which is necessary and permanent and not contingent. Everything is contingent, so you can't use the word reality strictly speaking in English. I'm just asking about it. We can say contingent in German, but it's a little... Yeah. Or interdependent you can say. Beinhalten. Say contingent beinhalten. But you can say actuality all right in English. And it's instead of reality, but it doesn't quite have the feeling for people, but actuality is more accurate.

[20:42]

You can just say the world as it is. But you have two words in German, one that's more like reality and one that's more like actuality, I think. So I can't speak to the German words, but you... So if you ask me in some way that doesn't depend on my responding to the words, what they mean in German, I don't try. But reality and truth, you could say.

[21:48]

Oh, and truth. Well, not reality and truth. Well, if I say actuality and truth, actuality implies the world as activity. So that's a way you can talk about the world. Is it true or not? Well, there's no absolute truth in Buddhism. There's trusting. But there's a lot of... intellectual and philosophical effort in Buddhism, particularly starting with Dignāga, is about what is a valid cognition.

[22:51]

Yeah. And what statements can you make, you know, that they're valid and so forth? Okay, I think that's enough. Too hard to go into that, deeper than that. Could one say... Truth is more conventional aspect, as to declare something as true would be, we need something like a peer group who come together, have the same experience, and then say... You can all say it's true, sure. ...say it's true, more conventional, and reality would be more existential. In Buddhism you simply cannot use the word in reality. Okay, so... Period. I mean, you can say it, but you have to say, well, we know it doesn't really mean real. Okay, so let me speak about the

[24:10]

a little bit, at least about what I refer to as the social body. It comes up most vividly for me, is I have to decide whether a person is a friend or a practitioner. You know, basically I cannot have a practice relationship with a friend. And the few, there are, I mean, there are I do have, there are people that I practice with that I would call friends. But they are quite, like Philip Whelan was an old friend of mine and a poet, and I knew him years before he started practicing with me.

[25:45]

Wie zum Beispiel Luke Whelan, den ich schon kenne, lange bevor er angefangen hat zu praktizieren. Und der war ein alter Freund und ein Dichter. Und das ist aber eins von ganz wenigen Beispielen. Er war auch in der Lage, unsere Beziehung als Freundschaft sozusagen auf das Regal hinten abzustellen, wenn wir in einer Praxisbeziehung standen. And so when I say social body, I also mean just the things you, you know, people want reassurance, they want hellos, and so forth like that. And in practice you don't do that. I mean, you do it, but you're sort of like, okay, but not real. At some point I began to, I would say, be too close to Siddhartha Kurukshetra.

[26:48]

I mean, I attended all his lectures that I possibly could. Went to Zazen every day. And came back from Berkeley, got on a bicycle and raced over to go to afternoon Zazen every day because I worked at the university. And was thoroughly engaged in the teaching. And at some point Sukhirashi didn't want us to get too close. So he simply stopped looking at me. I mean, say that I took one of you and I went to seminars with you, I did things with you, but every time you looked my way, I looked your way.

[28:16]

And if you bowed to me, you know, you came in, you bowed to me, I bowed, but I didn't really look at you. You might decide I didn't like you. I mean, that would be an obvious conclusion. But he started doing this, you know, I think around the second year I've been practicing with him. And that went on for two or three months. And I thought, what's his problem? You know, it's like, well, okay, I don't care what you do.

[29:17]

You're my teacher. I'm going to study with you. I haven't found anything better. You're stuck with me. And I trusted him completely. If he didn't like me, that's fine. My experience with him was way beyond whether he liked me or didn't like me. And every day we finished dazen, we would go out and we'd go through his office. And he would stand and bow to each person. I would come through and he sort of bowed to me, but he actually just sort of brushed me off. And I don't know, after about three months I thought, this is going to last a year. And really just about exactly a year he suddenly bowed to me and smiled.

[30:30]

A Zen teacher will take some way, if the student is strong enough, to get them out of any social interaction with the teacher. So that's partly social body. And it also has, using the word body, is, you know, one of the reasons I come in usually at the end of, very end of your sitting, is I don't want to be part of the body that's generated by sitting. I find very clearly, if I come in late or near the end, then I can feel you and know what to talk about. Because if I'm just sitting with you, there's too much subject-object merging, and I can't take a position from which I can talk with you.

[32:05]

So this is partly relating to what you said earlier. which is that you first notice that you notice the subject-object distinction. Maybe, I mean, I can remember my first experience of it was I felt like I was behind a glass wall. I remember the first time I felt like I was behind a glass wall. And I couldn't really feel the connection with things. It was like I was separated by a glass wall. And if it's there, what can you do about it?

[33:07]

You can't get around it, you know, it's just there. But I didn't even see it. You can't see it because it's glass. But I didn't even feel it's there until after I've been practicing for some time. The dualism means, in that sense, just not feeling connected. So in a way I pressed my nose against the glass wall and waited. Yeah, and I just thought, it's going to go away. I intended to go away. And after a while it went away. So that's making progress toward non-dualism. So in a simple sense, it means, do you feel connected or disconnected?

[34:21]

Now, as you go on in practice, and you notice that you have a subject-object distinction, you feel, oh, I'm here and he's there. then you at some point realize that's a social construct. So that's the next step, is you notice it's a social construct. And then you, in various ways, you begin to drop the subject object. It lessens it first. You can tell when it's strongly there and when it's less there. And you feel the mind, the kind of mind or presence, when it's less there. So you kind of move in that direction. And the direction is also the realization of it. Because everything's an activity.

[35:41]

So there's no absolute point, non-dual, dual. There's a direction toward non-duality or a direction toward duality. And when your basic mind and feeling is toward non-duality, toward less subject-object distinction, the world begins to relate to you and phenomena begins to speak to you in a way that's... implies little or no subject-object distinction. And I have tried to speak about this often. I used to use it as an entry, a beginning of many lectures because it made people stop and think. I would say that Stefan is sitting there and I'm sitting here and there's a feeling that space separates us.

[37:03]

And we think that's a fact of reality. Yeah, but actually space also connects us. You know, the moon or... cycles of relationship to the moon, men and women both have, and so forth. There's all these invisible connections. And they can test people who sit zazen together and within a few minutes all their metabolisms are in sync. So the emphasis on the hara is all about a hara mind, a non-dual mind. If you relate to people in the world through your hara, it's much more non-dual.

[38:25]

And the hara is... it loosens you from consciousness. So, a phrase I give you, based on this way of looking, is I give you in consciousness a phrase already connected. And if you repeat that enough and inscribe it in awareness, then what consciousness can't perceive, consciousness can only perceive difference. So it can perceive the difference, but it can't perceive the connectedness. So if you practice with a phrase like conscious, like already connected, you'll begin to see that your body and mind are acting with people as if you're already connected.

[39:48]

And that changes the social dimension of space. I mean, you don't feel like... I mean, you do. You say, hello, and how are you? I haven't seen you for a while. But you don't feel that way. You feel, woo, connected right away. And again, in our culture, one of the borders in our culture is an erotic border. And you have to be careful that this isn't read as some kind of erotic invasion. Or too much and undeserved intimacy or something like that. Unearned intimacy. So just as there's, let's call it a sangha body here, and the sangha body develops to the degree to which the social body kind of sinks out of sight.

[41:33]

Okay. But that does not mean we should not mature the social body. You have to mature yourself, your sense of self, self definition and your social body. It would be a very big mistake if as a teacher I let my students not also develop their self and their social body. But you don't identify with your social body or yourself as fully who you are. It carries your personal history and meaning, but it's not the entirety of what and who you are.

[42:49]

Nor is your karma body the whole of who you are, nor is your dharma body the whole of who you are. And you can't, as soon as you say it's even the dharma body or buddha body, it's already wrong. Any name is wrong. Some names are more wrong than others. It's part of the reason in a monastery you're supposed to rotate the positions of guest manager, a director, tenzo, and head of the zendo.

[43:52]

If you only know the head of the zendo, no one will acknowledge you as a teacher. You also have to be able to run the office, run the kitchen, and run the guest program. That's also the reason why in a monastery the position of the guest manager and the head of the sendo and the kitchen manager, that they all rotate. And if you only know how to take the leadership in the sendo, then no one will accept you as an honor. You also have to know how to welcome the guests, for example. So I think we should have a break. Let's listen to the bell a minute. Just one bell, not...

[44:34]

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