Dieter and I, the Eno and I asked, I guess they were asked, Frank and Beate, did you do that? About chanting? Yeah, so we asked Frank and Beate to Frank's here, Frank, and if Frank's not here, it would be Beate, to see if they can set a tone for the chanting. Yeah, we need some way to sort of see if we can all come together more quickly, so I thought... If we have somebody we listen to. And you can't listen to me because I'm all over the place.

[01:01]

I thought we should get together a little faster. That means we need someone we can listen to. And you can't listen to me because I'm in every tone. In the early days of Zen Center, people would kind of say, maybe you don't chant. Or they'd say, can you stay way underneath everyone else? But I love to chant, so if everybody else gets going right, then I can join in. Well, we've got past the third day. I'm not counting, but I think this is the fourth day. And it's a coast all the way. A post?

[02:17]

That's when you turn the engine off and you just let your car roll. You'll just sail into Sunday's harbor. Well, probably an exaggeration. But there's some truth to it. Usually it takes us three of something to get used to something. And then somehow we accept the situation more and it actually gets a little easier. But don't think it's going to get easier because that might cause a problem.

[03:22]

Yeah, and I want to talk about something that's not a subject at all. But something that you can't find in books and so forth. But I think we may, we can find in Zazen and Sashin and particularly long sitting. Mm-hmm. And that's a word that's hard to translate into German, which is pace. And pace. Yeah, maybe we just use pace, because rhythm, I think you think Germans say something like rhythm, don't you?

[04:31]

No? What do you say? Schritttempo. Schritttempo. Schritttempo. Yeah, I mean, it's like in English at least, I don't know, you know, English at least, like music has a certain, usually a rhythm, a particular rhythm. But a board, a flat board doesn't have a rhythm. But in English a flat board could give you a certain pace. Like you walk out in a wide room and you feel one kind of pace. Zum Beispiel, wenn man in einen weiten Raum hineingeht, dann fühlt man ein bestimmtes pace.

[05:36]

You walk down a narrow hall and you feel another kind of pace. Oder man geht in einen engen Gang und fühlt einen anderen pace. It's a rhythm, but it's... Anyway, you understand the problem. But maybe we could call it a pulse. Sometimes I say pace pulse is like one word. And pulse is an interesting word. Because in its roots, its Greek roots, it means to push toward. Or to draw near. And it's true that when you feel the rhythm of music, it draws you into the music.

[06:45]

When you feel the pace of another person, you're drawn nearer them. So I'm speaking about pace pulse as a drawing near. One of the things that remains a mystery for me, a recent mystery, is... ...is why from the time a baby, in this case Sophia, was as teeny as you can be... ...very early anyway, she wanted the name for things. As you went to my lectures when she was that size, remember my talking about.

[08:14]

She'd see something like the light, you know. We could tell she was looking at it. And she'd go, huh? I don't know where she got that, but that's what she said, huh? And we'd say, it's a light. She'd say, huh? It's a light. Huh? And it usually was about, I mean, it could be 20 times she'd say, huh? Till suddenly we got tired of it, I guess. That was like the first time. The first few times of identifying the thingness of something. Now, then she'd come back to it a couple of days later, and then maybe six times she'd go, huh? we'd say, and she'd say, huh?

[09:35]

Then she'd be satisfied. And these words seemed to remain somewhere and then start popping out when she had the motor skills to say them. Okay, now, why is this a mystery to me? Or to anyone? Why isn't the thingness of just seeing the light sufficient? Why did she... It seems like genetically, instinctively, want us to name it.

[10:40]

We need a lot of sushins and yogic skill to start peeling the names off things when we're adults. Getting the names off things is an important yogic skill. But she wanted the names on things. Long before she knew anything, she was just barely born. Now, but did she want the names on things or did she want the mutual acknowledgement of thingness? Because this is a face-to-face activity.

[11:44]

Okay, it's... So, if we... take it out of the category of names, she seemed to at least want the thingness that she noticed to be acknowledged by me or to be acknowledged by her mother. This acknowledgement took the form of naming it. Now that's a very basic vow. So if we take our basic vow to be, fundamental vow to be, to stay alive, maybe the next most important vow is that things exist.

[13:09]

That there's a thingness that can be named. Maybe initially it's just a shared recognition. But it soon turns into a vow that things exist, they're nouns, they're out there. Sounds so good. In German.

[14:16]

Okay, let's go back to Pace Pulse. Why am I talking about Pace Pulse? What do I mean? Yeah, I mentioned to the head server, this Sashin, to notice when the room has completed itself in some way. or settled. And the word situation means actually to settle. The roots are actually the same as the German word heim, home.

[15:21]

So each situation has a kind of... It settles, it has a completeness. And the serving of the food has a certain pace. It's set up like that. It's set up, it's designed that way. So ist es gedacht. Yeah. And, you know, in the altar we're trying to establish a kind of vividness on the altar.

[16:26]

There's a square white vase here to go with the rounded black Buddha. There's a silver vase here to go with the gold Buddha. And the shape of the vase has some echo of the stand of the Buddha. This altar over there has no face at all. The altar over there has no place at all. I found two Buddhas in Zurich but I can't afford them. But it takes time, and these altars are not complete yet.

[17:36]

But they should have a vividness. And vividness is a kind of pace, pulse. Like the emphasis in music on every third beat or something. The average person walks about 120 steps a minute. If you go to 130, it feels quick. If you go to 108, it feels like an amble. An amble means to walk, really. Yeah, like a slender, yeah. Germans amble a lot in the forest around here.

[18:43]

Where? In the forest around here. You see elderly couples. They always seem to be elderly. I feel like I fit right in. But I don't know if you ever noticed, German and English and American and Japanese people, the ones I've noticed, all amble differently. They all walk in the forest differently. So everything we're doing here, everything has a certain pace pulse. The service does. We try to make the service really clear so you can feel that.

[19:45]

Now, this Sunday in the afternoon, I think around 4 o'clock, Dieter and Akash are going to be ordained. We have to shave their heads. Doesn't look like there's too much to do. Usually it's a big job, you know. And they're going to receive the bowls, the eating bowls. And a raksu and a koromo and okesa. This is a koromo. This is the okesa. You know the orioke, the bowls, eating bowls. And when we take the ceremony, when we do the ceremony, they're going to vow

[20:46]

to wear the koromo in the traditional way, to use it in the traditional way. To use the bowls in the traditional way. I want Kobenchino Roshi, who unfortunately drowned, some weeks ago and drowned to death with his daughter in Switzerland. Said once to me that the meaning of the raksu is the wearing of the raksu. The meaning of the raxus is the use of the raxus. And this means something like pace, pulse.

[22:03]

These robes, they even have the pace of the loom in it. They're just clothed as it comes off the loom. They don't cut it. I mean, they do cut it, but still, they try to leave the lengths in the loom widths. And for young monks, you have robes that if you put your arms down, they clean the floor. So it means you have to keep your arms up like this all the time.

[23:09]

I used to walk sometimes with my arms down and hold my sleeves up a little bit. And somebody would go by me and they'd say, only old monks are allowed to do that. And you see the older monks, they walk along and they have shorter sleeves too, they walk along. But I'm old, I'm old. Compared to most of the other monks, I was old. Okay, so a robe like this has a certain pace.

[24:09]

There's a pace designed into it. And the way you put on your okesa. You simply can't put it on. You can get pretty fast, but you can't put it on real fast. And if you put it on too fast, the folds don't work. Or take it off too fast. So it's meant to say, You're taking a vow to live at the pace of the robes. This is something strange. But you wouldn't know it until you do it. As I think many of you know anyway when I first got ordained. It was in California in the 60s.

[25:27]

And nobody had shaved heads. Men did not wear black dresses. And wooden shoes with white straps. Yeah, particularly in cowboy country south of San Francisco. But Suzuki Roshi said to me, I want you to wear these robes for one year everywhere. You should have seen me going into a drugstore in Watsonville, the artichoke capital of the world. It's sort of like wooden high shoes and you know, I'm in drag without a wig.

[26:36]

So I learned the pace of the robes. Yeah, you're trying to get out of a Volkswagen with your sleeves? safety belted to your lap. So there's a certain pace. We're getting these two guys to vow to a certain pace. They're both They both can be slow, but they also can be pretty quick sometimes, too.

[27:52]

And the orioke balls, the elegant body of the orioke balls. You've discovered you can't go too fast with the Orioki bowls. It takes a while to do it. It brings a certain pace to the meal. So that... By the time you actually get the gruel in the bowl, it tastes good. I liked last night's Judita's pineapple surprise. I think we're going to offer it at Mürvenpick. Judita's pineapple surprise. People will buy it.

[29:06]

They say, what's Judita's pineapple surprise? They'll be right next to Toast Hawaii. We don't have Toast Hawaii in the United States. So central to this practice is this sense of pace. I told you yesterday that the moments are considered to be one or two milliseconds long. Moments of awareness. Why do that? Why say that?

[30:11]

Because we tend to think of awareness as something continuous. Like we look away and it would all still be there. But if you're aware that this awareness is actually tiny little discontinuous moments, that's a kind of pace, too. And you can kind of... Be aware that you can change the pace pulse. I sometimes, you know, I said the other day you could take this, this, this. That's useful.

[31:16]

But I find I use sometimes every, each thing complete. I try to bring my attention to each thing complete. Ich versuche, meine Aufmerksamkeit zu jedem Ding als vollständig zu bringen. So I, like Oyokis, each thing, I just, each thing complete. Now, where does such a thing come from? Why, what does a phrase like that do? Well, it's actually rooted in the idea that everything is just appearance. It's not real. It appears only.

[32:23]

But the appearance can have a completion. So just a phrase like each thing complete enters you into the Majamaka world of Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti and others. Each thing complete is a kind, is a pace. You'll find, if you say it, that each, the situate pace, situate like situation pace, situation pulse, You'll find, if you say each thing complete, that each situation has a pulse, a home pulse, that things come home. The world draws near. Die Welt rückt nahe.

[33:43]

Wir können nicht sagen, was der Geist ist. Aber wir können dem Geist nahe kommen. Wir können nicht wirklich sagen, was lebendig sein ist. Aber wir können unserem lebendig sein nahe kommen. The wearing of the robe is the meaning of the robe. The drawing near aliveness is aliveness. No, and I often say over and over again, to bring attentional awareness to your breath. Yeah, it's not just that you're bringing mind to the breath.

[34:47]

But you're bringing mind to the pace pulse of the breath. When we sit with the body, as Dogen says, we are sitting in the heartbeat, in the breath beat. And when Dogen says sit with the mind, We're sitting with a mind beat. What would that be? There's a certain kind of succession beat to the mind, too. So when you bring, when you, when attentional awareness is married to the breath.

[35:55]

That's a kind of lovemaking. Awareness is married to the breath. Awareness begins to take on the pulse pace of breath, of breathing. As speaking now, my speaking and Christian speaking, has the pace, pulse of the breath. So we find the pace pulse of each situation. Now, the breath is one I've... Yeah, the big key to this practice is the breath. But I want to finish with just another way of looking at these things.

[37:19]

Going back to Sophia. She wanted to have a mutual acknowledgement of thingness. Now that thingness turns into realness. I want to give her, as a Buddhist parent, I want to give her a sense that it's a provisional realness. That's actually only an appearance. Or a mutual acknowledgement. It has... What do we say... What's a simile for a Dharma?

[38:23]

The moon reflected in the water. The circle of a whirling firebrand. The... In the funeral ceremony I did for Philip Weylander, when you do, you make, my daughter made a beautiful, Sally made a beautiful Tibetan-style flame on paper. In the ceremony, I take the flame and I stand in front of the body or the ashes. And I make a big circle.

[39:23]

Clockwise three times and counterclockwise three times. And the one meaning is that we take responsibility for cremating the body, not the funeral home. We the friend. In Buddhism, you don't turn a body, your friend, over to a funeral home. You take care of it. You wash the body. You cremated about, you know, I'd like to be burned out here and back, but I don't know if the local authorities and farmers would like it. But as much as the law allows, and stretching the law a bit, we take care of the body ourselves.

[40:28]

But it also means the circle is an illusion. It looks like a circle, but where is the essence of the circle? So that's what a Dharma is. All right, so I took a discipline of some many years ago. of never saying anything existed. This is Madhyamaka teaching. So I decided, okay, I will never say anything exists. Even to myself, talking to myself, thinking, I will not say, these stairs exist, this wall exists.

[41:48]

Really, you have a lot of trouble with the grammar. It turns language inside out. And you provisionally, you know, you say things exist for the sake of a conversation, but your feeling is they don't exist. Now is this about whether things really exist or not? Is this about fine philosophical points of just how you say it? It can be, and that can be interesting.

[42:49]

But it's really about the mantric practice of it. If for five years you practice saying in yourself, feeling, changing your language to never say something exists, It's a Madhyamaka mantra as powerful as joining awareness and breath. Language becomes a light veil you see through. This language which joins us in a mutual agreement about how things exist becomes a mutual agreement about how things don't exist. or how they exist like the circle of a firebrand.

[43:57]

And the Sangha is those who have agreed, have a mutual agreement about how things exist and don't exist. And that's what Dieter and Akash will be joining the Sangha in this formal sense this Sunday. Taking on the bodily pace of this teaching, the use of this teaching. And this vow that things exist which language asks of us. which I think in the end isn't really about language,

[45:20]

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