We have an expression in English to hammer your point home. And I don't have to do that today. Quite a nice chorus. And you know, I did that little ceremony this morning, or we did that little ceremony for Matthieu and Matthias. And also to experiment, you know, just together, making up a ceremony. What is this about? Why do it? Was it pleasant for them, Matthieu and Matthias?

[01:02]

And was it, did it give us a kind of different feeling and respect for this extraordinary staircase? Will we use it a little differently? Of course in Japan, you know, again... I talk with you about the invisible architecture. And in Japan, a house, a room, the same room is a living room, a bedroom, a dining room. So it's a container in a sense for three or more different rooms. And it's the way you use it that transforms it.

[02:29]

So Japan would, just because the use of it is its architecture, Creating a transition like that stairway creates a transition between floors and between how it was used and how it will be used. And it would be important to feel it as a transitional space and transition ourselves in it. And by the way, if the chorus of hammers means I should speak more loudly, please let me know.

[03:34]

Although our by necessity and our practical first priority, completing the payment for this compound of buildings, Hotzenhaus, Hotzenholz, next year is our first priority. But it's wonderful that a number of Dharma Sangha members have thought, yeah, but we ought to start using the buildings right away too. And so contributed to turning this into a temporary zendo.

[04:52]

And putting those stairs in the building and eventually building the bathrooms. And changing this northern shinerei room into a future joinery zendo. part of this instrument almost like a musical instrument of practice Now the day before yesterday I spoke about Buddhist practice from the very beginning from the time of the historical Buddha and his disciples

[06:12]

being a cenobitic tradition, a communal monastic tradition. And we acknowledge that every morning when we chant the lineage. There's a Zen saying, don't forget the sweating horses of the past. Which means all the generations of effort that went into creating our teaching and our practices. But even though the main tradition and the passing of the teaching is a communal monastic tradition, although the passing of the teaching From the beginning it's been primarily a communal, most definitively a communal monastic practice.

[07:43]

There's also a strong hermit tradition within Zen, within Buddhist practice. So it's a mixture of practicing with others and practicing alone. And most of us, because we're laypersons, are practicing alone most of the time. So that a lay practitioner A lay adept practice is going to bring in practicing alone in a new way. And in fact, we're always alone. And practice is fundamentally always alone.

[09:05]

And one of the experiences we can have in practicing with others is how absolutely alone we are in this life. You will live this life and you will die from this life. Now, Bill Porter, Red Pine, he translates under Red Pine and writes under Bill Porter. He and lots of people I know know him and I keep thinking I've met him, but I'm pretty sure I haven't met him. He's written, many of you may be familiar, must be familiar with his books. He's written one, it's The Road to Heaven, Interviews with Chinese Hermits.

[10:16]

And there's a wonderful poet named Stonehouse. A Chinese hermit poet who he's translated the Zen works of Stonehouse. Mr. Steinhaus. Herr Steinhaus. That would be a good German name, wouldn't it? Yes. Is there such a name? Steinhaus? I don't know. I'm ready. That'll be my German name. Yeah. Okay. And he did a brilliant translation. He translated from Sanskrit and Chinese. And he did brilliant commentaries and translations of the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra.

[11:22]

And he wrote a book, the... And he wrote a book about the Zen teaching of Bodhidharma. He was a monk for a couple of years. But then he married a Chinese woman and stopped being a monk. In Japan he could have stayed a monk, but not in China. But he said, you know, he was hanging out with a guy named Ching Wei. Who was head of four monasteries. And when Bill Porter was with him, Ching Wei had to start a series of ceremonies that are 1,500 years old from Emperor Wu.

[12:34]

And Cheng Wei is getting old. And is diabetic. He is now or he was? He was diabetic. And when he got up to leave, he said to Bill Porter. He was leaning on his cane and leaning on his attendant. And he said to Bill, how am I ever going to get through all these ceremonies? How am I going to do it? And Bill Porter said, that's why I stopped being a monk. But of course China and Japan have accretions.

[13:40]

Slow accumulations. Is it accreditations? No, it's accretions. Slow accretions of ceremonies for 1500 years. So I'm trying to simplify things here. Just a few ceremonies for stairs and stuff like that. And wondering how to find the balance. And I'm only head of two monasteries, not four. And sometimes I think, how am I going to do all these ceremonies? But sometimes I have to put my personal life and personal practice to the side.

[14:44]

But I find it so wonderful to be part of your practice. It's okay. Yeah, but we need to find a balance. I need to find a balance. Now, one of the things that started around 1500 years ago in India, China and Japan, but primarily India and China, was the attempt to find a recognizable Buddha path. An experienceable Buddha path.

[15:47]

And a Buddha path that we can feel already in our own life. And Zen chose to emphasize Yogacara More than Madhyamaka. And for instance, one of the differences is just to kind of create some historical perspective. Chandra Kirti emphasized that the experience of the complete enjoyment body, the Samogakaya body, Chandrakirti has emphasized that the experience of the body, of the complete enjoyment of the Sambhogakaya body, which is normally equated with a Buddha who is not part of our experience,

[17:04]

And the Yogacara wants to conceive of a Buddha and a Buddha path that's within the realm of our experience. that's within the realm of our experience. Okay, so let me try to enter into this discussion by bringing up again allness, innerness and otherness. Now, as I mentioned just the other day here, I think, one of the first teaching, big teaching that I really actually got from Tsukiyoshi

[18:24]

It was the teaching of the three bodies of Buddha. And I remember he drew on a kind of flip chart some stuff. In those days it might have been a blackboard, I forget. Anyway, I went home and then I went back and I copied it all down. And started with the recognition that that I already felt that you can't just have these sort of, you're not just one self-being.

[19:27]

Wir sind unterschiedliche Personen in unterschiedlichen Umständen. And there's different modes of mind. and there's some modes of mind in which you have insights and flow of thoughts flow of insights and some modes of mind where I'm stuck in talk and I knew that I wanted to I needed to know these different minds and beer wasn't the answer I've never been a drinker, but in high school I discovered if I had a little sip of beer, two or three sips, I could shift my mind. Three steps were okay, but five, then I felt cloudy.

[20:41]

So I kind of had little experiments going like that. Hey, and then I heard about the three bodies of Buddha. This was the real stuff. So I think if you take these three domains of existence, one way to look at our existence is to... see these distinctions. Okay, so allness. So if you try to imagine, well, there is our environment, the wind in the pines, the moon at night and so forth. The planetary weather, the mountains.

[21:55]

Yeah, and we feel something. And that's why people write poems and so forth. But if you imagine Can I experience this allness? Some people say, why should we save all sentient beings? Can't somebody else do some of it? Yeah, well, I'm trying to create some troops here to help. But, I mean, look how ridiculous it would be if you're saying, I vow to save 32 sentient beings.

[23:01]

And someone in the back says, I'm the 33rd. What about me? It doesn't make any sense to give a specific number. Only thing that makes sense is all. To live your life in the context somehow of all. All beings, but all of sentience and insentience. Again, going back to National Teacher Nanyang, Lai Chang Nanyang, who spoke about the teaching of insentient beings which was this transformative story or experience for Dung Shan and extremely important for me and I practiced in the beginning

[24:24]

Und auch für mich ganz wichtig, als ich angefangen habe zu praktizieren. And it's Wei Cheng who said in Dung Shan's recounting of the story. Und Wei Cheng sagt in Dung Shan's Erzählung der Geschichte. He said, although you do not hear it. Da sagt er, obwohl du es nicht hörst. Do not hinder that which hears it. Hindere nicht das, was es hört. Or we could say, do not hinder that which hears, which is a little different. How do we find that mind which doesn't hinder? That doesn't hinder the allness, sentient and insentient. And Hui Cheng also said, this will never be explained to you by one born of a mother and father.

[25:29]

This will never be explained to you by one born of a mother and father. So in one sense this says insentient teaches the insentient. How do such categories as sentient, insentient, really, I mean, I don't know, the sentient, skin and stuff, it's all kind of molecules and chemicals. Where does sentient and insentient begin and end? Uli is transforming things into our meals all the time. Somewhat insentient, sort of sentient. Is water sentient or insentient?

[26:59]

Yeah, I like that. Okay, so if you emphasize this sense of allness, the only way to conceptually approach it is space. The only thing that is anything like allness is the space in which allness happens. So once you have the feel of that you may recognize that quite often in zazen, the boundaries of your body may disappear. You may feel you're in a big body, a big space.

[28:02]

As we mentioned before, very common for zazeners, And I often wonder what leads some people to practice and some people not. I have some very close friends who would never practice. I wouldn't want them in the back of the Zendo. They'd start laughing. Right now. And when we traipsed up and down the stairs, they'd say, really? But it's some kind of My experience now with a lot of people who practice is it seems to be related to noticing some kind of experience that doesn't fit into consciousness.

[29:19]

And one of the experiences I hear about quite often is somebody says, well, when I was a kid, I used to go to bed and I would find myself up near the ceiling of the room or something. So there seem to be some experiential signs that suggest a person may be open for practice. So although this inclusive, transparent feeling doesn't feel like it goes on forever, but you can't exactly say where the boundaries are. The more you get used to that feeling and let's call it a non-referential, non-conceptual awareness when that sort of like settles into the body

[30:45]

And the mind is often a kind of metaphor trap. It's trapped within metaphors. So often the experience of of cutting off mind and mental factors, is actually releasing the mind from the cage of metaphor. bedeutet tatsächlich den Geist aus dem Käfig der Metaphern zu befreien. Und du kannst spüren, kannst du etwas fühlen, als ob der Geist in den Körper hineinfällt.

[32:06]

Oder wie Dogen das sagt, Körper und Geist fallen lassen. Und wenn wir mit diesem Gefühl vertraut werden, It's a kind of ease. A deep inner ease. In which you feel completely inner, but not... but including the outside. A kind of non-dual transparency. A feeling of no separation. But rooted in a kind of bodily ease. And we could call that the Sambhogakaya body. Now this is the more traditional way that Suzuki taught the three bodies of Buddha.

[33:26]

That becoming familiar with the body without boundaries and that spatial feeling more and more familiar becomes a bodily continuum, or a bodily location. And then when that becomes the way you function in the world, in this bodily field of mind, this we can call the nirmanakaya. Now, to describe it this way is really to give us, and through this Yogacara approach, a feeling for what must be the mind of Buddha.

[34:32]

He was one of us. He was one of us. It's not something inaccessible, it's just around the corner in our own experience. So we have in this nirmanakaya field of mind, which I'm now calling, in contrast to the space, a bodily continuum, a bodily mind continuum.

[35:34]

Now, I also call it to myself a postural mind continuum. I'm sorry, I can barely say this in English. How the heck do you say it in German? I don't know. And I change how I say it all the time, you know, I'm talking to myself. Okay, so a postural continuum. As the Japanese change their rooms by changing their spatial architecture, invisible architecture. I mean, I would say that Japanese culture is the most, ordinary daily culture is the most profoundly culture, the culture most profoundly influenced by Buddhism.

[36:53]

It's not exactly Buddhism, but it's been influenced by Buddhism. The culture isn't exactly Buddhism, but it's been influenced by Buddhism. So, as we're doing in this room, when we practice and do ceremonies and do the meal, we're, as I pointed out, creating a spatial, invisible spatial architecture. And the more we feel that, get used to that, that our actions create a kind of invisible space I was offered the chance because of the hammering to move us into the other zendo for this tesho.

[38:05]

But I wanted to stay in this space we've already established among ourselves for tesho. Now, the more I feel this space as an invisible space, a postural space, a real space but created by our activity, It's clearly empty. It's clearly just a construct. Here one minute, gone the next. And when that postural continuum becomes your bodily mind continuum, then everything is empty like that.

[39:17]

This building is just part of the postural continuum. We've changed it pretty completely from how Oliver used it. Yeah, so it's very clear. It also is part of the postural continuum and empty. So this kind of understanding becomes part of what monastic practice is trying to generate. So you end up doing emptiness, not understanding emptiness. Now have I sufficiently hammered that point home?

[40:21]

With an invisible hammer. With my co-worker here. Thank you very much.

[40:27]

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