Well, as you know, I want to continue on how the self appears to us. But again, I feel I should speak about the context of the teaching in the Sashim today. And I'm very happy to be doing Doksans with you. You know, this is too big a task for me, how to bring Zen Buddhist practice into the West. And I need your help. And when you bring me your practice in Dokusan, it helps me a lot.

[01:05]

And I think it helps our Sangha a lot. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to present to you Yeah, one way the world exists. Yeah, one way, at least one way the world exists. And the way the world exists as meditation and mindfulness practice finds it. And the way understanding how it's a mutual relationship. Understanding how the way the world supports our practice and our practice shows us how the world exists. but now if I speak about how our practice exists this is a kind of little enactment a microcosm of how the world exists

[02:17]

then it is a microcosm and a small way of implementing how the world exists. And duksan means to go alone. But I'm there, so you're not alone. I'm the spy. What do we say? We have an expression in English. The walls have ears. No, we don't. That's what the fly on the wall or something like that. But it's not like that. It's that we're both alone. It's different than the I and thou experience, as far as I can remember, of Martin Buber.

[03:38]

Well, there's a kind of co-equal or same relationship. Coming together. Well, there's that. Yes, that's part of it. But it's also that it remains two separate persons, two others. And there's a kind of mystery in that. And this word, which I've been bringing up, alterity, which is, I think, based on the German word alter. Alter like alter? No, alter like other. It's Latin. It's not German, I'm sorry. Isn't German half Latin? Yeah, I think it was first used by this German philosopher, Levinas.

[04:41]

He lived in Paris. But he was quite influenced by Heidegger and he influenced Derrida and so forth. And his use of the term was we never take the otherness, rob the other of his otherness. And by that he meant his or her separate existence. So to go alone is also a deep respect for our separate existence. And yet, to what extent can we have a common mutual understanding?

[06:05]

No, I introduced this idea just because I think if you let it work in you, you'll see it reaches widely. I always say when I ask the Ino to give instructions to say it's not necessary to bow. because I always feel a little funny when you bow particularly if you're in your social body but as a ritual act it's to release the self and in that to make yourself vulnerable So not to go to Dokusan with a plan, but just to be vulnerable.

[07:25]

And the teacher, or Roshi, or Doshi, or Moshi, should also be vulnerable. Doshi actually means the one who's head of a monastery or head of a ceremony. That's the doshi. Moshi is what you say when you answer the phone in Japan. Moshi, moshi. So it's like coming into Turkestan. Moshi, moshi. Don't do that, please. Just come in like an American Indian. Ow. In the middle. Ow. You're too young to have seen those movies.

[08:43]

So there should be a mutual vulnerableness in the situation. Now, in what I said yesterday, The most important distinction to be clear about is the distinction between perception and conception. Percept and concept. Now, in the debating... schools of, I think it's mainly Galupka, of the Tibetan practice. And I met the other day, I spent a week with her and so, with the main translator for the Dalai Lama. And he was, I don't know, I think 12 years in a monastery where every day, five hours a day, they debated in the courtyard.

[09:58]

You know, finally he stopped, you know, after 12 years. Enough is enough. But, and I want to talk to him about it at some point, but what it does is it really makes you notice things. And it solidifies or contextualizes knowledge and knowing. My job, my role in this situation is to transmit the teaching to you. Your job as a Sangha and what we're trying to do in the winter branches is to make that a community Sangha knowing.

[11:09]

To contextualize it in your generation. It's, you know, Absolutely at this point the most important thing we can do is to contextualize it, solidify it in your generation. I'm an older generation than most of you. But you also contextualize it and solidify it for me. So these three, the various ways I teach, the various forms in which I teach, we had exemplified in the last ten days or so. Yeah, we had three full days in Hannover.

[12:19]

That's a seminar. Yeah, with the prologue day first. And with, as I said, you know, I don't know, 60 or 70 people who... I've been practicing with almost everyone for many, many years. And then a seminar in Kassel with mostly psychotherapists. I'd say a third of them, something like that. I didn't know, really. Although... Norbert and Angela I've been practicing with for... I don't know. I married them.

[13:20]

We're a threesome. I mean, anyway. I married them, but... So 20 years, 15, 20, I don't know, a long time. So that's... And then... And then a public lecture. And that's the hardest for me to do. That's what has taken me the longest to learn how to do. And then the Sashin. Now the content is not so different. But the mind which hears it is different. And the mind which speaks it is different.

[14:27]

And I'm trying to understand, with your help, what is the most effective way to practice, or maybe the mix of the three or four. For me, the Sashin and more important practice period is the fundamental way to teach. But since I'm committed to a lay practice, I've been trying to develop how to do seminars of various kinds with people. Now, you're part of the experiment, so I'm sharing the experiment with you. Okay, so let's go back to the distinction between conception and perception.

[15:29]

Now, if you debate these points with each other in some way, or you practice with each other in some way where these become clearer and clearer, There are distinctions that arise from our practice. But our practice over, you know, supposedly I'm 91, I guess, 91 generations from the Buddha. Don't forget that. But you're the 92nd. Don't forget that. Yeah. I don't know if the number's accurate, but it's accurate for 50 or 60, something like that.

[16:29]

That's amazing. Yeah, it's only three times the number of people, no, two times, less than two times the number of people in the Sashim. So I spent 10 or 15 years whispering the teachings to you. And then you spend 10 or 15 years whispering the teachings to him. And then here it gets lost. No, no. But you're covered. A few other people cover for you. Okay.

[17:43]

Yeah, we're engaged in something like that. I mean, not something like that. This is what we're engaged in. Did you say the first part? This is something like we're engaged in something like that. No, I did not say that. Well, that's important. That's why I said it. Do you think I'm just sitting here talking? My mistakes are all too important. Okay. So these distinctions arise from decades of practice.

[18:46]

And not just one person, one person, but whole generations of people practicing. and the next, etc. From generations of... Because a generation passes to the next generation. It's not just one person to one person. Yeah. So it's kind of an amazing... situation we're in. I mean it's ordinary and it shouldn't be special. And at the same time it's extraordinary and a miracle of human development. So these distinctions, which are incipient in us or potential in us, means potential, almost present, not quite born yet, have been developed over the centuries, by generations.

[20:13]

So we're at a point in the Dharma Sangha practice where we're articulating these distinctions that have arisen over the centuries as being significant. And then we're articulating them in our own practice, finding them in our own practice. Yeah, and they're always a little disguised. Yeah, disguised because if you don't need them, you shouldn't notice them. You're disguised because if you're not ready for them, you shouldn't notice them. Und auch deshalb verschleiert, weil wenn du nicht bereit für sie bist, dann solltest du sie auch nicht bemerken.

[21:26]

Und auch deshalb verschleiert, weil wenn du nicht in der Lage bist, sie zu bemerken, dann solltest du sie auch nicht bemerken. Now do we peel away the disguise? Und wenn wir jetzt aber diesen Schleier abnehmen... But if we peel away the disguise... By conceptualizing it, we take away much of its, maybe almost all of its power. So we create teaching situations in which there are various potentials. And I think if we're going to continue this practice and consolidate it in our generation, we need to understand it as well as we can, conceptually, as well as enacting it. Now let's go back to the distinction between perception and between percept and concept.

[22:46]

So we have the phrase, the saying, the flower is not red nor is the willow green. Now, what is taken away in this statement? When we say the flower is not red, what is taken away? The concept is taken away. But what remains? Redness. I think if I say the flower is not red, what you experience is redness. That's actually so simple and so brilliant. If I just said the flower is red, it's a concept you have no experience with. of redness.

[23:56]

Or very little. Okay, but if I say the flower is not red, we're more likely to feel redness. Nor is the willow green. Because Well, the willow is green. We know that. And so greenness appears. No, so not only is... We could go on and say... And say... Not only... the flower is not red, nor is the willow green. We could also then say, and there's no flower and there's no tree. Because that's implied.

[24:57]

And if we take away the tree, what do we have? Where again, we have some kind of knowing of the tree. So the statement, the flower is not red, takes away the concept of red and generates the experience of redness. And if we take away the concept of the tree, we've got some living, big, vegetable object there. Yeah, and no one knows what a tree is really. There's a mystery there. So this also generates a quality of the unknown. And how is that done?

[26:15]

By taking away the concept. And brings us into the percept. But brings us into the percept with the feeling of knowing outside the concept. Now. That is developed through centuries of teaching. It's not... So, you know, we feel, oh, the flower just sounds very zen. The flower's not red, nor is the wood green. But it's really an exercise for those of us who are practicing in noticing the distinction between concept and percept. Then the mystery that arises. And then in the sense of the alterity, we never fully know the other. Now, it's like again, over and over again, I've talked about when you're doing Zazen, you hear your own hearing.

[27:15]

You hear the bird, but after a while you don't hear the bird out there. Because one thing the senses do is tend to put the objective world, the world as an object, out there. That's a bird out there somewhere. Yeah, but when you're sitting and you're kind of loosening consciousness and loosening conceptual mind Suddenly the sound becomes your own resonance. Your own hearing is sounding. Then what do you know? You know the boundaries of your own hearing. Because you know that what the bird hears is different than what you're hearing, because the bird has different hearing.

[28:54]

More complex enough. The range of birds is about like this, and the range of our ears is about like that. And perching birds, the birds that sing, can sing two or three notes at once. I can't. So they're in another world than we are. But we hear blissfully our own hearing. And we know the boundaries of our own hearing. And so we know we feel the mystery beyond the boundaries of our hearing and each of our senses. The mystery of otherness that can't fully be found.

[30:02]

Now, most Western science has implicitly and philosophically been going another direction. It's been seeking some kind of unity. And Einstein struggled to find a unified field theory. We're still trying to, and it's a good, but Buddhism would say, well, maybe not, but at least it's not the best way to look at the world. Behind the inanity of the Christian fundamentalism of the United States president,

[31:06]

What did you say? Inanity, that means, inane means beyond, outside of sanity. Stupid. There's a wider sense of a Western that somehow we're all the same and so we can turn the Iraqis into Democrats. Or Republicans? Because there's some kind of thinking there that if they have a chance, they all want to be free the way we want to be free. I mean, this is just stupid. But it produces crusades and wars and all based on the idea that somehow we all ought to be the same. So really in our practice is the mystery of the not sameness.

[32:20]

And there's only sameness, which is a very important experience in Buddhism, in how everything is simultaneously different, which is called dustness. Okay. How are we doing? Should I stop? All right, I'll say one more thing. You know, David Byrne's song, Once in a Lifetime, The Talking Heads. Were The Talking Heads popular in Germany? when the talking heads... With Ottmar. Ottmar Kenti. Yeah, what does it say?

[33:42]

Where does it go? It says, you may find yourself in a shotgun shack. A shack is like a real run-down little house falling apart. This could only be America. There are no shotgun shacks anywhere but America. I've got my shack, I've got my Jesus, and I've got my shotgun. What? Yeah, pulver schuppen. This is America. Okay. I've got my shotgun. You may find yourself in a shotgun shack. you may find yourself in another country, another world.

[34:43]

You may find yourself with a beautiful wife. And you may wonder, well, how did I get here? This is somehow very Buddhist. How did I get here with my beautiful wife and my big car and my shotgun shack? Wow. And the days go by. And water, while water flowing underground. And that keeps coming up. And the days go, letting the days go by, water flowing underground. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. You and David Brin should get together and do a translation of this song.

[35:48]

Yeah, we should. I met him once. I didn't talk to him. We saw each other. We were walking around the same room for quite a while. And then as I went out the door, he said to me, we almost met. That's alterity. We almost met. Okay, and the Sandokai says... The branching streams flow in darkness. The Sandokai is something we could chant in the mornings, we don't.

[36:51]

The branching streams flow in the darkness. That's conceptually the same as David Byrne's sense that letting the days go by, the water flows underground. And sorry to point it out, but it's the same as our dumping the wastewater in the Irioki bowl, the Irioki practice. I think I tend to explain these things too much and the Uriyoki practice too much. Like I point out how this is an enactment of the chakras. I guess it's okay to point it out.

[38:03]

I do sometimes. It's a particular Zen way to enact the chakras. To disguise instruction and teaching and wisdom in ordinary things like eating a meal. Now, some things in Uriyoki are just a convenient way to do things. But again, this way has been developed over hundreds of years in detail for a reason. And part of it is just to see if we can get, so we can do something exactly the same. And more important than that can we develop the ability to notice exactly how it's done.

[39:16]

And more than that can we develop the freedom from self to be willing to imitate. And do it exactly as someone else does it. So the example I'm using now and I don't care if you do it or not but I'm just pointing it out is when we pick up the waste water No. Partly, you're just throwing out the waste water.

[40:22]

The dish water. There's no soap in it, so we could drink it. And so we wouldn't have to throw it out. It might be more efficient. Just everybody drinks it. Why do we throw it out? Because we're actually offering it to the spirits and powers. We're offering it to the mystery of what's beyond our senses. It's the water flowing underground in darkness. under the houses under the people it's the branching streams flowing in darkness the branching streams flowing in darkness is also the winter branches Each of you is a branching stream flowing in darkness.

[41:32]

So we pick up the water like this and then we put our hand over it so it's in the darkness. Superficially it's garbage so you cover it, you know, polite, but as practice it's in the darkness and then you pour it in the bucket and then you touch where you drink on the rim to the bucket so there's no separation there's interweaving here And then this water that's flowing in darkness and poured in darkness and going to be offered to the spirits and powers then you take it and drink half of it yourself and let it flow in your own darkness. This is a very typical Zen ceremony.

[42:50]

A typical ritual. To enact at a perceptual level a concept. Now there's a whole bunch of other stuff I thought I might bring up. But Eric is just, he's got the bell, the bell striker in hand and his hand is ready to go. Eric is ready. So let's go.

[43:22]

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