So when we sit down, I'd like you to sit so that as much as possible we can all see each other. At least I can see you all. Last year I built this little podium. Some people complained, why a podium and stuff? So this year I said, well, maybe no podium. That's right. Maybe we can build it tonight. All right. I'm very happy to be in Heidelberg, Ulrike's city. She introduced me to the city and invited me to come teach here. A little louder. All right. And you've lived here 40 years? Well, since... 25 years? Since 72. I've lived here for 18 years now.

[01:02]

On and off. And the title of this seminar to start there, right? Consciousness, Karma, Perception, Karma and Consciousness. So we'll have to look at all three of those words. First again, let me ask, how many people have no experience with meditation? Two, two, three. What I'll do is, at the break, the few people who haven't had meditation instruction, or specifically in Zen, if they come up here during the break, I'll give you some instruction.

[02:12]

So we have to figure out the schedule, which is for sure Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, and Sunday afternoon, right? There's people out there. And some, I think, other seminars here in Heidelberg, we had Zazen in the morning at some time, 7 or 7.30 or 7, was it? And Gerald and Gisela Beischede are here, who are the directors of the Crestone Mountain Zen Center. Geralt und Gisela, die Chefs sind in dem Creston Mountain Center, die sind also hier. The chefs?

[03:38]

Direktor sounds so in German, a little funny. And they're staying here in this room, in this next room. So it'd be quite easy to have zazen in the morning if you're willing to lead it. So since they're staying here, we could start at 4, 4.30. Would anybody like to have zazen in the morning at some time around 7? Will those who are interested, please raise your hands. Okay, fine. That's enough. And if we start at 9.30, 10? What time did we start last year? I don't know. I think we started at 9.30, from 7 to 8, and then there was a time for breakfast from 8 to 9.30, and then we started at 9.30.

[04:44]

So should we start at 9.30? Okay. Would 10 work? Is anybody's travel situation such that 10 would be better than 9.30? No? Okay. So that's that. So I would like... Anyone? I would like three people to give me a definition of consciousness. Any three of you. Just anything you think of. It doesn't have to be important or smart. Anybody willing to try? Now, if I was in Belgium with French people, there'd be about five responses already.

[06:05]

I'm not saying they'd be good responses, but there'd be... The state of mind where I know what I'm doing. The state of mind where I'm knowing what I'm doing. Yeah. Okay. Anybody can add to that? Does everybody agree with that? Does anybody have another definition? A state of mind that's observing. In a state of consciousness, you said, that's observing. Realising that something is going on. That you notice that something is going on. We don't know what's going on, but realizing something's going on.

[07:19]

Do you want to translate that? Well, we just finished a session in Maria Lach. And a number of you were there. And we discussed the five skandhas. And I think that even though the ones in the Sesshin we went through it, we're going to have to describe the five skandhas again. Because We have to see how the word consciousness is used in Buddhist practice. And it's difficult to translate the word mind into German.

[08:35]

What about translating consciousness? How does that work? Is there an equivalent word? Yes. Now, Zazen meditation practice is really something you a place where you live more than something you do. So I can give you some instructions about how to sit zazen. And in that sense it's something you do. But once you learn the fairly simple aspects of zazen practice, then it's a place where you live.

[10:02]

So when you sit down, you have the feeling of sitting down in a place where you live. Almost as if you were sitting, I don't know if this makes sense, but almost as if you were sitting down inside yourself. And as if you could forget about sitting down inside yourself, and yet you can forget about yourself at the same time. Now, practicing in this way is the way in which the Buddhist sense and Zen sense of consciousness has arisen.

[11:04]

Now, we have various ideas of consciousness in the West. And some of them I will probably have to speak about. Because we need some sort of contrast to see the differences. Now one practice that I've been giving to people during this time of being in Europe this summer is to, when you go through a doorway, go through with the foot nearest the hinge. So, let me illustrate that.

[12:06]

Let's pretend this is a door. And this is actually a kind of silly practice, but it's very important. Okay. So you're walking along and say that the door is hinged here. And you come to it, you step through with this foot. And, of course, coming from the other direction, you'd step through this one. And when you get... This has to do with consciousness, believe me. And not... Well, of course it has to do with consciousness in the sense that you're paying attention to something's happening. What do you say? Something's going on. Okay, so something's going on. We don't know what. So we might as well start with our feet.

[13:34]

So when you step into this next space, you stop for a moment and have a feeling of being somewhere. And it takes a little while to get into the habit. I actually did it for many years. Because I noticed my teacher did it, and then I sort of adopted it as a practice. So I did it probably regularly for five, six, seven, eight, ten years. And then I forgot.

[14:35]

And I just, I mean, the basic, what arises from the practice I didn't forget, but whether which foot I went through, I was, I don't know, sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. And then this year, for some reason, I decided to give this practice to people And immediately people began to catch me when I didn't do it. And I didn't do it, you know. Did you do that in Germany? Yeah. International sign language. So anyway, because I've been giving to people, I'm getting a little better at it. If you'll still catch me probably not doing it.

[15:39]

But when you get in the habit of it, and you stepped into a place and you're sitting down, So you're sitting here in a chair or something like that. And you know that in a few minutes you're going to go back out. And you know that when you go back out, you're going to go through, now there's a kind of line you're going to cross, and you're going to step through with a particular foot. Now the result of a simple practice like that is you're not sitting in your mind. You begin to have the feeling you're sitting in a place which is not the same as your mind. Man fängt an, ein Gefühl zu bekommen, dass man in einem Platz sitzt, der nicht das Gleiche ist wie der Mind.

[16:50]

Oh dear, this is a little hard to say. In other words, if I say the place is different from the mind, that sounds like very bad Zen. Wenn ich sage, dass der Platz jetzt nicht das Gleiche ist wie der Mind, dann klingt es wie wirklich schlechtes Zen. Jung has some image that the self is like a cork floating in a sea of consciousness. And somewhere he said, we don't create consciousness, consciousness is something we wake up into in the morning. That's definitely not the way Buddhism would look at it.

[17:54]

From the Buddhist point of view, every time the cork would move, the ocean would appear. So the ocean would arise out of the cork. Now that's a rather different way of thinking about it. And you may think that consciousness remains the same, no matter how you think about it. But I don't think that's true. That the way you think about consciousness affects what kind of consciousness arises.

[18:58]

So strangely, the concept within consciousness that you have of consciousness affects the consciousness you have. Are you following me pretty much so far? Some people aren't, I think. But what I've said is quite simple. But the reason for it may not be so clear. But just to say, first of all, if you practice something like this, stepping through the door, or another good time to practice physical bodyfulness, a physical awareness,

[19:59]

is going up and down these stairs. Points of transition, like going through a doorway or up and down stairs, is a time to return your sense of location to your body and your breath. In other words, you need some way, we all need some way to locate ourselves. And if you locate yourself in yourself or in your thoughts, You actually will live over a period of time in a rather different, even quite different world than if you locate yourself in your body or in your breath.

[21:17]

So the question is, How do you come, if you want to, to have a sense of location in your breath and in your body? Because at least my experience is, it's not very easy to do. And you really have to, first of all, feel, see the point of it. And then find ways to remind yourself of it. Until it becomes a sometimes habit and then finally maybe an all the time habit. So a good time to develop the habit is in transitions like going through the door, up and down stairs.

[22:27]

Now this has to do with becoming more aware and more conscious. Now consciousness is not a... I don't know what words to use. It's not a faculty like your stomach. Or like your arm.

[23:29]

Or hand. But it's more like handling. Can you say that in German? Handling? Handle and handling. Or it's maybe more like digestion instead of stomach. So if you try to define, you know, I think that often we try to define consciousness as if it were a kind of stomach sitting there waiting for food. And sometimes we put food in it and sometimes we don't. But you couldn't say that about digestion. Digestion is sitting there waiting for food.

[24:34]

Digestion doesn't sit there waiting for food. It doesn't even appear unless there's food. Now, is the distinction between stomach and digestion working in German all right? Okay. So from my experience and the Buddhist experience of consciousness is consciousness is something like digestion. And when you say, you can't say digestion is something, you'd have to say digestion is digesting milk. Or digesting lettuce. And digesting lettuce or milk is something different. So there's milk digestion and there's lettuce digestion. Okay, so when you look at a tree, there's tree consciousness, and when you look at this room, there's room consciousness.

[25:56]

In other words, consciousness is created by the tree. Now, when your consciousness is sort of passive and you kind of see this and you see that, then you don't notice that consciousness is created by the tree. So if your consciousness is connected to self, And then usually connected to the idea of control. Because we have a sense that what we're conscious of we have some control of. Then probably with that way of thinking you're not going to be so sensitive to the way what you look at, what you perceive, creates consciousness.

[27:09]

Because you can actually feel your consciousness. Like when you're getting sick, say your cold is coming or the flu or something. You may notice something like your throat gets sore or something like that. But long before your throat gets sore, your consciousness begins to get sick. It begins to feel squeezed or bent or something. So you can begin to do something about the sickness by sort of unbending your consciousness or noticing where it's squeezed, instead of worrying so much about whether we're cold or hot or something.

[28:21]

So in this sense, you can do something before the illness breaks out, by taking care of your consciousness, by pressing something and bending it and straightening it again. In other words, you can feel the kind of openness or stretch of the consciousness. And sometimes what may make your consciousness feel a little more open is you might want a breeze on your face or something like that. And if you're thinking, you say, oh, I don't want to breathe because that's a draft and that makes my cold worse. And maybe that's true a large part of the time, but that's thinking. That's not feeling what your consciousness needs to feel more open and less squeezed or less sick.

[29:26]

So it's possible to get a feel of your consciousness But first you have to get a feel of your body and a way of locating yourself in your body. And probably the easiest way to do that is with your breath. In fact, you might say the breath is a kind of lobby or train station or something. And your sense of location can wait in the breath lobby. And then you can decide, oh, maybe my sense of the... When you say my sense, you're in trouble, right?

[30:35]

Because who owns this sense of location? I don't know how it works in German, but how do you say in English, my location? So my is another location separate from location? So the breath is a kind of lobby for location. And this sense of location can move into your thoughts and self. Into your thoughts and into self. And it looks back at the breath and says, oh, my breath. But when the location's in the breath, the breath looks and says, oh, my self. And if the place is in the breath, then the breath says, oh, my self.

[31:56]

This is not very, you know, this is not esoteric or anything. It's something you do, everyone, but you don't notice it. Most people don't notice it. And then the breath, let's call it location, can go into your body from your breath or into some kind of activity. Okay, so what I'm emphasizing here is practicing with your breath. And when you come up and down stairs, of course, you get out of breath or you can feel your breath as you go upstairs. So during that time, you try to feel you're in a very specific location on the stairs.

[33:03]

You're not somewhere else. You're not where you want to be. This may be where you want to be, but where you want to be is irrelevant. You're on the stairs. And the more you can feel that, you can feel a kind of consciousness of the stairs. I mean, if consciousness isn't always there, it's arising in what you're doing. So there's stair consciousness. And tree consciousness. And my voice consciousness. And Ulrika's voice consciousness. And there's a kind of consciousness that is in this room that's particular to this group of people.

[34:17]

If you have the idea that consciousness is always the same, you won't see that. If the only distinctions in consciousness are whether you're sleepy or awake or something, then you don't see this other side. And if you tend to think of the world as real, you won't see this. And if you think the world is real, when you dream, you're going to think your dreams are real But if you're going to practice with your dreams and really feel your dreams as not real, or as real but real in the way dreams are real, So you have to get in the habit of seeing this to some extent as a dream or as something that you're seeing and making at the same time.

[35:34]

So this way of looking at things allows you to get more of a feeling of consciousness coming up in each situation. So when you look at a flower like this, if you're really able to bring the feeling of consciousness to it, a particular kind of consciousness arises from the flower you're seeing. And the more you get in the habit of seeing that way, the more the world seems like it's inside you. The more the flowers feel like you're inside the... what? It doesn't feel like you're separate from the flowers.

[37:10]

And if you get in the habit of seeing that way, you don't feel the world separate from you. You don't get feeling estranged and kind of threatened by things. Because they feel like part of you. And you feel like part of them. And that comes from seeing, feeling consciousness arise on each occasion. So back to zazen practice. So when we sit down to practice zazen, you sit down and feel a certain consciousness arise.

[38:19]

Now, It's a little difficult to do zazen sometimes because it's a different kind of time than usual time. Now, as most of you know who practice zazen, the usual, the ordinary mind can count to ten quite easily. But Zazen mind has a hard time counting to ten. This means there's a different kind of consciousness has arisen when you sit down. And it's a different kind of consciousness which allows different things to happen in your life.

[39:32]

You're digesting things differently. And when you sit zazen, sometimes it's... five minutes can seem like twenty-five minutes. And sometimes you can sit for an hour or two and it feels like five or ten minutes have gone by. So it's a different kind of time. So that's when I said earlier you live in a different kind of time. Or Zazen is a place where you live and not something you do.

[40:34]

And because it's a different kind of time, we often find in our usual time many reasons not to do it. Because the usual time approaches this thing and says, what am I approaching? It's some different kind of time. So you just have to make it a habit trying to do it. And it helps again if you practice something like this, stepping through the door. or going up and down stairs with feeling your breath and your body again. Now, if you've had some kind of physical sense of meditation practice, But your sense of location is still in your mind.

[41:44]

It will often create some kind of tension in your body. So the practice of zazen has to equally, as you begin to sit and settle on yourself, This practice of settling into your posture has to be part of allowing your sense of location to move a little bit out of your thinking. I think that's enough to start out with. So I think I should say a little something about zazen posture. And as I said at the break, I'll give a little more instruction for anybody who wants it. So basically you sit in a way that allows your back to be straight.

[43:08]

And your legs can be in any posture. Crossed is more stable, but you can sit with your legs behind you however you like. And you have a lifting feeling through your back. And through the back of your neck. And a kind of melting feeling coming down through you, relaxing you. And again, a sense of... sitting into the consciousness that arises as you sit.

[44:09]

Okay, so let's sit for a few minutes and then we'll have a break for some juice or something. so you That if, for example, you have a certain maybe itch, itch on your face, that you don't think of it so much as an itch, but as maybe itch consciousness or a consciousness arising.

[46:13]

And if you notice something, say, on your leg or foot, that when you notice it, it's a kind of consciousness arising. Or we hear these children's voices. And a consciousness arises from the children's voices. Or a truck or car starting. It's a little like maybe dropping stones or twigs or leaves into a pond.

[47:28]

And it makes different kinds of ripples on the water. So each thing that arises Whether it's a physical sensation or a sound, it's like a leaf falling or a twig falling into the pond. Thank you.

[51:05]

Now that plane is not only flying in the sky, it's flying in your arising consciousness. Both are true. So, let's have a... It takes quite a while to use the toilet, doesn't it?

[53:49]

Twenty-minute break? Twenty-five? Okay, so, let's come back and we're not going anywhere in twenty minutes. And after about ten minutes I'll meet with people here who want to more specifically have some zazen instruction. Okay. Can I say something? Sure. Okay. Basically, when you sit down, you have a feeling of placing yourself.

[54:51]

So first you're just standing. First you just stand. And then you have a feeling of putting your backbone down on the cushion. Okay. And then once you get your backbone on the cushion, you just feel it. And then you do one thing at a time. You put your legs the way you're going to sit. And then you do one thing at a time. You can sit just like that. Or you can sit like this. Yeah. And with your back straight if possible. and your tongue is at the roof of your mouth and there's many reasons for these things I'm not explaining I'm just telling you basically and your teeth are sort of together and your eyes are open a tiny bit but not much

[56:02]

I thought you all knew how to do zazen. And you let your mind come to your breath and you It's good to count your exhales. One. Two. Like that. To ten and then back and then start at one again. And the other basic instructions are you don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[57:18]

You just let your thoughts come and go without identifying with them and without trying to get rid of them. And the other basic instruction is don't scratch. It's very important. Okay, that's simple enough, that demonstration. Is there anything you'd like to know? Do you have any questions? How long will it be necessary to sit? Well, since it really is another kind of time, even a few minutes is helpful. But for a beginner, I'd say 20 minutes to 40 minutes. 40 minutes is quite sufficient once a day. In 20 minutes is okay too.

[58:29]

Less than 20 minutes doesn't have much effect. But... Even, well, even if you take the time to sit down even for five minutes, that has an effect, it's a different kind of effect. But I think one period of 20 to 40 minutes a day is probably better than trying to sit a lot. And just develop that as a habit. And usually it just needs to be at the same time.

[59:29]

Roughly the same time. And in a place in your house or apartment where you don't do other things. Some other question? Would you do if the feet get numb? Sometimes my feet would get numb and pretty soon I'd be numb up to the waist. I used to think, I'll never get up again. And when you're practicing with a lot of people, there's always stories that go around. Like about some Tibetan monk who lost the use of his legs and he used to have to lift him up and carry him around. I think that's extremely unlikely to happen to anybody. But if your legs get numb and the numbness disappears after you get up, it's fine.

[60:36]

If you get a numbness that stays in your legs or foot or something for a full day or something, then you're probably sitting in a way that's pinching a nerve. And it goes away. And it's good to start out sitting toward the back of the cushion. And then, because then the cushion is not... It's supporting your leg more and it won't... your legs aren't as likely to get numb. Okay, some other question? And how to breathe? When I sing, I'm breathing quite differently than when I speak. How do you breathe when you sing?

[62:05]

Oh, that's the same. So maybe you could call zazen a kind of silent singing. You don't breathe with your chest here. But at first it's good just to take an inventory of how you breathe. So you just notice how you're breathing when you first sit down, when thoughts come, how you breathe and things. And in a sense you begin to see a fabric of breathing that appears differently according to what you're thinking or feeling. And then you begin to thread that breathing with counting your breaths. And so you imagine there's a kind of fabric of your breath that you begin to thread with counting one. And in fact, you're threading your mind through your breath consciousness.

[63:31]

Some other question about that? Okay, that's... No, yeah? Yes, if your mouth fills with saliva, you should swallow. Unless you want to drool down your chin. But if you put your tongue at the roof of your mouth, it tends to inhibit this flow of saliva.

[64:33]

Because zazen, as I've said many times, stimulates the older, it activates the older part of the brain which stimulates the stomach, so you have more saliva. Okay, so that's Southern Instruction. So now we can just, let's just sit comfortably anywhere you want. And Arika, are you here somewhere? Well, you two traded places. So now we know if you get tired, we can translate to it. I'd like to give you the five skandhas tonight, but we don't have a blackboard or a piece of paper or something that I could write it on.

[66:07]

But I'll tell you what they are. It's form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. The consciousness then is understood as related to and part of this sequence. And I'll try to go into more detail of why the way we perceive and consciousness is understood in this way. And it's a different dynamic of understanding yourself than, say, id, ego and superego. Now I am... I emphasized in the Sashin the feeling Skanda.

[67:27]

In this seminar I will emphasize the consciousness Skanda. And how karma is understood and works in the way you exist and experience things. Today I had a pretty heavy conflict with somebody. Somebody I think is in a lot of trouble. And I decided to put my friendship with this person sort of on the line because I think they're in trouble. A kind of intervention. And it just happened a little while before I came here. I feel perfectly clear that what I did was what I wanted to do.

[68:47]

But when something like that happens, Generally, when two people are together and they're friends, there's a kind of enhancement of each other's consciousness. But in a situation where you're clearly challenging another person, there's a very sharp and dramatic close down of the territory of consciousness. And many defense things come into play. And denial and so forth. And your consciousnesses get all kind of enmeshed.

[69:49]

They kind of get, you know. Yeah. So while I'm here with you, I'm at the same time as I'm shifting away from that situation to feeling something here with you, But I don't want to shift away from it entirely. It would be hard actually to shift away from it entirely because it's so fresh.

[70:52]

But I also don't want to shift away from it entirely. Because allowing the experience of these enmeshed consciousnesses to continue, matures the situation. Do you understand? So it's a little bit like, I mean, it's not a little bit, it's very much like dreams. are a way that we mature situations. In other words, I used the example the other day, what I call current status dreams. Current status, the present status. So that, in other words, for example, if I have a dream about an old friend, in my conscious mind I tend to remember him as the last time I saw him a year and a half ago or so.

[72:21]

But having a dream about him recently, a year and a half had passed. He's in Los Angeles. So I called him up the other day. So I said, I had a dream about you and, you know, you've changed. He said, well, you must be having nightmares if you're having dreams about my current situation. So I said, well, when we talked for a while, when we ended the conversation, I said, well, I'll try to have a nightmare about you. And he said, well, okay, but if you can redirect my life a little in your dreams, please do. And something like that happens. In other words, if I actually in addition to my conscious feelings about him, I also am included in my conscious dream development of him.

[73:58]

My relationship to him will have more depth. So while I'm sitting here talking with you, and also absorbing the situation with this friend of mine today, Because if I just think about it, it's not sufficient. I have to allow a lot of stuff to feel about it to know what should happen next. And being... being... To be more conscious about how to allow such a thing to happen.

[75:17]

And to participate in it happening. To feel it like you were literally digesting something, like something in your stomach, but this case in your skandhas. This is a part of the teaching of the skandhas and karma. So this evening I'm just introducing a lot of ideas. And tomorrow we'll slow down and unpack some of them. So right now I would like to hear something from you if you have some question or idea or would like me to make something a little clearer I've mentioned. If it is the case that the consciousness of two people who do something to each other is strengthened, then it should be the case that, for example, between parents and children,

[76:44]

Could you hear him in the back? Yeah, okay. You said that the consciousness of two people or two consciousnesses enhance each other. And my question is now, maybe this is the reason why parents have conflicts with their children, because when the children grow older and become more independent and move away, and actually this enhancing of consciousness is not there anymore, and the parents struggle with it because they're put into the same situation than before they had children. Is that the case? You're worried about what's going to happen with Dina?

[77:47]

No, no, no. Well, that covers... I have a pair of myself. Really? So the question you just asked covers volumes of psychology. Of course parents go through their own ages through the ages of their child. And if they enjoyed their own growing independence from their parents, they'll enjoy and support their own child's growing independence. There's a big difference between two consciousnesses or many enhancing each other and being attached or trying to shape or control each other.

[78:56]

Some people have a quite developed consciousness But it's very thin and insecure. And it doesn't reach throughout the five skandhas. It tends to be limited into the thinking perception territory and if that's the case then you want the people around you to have the same consciousness you do so you try to control their consciousness and you take the enhancement into a kind of something you're trying to mold And the parents often do something like that with their children.

[80:09]

And then it's very hard for the child to get free. Because children usually have far... Most children have a much more open, pliable, pliant consciousness. But adults have a much more structured consciousness. And the child is almost helpless in front of those structures. Because our whole society is created through such structures. And democracies particularly need it. Democracies need to structure the consciousness of the citizens so that they control them through fairly benign means. If you can't easily force people to do what you want, and you depend on them agreeing with you, then you have to create a highly structured consciousness in each citizen so that they'll agree with the government.

[81:29]

Does that make sense? So that's why I think that it's modern industrial societies which psychology and the unconscious and all has come up. Because our... The kind of society and structure we have of consciousness produces tremendous unconscious materials. Okay, some other questions. Your professional life, is there a separation between your normal consciousness and your meditative consciousness?

[82:48]

For me or for everyone? I don't have a professional wife. This is my professional wife. I like this so much I do it full time. So ask it from your point of view.

[83:48]

However, I am a musician, so there are also areas when I am a musician where I don't want to use only the conscious or what I understand as consciousness in my limited field. So that I want to use many, many forces to get on the track of this music. And now the question is, should I go through everything with this meditative consciousness or is it my own support in this multidimensional, complex field? I'm a musician, and my question is, there are certain paths in my daily life and in my work I don't want to kind of only access with this meditative consciousness. I'd like to bring in all other forces and energies and whatever. And my question is now, shall I try to do everything from this kind of consciousness?

[85:10]

How would you describe meditative consciousness? So what do you mean by meditative consciousness? Are you surmising this or is this your experience? Surmising to you. So do you set this up or is this your experience? Of course, I am one of the few who have little experience. I have an idea of what meditative consciousness looks like and that means for me a total control a consciousness about my physical state and about my mental state.

[86:13]

But there is inspiration. That is outside of this consciousness for me. I feel meditative consciousness means I have control over my body and my thoughts, and inspiration is outside of this territory. Maybe by the end of the seminar we'll have made an approach to your question. Maybe we have come closer to your question when the seminar is over. Where is the dog barking? Is there such a thing as a pain limit in consciousness?

[87:13]

My personal feeling is that it somehow hurts when you don't push the concentration. Is there a pain limit in consciousness? My experience is I start suffering a lot when I push myself into this consciousness. Into the posture or into the consciousness? Into trying to be conscious and not to dream or day. Not to dream. It means not to get caught up in your thoughts. Yes, that's a mistake. Dream. Dream. Get caught up in your thoughts. It's my new zazen instruction.

[88:21]

Yeah. It's a big difference. Well, it's a big difference between what? Between dreams and thoughts. Yeah. But I'll explain this tomorrow, but dreams arise in the feeling skanda. Thoughts arise in the perception skanda. But from another point of view, dreams are a kind of formed mental activity. And share that with thoughts. And thoughts usually are translatable into language. And thoughts are close to language.

[89:24]

But dreams are close to images and not easy to translate into language. So dreams represent another, are another kind of consciousness. That you can only apply language to with some distortion. Let's make this really as simple as possible. You are familiar with being awake. We are familiar with being awake. And we're also familiar with being asleep to some extent. We're certainly familiar with almost, I think, everyone, virtually everyone has occasionally had a dream that they're aware of.

[90:57]

So you're aware already of two kinds of consciousnesses. Or let's say two different states of mind. Now, Buddhism takes this very seriously. Buddhism would say, these are territories of your life.

[91:13]

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