Well, let me say, before I respond to you, that looking at how you were sitting, a lot of you, you know, I used to sit in what I called the half-lily posture. I called, yeah. And I called it that because lilies are the flower often used at funerals. And I started out with my knees way up in the air I finally had three cushions, and I pushed my knees down, you know, like this, and I'd get one leg way behind me and one leg sort of like that, and after about five minutes they'd pop up. And Sekiroshi would come by with the stick, kindly, about halfway through each period.

[01:15]

And I finally learned to stay halfway through a period. And then when he came by, I would bow and put my legs up and sit like this. And so some of you need to have more height. Usually if you get enough height, you can get your legs more or less, your knees more or less to touch and things. Okay. The question, I mean, in general, Buddhism, every word, the tendency is to have every word cover every other word. Dharma can mean everything, etc., But to have meditation have some specific meaning, I think I'd like to limit the meaning to sitting meditation, and which is really better translated as absorption.

[02:34]

So then the question is, what is the difference between mindfulness and meditation? Now, you can have a zazen mind and it can be present as a kind of background of your mind all the time. But you probably have to discover that through sitting. Now, overall the basic practice of Buddhism is mindfulness.

[03:49]

But I believe that if there were not also meditation, Buddhism wouldn't exist. Buddhism basically is an answer to the question, is there a mind which is neither waking mind, dreaming mind, or deep sleep mind? And a mind that includes these three or is more than these three. So if you just practice mindfulness, you would practice the mindfulness of waking mind. and you wouldn't discover the mind that covers, includes all three.

[05:08]

Deep sleep and dreaming. It's an interesting... I mean, this right there is teaching and culture. This is not a question Western culture is asked, but it's a question Indian culture that moved through East Asia asked. You have all noticed that you're awake sometimes, that you dream sometimes, sometimes you're in deep sleep, which is different than dreaming sleep. But on your own, you wouldn't probably think, hey, is there a fourth mind?

[06:28]

And if you had that thought, you know, not too difficult to have that thought, but if you had that thought and found no cultural support from anyone, you'd say, well, no. So I think that teaches us two things. One is the importance of teaching and also the importance that maybe there's something equally obvious that nobody on the planet has thought of yet. The importance of teaching. And I think it's important also to recognize that all the possible combinations of way we could be have not been thought of yet. Okay, so I'm trying to answer your question rather thoroughly because this seminar is about posture and practice and so forth.

[07:47]

So then we can ask, what can meditation do that mindfulness can't do, even if mindfulness is awakened meditation mind? That was a little complicated. So I'm making a distinction between mindfulness of waking mind and the mindfulness that is the awakened mind being mindful. I speak very simple English, but I somehow... So, even awakened mind mindfulness can't know things, can't discover some things that meditation can discover.

[09:25]

Translating is actually a good way to learn Buddhism, but when you translate, you never know what you translated until a few days later. I'll finish the seminar with Ulrike and I'll say, well, did it make sense to you? What did I say? I don't know what you said. And Then a few days later she'll say, oh yeah, now it's coming back to me. I spoke to her last night. She said, I miss everybody. I hope everybody misses me. She has a lot of reservations about going back to teaching because it means she can't participate as fully in the Dharma Sangha.

[11:00]

But she's also excited to go back to science. She was a serious scientist at the Max Planck Institute when she was in her early 20s, so she's actually quite excited to go back into chemistry and molecular biology. But she's also looking forward to working as a natural scientist again, because in her twenties she was really enthusiastic about the Max Planck Institute of Biology and Chemistry. But I say she could be a serious molecular Buddhist. Okay. So, what can meditation tell us or open us to or which mindfulness practice cannot?

[12:10]

One is the physical knowledge of deep stillness. Another would be really discovering the subtle body. The subtle breath body. Another would be discovering how the body can teach itself. That's enough. But really Buddhist practice is the, adept Buddhist practice, is the development of meditation and the development of your mindfulness practice.

[13:22]

Yes? Yeah. A question in a difficult way. So, I mean, Zen developed in Japan. China. And it began in India. I mean, Zen says that, you know, we take the original form as practiced by the Buddha. And so much of Zen, I mean, we have the chanting, certainly chanting it for Japanese, offering it in the West, You see that Zen developed in Korea, developed in Southeast Asia, developed in other places, and I'm wondering if you take away the poor Japanese aspects of Zen, do you still have Zen? Ushmulvi comes from India.

[14:38]

And then this is the way the Ushmulvi came from, the Buddha, you know, lived here. How we eat breakfast, the singing or chanting that we do, the outer layers of the air and so on. So, a lot of aspects of Japanese, sometimes this strong quality. Yeah, this question is my whole life. I've been trying to answer this question. Zen is Chinese.

[16:01]

It's the Chinese answer to Indian Buddhism and the attempt for the Chinese to make Indian Buddhism their own. And there are unique Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese developments of Chinese Zen. But Buddhism is also a self-correcting teaching, largely because of meditation and emptiness. Und hauptsächlich durch Meditation und Lehre.

[17:05]

So emptiness is a wisdom generating consciousness. Lehre ist eine Weisheit. Die Lehre generiert oder hervorbringt Bewusstsein. Ergehen in den Spieß? It's easier, it's easier. They have to check whether my translation was correct. A wisdom generating consciousness. Again in German? No, sorry. As we talked about yesterday, that wisdom, that emptiness does not support conflicted consciousnesses, actions or thoughts, because they're not empty.

[18:10]

Is that too difficult? Yes. Okay. As we said yesterday, I'll go more slowly. Don't worry, because actually it's quite interesting that it's difficult. Okay. You know, because I'm putting words together. Even in American speakers, listen to me and say, What the hell is he talking about? Sometimes I wonder. Okay, so as we discussed yesterday, emptiness does not support conflicted thoughts. Because conflicted thoughts won't, let's say, melt into suchness or into emptiness. And what emptiness will support is wholesome or integrated or...

[19:15]

unconflicted thoughts or actions. So emptiness does not exist as an absolute outside this system somehow. If emptiness existed outside the system somehow, it would in effect be a deity or theological idea. If everything is empty, then emptiness is also empty. And it's an existent, but doesn't have an absolute existence. So, In Taoism there is also this doctrine. Did Taoism influence the Zen or vice versa? No, Taoism was before.

[20:27]

Did Taoism play the same role as the Tibetan region of Tibet? Don't get too complicated. So the question is about Taoism. But I mean, what does that have to do with Taoism? In China, we have Taoism. I think everyone's going to get mentally tired here. Very simple question, not complicated.

[21:40]

Not from what you're saying, but from what I'm saying. Yeah. Is Taoism going to be integrated into Zen and in Buddhism the way the Bonn religion is integrated into Tibetan Buddhism? That's another kind of question. Let me stay with the question you asked back there. Not only is it a self-correcting and own-organizing teaching, Largely because it's based on emptiness and meditation.

[22:47]

It's also been the work of many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of extremely smart, dedicated people. Throughout China, for some centuries, there was something equivalent if you took all the Max Planck Institutes and all the Stanford Research Institutes, etc., and said, all of them, all of the country are Buddhist. And over some centuries, some places with 5,000 monks working together to try to understand these things. I think we've got a teaching that is not much.

[24:00]

It's really essentially the same from country to country. Dogen even for example, taking some contemporary Chinese and Japanese translations, said, this doesn't make sense to me. From my experience, it's like such and such. And modern scholarship has shown that his own version was an accurate translation of the early texts, not the translations in between. So while Buddhism Zen may not be natural, it's experientially verifiable.

[25:03]

Although while I am certainly not Dogen, one thing, he died at 46, and I'm 10 years older than that. That's not true. I'm 14 years older than that, or 15 years older than that. And I'm still, you know, I don't know if I understand Buddhism as well as he did at 20. So she doesn't feel badly that something got missed for the autobahn. From what you said, religions, Western religions tend to be vertical, you know, relationship to God.

[26:35]

Shamanic teachings, indigenous teachings tend to be horizontal and more earth-based. Shamanische Lehren neigen dazu, mehr horizontal zu sein und mehr erdbezogen. And Buddhism is a teaching that's both vertical and horizontal, but if anything, it's more horizontal than vertical. Buddhism ist beides, also sowohl vertikal als auch horizontal, aber vielleicht ist es doch ein bisschen mehr horizontal. So Buddhism, I would describe, you could describe it as a large population urban shamanism. So it's accepted fairly easily the indigenous shamanic traditions of Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. And in fact, there's an interesting history in there, but just from the point of view of Buddhism, after Taoism influenced in Buddhism,

[27:45]

a lot of practitioners and scholars went back and took out the Taoist influences which were significantly different. Now, I think we need a break soon. So I would maybe right now or she'll... Can we take five more minutes or something, ten more minutes? Okay. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. Oh, by the way, in relationship to your question about the trappings of religion and all that, and the chanting, I don't feel smart enough to make all the changes.

[29:04]

And I believe the changes have to come by Buddhism becoming rooted in Western soil. And there's some things you learn from the chanting in In Asian languages you cannot learn in English. So we do things differently. Also machen wir das ein bisschen... I mean, we do things, I do things, like to do things with a mixture. Also ich mache das alles so in so einer Mischung. And wearing robes, did we talk about this, wearing robes here? Mm-hmm. Saturday night, Friday night? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Und Roben tragen. So what do you feel? Do you like me wearing robes better? Was meint er? Mögt ihr mich in Roben lieber?

[30:05]

This is okay? This is better? But robes definitely teach you things, as I think I said, robes definitely teach you things about the body that you don't learn by wearing this kind of clothes. So what I'd like you to do is mention to me things you, I mean, here's a wall, brick, et cetera. And here's a flower. When you look inside yourself or think of your mind, what objects do you see or what categories do you see? When you look into yourself, what do you see?

[31:06]

What kind of objects or categories of objects? I see my eyes from the inside. I see my eyes from the inside. You see yourself seeing from inside, or you see your eyes like the back of the eyes? Well, that's pretty good. I'm going to try that. So what should we call that? An eternal image of the body, something like that. Okay, well, I'll put internal body image. Okay, anybody else?

[32:09]

Yeah? Daydreams and fantasies. That's a generalization. Let's make it more specific. You see images and thoughts. What would you say? Images. OK. We have images. OK. I saw, when I closed the eye, I saw a mask with dark, with eyes, but... That's an image. Okay, that's an image. But let's not get too far out here. Just ordinary things, I'm like. Yeah? Do I have to feel or to see? I just feel. Feel. You feel. Okay. Feeling. Okay? Yes? I wonder what all these people see. I just see this piece of chocolate.

[33:16]

Well, maybe... But you just said a word. You said something, right? So I'm not meaning see, but so you must have thoughts. More than just seeing that piece of chocolate. Well, I'm thinking of this chocolate all the time. Would you share it with me? Oh, it's his. Would you share it with her? Can I have half your part? Okay, someone else. Colors. Colors. Okay, that's connected with maybe images, colors. So that's thoughts?

[34:20]

Okay, thoughts. Breath. Do you feel the breath? Well, it's a mixture of an image and a feeling, so it's a physical sensation. Yes. Schmerz? My knee hurts. Pain, yes. Your knee hurts. Your knee too tight. My vocabulary is increasing.

[35:23]

There's a kind of value system like good and bad, or like it or not like, or like pain or bliss. Okay, I guess we'd have to say if there's a pattern of alternatives, we'd have to say that's a structure, a structure within consciousness. or something like that. Sometimes the opening up of the heart and love feelings, sometimes anxiety. So anxiety, we could call it emotion. Yes, and the other thing is not only emotion, it's connected to the picture.

[36:27]

Okay, emotion, and then we're talking about emotions which have a physical sensation accompanying them, or something like that. I'm trying to find... Now, I'm doing this for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is that language, both English and German, only give us the possibility of identifying certain things. And again, can you imagine that there may be many more things that language doesn't identify? both because we don't have a developed interior consciousness and also because in normal social intercourse, conversation, you don't need a lot of subtle differentiations.

[38:02]

Now, Buddhism, because it works with the development and articulation of an interior consciousness, has a lot of words for things. Okay, Junior? A point of observation. a point of observation, an observation point, control tower. No, an observation point. I'm just... An observation point. Okay. Is that enough? Anybody? Yes? Yes. I don't experience these things as separate entities.

[39:14]

They are somehow connected and, I mean, they're tied together. The connectedness of all this, we would call it. Or interrelatedness or something like that, right? May I ask something? Of course. I didn't quite guess completely what it's about. Or people should say what they have in their mind when they are looking. Is that what I'm asking? No, what you ask, ask. What it is, it is not. I repeat it five more. Should I say this in German? You want to say that in German? Yeah, I only meant to ask in a very obvious way, what do you notice?

[40:45]

Like you notice the flower in the wall, what do you notice as part of the way you describe inner experience? I just wanted to ask, very simply, what you notice, whether you notice the flowers in this room or not. Yes, it's a misunderstanding. I was thinking what I see in me, not what I watch in the room. Okay, that's enough for now, right? Yes? Concentration. Okay. Tension. Okay. Intention. Intention. Absicht. Yes, please.

[41:46]

Please stay. Brown. Please stop here. In mental activities, I want to say some things simply happen and others are done by myself. This difference between activity and passivity. I feel this difference, feeling of activity. So mental activities Okay, so we could say maybe there's intentional mental processing, unintentional mental processes and non-intentional mental processes.

[42:56]

We could say that there are intentional mental processes, non-intentional mental processes and unintentional mental processes. Intent. Okay. Is that enough for now? I mean, we know. But, okay. Shall we have a break? Yes. What? A change between flowing and stopping. Viscosity. Anyway, I think viscosity covers it. Okay.

[43:58]

because it's the difference between whether it's stopped flowing and how it flows. Let's just call it viscosity. I don't know what else to call it. This is a pretty sophisticated bunch we got here. Okay? Okay, let's have a half hour break and we'll start up at 12 and not go too long. Okay? Someone told me that okay comes from a... A German man named Otto Kaiser, who worked at Ford Motor Company, and he always signed things, Otto Kaiser, and after a while it became O.K. But some people also say it's from the German, all correct, spelled... And other people say it comes from the German, all is correct.

[45:22]

Yeah. Well, in the dictionaries they say there's been a long study of the term. And most people think, the etymologist thinks it actually comes from all correct in German. Also in den Werterbüchern gibt es Studien, woher dieses Wort kommt. And the etymologists say it actually comes from German, everything is correct. So there are many discussions about it, but this Otto Kaiser story is simply a nice story. Okay. She said, isn't written with O, but with A. I know, but there's some sort of how that was mispronounced and then they know. Because why they know is because O.K. existed before Otto Kaiser was born.

[46:23]

And you know that because it was okay before Otto Kaiser was born. Okay, I mean, yeah. We want to stop, you know, Is four o'clock okay in the afternoon? Does that give you time to get home or you want to stop later or earlier? Later. None of you have to take planes or trains or something like that? No. I feel very popular in this seminar. Usually by Sunday at noon everybody's so exhausted, you know, they say, can't we leave now?

[47:31]

Maybe I don't know what the difference... Anyway. Now, a couple of people asked me about sitting in... Now, a couple of people asked me about sitting in Berlin. Could we have a sashin in Berlin and things like that? But Berlin does have a sitting group and you could ask Katrin or Neil or Herman about it. And if any of you want to join or sit with some people in Berlin. And I'm trying to find out how to practice together with you in this contemporary age.

[48:32]

And there's no tradition, as most of you know, to teach the way I'm teaching or to teach in this kind of context, kind of from city to city and so forth. And I do believe that part of lay practice can also be a period of semi-monastic practice. And for that we have the Crestone Center in Colorado. And the last minute last night I brought up, because I'd forgotten about it, this idea that we might, that we've been by this place called Johanneshof in the Black Forest.

[49:52]

And I, you know, I don't think I should do it, but if the Dharma Sangha does it, the students here in Europe, the practitioners here in Europe, I think it would be a good idea. Yes, and I think it would be a good idea because I feel it's nice to do the seminar, but it would also be nice to hang out with you the next few days if you could stay around. And I always like to spend time with the people I practice with.

[50:56]

This is a Zen koan. You have another piece of chocolate out here. He divided it carefully before but now he's put a whole new one out. I'm going to get a great big one and put it here. So And it also helps me to know how people feel about it, so I can make a decision whether I think we should go ahead with this. So if any of you want to, at this lunch break or something, take 20 minutes or half an hour and get together, I'm happy, but somebody has to take charge.

[52:11]

I'm available, and I think it would help me to understand, but I don't know if you have the time and so forth. And not everybody, just those who might be interested. Okay. I want to talk about, as I said, mind in Buddhism. If I have my hand here and I move it, That's mind over matter. I mean, I can have the slightest thought, I mean, a thought intangible and ungraspable, a thought which has almost no physical reality, maybe some electrical, chemical qualities,

[53:40]

But the slightest thought and my hand will move. This is quite miraculous. And I can take my right hand and turn my left hand into an object and have my right hand feel my left hand. and I can take my right hand and change my left hand into a kind of object and my right hand feels and understands my left hand. And? Did you say healing? No, feel. Ah, feel. Feel and understand. And, well, I can heal myself too, you know. Maybe you can heal yourself. You can get rid of warts and things like that. Anyway, so for some reason my right hand can become the agent, the doer.

[54:54]

And I can pick up this microphone, you know, with my right hand the same way. Or I can somehow decide my left hand is the doer and my left hand can take hold of my right arm. And I believe that's called a double perception because I can't do that with your hand. I can only do it with my hand. It's one thing that makes me separate from you. Now I notice during the Dalai Lama's talk for example many people put their hands over their chest or both hands over their chest.

[56:04]

I was just in Japan and China for six weeks with Thich Nhat Hanh and a few monks. And during Thich Nhat Hanh's talks, I watched the Asian people, particularly Japanese people, what they did with their hands. And there was a, they did things according to, with their body, a lot of things with their body, in relationship to clearly how they felt about the lecture and how intense the lecture was and so forth. But they generally didn't touch their body, but they kept their hand a distance from their body and moved it up and down in front of their chest, for instance.

[57:12]

As if they were massaging an invisible column here or something. Since you all can't see, I'll stand up. Anyway, I watched people's movements and they would often be something like they'd be sitting or sitting in a chair and so forth and they would start doing things like this. Or they would be sitting like this and they'd... as if they were feeling something in the air. And sometimes they would take their hand and they would move their hand like this, but almost rarely did they touch their hand or touch their body. And this is clearly a cultural difference.

[58:15]

And it's a cultural difference like in Germany, everybody tends to start, they jump the light at the end. In other words, when the traffic lights are going to start to be orange, everyone starts off. In Japan, everyone jumps the light at the end, at the beginning and not the end. Because it turns red and there's still, cars will keep going through for quite a while, but nobody starts up early. I'm a bit confused.

[59:33]

They're just the opposite. But they wait till it's really green before they start up. In fact, they'll even wait a little while before it's green. It is somehow... You know, it's not important. It's just... Should I try to say it again? Yeah.

[60:35]

Well, I said the important thing is that the Germans and Japanese do it just in the opposite way. Yeah, that's right. So they understood that. But you have to, when you cross the street, you have to know whether you're in Germany or Japan, because... Plus they drive on the opposite side of the street, so it really gets... Okay. The Japanese here, living in Berlin... Well, I can tell you an interesting story in relation to that with Japanese. I was driving with a Japanese man, old man, about 80. In Tokyo. Taxi driver. And he was playing, because it was so ironic, he was playing the tapes of the cicadas, this semi, You know, the send me the little insect at night.

[61:42]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. From the rice fields of his home. So I'm going along in the traffic. Yeah. Going along in the traffic and listening to this, because I have had a house in the rice fields too for many years, and so I'm listening to all this ch-ch-ch-ch-ch outside, it's Tokyo. Also habe ich all diese ganzen Zikaden gehört und ich habe auch mal in Japan außerhalb von der Stadt mitten in Reisfeldern und mitten in Zikaden gelebt.

[62:43]

But when we came to an intersection, this guy stopped, he looked to the left to see if any cars were coming, he looked to the right to see if any cars were coming, and then he went. Japanese don't do that. They just come right up the intersection, say this is the end, and then they push out slightly, and then they start looking around. And if they get out in the middle of the intersection and there's a bus or anything, no one backs up because there's no idea in Japanese language of ever backing up. And so I couldn't understand why this guy did this. And I said, did you ever live in America? And he was 80 years old or something like that.

[63:57]

And he had lived in America. His father had been a professor at the University of California. He had lived in America from the time he was about six to he was 20 years old. And he learned to stop, look and listen, which we teach everybody. So once you have these basic patterns, they usually stay even in another culture, my experience is. So anyway, the only point I'm making is, while this is cultural, this difference of how you move your hands in relationship to your body, It's also related to yoga culture.

[65:09]

As many of you have heard me say, but I think I need to make this point for what we're talking about, is Japanese and Cups don't have handles because they want you to do things with two hands. Because your hands are the mediator of your body field and how you open your chakras. And how you open your chakras. So if you watch in a Japanese restaurant like we ate last night, some of us, if a person is holding his cup here and here, he's probably born in Japan or first generation Japanese.

[66:15]

But if he holds it in some more loose way or with one hand, he's probably grown up, probably second generation at least, I would say. So when you're in a Japanese restaurant, like some of us did yesterday evening, when we see that someone Because these are stopping points. And this is part of the way in Zen practice you eat with your eating bowls in a sashin, for instance.

[67:16]

So again, in this culture, if I pass her the bell, I'm passing myself when I use both hands and directing my energy toward her, not just giving her the bell. And you can feel that you can practice that when you're having lunch of passing yourself and not just passing the salt to somebody. And feel the difference when you Don't just turn your head or just hands. Turn your body toward them as if there's a light here, and you take something. And then you, generally, you bring it into your body field, empowering it, and then you put it down. So in yogic cultures, and I'm trying to show you this because it's something you can do,

[68:17]

but it's not our custom and it requires teaching to do. So that you pick something up, you bring it into your body field and then you put it down. You just don't move it here. You bring it in, And put it down. So, mind is something, or let me say, mind is an English word. Mind is an English word. There is no exact equivalent in German and there is also no exact equivalent in Sanskrit or Chinese.

[69:30]

But it happens to be, and it will be interesting to see what happens in European languages, but English has a huge, has the largest vocabulary of any Western language. But German has more verbs than English. And so English allows one to create Buddhist terms more easily than most European languages. But I'm sure that German allows some Buddhist terms to be created in ways that English doesn't. But we have to be careful. For instance, if you're studying something like the Paramitas, and you're looking at the first Paramita as generosity, And the sixth parameter is wisdom.

[71:02]

So you can try to make those work together, like you can have the wisdom of generosity. But this is mostly nonsense. I mean, it makes some sense, but what is meant by wisdom in the Paramitas, even though it's translated by the English word wisdom, can't be easily combined with generosity, the English word generosity. So when I say we have to take some of our English and German words and make them into Buddhist terms, What I mean is you have to make these words your own through your own practice and your own understanding.

[72:10]

Now, my teacher, Suzuki Roshi, may have created the term big mind, actually, Trying to use the English term mind and then make that the sense of big mind. But in any case, as a Buddhist term, using the word mind, let me try to give you a definition. Mind is that aliveness in which there is no outside point. Now, for instance, consciousness, you can have an outside point.

[73:39]

You can feel like you're more conscious or less conscious. Or you're more concentrated or less concentrated. Or maybe you're angry. As soon as you say you're angry, you have an outside point on the anger. But mind, there's no outside point to observe mind from because all points are mind. For example, the ocean can't have a point outside the ocean. So that means that mind as understood in Buddhism is always, has a dimension, a quality of mystery. Because you can't reach the end of mind or take some outside point of view on mind.

[74:50]

So mind can't be grasped. And mind can't be fully known. You can only know aspects of mind. But then we can decide to, although we can't fully know mind, we are mind. But we can study the aspects of mind. So what I asked you to do here is to give me some aspects of mind or some observable aspects of mind. Okay, now this is basically what Buddhism has done over some centuries, identified all the different aspects of mind they can.

[75:59]

And then to say, how do they relate together? And are they in different levels? And how do the different levels, when you organize some things on one level and some things on another level, How do those different levels then interact? And from that basic point of view, all the teachings about mind have developed. For example, Freud made distinction between id, ego, superego and unconscious and so forth.

[77:11]

And this is one system and Buddhism has developed another system over many centuries which actually is fairly simple and I can explain some of it to you. And if it's okay with you, I'd like to try to do that after lunch. And, Giulio, you want to say something? I don't get it. If I'm angry, angry is an emotion, but it's only an aspect of mind. And through an aspect of mind, an outside point is possible. Yes. If I am angry, as Giulio said, if I am angry, then it is a feeling.

[78:18]

And if I can say that I am angry, then I look at the anger from the outside, so to speak. The anger is only an aspect of the mind. And the anger is only an aspect, and I can look at that from the outside. I can look at the aspect of the mind from the outside, but the mind does not. I think that's important. Because anger is an aspect of mind, you can transform anger. Because you can have an outside point of view on anger, anger can be transformed. And the practice of mindfulness is simply to develop the outside aspect on emotions and feelings and perceptions. And developing the outside aspect in itself is transformative.

[79:25]

In other words, and that's very characteristic of basic mindfulness practice, I mean, you know you're angry. You're angry, that's one thing. You also notice that you're angry, that's a second thing. And mindfulness practice is to put your energy into noticing that you're angry, not so much in being angry. And when you do that, you're, one, distributing your energy differently, And you're also developing a part of you which is not angry, while one part of you is angry.

[80:50]

And as you get more sophisticated, then you move your continuity, your identity stream into the part of you that's not angry. Into the larger field of mind which observes anger. And then you can still be angry, but at the same time it's absorbed in a larger field. calm mind. So characteristic of mindfulness practice is you don't try to change your anger. You just notice that you're angry. Now I'm angry. Now I'm angrier.

[82:05]

Oh, wow. Now I'm really, this is, whoo, my anger. I'm sick with anger. Now it's a little less. Now it's a little less, you know. If you try to do something, I wish I wasn't angry, blah, blah, then you have two aspects of the mind relating which don't create this calm space. So the secret of mindfulness, you may also have to control your anger, but the secret of, or whatever the emotion is, But still at the same time, the basic practice is just to observe, not to change. Because by doing that, you're changing the structure of mind, not just doing something about your anger. If you just observe, you change the structure of the mind and not by changing the anger.

[83:28]

What you're saying is my experience too, but for me the four abandonments are in total contrast to that. The question has been coming, every time I think about it I can only not identify and observe a thought or an emotion if I feel myself outside and I don't discriminate in the thought. For me the four abandonments are a factor of discrimination. and of duality and, you know, deciding and putting up categories. Could you say that yourself in German? What he said before was also my experience. For me, since yesterday, the question has been asked again and again how the four solutions fit in there, because I have the feeling that the thoughts that one distinguishes the second and third mobile image from the thought. And for me it is then, when I do that, then I identify myself with it at the same time and then I can, well, that doesn't fit together for me.

[84:36]

I don't know whether I should respond or I should let this four abandonments just mature in you or you get more familiar with them. But maybe I'll respond a tiny bit. One of the things that meditation practice can do, which mindfulness practice can't do, is the psychological practice of following a thought to its source. Okay, so you're working with, let's say that you have a sense of anxiety. I'll make something up, okay?

[86:09]

You have a sense of anxiety, and when that anxiety comes up, you just observe it and you continue about your day. And you're noticing you're anxious at certain times, more in the morning than in the afternoon. And working with mindfulness, you do more and more develop a background mind that's calm and at ease. And that allows you to deal with your anxiety and also tends to absorb and lessen the anxiety. But then still this anxiety comes up most mornings. Okay, so then you can start another practice, which is to notice what triggers the anxiety.

[87:25]

It's usually in the morning and not in the afternoon. And it's usually when you start walking down the street. So you begin to see that and then you notice when anxiety comes up it's associated with a chain of thought and you begin to find the kind of thought that's at the root of it. And at the root of it you find that in the morning you feel threatened by how other people will see you. And you see people, you feel threatened by people in the morning because before your day gets started and you're engaged, this feeling that people want to harm you or compete with you is there. But then you discover that actually you fear they want to hurt you or compete with you because actually you want to compete with them and hurt them.

[88:54]

And you notice that this feeling is an unwholesome thought. Now you've identified when it happens in your day and what it's associated with. And now you use the strength of mindfulness in this development of this background mind that's calm To abandon the root thought that you are somehow separate from other people in a way that you need to prove your superiority. So you abandon that unwholesome thought. That's all there is to it. What did he say?

[90:33]

I couldn't hear him. Yeah, that's all. Not more. But do you see what I mean? Are you serious? You see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But it's as simple... But conceptually, it's simple as you notice when the windows open, you get a cold from a draft, so you close the window. I'm subject to an unwholesome draft. Please close the window. Then there's the process of abandoning that unwholesome thought by working on seeing yourself as a share of the whole with others. I didn't promise you it was easy.

[91:36]

But really, listen, I want to tell you, if you understand it well, the practice isn't so difficult. if you don't understand it well, the practice is very difficult. So the clarity of your understanding makes the practice work. Now, if your understanding isn't clear, the practice will still work, but, you know, Yes, Julio. Maybe it will help to say that in order to abandon, the first step is a state of uncorrected mind and acceptance of that thought.

[92:48]

That's why I put it first. Mm-hmm. Ah, yeah. I mean, let me say that we have to take a break in a moment. So let me say that the Eightfold Path starts with right views. And let me give you an example now. the most common example I use, if I see you as over there, separated from me, I have a basic assumption that space separates us.

[94:04]

And that influences everything I do and everything I think. That's an unwholesome thought. A more wholesome thought or more accurate thought is space also connects. So if I go to my initial state of mind at the most basic assumptions before perception occurs, feel space connects, I'll start relating to the world differently. That was hard to translate, sir. If the initial assumption of my mind before a perception occurs and before associative thinking occurs that all my perceptions and mental processes are conditioned by space also connects

[95:14]

I'll see the world differently and act within it differently. So that's the difference between wholesome actions and thoughts and unwholesome actions and thoughts. So if I think that we're permanent, that's an unwholesome thought. At the basic, what we call an accurately assuming consciousness,

[95:40]

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