Finding their companionship. And then, you know, okay, so what... One thing that's possible... Well, obviously the main thing that's possible with sitting, which isn't possible in mindfulness, is through sitting still. As I said, it brings the mind into, first your body comes into a kind of stillness, and you get so that you can really sit quite still. And not scratching. For some specific length of time.

[01:01]

And if you really want to do this practice, you should do it for a specific length of time. And I'm such a believer in this posture. And think, you know, it's strange I'm a believer in it, but I am. And I really believe in introducing it into this culture. That I think it's better to do this posture, something close to it, for five or ten minutes. than half an hour or 45 minutes in some other posture. Particularly if you're interested in the wisdom side of the practice and not just the compassion side of the practice. Vor allen Dingen dann, wenn ihr auch an der Weisheitsaspekt der Lehre interessiert seid, nicht nur an dem Mitgefühlsaspekt.

[02:20]

But please, give me a little leeway in these words like wisdom and compassion. I'm trying to suggest something, not make strong philosophical distinctions. So you can begin to see your mind functioning. And feel it function in relationship to the body. And functioning in relationship to your energy. Or your chi or ki. But you can also not just study the mind, you can study the body itself. For example, I can have my right hand take hold of my left hand. Don't you think that's rather peculiar?

[03:30]

My left hand can say, hey, cut that out, and it can take hold of my right hand. I can just feel. I can put my hands together. Or I can feel my left hand is the one feeling my right hand, or I can feel my right hand is the one feeling my left hand. That's peculiar. But it means you can move your mind or feeling into your body. Okay, in just that kind of way. So say you're sitting still. You'd like to study the body. Okay, so you can, let's say that you move the feeling in your left hand. No, we're not emphasizing the right hand.

[04:32]

You can move this feeling of awareness or mind in the body up into the forearm and then into the upper arm. If you want now you can move that same feeling up the right arm. Now you have this kind of feeling in your both arms. You can move it into your shoulders. And when you move it into your shoulders, your shoulders change. You can feel another kind of flexibility even maybe in the bones of the shoulders. And you can go down now.

[05:40]

Take the same feeling because somehow your lungs have opened up a little. So let's take this feeling you started in awareness in the hands. And it's now in your shoulders. Now move it inside the body. Move it into the upper tips of the lungs. Feel like you're opening the upper tips of your lungs. Now you can move this feeling down around the lungs. You can feel the lungs. Sort of inside the ribcage. And you can go down and feel your stomach.

[06:42]

And you can even begin to feel your kidney and liver. Your intestines. And in your legs, you can feel the musculature of your legs. So your feet no longer feel like they're down there somewhere. That's when you know the body from the head, from thinking. When mind and body are more together, the feet don't feel down there. Wenn Körper und Geist mehr verbunden sind, dann fühlen sich die Füße nicht mehr als dort unten an. Also auf diese Art und Weise könnt ihr auch den Körper untersuchen. You can get quite familiar with the shapes of your organs and bones and so forth.

[07:47]

It's a kind of skill. Developed from such simple distinctions as noticing that the left hand can touch the right hand or the right, the left. So you get the feeling of mind in your body. And sometimes when you bring your attention to an organ, Like your liver, say. You can feel it throughout your body. You might feel it as a color or even sound. It doesn't necessarily take an anatomical form. But your kidney is a process that's throughout the body.

[09:11]

So as you become more sensitive to this, you can begin to feel the functioning of the organs, not just the shape of the organs. And those of you who are medical doctors, don't worry, this doesn't put you out of business. It just allows you to have patients who are more feel into their body. And maybe can take a little better care of their bodies from inside. So anyway, that's enough on zazen. Which also is speaking about how it's different from mindfulness.

[10:13]

Does anybody have any questions at this point? Before I go to breath about this morning. He said, the concept of karma is a relatively new one. He said, actually, everybody realizes that whatever we do, our thoughts and feelings have some repercussions in life. And so what's the big deal about realizing karma is, isn't the big deal the step from realizing a trivial

[11:19]

level, that all our thoughts and our deeds have repercussions on one end, and realizing that this goes beyond the light level. But the concept is about light, the much larger one, that of the trivial, what the devil can see. In other words, is it a step into metaphysical awareness? Okay. German, please. I was just about to say that the concept of karma is a refugnist, but it is also an integral part of the teaching. And it would not be special for us to recognize that all three thoughts and deeds have a different meaning. Yeah. Well, I think that the idea of karma and the practice of karma Pretty much completely separate from the idea of rebirth.

[12:39]

It's conceptually related to understanding the moment of death. And that the idea at the moment of death you can be free of your karma. But the idea of rebirth, which was also adopted by some of Buddhism, but there are statements attributed to historical Buddha which suggest he doubted rebirth. And there's others that suggested he believed in it or taught it anyway. Yeah, and it may be true. Yeah, but I haven't experienced it or I don't have any knowledge of experiencing it. So I don't teach it.

[13:55]

And there's almost nothing in Zen practice which emphasizes. Yeah. As I say, I have enough trouble leading this life. I'm not thinking about other lives. So you can think about it in terms of it did develop as an idea of successive lifetimes, but as a practice it's not very important in Zen. In Zen. But if it turns out to be true, I hope I know all of you in the next lifetime. Yes. Yes. Why don't you define it?

[15:17]

In English. No, I mean, when I say mind is conditioned moment after moment. When I say that the mind is conditioned moment after moment, This is co-dependent arising or interdependence. Anyway, you can't ignore it, conditioned arising in Buddhism. Also through rebirth and death. So the 12 parts of this chain also include death and rebirth.

[16:24]

I know. But anyway, I don't think that if you read the sutras or the koans, they very seldom emphasize any aspect of rebirth. My prince in security didn't believe in reincarnation and rebirth. He said some teachers do and maybe they practice harder because they believe in it. This is a big topic and I don't particularly want to get into it. It might be fun, but it takes a lot of time.

[17:25]

Because I've discussed this with the Dalai Lama and the Thich Nhat Hanh and a lot of people. And they have public opinions and private opinions. All I can say is, I'm ignorant, so I only teach what I know. And I always, as you can see, try to relate this to our actual experience. And I try to find terms in English or German. rather than using Sanskrit or Pali terms. And if I decide to work with a Sanskrit term to see where it goes, I try to then find English equivalents.

[18:31]

Eric, you had some question you wanted to bring up? Or Christina, yeah? My experience coming to this seminar, when we started talking about the mind moment of the moment, is that it takes some opening up to be able to enter this mind. Yes. that is necessary to let go of this continuity of mind, say, around vigorous thoughts and so on. Could you talk about what helps bridging? I mean, what kind of continuity do you have when you stay in this mind moment after moment? Because you need one kind of continuity And then we are somehow moment after moment.

[19:31]

That's insecure territory. Insecure. Insecure territory. Deutsch, bitte. My experience, every time I come to the seminar and hear Roshi talk about this spirit moment after moment, moment after moment, I need to open up to this spirit, to this forward dance, to this spirit, to this forward dance, [...] And my question is, what can somehow help to build this bridge? So this letting go of continuity, yes, that simply induces uncertainty. You are then in this moment by moment spirit. This is an uncertain territory. Well, I don't think you leave me any choice but to present again, but I'll try to do it maybe briefly, the three functions of self.

[20:41]

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I hate to repeat, On the other hand, we keep building up the vocabulary and we have to find these terms in our own experience. And my sense is that We've got to get ourselves away from seeing self as an entity. If you have self as an entity, you then have the people teach them that there's no self or something like that. But if you see self as functions, you can see that we always have to

[21:48]

have these functions in some form or other. And they're very simple. The first is separateness. Second is connectedness. And the third is continuity. Okay, so separateness is that this is my voice and not Marie-Louise's. Or it's not your hearing some voice in your head. We have to be able to make that distinction. And if you can't, you might be in a mental hospital.

[23:06]

And your immune system is a kind of self. It decides what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you. Okay, connectedness. This is how we're connected. And in our culture that mostly means how we behave toward each other. Rightness and so on. But we don't feel already connected. We feel already separate. And as I say over and over again, we feel space separates us. And as I have always said, we believe that space separates us, that I am here and you are over there.

[24:10]

And that space separates us. But space also connects us. And we need to discover the mind which feels space connecting. Okay. And then there's continuity. And most of us find our continuity in our thinking. From moment to moment. We generally find that in our thinking. So now we can go to break.

[25:14]

What time should we take a break? Maybe in a little while. You're ready to go now. Okay, so let's take the practice of bringing your attention to your breath. Now again, I'm going through what I'm calling these five fundamentals. And from my experience, if you really understand these, And practice them with some thoroughness. It covers most of the territory of Zen practice as I know it. Okay. Okay. Now, it's the easiest thing in the world to bring your attention to your breath.

[26:36]

You can all do it for two or three minutes. Or maybe two or three breaths. It's very difficult to do it for half an hour or 24 hours. I feel present in your breath most of the time. Why is something that's so easy to do for a few moments so difficult to do for a long period of time? My opinion is And my experience is that as long as you find your continuity in your thinking, it's virtually impossible to find your attention, presence, mind in your breath.

[27:39]

to find your attention, your presence, your mind and your brain. Sorry. You bring your attention to your breath. And it snaps back to your thinking. And you bring it back and it snaps back. And as long as you find your psychological or personal sense of continuity... in your thinking, in your narrative story, as long as you identify with consciousness as who you are. Now you may know intellectually that everything is impermanent, And there's no permanent self.

[29:03]

But as long as your attention keeps going back to your thinking, means you have a subtle belief in the permanence of self. Or the need to find your continuity through thinking. Okay. If you keep trying to bring your attention to yourself, to your breath, eventually at some point, it just rests in your breath. And when that happens, you've changed or freed yourself from identifying, freed yourself, your attention, from identifying with thought as continuity. One thing I wanted to say before we had lunch,

[30:04]

was one thing that happens when you learn to sit still. And sit a specific length of time. 20 minutes or 40 minutes. And whatever you decide, you sit that length of time. And as I said, you don't scratch. or you break the adhesive connection between thought and action. So if you think of something, normally we feel we might act on. But as soon as you know, you don't have to act on what you think. You can really feel that in your body. Whatever comes up, you can just sit still. Then it's almost like a psychoanalytic process. More and more things were just things you didn't know were part of your personal history so much.

[31:43]

And I think in the West, since we have so much identification with our story as us, So much identification with our story as us. I call it counting to one. Counting to one. You try to count to ten your breath. You only get to one or two. And then all your story comes back. So it's the practice of counting to one. And It takes about two years, I think, before you in effect recapitulate your story. And as I say, reparent yourself. It's a kind of power. Your story becomes your own possession and you don't feel like a victim.

[32:45]

So this breaking adhesive connection between thought and action is connected and part of the process of Freeing yourself from identifying your thought as who you are. And as where you find your continuity. So through that you begin to find your continuity in your breath and your body and phenomenon. it's a huge change in mind you're in a different world if you did nothing as I would say if you did nothing in the next couple of years but get to the point where breath and tension, we're resting together.

[34:17]

Or breath and awareness were together. You'll be in a slightly different world. You used the word trivial before. What? Yeah, probably, yeah. And trivia I like, you know, because it means three roads. So it means each moment isn't trivial at all. It's a choice. So these tiny little moments of choice, when they're based on finding your continuity in breath, body, and phenomena, you find yourself in a much more of a dharmic group. unless in a karmic world in the karma primarily carried in your thinking carried in the dualistic mind of comparative thinking I mean as a preacher I shouldn't make too many promises

[35:33]

But I promise you this makes a big difference. Okay. So, sure. I mean, it sounds now like either you say this or the other. But in my function as a mother, I'm very often occupied by just holding things together. I have to do this, I have to do that, I have to take this and that, I have to figure everything out. How do you work with stepping out and stepping in? Deutsch, bitte. Sure. Of course.

[37:01]

How do we do it? Deutsch. Deutsch, bitte. Well, I mean, we have to be, I don't want to get too much into practice questions particular to the two of you or particular to somebody. I mean, not as a problem, but just as, you know, everybody's at a different stage of practice. And I want to speak about this in a way that's useful for everyone. So I'll... I'll jump to wisdom phrases.

[38:07]

And just tell you this little koan you all know I like, or many of you know I like. And then I will tell you the Quran, from which many of you know that I like it very much. Yunyan is sweeping. And his brother monk, who is his actual brother and Dharma brother, and older brother, and perhaps a little sharper. And our lineage goes through the younger brother. We have to accept what we got. The older brother says to Yunyan, Dawu says to Yunyan, he's sweeping. He says, too busy. And Jungian says, you should know there is one who is not busy.

[39:10]

So one way to practice with these things is to use a phrase like that. In the middle of activity, find that place where you're not busy. And one way to practice it is in these pauses. Or stay with the baby's breath while you're with the baby. I think if you have this feeling of doing it, and you bring the intention somehow into your, hold it in your consciousness, you begin to find ways to realize it. As I say, another thing to take is, ideally, is never sacrifice your state of mind. That's hard to do if you're a mother or a father.

[40:22]

Or even as a spouse. It's easy not to sacrifice your state of mind. Sometimes you're always with well-disciplined monks. But with your spouse, sometimes it's a little difficult. Poor you. I'm not speaking about anything personal here. And the translator is not supposed to make comments. But if your practice is pretty good, even with spouses and children, it's possible. The point is not how much you achieve it, but to feel in the direction of not sacrificing your state of mind.

[41:22]

Look at your job that way, how you spend the day. I like the Russian practice when everyone's packing and getting ready to leave. Cars are waiting to take you to the airport. Someone says, sit down. And everyone sits down. You sit for a minute, half a minute, and then everybody gets up and runs to the taxi. But that's pretty much the same as a little bow. And the monasteries always put a little altar right by the toilet. And sometimes you're in a hurry. Even monks are sometimes going to hurry.

[42:41]

And to take off your robe a certain way. And you have to bow just a little over. You enter another space. And sometimes you don't have to even put your robe back on because you... No, that's how you... Okay. You want to say something? Yeah, I don't understand. Don't sacrifice your faith. I mean, my faith is always changing. How can I say, don't sacrifice your faith? What can I say? You have no difference in experience between being distracted and not distracted. Then, when you're distracted, you're sacrificing your state of mind. Yes, so your composure.

[43:55]

Yeah, of course, but I wouldn't, I don't want to. I don't want to say a desirable state of mind. Let us say it's the feeling of not being busy. Feeling of, as I say, going somewhere, feeling you have no place to go. Okay, so why don't we sit for a minute? Then we'll have a break.

[44:58]

Here's the come up here. And I have to feel some kind of entry with all of you. It allows me to speak about these things in a way that we can feel. And not just tell you about something. I know it's possible. But since we don't see each other very often, and since some of you I spent quite a bit of time with, in fact, in the last week, in Wiesloch and then in Schlierbach,

[46:11]

So how to find a common way to talk about these practices? Now I want to come back to the idea of, at least during the seminar, the idea of original mind. Ich möchte auf diese Idee dieses ursprünglichen Geistes zurückkommen, also zumindest während dieses Seminars. And the idea of original mind is part of a kind of group of practices in Zen. Und die Idee, Vorstellung von diesem ursprünglichen Geist ist gleich eine ganze Gruppe von Übungen im Zen. Which are based on kind of trying to take a single practice, a one practice samadhi. Gleich eine ganze Gruppe von Übungen im Zen. which are based on trying to take a single practice, a one-practice samadhi. We can call it one-practice samadhi. To take a simple practice like a phrase or, let's say, original mind,

[47:27]

And a kind of pedagogy. Based on the idea of sudden enlightenment. And you can take a single practice. Yeah, they'd even like raising one finger. But there's a great deal that goes behind that single practice. For a monastic culture in Asia, there's a shared sense of the world. And these practices can work. I think in the West, we need to understand the background behind these practices.

[48:42]

And it's not just in order to teach, you have to understand the background of these practices. I think in order to practice, we have to understand some of the background. Otherwise, our practice slides into our cultural views. So I'm trying to find out and feel from you what kind of things I should bring up that are new for some people and old for other people. But at least I should finish these five, and then we'll come back to the idea of original mind.

[49:57]

Which is one of these kind of one-practice samadhis. And at the same time, I think for us it doesn't make sense unless we really have an ability to experience our own mind, the territory of our own mind. And that's mostly realized through mindfulness. Going through the body the way I did earlier is one aspect of mindfulness of the body. And sometimes we work with the four elements. The solidity and the fluidity, the liquid or water element. And space or air.

[51:07]

And heat or movement, motility. And we try to get a feeling of, first, as I said earlier, our organs, but also we can look at it as our solidity. In other words, we can just be mindful. We can just be mindful of our walking and talking. As I'm speaking now, I can feel my breath in my voice. and I can be mindful of my speaking without having an observer, self-conscious observer of my speaking.

[52:17]

So as we brought our attention into our left or right hand, So wie wir unsere Achtsamkeit in unsere Hände hineingebracht haben, so kann man seinen Geist in seinen Körper hineinbringen. Und in eure Handlungen. Ganz allgemein, führt die Aufmerksamkeit zu dem, was ihr gerade tut. Und zu dem, was gerade auftaucht. But we also can kind of bring this attention to some specific thing. As I said, mind arises through its condition. So actually, if you bring your attention to your solidity, You generate a slightly different mind.

[53:25]

And you can feel other people's spirit. Or you could, as I say, try to develop a feeling of nourishment. So if you try to do things in a way that feel nourishing, as again, I can try to feel my speaking in a way that's nourishing, So that's bringing mindfulness into a kind of focus or attention. Feeling nourished by what we do. Yeah, or I can... Look at Dan again.

[54:37]

And as I look at him, I can feel noticing Dan, or I know well. And the different associations with Dan come up. And as they come up, though, I can try to dissolve them. And when they come up, I can say, oh, I'll dissolve the subject-object distinction. So when I look at Dan, the natural tendency of the mind to make associations, If I take them away, the natural tendency of the mind to make association, I can feel a different kind of connectedness with them. So when I take away the subject-object distinction, I'm moving toward non-duality.

[55:53]

The more I let the subject-object distinction develop, this is okay, but I'm moving toward duality. One feels more separated and one feels more connected. So into the mindfulness I have for each of you, or all of you, I can bring certain ideas or teachings in, In an almost mechanical way. You can simply remind yourself. Like reminding yourself of the one who is not busy. So if I remind myself to dissolve the subject-object distinction, even right now listening to Marie-Louise, I hear her voice differently when I let my mind have less subject-object distinctions.

[57:14]

So this is a way of practicing mindfulness. But you develop by first bringing attention to things. Then you can further develop by bringing teachings into the mindfulness simultaneously. And as you do this, you create more and more space. The mind feels more and more spacious. And there's a kind of shift from again the contents of mind to the field of mind. So mindfulness becomes mindful of mind itself. You can be mindful of the objects of consciousness.

[58:42]

I think we have a problem with to be mindful of, because it's the same to be conscious of in German. So maybe notice? Can you say aware of instead of conscious of? I can use aware of, that's better. Again, these words don't exactly describe what we're talking about.

[59:43]

Maybe we have to start out, go back again and say you're walking, you bring attention to your walking. We can call bringing attention to your walking. I can also say being aware you're walking. That's a little different than just simple attention. So I don't know. You'll have to find in German ways to say it that make sense. Now, when the five skandhas are presented as a teaching, you get a general understanding of the skandhas. And then you hold the skandhas before you.

[61:12]

And this is actually a kind of exercising, as I've said, the muscle of attention. If you keep holding a teaching in front of you, Let's say like the five skandhas, which I've presented several times, so I won't go into it now. You don't know anything about it, just assume it's a word. Assume it's a teaching. Okay. So some teaching, let's say. If you bring a teaching, if you bring a tent, hold the teaching and you understand it, the basics of it. You understand the basics of it.

[62:23]

And what kind of intellectual understanding? Or a kind of information. And enough information to understand the dynamic of it. So then you hold this teaching in your awareness or in your mindfulness. You know how a woman who's pregnant, we can imagine is always aware of her soon to arrive baby. But she does what she's doing during the day. But there's a kind of background mind which is aware of the baby. And everything she does, there's a kind of awareness.

[63:26]

Maybe she doesn't pet cats anymore. Vielleicht rührt sie Katzen nicht mehr an. What kind of disease do you get from cats? Toxoplasmon. Toxoplasmon. Okay, so before you petted cats all the time. Also vorher hat man Katzen die ganze Zeit gestreichelt. But now you say, well, cat. Und jetzt sagt man, oh, eine Katze, und rührt sie nicht mehr an. Or somebody offers you wine for dinner. You say, oh, that much wine for me is that much wine for the baby. So you begin to, you're just doing your life, but the teachings having to do with what you're supposed to do when you're pregnant start coming alive in your mind. And they're held in your background mind. Some of you have asked me questions which relate to this idea of a background mind.

[64:32]

I remember when I first started feeling it years ago, starting to practice, I described it as sort of like if you were driving along a highway. And before that, my experience had been there were all these billboards. ads you know and before I started practicing like in a tunnel of billboards and they were saying things like be a good person remember this study hard the pause that refreshes so But as I began to practice, the billboards kind of receded into the background of the highway.

[65:54]

And I began to see more and more spaces between the billboards. And then I could see mountains between the billboards. And forests and trees. And I began to have a sense of how the trees were cut down to make the billboard. So there was some kind of shift until... My mind was more like the mountains or the trees or even like the space between the trees. And the trees and the billboards and the road and activity appeared in this space of mind. So through practice you just almost naturally develop more and more of a feeling, first of all, of background mind.

[67:16]

And the background more and more becomes where you feel you live or where you feel at ease. And almost becomes the foreground. But let's say it starts out as a kind of background mind, but fills the spaces in the foreground mind. And as Eric said, you don't have to get out of this mind. Okay, in a similar way to the concerns a pregnant woman would have about taking care of a baby. These teachings, or let's call them teachings, you begin to respond to them in your activity.

[68:21]

So if you hold a teaching, as like, again, the skandhas, As you go through your day, and you keep holding form, feeling, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, and you can begin to feel like associative mind, Or the mind when perceptions are emphasized. Which are part of the five skandhas. Suddenly it begins to make sense.

[69:22]

Simply by holding it in the midst of your activity in mindfulness. And if you keep doing this, the teaching, little things begin to inform you about the teaching. Trivial. Small things, you wouldn't notice otherwise, oh, that's what it's about. And you begin to have a flow of insights. And by holding the teaching over some time, in a kind of field of mindfulness, the world begins to confirm the teachings. or make you refine the teaching and refine your understanding of it.

[70:24]

And through this series of insights and the growing coherence of the teaching and so that the world and your own activity begin to be be corresponding, talking, dialoguing through the teaching. The world, you and the teaching begin to come into some correspondence. The world isn't anymore just telling you about the truth of the teaching. Das spricht die Welt zu dir nicht nur mehr über die Wahrheit der Lehren, sondern ihr könnt anfangen, die Lehren zu leben. Das sind sieben oder acht Stufen in der Lehre der Achtsamkeit. Okay, so here, what I've tried to emphasize there is the relationship between mindfulness and wisdom teaching.

[71:37]

And a wisdom teaching is something that you have to confirm for yourself in your own practice. Not just accept it because it's part of Buddhism or part of something someone's told you. But because you've embedded this teaching in mindfulness, Until you've discovered the truth of it or the falsehood of it. And for example, if I keep talking about the five skandhas, I'm going to have to present them. But I've done it so often, sometimes I don't. I feel I'm boring you all. But I would say that mostly the way the skandhas are presented in books is as a philosophical system tied to other teachings.

[72:41]

It doesn't make practice sense. For example, I think feelings, the second skandha, does not mean emotions. Emotions fall in the category of perceptions. But in any case, you have to discover this for yourself. And the way to discover it is to, first of all, develop sufficient mindfulness so that's where you're living. And then bring these teachings into your own mindfulness, holding them before you And believe it or not, a kind of process happens which proves the dynamic or integrity of the teaching or changes it slightly.

[73:59]

And there are some teachings that Dogen received that it just simply didn't make sense to him. And he felt you had to practice them a certain way. If you practiced them, there was something wrong. So he changed some teachings slightly. And it's turned out in some cases, a couple of cases anyway, that early versions of sutras confirmed his way of understanding it from his practice. We emphasize experience so much in Buddhism

[74:59]

That we should be able to write our own sutras. Or rewrite the sutras. Dogen said, don't let the sutras turn you. You should turn the sutras. And this is, you know, The practice of this is to bring a teaching into your mindfulness until it's so intimately a part of your activity you can feel the truth of it or develop the truth of it so it becomes something you can live. And two or three years later or ten years later, you might live it a slightly different way.

[76:12]

As you yourself mature. Right. Okay, so that's this fourth one again. Practice of wisdom teachings through mindfulness. And third, or the fifth one, is the use of phrases. And that's very particular to Zen practice. Yeah, to Chinese Tang and Sung, particularly Zen practice. Emphasizing not just interdependence but interpenetration.

[77:17]

And to work with phrases in the way I just said you present a teaching to yourself. But phrases are a phrase you take out of a teaching. Take out of a koan. Like the one who is not busy. And certain phrases have a power independent from the story in which they originated. And a koan tries to present certain phrases within the context of the koan, which the context of the koan is powerful enough to move the phrase into your own life. And then when you bring that phrase into a mantra-like practice, you know, repeating the phrase, again, mechanically repeating the phrase,

[78:36]

Or kind of humming it. Until it, let's say, goes into your background mind. Or just silently present. Like having your awareness on your breath. And you let that phrase have its own power in your life, rather independent from the koan. You've got to see what this means in your own experience. And once it's become your living words, Then you can bring it back to the koan to see if it still belongs there. Usually if the koan's good, a wide koan, You find your personal experience with the phrase, then really starts opening up the koan.

[80:12]

And other phrases come out you can work with. So it's like a story, a koan is like a little story. written on several levels which don't quite fit together or look like they don't quite fit together and yet the doors of them are little phrases little phrases that when you add mindfulness and add a repeated mindfulness and bring it back to the koan, your own experience begins to open up the koan. So koans can have quite a different meaning when you're older. Or practice longer.

[81:24]

And this is rather different than the use of koans when they're a kind of system of you go from this koan to that koan to that koan. Which is one way to work with koans. Before Hakuin, koans weren't given by the teacher to the disciple. In the 15th century or so. Before that, koans were presented from your life situation or by the teacher in a lecture. Like probably since yesterday. There are some things that I've said or that have come up as questions that don't entirely make sense to you.

[82:37]

That could be a koan for you. Maybe how you understand karma in your own experience. Now, if you want to work with that, you can't leave the karma as a theory. So, though it's helpful for someone to have a little information between the Hindu view and the Buddhist view, but you don't want too much information. You want to bring it really into your own mindfulness. And not into your thinking. You use your thinking to put the praise or the teaching into your mindfulness. And then instead of letting your thinking work on it, you let your mindfulness work on it.

[83:51]

And I know scientists have told me and mathematicians, they work on problems this way. Particularly in pure math. where they're working on problems where there is no solution, known solution. So they get to know everything they can about the problem. And then they just let it sort of be there in them. And sometimes, oh yes, that actually happens. Unfortunately, that's how Teller saw how to do the hydrogen bomb. And that's also how Watson saw the DNA pattern. So this isn't just a Buddhist idea.

[85:05]

This is a process of thinking or developing an understanding through mindfulness rather than through thinking. Das ist eine Art zu denken oder eine Idee zu entwickeln, vielmehr durch Achtsamkeit als durch reines Denken. And you can do it naturally or by chance. Ihr könnt das natürlich oder durch Glückssache machen. Or you can develop it as a craft. Oder ihr könnt das als Handwerk entwickeln. And the practice in Buddhism is to develop mindfulness as a kind of power or strength. A way of being in the world. Yeah. Now, so, if in this context since last night, Certain situations have been presented to you that are like a koan.

[86:11]

And sometimes I've likened it to a strange fishhook. It's some kind of strange object. You don't know what it is. But because you're practicing with this image, sometimes it's an image and not a phrase, Hanging down there in the background mind. And one day you're doing something entirely different. You're having a wild dinner with friends. To see who can get their napkin dirtiest fastest. And while you're eating and enjoying yourself, a strange fish swims through the air. Something you've never seen before. and this corn hook and he says ah I've been waiting to catch this and the whole thing makes sense but these phrases don't have to come from Buddhism working with phrases means they can come from your own life and at first they don't have to be you know anything other than a simple question

[87:44]

And how can I get along with my spouse better? Or how can I solve some kind of other problem in my life? Like Giorgio, you're an architect. You're like, what kind of building could fit there? And you just keep holding that, and then, what kind of building could fit there? That's how I figured out the Wheelwright Center at Gringotts. You know, that building sits down there in that space in front of the old house. I knew we had to enlarge that building. But I couldn't figure out how to do it. And so I just kept concentrating on it. And one day that whole building just there appeared in my mind.

[88:59]

We had to pour about six or eight trucks of cement, do you remember that? Into the stream, because it's a stream bed, it's sitting there. But now that building will survive any California earthquake. So it can be a personal problem, a professional problem, or a question. And whatever question you take, when it's useful to take something, if you want to practice Zen, don't just do Zazen. Develop the skill of working with phrases. Yeah, so... Just something that comes up in your life.

[90:04]

I worked with things like what is darkness. A feeling of some darkness or something beyond thinking. So I ask myself, what is darkness? What is darkness? Or you could ask, what is consciousness? What should I do next? Should I change my job? If you get skillful at bringing mindfulness to simple questions, You can bring more and more subtle questions to mindfulness. And mindfulness even begins to show you subtle questions. Mm-hmm. So these last two, mindfulness, wisdom phrase, last three, mindfulness, wisdom phrases, and wisdom teaching, it's not just a way of being more alert.

[91:28]

It's a way of thinking non-thinking, or somehow thinking in the world in a new way, through mindfulness. And this practice arises through a strong basis in sitting practice and in bringing attention to your breath. And this practice comes up through a strong basis in the Sazen sitting practice and in the So there's more to Zen than just these five. But I think if you know these five, the rest of Zen practice will be pretty clear. dann wird der Rest von der Zen-Praxis für euch ziemlich klar sein.

[92:40]

So why don't we sit for a few minutes and we'll have a break before dinner. And if there are questions about these five or anything else, I'm happy to discuss it with you tomorrow.

[93:09]

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