The mental Buddhist teachings are that everything is marked by impermanence, suffering and change. One of the things that are impermanent and interdependent and interpenetrating Those are all ideas that's easy enough to understand, accept. But how do we bring them into the details of our experience? As I say, how do we break the habit of implicit permanence? Yeah, and the central practice is really this idea of appearance.

[01:29]

Noticing things, noticing Appearance at the moment of appearing. Dogen's central teaching is encapsulated in his phrase, Genjo Koan. which we can as practice translate to complete that which appears. That means to be present at the moment things appear to you.

[02:45]

Das bedeutet, gegenwärtig zu sein in dem Moment, in dem dir Dinge erscheinen. You get in the habit of this and you notice things like a day or two before the flu appears or a cold appears, you notice your body change. Diese Dinge geschehen dir so, sodass du bevor... Or before a headache appears. Because you get in the habit of being present as things are happening to you. Physically and mentally. Now if you're present at the moment things happen to you. Which is again the center of practicing. You can shape that which appears.

[04:06]

Well, we already shaped that which appears. Our habits of memory and so forth shape what appears instant. You're trying to get your attention there before the shaping occurs. So the five dharmas say, you know, be there at appearance. Be there when things appear. And it's not a matter of who's there or some kind of idea of you being there.

[05:11]

It's too quick for that. It's just a noticing is there. Now what do we notice happens? For most of us, we name it. And that naming quickly shifts into really a word. And that word becomes brings in association, discrimination. Now, can you be present at the moment of naming? And there's a very traditional practice to be present at the moment of naming.

[06:13]

And just to name. So if I was practicing that, I would, looking out there like a little kid, I'd say, little Sophie, I'd say lamp. And then I would look out there like a little child, like Sophia, and say, lamp, post, pond, [...] pond. If I just do that as a habit, it actually stops your thinking. So if you take a walk, and as you're walking along, you just notice things, grass, gravel, If we're sitting, the tradition is, this is a long breath or this is a short breath.

[07:45]

So if we just use naming, it shifts us back toward appearance. But if we allow it To become words, we're into discrimination and association. Now you're trying to intervene with wisdom or right knowledge. This is a kind of, I call it Dharma surgery. If I give you the five dharmas, I should give you the four marks. soll sich euch auch die vier Kennzeichen geben.

[09:00]

Geburt. Dauer. Das ist wirklich dasselbe. Dissolution. Auflösung. Disappearance. Und verschwinden. Now what's the difference between this or Marx and this? Was ist der Unterschied zwischen den vier Kennzeichen und diesem? This is more just a description. You notice it. Things arise, they last for a little while, and they cease. And the five dharmas and the four marks are teachings based on this.

[10:13]

So if you take four marks, I hear this is called birth and not appearance. So the fact that the word birth is used means you're really trying to emphasize the beginning of each moment. Now this is a kind of revolution in your thinking and shaping your mind if you actually create this new habit. Creating this habit? Yeah, creating this, making this a habit.

[11:22]

It's so simple, I think, that you can't believe me. But it contradicts the habit we have now of making the world real. And not having much real experience of participating in the world we make. By calling this birth instead of appearance, arising. By calling this birth instead of arising.

[12:32]

This... emphasizes your conscious participation. And then you notice things have a certain duration. And that's what Dogen means when he says to complete that which appears. You can give it more duration or... different, you know, etc. You can be really, with your energy, present in the duration. And then it will change. The dissolution pretty much occurs by itself. And then the disappearance is there because it's really an act of sort of wiping the slate clean.

[13:50]

So if we take the four marks as a wisdom teacher, Wenn wir die vier Kennzeichen als Weisheitslehre nehmen, könnte man sagen, dass man die vier Kennzeichen auf die Erscheinung anwendet. Oder auf die Erscheinung. So basically you're taking, you're noticing that actually the way we function. Let things appear.

[14:52]

We tend to name them, discriminate about them and so forth. And then we just start discriminating thinking. It's okay, it's okay. But it's different when you don't get caught in that discrimination. And don't identify with that discrimination. Yeah, it affects us, certainly it affects us. But it's not us. It's not our true nature. Again, if you feel that, you just don't have anxiety and worries the same way.

[16:08]

If this makes any sense, but anxieties and worries belong to the foreground mind. I think of You know how a movie is actually a series of stills put together. Like those kids' books, you know, you flip the pages and things. It's a little like through practice you can flip the pages slowly or quickly.

[17:12]

Through practice you can flip the pages slowly or quickly. Or if a movie actor could experience the stills while the audience was experiencing the movement. Each movie frame is a still. So you could experience the stills while the observer saw the movement. I would guess that this experience of everything appearing in slow motion to be in in the zone, in sports. There's something like flipping the pages very slowly.

[18:16]

Now, another way to practice this is to get at this, you know. is to practice shifting your attention from details to field. Okay, so say, like take trees are good. I find trees good for this kind of practice. You look at a detail of the tree. And you don't think about it. It's a branch or a leaf or something.

[19:19]

And then you shift to the feel of the whole tree. The feel or the field? Both. I was going to say feel first and then feel second, but the feel of the whole tree. The tree all at once. Or the tree the space occupies. Or the space the tree occupies. And then go back to a detail. And you can get kind of used to this shift. From detail to... feeling the whole tree.

[20:24]

Now, like if I look at you, I actually by habit tend to notice something in specific. Like the aura of your grey hair. Or your fuzzy beaver head. Or your... So I notice a detail like that and then I shift to feeling all of you at once. And I don't think about you much. Or not at all. But if I find, if I do that, it's not even an exercise anymore.

[21:26]

The shift almost makes it feel like you're coming toward me. Or something's being drawn in. And it gives me a feeling of connectedness with you. Yeah, and with a sense almost of knowing what you're feeling and thinking. with a feeling of almost knowing what you feel and think.

[22:30]

Yes. Hong Ji. [...] actually did the first compilation of koans that led to the Book of Serenity. He said, he says, realize mutual response. And he means something like this when you practice with, say, a tree, the detail and then the field of the tree. You begin to feel the space of the tree.

[23:40]

I remember when Sophia was first starting to try to take hold of things. She couldn't quite get her hand. She would bump me instead of put her hand on me. felt like there was a kind of circle of space around her and she couldn't figure out how to get her hands into it. And eventually she got so she can transfer feeling from her hand and receive feeling from her inner arm. But this sense of a space remained in which she could have had many hands. And when I watch her, I almost see her trail a little space behind her.

[24:58]

That gives a kind of... invisible envelope of space being trailed behind her or going in front of her. You begin to have some More feeling like that, like Julius, something like Julius said earlier. Because you're in this little practice I've just suggested, of going from detail to field, And the detail you can think about.

[26:00]

But the field you can't think about. If you think about it, it's gone. You have to kind of feel the field. So just in such an exercise, you're beginning to change the way your mind functions. So you're going from detail to a kind of feeling of a field. And the feeling of the field shifts into the field of mind itself.

[27:01]

It's an entrance into experiencing mind itself. And the more you have that feel, the more the contents of mind almost seem to be floating in a continuum. like a boat floating in a liquid, like a river, a continuum. And they float in a multidimensional relationship to each other, not just in sequence like railroad cars. Yeah, and so that's one reason I use continuum instead of continuity.

[28:14]

Continuity has more the feel of two things connected with each other. Now, when I talk about a mental continuum, I'm talking more about the field of mind. And they're not just solid objects. They're made from mind. Because after all, it's you perceiving them. So they seem to appear and disappear back into the field of mind.

[29:32]

And there begins to be a more and more feeling of space between things. So the four marks begin to generate a kind of space. And It's a kind of relaxation. It produces a kind of relaxation. So maybe you can feel now more what I said earlier, a kind of imperturbable mind or real stable feeling mind.

[30:35]

So this experience of a background mind, the example I usually use is like a woman who's pregnant, knows her baby's there, but she does her regular daily life. Perhaps she's a little more careful how she walks or what she eats and so forth. So that's a normal experience for us, something like that. And when we practice with the teaching, we hold the teaching in the background of our mind. And it kind of influences what we eat and...

[31:45]

how we walk and so forth. But that step to really developing a background mind, in which you can keep present teaching, hold present a teaching, especially this kind of teaching, tends to dissolve both the feeling of background and foreground into a kind of field of mind itself. And self and mind and possessiveness belongs to foreground mind. So it's something we pay attention to.

[33:00]

But it's not something we identify as the whole of us. So it's not quite the same then how we interact with others and so forth. And now at the same time as we interact with others through our mutual selves, we can also interact with others through this a mutual sense of this field of mind or space of mind. And that's one way you notice how people practice is with people who practiced a long time, you feel that field more than you feel the foreground.

[34:34]

You both agree to use the foreground. And that's sort of fun. But you... It happens with a feeling of the connectedness of the field of mind. And if you look at Zen stories that way, you can see it's a playfulness of two foreground minds. And it's, you know, this is, this is a craft as well as insight. It's changing your mental habits.

[35:51]

And the five dharmas and four marks are ways to change your mental habits. So I'd like us to sit for a few minutes and then have a break. You can be present to details as they appear. Your backbone. Or your breath.

[36:53]

Or whatever sensation appears. Just notice what appears. At the same time, have overall feeling for the field of your body and mind. and at the same time you have an overwhelming feeling for the field of your body and mind. Things tend to get in order

[38:02]

into smaller groups. Maybe five would be good. I guess we could have one upstairs and one downstairs and three here or something. Oh, a couple in the garden, yeah. To turn this into German for yourselves. What I'd suggest you speak about, though, it's up to you. To enter this moment of first appearance, is any of the practices I suggested Do you have a feel for any of them?

[39:48]

Does any one seem more possible than the other? I mean, you can make up one, too. Like I just did, moment of first appearance. So I might myself take that for a few days. Let's see if I could stop the grass at the moment of first appearance. Or a thought or mood at the moment of first appearance. Yeah, okay. So let's take about half an hour, so 4.30, and then we'll start the groups.

[41:02]

And at some point I'll ring a bell two or three times to suggest we slowly stop. Okay. Please don't wait for me to get up. I don't understand how we count to five and we end up with two groups of eight and two groups of five. And all the couples are together somehow. I think kindergarten does it better. You know, I'm interested in which of these practices, if any, you are able to relate to.

[42:22]

Because I find it difficult myself to know how to talk about this. To really... Be convincing or practical about how to interrupt the process of the world appearing to us. Because I'm not kidding when I say this is the center of Zen practice. Most Zen practice emphasizes really a kind of well-being.

[43:34]

You can sit zazen or practice mindfulness. Bring your attention to your breathing. It's very good to do that. Yeah, it's quite wonderful actually. But you're really not But then you don't really practice a Buddhist practice. That's why Buddhism is called Dharmism, probably more accurately. Yeah. Yeah. And the Eightfold Path asks this of us. For most people, the Eightfold Path is a way to pay attention to one's conduct and speech and so forth.

[45:26]

But the Eightfold Path starts with right views. And if there's any right view or integrating view, that's impermanence. And impermanence can't just be an idea. It needs to be how you experience each thing, each moment. Es muss die Art und Weise sein, wie du jedes Ding, jeden Moment erfährst. How to do that, though, is not so easy.

[46:28]

Wie das zu machen ist, das ist nicht so leicht. So, I'd like to know, did you have any luck? Do you have anything to talk about or tell me? Hattet ihr irgendein Glück? Hattet ihr irgendetwas, worüber ihr sprechen konntet und was ihr mir erzählen könntet? We talked about many things, various things that can't be easily summarized. I heard that before somewhere. Yeah. Are supposed to lead us to intensifying and experiencing the here and now moment. And I also think that the changing of views through impermanence and the things that were talked about in the morning

[47:52]

have to profoundly shake our worldview. And probably to fear or also to repression, for example, by forgetting a certain practice of mindfulness that you have started. And that it leads to fear or maybe to a forgetting of a mindfulness practice that one decided to do. For example, I try to, in any occasion where I happen to think of it, watch the breath. And I notice that I forget about it and then happen to remember it again and then I continue to do it.

[49:27]

And that sometimes there is an inner resistance to doing it. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. A good practice would be neither here nor now. Eine gute Übung wäre weder hier noch jetzt. Yeah, because there's really no here-ness and no now-ness. That's a kind of permanence. Denn es gibt nicht wirklich eine Hierheit und eine Jetztheit.

[50:30]

Das ist eine Art Beständigkeit. That might be a good new mantra. Neither here nor now. Where the hell are you? Neither here nor now. Okay, someone else. Yes. In our group we have been talking about different exercises for the longest time to find and hold back this fear and heart. In our group, most of the time, we talked about various practices concerning the holding oneself in the here and now or returning to it.

[51:32]

To return to the present moment and to pause, just to make oneself pause. We talked a little bit about impermanence. And we had the feeling that continuum is somehow in a contrast, in a contradiction to that. And the question arose that when we start to perceive things as impermanent,

[52:34]

What is there then, or what remains then, that is able to give us a hold? What is there that holds? Very good question. Good question. Because the word dharma also means what holds. If everything's changing, what holds? Well, that's partly why I suggested this idea or sense or field or continuum. But I don't want to respond so much now. I just want to hear what you have to say. Okay. Someone else? Yeah. We also talked about practicing with a pause.

[54:15]

and the various experiences that the participants in the group have made with that. Of course, we also got to the topic of impermanence and permanence. And one of the questions was, why is permanence so attractive for us? And that there is an imbalance in the balance, or that there is an... I don't... That there is such an imbalance that the weight lies with permanence and that it requires so much effort to really recognize impermanence.

[55:58]

It's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah. That it's easier to recognize what's not the fact than to recognize the fact. Okay, someone else. Yeah. I wasn't clear about the terms continuum, continuity in relationship to true nature. The word impermanence, does that only relate to time?

[57:02]

Or does it also relate to our true nature? Or is this true nature also impermanent? Okay. They seem to be playing our song. So why don't we sit for a minute or so, a little bit, and then we'll stop. And we'll start tomorrow at 9.30. Is that okay? Okay. Good morning. Say good morning to you. Good morning.

[58:03]

And good morning. Yes. Guten Morgen. Nice to see you all again this morning. And I'm trying to establish a certain shared mind continuum. Establish a certain mind continuum here in this room. If we can... I can't do it by myself, but if we can do it together... A... a teaching can be absorbed much better.

[59:27]

Maybe we could say in the language of this seminar it's absorbed as experience or potential experience. While if we have our usual mind stream, the same teaching gets absorbed as or you try to grasp it through understanding. And then we've taken, in Buddhist language, a step forward when we need to take a step backward. A step backward means a step outside our usual, back from our usual mind. Ein Schritt zurück bedeutet hinaus oder zurück von unserem gewöhnlichen Geist.

[60:55]

Okay, but before I start on something, I'd like to hear anything more from the discussion yesterday. Aber bevor ich jetzt mit etwas anfange, möchte ich gerne noch mehr von dem Gespräch gestern hören. And Hermann wasn't here for the discussion, but he probably had some discussion after dinner. He can report on that. All right. Anyone, please. What wasn't brought up yesterday? I think I have tried to express something all the time.

[62:09]

I think I tried, through the whole time I tried to express something particular. a certain feeling for life that this morning became clearer to me or is clearer to me than yesterday in the discussion. Mm-hmm. This feeling is very simple. It's the feeling of having grown up in a world that stands still. Sometimes like a big painting maybe from Rembrandt or something and there are many people and once in a while one person steps out.

[63:22]

It's very difficult to come close to this circumstance that everything around oneself and oneself too is constantly moving. Okay. I would say that that kind of experience is more characteristic of trusting experience rather than thinking. Okay, so anyone else? Yes? I realized on the first evening

[64:39]

that I missed this opening for the questions, and I talked with you afterwards, and you told me I could have said so. And I realized, in a way, I'm mostly approaching life through acceptance, trying to accept the situation, and so on. But for me it becomes more important in the last time to realise the moments to put my awareness not on acceptance but on where I stand at that moment and that I decide if I want to add something to the situation. And in this happening on that evening it became more clear to me.

[66:03]

You just open your mouth. Please, Deutsch. Ich habe oft eine Haltung geübt des Akzeptierens von Situationen. And lately it has become more and more clear to me how important it is to focus my attention on the moment in a way that I decide which position I take at the moment and what I can contribute to the situation. And that I also have a certain responsibility I create this moment. Yeah, I mean, acceptance in Buddhism does not mean some sort of passive acceptance.

[67:09]

So acceptance can mean accepting where you stand at the moment that you want to say something Or even accepting that I want you to say something. Even if you haven't. So all of this is really a kind of craft or aesthetic. You have to, you know, really... That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is time is As I say, ripening time.

[68:28]

Das ist eine Art und Weise, darauf zu schauen. Und eine andere ist, dass die Zeit, wie ich sage, eine reifende Zeit ist. Clock time is something quite artificial to make everything work together. But ripening time is what we actually live in, where there's moments where things come together or there's a time to act and so forth. And the more you feel that, you let that topography of time tell you what to do. Like I often don't know what to say and something comes up and I think, well, it must be time to say that.

[69:41]

I don't think about it. Well, does that fit into the lecture or not? And if I'm sensitive to that actually the lecture is better organized than if I think it out. In other words, there's some mystery or wisdom to this background mind. There's some kind of non-thinking that thinks. Okay, someone else, a second. One thing we wanted to talk about was finding out the difference between naming and wording.

[70:53]

You mentioned that. Another thing was what happens when we concentrate on one sense field. For example, Julia brought up what happens when you only concentrate on hearing only. But most of the time we also talked about what fuels us and supports us in establishing everyday practice. It was what it led to then. Good. What we talked about yesterday was the difference between giving names and using words for names, then what happens when you concentrate on one field of thought, for example, the field of thought is hearing, and you try to stay there.

[71:57]

Okay. Yeah, Julia. to view self as a function. I find that the more I go on and practice, this is happening, but there's still a certain percentage of time where it doesn't work at all. And once I'm in a place where I identify it in the self, Even so I intellectually know, I have every tool I think available to get out of there. It feels like it's a sickness and I sit in it and I know it's going to take a week or maybe now it's going to take two days.

[73:05]

But I feel that I have no choice at that point to wait and come back to the other place. Deutsch, bitte. Or Italian would be all right, too. In practice, the longer I do it, the more I have the feeling that this state of self as a function and not as a fixed point, that it is possible for a very long time, and then there are always phases where it is not possible. And if I am in a phase where it is not possible, I have no reason to do it. And that is difficult. Okay, you seem to know it's possible.

[74:07]

At this point you have, you or a person like you, has two choices. You can wait and hope that slowly you're you'll be able to use your toolbox more effectively and more often. Or you can stop and say, solving this is the highest priority in my life. You can make it practical and say, if I can solve this, then the rest of my life will go better.

[75:09]

Or you can make it more dramatic and say, I don't want to live my life unless I solve this. This should be something that human beings saw. And if I can solve it, it means other people can solve it. And that's basically the bodhisattva position. Now, of course, even if you take the latter position, you still have to be practical in some way. Yes, you have to make it work in your regular life somehow.

[76:14]

But the latter position is the most powerful. The thing is that this habit of self is extremely deep. We develop things through repetition. And we've been repeating the self for as long as we're alive, all but the first year or two. So it's a kind of miracle of practice and psychotherapy and other approaches that we can change anything at all.

[77:19]

You've got 80% of it, which is really that you understand it's possible. That's the good news. The bad news is the last 20% is the most difficult. But if you know it's possible, it will be possible. And a lot of the practices in Buddhism, dare I mention the word Sashin. I'm teasing you.

[78:23]

And... A practice period at Crestone, things like that are meant for the weaker, those of us who are weaker and need that help. So we can actually put aside some time and say, okay, during this time I'm going to solve this or die. But it's not just about attachment to self. There's a mindological dimension to it and not just a psychological dimension to it. Okay, but I'm tending to come back to that if I can.

[79:27]

Okay, someone else. Yes, behind the column, I can hardly see you. So it is the goal to connect or merge the background mind with the foreground mind? Yes. And what emerges from that is how I assume something like a continuum. A permanent continuum. You've got the idea. Yeah. When you connect that with the body, because it was said that the body reacts to everything, so everything is woven together.

[81:03]

But the body is something impermanent. And the body dies. And what is woven together with the body, what is woven together with the body, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I understand. Nothing but the big questions this morning. Um... The first part of what you said, let me say you've got the basic idea that I've been trying to talk about.

[82:23]

The latter part, that's something, let's leave that aside for a minute, a while, an hour, a lifetime or something. Maybe we have to leave it and find out when we die. So I would like to use the questions this morning or the comments you're making to introduce some things to our mind continuum, our discussion. Much of what I teach is shaped by what I avoid teaching. What I mean by that is there's certain things I've gone over often and I really If there's anyone here, there's always some of you, who had to endure it a number of times, I just don't want to talk about it again.

[84:01]

And also, even if It's a completely new group, which occasionally happens. I feel like Mick Jagger being asked to sing Satisfaction again. I can't get no Satisfaction. Okay. But at the same time, I find if I say things, like I've said almost everything I want to during this seminar.

[85:03]

And it remarkably conforms to this book I happen to be looking at of Hong Ji's And he's trying to say exactly the same that I'm trying to do. But I'm trying to make it something you can grasp and practice. Okay, so I think I have to go back to, as we say in English, some of my old saws.

[86:12]

An old saw is something you've done over and over again. I don't know where the expression comes from. I looked it up once. It's like an old saw. But I don't think it means saw. It's just an expression. Yeah. Is it toilet time? Um... Maybe it is. Anyway, I'll do my whole saw. Okay, here's the stick. It's a particularly ragged one that I got from Beate. It's having a bad hair day.

[87:19]

Do you have that expression in German? Not really. Bad hair day. A bad hair day is a day when you can't get your hair done. Mahakavi and I, we know nothing about this. Yes. I couldn't find my striker, so she loaned me hers. She's been ringing bells for a hundred years. All that long she rings my... Not even in a 200-year-old temple have I ever seen anything like this. Maybe your kids chewed on it when they were little. Not mine. No, it's not yours. Okay. I think it's yours. Oh, my God. Oh, I see. I saw. All right. Shucks, I liked blaming you. Hello.

[88:23]

Come on in. Okay. So, here we got this stick. And if you concentrate on it, until you have only a stick arising mind, Now, that's already a considerable yogic skill. To be able to focus on something and not waver from it. But let's say you can do it. Now the lesson here is that a mind arises on an object.

[89:31]

If I hold this up, you have a glass of water arising mind. Which if you're actually looking with your senses, it'll be a different mind. If your mind is generalized in thinking, it will be the same mind pretty much as this. Okay. So you've got this stickerizing mind and it's fairly stable. Now if I move that into the background of my thinking, and I keep it there, While I'm looking at you and thinking about you and so forth.

[90:51]

But I can still feel the presence of this. That would be like a background mind. And this could be a teaching. Or, you know, the repetitious idea that I'm a good guy. Yeah, it can be a number of things. As what I do in a seminar, I try to hold in mind the benefit of each of you. What's beneficial for each of you? What might be... Oh, so what's beneficial for... Them, yeah. And at the same time, I'm holding in mind the subject of this seminar.

[92:02]

And the closer I can bring those two together, the better I feel. So that's I'm using my background mind and I'm deciding what to put in it. Okay, so now you've got the picture of the foreground mind which is talking with you and the background mind which is holding some intent. Okay, now say that I take this, you're concentrating on this, and I take it away. And you're not thinking about which hand I have it in. Okay. And yet you stay concentrated.

[93:12]

And you don't lose the concentration. What is the focus of mind now? Mind itself. Now the object of mind is the concentrated mind you created, the field of mind you created. And we could call that samadhi. Okay. Now if I bring the stick back up into this concentrated field of mind, and now I have a field of mind concentrated on itself, but yet which the stick is in, we can call that insight. Or something like that.

[94:17]

Now, if we have the eightfold path, could you put the eightfold path up there? the last of the eightfold paths, we can understand as this field of concentration, which you now bring your speech, conduct, livelihood, and so forth into that field of concentration. So the Eightfold Path, we can understand it in considerable depth, but one aspect is to bring a developed field of concentration to all of the first seven.

[95:02]

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