Did I understand it right that as a child you have this innocent consciousness and as an adult you have the structured one? And that you acknowledge both and balance them or keep them in balance? Yeah. I think maybe it's a good word, innocent. I don't know what you said, but she translated innocent.

[01:02]

My point is not that awareness, let's use the word awareness to mean something separate from consciousness, My point is not that awareness is the same as the more innocent mind of a child without structured consciousness. But the child's mind before the onset of consciousness, the development of consciousness, is an example that we can have a mind that's not structured in the way consciousness is structured.

[02:22]

We can have a mind that isn't memory-based. But for us as an adult person, that mind will be different than for a little child. Now, how is that mind present in our life? Well, it's always present. It's just not noticed. It's not noticed unless you make the effort to notice it. Then we could call the effort to notice it wisdom. And we could call the effort continuous presence of unstructured awareness, and functioning through that, we could call that wisdom.

[03:52]

Now, Why would that be wisdom? Sounds like it might be stupid. Well, starting this evening, I will try to speak about the path of wisdom. But, you know, and we don't really have much time from Friday till Sunday sometimes. So I like using these few hours to look at one or two things more carefully than we can starting this evening. Now, I said we don't notice it.

[05:09]

But it helps to notice it. It helps to have some kind of knowledge about the presence of awareness. Or even some, we can say, some kind of conceptual understanding of the possibility of awareness. Now, as I spoke to you about really knowing that if consciousness is structured, it's possible to have an unstructured mind. Although I'm sure that this is already your experience. I'm trying to give you a conceptual recognition of this because if you have a conceptual recognition of it in the midst of all the conceptions we have

[06:22]

That conceptual recognition may help you start recognizing it. May help you start noticing it. Okay. But if you start to practice, you know, like some of you have been practicing a long time, but let's say I can remember the first years of practicing. Mostly you're noticing a bunch of new things. But much of the time you're spending an awful lot of time meditating, if you do it regularly. And on the whole, not too much happens. So you get kind of bored. There must be something more interesting than this.

[07:47]

But interest is a category of consciousness. So you're each absolutely fantastic creatures. There's nothing we know in the universe, the multiverse, that's as complex as each of you. So you can be sure that each one of you is the most extraordinary thing known in the universe. How can you be bored with the most extraordinary thing known in the universe? Because consciousness needs excitement to keep its structure going.

[08:48]

Once you get sort of free of it has to be interesting or exciting, Also, wenn du dich mal davon befreist, dass es interessant oder aufregend sein soll, underneath this kind of surface of boredom, also ist unter dieser Oberfläche von Langeweile, there's categories of satisfaction for which we have no words. Gibt es Kategorien von Befriedigung, für die wir keine Worte haben? Yeah. Just being alive is extraordinarily satisfying. This is the first question. I'm going to finish about seven o'clock tonight. You shouldn't ask me such astute questions.

[10:06]

Ask me some dumb questions, please. So if you start to practice, again, you notice various things. But you don't know what to notice or what to emphasize and what you notice and so forth. But we shouldn't make the teaching a new kind of structure. Which tells you what to notice. So then you're on some kind of new path where it's all figured out. But it helps to be given some hints about what to notice.

[11:12]

The hints that don't take your own experiment away. Okay. Yeah. So let me try to respond to what you said. How does it fit in or how do we balance it? So let me try to give you another conceptual way of looking at it. If I hold up this stick... And you can concentrate on it. And you can eventually sustain your concentration on it.

[12:19]

Now that's not so easy actually. And traditionally and typically your concentration goes somewhere else. And you make an effort and you bring it back. And you bring it back. It's normal stuff. Sometimes it's good to be distracted. We come back with more preciseness then. Eventually the mind just rests on it. Or if it goes away, it comes back by itself. And eventually you can get so that your mind will just rest wherever you put it.

[13:22]

A little bit like the bell. I can put it down here and mostly it just will stay there. So wie die Glocke, wenn ich sie hier hin tue, wird sie meist da einfach bleiben. Vielleicht entscheidet sie sich, da rumzulaufen. Der Mind ist auch so. Er denkt da und dann bleibt er da. All right, so imagine you can concentrate on this. You're pretty focused on it. And I take it away. But you remain concentrated. What are you concentrated on now? Well, you could be concentrated on the field of mind itself. Free of contents.

[14:34]

Okay. So that's another way to look at this mind I'm calling awareness. It's the field of mind in which contents arise. Yeah, now consciousness, I use the word consciousness because it has S-C-I in it, which means the same root as scissors. Yeah. And consciousness divides and separates. So the ordinary way we notice things can't notice the field of mind.

[15:39]

The field of mind must be there. There's some kind of contents come up into something. We can't notice it because consciousness notices distinctions. But you can feel it And all modes of mind have a physical component. So you can feel the field of mind. But you can't exactly think the field of mind. But even when you think the field of mind is still there, it's just now concentrated on content in it.

[16:53]

So it's not so much a matter of balancing, it's a matter of what aspect of mind you act on or act through. Now it takes me some time to establish this way of thinking here. Yeah, but if we were in Asia, About 70% of what I just said is taken for granted. It's part of the culture. That doesn't necessarily make their practice easier, but they don't need this kind of explanation. So I'm in a way justifying my explanation. Because Asian teachers would never explain like I'm doing.

[18:21]

And there's two reasons for that. One is most of these assumptions are already part of the culture. And mostly they're speaking to monastics. who have a way of life structured along these assumptions. So I think as lay persons in the West, We need some kind of understanding of yogic culture. Okay, something else. I promise the answer will be short. I promise the answer will be short this time.

[19:34]

Yes. When Roshi spoke, the language arises from a fundamental being. How can I follow the path back? If language is created out of basic awareness, how can I get back, I mean, follow the steps which got there, back to it again? Well, I think as I said this morning, one example, is the difference between words and naming. Naming does not create consciousness. When names become words, part of syntax and grammar, then they create consciousness.

[20:57]

So if you kind of, as I said, go back to just naming, and particularly naming impermanence, in a way you're reversing the process by which consciousness is constructed. But the interactivity or intersubjectivity of consciousness remains as part of awareness. It's just not tied to language anymore. Sorry, I... That was more complicated. Yeah. The fruits of language, which is a developed intersubjectivity, are still the fruits of our knowing, even if we separate it from language. So those categories still are there, but they can be there more at a kind of feeling level rather than a verbal level.

[22:22]

Because I would say fundamentally, it's about feeling anyway, not language. Okay. Is that enough? Oh dear. I promised it would be shorter. There's lots of ways to alter the structural process of consciousness. Let's start living together and we can figure it out. Okay, something else? Yes. I won't translate here.

[23:24]

My question is, when you are talking about... Oh, I see. Okay, go ahead. When you talk about words and putting them into a sentence, that is still not giving the meaning? Because it's meaning. Yeah, you give them meaning. Yeah, so in the words, instead of names, in the words, the meaning. Yeah, the words. A name just names Andreas. But if I say Andreas is a person... That's not a name anymore, that's language. Yeah, persona, mask, humanity, etc. Persons are supposed to be treated a certain way.

[24:26]

The word person has all kinds of implications. Yeah. So, yeah. But you could of course use person as a name. I could just say person. Yeah, person. Person. Like that. That's what my daughter does. We have this elevator over here that's all glass, goes up and down. And she says man. Man. Man. Other man. Mm-hmm. And then there was somebody standing beside her, blocking her view, and she said, get away, man. Yeah, that was some other, that's not naming anymore.

[25:49]

Marie-Louise took her to the zoo the other day in Basel. And she was particularly fascinated by the bears and the monkeys. And then she turned to Marie-Louise and said, Mama, they're naked. Yeah, because in the children's books they usually have clothes on them. And that's where she learned them, you know. And then she went up to some stranger and she pulled his shirt open and said, naked. So we're trying to look on the other side of culture, you know. So versuchen wir auf die andere Seite der Kultur zu schauen.

[26:53]

Nackt. Something else? Someone else? Oh. Yes, please. You said that in the West that we have a different relation between body and mind. And could you say more about that? Well, in my lifetime, body and mind when I was young were considered to be really quite separate. There were science fiction movies about a brain just sitting in liquid, controlling everything, stuff like that.

[28:06]

Yeah, and we even, I remember... Something a scientist. I think it's the fellow who invented the idea that made a hydrogen bomb possible. He just said his body was fattened down. He said, my body is just here to prop up my brain, you know, to carry it around. But then Einstein, who was our favorite genius, He was able to notice or feel that his ideas came from his body. If he felt something physically and paid attention to it it turned into an idea.

[29:14]

It was this Descartian dualism, I think, therefore I am. And really, body and mind are considered quite separate, you know. You could chop away the body and, you know, no problem. You could have all kinds of artificial limbs and things. And I was just met with a group of scientists in Venice at the Venetian Institute of Science. And one of the older scientists I still felt that basically anything you feel that can't be reduced to neurons and, you know, hormones is not real.

[30:28]

This is the opposite point of view, that there has to be a physical, measurable, bodily basis... for consciousness, mind, etc. And the most interesting work is actually being done by scientists who have been influenced by Buddhism. So we're in the middle of a situation where we still don't know what the relationship between body and mind is. And the new age, which sometimes I call newage, It's a bad English pun because newage rhymes with sewage.

[31:47]

Sorry. But new age thinking is mind and body are just one and everything is one, et cetera. Yeah, but the yogic view would be something like this. Yeah, there's no mind without a body, and no body without a mind of our kind, anyway. Okay, but... we can experience mind and body separately. And in significant ways, we experience mind and body separately.

[32:51]

And how we experience that separation is very culturally determined. But in any case, we experience them separately. But yoga culture says we can develop the relationship between mind and body. Aber die yogische Kultur sagt, wir können die Beziehung zwischen Körper und Mind kreieren. We can cultivate that relationship. Ja, wir können sie wirklich kultivieren. Intentionally cultivate that relationship. Mit Absicht. And yogic practice is a particular way to cultivate the relationship between mind and body. There could be other ways. I don't know. But most cultures, the key to the cultivation is breath. In English, and I think in German, spirit, etc., is very closely related to breath.

[34:23]

Geist, isn't it, related to breath? To inspire and expire is to breathe. Spirit means breath in English. So I can come back to breath, I should come back to breath, but someone else wants to say something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maybe I can hum an answer out of your question. Okay. Central to everything I've been saying.

[35:48]

And the practice which brings everything I've been saying together, which makes it more real, is the practice of bringing attention to your breath. Now, if you bring attention to your breath, what are you doing? You're bringing mind and body together. Attention is mind. And your breath, we can say, is your body. And it's mostly an involuntary activity of the body.

[36:52]

You're breathing while you're asleep. I hope so, anyway. But you're not conscious of your breathing. Now, it makes a huge difference what you bring your attention to. You have an intention to bring your attention to your breath. And the more you can Bring attention to your breath. You're weaving your mind and body together. Keep putting them together. Now, as I've spoken recently about the Eightfold Path, the Buddha's earliest teaching, it starts with views, intentions, right views, right intentions, right speech.

[38:12]

Right conduct. The right livelihood. The right mindfulness. And right concentration. Now that list of eight is the center of all Buddhist practice. And you can understand it as a kind of suggestion about what you bring attention to. How do you bring attention to your views? That would be wisdom. But how do we bring attention to our views? Because it's our views seeing our views.

[39:26]

Yes, so how do we... What do we do? Our views, our intentions should follow from our views. And our speech should follow from our intention. And our conduct should arise from are not just speaking, but our views, thinking, intentions, and so forth. And our conduct should take the shape in our society of our livelihood. And we have to ask, can we bring the fullness of our, the depth of what kind of human being we want to be? To our livelihood.

[40:43]

To our conduct. To our speech. Maybe some of us are lucky enough to be in that territory. And we're all lucky enough to kind of move into that territory. How do we do that? So what's the entry to the Eightfold Path? Entry is actually bringing attention To the middle of the list, sort of the middle, speech. Also, der Eingang ist, die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Mitte dieser Liste, also auf die Rede zu bringen.

[41:50]

And speech is all the ways we talk to ourselves. Und reden, so zum Beispiel, wie wir die ganze Zeit auf uns einreden. If I move my arm, that's a kind of speech. It's body and mind and speech. So speech in Buddhism as a technical term means all the ways we speak. talk to ourselves. How do we bring attention to that? We bring attention through our breath. So like I'm speaking right now, Währenddem ich jetzt hier spreche, ist die Aufmerksamkeit auf das, was ich sage, ist auch in meinem Atem.

[43:12]

Und mein Sprechen ist Teil meines Atems. Mein Sprechen war immer Teil meines Atems. It's hard to speak without a little breath. But my... You didn't translate that the same way. No, it's all right. But there's a difference between having your attention in your mentation But and having it instead, I'm not thinking so much. I'm really, my attention's really in my breath and speech. And in a way, I'm going back to weaving mind and body together through speech.

[44:17]

So I can... Feel my breath and my speaking right now. And if I get in the habit of that, it's also in my thinking. And this is another way to speak about weaving mind and body together. Using now speaking as part of that weaving. And it generates something we can call a truth body. My simple example of that is why do lie detectors work a great deal of the time?

[45:39]

Thinking is intimately connected with the body. You find it very difficult to lie to yourself. You begin to have another kind of process going on. And the more that's a habit, the more you feel kind of sick if you lie to yourself. So this yogic insight that if we join mind, if we join speech, thinking and breath, In an attentional awareness. It changes us in fundamental ways.

[46:59]

It changes our whole way we function, really. Yeah. And then that penetrates our livelihood, our conduct, and so forth. And then we have, after livelihood, the next one is mindfulness. And the eighth is concentration. And this concentration means a kind of Authentic or truthful presence. Und diese Konzentration bedeutet so eine authentische, wahrhafte Präsenz.

[48:06]

And this is, you know, as a yogic teaching. Und als eine yogische Lehre. It says it's usually better for us. if our thinking and mental processes and our consciousness are intimately related to our body, We simply feel better. And the means of developing that relationship is the breath. Doesn't mean there's not other ways of being alive. Yeah, but yogic culture says this is the most satisfying way to be alive. Yeah. Yes.

[49:26]

I have a question about the possibility of changes in structures. First of all, how do I do that? I find that very difficult. As an example, my structure is my attitude. It also has to do with why I am the way I am. And how difficult it is to suddenly bring it in the other direction. The way I am now paying attention, the old structure always falls back. So he talks about the changes in the structure already, how it is difficult to change the posture. You mean our just ordinary posture? Yeah. Yeah. He has a certain structure when he's not conscious.

[50:32]

And when he's conscious, he's able to change it in the way he wants. He sits up. And as soon as I lose the attention on it, I collapse. It changes again. As an example, how difficult that already is. And then we had a cigarette to straighten things out. And if that is already so difficult, how difficult it is to change the structure of views. That was his second part. Yeah, that is even much more difficult. I think it's easier to change the structure of the body than to change the structure of views. The structure of views or the habit of the views is the most difficult place to penetrate. And the penetration of that is the path of wisdom.

[51:34]

And the reason yoga culture uses the body And the reason why the yogic culture uses the body is because the body is more accessible to us than the mind. As there's a... As there's a syntax, grammar to language, and that helps us become clear in our thinking. Yeah, if I'm trying to be clear in what I say to you,

[52:36]

I have to use language clearly. So language is a means for me to develop clarity. One kind of clarity. This evening we'll come back tomorrow to another kind of clarity. I can't do everything in the next few minutes. And there's also a kind of grammar or syntax to physical postures. And you can see people's views and mental habits in their bodies. And you can see the views of people in their bodies.

[53:58]

And you know, for example, when you get a massage, that it can bring up memories. There are memories in our bodies. So part of the posture of sitting is to begin to clear those memories. Very difficult to sit straight until your body is cleared up of a lot of kind of crystalline memory structures. You know, the Diamond Sutra. And many sutras.

[54:59]

Start with some sort of little formula like this. The Buddha was out begging. Yeah, and he got his lunch. And he finished eating. And he washes, he cleans and puts away his bowl. And then he washes his feet. Then he sits upright. Then he establishes his mind in mindfulness. And then he speaks the sutra. Was the sutra there before he spoke it?

[56:25]

No, the basic sense of this is that because he sat upright and established his mind in mindfulness, the teaching appeared. It doesn't come from, excuse me, God or something like that. I'm sorry, but in Buddhism it's pretty pedestrian. It comes from your posture. But a refined, relaxed posture clear of karmic influences. Then he can speak quite easily about how the world appears and how we relate to.

[57:37]

It doesn't mean we always have to be in some kind of stiff posture. But our posture and our awareness are Yeah, that's enough for right now, I think. Yeah, and shall we take a 20-minute break this time? We don't have much time, so maybe I should just say a few things.

[58:46]

But I'm happy to... Before I start, anybody wants to say something? Buddha said that he found out a way out of suffering. What did he mean exactly by that? What did he mean exactly by that? I like your question.

[59:58]

Because I get the sense that you believe it's possible. That he might have meant it. I think that's the first step, to imagine that being free of suffering is possible. So that's good, you've got that far. Still, we have to start with acceptance. We can't start with where we'd like to be. We have to start with where we are. So we start with acceptance. And if you can really accept your situation, whatever it is, it's a kind of freedom.

[61:17]

That already is a kind of freedom from suffering. So that's a starting point. Maybe we can say something more, I don't know, during the seminar, but now that's enough. Yes. Yes, she asked herself, what is a lie? She supposes that what you just said is already the answer to her question, which is, what is a lie?

[62:18]

Is that the answer? When there is really this full acceptance, then I'm out of the reach or out of the territory of a lie. Yeah, I think that's good. I like that. Das mag ich, ja. So I guess what I'd like to say is somewhat connected to what we've been talking about, but just I want to add it to our morning and afternoon.

[63:20]

Another image that can help us in practice. But first let me say that I look at you, each of you, and I can see each of you quite vividly. What do I mean by vivid? I mean I'm not looking, I'm not thinking when I look at you. But I see you, feel you, each of you very vividly.

[64:25]

Maybe it's because when my mind looks at you, it doesn't jump around. It's like when a photograph is really in focus, it's vivid. Yeah, but even a photograph, sometimes photographs out of focus can be very vivid and beautiful too. Mm-hmm. Now, wisdom also means that which holds. Yeah, so in the midst of everything changing, what holds?

[65:31]

Yeah, and Buddhism could also be called Darmism. Dharma means wisdom, it means the law, it means the teachings. Dharma bedeutet weisheit, es bedeutet das Gesetz, die Lehre. But etymologically it means, the word means that which holds. So if I look at you and my mind doesn't jump around as I look at you, Something that's more than thinking seeps in. Thinking can only notice the things I can think about. When my mind, your mind, our mind, isn't thinking but just resting, things that we can't think about begin to penetrate.

[66:55]

And that's the best word I can find for it, something like vividness. And the word also vivid has a sense of energy in it. of chi or ki or something like that. The kind of readiness, aliveness. Yeah, so all of that is what I mean by the word vivid. What am I seeing when I see vividness? I'm seeing mind itself. Because the object itself doesn't have vividness. But when I feel it, look at it, it has a kind of presence, vividness.

[68:38]

I'm no longer just seeing the object. I'm feeling, seeing the mind, see the object. And if I also have this feeling of resting on each object of perception, often there's even a kind of light or shininess to objects. It's interesting, there's lots of words in English which the roots mean to shine. Knowing things as shining, something like shining.

[69:41]

Again, not a quality of consciousness or the object, but a quality of mind itself. Now let me shift a little a bit. Ich möchte wieder so ein bisschen noch davon wechseln. That traditional example and sometimes I mention. Und ein traditionelles Beispiel, welches ich manchmal erwähne. But I think it's again one of the most useful of all images. Und ich glaube, es ist ein ganz nützliches Bild dafür. When you see a wave, an ocean wave. Wenn du eine Meereswelle siehst. What are you seeing? Was siehst du? Well, you're seeing the wave.

[70:53]

You're seeing how rough it is. Okay, du siehst die Welle, wie wild sie ist. And if you're a surfer, some waves are better for surfing than others. So different waves are different, of course. But what All waves have the quality of stillness. If you look at the shape of a wave, the shape of a wave is stillness. Otherwise the wave would fly off into the air. Mathematically, you analyze the shape of the wave.

[72:03]

It's trying to return to stillness. So if you see a wave more deeply, you see stillness. Or if you see a wave more thoroughly or accurately, you see stillness. The real shape of the wave is stillness. Wisdom is something like seeing the stillness of every wave. Or maybe it's better to say feeling the stillness of every wave. Because you see the shape of it, you think the shape of it.

[73:15]

But if you feel the way, you can feel it returning to stillness. You look at a tree in a storm. It's returning to stillness. If you hear my voice, it's returning to silence. So a kind of more fundamental knowing is to feel stillness and silence. Something like what we mean by emptiness. So the Heart Sutra says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth, etc., Yeah, we practice with each sense field.

[74:30]

We practice and know the mind of each sense field. And the karma and memory that's particular to hearing, different than the karma and memory particular to taste, say. And we something, hear something. And we know we're not knowing the whole of it, but we're knowing those segments of it.

[75:32]

And in each one, at the same time, we feel it returning to emptiness. Or returning to this field of mind. Almost like the contents of mind dissolve into mind and reappear as contents. This experience is also called thusness. And thusness is also called wisdom. So you feel on each thing, each thought or each sensory perception, You feel it returning to silence.

[76:41]

It can almost just be silent. Or be still. You look at something and it's still, it seems, even in the midst of moving, stopped. There's a statement in the Upanishads. It's that which the gods cannot know. That which, even when standing, even when standing still, passes all things.

[77:50]

The Upanishads, not Buddhism, effort to describe something So why don't we sit for a few minutes? The stillness of the bell.

[79:31]

Stillness of the passing car. This much we can notice. Even if you don't feel it yet.

[81:30]

There's a grammar of the mind and the body. And a grammar of the body and the mind. And a grammar of the body and the mind. Both always returning to silence, to stillness. Her karma always dissolves a little. The karma always dissolves a little bit. It feels good to sit with you.

[84:06]

Thank you very much. And thank you for translating it in. I'm glad I don't know German because then you can sit beside me. I think it's better when it's a woman, though, than a man, too. I think it's better when it's a woman than a man. Something softer happens when I'm too warm. Thanks. Let me ask as I did earlier in the day. How many of you have... and I've never seen each other before?

[85:09]

Yeah, quite a few. This is nice to get to know somebody new. And how many of you... don't know much about Zen practice. Yeah. I mean really, come on. Don't be so wise. Yeah, since, as I said earlier, again, Andreas told me that there are quite a few new people coming. So I have to think about how to introduce practice and, yeah, also speak to those of you who have been doing this quite a while.

[86:24]

Now, yeah, most of you know, I mean, certainly all of you who are here know that we had a kind of pre-day today, about two-thirds of you, I suppose. We just talked about some things that might be useful for the seminar. wo wir schon so ein bisschen angefangen haben, über Themen zu reden, die für dieses Seminar nützlich sein könnten. And we have this topic, the path of wisdom. Und wir haben dieses Thema, der Weg der Weisheit. We could have almost any topic. Wir könnten so geradezu jede Art von Thema haben.

[87:26]

But if we have some topic, aber wenn wir ein Thema haben, allows us to give, yeah, use it as a way to give, well, to look at the topic, uses an entry to this practice. The path of wisdom. Well, I think what we generally mean by wisdom in Western culture is not what we would think is meant in Buddhist practice.

[88:27]

Although the dictionary says wisdom is to know what is true, right, and lasting. Yeah, through a lived life, through the living of life. I wouldn't disagree with that, of course. But I would also say that wisdom means something like as we discussed today. To know the field of mind and not the contents of mind.

[89:33]

I suppose we can imagine what it is to know the field of mind rather than the contents of mind. Yes, but how could that be wisdom? If we're going to talk seriously about this, I have to try to answer that question. Okay, so we can imagine that somehow being, yeah, let's say knowing the field of mind and not the contents of mind is wisdom. Let's imagine that might be true.

[90:48]

What's that have to do with our everyday life? And the word wisdom comes from, you know, in English again, comes from to see, but also to guide. Yeah, so to be, yeah, to just keep with the same idea, to know the field of mind rather than the contents of mind only. Also, um damit zu bleiben, das Feld des meins zu kennen und nicht den Inhalt. Is also to know, yeah, to know mind outside the structures of mind.

[91:57]

Is auch den mind außerhalb der Strukturen des meins zu kennen. But what about the structures of mind? Yeah, consciousness is a structure of mind. We need some guidance within the structures of mind as well. I'm just trying to cause some problems here. Because we have to look sort of carefully at these things. I don't want us to take these words for granted.

[92:43]

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