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Choosing the Mindful Path

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Seminar_What_Is_Mind?

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The seminar "The Mindful Path to Awareness" delves into the question of "What is mind?" It explores how the mind shapes and perceives the world, the relationship between mind and body, and the practice of differentiating intentional thoughts from discursive thoughts. The discussion includes the influence of cultural conditioning on perception, the significance of adopting 'right views' as per the Eightfold Path, and the Zen practice of "mind-to-mind transmission." Moreover, it distinguishes between 'host' mind and 'guest' mind, suggesting ways to stabilize the mind through meditation and physical postures, while emphasizing the transformative potential of choosing the type of mind one inhabits.

Referenced Works and Concepts:
- Eightfold Path: A fundamental Buddhist teaching that emphasizes 'right views,' which influence one's perception of permanence and impermanence in the world.
- Zen Story of the Monk's Question: The tale where a monk asks about the nature of the mind or Buddha and the teacher responds by turning the question back to the inquirer, highlighting the need for self-inquiry.
- Blue Cliff Records: A significant collection of Zen koans, which includes traditional teaching terms like "host" and "guest" mind, providing insight into Zen thought.
- Dogen: A prominent Japanese Zen teacher whose teachings emphasize the importance of choosing the mind one wishes to live in, associating that choice with enlightenment experiences.
- Mind-to-Mind Transmission: A Zen concept referring to the direct transmission of understanding or insight between teacher and student, signifying a non-verbal communication of wisdom.
- Host and Guest Mind: A teaching in Zen where the 'host' mind represents a stable, foundational awareness while the 'guest' mind involves transient, discursive thoughts.

Key Concepts:
- Attentional and Intentional Awareness: These terms describe different kinds of thoughts, with attentional awareness being linked to presence and intentional thoughts being directed and focused.
- Cultural Conditioning: The influence of cultural background on individual perception and understanding of the world.
- Physical and Mental Interconnection: The idea that physical postures can influence mental states, a core principle in Zen and Yogacara practices.
- Recognizing and Changing Mind: The significance of recognizing one's current mental state and the ability to choose and transform it as a foundational aspect of Zen practice.

AI Suggested Title: Choosing the Mindful Path

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Thank you for coming, those of you whom I know and those of you whom I don't know. I'm always a little perplexed by First, when I first start a seminar, particularly a semi-public talk, particularly with a topic like what is mind, I think, I feel we need some, it's almost like we should go through some sacred ritual before we ask ourselves such a question.

[01:04]

I mean, walking in, I see this poster that says, has a picture of me, and it says, what is mind, you know, in German and English? Maybe there's two different minds, a German mind and an English mind. But there, the question is... Really, no one's ever been able to answer such a question. Of course, Buddhism has spent two and a half millennia trying to answer the question. Buddhism has spent two and a half.

[02:13]

Who? So we can spend certainly an hour tonight looking at the question. Now, I'm actually quite interested in how to explore this with you, but it'll be easier to start that tomorrow when we're together and for a longer period of time. So how do I introduce it this evening? That's what I'm asking myself. It's a quite common Zen story as a monk asks, what is mind? Or even, what is Buddha? And the teacher usually answers something like, what is asking the question?

[03:36]

And of course this means that, first of all, you have to be the questioner, if there's a questioner, you have to be asking yourself that question until there's, unless, if there's gonna be any hope of an answer. But why should we bother with such a question? I mean, there's us who are here. We all look alive and have some kind of mind. Perhaps you all are quite satisfied with how you understand the mind. Or why bother with the question? Why should I bother with the question?

[04:51]

I'm saying this because I think we really have to consider entering into the question ourselves. Don't expect me to do much except enter into the question with you. Now, I think it's perhaps very appropriate that we're here in this martial arts dojo. Because Western philosophy started with an idea of practice, an idea of how to take care of oneself. And the word gymnasium in the United States means a sports place and in Germany it means high school. But in Greece it meant the same thing.

[05:57]

That you had to take care of yourself physically and take care of yourself mentally. mentally, if you were going to be able to take care of the world. And it was thought that there was an absolute relationship between caring for oneself and caring for the world. And if we look at the world now, at least I'm pretty disturbed by the world we live in. I've been disturbed actually by the world we live in since I was pretty young.

[06:59]

America, where I grew up, wasn't involved in a war on its land, but I'd heard the news of the war here in Europe every day. And I recently, in fact, was struck again by how much that disturbed me. And I pretty early on, I don't know, sometime, you know, eight or nine years old, I decided I didn't want to live in a world where people live like they were doing, like they were doing that I heard every day on the news.

[08:09]

But what do you do about it? How do you opt out? How do you decide not to participate? How do you decide to participate in the same time participate in some way which doesn't contribute to the delusion? And I decided, I think wrongly, Basically not to participate at all. I decided to try to live outside of our society. I think a more responsible, more mature decision, more sophisticated decision would be how to both live outside and live inside.

[09:24]

But I didn't discover how to do that until I met my teacher and started practicing Buddhism. Now, Buddhism's decision going way back on how to take care of both mind and body is rooted in this, basically, this posture we're sitting in. Buddhism isn't limited to certainly this posture.

[10:25]

But it was thought that this posture was a way to both take care of mind and body. And discover how we know ourselves. How we might approach the question, what do we know? What is asking the question, what is mind? We have this basic question, how does the eye know the eye, or how does the mind know the mind? Then it was clear to me that I know the world through my mind.

[11:41]

And my mind is shaped by my culture and so forth. But I had some experiences which gave me the feeling that there's more to the world then what I'm told is the world. My education shows me is the world. And that made me, and I think all of us have had some sort of experiences like that. And that made me want to know how I know the world. And unless you really existentially and personally want to know how you know the world, there'd be no energy in exploring

[12:50]

What is the mind or what is the world? How do we know the world? You know, this posture is not a posture you're born with. And it's a posture that's been discovered which produces a different kind of mind than waking or sleeping mind. Because at least in yoga culture, there's a very early understanding that mind and body are expressions of each other. And it's easier to work with the body than to work with the mind. So if we are asking what is the mind, we have to have the mind being able to observe the mind.

[14:07]

And how can you observe the mind if you're thinking all the time? How does thinking observe thinking? The basic problem is how do you observe this? And if I'm going like this too, how does anything observe? So the idea was maybe if the body can be stilled, It can begin to observe the mind. Now the question is, does the mind, are we just like a camera and it just sees, or does the mind shape what we see?

[15:19]

Well, consciousness, the job of consciousness is to, the function of consciousness is to give us a cognizable, A cognizable, predictable world. We want the world to be predictable. No matter how much you believe in impermanence, you still want the world to be predictable. You want the tree in front of your house to be there every day. And you even would like the buses to be on time. But the basic need for consciousness to create a predictable world

[16:20]

Actually, it's very close to assuming the world is permanent. So when you... And we know the world is not, everything's changing, we know the world is not permanent. But we have an investment just through the way consciousness functions and finding it permanent. We have an invest, like you invest your money in something, you want it to be there. So my most usual example of how mind shapes the world.

[17:55]

To point out, to get us started somehow in this is to look at how commonly, easily we accept that space separates us. But isn't it also true that space connects us? How the moon affects our... procreative tendencies. So how are we connected? But also Buddhism Zen is particularly called mind to mind transmission.

[18:59]

Just now, is there any mind-to-mind transmission here? I'm sitting here, you're sitting there, we're all sitting together. Is there some common mind or mind through which we're connected. Someone asked some kids, you know, I don't know, four or five years old, six years old, what is mind? What's the purpose of mind, they were asked. Kids your age are even younger. And they answered, oh, the mind, it's to keep secrets. But if we're connected, are we really able to keep secrets?

[20:16]

Or what sense is, could we be connected? Now, I would say that our perception of space separating, the emphasis on it is a cultural conditioning, not fact. Also ich würde sagen, dass die Betonung auf die Wahrnehmung dessen, dass Raum uns trennte, eine kulturelle Tatsache ist. Wenn ich die Ansicht habe, dass Raum trennt, dann werden meine Wahrnehmung diese Ansicht verstärken. Okay, so what do you do about that?

[21:16]

Now the Eightfold Path starts with right views. That's the Buddhist earliest teaching. So all of Buddhism rests on our having right views. A view of the world as permanent will lead us to perceive the world as permanent. So the question what is mind is also a question is how do we change our habits of mind or how do we even notice mind? Our habits and mind. And how do we even change mind?

[22:17]

What are our habits of mind? Well, the insight is that mind can change mind because basically mind has different parts. The question is what, when the teacher says, what is asking the question, implies that there's the question and then there's some kind of, what is it that's asking the question? So if you can, if you can ask yourself or find a way to notice your views and basically create antidotal views

[23:37]

So part of to see the mind is to see the views that shape our mind. So what I'm saying is that there is a view that space separates things. And once we have that view, it's prior to our perceptions. And so we start to more and more take it for granted because our perceptions can reinforce it. So if you take a simple, if you simply reverse it and say space separates, I mean space connects, and you hold that in mind,

[24:47]

It slowly begins to influence your perceptions. So again, as a practice, I think it works better. Normally we meet people and we think already separated. It has a view that we're already separated and we're meeting a new person. So if you take a view like already connected or space connects, And I can remember my first experience of that. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, you know, I practiced things in the early 60s. And at one point I got what I called myself an underwater feeling.

[26:15]

Not that I was drowning. But instead of feeling like I was in a kind of... empty space with things here and there. It struck me it felt more like when you look in an aquarium and you see a fish swim and the seaweed moves along with the fish. I didn't know how to describe it to myself. But I knew that I felt a kind of... some kind of, I don't know what to say, rubbery feeling or connective feeling between people, between things.

[27:21]

I had no language for it. But, you know, I noticed that this was more and more the case. And I suggest to you, if you take a phrase, like I've suggested many times to you, those of you I practice with, for example, like already connected. If you meet somebody, an old friend or a new person, And you have a feeling of already connected. I think you'll see if you try it for a few hours or a few weeks. You'll probably notice something different in how you feel with the world and with other people.

[28:53]

When we feel, and it's very fundamental through yogic practice, you get so you really feel that way all the time. You feel surprisingly in some immediate way intimate with everyone you meet. Okay, so then we could refine our question from what is mind What is the intimacy we feel? What is the intimacy or connectedness we feel? Is that also mind? Is there some mind right now that's connecting us? Or if there is such a mind, when is it present and when is it not present?

[30:02]

And if it can be present, isn't that a kind of step forward in social if not biological evolution? What if it became more common to feel connected with everyone? then separate. Now it takes some kind of special holiday or a really bad storm or something before you, you know, everyone's in a hurricane, you feel really connected with everyone. But, you know, it is possible to feel intimate with the familiar with the intimate, familiar, connected with the world.

[31:08]

But that kind of experience... is rooted in initially asking yourself a question like, what is mind? Now, again, something I've been spoken about recently, but I think it's, I'd like to introduce it again for us here. Yeah, so we can have a kind of shared vocabulary. So I'm looking here at, you know, Zen teaching is a kind of, it doesn't try to give you elaborate teachings.

[32:11]

Zen doesn't try to give you elaborate teaching. But rather simple teaching. That if you practice them, there's teachings nested inside each level as you practice it. So the nature of Zen practice is really to take a question like, What is mind? Answer it as thoroughly as possible. And not try to answer it intellectually, but kind of keep approaching it until the answer becomes you. So we see if we can come to some physical stillness, if the physical stillness begins to make the mind more still.

[33:56]

And from a more still body you can observe the mind more clearly. Now, part of that process is, you know, I've said the very simple instructions Sukhiroshi used to give us. Which is, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Okay. Well, I think almost all of us can say, yeah, I can understand that. We have some experience of not getting caught up in our thoughts. So we think this must be possible.

[35:01]

So you sit in meditation and you notice that you have these various thoughts that appear. And because you're sitting still and don't get so involved in your thoughts, But that's already quite interesting. Sitting still allows you not to get so involved with your thoughts. So you, you know, anyway you get so you... Don't invite your thoughts to tea so often. Okay, but then is it a thought that doesn't invite your thoughts to tea? So is it a different kind of thought?

[36:07]

Because in English we don't have any word for they're both thoughts. But we need, if you keep practicing, you begin to feel the difference in thought. No. In just mindfulness practice, in your daily activity, you can notice these differences. But you're more likely to have a physical feel for it through still sitting. So now what you find if you practice is that very quickly language

[37:10]

You run out of language for your experiences. And the deepest experiences, Buddhism says, actually can't be languaged. The truest experiences can't be languaged. Once you can language them, they're already not so intimate, they're already generic in some way. Okay, so this question, what is mind, has led us to looking at non-languaged mind and languaged mind. Okay, now, I think we each have to wonder what is such a thing?

[38:32]

Is there such a thing? Okay, and then we have this thought which doesn't invite your thoughts to tea. What kind of thought is that? Which thought isn't inviting your thoughts to tea? Now, these are are questions that arise if you really practice with don't invite your thoughts to tea. And after a while you begin to feel a physical difference between the thought which doesn't invite and the thoughts which you don't invite. Suggesting I translated.

[39:37]

Okay, so let's name them something different. Let's call a thought which doesn't invite an intentional thought. And the thoughts which you don't invite, discursive thoughts. So we begin to feel the difference between discursive thoughts and intentional thoughts. And we can begin to see how our mind is shaped by intentional thoughts and how our mind is shaped by or distracted by discursive thoughts.

[40:38]

So through this simple thing of don't invite your thoughts to tea, you've noticed there's two different kinds of thought. And, okay, now, but what does not only are you two different kinds of thought, you have two different kinds of mind. Because you see that discursive thought produces one kind of mind. An intentional thought is more the thought of what we can call, let's call one guest mind and one host mind. Now these are, in fact, traditional terms, Buddhist teaching terms, that are the most common teaching terms in the Blue Cliff Records, the main book of koans in Zen.

[42:01]

So if Through such a simple instruction, don't invite your thoughts to tea, we begin to discover there's two minds, one mind that arises through discursive thoughts, and one mind that arises through intentional thoughts. Because the intention not to invite your thoughts to tea, that intention itself produces a mind. So then you can notice to what extent are you discovering a mind that's already there and to what extent are you generating a mind through intentional thought.

[43:22]

And certainly the terms host and guest imply the host is always there and the guest comes and goes. Und die Begriffe Gast und Gastgeber implizieren, dass also der Gastgeber bereits da ist und der Gast kommt und geht. But the guest is where we're usually living. We're usually living in our discursive thoughts until we go to sleep. Aber der Gast ist ja das, wo wir uns gewöhnlich aufhalten und leben, also in den diskursiven Gedanken, bis wir schließlich einschlafen. Yeah, and people who decide to meditate usually notice that there's some difference between how they think about something when they meditate and how they think about something when they don't.

[44:33]

It's almost like I mean, often you discover you make a basic decision about your life differently when you are meditating than when you're not. You might have to make some decision about your job or whatever, and you might also say, okay, I'd like to bring this question into my meditation and see what I feel. So if you do notice that difference, it's some kind of different mind is making the decision. So you do find after a while, I think, that if you practice meditation, that the host mind is actually somehow

[45:50]

Stabler or less easily disturbed, less anxious. Yeah, so you start to... Again, just through such a thing as don't invite your thoughts to tea. By not inviting your thoughts to tea, you more and more experience what we're now calling host mind. And becoming more and more familiar with it, you find you can stabilize yourself in it. And you find that there's a different physical feeling to host mind. And you can even feel that when host mind appears, your posture changes.

[47:11]

And your breath changes a certain kind of physical feeling and a certain kind of mind. And it's almost like we're inhabited by two different minds. Or perhaps many different minds. Right now we're just talking about these two we can notice. And we notice that noticing them changes them. And as I say, attention is a magic wand.

[48:18]

What we bring our attention to changes things. So now you can notice that if you bring your attention to host mind, and you can somehow keep your attention on host mind, host mind begins to be your initial mind in situations, your underlying mind in situations.

[49:25]

Okay, so why am I explaining this? Partly because if you notice this, it develops much more rapidly. If you practice this, you practice, you notice very things, you feel this and that, but it's not very clear usually. So if we can practice in a way that helps us notice what's happening. And we have some understanding of the process. Yeah, host mind isn't just something, oh, sometimes I feel better, sometimes I don't feel so good.

[50:32]

But you can begin to make a decision to basically rest in this host mind. And think when you have to think, but rather identify with the host mind and not with your guest mind, not with your thinking mind. Okay, so once you feel that, you can feel that host mind is somehow more fundamental than guest mind. Now you're much more deeply in the question of what is mind. Because in this case, what I've spoken about is, you notice there's two aspects of mind we can call guest and host.

[51:35]

And you can decide, you can decide, it's a personal decision. You can make this personal decision. And the personal decision is something like a conversion experience, religious conversion experience. And we can't say exactly why one person makes the decision and another person doesn't. Sometimes maybe it's character. Or compassion. Or you're desperate or going crazy and you've got to do something. And you find host mind, you're a little saner than in guest mind. But in any case, it's a kind of, we could say, conversion experience or enlightenment experience.

[52:58]

Basically you're saying, I'm going to choose the kind of mind I live in. And that choice, okay, I can see there's a choice, I'm going to make the choice. Dogen, one of the, most of you know, is the outstanding, along with Hakon, Japanese Zen teacher. says all enlightenment experience, wisdom enlightenment experiences arise out of this initial decision to choose what mind you live in. And basically the choice is to know how we actually exist, what and who actually exists here,

[54:16]

How things actually exist. And how we exist along with others. And we can't separate this how we exist along with others. And I think it's recognized in the early Greek philosophy of the care of the self is also the care of the world. Now this is, I think, an extraordinary decision. To recognize that we can choose the kind of Choose the mind we live in.

[55:27]

Most of us make the non-conscious choice to choose the mind our culture and personal experience offer us. Even if we don't like the world that this cultural mind is producing, we still make this choice. Mostly because we don't know we have a choice. But also because mostly it serves our advantage. to make the cultural choice. But the teaching of Buddhism is you can make the cultural choice and simultaneously be free of the cultural choice.

[56:31]

If you know this host mind. Dogen says the purpose of discriminating mind is of course to discriminate. But from the point of view of practice, it's to choose to practice. But from the point of view of practice, it's to choose to practice. And through the choice, the discriminating mind can make this choice. And once you make this choice, then what is mine? And practice arises from this choice. So real practice arises when you decide to choose what mind you live in.

[57:50]

How do we enter into this mind? This mind which is both mind and body. This mind which is also the mind of the world and the mind of our connectedness. This will be the subject of tomorrow and Sunday. And I hope you're ready to make this choice with me. So this was just an attempt to establish a little common vocabulary. Notice our own experience. Look into this very intimate Question is what is our mind?

[59:04]

And what are the potentialities of mind? And what is the mind we live with the world? People, quite wonderful, extraordinary people have spent two or three thousand years trying to answer this question. And it took centuries really to come to an insight, work with that, come to an insight. And we have the benefit of their insights today. So it's certainly worth spending a weekend on. That's why I came to spend a weekend with you.

[60:07]

Thank you very much. Now we have such a basic question here, what is mind, that every teaching of Buddhism is about this question. But we have to be But to practice these teachings, we have to be introduced to this mind. We have to find ways to notice mind and to decide that Mind is part of the territory of the world.

[61:24]

And that we can participate in this territory. And if we participate in this territory, we can change, transform this territory. And thus we can transform to considerable degree, the world we live in. I would say this is the basic recognition that all practice rests on. And the process of Accepting this recognition goes over, takes some years.

[62:33]

I would say again with Dogen that the initial Recognition is also an initial enlightenment experience. Most of us just feel it's, oh, I've decided to do this. But later you find... More and more, that was a seed, or that's the ground in which later insights were rooted. So again, what is this recognition? That the mind is part of the territory of the world.

[63:44]

That it is, in some sense, all of the territory of our world. Because it's the only way we can know the world. And that we can participate in this territory. And because we can participate in this territory, We can change this territory. And changing this territory means we can transform how we live in the world. No, I think we don't have to rush over a lot of teachings, but rather just a simple thing like that to see if we really believe it.

[64:56]

And see if we're willing to confirm it in our activity and in our practice. And willing to follow its consequences. Yeah, so first of all, it's just, yeah, do I think that? And if I really think that, what does it mean? Well, first of all, it means you have to notice mind. Now, last night, last evening, I... brought up the thing of space connects, that we're already connected.

[66:10]

Yeah, to remind you of that. Because that's such an essential and transformative practice in itself. But also to give you, mostly to give you an accessible to remind you of this accessible entry. An accessible way to understand that your views shape your mind, which shapes the world. So what your views are is the single most important thing in that practice. Okay, so how do we notice mind?

[67:35]

Well, the most obvious way most of us notice mind is the difference between waking mind and dreaming mind. Yeah. Not too many people actually explore it or really notice, feel out the shift from waking to sleeping mind. And most of us, even people who are interested in dreams, are interested in dreams and not the mind that dreams. Yeah, in Buddhism we're much more interested in the mind that dreams than dreaming. No. You've all had dreams. Almost all of you. And... So you always have an opportunity to feel the distinction between waking, sleeping, and dreaming.

[69:08]

And I think it's quite interesting to try to see if you can stay awake for a while after you go to sleep. This is quite possible to do. Because of certain physical changes that occur when you go to sleep. And you can hold your awareness, your consciousness awareness during those changes. For example, you can, you know, if you go into a room and your child or somebody is pretending to be asleep, you can almost always tell they're pretending.

[70:22]

Because there's an involuntary quality to sleeping that doesn't feel like consciousness. To consciousness that there's an involuntary quality to sleeping that you can't duplicate through in consciousness. Okay. So because those physical changes are a shift in breathing, a shift in the mind from thinking to imagery. To imagery. To imagery, yeah. So as you go to sleep, Watch for the shift in breathing.

[71:39]

And or when the mind shifts from thinking about to images appearing. And then see how long you can stay aware after you fall asleep. It's fairly easy to do it for a minute or two, and then usually, you know... go into another kind of awareness, but it's not so available. So you don't have to be a meditator to notice you're going to sleep.

[72:41]

But it's certainly the more meditation experience you have, the easier it is to remain somewhat aware as you fall asleep. Yeah, and it's a kind of interesting exercise. What the heck are you going to do as you go to sleep? You might as well do something. But also, if you get familiar with it, it helps you put yourself to sleep. If you can't sleep sometimes, for instance, like after jet lag, which is an experience I have now and then. Yeah, my astral body is back in America or somewhere over the Atlantic. And I keep saying, come, join me.

[74:09]

But it takes a while. But it seems to, if I can... shift my thinking into imagery, intentionally shift my thinking into imagery, I can almost always go back to sleep. And then I make a better landing field for my astral body to come home to. You know, a couple of people asked me, where's Sophia and how am I managing without Sophia and blah, blah, blah. Well, you're nice, but I'd also like to see her. And those of you who don't know, she's two and a half now.

[75:18]

And she's really a... Really a little girl, not so much an infant. Although she looks a bit like an alien now because she decided to shave her head. Did you know that? I think it's because she fell in love with Jerry. Your brother. But Marie-Louise thinks it's because there's so many nice men with shaved heads and women around her. So about the time of the Kinderfest, she was saying she wanted to shave her head, and I thought it was Jerry's interest. This is the little boy who's going to shave his head.

[76:21]

So we said, I'll come. No, no. We'd never cut her hair. It's just from birth, right? No. So we said, okay, well, I'll ask again when we get to Crestone in a couple of months. The second day we're in Crestone, she said, you promised. Thank you. So there were a couple of people getting ordained, so along with them we cut her hair about this long, you know. With clippers. So she said, it's still there. She said, Papa, shave it up. So I lathered up my brush, and now she looked like Bing Crosby from Mars.

[77:30]

Bing Crosby, you probably don't even know who that is, but he had ears that stuck out like this. He was before Frank Sinatra. And after Rudy Bell. And when I first went away, because we've never been separated more than some hours. This is the last anecdote. I almost promise I won't tell you. When I first left, she was convinced I wasn't gone. She would say to Marie-Louise, no, Papa's just out a different door. Okay. Then when she realized, Marie-Louise kept telling her I had to fly to get back, she would talk to me on the phone and she'd say, fly, Papa, fly, Papa.

[78:39]

Yeah, and then she began to say, just simply in her best English, come puppy. I felt like a little dog. Come puppy. Yeah, and then, I don't know where she got puppy, but anyway. Then most recently she told people that I really wasn't gone, I was just in the trees and clouds. And the point of my telling you this is partly that I think she's actually telling us what she experiences. That her attentional awareness is so filled by the presence, so shaped by the presence of Marie-Louise and myself since birth. that I can't depart easily from this attentional awareness.

[80:02]

So this is another example of mind, which I would call attentional awareness. and intentional awareness. It's related to the example I gave you last night, again, of host mind and guest mind. And that The host mind can be the host to intentional thoughts, but not discursive thoughts. I'm starting in a very basic way because we've got a basic question.

[81:14]

And I'm trying to create a shared vocabulary. And one of the main, I mean, to become a geshe in Tibetan Buddhism, sort of like a super PhD, It takes 20 or 25 years. But usually you start at 10 or something. A great deal of that time is spent developing a common vocabulary within the Sangha to recognize mind. So I'm trying to, just for our weekend here, develop some kind of shared vocabulary. And some of you have this vocabulary, but some of you are new, so we have to kind of establish it. And some already have this vocabulary, but since there are new ones here, I would like to establish that again.

[82:36]

Okay. So what is the basic structure of practice? Yeah, first of all, it's the recognition that everything changes. Even that takes a time to really get into your system that everything changes. And the second is to notice what does remain constant. Okay, now part of practice is to shift the need from constancy from the world to the mind.

[83:52]

Mind is changing, the world is changing. The world, in most of its instances, seems to change more slowly than mind. And we depend on the relative slowness of the change of the world. Although it can be sudden. You suddenly find out you're ill. Or suddenly there's an accident. Or suddenly there's a war going on. But still, most of the instances don't change too much. So we kind of depend on that. The wisdom of practice is to shift that need for constancy to the mind itself.

[85:24]

Initially, that doesn't really change your relationship to the world much. Initially at least. But it's again a kind of decision you have to make to look for constancy in the mind. And to prefer constancy in the mind to a mind changing. And it's a preference that is confirmed usually because you feel better, you feel more nourished, you feel more... Complete, as I say.

[86:27]

So you again are making this shift to noticing what is constant in the mind. Now, at some point I want to speak about establishing four or five basic constants in our activity, in our being, in our beingness. So I hope to get to the point where we can see how that's possible and how we do it. Because the mind, you know, is not a thing. It's not an entity.

[87:39]

The mind is an activity. And so the mind is doable. So the question is, how do we do mind? That's another basic question of practice. Okay. Now, the word dharma, as you know, means what holds, what remains in place. And what holds for Sophia is her attentional awareness. Yeah, she's surrounded by a kind of awareness that's wider than her thinking consciousness. Okay, so now... we've noticed that there's a difference between waking and dreaming mind.

[88:55]

And there's a difference between zazen mind or sitting mind and ordinary mind. And within zazen mind, we notice there's a difference, different kinds of minds within zazen mind. And this is I'm pointing it out, but you also have to notice it and feel it yourself. These differences between zazen mind and ordinary mind. And then, for example, the difference between host mind and guest mind. Or the mind that arises through... Dreaming in the mind that arises through thinking.

[90:00]

When you wake up in the morning. Or, somewhat different but parallel. The mind that arises in zazen when you invite your thoughts to tea and the mind that arises when you don't. Hi, let's have tea. Okay, but even then you'll find that the thoughts, the discursive thoughts in Zazen are different from the discursive thoughts not in Zazen. So this is just a basic territory of mind in the first years of practice you just get familiar with. Then, as all of you know, I think most of you know, that Yogacara, Zen practice, emphasizes that all All mental states have a physical component.

[91:22]

And physical sentient states have a mental component. On that basic insight or fact that yoga is based. Is it physical postures affect mental postures and mental postures affect physical postures? So the Zen emphasis in exploring these distinctions like between the mind of discursive thinking and the mind of intentional thoughts is to feel the physical difference.

[92:51]

You can easily, as you become more sensitive, feel it in your body and often, or even more often, feel it in your breath. So Zen, we can say, is also the physical exploration of states of mind. Yeah, I mean, people intuitively know most of this. You have to go into a difficult meeting. You kind of compose yourself physically because you know it's going to affect your state of mind. But the Japanese, for instance, coming from a yogic culture, go much farther in this. They actually have a term, business term, called haragai. Die haben tatsächlich einen Ausdruck in der Geschäftswelt, einen Ausdruck namens Haragai.

[94:23]

Which if you can compose your stomach, your Haragai, you can affect the other person's state of mind. Nämlich der darin besteht, dass wenn man sein eigenes Haragai sozusagen richtig zusammenfügen kann, dass man So if you have three or four people, you can say, let's get our heart together and control the agenda of this meeting.

[94:55]

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