shift even out of associative thinking, and rest in a field of mind, a non-conceptual field of mind, in which there's no periphery of other senses. And we can go into one sense from there, or we can, it becomes a kind of platform. Railroad turning, what do they call it? Where the trains come in and they get turned and they go in a direction. Anyway, it gives us a different space from which to explore perception and mind. And also, we would, the adept practitioner practicing with the vijnanas or phenomenological, you know, perceptual analysis, would also have the experience of, let's say, again, hearing, hearing itself, hearing the mind, hearing, hearing the process, the experience of hearing.

[01:16]

Now that's a shift probably It's only possible through the mind and practice that arises through zazen and particularly repeated zazen. Now I'm not in any way criticizing this phenomenologist, I'm impressed by his book and I'm learning from his book, but it's interesting to me the difference between how an experienced practitioner would work with the jnanas. So your exploration is an exploration... through this finding out how not to invite thoughts to tea, it's a process of exploring awareness and non-conceptual mind as well.

[02:21]

Okay. And a folding back into, folding back into a mind free of discursive thinking, a mind resting in don't invite. And I think you can actually explore, which this phenomenologist wouldn't do too, the presence of the words don't invite. Now you can also try it in zazen, when you're sitting, Use the words. Now, you can have the concept of not inviting thoughts to tea, and so you enact not inviting thoughts to tea. Your attention becomes a postural attention. Your attention is primarily within your posture. And these discursive thoughts sort of appear from some other realm than your posture.

[03:30]

And if your attention is within your posture, the posture, It's fairly easy not to invite the thoughts to tea. They're coming from some other realm. So the postural attention that you discover through not inviting thoughts to tea and the postural attention is something different than the concept, the intentional concept, turns into a postural attention. Then within that postural attention, you can put the two words, in English, I don't know how you'd say it in German, in Deutsch, Deutsch invite. No, no, no. Don't. Excuse my bad joke. Don't invite. [...] The words themselves, it's interesting, that words have a syntactical identity, dynamic, and tend to lead to other words, and tend to lead to associations.

[04:38]

But words also have a bodily power and energy. And if you take a word, now we're not talking about, we're talking about a word now, which is also a mental formation, but now I'm talking about making it a bodily formation. you take the word out of the sentence, there's still a thought. Well... We don't want to limit practice to the nameable. We don't want to limit practice to the nameable. And all the parts of a situation most of them can't be named. There simply are no names for them. The immense vocabulary of English comparatively is 600,000 words or something crazy like that. It's all what can be noticed in consciousness.

[05:43]

One of the things we need to get familiar with through this, again, this simple instructional concept is that most of the parts, one, they don't add up to a whole, the phantom of the whole, but the parts also themselves can't be named. They can be noticed. It takes time even to notice them. It takes a lot of zazen experience to start noticing what can't be named. But really, if you're really curious about our existence, how fantastic this is. This posture which enters you in with distinction into the parts that can't be named. And the parts that are different on different days, just as I'm trying to find my way into four versions of this talk.

[06:49]

the fourth period now so don't invite the accumulated bodily presence of the word which not isn't usually present and may be present in the poem but it's usually not present in prose because the grammar and the syntax disperses the energy of the word. But if you take the word out of the sentence, just put it in the body and repeat it, it gathers all kinds of stuff. If you can feel it in your spine, don't invite. It will affect your posture. And don't invite will itself, by affecting the posture, cut off discursive thinking.

[07:56]

Listen. Not just listen. Listen. Cut off. Okay. Now, what's the problem? What are some of the problems with discursive thinking? Okay. One is, as I just pointed out, it turns concepts into ways in which often a deluded sense of the world is carried. We can think of discursive thinking as functioning in a tube. And discursive thinking is actually a form of desire. So you can think of discursive thinking as desire. I like, you know, the etymology of desire and consider are nearly the same. The word S-I-D-E-R-A-L means the stars. So consider means to do things by the stars. And desire means to hope for the stars or wait for the stars.

[09:02]

That's a nice... For Valentine's Day, it's pretty soon, right? So discursive thinking is primarily a form of desire, a desire for the world to be a certain way, and a desire for the self to have a certain satisfaction. Just notice Discursive thinking. Discursive thinking isn't situational thinking. Discursive thinking is about... It's a discourse within thinking. Discursive thinking is thinking about thinking. And it's thinking about the way you want the world to be. So discursive thinking is... pre-existent sense of the way the world is.

[10:06]

Discursive thinking is always trying to confirm that the world is the way you want it to be. Discursive thinking is always trying to find satisfaction for the self. Okay, so what's the problem with that? You know, I don't know. Well, it's a form of delusion. That's one problem. Usually it's a form of delusion. Applied thinking is not delusive. Usually. Discursive thinking is usually delusive because it's carried by concepts that have already been established about the way the world is. So it keeps wanting to see the world in terms of concepts which have already formed through how the world is. So you get in this tube. Okay. So what's the problem again with discursive thinking? One is, as I said, it is mostly a form of desire for a world and self which is to various degrees deluded.

[11:26]

Second, it prevents you and wants to prevent you from non-conceptual modes of mind. But why does it want to prevent you? Because you don't find your identity in non-conceptual modes of mind. Delusive thinking or discursive thinking is always trying to re-establish the world the way you want it to be and re-establish self the way you want self to be. That's a form of desire. Now, what it also does is it doesn't allow for divergence. It doesn't allow for interruptions, disruptions.

[12:31]

It's trying to create an undisrupted view of the world and the self. And when the self is disrupted and the world isn't the way you want it to be, you feel disturbed. But enlightenment is a disruption. And it doesn't allow for singularity, uniqueness. It doesn't allow for chaos. It doesn't allow for randomness. It doesn't allow for the undefinable and unnameable. It's carried in concepts which keep trying to confirm the world as you've already found it and confirm the experience of the self and the anticipation of self-experience. Now the adept practitioner is locating him or herself.

[13:40]

Do I have to say self? Him or her Buddha? No. Him or her, do I have to say gender? Anyway, the adept practitioner is locating attempting to find a location within singularity and near chaos. Because only within singularity, uniqueness, only within singularity, unpredictability, only within singularity and near chaos can the unnameable, can the indeterminate, Can what's not yet known appear? What's not yet imagined can appear. But you have to function somehow. Where's your ground of being? Okay.

[14:49]

Gute's finger. No matter where Gute puts up his finger. There's always a background. So there's a sameness of background. I mean, the background's always different, even though the finger's the same. The background is different. But yet, with every particular is a background. So you begin to have a state of mind that always knows the background within the particular, and that's what I keep trying to say, pause for the particular, and know then the field of mind. So this is a basic yogic practice within the particular to always know the background. The sameness of the background, because there's always a background. Okay, but let's carry that one step further. There's not only always the sameness of the background, there's always the sameness of the mind.

[15:52]

Because whatever you perceive is within the field of mind. And what's the background of the field of mind? You guessed it. Emptiness. So getting to know the particular within the field, within the field, within the background, is the first dynamic toward getting to know the particular always within the field of mind, which is the next step toward getting to know the particular and the field and the mind within emptiness. Albert something Necker, I don't remember his full name, Albert Lewis Necker or something like that, in 1832, presented the Necker cube.

[16:58]

You all know what a Necker cube is? It's the cube made of 12 lines, Which, when you look at it one way, it jumps this way, and you look at it the other way, it jumps that way, right? You all know what it is? You've seen it. It's a drawing of a cube on a flat piece of paper. If you look at it one way, it comes out this way, and you look at it another way, it comes out that way. It's used all the time by research psychologists, sociologists, etc. It's kind of fun to look at. It's really used a lot as an example and used in many levels. But if you look at it, it tends to go almost like up or down, but really the brain of most people tend to like to feel they're looking at it from above. So usually the most stable position is when it looks like it's from above.

[18:02]

But if you see the other side, suddenly it flips and you're looking at it sort of from below. And it's called multi-stable position perception or something because both are stable. You can stabilize one or you can stabilize the other. Or you can have a pulse, it can flip back and forth. But of course there's no cube there at all. There's only 12 lines on a flat piece of paper. So we're only seeing things that we see on my lecture from four different points of view. But in the end it's only some words, some sounds I'm making. But you are giving it a kind of form. Acting within it. Letting it incubate.

[19:03]

And the conventional truth, conventional truth world and fundamental truth world are a bit like that too. You look at it one way and it's a conventional truth world. Look at it another way. It's the fundamental truth world. And all this can... Arise from incubating in zazen practice and in your musing, contemplation, activity. Don't invite thoughts to tea. And I hope you all find the power, it's a kind of power, to locate yourself in the sameness of background, mind, and emptiness.

[20:28]

It's a kind of locus. It's empty. Can't be grasped. But it's a kind of locus of emptiness, mind, and background. in which you can find yourself allowing, making room for the unnameable, for chaos, for randomness. And you can see yourself moving toward unity, wanting to move toward unity, and you can pull back from moving toward unity. You can see yourself noticing singularity, avoiding chaos, and preferring unity, with the courage to move toward chaos because you're located in the sameness of mind, background, and emptiness. Yeah, okay. Thanks. May our intentions equally penetrate

[21:42]

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