So I wanted to see if it makes this a little more accessible in terms of the realm of practice. For me, the process of our meeting like this is part of what I'm... The process itself is part of what I'm trying to do. Yeah, and what I'm trying to do is find ways to practice with you. So one of the things I have mentioned often, and I think maybe you referred to it earlier, the pause for the particular, Which is a phrase I've often used to help us start noticing appearances and appearances as dharmas.

[01:17]

And a related aspect of that is for instance if I'm sitting here with you, which I am doing, I find it only works for me if I can speak to you as a field. A field, but established by each of you. Okay. So, the sort of yogic technique for something like that. is to, I notice, only particulars.

[02:37]

And like this word hishirio, I don't think about the particulars, I just notice. So maybe I notice your bare feet and your stockinged feet. I don't try to notice anything. I just notice whatever I happen to notice. And then I, again, this is not thinking, I shift to feeling this room and all of you all at once. So Norbert, I mean, I think it's Norbert, but anyway, those stalking feet that look like they belong to him. He says they do belong to him.

[03:40]

But I'm not thinking about whose feet they are. Or what the paper is over there I see. I just allow those particulars to be present. And then I shift to feeling you all at once. I don't know, that's the best I can say. And that field of feeling you all at once and Not just you, the room, the trees, etc. There's a physical sensation in my body. And again, another yogic truism. And another yogic truth is that all mental phenomena have a physical component, and all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component.

[05:08]

When I feel the all-at-once-ness of this field, it is a physical feeling in the body. And it's not always in the same place. But wherever it is, I or the observing function can notice it. And rather stay with it. More or less stay with it. And then I can speak, I don't know what to say, but I can speak from that physical location. And while I speak, that physical location may become more, or move a bit, or et cetera, become more pronounced or less.

[06:25]

So that is an example that you too can play with, of what in Buddhism in yogic practice you mean by a field of experience. Like I spoke earlier about the field that's established when you just notice the particulars of change. Now we're going back, I'm going back to the locating yourself with spine and breath in immediacy. And perhaps with a phrase like nowhere else but here.

[07:46]

And then maybe with a sentence like nowhere else but here. Immediately becomes a Now, how I spoke about establishing balance in that field. Yeah, it's the best word I can think of right now. Balance in that field. Where there's no outside, it's all an externalized inside. But it has experiential boundaries. It doesn't go to the moon or to... Hannover.

[09:02]

A little bit to Hannover. It's not something magical. It's an experienceable and experiential field. Okay. All right. No, when I say to imagine, I imagine I could have, but I didn't say to Paloma, do you notice the contents of mind as well as the field of mind? And I would have no problem kind of half-joking, say that to her, while looking the other direction. And assume, since she's an alert little kid, it's probably being seeded. S-E-E-D-E-D somewhere.

[10:13]

If not seeding the difference between the contents of mind and the field of mind, at least seeding the sense of the relativity of views. Okay. Now, I spoke about a spectrum within a bandwidth. A spectrum of frequencies within a bandwidth. Okay. Um... Now, the way we function as human beings, we tend to think in alternatives. If it gets more complex than that, we're lost. Phone numbers can't be too long, and we can't remember them. Okay, so this field of immediacy

[11:15]

We can notice in a number of alternative ways. One is it's an experiential field or an attentional field. And the ingredients are necessarily sensorial perceptions and mental formations. And the more you get experienced with and have a bodily sense of the field of mind itself, then the incidence of and stream of appearances are happening within that field. Then the incidence and frequency

[12:31]

Appearances are arising within the field. And structured by the field, culturally structured by the field. But simultaneously, there's the field itself, which is pretty much unstructured, as unstructured as we can get. Okay. So... The more you have, it takes time to establish the insight. Understanding this conceptually is relatively easy. Practicing it is a little hard.

[13:48]

And establishing it as an embodiment and a mindment is, you know, that's what we call a realization. A realization. Yeah, but it's accessible to any of us if we practice. Okay, once you have established the physical feel of the field of mind. And you simultaneously see the contents of mind and the field of mind. That's one of the definitions of one-pointedness. or feeling the field and the contents as one experience.

[14:58]

Okay, now again, given the kind of human beings we are, we have a tendency to identify with what we see and hear and so forth. So once you notice that, and you can feel yourself a bit inhabiting an identification, You can just make a choice. You can decide to identify with the field of mind rather than the contents of mind.

[15:59]

And this fully accomplished is one also definition of enlightenment. Okay, so here we have the alternatives of the field of mind and the contents of mind. But we also have in this concept and practice of establishing balance and immediacy, The categories of stillness and activity. Or staying and moving. And of course there's a spectrum within stillness and activity. And there's a directionality.

[17:04]

The directionality may be away from stillness and toward activity, or it may be from activity toward stillness. And if you can visually imagine this as a kind of picture, the same point on the spectrum going towards stillness is very different than the same point going toward activity. Okay, so one of the skills of noticing the field of mind in contrast to or inclusive of the contents of mind Is the ability to establish physical stillness.

[18:12]

One of the things you're doing when you establish physical stillness You're increasing the ability to observe the movement of the mind. And you're beginning to develop a participatory relationship to the activity of mind. Because the stillness of the body tends to also still, quiet the mind. So in advanced, kind of advanced, we can say yogic skill is to be able to move from stillness into the activity of mind, keeping the feeling of stillness present.

[19:33]

Sorry, I lost you there. The yogic skill is to be able to move from the experience of the fact of stillness into the activity of mind and body and yet the activity of mind and body occurs in the larger field of stillness. And the example I would use, that would be like being able to see the trunk of the tree and the movement of the leaf. Because all the leaves and branches and things which are moving around here, right there and there, Denn all diese Blätter, die sich da überall bewegen, hier draußen, da draußen, überall, Their movement is formed by the wind, caused by the wind, but let's say it's caused by the wind, but formed by the trunk of the tree and roots of the tree.

[20:55]

Da können wir sagen, dass die Bewegung, die ist natürlich verursacht durch den Wind, also wir können es vielleicht so sagen, die ist verursacht durch den Wind, aber ihre Form bekommt die Bewegung in Beziehung zum Baumstamm und den Wurzeln. like the waves of the ocean, the leaves of the tree are always trying to return to stillness. So wie die Wellen im Ozean versuchen, die Blätter des Baumes immer zur Stille zurückzukehren. Now, because stillness seems so much, is so much more satisfying than activity, really, sorry to say. I mean, activity is fun too, but stillness is better. Weil die Stille so viel zufriedenstellender ist als die Aktivität. Es tut mir leid, das zu sagen. Also Aktivität ist auch toll, aber Stille ist besser. Can I make a question?

[22:14]

So the adept practitioner can ideally seize the stillness of the leaf in its movement. sieht idealerweise die Stille der Blätter in ihrer Bewegung. And all of us in our activity also there's a movement within us to return to stillness. Und für uns alle in unserer Aktivität gibt es auch eine Bewegung zurückzukehren zur Stille. Human beings, individuals who are locked into activity and their whole identity is determined through what they do are in a very fragile place.

[23:22]

And they have to keep making their activities satisfy their their identity which is based on activity. But there's also, you can be very active and feel that activity arising from or being based in stillness. But in the bodhisattva practice you want to illustrate in each situation and with each person. The presence of or the possibility of returning to stillness.

[24:27]

For you to return, you yourself to be able to move into activity and back into stillness. In a way that catches the other person to perhaps in their activity and feeling it turn towards stillness. Now, when you've established this more field field in which an experience in which activity occurs within and arises from a field of stillness as well as from the field of mind.

[25:39]

Your own emotions are absorbed into this field. I mean, you can feel very strongly and thoroughly, but these emotions, very strong emotions can occur within this field rooted in stillness. Now, this is where we go back into a therapeutic model. It would be assumed in yoga practice and more strongly in the Chinese worldview, which assumes an always present medium, but even if you don't like that sort of assumption, which I have a bit rather ambivalent about,

[27:06]

Still, if you establish a field of mind which absorbs, which includes both activity and stillness, it ideally will create another therapeutic dynamic will create a particular therapeutic dynamic. And some dynamic like this, concept and actualization like this, Is the basis for what's called Doksan or Sanzen in Zen practice? Doksan means to go alone or be alone with another person or be alone with a teacher. Dokusan means to go alone or to be alone with another person or with the void.

[28:32]

And it's, yeah, that's enough. So what shall we do? It's time to end, I think. So tomorrow, if you'd like, we can continue. And maybe we can even start with a discussion. Maybe we can even start a discussion tomorrow. I really like it when you discuss. You know so much. I like that. Anyway, this is my experiment in old age to try to make this more satisfying for myself.

[29:41]

Which is basically to get you to do more work. Thank you very much. Thanks for chatting.

[30:01]

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