It's funny, you always have, on the break, you always have lots to say to each other and not much to say when you get in here. Maybe I should use some of the techniques that Norman Fisher used. And that Hannah might use. which I have all of you turn to one other person and talk for a while and then switch the subject and things like that. But I always think that you're going to assume that you're doing that even though you're speaking to everyone. Aber ich nehme immer an, dass ihr das auch tut, obwohl ihr zu allen spricht.

[01:01]

We lost your friend. Wir haben deinen Freund verloren. He didn't feel well and went to bed. Oh, this is smart. Das ist schlau. Yes. I would like to share my confusion, and also you said that we could make something up, so I'm making something up. Okay, that's even more confusing. Okay. The order of the five skandhas confused me because I am to give order to a dynamic and this in itself is confusing for me.

[02:05]

What was helpful was the metaphor of the, I still don't know the word, die Taucherglocke. The thing in which you can dive down. Or a bathysphere. Or a diving bell. Diving bell is much easier. Thank you. Und ich stelle mir vor, ich sinke von oben nach unten. And I imagined sinking down from the top to the bottom and the other way around. And I tried to describe the difference in color. In blue, in that case. Ich wollte fragen, ob das okay ist. I would like to ask whether this is okay. If it's okay with you, it's okay with me.

[03:31]

Wenn das für dich okay ist, ist das für mich okay. Es verwirrt mich nicht, aber ich bin sehr faul. It doesn't confuse me, but I'm quite lazy. Und oft nutze ich zu simplifizieren. And sometimes I use oversimplifications. Okay? It's really up to you. It's your experiment, not mine. So you try whatever you want. And it is about trying, and often trying in images. In the early days, speaking about the five standards, I often used a flip chart and the consciousness, the arrows showing what happens when you go up and arrows showing what happens when you go down. But I think all of it, that's all interiorized for you now, so I don't have to flip it down on the chart.

[04:32]

Yes, ma'am. In the early times, as we are already talking about the ocean, in the early times you always had the metaphor of the lifeboat of the five skandhas. Oh, I forgot that. And I never understood why it's called the lifeboat of the five skandhas. It confused me. Maybe you could explain it to me now.

[05:33]

Maybe you could explain it to me now. You mean if I can wait till all these years to... I have to send Norman Fisher my notes. You want to get in on the act now. You'd want to get in on the act now of taking questions from years ago and bringing them to me. There might be thousands of them. Sorry. It's all right. I like it. Let me give some thought to why I used that image. I think it was a way probably of trying to, in this sea of indeterminateness, Hegel, I think, defines being as indeterminate immediacy.

[06:45]

So probably I was thinking in this sea of unpredictability, perhaps we can plug the leaks in the boat of self and consciousness. By using the five skandhas. Okay, so I need to pursue or still move toward dimensions of constructing, deconstructing consciousness.

[08:05]

Okay. Now I think that, as you know, I usually emphasize that basic proposition, I spoke about it in the last seminar, basic proposition or wedded to one's experience, knowledge. Wedded to one's experience? Wedded. Wedded to one's knowledge, which is wedded to one's experience. Welded or wedded to one's experience. Okay. Is that tired of saying all the time, that on every appearance, mind is the partner of that appearance.

[09:16]

And that's, you know, really, if your practice is going to develop, that's got to be really one of your habits. Because it's a fact, it's a simple fact. There's no perception if you don't have a mind. Or if you don't have a mind, you are a mind. Okay, so practice functions in the soil. rooted in the soil which accumulates through the repetition, the sedimented knowledge that all perception is within and as mind.

[10:23]

That all practice is sedimented in the soil that accumulates through the habit of knowing mind as appearing on every appearance. Mind is inseparable from every appearance. Sukhiroshi said something like, the self which is shown to you by consciousness is not the self you actually live. And maybe that's getting closer to something Krista is looking at. Okay. Now again,

[11:26]

We want to, and as Siegfried emphasized, we want to really feel, remember, that words only point, they don't describe. And to think of them as describing is delusional. So they point, and you look at the experience of pointing when you look at something. Now, if we look at consciousness, point to consciousness, Okay, look at consciousness, point to consciousness.

[12:41]

This is actually a different experience than mind appearing inseparably from every appearance. Now, just to refresh your understanding of this, The experience of mind appearing inseparably part of appearance, inseparably the condition of appearance, allows you to begin to feel mind. So you're making a distinction that allows you to experience mind and the object separately.

[13:45]

Yeah, so let's... Let's say, again, that on every appearance... Herschel says something like, consciousness only appears on... You only see consciousness when it appears through perception. Yeah. But, you know, I think he leaves out, and again, I'm not a scholar enough or interested enough to report that, but I think he leaves out when consciousness is conscious of consciousness or attention is...

[14:52]

attention is on attention itself. Okay, so just keep this simple so I don't go too much in this direction. If I recognize it when I look at Hiltrud, Not only seeing Hiltrud, I'm also seeing my mind seeing Hiltrud. It's conceptually exactly the same. It's when I hear a bird, I'm hearing my hearing hear the bird. So I clearly see Hiltrud. Pretty clearly, anyway. Okay. And if I look at Meike, I clearly see Meike. There are some differences. But there is sameness. Because I feel the mind, the sameness of mind on each of you.

[16:25]

Now, if I can begin to separate the differences of Hiltrud and the differences of Micah from the experience of mine, then I can experience mind itself in which both of you appear. Okay, now if I have the yogic and attentional skills, to make this difference and feel the shift, and if now that I've said this, you imagine this is possible, since it is possible, the imagination of it being possible helps make it possible. Now, if I can feel the field of mind in which you're all appearing, or he truly is appearing all by yourself, I can then shift my attention

[17:40]

attentional identity from the differentiation, the differentiated to the sameness. And that experience is a more biological, bodily location. And this experience is a more physical, biological feeling. Yes. And then... And then whenever I meet anyone, I can feel them in this more wider sphere of just simply appearing. Like, you know, if I go outside and I see a tiger, it would be quite unusual. I mean, I can imagine it, but I don't think it will appear. But maybe a bear, a crest of bears would appear. Also wenn ich zum Beispiel hinausgehen würde, dann könnte ich einem Tiger begegnen, das wäre etwas ungewöhnlich, aber ein Bär, der könnte schon kommen, zum Beispiel wie auch in Creston.

[19:12]

I wouldn't say, oh, Hiltrud, you look like a bear. Ich würde dann nicht sagen, oh Hiltrud, du siehst aus wie ein Bär. I'd say, wow, this is a bear. I don't know who you are, but you're a bear. Ich weiß nicht, wer du bist, aber du bist ein Bär. That is also the bodhisattva practice, because every human being appears that way. Wow, look, that's Anna. It's like that, the sheer presence, the vibratory presence of each human being. You have to kind of tone it down, or people start thinking you're a little crazy. So the simple practice of getting in the habit in the habitation of noticing mind on every appearance.

[20:21]

Allows you to shift into bodhisattva mind. while still knowing the differentiation of each person or each observation. Now that would be another seminar, but this also enters you into the Sambhogakaya body. Yes, the dharmakaya, the sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya. The sambhogakaya body is when you're in the midst of this unnamed experience of mind itself assimilating differentiation. mind itself assimilating differentiation.

[21:28]

Okay. So there's this powerful field of attention. So now we're asking, let's not think about mind appearing on every appearance. Let's see if we can We're conscious. Can we see consciousness? I mean, we're always seeing consciousness. What else? I'm seeing consciousness. What else could I be seeing? But it feels like I'm seeing something outside there. And I know you're outside there, of course. But the actual experience is inside. Okay. Now let me divert a little bit. This simple statement, don't invite your thoughts to tea, which we immediately, I think most of us, immediately understand.

[23:09]

But that immediate understanding hides what's really going on in that statement. You can act on it. In other words, the consciousness of that statement allows you to act within its complexity but not understand its complexity. And by not understanding its complexity, you don't make use of its complexity. And the complexity is the statement has a scaffolding built into it. And the scaffolding is between linguistic mentation and postural mentation.

[24:27]

Okay, so linguistic mentation is mentation or mental activity or thinking defined really through language. It assumes language, it assumes It can be further explored in language. Okay, now postural mind or postural meditation. is more physical. It's a posture. Like I say, zazen is the posture, is the physical posture of sitting and the mental posture of don't move.

[25:32]

But the mental posture, don't move, by being held, becomes physicalized. Aber diese geistige Haltung, bewege dich nicht, wird gehalten und auf diese Weise verkörperlich. The question then is, can you physicalize everything you say? Und die Frage ist dann, kannst du alles verkörperlichen, was du sagst? Can you speak from mental posture to... mental posture to mental posture to mental posture while at the same time creating a linguistic flow. kannst du von geistiger Haltung zu geistiger Haltung zu geistiger Haltung sprechen, während du gleichzeitig einen linguistischen Fluss herbeiführst.

[26:33]

Das ist, was ganz grundlegend ein Gedicht versucht zu tun. Wo die Worte sowohl eine vertikale als auch eine horizontale Präsenz haben. So this is very interesting, that we act within the intelligence of this statement, don't invite your foster tea, but we really don't know how to make use of the intelligence that's embedded in it. It reminds me of the ads in the 50s. And I don't, I used to hear they hired psychologists to work out these ads, but I don't know if it's true. It may have just been, you know, in those times they did this.

[27:33]

And at that time in the 50s, America at least was much more inhibited. Paris was supposed to be uninhibited, but America was much more inhibited than it is now. So there was a lot of energy, commodifiable energy, commercial energy, in eroticized statements. But you couldn't, the erotic charge which led you to drink a Coca-Cola or buy a cigarette, It couldn't be visible.

[28:50]

So the ads, spatially the ads, would be somebody standing here and somebody else is standing here and somebody's on a fire truck and somebody's over there, etc., But if you took the space away and made it flat, the genitalia and the mouths and the elbows were all tied together on the flat surface, but not spatially. And a great deal of it was homosexual. And you could see that that was, in a funny way, an erotic anticipation of the more openness about gay life that came in the 60s and 70s. But the repression was hidden in the space, but not in the flat surface.

[30:11]

That's quite interesting, to hide it in the space, but it's present in the flat surface. In other words, the photograph that's reproduced is a photograph that spatially has people quite separate. As soon as you flatten it, they're all intertwined sexually. So you've got this thing, ooh, that's kind of exciting, but you don't know what it is, I'd better go buy Coca-Cola. No, I don't know why, I really need a Lucky Strike. Does the Lucky Strike still exist? Or the cigarette? Famous designer designed that red circle.

[31:31]

Okay, so this has something to do with seeing consciousness. Yeah, so consciousness is present, but we see it without thinking we're seeing consciousness. Now, one of the things that exploring and making the articulation of the five skandhas more clear is you can feel in the field of presentness you can feel the topography of the five skandhas. You can begin to feel the separate field of the five physical, the differentiation of the overlapping fields of the five physical senses.

[32:51]

No. I explored this by simply saying to myself, walking to the Zendo or walking somewhere in the city or wherever it was, saying, this is consciousness. It's really the same technique as saying cup, bell, etc. So I interrupted the... I interrupted the... biological apprehension of consciousness as an out-there-ness So I began to see it maybe like a flatness without the space of the advertisement I was talking about.

[34:09]

Now again, these words are just approximations. But at some point I suddenly realized, yes, I now see consciousness. And I then could notice a number of things. One thing I noticed, I could feel consciousness being assembled. Like the flowers built through Siegfried, they begin to come together with more and more definiteness to make a conscious apprehension. Also, die Blumen, Hildrud, Siegfried, sie kommen zusammen um und bringen einen bewussten Eindruck hervor, eine Ansammlung.

[35:19]

I love the word apprehension. Ich liebe dieses Wort. Was heißt das eigentlich, apprehension? Nervöse Aufgebildetheit. Wirklich? In Antizipation. Hat das nichts mit Lernen zu tun? The reason I like it is just that, on the one hand it means understandable, I can apprehend it, and at the same time it means I'm afraid, I'm apprehensive. So I use the word apprehension whenever I want to convey the feeling that really seeing things is also scary. But I don't have a German word for that. But I like being dependent on you. Thank you. By just asking myself a simple question without any expectation, it's just pointing, it's not describing.

[36:49]

This is consciousness. What the hell is it? This is consciousness. You're going to translate? I would like to. You were just too enamored of looking at her. Yeah. Oh, what a weird thing you said. You're also the translator. I know. Okay. Okay. So just saying, asking myself the question, or saying, this is consciousness, which is actually a kind of question, if this is consciousness, what is this consciousness? Okay, so... As I said, you can begin to feel consciousness composing itself.

[38:01]

This is one of the big secrets or Dharma doors to intermediacy. Das ist eines der großen Geheimnisse oder Darmatore, um die Unmittelbarkeit zu betreten. Denn das Bewusstsein, das sich formt, ist aber per Definition die Unmittelbarkeit. Es ist nicht Erinnerung oder Vorwegnahme der Zukunft. It's nothing but, in English, immediacy, which means no in-betweenness, in, not, no media. All right. So, the dynamic of being present, as consciousness forms the scene of the world,

[39:07]

has so much energy in it, and so much more interesting than past, future, and what might happen. You find it energetically because it's so nourishing, satisfying, and demanding to be present in immediacy because, whoa, you're in the middle of something really happening, like a fire or a tiger or something. Yeah, okay. So it's a kind of... The exploration of the five skandhas allow you to feel in relief when... When a sculpture, like a frieze on a Greek temple, has all the figures carved out, that's in relief.

[40:21]

Okay. The familiarity with the constituents of consciousness through becoming, through getting to know, be familiar with the five skandhas, That developed articulation of articulating the five skandhas separately, that articulation continues in the present. So you can begin to feel the topography of the present. Is actually your experience, because you know it through the the articulation you've given to the five skandhas.

[41:38]

Okay, and now another thing that happens is you notice that presentness is somewhat different from consciousness. Yeah. Now, if Siegfried transfers that letter I wrote, as an email to you. But I don't know if all of you have computers or read your emails while you're in my seminar. But it's not my seminar, it's your seminar. So those of you who don't, if you can read it, then I can speak to this continuum of consciousness.

[42:44]

I can speak to it anyway, I suppose, without you reading it. But it's a simple enough idea in its own complexity that it's good to have several approaches to it. Okay, so now, when I look at consciousness and I say, ah, this is consciousness, and I have an experience of consciousness as being composed at this present moment, And then in addition I can feel that there's another dimension to consciousness, which is, in this case, I would call presentness. And by the way, I don't like the word being or even becoming.

[44:01]

So, and be has a durative implication, which I think is actually delusional. A delusion. So in my own inner vocabulary, I call being isn't. I'm not sure I want to make that public yet. I've tried is-ness, but I think is-ning is better. Now, what are you doing, is-ning? Oh, okay. All right. So, what's interesting is The experience of presentness is a kind of glue that holds, one of the glues, that holds consciousness together.

[45:19]

Oh, we're supposed to be eating. Oh, we're supposed to be eating. While I'm izzing away, the clock is izzing away too. Okay, so, but when you say go to bed, or you go to sit zazen, consciousness remains, but presentness disappears. As you woke up in your room and you didn't know where you were, that means presentness was gone.

[46:21]

So one of the things we can distinguish here is the difference between consciousness and this now new subtlety that you wouldn't have noticed before of presentness. Now the concept of presentness is part of what I was trying to speak about when I talked about creating conscious continuums. Okay. I hear the dinner bell ringing. Do you hear it? Okay, maybe we can continue tomorrow. I mean, we can definitely continue tomorrow.

[47:32]

Unless you have something much more wonderful to say, which I'm sure you do. Or we can have a tapestry of appearances. But I find it extremely interesting by asking a simple question, saying to myself, this is consciousness. Then I begin to experience presentness as a kind of cellophane or sarin wrap on the surface of everything. And I can now pull it off consciousness, put it over myself, and it looks just like me. Okay. Okay. Now I'm totally confused.

[48:53]

This is a good place to start. Yes. You got us confused. Oh, I did? Are you confused too? Yes. May I ask something? Yes. My foil consciousness, this experience that you had, Christine, The words that are at my disposal, I would have said you were in presentness but not in consciousness. But presentness is a form of consciousness. But presentness... Aber dieses Gegenwärtigsein ist eine Form des Bewusstseins.

[50:05]

What you can say along with Sherlock Holmes is foiled again. Was man mit Sherlock Holmes sagen kann, ist schon wieder in die Folie verstritt. Ich habe das Gefühl, er destruiert gerade alle Wörter. I have the feeling that you are just destructing all the worlds. I'm trying. Because if you want to construct consciousness, we have to deconstruct consciousness. That's what you're doing. I'm trying. I want you all to feel safe, so I make it a joke. And that I can get someone to translate this stuff is just amazing. Thank you. God, you're on to my trips.

[51:22]

I would like to take a photo for you. I would like to take a photo. Yes, it was good. How's that, guys? Good. Thank you very much. Yeah, I know.

[52:43]

Thank you very much.

[53:05]

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