Why is it off the record? Everyone knows. In Crestone, 4 in the morning she'll get up, or 2 in the morning, to watch a game in Germany in Colorado time. And she has to get up at 3.30 or 4. Yeah, it's problematic. Yeah. But I've come to like football. It's more interesting to me than the American sports, I must say. That's on the record. That's right. You've taken, what, 50 years to teach us Zen?

[01:03]

It's taken us that long to teach you to appreciate soccer. No, it hasn't taken. You haven't known me. You're not even that old. Okay. You know, this question, Zen, religion, spiritual, etc., for me, I think, for me, Zen and Buddhism is just a way to look at your, to explore, examine your experience. All these questions about the spiritual, everyday, also religion, etc., And you can use your own methodology, techniques, observations as the way you observe your experience, or you can use the tools, when they're useful, which have been developed over two and a half millennia.

[02:06]

But certain mental postures are useful to bring to the examination. Yeah, just to define a mental posture. Zazen is a physical posture, something like we're sitting in. But it can be in a chair and so forth, but then your spine should be the focus of your posture. But zazen practice is also a mental posture of don't move.

[03:08]

If you don't bring the mental posture, don't move, join it to the physical posture, zazen doesn't really happen. Yeah. And zazen, of course, is one of the main ways to examine and transform your experience. Somebody I knew was head of the Cambridge Buddhist Society. And her father happened to be the founder of the Fidelity Mutual Fund.

[04:25]

And he was one of the very successful stock pickers. And for some reason we'd have conversations. We got to know each other very well. And his conversations were always about how the mind worked. And somehow, without Zazen practice, He developed it, so it's just that Zazen practice helps develop it, but he developed it on his own. And he used to question me about it, that he could make his mind virtually empty.

[05:28]

And then he could let one thing come in and look at it. And then he could let associations arise in relationship to the one or two things he let come into the empty field of mind. And when the associations appeared, he would have a kind of, just observe them. And as we tried to talk about it together, And when he was picking a stock, he would bring it into his attentional field and then let associations appear, and then he'd kind of initiate a decisional process, and then he'd invest on the basis of what the decisional process predicted.

[06:56]

And I don't think his daughter... I know his daughter wasn't the influence. It was his... discovering this on his own, this way of observing his mind, which led his daughter to become a Buddhist. So I mention this only, primarily because to say this isn't What he's doing was Buddhism, even though it's not called Buddhism, and he didn't think of himself as a Buddhist.

[08:00]

Now, so the first is the intention to look at your experience with the feeling that the experience is what I and the world and my world is. And it's useful to also know that this examination itself is a process which transforms what you're examining. So the exploration leads to what you explore.

[09:01]

Now there's what I don't know what to name yet, but what I would call, sometimes I call the four pillars of Buddhism, sometimes I call the four dynamics of Buddhism. Or the four views, wisdom views, or something like that. And what these four are is the conviction that transformation is possible. You believe, believe really, that transformation is possible. So it's a kind of story. But the importance of the story is, if you don't really believe transformation is possible, which also means enlightenment and realization and so forth.

[10:29]

If you don't really believe transformation is possible, you won't notice transformation when it happens. So as David said, there's little shifts. And if you don't notice those little shifts, your practice is kind of stagnant. So that's to actually have faith or trust or belief that transformation is possible. And Buddhism is called Buddhism because the Buddha is one who is an example of the possibility of transformation.

[11:37]

And Buddhism is called Buddhism because the Buddha was an example for someone who shows that real transformation is possible. So the Buddha is a transformative principle as well as a historical person. Now, the second dynamic of Buddhist practice is, again, the belief or trust that it is possible to be free of emotional and mental suffering. Now, it sounds contradictory in a way, but it's the freedom from emotional and mental suffering that allows you to fully experience emotional and mental suffering.

[12:59]

You experience it, but there isn't the same kind of suffering because of the experience. There isn't an avoidance. The avoidance of the suffering is not part of the experience. So as your attentional skills develop, You notice perhaps that some kind of mental suffering or anxiety actually had a trigger three days ago.

[14:07]

Your upset stomach or your headache or your anxiety actually triggered By the time you notice it, it's almost too late to do anything about it. So when your attentional skills get developed, you are present when the trigger happened that led you to be anxious. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this would work. It would make sense to anyone.

[15:09]

But, you know, I noticed years ago that for some reason I felt a little click on the side of my head, like a blood vessel or a nerve or something happening. And if I felt that, within a few hours, I'd have a headache. Once I noticed that trigger, as soon as I felt that little trigger, I would change, I'd relax inside, and I've never had a headache since. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone, but as it has become clear to me, many years ago I realized that before I got a headache, there was always something like a little click or something on the left side of my left lobe and maybe as if it happened in a blood vessel or something. Now, when I noticed the little click, I had no idea what it led to. I just noticed, it's that little click. Click isn't the right word exactly, but something like that. Yeah, but then I noticed when I had the click and I kind of changed so the click went away, I never had headaches again.

[16:31]

Now, if you're prone to migraines and so forth, I don't know if such a thing would work, but it does help if you can change your blood flow in your hands and things like that, if you do have migraines. So the alertness to know that mental and emotional suffering can be stronger or lesser, etc., is the second point. dynamic of Zen practice. The third dynamic is to feel, believe, hope that one can live as closely as possible to how things actually exist.

[17:42]

So you're not looking at the world the way you want it to be. You're looking at the world just the way it is. And that ain't happy making. Yeah, and then that's what makes Buddhism very close to science. How do we actually exist? How do I actually feel? How do other people actually feel? What's happening? And that helped if you develop attitudes of acceptance, attitudes of welcoming, attitudes of yes.

[19:02]

Whatever happens, you say, okay, or yes, or welcome, and now I'll deal with the problem. And the fourth pillar or dynamic of Zen and Buddhist practice And the fourth dynamic or pillar in Zen or in the Buddhist practice is to believe, feel, know, intend that it's possible to live in a way that's beneficial to everything and everyone. I mean on hand it's clearly impossible. And on the other hand, it's clearly beneficial if you intend it.

[20:21]

And in simple ways, if you, on the sidewalk you pick up cigarette wrappers and things like that. Right near where I have an apartment in Freiburg, there's a bakery across the street. And there's a high school at the other end of the street. And on the bricks, a student's pride... Go up to the bakery, get something, come back and throw the wrappers on the street. In New York there'd be hundreds, but in Germany there's ten or something. But, you know, I'm not going to spend all afternoon picking them up, but I will spend 20 minutes or 10 minutes or something. There's a limit.

[21:28]

When you find a broken bottle in the street, that's okay. And of course, sometimes you can't, don't have time. Yeah. I have a practice of every time Next time I see an animal been killed by a car, I bow. And I have friends writing to me, and they say, what the hell is he bowing for all the time? Well, it used to be that windshields were insect collecting mechanisms. And I used to, every time an insect hit the windshield, I'd bow.

[22:29]

It used to be hard to steer. There were so many wind sacks. But now... Really, it is true, the insect population is dramatically reduced. They don't hit the windshield anymore. It's unbelievable. And in the past, it was difficult to steer, because so many insects hit the windshield all the time. But in the meantime, and that's true, the insect population has gone so far back that hardly any insects have hit the windshield. So one explores these four dynamics to see if they help give some guidance in your exploration of your individual and shared experience.

[23:36]

Man kann diese vier Aspekte anwenden, um zu schauen, ob sie einem eine gewisse Now in this Dharma land or Dharma city or Dharma park or whatever we're calling it, somehow I see a field of lights as if I was above it. Where am I going to land, or where is the entry to the city gate, or something like that? In Freiburg, there's two gates at either end of the city, and one of them no longer is called a gate, it's called McDonald's. In Freiburg gibt es zwei Tore auf beiden Zugängen, auf beiden Seiten zur Innenstadt.

[24:43]

Und das eine wird inzwischen nicht mehr Tor genannt, sondern McDonald's. So somehow McDonald's gate is also a gate. Also ist das McDonald's Tor auch zu einem Tor geworden. Okay, so what are some of these gates or entries? Was sind einige dieser Tore oder Zugänge? Well, you know, one grouping is 545. Eine Gruppierung ist 454. Five skandhas, four marks, and five dharmas. I call it the 545. Ach so, 545. Also, five skandhas, four kennzeichen, and five dharmas. No, five dharmas? Is that what you said? Yeah, five dharmas. Five dharmas, five skandhas, and four marks. 454. No, 545. 545. Okay, so the five skandhas, what Christoph brought up the other day, are formed.

[26:02]

Really, the best translation in our paradigm, cultural paradigms, is non-graspable feeling. And then perceptions. Yeah. And contemporary phenomenology is really focused on perception. But for us, practicing the five skandhas, the first is form. And then the feeling we have that arises with form before it takes the form of words or naming. And then when it becomes a perception.

[27:09]

And then when the perceptions lead to the associations, so associative mind. And then when that cone, a kind of cone, comes into the point of consciousness. And you can change the koan's direction and start with consciousness. Like when you do zazen, you start with consciousness. Usually it takes a certain amount of consciousness to find the zendo, find your seat, sit down, etc. And then you release consciousness. And then you're more in a kind of dreamy state of mind, which is without sleeping.

[28:09]

A dreamy state of mind with a lot of associations. And after a while you get pretty good at this. You can really feel consciousness drop away, like someone was saying about their experience falling asleep. Part of falling asleep, part of exploring your own experience is to explore the experience of falling asleep and waking up. And if you can't release consciousness, you don't fall asleep.

[29:18]

So after a while, you get so you can feel yourself release consciousness, and it's usually with me anyway, accompanied by a little bodily shift, and consciousness goes, and then associative mind appears. And after a while you can actually get good at staying in associative mind without the restrictions of consciousness and at the same time being conscious. It's a fairly common experience in Sashin, maybe your third or fourth Sashin, that you find you're somehow conscious all night but completely asleep.

[30:28]

If someone comes into the room, you know what happened, you can talk to them and not wake up. So this is an example of the exploration leads to the transformation of the ingredients. It's a kind of cooking. Or winemaking. And maybe it's when you fall asleep that way and you release associative mind, then the perceptual field of mind comes up and that stays awake. while associative mind and consciousness sleep.

[31:36]

If I'm sounding crazy, I'm not. This is the fruits of having done this for a long time, but these are the fruits of the first. five, six, four, five, six years. Then you enter the field of non-graspable feeling. And there's a certain feeling in this room right now that we have generated together. It's like a fine film. Film? Film that's in the room and it has various qualities and it's what allows me to speak.

[32:40]

So once that field calls forth from me what I can say, what the field allows me to say, And I would say most of what's happening in this room is happening in that non-graspable film, field. And from what you said earlier, you with the sunset on your chest, What is your name?

[34:00]

Wolfgang. Ah, yes. I should know your name, but I don't see you often enough. But you have a sunset on your chest. Wolfgang. San Diego Desert. Oh, I should have known. Yeah, go ahead. Actually, she's giving a lecture and I give her little signals. I would say most of my thinking happens outside of thinking. Or maybe we could say the result of thinking, the results of thinking happens outside of thinking. Just translate it. That explains a lot. You could say that the results... That could be a criticism. That explains a lot.

[35:20]

Because in a way, this film of non-graspable feeling is present all the time in whatever circumstances one's circumstancing in. And you can sort of fold things out of your thinking or observations or questions you don't know how to answer. You can fold them into this out into this film, into the ear-ness of this film. And after a while, they fold back into you with some kind of results, as if you'd been thinking about it.

[36:25]

And many people, you know, like who are working on a poem or pure mathematicians who are working on a problem that hasn't been solved before, etc., use this technique intuitively. Fold it out and then after a while it just appears as a metaphor, an image, a vision. So this happens naturally to people, but the practitioner, the yogic adept, becomes skillful at it. You just have to let more and more of your life happen on its own. On its own. On its non-ownership. And then there's form.

[38:09]

Yeah, and form, the more you look closely at form, it's nothing but contingency and relationality and is empty. And the more you look at the form, the more you see that it is nothing more than a relationship. Can you say something different for contingency? Relationality. Relationality is fine. Interconnectedness. Thank you. It is basically that intersex connections and a relationship are different relationships and that it is empty. Meta-connectedness. That's not an improvement. Okay, sorry.

[39:09]

We did well. All right, good. Now, what is this essentially? It's just a practice of noticing appearance. Noticing appearance. Oh, I look at you. I turn and look at you. I turn and look at you. Each one of you is an appearance. But each one of you, if I look at you, consciousness is there, perception is there, associations are there, and so forth. And so it's a form of... It's an evolution of the... It's a detailing of appearance. Evolution and detailing of experience. Okay. So it's useful to do very simple mechanical experiments.

[40:33]

What is your name? Vanessa. Hi, Vanessa. So I can look at Vanessa and I just allow non-graspable feeling to be present when I look at Vanessa. And there's some kind of knowing in the noticing. And then I can turn to Ulrich. But it's good if I develop the practice of appearance that I leave Vanessa completely behind when I look at Ulrich. Aber wenn ich die Praxis von Erscheinung wirklich entwickeln will, dann ist es sinnvoll, Vanessa wirklich komplett loszulassen, wenn ich mich Ulrich zuwende. And then Reinhardt. Reinhardt, right? Reinholdt. Reinholdt. Holt. They talk Reinholdt.

[41:53]

Too many Reins around here. Reinholdt, okay. Und dann schaue ich mir Reinholdt an. And I leave Ulrich behind and just... have a noticing, a K-noticing, K-noticing. And if I've actually been able to release Ulrich and Reinhold, I come back to Vanessa and she's actually different. Her eyes are a little wider. Which, if I'd stayed with Vanessa, I'd look back and see the same Vanessa. But each moment is somehow unique. It's not your problem. And when I let go of these two and turn to Vanessa again, then I can see that she is actually a slightly different Vanessa than the first time. Her eyes are a little wider, her attitude is a little different.

[42:55]

She is actually unique in every moment. So if you're exploring your experience, you have to actually explore your experience. And what is experience but appearance? There's no experience without appearance. Let what appears appear. And try to let it appear as simply and as fully, attentionally fully as possible. Now we come to here, we've somehow ended up with one of the other gates of practice.

[44:00]

So the gate of appearance, one of the gates of appearance, are the five skandhas. And the more you recognize the brilliance and usefulness of these five ways in which And the more you can make the brilliance and the usefulness of these five different ways of appearing more detailed, While the original conception of the five skandhas is that the process of form, feeling, perception, associative mind, leads to its ingredients of consciousness.

[45:14]

So it's how you separate, you look at consciousness and you say, hey, what's that about? This luminous screen that is so hard to... to turn yourself outside of. So you know that consciousness isn't a feignness, it's a process, it's an operation. It's a construct. So it's not a thing like time, space, etc. It's something constructed, and you're the constructor.

[46:16]

It's not a thing like time or space or anything like that, but it's something constructed, and you're the one who constructs it. So knowing it's an activity and a construct, practice is to deconstruct it. See how it's put together. The five skandhas are your way of examining how it's put together. And then you discover, oh, these are the five parts which have been most emphasized since the earliest time in Buddhism. And then you discover, oh, look, these are the five aspects that have been emphasized the most since the beginning of Buddhism.

[47:17]

And then you can see, oh, now that I can see these five individual aspects, I don't have to put them together in the same way. my bodily mind-ography, in each one of these. So I can establish a percept-only mind. For example, again, you hear a bird. This is my usual example. Birds have much more complex ears than we have. So the bird is singing something that's beyond our ability to hear it. So when you hear a bird, and Zen temples tend to have gardens so that you have an early morning Zazen with songbirds.

[48:46]

When you're really more or less completely in percept-only mind, When you hear the bird, your body recognizes you're hearing what you can hear of the bird. And in percept-only mind, then, you're hearing your own hearing. Und im reinen Wahrnehmungsgeist hörst du dann dein eigenes Hören. And somehow that is often an experience of bliss.

[49:47]

Und aus irgendeinem Grund ist das häufig eine Erfahrung von Glückseligkeit. And the Lankavatara Sutra says, when you hear somebody, right, Im Lankavatara Sutra heißt es, dass wenn du jemanden hörst, solltest du ihren Silbenkörper hören. Du solltest ihren Wortkörper hören. Du solltest ihren Satzkörper hören. And so this is to be in percept-only mind, and you hear the emphasis on the syllables, which also tell you something separate from the words you're saying. And in early texts here in the West, they didn't punctuate. Und in frühen Texten, auch hier im Westen, gab es keine grammatikalischen Zeichen, keine Punkte, Kommas und so.

[51:02]

Gedichte wurden einfach Zeile für Zeile geschrieben, ohne dass es bestimmte räumliche Abstände und so weiter gab. And it was felt that the reader in speaking it would shape the punctuation. And another very sophisticated idea was that each language, Greek or German or English, has built into it a certain kind of prosody, a certain kind of rhythm that makes the language poetic. And another really refined idea was that every single language, Greek, German, any language, a kind of prosody, a kind of... The art of writing poetry.

[52:03]

Okay. So a kind of poetry where the own rhythm and melody... Ja, also die einen eigenen Rhythmus und eine eigene Melodie haben. So there was a sensitivity built into the language, a poetic sensibility, which pulled these lines of words into the form of experience of a poem. Und da gab es eine sprachliche Sensibilität darin, die die Zeilen eines Gedichts in die Dichtkunst, in ein Gedicht verwandelt haben. Now, I don't speak Chinese, but from what I've read a lot about Chinese language, you don't know from a particular character, kanji character, whether it's a verb or a noun, but it's your feeling for the text which turns it into a poem. Okay, so one of the other entries into this Dharma land

[53:05]

ein weiterer Zugang in dieses Dhamma-Land, ist das Wort Hishiryo, to notice without thinking. So this is a concept or a pointer you can use to notice without thinking about. Und das ist ein Konzept, ein It's a concept which you can deploy in the background of situations. So you allow yourself to notice, connotice, without thinking about it. So this is one technique to allow this thinking to happen in the film of knowing, but not in consciousness. That thinking happens in the film of knowing.

[54:29]

Without thinking about it. You know, in the United Nations, the translators change every half hour. So I think we're reaching... I can't remember anymore. It's just all sounds to me. I have no idea what you're saying. It's time for lunch, I think. And there's various things, but of course, maybe after lunch. Thank you for your patience. Oh, on Sunday, sometimes we make it a little shorter. So you can get home earlier. So shall we say two-third?

[55:48]

Okay, two-third. Okay.

[55:52]

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