Okay, now how to trust this kind of Well, I think we can trust it more than thinking knowing. But can we always trust it? Well, I don't think you can always trust anything. But you can trust it more. And how can you increase the likelihood that you can trust it? Consciousness in Dogen, Kukai, Nichiren, Shinran and so forth is

[01:15]

we'd have to call it something like contextual consciousness. Context... Consciousness that arises in a context. Now, Dogen says, for example... um, to, to authenticate and cultivate all things by conveying the self to them is delusion. From that point of view, I think almost all of us are deluded.

[02:36]

We may not be deluded in You know, the usual sense in terms of our society and our friends. But in a Buddhist sense, this is delusion. To authenticate, you know, when you look at a tree and you say it's a tree, that's authenticating the tree. Yeah, you're saying that's a tree. It's a kind of vow almost. It's an agreement that that's a tree. And from the point of view of Dogen, that kind of agreement cultivates consciousness. So to cultivate and authenticate all things by conveying the self to them is delusion.

[03:42]

But by letting all things come forward and cultivate and authenticate the self is enlightenment. Now that that's quite a different thinking about consciousness and the self. Doesn't mean the self doesn't have memory or function in the context of memory but that memory rises, that comes up through all things coming forward.

[05:05]

Okay. Now this assumes what I said, described yesterday, is the three minds of daily consciousness. That... that the consciousness of a mature practitioner is always in immediate consciousness. It's always rooted in the immediate situation. Out of pure selfishness. I'm partly joking, but you discover you simply feel better all the time if your consciousness is nourished or rooted in the immediate situation.

[06:12]

Plus you stay younger. I'm sort of joking, but there's some truth to that. Sort of pure selfishness. Yeah, like that. Okay. Okay. Now, if the emphasis on the self as something inside you that's rooted in its personal history and its future plans, and Dogen certainly knew about such a self or he wouldn't have said to authenticate things by conveying the self to them. So he knew about that.

[07:14]

So if that is de-emphasized, that's a minor note in the performance of self and body and consciousness. And if we look at the word perform for its directionality through history, its etymology, No, it's about the word perform in German, really. In German, too? No. Well, I'm just speaking about the English word. Yeah, to find the appropriate word is my difficulty. We'll just say English, perform. That's an English word.

[08:29]

It means to furnish each situation with what's needed. So the self and consciousness are considered to be a kind of performance or exercise. So if we used current, which sports club, which gym do you bring the self to? A self-fitness studio. A self-fitness studio, yeah. Which means, in what context of consciousness does the self most mature?

[09:32]

Now, you heard the bell yesterday, and the bell brought up this deep feeling you had at Johannesburg. This is things coming forward and authenticating the self. Now, I asked you to talk about these things, you know, because I like you to talk with each other. And I get tired of doing all the talking. Okay. But also, I wanted you to notice these things are already in your own activity.

[10:41]

Now, practice is to notice them more. And to give them more strength, space. Now, I've trusted, for many years now, trusted my bodily knowing. And one, I've made some mistakes. One cost my friends a million dollars. So it was a serious mistake. Yeah. I don't know if the decision was wrong but the decision wasn't developed really in the context of my life and then my context of my life didn't support the decision.

[11:48]

So I've had to learn to, yeah, trust this intuition, this bodily knowing, which is clear, I don't have any doubt about it. But I have to discover I have a responsibility for this decision. And I have to exercise that responsibility in a context that supports it. So it's not just the initial decision, it's also the... creating the context that supports the decision. So it's actually not a simple thing to shift from

[12:49]

thinking things through to feeling them through. Yeah, and in small decisions we practice it. And we can extend it to bigger decisions. And decisions to enter a monastery or take the precepts and things like that, really you can trust that kind of decision. Because actually the decision is to create a context that supports the decision. Okay, now Kukai, he says, and he's the person I gave you this phrase, Sokushin Jobutsu. Sokushin Jobutsu. Kukai also said, wherever my six elements reach, he means, I think, I have to check, but I'm assuming he means his six senses.

[14:48]

But he doesn't mean the six senses is mind. He means the six senses objectified by and embodied in what they notice. Yeah. Embodied in what they notice. So wherever my six elements reach, he says, this is my body. Now, just imagine thinking that way. Just imagine that while I'm sitting here, I'm looking at you, hearing you, proprioceptively feeling you and I consider you my body. Maybe we know intuitively that there's some truth to that.

[15:51]

And they've shown that Very quickly, a group of people sitting together, their metabolism all starts to be in sync. But let's not think about the objective truth. Let's just think if we take that as a world view, as a view that's in our immediate experience. How difficult I will feel when I get up and leave the room. Because I'm leaving my body behind. And I definitely feel that when I leave Sophia and Marie-Louise.

[16:53]

Yeah, but that's... Yeah, because I'm related to them. I'm the father and the husband and all that stuff. But maybe that's more widely true than we think. It's just that the fact of... genetic connection makes that more, presses that into us. And I definitely feel the Dharma Sangha, those of you I've been practicing with, and I look around and I've known a lot of you for a lot of years. You know, 10, 12, 15. Hey! More.

[17:57]

I've known some of you since you were quite small. Yeah. So in some sense we share some common body. And practice is also to develop that resonance. Now, Kukai speaks about body, speech and mind as the three resonances. Or the three intimacies. Or the three mysteries. Okay, now what he means by that is by voice he means hearing the sound of the world. Now, What I'm trying to do here is I'm not trying to tell you the way it is.

[19:10]

I'm trying to tell you the way they thought it is. And We might try it out. I can't promise you that it'll have a good effect. You're the test group. And we'll see, if you try it out, if it has a good effect. I sound like a pharmaceutical company. A dharmaceutical company. Yeah, that's pretty good, isn't it? Dharmaceutical. Okay, I'll use that again. And I think we can try this on to various degrees.

[20:18]

And it contradicts some of our senses of truth. But try it on as a different way of looking at things. Now, there was some, I remember in San Francisco years ago, there was some kind of serial, let's call it, criminal. And he was Everyone who knew him was a serial, repeated offender. I don't want to make it too explicit. And in the apartment building where he lived and at work, everyone liked him.

[21:26]

He was a really nice guy. But when he was alone and in a kind of fantasy world, he became a different person. He did what he did. Now, we think, yes, he's a bad person. This is a dangerous person. That's all true. But in Dogen and Kukai's way of thinking, in one context, he was a good person. In another context, he's not. So they put him in prison, of course. That changed his context. But it didn't probably change his context positively. So... From the point of view that I'm speaking now, we want to create the context that brings out the best in us.

[22:40]

And of course we do do that. We know where we feel better. We know we go to a movie, we feel better, you know, things like that. But really to shift and think the self I am is my context and not my prior continuity, that's actually a big jump. But really to think, to make this transition, that even the fact that I am, is my connection and not just my earlier continuity until now. No, I don't think we can give up our sense of the continuity of self. Although, relating to what you said the other day, Martin, I think the addictive and quality of thinking

[23:49]

Because thinking massages the self. And also, thinking supplies us with our continuity from moment to moment, so we need it. Okay, now one of the big shifts in practice is when you shift your experience of continuity from thinking to the breath, body and phenomena. And you'll know that that's happened when you concentrate or bring attention to your breath.

[25:08]

It doesn't keep jumping back to your thinking. When you no longer have to massage the self, because the observing eye doesn't appear on each moment. And because your sense of continuity It's always in the immediate situation. Und weil dann Gefühl für Kontinuität immer in der unmittelbaren Situation ist. So you can let your thinking go or actually drop the sense of continuity in your thinking and only have a sense of continuity in your senses and not feel like you're having a nervous breakdown.

[26:09]

I think intuitively if people have an anxiety attack, they go wash the dishes or something. Because it supplies a continuity that their anxiety is stopping, breaking. Yes. So to practice Buddhism is to wash dishes continuously. So to feel like you're engaged, something like washing dishes. And if those of you are thinking of going to the monastery, you should know that the monk's life is basically...

[27:10]

Learning to become a housewife. Right? Okay. Now, when you get in the habit of this contextual consciousness, a consciousness generated by all things authenticating the self, All things coming forward and authenticating the self. There's a strange... physical presence to everything.

[28:33]

Now I can say it in words. I can try to say something about it in words. But really, You can't really know it unless you do it. But I can say something about it, even if it sounds silly. It's like maybe you're in a Dutch still life. Maybe it's like living in a Dutch quiet place. The Dutch painters painted everything very clearly. You're in a cafe and the beer glass has a halo around it. Not because you've had a beer yet. The Dutch painters painted everything so clearly. For example, when you're in a restaurant and the glass is in front of you, it has a halo around it.

[29:35]

And not because you've already had a beer. Even a mundane thing like a beer glass shares a presence with you in the world on an equal basis. Mark Twain said he knew somebody could only recognize people through the bottom of a beer glass. That's conveying the self to things. Now, if you're in the habit of letting things come forward and authenticate the self, and he means consciousness, You're not arranging things, knowing things in terms of their importance to you. your things are present, the presence of the world which awakens your consciousness,

[31:00]

takes away all feeling of importance and comparison and so forth. I would like to say not all, but really virtually all. So the presence of the world is the context of consciousness. Now, sometimes it's said that in Buddhism we understand everything all at once or the whole universe to be the Buddha. And we tend to think of that in terms of from our habits of thinking, we tend to think of that as, well, the Buddha is this great guy and the universe is great too.

[32:42]

And how can the universe be like this great guy? That's not the way Kukai or Dogen is thinking at all. Here they say, or he says, the universe, the cosmos, is, you know, the word cosmos also means cosmetic. Anyway, the cosmos is as it is. And it's the cosmos which determines what a Buddha is. It's not the Buddha through which we understand the cosmos. It's the cosmos... from the cosmos which we understand the Buddha.

[33:44]

So it's the cosmos which makes a Buddha. And it's us in the midst of each situation that makes us a Buddha. Okay, now what context of the world creates the womb of sagehood? Nun, welcher Zusammenhang der Welt erschafft diesen Schoß der Weisheit? I don't know if I can... answer that further than what I've said already. But I think we can try on this sense of what we see, hear, smell in an embodied sense is our body. Now, in that sense, we can trust bodily knowing in an embodied consciousness.

[34:54]

So we could take the title of this seminar, The Nature of Mind, and ask, what is the nature of mind? And if we take nature to mean birth or source, We could say the nature of mind is the mind you can trust. Or when you can feel the source of mind, you can trust that. Now, what is the source of mind? I mean, you... I mean, Kukai or Dogen or one of these guys jokes and says, somebody says... That's my son.

[36:04]

Their son, their child, belongs to all things. It arises from all things. You happen to have a little seed involved, but the child arises from all things. So we think our child belongs to us, and then somehow at least should belong to the self we imagine into the future with our children in it. We think the child belongs to us. I told you that story many times when I told Sally, because she wouldn't do it. Ginny and I wanted her to do. And finally I got annoyed at her. She was about four years old. I said, Sally, Virginia and I made you and you belong to us.

[37:09]

And you should do what we said. And she said, it's too late now. I belong to me. Oh, that's what I like. Wow. But she doesn't just belong to me, she belongs to her age and her contemporaries and the world. And growing up is to realize that. Now, if we go back to this threshold dynamic of the conscious-unconscious.

[38:13]

Now in Buddhism we have the Alaya-Vijjana. And it's somewhat stupidly translated sometimes as the unconscious. And the Alaya-Vijjana is everything is something like everything you know, experienced, etc. It may not be conscious, but it really doesn't have any relationship to consciousness. It's just your accumulated experience. It's never, you know... So... It's the potentiality of everything you know. So there's no pressure in it. It's not trying to express itself. It doesn't mean it.

[39:13]

doesn't sometimes push forward or, you know, whatever. But that's not how it's primarily thought of. It's just the sum of everything you know. Things that have been experienced without any consciousness at all. You know, it's just things you picked up along the way. Now, how do you draw things out of that? They're drawn out by consciousness or by the self, etc. And if they're drawn out by the self, you have a... a consciousness that's driven by the self. If they're drawn out by consciousness, you have a consciousness that's driven by...

[40:29]

But if this what's drawn out comes from your immediate context primarily on each moment... with self-interest of the observing self of a minor importance, then, at each moment, various things come up. Okay. And there's not so much, the self isn't so involved with, I don't like that, or I do like that, or that scares me. You push it down. Because the situation is always drawing it out, whether the self wants it or not. and the consciousness not being primarily defined through the self anymore but being a consciousness which is simultaneously awareness and bodily knowing much will come out

[41:48]

that normally in a self-dominated consciousness would be repressed. So the whole relationship to the pathogenic secret or to... Pathogenic what? Secret. Secret? Or to, I don't know... is different. The dynamic is different. In other words, secret. It's part of the development of the idea of psychiatry in psychiatry that many people have in them a secret that they can't tell. The famous example is a is a woman found out the man she really loved who she didn't marry actually was in love with her.

[43:20]

But she was already married. And she had two children. And she allowed the two children to drink typhoid water. And one died. And this was a secret she couldn't deal with. And the therapist also couldn't tell the secret because then she could be charged with a crime. So my impression is that the development of psychiatry has in the background the feeling that many people have some kind of secret that they can't tell. At least that was in the old days. I don't know about now. But let me say, because it's something I've been thinking about, it's just a house of time going here.

[44:29]

It's just a thread going in a different direction. And I spoke about it a little bit in Hannover, and Gerald asked why. But the way in which psychiatry develops or one way to look at the development of psychiatry is from exorcism to mesmerism to hypnotism to... to psychiatry. Which, it's interesting because all of them assume an attunement between two people. You don't exercise yourself, someone else has to help you.

[45:44]

And the original meaning of exorcism wasn't to drive out spirits, but to bring up spirits. And this fellow Mesmer where the word mesmerized comes from, seemed to have a tremendous power. And it's called magnetism because they used magnets, they would magnetize the body to think that would draw out evil spirits or sicknesses and things like that. And Mesmer discovered that he didn't have to use magnets, so he called his own power animal magnetism. But he had such power that one of his people who was very skeptical about him noticed that when he looked in a mirror in a room

[46:52]

at people whose backs were turned, they began to be affected by his looking, even in the mirror. And even when he went to Mainau, the island in the Bodensee, Birds flocked around him and then followed him where he went. Now, there's many Zen stories about hermit Zen guys living and animals gathering around where they lived. And when I take a walk, sometimes there's a stray cat with me. But my point is the discussion of animal magnetism is very much like the Buddhist idea of chi or ki.

[48:09]

And the idea of hypnotism is also in psychotherapy. This idea of a channel of rapport that's open between people is very much like the idea of Sangha. that the therapist uses. Now, I don't know enough about exorcism, but I've never been exorcised. I don't remember. Is that I would guess that it works, the way I would understand it, because much of our suffering, our way of seeing ourselves, is not just because we've had those experiences that have accumulated in a certain way, but because there's a kind of vow that we've made that binds those experiences to us.

[49:28]

And if you release that vow, they don't weigh. And I think you find when you practice that if you do make this shift from the Consciousness as arising through self. And to consciousness arising through things coming forward and authenticating consciousness. That change can release some of the vows we have that we're a certain kind of person or certain kinds of things define us. that this change, so to speak, started to emerge, which in a certain way were bound to us.

[51:03]

Okay. Now we could also speak about this little tree at the base of the spine and the tingle at the top of the head and things like that. But it's exactly four o'clock. Come back next year. Or tomorrow. So I would say that I didn't know exactly what to do when I came Friday night. And so I talk about what interests me at the moment. And I found that when I made this list, I thought, oh dear, this list doesn't work.

[52:08]

Mainly because I lost contact with you through one of the transitions within the list. But I think that now we can see how the kind of consciousness you have produces self and generates how memory is used. And this practice of, let's call it, dharmic attention How you bring attention to each moment and what aspects of each moment as it arises you bring attention to is the alchemical moment.

[53:17]

in which what kind of person we are matures and rises. So part of this nature of mind is how the seed of attention is used. And the whole understanding that attention isn't a continuous thing, but rather a pulse, which is in grain terms what it is, and that that pulse of attention, which we call a dharma, is the root of the nature of mind.

[54:38]

Or how you enter into the nature of mind. Okay? Maybe we should have a moment of the bell ringing so we can all decide to enter the monastery. Or at least enter the walking monastery which each of us is. Thank you.

[57:17]

Thank you very much, all of you, for being here. Thank you, Atmar and Melita and Neil and Manuel and anyone else who helped organize this. And thank you for transferring in. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you, Roshi. You're welcome. Thank you, Jerry, for keeping us amused.

[58:06]

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