Yes, I would like to welcome you all to the broadcast of Richard Baker Hoshi, Zen Spirit, Beginner Spirit. As you may know, Richard Baker is the successor of Suzuki Hoshi, who wrote this book, Zen Mind Beginners, which is already relatively well known. It is now almost very well known as the master course of Buddhist books, as far as I know. Richard Baker manages two meditation centers, one in Colorado in the United States, in the Hohemautis, and one here in Germany, in Schwarzwald. And invited here in Göttingen is our little sangha, We call ourselves Living Zen. And we meet regularly. And about us and also Richard Berkaroshi, there is information for those interested.

[01:02]

You have our website also on your small entry card. Yes, I am in charge of the small program here together with my wife and teach Buddhism and also work as a psychotherapist. I would like to wish you a good evening and I am very happy that you came despite or just because of football. Thank you. We'll go down together. Thank you for being here this evening.

[02:33]

As I think Gerald explained that this title for this talk this evening is the name of my teacher's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And originally Suzuki Roshi wanted the title just to be Beginner's Mind. That was his idea. And can you hear us in the back okay? Okay. But, you know, the publisher, who became a friend of mine, wanted to have the word Zen in the title.

[03:35]

So finally, we came up with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And it turns out that it's a Yeah, actually a good title to practice with, as well as, you know, a pretty nice title for a book. And some of you know that there's a Buddhist and particularly Chinese custom of naming a teaching, a commentary, in a way that you can practice with the name itself. And the feeling is that you can't get much

[04:36]

the meaning of words when they're immediately understood is not very deep. In which case? The meaning of words when you initially understand them is not very deep. But when you, as I say, incubate the words or repeat the words or hold them in your mind and attention, over time they begin to have a richness and a depth. And ideally, the title itself opens up the teaching of the book. So maybe after this talk we'll see what happens.

[06:01]

You can read the book and say, oh yeah, it's all there in the title. And I was thinking before I came today, if I myself came to a lecture like this, what would I want to hear? One of the things I'd like to hear is, what do these words mean? At least I'd want to know, do they have any meaning beyond just their common usage? Yeah, and actually they are terms, practice terms.

[07:05]

So Zen, let's start with that one. Zen, of course, is... means in short, it's a word for meditation. But more specifically, really it means something closer to absorption. A kind of concentration, not a concentration on something, but to be absorbed in your situation, or something like that. And we could say that it means to be absorbed in the, yeah, to have the mind absorbed in the body during meditation.

[08:09]

So, you know, actually the Zen school, as I pointed out recently, is, well, Buddhism is about 2,500 years old. And the Zen school is about 1,500 years old. And it took about 500 years of those first 1,500 to come to some shared agreement about what Zen practice was. So what these words mean, Zen and mind in practice took a long time to develop. So going back to the beginning, what would I want? I came to such a lecture, what would I want?

[09:35]

One would be, as I said, what these words mean. Yeah, mean. But I'd also want to know what use are, even if I know what these words mean, what use are they to me this evening when I'm missing a soccer game? Well, I hope that after this lecture you'll enjoy future soccer games or meals even more. So... So again, Zen has come to mean the word absorption. A kind of non-dual absorption in your situation.

[10:37]

Now, can you be that way all the time? Well, yes and no. So what does mind mean in Buddhism? And you can see that in German you don't have exactly a word for mind. So it's not obvious what mind means. But even in Japanese and Chinese and in Sanskrit there are lots of words for mind that English conveniently has this one word.

[11:41]

And the word in Japanese, a very similar word in Chinese, is shin, which means actually heart and mind. And it doesn't just mean at least tooth, too. bodily organs. But it means these two areas of feeling and thinking as a relationship. and especially a bodily relationship. And all Zen practice assumes that you're going to weave mind and body together.

[12:53]

We can experience mind and body separately, And they also can be related and are, of course, related. You know, there's no mind without a body. But again, we can experience them separately. And how do we weave that experience together? That's assumed in the word mind. And it's assumed especially when we say Zen mind. Now in general, mind in Buddhism means that which goes beyond words, language, and the senses.

[14:08]

Or really, that's what Bodhidharma said anyway. And he's probably right because he's mythological. And what he meant was that when you hear something, you notice the hearing. When you hear something, you notice the hearing. When I see you, I notice the seeing. I notice you. I don't so much notice the seeing of you. But still, usually we notice objects of attention. But if you really listen to something carefully or look at something carefully, you can feel the mind goes beyond the senses or any description you can make of the sound or the sight.

[15:34]

So mind then, Bodhidharma meant that mind is, you can notice, yeah, something like pure mind that goes beyond the object when you look or hear or feel carefully. So Buddhism in a general sense means mind more or less as presence, as feeling awareness. And in that sense, you know, You didn't come here to be part of my mind, but in fact right now you're part of my mind. And I'm part of your mind. Or at least if we don't have a word for it, maybe presence.

[16:45]

I'm part of your presence and you're part of my presence. So mind and Zen has some kind of feeling like that. While its presence like that, it's also bodily. You can feel it in your own body. So mind in a more specific sense means like sleeping mind, dreaming mind, angry mind. Now, what's the point of making it more specific like that? Or saying Zen mind or beginner's mind. Well, because we can experience particular states of mind.

[18:16]

Yes. And one of the basic things you should know of Yogacara Zen Buddhism And Yogacara is one of the teachings behind Zen. And really emphasizes that this is a yogic teaching. Yogic teaching means really that there's no idea of natural. That everything is actually a posture, a bodily or mental posture. Okay, so all Mental, all states of mind have a physical component.

[19:38]

And all human physical states have a mental component. It means you can specifically feel a state of mind. Well, of course, it's very fleeting. Momentary minds, we don't, unless your mindfulness is very developed, you don't have much feeling for it. So in the sense of a specific state of mind, We could define a mind in that sense as being homeostatic and self-organizing. Now, homeostatic, by that I mean it just tends to maintain its state.

[20:39]

When you're asleep and you... Don't really want to wake up, that's a good example of homeostatic state of mind. You want to stay asleep. Or, as I say, if you hear the alarm and you decide it's not an alarm, it's the telephone which you don't have to answer. This is self-organizing. So a mind, an angry mind, is a mind that wants to stay angry and does its best to stay angry. So it's not just that you're angry.

[21:52]

The mind that you generate anger, or whatever caused you to be angry, generates a mind that's angry. Just as you dream in dreaming mind. And when you wake up, and you start thinking about what you have to do during the day, the dreams sink out of sight. So there's two, you know, like, you can try to remember a dream by remembering some detail, and you can sometimes go back into the dream. And to keep a dream, you can remember one detail or you can create the physical feel that you now know through practice, mindfulness practice. Or you all know because you all go to sleep and wake up quite often.

[23:16]

So you can go back into the physical feeling of dreaming mind and the dream floats to the surface. Of course, if you just grab hold of a corner of the dream and pull it into consciousness, It turns into something to be analyzed. It turns into some sort of piece of consciousness. But when you take hold of the corner of a dream or some detail of the dream. You don't pull it into consciousness.

[24:18]

But you let it pull you back into sleeping. Then actually what you've done is used the detail to bring dreaming mind back No, I'm talking about this because, one, waking and dreaming and sleeping is all familiar to us, of course. But this negotiation of going from consciousness to sleeping and sleeping to consciousness is very similar to the negotiation between Zen mind and usual mind. You can feel the difference.

[25:21]

And you get to know the difference, first of all, by sitting gaza. Sitting in this zazen means sitting absorption. And what is this posture? We're both sitting up here like pretzels. You might as well know. And what is this posture? We're both sitting up here like pretzels. You might as well know. I remember when I saw somebody do this on a subway in New York when I was about 20.

[26:26]

It looked quite... Some kid was across the... Young man was across the subway and he was just sitting like this. I thought, well, that looks easy. Babies can do it. And I thought, yeah... So I tried it. I was sitting with my knees around my ears. It took me years to learn to sit and I still don't do it very well. But the advantage of the usefulness of the posture is you can sit without leaning. Your body supports itself. And it's almost like the posture of sleeping on your back, except you're held upright. So you can kind of relax into the mind of sleeping, but then wake up through the upright posture into a mind of aliveness.

[27:47]

And this is actually not a mind we're born with. We could call it a wisdom mind. It's a mind that overlaps with sleeping, dreaming, non-dreaming deep sleep, dreaming and waking mind. It's a posture and practice discovered in India long before Buddhism. And there was an understanding, let's explore Let's know ourself. You know, Socrates, know ourself. But the Indians decided, let's know ourselves through a posture through which we can come to a new knowing mind. And the Indians had the approach

[29:04]

You know, it's not so dumb. It's quite obvious, actually. But to really notice it and make sense of it takes a civilization a long time. Now, it's very clear, it's easier to sleep lying down than standing up. Unless you're a horse. Or driving. So... It's clear there's a relationship between posture and the mind of sleeping. And I know in Germany you guys all stand up in the morning. We just get up in English, but you guys stand up in the morning.

[30:29]

So standing up is the mind of consciousness, the waking mind. And this is obviously some sort of combination. It's a mind-body posture quite similar to the one we sleep in, but also the one we stand and are waking in. So Zen mind also means a posture. And as I've been pointing out recently, and I think it's quite... Useful to notice is that one of the teachings of Buddhism, simple teachings of Buddhism, is the so-called Four Noble Postures. What a dumb thing to point out.

[31:49]

We all know we walk, stand, sit and recline. Why point it out? Well, first what's being pointed out is you will live your whole life in these four postures. And you will live your life differently if their postures are not simply positions. So what I'm saying here is that, when I talked about this recently, I said, this is a position. You have to translate that. He can't. There's no energy in this position. If I kind of... If I put energy into my position, it turns into a posture.

[33:01]

And that's what's meant by the four noble postures. Can you walk, stand, sit, even recline? What posture do you sleep in? in ways that you feel filled with aliveness, or qi, or energy. And I suggest, I recommend, when you leave, when you're walking, see if you can fill yourself with energy as you're walking. Then Zen mind lives in all the postures of your life. Zen mind needs a territory for itself, a territory of aliveness. And you'll feel, I think if you do that, you try this out on the way home this evening, you'll actually feel more alive and you'll feel more nourished by what you're doing.

[34:19]

Okay. I still have time. Okay. Okay, so I've tried to give you some feeling for Zen mind. And we can also look at the most common instruction of my teacher on how to do this zazen sit. And that most common instruction was don't invite your thoughts to tea. Now, what does it mean not to invite your thoughts to tea?

[35:39]

What means the intention not to invite your thoughts to tea? can generate a mind which doesn't get caught in discursive thinking. So the statement actually means, have the intention not to get involved with discursive thinking. Well, in a wide sense, discursive thinking, the mind of intentions, it's all mind and maybe Zen mind. But this is a teaching.

[36:48]

So we're making a distinction. A distinction that helps you notice your own mind. Perhaps noticing the difference between thinking about something and feeling your presence here in this room. And I think you can feel if you start thinking about something or if you now just let yourself go into your presence and our shared presence. And you'll feel there's a difference. I think you'll notice there's a little bump you go over. Well, there's a difference like your attention feels like it's the back of your eyes instead of the front. So we're making a distinction here again.

[38:01]

So we can notice our experience. So let's say Zen mind is not discursive thinking. It's the mind more or less free from discursive thinking. Or It's the field of mind in which discursive thinking arises. So then we're saying, can you feel the field of mind independent of the contents of mind? Now, that takes some practice to do it.

[39:04]

But it's not so difficult. If you have an intention to notice the field of mind, that intention itself, if you hold it like the title of this lecture is in my mind, if you hold the title, if you hold the intention, it inhibits discursive thought. It inhibits, holds back discursive thought. And you can even feel it too when you're breathing. So you can notice that when you feel the presence of mind instead of the thoughts of mind, your breathing will be a little different.

[40:12]

Now what I'm talking about is called mindfulness practice. To notice and participate in that noticing. And in particular to notice without thinking. To practice noticing without thinking. And that's one suggestion I would give you. To make use of what I'm talking about. When you go somewhere, taking a walk or whatever, spend ten minutes or a few minutes, just noticing without thinking.

[41:14]

You don't think that this is a bell. As I say, it might be a teacup or a hat. But you don't think hat, teacup or bell. Your senses just... Feel whatever they feel. So if you practice a little bit every day, noticing without thinking, you begin to get a feeling for the territory And one other suggestion I would make is every time you go through a door, you stop and feel the room.

[42:16]

or the outside, whatever it is, you feel the room and don't think the room. So you have a little moment of a pause and then you can think the room as much as you want. But just feel the room. Feel the room first. When you go out the door, feel the presence of the street, etc. Feel it in the kind of posture, stability of the body. It's only a moment, just like that long, but... it will begin to give you a feeling again for this mind that doesn't identify with thinking.

[43:33]

Now I'll give you one other little practice. You can work with the Zen mind. Because you can't You can't think your way to what Zen mind is. It's a practice. You can swim your way to what Zen mind is. I see you all going down the street now. It just came out of his lecture. So what I'm going to suggest is you use a phrase. Now a phrase, words, carry attention like they were electrical wire.

[44:36]

A simple example is, say, ask yourself, who is breathing? Now ask yourself, what is breathing? You've just changed HO to HAT, in English at least. And you feel different. You changed what? H-O, who? Yeah, okay. To what? H-A-T, to what? Sie haben gerade das was zu wer verwandelt. You just, a small change. And what a difference in the way of tension. is felt. So the phrase I'm going to give you, which is a typical way of practicing Zen, is to work with phrases. And the expression that I will give him, and it is very typical for Zen to work with sentences, is just now is enough.

[45:54]

Now, just now most of the time isn't enough. You are bored, you get better things to do. You have to go to the toilet or you are hungry. Yeah, but in fact, just now has to be enough because there's no alternative. And if you go through moment after moment of your life thinking it's not enough, you're going to be dead soon. I mean, walking dead. Or not fully alive. Because just now is a fact that it is all there is and ought to be enough.

[46:57]

So what's interesting about a phrase like this? If you hold it in your awareness is that sometimes you can feel that just now is enough. Everything feels like it's in its place. You feel really at ease and settled. And then maybe you think you have to do things, etc. But the more you get familiar with The mind where just now is enough, that's, we could say, Zen mind.

[48:08]

When just now isn't enough, wait, let's say that's not really, yeah, why bother calling it Zen mind, it's usual mind. Now what do you notice? Because even if you're completely busy and you're running down the street to catch a bus, still, underneath, just now is enough. So even when you're busy, this mind works. Zen mind is also present. And we call that inactivity, knowing the one who is not busy. And that's another phrase you can use to knowing the one who is not busy.

[49:14]

Okay, now I still have a few... Do I have... I guess so. What's beginner's mind? Okay, well, Sukhirashi said the beginner's mind is... There are many possibilities in the beginner's mind, but not so many in experts. So he meant that the beginner's mind has more openness. It doesn't have thoughts like, I've attained something. In English we have phrases like beginner's luck. What is this beginner's mind?

[50:15]

The non-expert's mind. It's not just the person who begins practice. It would also be the mind before content arises. It would also be an initial mind. And we actually already spoke about that. If you open a door and use the door to pause and just feel the room or the street you're getting a feeling for initial mind and when I look at you can I feel almost as if each moment it starts anew And when I look at it, I can almost feel that it begins anew in every moment.

[51:39]

That's initial mind or beginner's mind too. So, Sukhriyashi did mean the person just beginning has already the taste and seed of the more developed Zen mind. And what Suzuki Roshin meant is If you can just notice your mind. As a beginner or as a... Somebody who's practiced a long time. The poet Rumi has a little poem I like. For many and many years I knocked on that ancient door. knocked and knocked again.

[52:47]

And when it finally opened, I found I was on the other side. And that's much like Zen mind, beginner's mind. And find Yes, you've learned something. Maybe you have to knock for a while. But beginner's mind and Zen mind are two aspects of our existence. And they become ways to enter more deeply into our experience and our connectedness with others and our connectedness with the world.

[53:48]

Thank you very much. And I think that we have a little more time if you want. We'll take a break. And if you want to leave, nobody's keeping you any longer. And then after, I don't know, I'll ring the bell after 10 minutes or so. If anyone's still here, we can have some discussion. Okay. Thank you. Dankeschön. It's quite nice. You're a very strong audience. There's a lot of vigor in this room, I can feel.

[54:49]

Thanks. Danke. Thank you for translating.

[54:54]

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