It's nice to be here in Berlin after several years of not being here. And compared to Hamburg and the Black Forest, it's quite warm here. And finding this place was a little difficult. But anyway, we got here. We have a topic as usual. And I believe it's, What is Buddha? Thanks for an easy topic. And thank you for inviting me, all of you. Now I don't want, I'm not interested particularly in this question, answering this question in some kind of historical sense.

[01:08]

I mean, to me, what is Buddha is only... really interesting for us each, for each of us. If really the question is to be a Buddha, what is the possibility of being a Buddha? You know, I mentioned this anecdote a number of times. But I was in Basel giving a talk at a conference of psychotherapists.

[02:09]

Can you hear in the back okay? And someone came up to me and said, what is this? Yeah. Sometimes I tell people it's my bag. But in the 60s, what your bag is meant what's your job. And I said, oh, it's a small version of Buddha's robe. And the person looked at me rather peculiarly and left. And they came back a little while later and talked to Marie-Louise, who was translating for me. And it turned out he took what I said as if you'd asked a Catholic priest. And they'd had a priest's garment on. They had a priest's garment on.

[03:27]

They asked a Catholic priest who was wearing what Catholic priests wear. Okay? So you can translate that. Or somewhere else, I'm sorry. And the priest answered, I'm wearing God's robe. And I Am I wearing God's? No, I'm wearing Buddha's robe. So there's quite a different idea of a Buddha if we can wear, be like him or her in some way. So if we're trying to figure out what is a Buddha here in Berlin, Or in Germany or wherever you happen to be or live. How do you look for a Buddha?

[04:28]

Yeah, how do you find a Buddha? Can we even imagine We somehow have to get the idea of a Buddha out of our cultural categories like God. So we have to think of it somehow as a... Some kind of everyday possibility or at least a human possibility. Now I believe this evening some of you are not going to be in the seminar. And the seminar will be here in this room? So tomorrow and On Saturday Sunday we'll try to

[05:49]

think about how we can approach being a Buddha. Yeah, and I'd like to make that a real possibility for you. And even more so, make it clear that in some ways you already know this. But right now, for those of you who won't be in the seminar, Again, what can I say that give you a feeling of this as a possibility just this evening?

[07:00]

Because we don't usually, you know, we don't, it's not a category we look, in which we look for people. I suppose that most of us spend a good part of our youth looking for somebody to reproduce with. Maybe as you get older, it lessens a bit. But anyway, that occupies quite a bit of most people's time. Yeah, I suppose it's... An anthropologist would say we're just behaving like human animals. An anthropologe würde vielleicht sagen, wir benehmen uns mehr oder weniger wie menschliche Tiere. But we also have people we work with and friends and so forth.

[08:06]

Aber es gibt auch Leute, mit denen wir arbeiten, wir haben Freunde und so weiter. And there's strangers we look at and passing. Und es gibt Fremde, die wir ansehen, die vorbeiziehen. But where's the category of Buddha? Wo aber ist die Kategorie für einen oder eines Buddha? Now if you just look at a person walking down the street, maybe they're pulling one of those two-wheeled shopping carts or something. Or they're riding a bicycle. Yeah. We're carrying something over their shoulder. Yeah, from the window of where I'm staying here in Berlin, I just arrived. I could see such people walking across the street.

[09:08]

And yeah, all of them were strangers to me. And they, you know, they're just walking along. They're riding their bike. Yeah, but if I just, I don't know what to say, look at them, feel, feel with them. I can feel some... consciousness in them. Yeah, as most of you know, I practice with consciousness or awareness in them.

[10:10]

A distinction between consciousness and awareness. But without explaining the difference, I'll just say consciousness and awareness. Or a word I've created recently, awarenergy. Awareness and energy put together. Awarenergy. Because energy, that's not quite right, it sounds like an electrical company or something. And awareness doesn't quite touch it. So, I don't know, we don't have a word in English anyway, so aware energy is a little closer.

[11:13]

And it's easy to spell, you just stick them together. So each person has a kind of awareness or consciousness or aware energy. You don't usually look in that category so much. But again, we're trying to look for a Buddha here. We don't want to look back in history or to some ideal future. But right now, where do we look for a Buddha? So we have to look in categories that we don't usually look in. Yeah, so you can start by developing a little habit of looking at people, see if you can look at the actual body of a person.

[12:38]

Yeah, not the outer body. Because, again, if you just watch some people walk down the street, and you get a feeling of sensing what I'm calling the actual body, Because if I take away the image of the person walking down the street, what do I see? Some activity. Some movement. Legs are moving, arms are moving. And somehow that movement has a sort of a center. So it's quite clear in some people, kind of muddled in others.

[13:55]

And if you can just get in the habit of noticing it, you can see that the outer shape of the person kind of appears from this actual body. Now I've just created a kind of term here, actual body. And I'm putting it in contrast with your outer body. So there's this actual body and it's manifesting in one's activity. And when you get the feeling for this, what I'm calling actual body, you can see that It has a location in the outer body.

[15:19]

And it's usually clearer and stronger if it's lower down in the body. It's almost like a weight. A weight. Something that weighs something. If it's higher up in the body, it kind of pulls you down. So you can see people walking along and they're kind of as if something's pulling them down. If it's pretty high up, you can walk along. But somehow if it's lower down, it lifts you up. And if you get more sensitive to this kind of yogic body or actual body, you can see when people kind of monitor it, to watch, to monitor it with their breath.

[16:30]

And you tend to monitor or follow that feeling in the upper part of your body with your thoughts. And the more that's lower down in the body, the more the breath is what's monitoring it. So if you start to notice this, now it doesn't make much difference, any difference really, whether the person is your associate at work or a stranger. Now one aspect of this, if you start to notice it, is you have to feel it in yourself.

[17:50]

And the more you feel it in yourself, the more you can pick it up in others. And this is a small thing. I mean, all of us know this to some extent. Certainly unconsciously we do it all, feel people this way all the time. But it makes a big difference whether you're aware of it or not. Now many of you know I'm the I'm the proud father of a little baby. And she's really a wonderful little kid. And she's just now six months old. And she taught me something the other night. Again, many of you know because I can't stop talking about her.

[19:06]

I've watched her put her consciousness together over the first few months. Put her consciousness and her sense fields together. Yeah, and then begin to respond to pleasant and unpleasant and so forth. At first she couldn't give attention through her hand, she couldn't give attention to another person. She could bump her arms around and bump into you. That's about the best she could do. But after a while she began to get her mind and arm and everything together and she could put her arm where she wanted to. And then she began to kind of be able to pour attention down her arm into touching you.

[20:14]

And to receive attention. But it took quite a while. It took several months before her consciousness and sense fields were together enough for attention to flow. So anyway, the other night Marie-Louise left for a while and I was alone with the baby. It was the middle of the night. And the baby was as sound asleep as I've seen her. She was quite sound asleep.

[21:15]

So here's this tiny little human being in bed with me. It's kind of amazing. I hardly believe it. So I decided to look at her. So I got up on one elbow and was looking at this little tiny creature. Yeah. And slowly her arm came out and found me. And then her head turned in my direction, but she didn't wake up. At first I was just there beside her. I wasn't giving her attention. She was completely in her own space.

[22:29]

There was no physical movement toward me. And after a few minutes, I mean, I don't know, two minutes or something like that, I decided to to really focus on her and I myself was waking up. And when I brought all my attention to her, You know, caught in the field of her body. Her arm moved toward me and her head turned toward me. Maybe it was an accident. I don't think so, but it could have been.

[23:31]

Anyway, my experience was an increased... I could feel her attention, even though she was asleep. So all I'm pointing out is from the practice of meditation and from this little experience, which gives me a way to talk about it, attention is far more far more powerful than I think we realize. It took her quite a bit, I think her consciousness became quite developed before she could add attention. If you think of all these artificial intelligence folks, Yes, it might.

[24:44]

Perhaps a computer can come close, somewhat close to some kind of consciousness. But I don't think a computer can give attention. I don't think artificial intelligence people would imagine a computer could give attention or receive attention. that could give or receive attention. So what I'm saying here is attention isn't just consciousness. Yeah, or the presence isn't just consciousness. A person can be conscious and have very little presence. But when you begin to notice this, what I'm calling the actual body, It's almost like attention is... For you to notice it, you have to bring attention to the person.

[26:19]

Not just consciousness or thinking. Now, attention is not concentration. Yeah, because concentration is something you do with your consciousness. Attention is more like something, you're in a totally dark room, you don't know where to turn and you can't see anything, but you feel, you can't think about it, but you can feel the space. Maybe blind people develop some sort of attention like this. Maybe we need to have some kind of blindness to feel this. Maybe we need to have some kind of blindness to begin to seek for a Buddha.

[27:30]

And anyway, we have to be in some not our usual categories of looking. And this awakening, this... This looking through blindness, we begin to feel others and it awakens us too. Now, why do I notice this? Why do I call it an actual body? Yeah, well, I mean, I don't think I would do it unless I practiced meditation. And, yeah, I mean, I'm not suggesting you have to practice meditation to notice this.

[28:37]

Although it helps. Meditation is a kind of blindness. You stop identifying with your consciousness and your thoughts, and you kind of let something, kind of awareness rise up that isn't consciousness. As awareness and as you really have a body-mind, not a conscious mind, And there are practices, I mean basic Buddhist practices, to awaken your body-mind.

[29:48]

Make yourself more able to notice it so you can wake it up. It's mostly our body-mind is sleeping. And may be more present when we're actually sleeping. And when we practice meditation, we find that it starts to wake up. And you could define meditation as letting your body fall asleep. While at the same time you wake up throughout your body.

[30:50]

So you're beginning to be in that territory, discovering and widening a territory between sleeping and waking. Between sleeping and waking. And at some point, I think you could say, I begin to feel my, the, and actual body. I don't know what... I don't know what other words to glue on to the experience. You have some complete experience through and through. Our experience of completeness. It's so thorough you feel, oh God, I... It's almost like, my goodness, now I have an actual body.

[32:14]

Closely related to that, you begin to feel something like your actual mind. And this is closely connected to attention. It flows, it appears through attention and flows out through attention. Now, this kind of experience is very close to what we mean by your Buddha nature or Buddha body. And what's strange is, yeah, you can sense it in meditation practice. But there's some other kind of catalytic quality. When it begins to appear through noticing in another person.

[33:32]

Now isn't that strange? We're looking for a Buddha. And whatever that might be, we can spend a little more time with it in the next few days. Wir werden ja ein bisschen mehr Zeit in den nächsten paar Tagen damit verbringen. Aber es erwacht, indem man gewöhnliche Leute bemerkt. Irgendwie gucken wir ja nach einem außergewöhnlichen oder besonderen Buddha. Der Katalysator dafür with sensing their actual body.

[34:33]

It awakens your actual body. And that's something close. You're sort of in the territory of what we call Buddha nature. Now I would like to tomorrow, I'd like to say something about Buddha fields. What is a Buddha field? We're sitting, all sitting here. Where are we sitting? What is the occasion of this, what creates a place here.

[35:51]

Yeah, I mean, each of us is in a particular place. And it has certain aspects. What would you call this place a Buddhafield? How do we... When would we call it a Buddha field? Or where, how, when is it a Buddha field? If it's a Buddha field, does that make us more of a Buddha or something like that? Yeah. When Sophia, that's my little baby's name, wakes up in the middle of the night and she's in a bed somewhere right now for the first time in Berlin, is this a baby field for her?

[36:57]

A Buddha field for her? Or just A field created by her parents? What kind of space does she wake up in? Yeah. What kind of space are each of you waking up in? Do you have anything to say about what kind of space you wake up in? Yeah, it's like something like that I'd like to start in on tomorrow. Maybe that's enough for this evening.

[37:58]

But we can take a break and anybody who's here after the break, we can have some discussion. That one, that gives you, those of you who want to escape, time to escape. Get out on the street and check the Buddha fields around you. See if you can see some actual bodies. So, Tomorrow morning, we're supposed to figure out what time we start, aren't we? I mean, I don't know if it takes so long to get here as I did. Maybe we have to start at 11. Or 9, or 10, 9, 30, 11. That's too late. 9?

[39:12]

9.30? 9.30? Yeah, Andre, you came all the way from Hanover, so 9.30 is, yeah. But you're sleeping here. Could we sit for half an hour before, free? Tomorrow? Yeah, if people want to. Sure. Well, if we start at 9.30, we probably would start with sitting. Would not. We can start at 9 and have two periods if you want. So let's start at 9.30 tomorrow. Is that all right? Okay, so now we'll have a break. And anybody who's here after the break, we can have some discussion if you want. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for translating. Is there anything you'd like to speak about?

[40:28]

You all came back to hear someone else speak? How can you be a Buddha if you won't even speak up? Now no one really will speak. Yes. To the real body again, what does Mr. Oshigani mean with it? The first thought I had with this energy, and I should have filmed a picture of Castaneda, this old egg or something, with this montage point or something like that.

[41:35]

Is it possible to approach the direct point with awareness consciousness? That was the first thought. The first thought for me was, when you spoke about the actual body and the energy, my first thought was something what Castaneda said, like this oval or this egg shape, and does consciousness and awareness, does this go in that direction? Do you mean something different? Or is it completely different? Well, I don't want to go in any direction that you've read about. I only want to go in a direction you've experienced. So if you've had some experience like that, you tell me about it. I can say if it's in the same direction. Okay. Because really the whole thing I'm trying to do is talk to your, to our, each of our experience.

[42:43]

And if it is similar, it's unimportant. What's important is, is it similar to your experience? Yes. I had one experience when my daughter was very small and I was alone with her. My wife was away. I had her on the arm and she began to cry. And I was quite upset because why does she cry when she's alone with me? Why doesn't she cry when she's with her mother? We fathers, we have this problem. And then suddenly I turned around and thought, what am I actually doing here?

[43:51]

And I said, okay, she may be like that now. I said, okay, you may cry, everything is fine. But I completely let myself in on her and said to her, Then I switched and I gave her my whole awareness and said, she can or may be anywhere she wants, like she is, and instantaneously she stopped. I took away my ego, what I wanted. Then some of that what I wished happened. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. That was Mick Jagger. Did you translate that?

[44:52]

I can't. You can't. Mick Jagger said, you don't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. You know, I think actually the practice of, the actual practice of Buddhism, and I think, you know, I would say that Sophia is biologically almost still part of Marie-Louise. But there's still some biological connection, I would say, with the father, which is different than the connection with other people. But I would say that, from my own experience too, the difference between the way a mother can respond and a father can respond isn't just the biological difference,

[46:01]

But the mother has more experience giving full attention to the baby. I think when the father gives that kind of attention, the differences between the mother and father are less. But really this territory of how you relate to a baby, or how you relate to your own baby, or how you relate to someone you're in love with, is the territory of Buddha nature. We normally can only have those feelings for our baby or somebody you fall in love with. But we might say that this is a taste of Buddha-nature.

[47:16]

This is part of everyone's experience. But it's outside the category usually that we can experience. But it's not foreign to us. Something else? Yes? Deutsch, bitte. I'm a body therapist and I work only with one person at a time. I think that it happens about every day with me that I enter into a field with someone else.

[48:31]

Or create. I think it's a very beautiful experience and I nearly feel enlightened. Whoa! This is good! But it's much more difficult for me to experience and reach this in my personal, my private life. The persona that I have in my life, the relationship that I have with my girlfriend, for example, is actually almost in between, or is almost limited.

[49:41]

The relationship I have to my spouse seems to be nearly in the way to my persona. He interferes with your... What? The persona interferes... Oh, with your relationship with your spouse. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I understand. Thank you. Thank you. And when I'm really outside, when I'm probably climbing over the subway, I feel sort of catapulted into a world of being an object. I don't know if that's a question, but I'd like to hear about this. We can... What I would like to learn something in this weekend is how can I change my way of viewing or looking at things when I'm outside, so to say.

[50:53]

Okay, let's try. This weekend. I think we should have the confidence. When you said you feel nearly enlightened, I think we should have the confidence of feeling, yeah, that's probably actually true. Or be able to look again. Let's speak about being in love. This is a capacity of a human being. Why does it necessarily take a special other human being to have that feeling? That's a kind of mystery.

[52:03]

Buddhism is trying to solve that mystery. I can't promise we'll solve it this weekend. But if you lovely people are here we'll try to do it. What else? Yes. Do you have to practice this? Aware energy, yeah. Can it be given to you as a present? Like a present? Or you have to practice it? Are you lazy?

[53:05]

How does Marie Louise translate aware energy? Yeah, you can feel it in another person. And in that sense it's a gift. But if the other person goes away, you lose it. So practice allows you to, if you do receive it, to stay with it. And it sometimes helps to receive it from another practitioner or teacher or something. But through practice you can receive it from yourself. I mean, practice isn't such a big deal.

[54:17]

It's just a normal way of being alive, actually. It's like waking and sleeping. It's normal to sleep. And for your wisdom, it's normal to practice meditation. It's a... In the simplest sense, it's weaving your body and mind together. So you make a decision, do you want to do that or not? If you want to, it's more important than going to college. We spend four years or more in the university. And you have a degree. If you spend four or five years with that much attention to practice, you might have a special degree.

[55:20]

Yes, over here. Do you want to say something? And I wanted to ask if Buddha nature can be understood as having to do with love, with open love, with an open heart? Yes, but Naturally we want to understand.

[56:24]

Naturally we want to understand. But there's always some danger when you put some kind of, oh it's this. Aber es gibt immer so eine Gefahr, wenn wir so festsetzen, ah, das ist es. Practice is open, open, open, you know. Die Praxis ist einfach offen, offen, offen. And then to notice all the ways in which you're not. Und dann die vielen Arten zu bemerken, in der man es nicht ist. And have a deep, deep total attention commitment to dissolving those obstacles. Yeah. But basically what you said is okay. People like to say, for instance... Zen is about the here and now.

[57:40]

And every time I hear the here and now, I hear a door close. So I say, here, broken open. Now, lost. We have to get somehow outside configurations. Something else? Okay. I don't care, but it's easier in German for everybody else. One second.

[58:48]

We spoke, if we came here to hear someone else talking, and we spoke that we are here to sort of watch the actual, or experience, watch the actual body. I try to express the feeling that I have here, where I am sitting. I am sitting in a room, and I see the eyes open, half-naked, and I see my back. And I also ask myself, How would it be this weekend with the approach to this recognition of Buddha, to see the Buddha, how is it that only by listening, by speaking to someone else, or trying to get along with someone else, Yes. I see there, for me, there's a discrepancy.

[59:58]

I see the focus, the attention focused in this direction. I see only backs, she says, before me. Her own attention? No, I see the discrepancy before. She says, I see only backs before me, and I see the attention focused... Yeah, okay, yeah. I see the attention focused here. And to see the Buddha in another person, canst du es nochmal kurz sagen? Du siehst die Aufmerksamkeit hier. My position in the room is like that. Yeah, yeah, I see. My question is about the vegan. How to approach it? It's a concept of seeing a Buddha or seeing that your body is bound to a person. This is an idea that I think when you speak, and it's only about listening to somebody else, but practicing on my own, meditation or something, I have to take this idea, put me out there, wait for when I'm back on the street to watch people.

[61:09]

No, right here it's okay, I'm watching you. You can come up here and sit with us if you like. Well, about this weekend, you'll have to find out. But the situation you're describing, if you're describing your experience, it's rather interesting. What's the difference between a person's back towards you or their front towards you? Yeah, the kind of difference we... we should notice.

[62:17]

And strangely, if your back is toward the door and somebody comes in and watches you, you often feel it. And you turn around and somebody's looking at you. So the back isn't dead. But this kind of territory we want to become familiar with. And it's most able to be sensed when we don't identify with our thinking. So then how do you establish a a continuity of awareness that's not identified through thinking. Yeah, that's like one aspect of practice. You want to say something? Yeah, my question is if meditation, the practice of meditation, does help one to see what is true, but Does it also help you to accept what you see?

[63:35]

Do you understand what I mean? Yeah, I hope so. Do you want to say it in German, please? Yes, my question is, the practice of meditation, is it there, or is it not there, that it helps to see what you are? But my question is, does it also help to accept what you see? Well, there's no outside measure of what's true. So does it help you know what's the truth? We can't say that. But you have an experience of things as true. Yeah. And that experience of things as true is inseparable from accepting.

[64:37]

Yeah? Oh, really? So my question is, how can it be that when we understand, when we see the power and we accept it, then it is one thing, but how can it be that people simply say, what is your own world, [...] Oh, boy! Maybe for you that was the case. I don't know about your own experience, but I know a lot of people, including myself, who have had insights, but not been able to stay in that vulnerability.

[65:48]

And that's why I'm trying to get that, for the practice of meditation. Yes, I understand. In German, please. Can you say the last one in German, please? I don't know how it is in Rorschach's experience, but I know a lot of people who have had such experiences, who have also had insights, but who were not able to keep it up for a long time. Right? Yes. Yeah. Well, first just let me say that in Zen, in Japan at least, and Vietnam, I don't know so much about other countries, the emphasis on satori as an experience is not the same as we talk about it in the West.

[67:01]

Yeah, maybe we can... It's rather difficult to, unless I work with our vocabulary, to talk about it in ordinary language. But there's one ancient saying, it's like a bee flying into an unclean hive and turns around and flies out again. And that image is used to express that unless your whole life, body and life situation is matured along with the potentiality of that experience, if your body and your life situation isn't ready for such an experience, it doesn't stay with you.

[68:36]

It stays with you as a kind of knowledge, actually, often. But you often can't use the knowledge. Um... And Satori experiences are just something human beings have, it's not necessarily Buddhist. But Buddhism talks, the way Buddhism speaks about it is, or emphasizes it, is... is really how you mature such experiences. I think that's enough to say about that now. You want to say something else? It's not willpower. High, if not heart.

[69:49]

Yeah. I'm the laziest guy around. And I sit here because I'm so lazy. There's no willpower involved. I have to use willpower to do my busy life and answer my mail. But this is my vacation. One of the main secrets of all Buddhism is to be fully at ease and relaxed.

[71:00]

And you sit down, you can find you're not relaxed. You can't even be relaxed, doing nothing, sitting here. Yes. I saw somebody over here. I was sort of astonished about this gravity point that she says and why this should be fairly deep. My experience is, when the weight of my body comes, I don't know which part of the question I would have, when there is a heart disease, that it is actually the next to nothing.

[72:15]

And that's why I was surprised when it was said that it was the deepest. My experience is when I'm with my energy body, which isn't the same, but when the main point is in the heart center, it worked better for me. I was astonished that this should be deep down, deep down. Yeah, this is good too. And some teachings and practice, not Buddhism, emphasize this chakra, this area. But as a kind of physical mind-body center, Buddhism tends to emphasize being just below your breathing. And you breathe into it and you breathe from it. But that doesn't mean you also don't have other awareness centers in your... not just in your body, but... You feel them in your body.

[73:34]

What's the difference? Why don't you find out? You're not going to lose anything by finding out both, or three, or five. Okay. Oh, Tanya. Okay. It's just I have a wish if we could start at 9 because then I could participate a little longer. Because you have to leave at 10 or something?

[74:37]

11, 11.30. Oh, tomorrow? Every day you have to? Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, you can come at 9.00. Neil will be here. Yes. I would like to know very much what you feel about the situation in the world right now because I cannot keep it out. Are you going to be here this weekend? Yes. Okay, we'll undoubtedly talk about it. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. So sometimes Buddha is thought of as what you can't mention.

[75:56]

Well, when they say something like that, it means you have to find some other way to know Buddha, to be present to Buddha without mentioning it. Yeah, but I want us... I want to... here in the West... Find Buddha here in the West. Yeah, why not here in this room? But again, as I said last night, how do we look, where do we look? Yeah, dad, dad, dad.

[77:14]

No, is that what she's saying? So if I... And I walk here. I'm doing like this. Where am I walking? Well, I guess I'm in Berlin. But that's mostly that direction. Unless I can feel somehow Berlin in you. In Paul, I feel New York and California.

[78:14]

So, Certainly if I'm walking here, the place I'm in, whatever it is, Priya is partly formed by you. And it's also the floor. And it's a difference, I think, in the wooden floor or the linoleum or something. And it's the height of the ceiling that makes a difference. And the feeling of the windows, of course, makes a difference. The physical space of the room does make a difference.

[79:24]

But if I say, you know, have some beans, Has some beads. And I carry the beads. Does that change my physical space? Yeah. The floor and height of the ceiling determine where I am. So these beats, you know, my hands are... along with the brain, the most complex part of the human being.

[80:26]

My hands are occupied with these. beads, then that's part of my location. And if I don't have the beads in my hand, but I have a certain feeling in my hands, then my hands are part of my location. Likewise, where I find each step on the floor. So likewise, not just... posture of my hands or feeling in my hands.

[81:39]

And also what mental posture or attitudes I have. So, the fifth... the first skanda of the five skandas, is form. And in the practice of the five skandas, you can understand form... as a direction within the first four skandhas toward form. So if there's a direction toward form, then form is present.

[82:43]

Now, if you don't know, you're not familiar with the practice of the five skandhas, this sounds rather obscure to you. So I encourage you to study the five skandhas. And likewise, what I'm going to be speaking about, if you have developed the practices of the Paramitas and the foundations of mindfulness. You'll be able to extend what I'm speaking about in your everyday life. So I can't always in a new seminar go back to all the basic teachings. But I can start, try to start from some beginning.

[84:00]

So here I'm speaking about form as a beginning. The rupa kaya. That means the form body. Or the vehicle of form. Or how form carries us, supports us. Okay. So in that sense, as I'm walking here, form, the floor, the ceiling, the beads, I'm starting from form. Excuse me, I have several conversations at once. So form is also the texture of the moment.

[85:28]

Yes, so there's a structure to each moment. Now, we may not notice the structure. And not noticing the structure is also structure. Yes. But you can't really notice or practice the structure of each moment. The texture of each moment. Unless you know each moment as unique. Now mostly we don't notice each moment is unique. Now see if you can be patient with me in all this. Because Buddhism is rooted in its practice and how each moment appears.

[86:52]

And unless you're Sophia's age, each moment is a habit. Unless you're Sophia's age, this moment is a habit. She's never seen a red blanket like that before. So you better save it if you want to protect it. We thought you brought an ordinary blanket here, but she thinks it's an absolutely unique blanket. And to make sure of that, she'll soon want to taste it. I hope you have a flavored blanket here. Okay. Yeah. Now, the fact that we don't notice the uniqueness of each moment is, you know, because we're accustomed to it.

[88:30]

Now I'm going to wander around in this territory for a while. And when, like, if I change the baby in the middle of the night, I like to turn on the light and see... She has to get accustomed to the light because it's too bright at first. So we get accustomed to each moment. And if a bird flew in the window now that would be something unique. And we'd say, oh, a bird flew in the window. Then we'd have the trouble of trying to get the bird out, back out the window.

[89:37]

Yeah, we could use the red blanket. But even if the bird doesn't fly in the window, this moment is unique. But are you there? If you're not there, much of practice is going past you. How do you get there? You kind of have to... Undress the moment. Man muss sowas wie den Augenblick entkleiden. It's already in its habit. Weil er schon in seiner Gewohnheit steckt. ... If you all right now would look, close your right eye and look to the left.

[91:03]

Even if you've got a nose smaller than mine, you can see your nose. And then when you open your right eye, your nose disappears. Or mostly it disappears. You can kind of see it. Because our brain blocks out the sight of our nose. And we block out the uniqueness of each moment. And it takes something as unique as a bird coming through the window. Or Buddha and God forbid an airplane coming through the window.

[92:05]

For the world to change or for us to recognize how each moment is actually unique. So we have a habit of noticing it. And habit means where you live. It also means what you dress, how you dress up. We come accustomed to. Okay? Can you say that?

[92:51]

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