We talked about the stream bed of thoughts yesterday and by repeating thoughts we create a continuity Where does the energy come from to repeat the thoughts? Why do we need, very necessarily, it seems like, continuity? Is it the... Are we afraid of dying? And why are we afraid? There's quite a lot in your question.

[01:14]

It's a given that we're afraid of dying. It's normal. It's normal, but perhaps not natural. I don't think the origins of why we do things is So important. So it's interesting why we do it. And we're thinking about, perhaps, you know, to amuse ourselves. But the why doesn't have much to do with practice. The fact is we do these things.

[02:27]

My sense of it is that the experience of knowing is very powerful and of conscious knowing. So we develop our consciousness And not our awareness. And then that gets reinforced by our society and so on. I think we're at a very, my own feeling is that we're still at the kindergarten stage of society or civilization. During the February-March time I was here, we spoke about how short a period of time it is back to Christ and Buddha, basically, really.

[03:39]

Several great-grandmothers ago. So, you know, it was... For me this is a hopeful view because unless we wipe ourselves out we've got a long ways to go in developing a true communal culture. Where does the energy come from? I don't know. We are born with a certain amount of energy. Then we tie a great deal of it up in a restrictive consciousness. And in general, as I've said before, most people, I think, use up their basic energy by the time they're in their mid-forties or fifties.

[05:02]

The whole tradition of longevity in Taoism and to some extent in Buddhism is how to live in a way that replenishes and generates energy rather than that uses up your energy. That's enough for now, I think. Yes. You spoke about You talked about the step out of the stream bed where are no thoughts. And what I understood is that then I fall out of continuity.

[06:05]

This is an area I partly know, but I'm afraid of. And I'm also afraid that it could be dangerous. And I would like to have an advice. Yeah, no, it's good you feel that way. It's realistic. And it means it's possible for you to realize this then. The anxiety or the concern is the surface of knowing it's possible. And Dogen would say something like realization Excuse me.

[07:34]

It's getting better, though. It's getting a little better. Um... Realization hinders realization. Sayonara. I feel I have a room full of nurses. It's very nice. It's not that to free yourself from the stream bed of future directed thoughts.

[08:43]

I don't mean by that that you enter a realm where there's no thoughts. Unknowing A knowing without thoughts is good, you know. But just thoughts are fine too. The problem I'm pointing out is if we identify with our thoughts to the extent that that's really who we think we are. and we identify with our thoughts and that we experience continuity through our thoughts. Okay, so what you're doing by bringing attention to your breath, and your body, your beginning and phenomena, you're beginning a process of developing a more complex experience of continuity.

[10:16]

And you don't entirely give up the experience of continuity in your thoughts. You have to go to work in the morning and things like that. If someone calls your name, you want to remember that that's your name. But you're not solely invested in this one way of knowing yourself. And it actually allows a greater complexity of thought and feeling. And there's a greater experience of groundedness and... And body is also mind. So there are continuities of mind that are not.

[11:27]

So it doesn't, when I say that you find a continuity in your body, Yes, you do. But do you also find out your body itself is a way of knowing? There's a kind of somatic intelligence. So if you develop the tonic of practice, I say tonic instead of medicine, because practice builds up slowly in you. and you more and more find a continuity in your breath and body, then it can be a fairly gentle transition from finding your identity and continuity only in your thoughts to finding it in a more complex way.

[12:50]

Does that make sense? Yeah. It's important to get these things straight. Yeah. Yes. You talked about the four or five hindrances yesterday which hinder our absorption which hinder to concentrate ourselves And you showed three or four paths which could help us in our practice So I'm remembering everything is transient, ephemeral, evanescent, and everything is changing.

[14:14]

There's no self and no others. Your servant Lord. Mm-hmm. And I have problems with that. I don't understand. Which part, the last part? There's no self and no others. Yeah, that's good you have a problem with that. Because there are self and others. I'm here and you're here and etc. And we have to function that way. What I should have said was, don't abide in the distinction between self and other.

[15:23]

The Diamond Sutra says that the highest, most awakened, highest, most awakened mind. The highest, most awakened mind. mind is everywhere equally. Because it is neither high nor low. And it is realized through actions based on the spirit

[16:24]

the understanding of no self, of non-self, non-person, and non-lifespan. What does this mean? I think when you hear something like this or read something, and that's in a way what I've been talking about is this statement. We should approach it as something familiar to us, as something that, if this is true, must already be true in me in some way. And to approach it as something you discover through your own experience.

[18:21]

Okay, now... Diamond Sutra says over and over again, not no self, but non-self. I think that's a useful distinction in translation. And non... non-lifespan. Okay. Maybe non-lifespan is the easier door to enter in this. Excuse me. Mamma mia!

[19:22]

This is really quite simple, but the words get us tangled up. Let me go back to the example of sunbathing. You're, say, sunbathing on a tenement roof in New York or on a beach in... Yeah, okay. The sun, the great sun god, O-Tan-Mi, is, you know, your worshippers. O-Tan-Mi-Brown, this is good. O-Tan-Mi-Brown. Won't mock me brown.

[20:39]

And when this God is present, you feel completely absorbed. You forget about the time. This is much like meditation experience. I consider Zazen a form of sunbathing in Buddha's light. I'm not getting very tan, though. Golden, I hope. But at that time, you're not, you don't have, let's imagine you don't have a sense of a lifespan. I'm such and such an age. I have such and such a length of time to live, etc.

[21:52]

Often built into our thinking is a sense of, I'm here, I'm going there, I was this person, etc. But there's a quality of timelessness to sunbathing. And there's a quality to timelessness right now in this room. We all have to go somewhere this afternoon and so forth. But as I suggested, right now there is this moment. And it's unique. And it's not comparable to other moments. So there's a kind of timelessness to it. And if you go back a thousand years, There was a kind of timelessness to their moments.

[23:06]

And the more one comes into that kind of experience, the more there's no sense of... lifespan of one of us being older or younger or something like that. For instance, Mike from Holland here is a much younger man than I am. I'm 75. His practice shows. If he's really 75. But if I'm just looking at Mike and talking to Mike, there's no sense of lifespan or age or anything. This is obvious. So as a practice, if you understand a phrase like this, as a practice, if you do not abide in the distinction between self and other,

[24:44]

There is self and other. But for a moment you dissolve it. As for a moment we can be here and dissolve a feeling of separation. The more we feel the unique moment that this is, that we're generating together, For instance, if I think I'm generating this situation, because I'm the teacher or something like that, I don't know what to say. It's only when I am here with you with the feeling that we're generating it together, can I feel the flow in the room which allows me to know what to say. So I have to dissolve my sense of a separate self in order to open myself to this.

[25:51]

So we could call perhaps the the freedom from the distinction between self and other as the sense organ of compassion. So what do I mean by that? I have a sense organ of my ear which allows me to enter into the fabric of sound. And I'm saying it that way because I'm suggesting the practice of

[26:52]

Being present in a continuous way to the texture of sound. Not just to hear things, but to hear sounds. the constant presence of the sounds of cloth in the room, of birds outside, etc. There's a kind of fabric being woven all the time. So that my ear allows me to hear someone's restlessness, someone else's settledness and so forth. The conversation of the birds. So that's the organ of hearing.

[28:09]

And there's the organ of seeing and smelling and so forth. And the organ of smelling is very closely related to knowing people's moods and emotions and things like that. So I'm defining the organ not as a sense apparatus but as a way of knowing. So that the more you can dissolve this... Not as a continuity, but on particular moments. The more you can dissolve the distinction between self and other, it opens you to a kind of compassionate knowing. Let's take a very simple example.

[29:28]

You go into a hospital. And there's a friend dying of cancer or AIDS or something. And if your thought is, boy, am I glad I'm not sick like that. Well, it's quite natural. But it... But at that moment you're doing what I would call abiding in the distinction between self and other. If you can genuinely walk into the hospital feeling that that's a person like me and with a genuine feeling of being willing to trade places with that person You're going to know how to be with that person in a different way.

[30:35]

And that person will welcome you into the hospital room in a different way than others. So it's not that there's no self nor others. It's that a way of relating to others is to dissolve the distinction between self and others. And that also opens you to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind. Which is everywhere and equally present. So that is another way of speaking about this, bringing your energy equally to each thing.

[31:47]

Your self-centered mind is not everywhere equally present. But there's a quality of mind here in the room that isn't just our separate self-centered minds. Self-involved minds. And that feeling is what we call Buddha mind. And it's present in this room. It has to be. So, the one characteristic of Dongshan and Dogen's practice is to practice as if you were already enlightened. Instead of striving for enlightenment, You practice as if you were already enlightened.

[33:01]

You don't go around saying, I'm already enlightened, so... Sound like to say. But rather, the craft of practice is based on wisdom. So that if I say, practice with a phrase like no self, no other, this is a practice based on enlightenment. You may not experience, you may not have had some big experience where you realized a mind free of self and other. But this assumption of Dogen's style of practice that we all have at least small experiences of enlightenment that have gone probably unnoticed.

[34:06]

One of Dogen's main examples is the decision to practice is an enlightenment experience. Somehow the decision Maybe I should practice. It is rooted in enlightenment. But it's not opened up, it's not unfolded. But if you have a craft of practice based on enlightenment, you open these small enlightenment experiences. Okay, that was a long answer to your question, I'm sorry. Oh, sure, okay.

[35:20]

Isn't your last answer not also an answer to what's the connection between mind and environment? No, of course, yes. Yes? I felt like a sponge with so many new words during the last days and I was still thinking about a word which I knew but in a totally different setting that was neutral. because I was learning for decades that it's good and bad and neutral is really as I said boring and I cannot find any positive positive power out of the word neutral and this is especially important to see the difference between feelings and the emotions as well so I'm still

[36:31]

waiting for a step forward to understand the positive input from... to be in a mutual thinking. Okay. German, please. I feel like I don't have the chance to learn so many new words, and I'm still thinking about the word neutral, was very positively transmitted to me, but where I have actually learned for many years, decades, that it is very negative, or at least that accepting or loving or not loving is clearer, but the neutral is rather something that is boring or not good. And that, together with the theme of the feeling, Yeah, but the word neutral is a trick.

[37:35]

I mean, on a conceptual level, Neutral is just the alternative to either pleasant or unpleasant. And if you understand it that way, it's like there's Here's brown eggs and here's white eggs and here's eggs with no yolks. And who wants the eggs with no yolks? Unless you're on a diet or something.

[38:36]

But if you practice with... these eggs, cooking with them. Maybe you find some use, I don't know. But the point is that they put the word neutral in there as a practice equally with pleasant and unpleasant. And if you start being mindful of your feelings at this feeling-knowing level.

[39:38]

You notice that the more you're in the realm of satisfaction, or pleasantness, say, or unpleasantness, you are very quickly drawn into likes and dislikes. And this is not compassion or wisdom. If you reverse this direction away from liking and disliking and away from satisfaction and dissatisfaction More toward just looking, just seeing, just hearing.

[40:40]

If I look at you with neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction, without feeling pleasant or unpleasant, my feeling is I see you much more clearly. I accept you much more fully. So it's a little the image I've used in the past is it's like a stream. The left side of the stream perhaps is pleasant. The right side of the stream is unpleasant. And the water is quite shallow. But in the middle, quite deep. I think when you practice these three, you find that when feeling is less limited by satisfaction,

[41:42]

by pleasantness or unpleasantness, the feeling is much deeper. So in ordinary consciousness, neutral is so boring. In a wisdom consciousness, neutral is equanimity. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Yes. For me, at the moment in practice, there is a problem with effort. For example, when you go into the hospital room, sometimes... I can catch myself as feeling there is no self and no other.

[42:52]

And I notice that and it's very powerful. But as soon as I don't have that and I put an effort into creating it, the effort by itself I buy into the separation. Because it's like I'm deeply convinced I'm a self and there's the other. So now I make an effort in saying there's no self and no other. But by making the effort, I'm already buying the separation. I'm enforcing the separation. Maybe. I understand what you're saying, yeah. He said that in German first. He said that in German first. That's just in this instance, but to me it's like a red thing through a lot of things in practice.

[44:03]

Well, first of all, just simply, an expression like no self, no other is an antidote. That you apply... When you notice, you're abiding in the distinction of self and other. That's an antidote motivated by compassion and intention. Intention. So the more I have an intention to free myself from comparative thinking, the deeper that intention is, the better I feel.

[45:36]

And that if that intention is there and present and embedded in my activity, I feel better and there's actual less energy expended when I remind myself, no self, no other. then the kind of energy used up in maintaining that distinction. So, in general, I don't... I think... that one's effort, shall we say, goes into deepening one's intentions, not so much in making an effort to practice.

[46:53]

So I don't make an effort Sometimes I make an effort to be mindful. But mostly, if I'm mindful, I say, oh, good. If I'm not, I say, oh, there it is. I'm not mindful. But I know my intention to be mindful is... immovable. So I trust that as occasions occur, I'll be more mindful. If I'm not, it's okay. I suppose sometimes if I'm if it's one of those days where I drop three things and stumble over my bicycle, I then might make an effort and say, oh, today you better be mindful.

[48:10]

But generally I don't. But I don't know if that responds to your question much. Part of it, but the thing is, I mean, the experience is that on a very basic level there is no self and there is no other. Okay. And, like, as I understand it, on a very basic level you are already enlightened. Okay. So that is the ground. Sometimes to me a lot of things, you know, if you... there's a tendency to deny that ground through the whole effort of practice.

[49:13]

Well, that was... When there is practically no self and no one else in the primordial essence, and when one is already enlightened in the primordial essence, I often have the feeling that the whole culture of practice actually always denies this primordial essence. Yeah, I understand. I think it's a little philosophical. But it is the question Dogen had. If we're already enlightened, why should we practice? And his answer is that And his answer was, practice is the expression of enlightenment.

[50:23]

And I think you want to find a way to develop that feeling through intention more than through effort. And I think that... I don't know. One of the problems with practicing this way with all of you is that you're all at different places in your practice. And we're not practicing... Practice is... Practice is really a kind of apprentice system.

[51:37]

where you mostly learn by just doing it together. And I would say that The first couple of years of practice, if you sit every day for one or two periods, is a process of cooking your karma. Your life experiences come up into your zazen on a repeated basis for a while until they kind of lose their energy. And the next six or eight years or four or five years are absorbing practice into the background mind or the background. And you're just absorbing it into your back.

[52:58]

You don't know really what's going on, you're just absorbing it. And because it feels good, or there's some satisfaction, or you notice some growing satisfaction in being alive, You just feel a little better if you practice and if you don't. So you continue. Then after five or six years, you begin to bring this background into the foreground. And your foreground mind hasn't changed much. It's basically the same habitual mind you have. It's different, but it looks the same. It feels different. It gives you less problems, but it looks more or less the same.

[54:01]

And then you try to start making sense of the practice. And making it clear what you're actually doing. And then that begins to joining the background and foreground minds. For example, we have energy that goes all kinds of which directions. And it's involved in our thinking, it's involved in this, etc. And there's a basic movement of mind. With enough practice, eventually the movement of mind settles into a singular pulse. There's a movement outwards?

[55:07]

and a movement inwards. All the other movements come into these two movements. But if I talk about that to people who are just beginning to practice, it doesn't make much sense. You can hear it, but you don't really know what that feels like. So in general, you know, as I've often said, I talk about much more in a seminar like this than I would in a monastic situation. This is more than you can absorb. But I'm trying to make an adept lay practice work.

[56:22]

One thing about an adept lay practice is you cannot integrate practice into your life. if you want non-being practice instead of well-being practice. After sesshins and seminars, people often ask me, How do I bring this into my daily life? Well, you can, of course, bring it into your daily life, practicing. Mindfulness and so forth. But seriously, you can only do it if you bring your daily life to practice. You really have to adjust your daily life to support your practice.

[57:34]

Doesn't mean you have to live in a monastery, but you have to adjust your daily life so it supports practice. Then you can have a real adept practice as a lay person. So I've talked about a lot of things just because you gave me some excuse. But what I would recommend for you is no effort. See if you can explore no effort. But emphasize your intention. Now we're going to have lunch a little later today, right? Around one.

[58:35]

Around one, and we're not going to meet in the afternoon together, right? Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. But usually several or more people have to leave. Who has to leave by 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock? Anybody? A couple, two or three. So should we keep the schedule as it is or should we have a meeting in the afternoon? Or should we meet again in the afternoon? If we meet, what would it mean? What would we do until lunch? He's asking. Well, right now, I think we should have a break. It's 11. So we come back at 11.20 or so.

[59:38]

And then, so 11, by the time we're stopped, say 11.25, and then we go, we'll have a second session. And if we want, we talk about what else we do. Probably it's enough to go up to lunch. Okay, thank you. I haven't spoken about mind as one of the foundations of mindfulness yet.

[60:46]

And being mindful of the mind means to be mindful of the various ways that mind appears to you. Or let's say how mentality appears to you. Because this is mind in distinction to the body, this basic feeling level and external objects. So this is the distinction between mind and... We're talking about mind, not as mind in the body or mind, etc. They're all mind. So when you are observing mindful of mind itself.

[62:03]

Just you're mindful of the formations of mind. Whatever forms it takes. Moods, emotions, etc. Emotions. And as you know, the dynamic again is just to accept and not try to change what appears. So again, if you're angry, you just notice, oh, now I'm angry. Now I'm more angry, etc. And of course this process is itself creative, because if you're noticing that you're angry, you're in a wider place than just being angry. Denn wenn ihr wahrnehmt, dass ihr wütend seid, dann seid ihr in einem größeren Platz, als wenn ihr nur ärgerlich seid.

[63:18]

Und sobald ihr nicht mehr ärgerlich sein wollt, dann ist es genauso, als seid ihr im Ärger befangen, eingefangen. So you're just, oh, I'm angry. It doesn't mean, again, of course, if you're in the midst of... some kind of conflict with your child or your spouse or something like that, you just say, well, I'm angry. Pow! But you might, if you're really angry, you might say, I am really angry. You might do something to demonstrate your anger. But you try not to hit whoever it is.

[64:22]

But the general feeling and what happens through meditation practice is you develop a space where you can feel things and not act on them. So here you have the interpenetration of the crafter practice with... The function of practice. The function. I mean, all of these Zen stories you read, they don't make so clear, it's not so clear if you just read the stories, that all of these folks had been living usually for decades in monastic type situations. So they've now taken for granted that they've developed a fourth mind.

[65:58]

A mind that's not waking mind or dreaming mind or deep sleep mind. And this generation of a mind in this posture, which is not our usual posture, is the given of all these stories about Zen. And I know for sure that no matter how much my contact with Sukyoshi was or how much I studied, that if I hadn't really sat regularly for years, I could never have absorbed this practice. Can you hear me? So whatever your mood is, the practice of mindfulness of mind is to move into whatever, to notice whatever is there and move into it and accept it.

[67:41]

and have the patience to stay with it without being destroyed or ruined by it. And it really does after a while get so that no matter how much you're caught up in anger depression or whatever. It begins to experience it like it's the shape of the water. or the surface of the water, but not the water itself. From one point of view you could say it's like you're deep down in the mind where it's calm and still, no matter what's going on in the surface. And this is a physical experience that you get from meditation and from, dare I say it, Sashin.

[69:21]

So one stage is you have a deep stillness inside you, which you identify with more than the surface forms of mind. Sometimes it's a struggle, But you know it's possible. So after a while you more and more settle into this stillness. As a sort of ground of your being. And then the next stage, we should say, is silence. the experiences of mind as water itself.

[70:35]

Not still water. Active water is also simultaneously water. So even in the midst of the forms of mind, you experience the water of mind, which is always timeless or still. So even in the midst of activity or moods, you feel mind itself. So we can understand this practice we're doing through, you know, one word we can understand this practice through is intimacy. You're simply becoming more intimate with yourself.

[71:37]

You become more knowledgeable of or aware of and intimate with your body. Your solidity, your fluidity and so forth. The parts of your body. You feel your body permeated by mind and awareness. You don't feel your feet are down there. Your feet aren't down there. Your feet are down there if you think you're up here. You feel equally everywhere in your body.

[72:44]

It's like you feel the sky starts here. The sky isn't up there. The sky starts here. We're all sky beings. We have some feeling like that. Amen. So you become more intimate with yourself through these practices. And you become more intimate with others. Because you're not so intimate with your self, you're intimate with your body.

[73:46]

And the more you're intimate with your body, there's no self there. There's solidity and fluidity and heat or movement. But you can't exactly call that a self. So you're more and more just, oh, this body. And it's hard to say my body. The more you have a feeling of this body, it opens you to feeling myself. others this body. It's not so different, you know, my ribs and your ribs and so forth. So there's more intimacy with others.

[74:47]

So with an increasing non-self intimacy with yourself as a non-self intimacy with others. You feel your self part is relating to another self part, having a conversation. At the same time your bodies are communicating. This non-graspable feeling of this present moment is... inseparable from each other.

[75:49]

So you feel more intimate with others at the same time. And with the phenomenal world too. The other day I was in a hotel Having breakfast. And, you know, I've been doing this a long time, so I have a habit of, when I see things, I see my mind as well as I see what I'm looking at. And I've been doing this for a long time, and I've got the habit of... to see my mind as well as the object I'm seeing. Again, it's very simple. I hear a bird and I hear my hearing of the bird.

[76:51]

And I know very clearly that's my possession. And I know it's different than another bird hears that bird. So I don't think of it as... the bird's sound. I think of it as my bird's sound. The bird is showing me my Oral, A-U-R-A-L, mind. As the flowers are showing me the colors of my mind, I enjoy the colors of my mind.

[77:54]

And they're there before the flowers there. So I feel what things that appear, my mind is ready to show itself. So having breakfast, there's these... Funny walls with molding and panels and stuff like that and peeling paint. That could be on Mars. Yeah, it looks so strange. Never been in this breakfast place before. And there's stuff going on, people walking around. And I have no fantasy that they're not actually walking around.

[79:17]

It's just that my first, my habit through practice Through the craft of practice. Through shifts. Experiences I've had which have shifted my energy to mind itself. I see everything, you know, as templates for the mind. I can feel these shapes are my mind's shape. And there's people talking over in some other table. And when I was younger, I would imagine, oh, who are those people, and what are they doing, and they're richer than I am, or something like that.

[80:26]

I'd have some thought, right? And when I was younger, I had thoughts about it. Who could these people be? They're rich. What are they talking about? And so on. But at this moment they're just occupying the same richness I'm occupying. They're occupying the same timeless space I'm occupying. And each moment is like this. And because I have this simple habit of when I see something, I see my mind seeing it, For some reason it makes everything okay.

[81:31]

There's no comparison, there's no anxiety, there's some kind of ease and trust. the more I come into intimacy with myself and with others and with phenomena. On the one hand, everything is new, like it might be Mars. It's very strange and exciting. It's almost dangerous. The wall decides to bend that way. It could have bent that way. It's almost dangerous. Maybe after the seminar you recommend I go to a mental hospital.

[82:38]

He thinks he's on Mars. But anyway... It's quite exciting and a little dangerous feeling in its absolute uniqueness. At the same time it feels so intimate and familiar. Still I'm well aware that pretty soon I have to leave. They're clearing the table. You may think you're on Mars, but we want to clear the table.

[83:39]

Alien you. But... So it's like this dialogue between your ideal posture and sitting. I accept my own posture. It's just that my habit is now to see mind first and then the object, rather than to see the object first and not notice mind. And it's, for me anyway, been transformative. And this mind in which it appears so unique and clear and relaxed.

[84:46]

And how could it be different from Buddha's mind? I'm sure that Buddha or some one of our Dharma ancestors may have had some much wider, deeper mind. Look, I don't think about that. Just this taste of this mind is enough for me. And I find that through practice I can abide in the clarity of mind without the distinction of self and other.

[85:53]

At least often I can. And this is the fruit of practicing, can be the fruit of practicing these four awakenings of mindfulness. So when you, going back to the mindfulness of mind itself, first you're mindful of the the forms of mind, the structures of mind.

[86:54]

Then you begin to see how mind functions, how it generates structures. And how it generates self-observing functions. And the more you observe this, you're also, as I said, generating a wider mind from which you're observing this. And you find you can have the ability to put more energy into these structures or less energy and they dissolve back into the field of mind. And this practice is also to to shift into the field of mind.

[87:56]

Through clearly noticing the contents of mind, you discover the field of mind. in which the contents arise. And discovering the field of mind, at some point you identify more with the field of mind than the contents. And these simple instructions or observations, like we're not freeing ourselves from thought, we're freeing ourselves from identifying with thoughts. It's very important to get these things conceptually straight.

[88:56]

They create a more open field, less obstructed field for practice. And when you practice, it's not so likely to be confused or sick-making. Now, I said earlier that we... both in a separate conversation, but in general I've said you create an antidote to an obstruction or obstacle. And this use of wisdom phrases. Which are called in Chinese, wado.

[90:11]

And the same, basically the same word in Japanese, but spelled somewhat differently. Romanized differently. Romanized differently. And wado means the head of thought. Or the root or source of thought. So by creating a phrase, like just now is enough, Or no self, no other. Phrase based on wisdom or enlightenment. and taking the phrase out of the syntax of language, and using it in a mantric way, you create an antidote to

[91:19]

Very precise, kind of acupuncture-like needle, antidote to some obstacle. And so we create a counterpole as precise as an acupuncture needle for a problem. But part of this practice, and I don't know why I'm mentioning it now, because it's more, maybe it's out of context, but I felt I should say it. Because a good wisdom phrase, or enlightenment phrase, and they're a little different, freezes the mind. Freezes? Freezes the mind. Er friert. Er friert oder hält den Geist an. Ja, er friert ihn. Oder hält ihn an. So instead of finding your continuity in your thinking, future-directed thinking, und anstatt dass ihr eure Kontinuität im Denken und dem Denken in die Zukunft gerichtet, euch da

[92:48]

Or finding it in your body. Or your breath. You begin to find it in the phrase. And you just really are embedded in this phrase. Like... you know, Mu or some traditional koan. When all your energy or tension or identification is in the phrase and not in anything else, it can freeze the mind.

[93:19]

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