Well, from my point of view, we have a kind of adventure together here, a possibility of one in the next couple of days. To look at the mind and the object of mind And the present, what we call the present, is more accurately described as an object of mind. I thought that was a good topic for those of you who are new. Because I'm rather excited or pleased anyway that there are so many new people, 10 or 11 or more, I don't know, this seminar.

[01:05]

Usually I'm speaking to all these old has-beens who I've been practicing with for five or ten or twenty or more years. We know each other so well, there's nothing to say. But anyway, so it's kind of an interesting challenge to speak to the initiates in the audience as well as people new to Johannes Aachen, new to my way of presenting Buddhism. As you noticed I'd like to come in a little bit after a while after you've started sitting Because if the present is an object of mind, I don't want to participate in the present you're generating through your sitting.

[02:25]

So if I come in after you've established a mutual mind of the present, then I can more feel you, feel the difference more clearly. Now, if some of you have not much experience Sitting. We could have someone give some sitting instruction if we need to. You did that, haven't you? You did that. This is really, you're way ahead of me. But there's some chairs in the back for the brave. You have the courage to be different.

[03:54]

But the main posture of Zazen is really your spine, the backbone. And you want to find a way to sit, which is the way she's sitting, for instance. It's quite good if you're not used to sitting cross-legged. Your posture is closely related to your modality of mind. And the spine, we can say the spine is a kind of mind of its own. So much of Zen practice is bringing awareness to the spine and to the breath.

[05:09]

Okay, now what we usually do here in these weekend seminars is I'll say something this morning. At least until the break. And then I'll probably have said too much by the time the break comes. But then we'll have a break. And then afterwards I really would like some, I want some discussion from all of us, especially the new people. Because the presence of you newer people gives me a chance to have an excuse to review what the older people think they don't need but actually do. That's because we're primarily not a monastic Sangha.

[06:42]

We're building a mutual practice in mind over five or ten years. I would describe us as overall an adept lay Sangha. And I actually think the future of Buddhism in the West lies with the adept lay Sangha. which needs, I believe, a monastic component. In other words, a place like this where you can come even if your life is somewhere else. But also a Sangha in which some of the practitioners do have monastic experience.

[07:58]

And that is a description of this Sangha. So the real question will be, can the, this is not so important for the topic, but can an adept lay sangha transmit the teaching generationally? So far it's never been done. We have this teaching because it's been passed in monastic institutions for 2500 years.

[09:01]

So it's a major and interesting experiment. To see if a lay Sangha can realize the teaching and transmit the teaching. Okay, so what can I speak about that doesn't depend on a lot of Zazen experience? And I, of course, could speak about why a lot of zazen experience is useful. But let's leave that aside for now. Okay. So... Zen practice, let's say, Zen teaching is to, again, study, observe the mind.

[10:19]

And we have this topic, this kind of lottery topic of the new mind. And as I said yesterday in the pre-day or prologue day, we have these three words, the new mind, at least in English. And the establishes otherness. In other words, it establishes that something is an object of attention. And if it establishes

[11:21]

that something is the object of attention. There must be a subject that's giving the attention. So it especially establishes otherness. Yeah, which is a kind of worldview that the world is other than us. But the teaching of Buddhism, the teaching of Dharma and Darwin, Dharma and Darwin, is that the world is not other than us. But how is the world not other than us?

[12:30]

And yet we have to speak about it and experience it also as other. So already in the word the there's quite a lot happening. And then what's new? Are you new or old? I'm old and new. Or something like that, I don't know. And then mind, do we know what mind is? So the title at least certainly has the question in it, what is mind? So we could say that all of Buddhism is the study of the mind and the study of the, as I said, the objective mind. And what is the primary object of mind?

[13:53]

Well, for most of us, it's our past, our future, our anticipated future, and our self. If you could take those people who stand around with little clickers and they click how many people go in the subway at a certain time or something like that. Sociological research of some sort. If you had one of those little clickers, You could click it every time you had a self-referential thought. It would be scarier to look at than to look at the scale in the morning. And again, from the point of view of Buddhism though, the primary object of attention

[15:10]

Is the present itself. What is the present? Now I hope in this seminar we can get to a kind of surgical look at the present. Sort of like cut into the present, peel it back and see what's going on there. And let's consider it surgery because we're going to hope the patient survives. How do we enter the folds of actuality? Because the present is where our actual life happens. And it happens.

[16:47]

Our life actualizes itself through an attentional presence. Attentional. I hope my English is... She's in charge of my English, so I don't have to worry about my English. The more your present is not formed by your past and not formed by your anticipated future, I mean, of course there's going to be the past in the present. Where does the past exist? In the present.

[18:10]

The present is inhabited by the past. It doesn't exist in the past. The past is gone. It's inhabited. It inhabits the present. Okay, that's a condensed version. It's abridged. Sorry, I'm just teasing you. So Zen practice, we could also say, is to release the past from the present. Release the past from the present. It inhabits the present. Yeah. And so you release the past. You say, hey, you're not paying the rent, you know, get out. So kind of the past inhabits the present in the kind of stuck to the present. Yeah, it lives in the present and it's not going to be evicted easily. I mean, the present, the past says to...

[19:11]

You think you're the landlord, but I'm the landlord. The past says, how do you think you can evict me because I am you? Wie kannst du denken, dass du mich rauswerfen kannst? Ich bin du. I'm not joking. Und da scherze ich nicht. And then also the anticipated future is certainly going to be present, in the present. Und die Zukunft, die man erwartet, ist ganz sicher auch präsent in der Gegenwart. But that's a worldview which assumes the present is present also. and waiting for us. And it certainly looks that way. And that's how consciousness functions. Consciousness' job is to give us a present that we think has some existence.

[20:33]

Like these couches and chairs are in the next room, in the staircase room. Waiting for us to sit in them. you know, at the break. And we sort of somehow think the present is waiting for us to, you know, enjoy it. But we're usually too busy thinking that we don't enjoy it. Okay. Now I said I'd like to speak about the mind in a way that doesn't depend too much on zazen experience. So let's use the transitions between the transitions between sleeping and waking as some sort of way to study the mind

[22:10]

I said yesterday afternoon that the mind is structured. Now, How we view the mind and nature or something like that is very tied up with our world views. And looking at our world views, seeing that we have world views, which influence everything.

[23:24]

I mean, there's a general European worldview and American. But you go across the border from the different Switzerland, Italian Switzerland and German Switzerland, why it's like a different, the street is different. And after bringing Marie-Louise and Sophia to the airport in Frankfurt, I drove back here through Alsace. Alsace, is that right? Alsace. Alsace, okay. And it used to be Germany, or it used to be Baden at least. But now it looks French. Just the way the stream runs through a town doesn't look like the same stream in Germany would look.

[24:33]

It's amazing how ingrained and taken for granted our worldviews are. But the infant, infant means one who doesn't yet speak, fat means doesn't speak. The infant learns the realms of language, meaning, emotion, et cetera, learns them all at once from their parents and caretakers. And from the very beginning, their experience is blended with this networking.

[25:37]

And those infants are now us. And we have a very particular way of looking at things. And to really accept that the mind is structured can be a pretty big step. I mean, when you have a nervous breakdown, the structure of your mind kind of comes apart. Yeah. And Zen practice is, you know, in a way trying to, well, if the mind is structured, then the mind can be unstructured. And it can be unstructured Yeah, it can be deconstructed, but it can also be simply unstructured.

[27:00]

And it can be done in a way that is gentle, which we can call Zen practice. Or it can happen in a more disturbing way when you have a crisis or something. But to see that the mind is structured and really accept that is extremely important. But to see that the mind is structured and to really accept it is very important. And we saw that yesterday in just comparing the different words in English and German for mind. The different words represent categories of attention to mind.

[28:17]

Categories of attention to mind. What Catherine's doing is harder than what I do. I just talk to you sometimes, right? I'm sorry. It's much more tiring, too. I'm glad I'm not you. No, I'm incapable. But I'm incapable. I couldn't do your job either. But I could do your job either. Oh, yes, you can. You will be able to do it. You can't now. Yeah. So let's just... So accept that at present. The mind is structured. It can be unstructured. You can experience that it's structured. And with some yogic skills, you can experience it as unstructured.

[29:23]

And when it's experienced as unstructured, it's called, in Zen, your original nature. It's called your original nature. Your original mind. Or it's called the face before your parents were born. And each of these expressions creating a category of unstructured mind are based on different practices to realize unstructured mind. But we don't have to go there today. But if you come back in a few weeks, maybe we can go there.

[30:37]

Okay. So going to sleep, waking up. I think everyone does that, right? Sometimes it's hard to go to sleep. You just flew in from the States, right? Okay. So you're asleep. And you've slept enough and you wake up. Let's not wake up with an alarm in this case. You just wake up. And you know you're really awake when the forms of the day start appearing. You could still go back to sleep. Because the forms of the day have not yet resulted in physical action.

[31:58]

You haven't, as you all do in Germany, you stand up in bed in the morning. In America we just wake up, but in Germany you stand up. All over Germany I see people just standing in bed. It's a very invigorating image. We're ready. Okay. So before it takes some physical form like that, you can let yourself go back to sleep. Okay. Now this What I'm pointing out here is not only that mind, when it starts to have the forms of the day appear in it, is beginning to have the structures of consciousness in it.

[33:27]

But the mind of dreaming is releasing the structures of dreaming that we actually have significantly different modalities of mind. If we try to think of it metaphorically, we can think of mind as a liquid. I haven't found a better image than liquid. And so one of the qualities of liquid is its viscosity. So in the viscosity of waking mind, dreams out of sight.

[34:34]

Dreams won't float in waking mind. To some extent they float in the background and bump into us during the day but mostly they don't float. And if you go back to sleep The viscosity of dreaming mind doesn't let the forms of the day float. So if you want a way to call back the viscosity of dreaming mind, is to find some kind of fragment of the dream that you can remember and take hold of it like you might a log in the sea and then

[36:00]

the dream will come back sometime. And what's interesting, if you're a careful observer, it sometimes comes back and you've just missed a couple scenes, but it's been going on without your noticing. And my own experience is not that there are only different dreams. There's also very basic subliminal dreams that are going on all through your life. And you get into them. These are all examples that the mind is structured. Now when you can begin to feel dreaming mind the liquid itself.

[37:33]

One of the truisms of yogic practice, and I'm almost through, I'll have a break soon, don't worry. One of the truisms of... Did you say that about the break? No, I didn't. That's something most want to hear. If you can... One of the truisms of yoga practice... is that all mental phenomena have a physical component and all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component. So mind is not just a generalization or abstraction.

[38:35]

You can feel mind. And it's good to develop an experience of feeling the modalities of mind. So if you feel the bodily sensations of the viscosity of dreaming mind, And if you can feel the physical sensations of the dreaming mind, then you can call forth that dreaming mind itself and let the dream appear. and the dreaming piece.

[39:47]

Or you can decide to call forth the forms of the day. And you can see it begin to change mind into consciousness. And pretty soon all the have-tos and shoulds of consciousness take hold of mind. and those structures get you up and get you to work and so forth. So the point is you see how mind is structured and that you are experiencing and living the structures of mind and that you are experiencing and living the structures of mind And that means there's two major possibilities upon which Zen is based.

[40:57]

You can also experience unstructured mind. And you can also change the structures of mind. If you want to. Who is it that wants to? Well, we better not go there. Okay, that's enough for the one little morning. That's a review of the modalities of mind. This is a repetition of the ways of the mind. Thank you very much.

[41:48]

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