Thank you for the two denchos. That made me happy. And it's a little warm in here, isn't it? Just the way it is. Seems warmer than yesterday. Ah, okay. Yeah, so we're in the midst of this teaching of the Vijnanas. And you're in the midst of perhaps suggestions I've made about how to make this a way to practice. And I hope you're in the midst of experimenting in your own way with how to make these six sense bases your own. And as I said yesterday, the visionas arise from the sense organ, from contact, and the resultant field of mind.

[01:19]

And we can slow that down to try to notice the construction process. Now, I've often said that the job of consciousness is to make the world predictable. Yeah, rather necessary for our functioning. And to make the world categorizable. Because if you can't put things into categories that make sense to our human perceptual scheme, you can't make sense of them.

[02:46]

Now, I I would add today, though, that the job of consciousness is also to make the world feel like it's out there. And it's interesting, The process of perception shows us the object. But the process of perception does not show us the construction process by which we know the object.

[03:54]

Aber der Prozess der Wahrnehmung zeigt uns nicht den Konstruktionsprozess, durch den wir das Objekt kennen. Und ich glaube, einer der Gründe dafür, warum Klang in der Praxis betont wird, Because, you know, when we see something, we see it near or far away, etc. And sound, we just hear it. It's neither near nor far. And perhaps if you listen to music attentively, carefully... You can feel the voice making the sound. And singers like Frank Sinatra made a big effort to study how to bring the feeling of the sound and the emotion within the sound into it.

[05:02]

So you could feel how the sound felt to him and was made by him. Also kann man spüren, wie der Klang sich für ihn angefühlt hat und wie er von ihm gemacht wurde. And I think we also, if we listen attentively, we can hear the instrument, even the lips perhaps, on the French horn or something like that, in the making of the sound. Sound may be one of the ways we can practice with the auditory vijnana. And at the root of Vijnana practice is the noticing of the world, as I said yesterday, as a succession of appearances.

[06:34]

And so I gave you a couple examples of practices you can do like that. In the last seminar and again yesterday. Like To pause for the pause or to pause for the particular. The sense pause to bring a feel of all the senses, even ones which don't apply, into each particular. I mean, it's mechanical at first, you do, you know, but after a while it just becomes natural. Es ist zunächst ein bisschen mechanisch, da muss man das alles so zurecht bekommen, aber nach einer Weile wird es dann einfach natürlich.

[08:01]

And as I said, you find yourself located then in the particularity which is an instantiation of immediacy. Und wie ich das gesagt habe, dann findest du dich verortet in der... And I gave you in the last seminar to Dogen's to complete that which appears. And that can also be, of course, a way to kind of develop a pulse, a pulse of being in the world so that not only do you experience appearance, the succession of appearance, but you experience the construction process of the visionaries.

[09:12]

Yes, and another very basic... For a thousand years I've been saying it. Well, it's an exaggeration, but not too much. With, in each particular, say, just this. It does stop you and locate you in the particular. But it doesn't emphasize that all out there's are in here.

[10:14]

Now again, I feel like a schmaltzy kind of Zen Buddhist, all out there's are in here. But, yeah, we have to turn this practice into some kind of action. Then it becomes a craft. Because maybe we could say then, just this in here. Vielleicht können wir dann so was sagen wie, einfach dies hier drinnen. Just this here-ness. Oder nur dieses hier-sein. So it's not so much just this object, but just this here-ness.

[11:16]

Und dann ist es nicht so sehr nur dieses Objekt, sondern das Gefühl von nur dieses Hiersein. Ja. Now, you may have noticed that the word Vijñāna is made up of V and Jāna. Okay, so I translated it yesterday as the vi is like the dis of disengage or disconnect. But the jhana is the same jhana that leads to the word zen. In that sense, jhana means direct, non-conceptual perceptions. In other words, taking away the out-there-ness, which is part of the employment contract of consciousness.

[12:31]

And health insurance comes with it too. We get everything with consciousness. Except non-conceptual direct experience. Okay. Yeah. In here-ness. How do we develop in here-ness? Sorry. Even in English it doesn't exactly make sense.

[13:43]

Okay. Well, the prior practice, which is assumed with visionness, is a disciplined, regular zazen practice. And the development through Zazen practice of an interior attentional space. You know, and I went... into that in the last seminar. And without interior attentional space, there's no way you're going to experience the visionas as an interior construction process.

[14:45]

Even though consciousness is the receptor and receptacle of the construction process, the manifestation of the construction process, It's almost as if consciousness had a mind of its own. I think it does have a mind of its own. Consciousness almost is saying to you, ha, ha, ha, I hid the construction process.

[15:55]

It happened right here in front of you, but you didn't see it. Ha, ha, ha, I gotcha. Yeah. Right before your very eyes I constructed the world and you didn't notice it. And I did that in case there's a tiger attacking and you then need to know the tiger is out there. But there aren't many tiggers anymore. Well, still, I'm protecting you. We don't want you to think the tigger is an inner construction process. Okay. It's interesting, isn't it?

[17:06]

We live in the middle of deception. Our own functioning deceives us. Yeah. So zazen is a way to bring us really into a kind of truthfulness of our own experience. Just by following the breath now, as I've said, and not just counting the breath, Counting is a process of getting used to joining the attentional dimension of mind to the body. No, please repeat this. Counting the breath is a way to bring the attentional aspect of mind to the very aspirational and inspirational pace of the body.

[18:32]

Aspire is to desire something. Inspiration is to have this come from inside. Both words are rooted in the word to breathe. Because you're doing something, counting your breath, you're doing something incredibly basic and profound. And you get used to it. Pretty soon you don't have to count because mind rests, attentional mind rests on every inhale and exhale.

[19:47]

And then when you practice following the breath, being present within the breath in breathing, You create an interior attentional space. An interiority. Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying various words to give us... to give me a feeling of what it feels like to me in English, I just hope that her German is better than mine. And your German is better than mine. Now, in a way, the test, if you created... an interiority or not.

[20:59]

The big test for most of us is sashim. If you haven't created a satisfying interiority, Wenn du noch keine zufriedenstellende Innerlichkeit geschaffen hast. The interiority is enough for you. So dass die Innerlichkeit für dich genug ist. Just this in here-ness, just this interiority is enough. Als einfach dieses hier drin sein, diese Innerlichkeit genug ist. If you can't feel this, it's real hard to sit as a sheen. And the difficulty the first two or three days is that we haven't yet shifted in to a completely satisfying interiority.

[22:02]

Yeah. But eventually, this interiority is, yeah, more satisfying than exteriority. And as you're really developing it, there may be times when, you know, a few years in your beginning practice, where you long for the interiority of a sashim. When you long for the interiority of the morning zazen, And I, by the way, the last couple of mornings, I've really missed sitting with you, but I've had to work until, because of things in America and the funeral I'm working on for my oldest best friend.

[23:19]

Yeah, my most definitive friend until I met Suzuki Roshi. So I've had to be up a bit late. And then I'm a bit jet-lagged still. And I had to choose between zazen and being asleep now. And I decided, I don't know, maybe you'd prefer me to be at zazen and asleep now, but I chose this. Yeah. I've done that. Dogen. Oh, Dogen, yes. Okay. So... So eventually... one discovers this interiority of zazen.

[24:47]

And I think one of the most, again sound, one of the most convincing experiences And again to the sound, I think one of the most convincing experiences is when in practice, I've spoken about this, you know, well, not for a thousand years, but for five hundred. Hearing your own hearing. And this is an actual bodily embodiment shift. Yeah, you... Yeah, there's sounds.

[25:48]

But they... don't feel like they're outside of you. I often like it to what some people without doing Zazen experience sunbathing. On a tar New York tenement roof when I was young. Tenement is where a bunch of people live in very poor apartments, one above the other. Tenement. It's just an apartment building. It's the lower end of an apartment building. The one I lived in, every sink was full of cockroaches.

[27:01]

And every stove, when you heated the stove up, the cockroaches came running out. And I used to literally, I'm not kidding, sweep the cockroaches and off the ceiling, you know, with a broom. It seemed normal to me. I got used to it. And bed bugs, oh God, they were terrible. Okay, so anyway, so you sunbathed on the roof? Or you sunbathed on Jones Beach with 10,000 other people in a square mile? Everything disappears.

[28:07]

There's this great sun god, O-Tan-Me. And you hear voices, seagulls and And it doesn't make any difference how far away or near. They're just in a kind of sphere of timelessness, and then you get sunburn. Something like sasa. You're sitting and you hear things. Nothing bothers you. In Yogacara, the enlightenment is described as the overturning of the cognitive basis.

[29:12]

So the vijnanas still have a cognitive base. And the Virginians still have a cognitive basis. In this case, to translate the word means that it is separated from the non-conceptual direct experience. And so we can say that studying the Vijnana, the eight Vijnanas, Yeah, it's maybe a process of, you know, looking at the floor plan of an apartment you intend to rent. Yeah, there's six rooms. Actually, there's eight, but we're not concerned with them yet.

[30:15]

And you get used to each of the six rooms, one for each sound or smell or taste? And in your mind practice, you move between these six rooms. Yeah. But they all still have a cognitive basis. But we're getting familiar with the floor plan. We're getting familiar with the construction process. And we're trying to isolate each sense experientially enough that we can know it as part of the construction process.

[31:26]

Now, another way to enter the same territory is zazen. Regular zazen, because it's regular zazen five, seven, ten times a week. Which begins to shift you into an interiority, which then becomes an interiority that's with you all the time, even in daily life. We can even say, as I said, this interior attentional space now can be exteriorized as an exterior attentional space, but it really is rooted in interior attentional space.

[32:43]

And these are the practices which really make practice something transformative. And these are the practices which allow you to free yourself from mental suffering. Psychological, emotional and mental suffering. Okay. Okay. So the experience I'm referring to, the iconic experience I'm referring to, is hearing your own hearing.

[33:51]

It's recognizing, because you're so located in an interior attentional space, The entire body and all your attention is just located as interior attentional space. So when you hear something, you don't feel yourself going out to the sound because it's in here. And for some reason it's a huge psychological relief. All the tension associated with out-there-ness drops away.

[34:55]

It sounds just in here. And for some reason it's associated with the bliss of jhana, direct non-conceptual experience. And this is the shift from vijnana to jhana. And let me say something about perching birds. Perching? Birds that sit on a branch or perch. Perching birds are birds that sing. Okay, so Zen temples plant gardens around, so at first light. Atmar is doing it all the time, so that we hear birds in the morning.

[36:10]

Now, if you know something about birds, the range of birds hearing... Wenn du etwas über Vögel weißt, dann weißt du, dass das Spektrum, in dem Vögel hören können, is from 200 Hz to 29,000 Hz. Dass die von 200 Hz bis hin zu 200,000, 200,000 Hz 29,000. 29,000, okay. 29,000 Hz hören können. And our range is from 2,000 to 4,000 Hz. Und unsere, unser Spektrum ist von 2000 bis 4000. It's like the dog's smelling. There's just no comparison. Das ist so, wie der Hund riechen kann. Das ist nicht vergleichbar. And perching birds can sing two notes at once.

[37:12]

They're like Tuva singers. Und also diese Vögel, die können zwei Töne gleichzeitig singen. Die sind so wie... What kind of singers did you say? Tuva, these Mongolian singers. And they can sing and hear ten times as many notes per second as we can. So when you're hearing a bird... You're not hearing the bird the way the bird is singing. It's singing like Bach taught it to sing in another dimension. Yeah, and... And the birds are hearing it and singing it and hearing it in dimensions way beyond our capacity.

[38:14]

But what we hear is lovely. And then there's the mystery that we're hearing only within the capacity of our own hearing. And this is a basic recognition of the Vijñānas. And through zazen and the creation of an interior attentional space, You enter directly into the experience of this fact. You're hearing within the capacity, smelling, tasting, touching within the capacity of your own senses.

[39:22]

It's your human perceiver world that's being created. And now you can participate in it through the Vijjana practice and Zazen. You can participate in its construction. And you know the limits and dimensions of it are within your own capacities. And so now you really feel how you live in the midst of an immense infinite complexity in our own sensorial sphere with each other.

[40:26]

So now we can understand when Dogen says complete that which appears Knowing each particular is simultaneously infinite and particular. This is the daily fare, Dogen would say, or the tradition would say, of the patched-robed monk. How are the spandexed lapers? The well-dressed lapers. That we live within each particular Through our own capacity.

[41:49]

And we are participant in the construction process. Engaged in immediacy. That's enough for this morning, don't you think? Thank you very much.

[42:14]

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