You know, you find yourself hanging to a tree for several hours. And after the water recedes, you find there's quite a few other people in a similar situation. Yeah. And you share a common vision. You see the same trees and rocks and buildings and so forth. And you hope you can get your feet back on the ground and so forth. This is certainly obvious. But we don't seem to feel that way most of the time. If you speak to New Yorkers about what it was like after the World Trade Center disaster, What most people mention is there was a wonderful sense of comradeship for weeks afterwards.

[01:17]

Don't we feel it in a big storm or something like that sometimes? If there is this wonderful sense of comradeship after such a disaster as the World Trade Center, why don't we feel that comradeship all the time? You know there are many simple expressions in Zen lore which describe life as you know

[02:28]

you know, carrying water and cutting firewood or something. And this doesn't refer just to the fact that we take care of the basics of life. But it also means, and more fundamentally means, what I'm calling a sensorial baseline. And we see it in the salutation, the greetings we often in the greetings we commonly have. How are you? It's a nice day. People are always saying to me, I kind of hate the greeting that's so common in America, have a nice day. I always want to respond, well, thank you, but I have other plans.

[03:51]

I don't like the imperative of it. But, you know, the word hello, hello, it means something like stop, or in Latin and other languages, stop and just hear. And the Hawaiian greeting, Aloha, Aloha, which sounds so much rather like hallo, means it's the same ha in Hawaii.

[05:04]

And ha means breath. In Hawaii it means the kind of animistic connectedness with all life. And the alo means in front or presence. Yeah, something like that. So... The greeting of Hawaiians with each other is to touch foreheads, noses and share breath. They brush their teeth always. Anyway, so there's this, you know, in a greeting like aloha, this breath, connectedness, presence, there's right there this manifestation of a common vision.

[06:30]

But our consciousness is driven by thinking. Our consciousness generally isn't driven by our immediate situation. And sometimes, you know, like in a big hail storm or hurricane or something, it is driven by our immediate situation. Or if you climb mountains or coming down a glacier when it's melting in the morning.

[07:38]

These things are, we could say, usually a kind of ecstasy or high for people. Eric and I were discussing yesterday the... The Leopard, this novel, the Sicilian prince. And I think he says it somewhere, something like this potion that's poured Every day. This potion of... of the world as it is that's poured on us every day.

[08:45]

Yeah, he seems to admit something like what I'm talking about. So let's go back to consciousness driven by our thinking. Shaped by our thinking. Let's be more specific, usually self-referential thinking. Now, consciousness is part of the problem, actually. As I've discussed with some of you before, the job of consciousness is to make the world predictable.

[09:48]

When in fact it's not predictable. Ordinary, just like you said, 1971, I think, about in Tassajara. Our thinking mind limits reality. in order to make it easier to understand. So what we see is only a shadow of reality. So If you want to see things as they are, you can't depend on thinking mind.

[10:59]

Okay, so however we approach this topic, From the point of view of Buddhism and Zen Buddhism you come to the same point which is the nature of consciousness itself which is to make the world predictable. which is a very useful and necessary function so that we can function. But it shouldn't deceive us into believing that the world is predictable or becoming overly attached to its predictability.

[12:11]

And consciousness, then in addition, driven by thinking mind, Again, usually self-referential thinking. Really... separates us by several dimensions from this, what I'm calling, sensorial baseline. An underlying mind located in sensorial awareness. We have that, of course, to some extent, or we trip over objects and so forth.

[13:32]

But if our consciousness, by contrast, is driven on... I can't find a better word than that... It's driven by our immediate sensory location. Then come closer to what Zen assumes as a baseline in our living existence. Where does our mind rest moment after moment? In our thinking. When we're not thinking we want to turn on the radio or something. Because often the sensorial world, unless it's pressed on us, is boring.

[14:49]

We don't feel its complexity. And not just to retake a walk in the forest, but at any moment. No, from the point of view of We have to retrain ourselves to come into this, to an underlying, to a mind rooted in our sensorial mind. immediacy. Most of you know I have a now four year old daughter.

[16:03]

And we've got to create some kind of identity, help her create some kind of identity in her consciousness. If we don't, we can't get her to do anything. I mean, she sees no reason why in any circumstance she shouldn't eat with her fingers and throw food. And she doesn't tell me that why Indian people eat with their fingers, but if she knew it, she'd say it. She thinks it's just fine. So we first got to convince her she can't do it in restaurants. And there's no kind of logic to this.

[17:05]

It's just about, you know, rules embedded in a consciousness which you can say, hey, that wasn't good. And society trains us in this way. So we have to undo that training, I mean not lose it, but not identify ourselves through it. Maybe that's why we like going camping out or something in the mountains. Some of that is undone Or maybe it's why some people like to get a little drunk or whatever

[18:17]

But I think through practice you start feeling like you're always maybe camping out or even a little drunk. So as I said, we're talking about something that's pretty obvious here. But the way in which it is emphasized, the way we develop the emphasis, And how it's part of our structure of knowing is a description of practice. Now if we want to get into it in more detail, we probably want to speak about the practice of noticing through each sense separate from the other sense.

[20:17]

And then we would like to talk about the fact that we practice this through every single sense, Now that's actually rather fun to do. But you have to see it and understand it as a practice. And to be willing to make the effort. And also you need the confidence that actually you get the feeling of it. And it changes everything. the way you structure yourself in the phenomenal world. With only small doses of the practice. But I don't think we want to go into that too much today.

[21:36]

Though it might come up in the discussion this evening about the foundations of mindfulness. So I think at this moment it's a good time to have a break. So thank you, each of you, for being here. So I'll see you in about half an hour. Back here? Okay, thanks. Thank you for translating. Please don't wait for me to get up. I'm enjoying sitting here.

[22:30]

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