Guten Morgen. Good morning. Oh, it's nice to see you. I wondered yesterday if you'd be around. Well, willing to risk being schmaltzy, Yeah, I'm very happy to be sitting here with you again. Every year. The world's most famous Zen master, Matsu, said, every day is a good day. So, yeah. We might as well agree with him. All right. It's always a pleasure to come in after you've been sitting and sit down in this somatic body swimming pool.

[01:13]

Yeah, to let myself into this water, liquid of just the right temperature. Okay, does anyone have something they'd like to... bring up from the discussion yesterday? How? Yes. We had a point in our group that I find interesting. In our group we had a certain point which I found very interesting.

[02:22]

And I would like to have Roshi's experience about that and hear about that. So we were discussing the question Roshi posed, attention is changing something. And what is in contrast to that is not interfering, observing, non-interfering attention or consciousness. And the shared or the common opinion was that awareness itself is not interfering or non-interfering.

[03:33]

And when one has the feeling that mindfulness is somehow interfering, then there is something like an ideal is coming into play somehow. As an example, when one has the experience of observing the evening while sitting, As an example, for instance, when you are sitting and your attention is on your breath, and you have the experience that your breath is getting somehow narrow, then mindfulness would be just letting the breath be narrow. And when you have the feeling And when there's something interfering, then it's because there is this ideal that breath shouldn't be narrow.

[04:43]

And my question is, in your experience, do you distinguish between mindfulness and non-interfering consciousness? Okay. I love having these discussions, which many people would think were nonsense. It meant nothing. wouldn't see it's one of the most serious things in the world. To be able to observe one's own mind, body and functioning, what could be more important? Well, just let me make two simple examples.

[05:52]

What I mean by non-interfering. You've heard about Samadhi. So you're sitting Zazen or you've done a Sashin or two. And suddenly you notice The last ten minutes, there hasn't been a thought in my mind. This must be Samadhi. Could it be? There goes the Samadhi. You know what? Yeah, okay. But after you've been practicing for a while, you can feel the mode of mind we call a being called samadhi.

[07:30]

And you can examine it with a corner of your mind without interfering with it. And you can think about it. And I would call this non-interfering observing consciousness. Now, another experience people have when they first starting breathing practice, bringing attention to their breathing, they find that they don't breathe naturally anymore. The attention to the breathing interferes with your breathing.

[08:36]

So at this point, should you give up? But strangely, when you continue and you... the habit of bringing attention to the breath. At some point, It can be a rather big experience. Breathing breathes itself. And it seems like the attention which first interferes after a while that attention kind of expands, something like that, into a kind of field of awareness.

[09:43]

And all your organs, not just your breathing, suddenly feel they're in a space. where they can function freely. You know, in the process of growing up, or growing down, or something like that, Certainly the promises of childhood are not fulfilled by adulthood. At least unless you practice. That was a commercial. Okay.

[11:00]

It was a pop-up commercial. Okay. It seems in the process of growing up and down, we get a lot of mental... constraints on our body. Then if you go to a masseuse, various things come out just by being massaged. It seems that what happens is the attention at first carries a certain, it can't be free from mental baggage.

[12:07]

It carries the habit of the habits of willing something to be done. And it sort of interferes. And after it, in the sense, by being repeated, it is washing itself and purifying itself. and in that process it also releases us from the mental and emotional kind of constraints that are throughout our body and as awareness as awareness Attention is purified, we could say.

[13:35]

And returns to its mother, the awareness. It creates a big space where we can be free of what we call technically the thought body. And this is not unrelated to Dogen saying, drop body and mind. So it's interesting that an interference and actually she sort of ends interfering. Well, that was a much longer response than I expected, but it just, it was a pop-up. I have a much longer answer to what you asked than I wanted, but it somehow came to me.

[14:39]

I am getting better, excuse my coughing now. I'll be almost normal by the time you leave. Someone else. What was your experience in the group? It's allowed. So I'm occupied or I'm dealing with this concept of self. And I am somehow fascinated by this idea that there could be some kind of higher self.

[15:56]

And also not a higher self, but also a divine self. And Roshi said yesterday that it could be somehow experienced or found in oneself. In the body. Yes. And this morning I had some kind of a flash that there is no contrast between these two concepts. Because in the first concept it's somehow about integrating the self in one's life. And that would be a kind of unity with God. and in this Buddhist concept I don't have this divine self but by integrating the self in the body by that it's the same and I'm interested in

[17:13]

So what I'm interested is how to have some hints about this method, how we can integrate this self into the body. Integrate. The divine self? Or what do you mean? I think there's, don't let's talk about the concepts of divine and not divine, but just self integrated in the body. It's this feeling of, but I think it's about the same thing. Okay. Well, I appreciate your question and statement. But you know, Buddhism is not a description of the world. It's just a practice. It doesn't try to say what the world is.

[18:37]

It assumes the world is not... The practice assumes... It assumes the world is something like a lot of interrelated parts which are only partially interrelated. So it's a practice to enter into this and participate in it, but not to know it. So it's a very pedestrian kind of practice.

[19:57]

So it's a very pedestrian kind of practice. Oh, is that last word? I mean, there is no such word like pedestrian in German. What made my friends to say, is this a very footganger? A footganger? Pedestrian, yeah, a footganger. And it says in the, he mentioned the first koan.

[20:59]

in one of these two main collections of teachings, hundred koan teachings. And the first two are really koans about views. Manjushri announces that the Buddha is going to say something. They call him the world-honored one. And he sits down and he gets up and then goes away. And doesn't say a word. Yeah. I dare try that, yeah. Knowing you're... something like a twelve-track person.

[22:13]

I always think I can throw something in that you'll get that. Well, it's a twelve-track person. And then Manjushri says, thus the Dharma. So does the Dharma. Well, that's a big help. Okay, then the second koan. Bodhidharma, you know, that one, meets the emperor. Says, hey, Kaiser. No. Anyway, you... You know, it means the state or the society or something like that.

[23:16]

The emperor asks him, who are you? Who's coming to visit? Who are you? And Bodhidharma says, or somebody who later is called Bodhidharma says, I don't know. So these two koans establish... Something. I don't know. And the third koan enters directly into practice. And in the commentary it says, unless you know and have realized the basics, Yeah. And the basics, the core dimensions are the five skandhas. Yeah. Part of the eight.

[24:26]

Part of... The four foundations of mindfulness. As the rest are. He mentions the five skandhas. The 18 vijnanas. The senses. The eight senses. The 18 datus. Sensorial realms. The six methods of breathing. And if you don't realize though, if you're not... grounded in those, you will never attain realization of the mystic path. So the whole thrust of then is, you do these things and then maybe we talk about

[25:27]

And the mystic path includes teachings and experiences of subtle bodies and so forth. There's no sense of a transcendental world, of a divine self, or anything behind this so-called reality. All of which would, from the Buddhist point of view, get you into some kind of infinite regression or some kind of theological vision. Now, Buddhism doesn't deny much. It just says it's not concerned with it.

[26:47]

Now, for someone who has experience of and a feeling for other or additional ways of looking at things than just the Buddhist way, as you do, You can use Buddhist practice. in just the way you implied which is to use it in a way that you know yourself and the world as thoroughly as possible and then you look for or you Let your intention and feeling go into these other realms which are real to you.

[28:12]

So in this sense, Buddhism can be used as a kind of tool to explore the world as you find it. Now, there's lots of things that happen to practitioners which are not explainable by science or any contemporary way of explanation. And these are treated as real experiences, and even facts of existence, but they're also treated as anomalies, which you don't make theories about. which you don't make theories about.

[29:31]

And it's called in Buddhism the intermediate world. Rupert Sheldrake is trying to make theories about what in Buddhism would be called an intermediate world. Yes, theories are interesting. So that's the best I can say. And the sense you, what you said about the integration of the self. Now I would be careful, for me I wouldn't say that because that implies the self is something real or an entity. This is not an entity, it's a construct. And I can hear it if I hit it. But if I want to eat it, you know, with some people in circuses, eat metal and things like that, I'd at least have to break it down into smaller parts.

[31:03]

And in that sense, the self needs to be broken down into smaller parts in order to be integrated. And in that sense, the self needs to be broken down So you're not integrating the self, you're integrating the functions of self, something like that. Geez, I'm waxing long here, sorry. I'm not. Waiting long? Not better. Someone else? You okay? Yeah, you're good. Drink it. It's okay. Okay. You have to enlighten the mind.

[32:16]

If the mind doesn't dwell on anything, it doesn't need enlightenment. Okay, all right, that's very good. That's also the third Koran in Shoyuroku. And I'll come back to that, but... Yeah. Yeah. And you should translate what he said, if you could. But you speak German, don't you? Alright, thank you for that.

[33:33]

And I will come back to that, for sure. Now, someone else, before we do something else? I don't know what... Yeah. So I would be interested in, we also talked in our group about this representation of the world And that this representation of the world then is also conferred to the world.

[34:37]

And how I understood it, you would call that delusion. Okay, let's start again. We call what delusion? If you... If you convey self to the world, I'd call that delusion. Well, Dogen would, and I'd agree with him. Dogen would do that, and I agree with him. For me, the question is, it's difficult, or how should you approach it, that when you try to let this thing emerge, But for me, it's difficult if you are one tries to let these things appear or come up. Then one would have to, this apparatus, this filter, how one perceives things.

[35:47]

The structure, the mode of how one perceives things? Yeah. Yeah. You would have been able to throw away this filter, how one perceives the world, so that things could appear, or could, yeah, could appear, conform. Yeah, it's up to work, eh? Yeah, even if it wasn't that. How can you do that? How can you throw away the filter? Well, responding to Christina's question, when awareness makes a wide non-interfering field you could say there's an experience of things coming forward and this is also you know this kind of language come forward.

[37:13]

It's an interesting problem and I've been working on what does come forward mean now for a year or so. I've found many ways to try to make that clear. But it's also a Chinese way of speaking. The future comes forward. And our experience is that the Chinese describe their experience, of being sort of hit in the face by the future. The future keeps... You don't want it to come, maybe, but it keeps coming forward. And that's also something like Chinese people, when you ask them to describe it, that the future practically hits them in the face.

[38:20]

It's not like they... So it's just there, but there as a movement. And the Chinese talk about whether it strikes you as new or it strikes you as refreshing. And that's an interesting, subtle distinction. Is it new or is it refreshing? And the implication is for a realized person, it's refreshing. For an unrealized person, it's new. But also, don't get caught in You or anyone.

[39:21]

That things are either this way or that way. There's either self or there's a freedom self. No, there's a There's a movement toward self or there's a movement toward less self. Then set your practice with this phrase to cultivate and authenticate things by letting the self by conveying yourself to think. If you notice that less and less are you conveying the self to things, you're not free entirely of doing it, but you do it less and less.

[40:31]

Then you have the dynamic. of a freedom from self. If you have more and more equality, you can't stop being free. thinking of things in a self-referential way, then your dynamics will be really self-inflicted. So instead of entities or something like that, think of direction. Like you start putting your luggage down, maybe you still got a backpack on, but you already feel better.

[41:32]

What you're getting right, you're leaving, you've only got one suitcase in your hand, and you already feel... Yeah. Well, I want to have people have a break. Yeah. When I hear what you are saying now, do I feel thinking of the position of yesterday? We can see the position as a fixed position. There's a famous koan which is the last two lines.

[42:34]

Xu Shan says, after this earlier discussion, he says, well, what can we do about the world? And Di Jiang says, what do you call the world? And that's been in the background of what I've been talking about the last three days, two days. What do we call the world? We can't do something about the world unless we know what the world is, what we call the world. Mit der Welt, solange wir nicht wissen, was die Welt ist.

[43:55]

And that's what we call the self, what we call the body, etc. Und das ist das, was wir nennen, das Selbst oder den Körper. And whether the calling in prisons or the calling calls forth and frees. Und ob dieses Rufen uns entweder... And the biggest word for the world in Buddhism is Tathagatagarbha, which the Tathagata part also means the Buddha. The Tathagatagarbha means the world is not a generalization world, cosmos or something. Und das bedeutet, dass die Welt im Buddhismus nicht eine generalisierte Welt ist, wie das Universum, der Kosmos. The world is a pulse of coming and going in a appearing and disappearing in a womb embryo

[45:01]

In a context of the particular and all at oneness. Now this is a description you can practice with. It's not just a name. Okay, so we have only one... three-fourths of the way through the first of the four foundations of mindfulness. But we've in fact been continuously talking about the other three. So we'll tie this up with a ribbon after a break. And we'll see what Eric does with the ribbon. Okay, great. Maybe we should make the rest of the day.

[46:03]

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