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Beyond Entities: Embracing Dynamic Awareness
Seminar_True_Intentions
This talk examines the concept of "true intentions," encouraging a shift in perception from thinking in entities to understanding dynamic relationships. The discussion includes the dualism of host mind and guest mind, a vocabulary of practice emphasizing background-foreground distinctions, and the integration of subtle shifts in consciousness through meditation. It also explores concepts of another world and the essence of duration, beyond measurable matter, into dark energy and awareness. These ideas underscore the importance of non-entities, touching on relationships and attentiveness to present experiences.
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Kikan Koans: Highlighted as a practice to distinguish between discriminating and non-discriminating thoughts, emphasizing a deeper understanding through Zen training.
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Sushin Instructions: "Don't invite your thoughts to tea" serves as an example of differentiating between guest mind and host mind, foundational in cultivating conscious awareness.
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Avalokiteshvara's Thousand Arms: Used to illustrate a form of non-fragile concentration, symbolizing readiness and presence beyond conscious control, as described by Suzuki Roshi.
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Ji-jitsu Kannon Gyo (Avalokiteshvara's Sutra): Implied as a paradigm for integrating compassion and awareness within Zen practice.
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Darwin's Theory of Shared Creation: Referenced to argue the shift from seeing humans as separate beings to understanding interconnectivity within the larger cosmos.
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Wado (Returning Words to Their Source): The practice of breaking down concepts to reach a raw experience, aligned with direct perception and early Buddhist teachings.
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Chuang Tzu: Quoted to reinforce the idea of liberating the mind from rigid constructs and embracing fluidity in perception.
Each reference contributes to an understanding of how Zen practice facilitates an expanded experience and greater subtlety in everyday life through the exploration of relationships and intentionality.
AI Suggested Title: Beyond Entities: Embracing Dynamic Awareness
This one's for you and this is for me? Yeah, the big one is for you. Oh, okay. We're experimenting with seeing if we should change to another kind of recording system. So I want to talk about some things with you that much of it is obvious to you.
[01:09]
Yeah, perhaps some of it not so obvious. But mainly how can we... rearrange our experience or emphasize our experience in a new way. It lets us enter into ourselves and the world in some fresh way. Now, I suppose I will end up, and I want to speak about some of the things we already looked at in Sashin. And then in Hannover.
[02:29]
Because I'd like us to develop a vocabulary of practices and teachings. that we can learn to apply in different ways. So if it becomes more vocabulary, it becomes accessible to us in various situations, including our own practice and our own personal circumstances. And again on this prologue day I feel more freedom to kind of just explore things. And not so much to stick to the topic.
[03:31]
The topic is, I think in the brochure, it's true intentions, but I think fundamental intentions is a better, in English, a better feeling title. In the annual program, I think the title is called True Intentions, but in English it sounds Fundamental Intentions, so Fundamental Intentions. It feels better. So intentions, but let me speak to the topic for a moment, for it's certainly in the background what I'm saying and will be the foreground, at least maybe it'll be the foreground of our seminar. So we can say that intentions are a kind of thought that works outside of thinking.
[04:56]
And when you're practicing, You want to ask yourself, you know, is all of the things that appear as thoughts, are they all thinking? Yeah, we need to make some distinctions because For example, there's a whole range of koans called the Kikan koans, which emphasize discovering how to discriminate in a field of non-discriminating.
[05:59]
Now, is this just wordplay, discriminating and non-discriminating, etc. ? Well, no, it's actually trying to widen our experience And trying to make our experience more subtle. And our experience and thinking want to become more subtle. If we meditate. Because meditation increases The territory of our lives, at least the territory of our experience.
[07:11]
So we need to shift our viewpoints. To get out of the habitual way. We view ourselves in the world. And we have a kind of safe chance to do that by, you know, being here for two or three days. Try on some kind of different viewpoint. And as I said, meditation calls us to a greater subtlety. But we may call that off or cut that off because we can't hear it in our usual daily lives.
[08:53]
Weil wir das in unserem gewöhnlichen alltäglichen Leben nicht hören können. So I think even our daily life practice needs to be refreshed by occasional times. Also die tägliche Praxis unseres Lebens, glaube ich, muss auch aufgefrischt werden, hin und wieder. When we can listen to, safely listen to... our more fundamental life. Yeah, let me call it fundamental life. And so that this fundamental life can surface more in our own everyday life. The whole point of this practice is that it is possible. And I also want during these days, particularly today, for us to feel some freedom to
[10:35]
you know, get to discuss these things. To get to the bottom of these things. Do you have that expression in German? Oh, the Grundgehen, okay. Because, as I often point out, what distinguishes, what exemplifies Zen practice is its thoroughness in which it opens up a practice, the thoroughness with which it opens up even the obvious.
[11:47]
Okay. We are not a separate creation. We're not somehow a separate kind of being from the rest of the world or the cosmos. Well, that's certainly the viewpoint that Buddhism and Taoism take. And yogic teachings, too. And I think at least most of us would... agree, at least intellectually, that we somehow share the same creation.
[13:02]
Okay. But if we take this, you know, not just a, well, that's a kind of Yeah, intellectual fact that we share the same creation. I mean, Darwin is considered the most influential scientist of all times, probably. Yeah, not so much because of his particular science he did. But that he shifted our viewpoint to recognizing that we're a shared creation. Whatever all of this is, we share with the same creation as a different emergence, but the same, arising from the same.
[14:26]
background. A different kind of emergence. But arising from the same Okay, now I will use probably quite a bit this, you know, idea of background and foreground. And in every way we can notice a background-foreground distinction. It's useful to notice that as... In practice, it's useful to notice, in any way we can, background-foreground distinction.
[15:55]
Because No, all the distinctions are closely related. Hello. And just we can think of the background-foreground as a dynamic, in which we first of all begin as part of practice to notice the background.
[17:10]
And to then sometimes make shift and emphasize, put the foreground and the background. And sometimes merge foreground and background. Just in such a simple dynamic, such a simple... dynamic relationship, we can understand much of practice. This is dharma and karma, form and emptiness, compassion and wisdom, and so forth. And as I pointed out in the Sushin particularly, that this real basic, simple practice, Sushin said all the time, don't invite your thoughts to tea.
[18:35]
Has this foreground and background in it. Because if you can not invite your thoughts to tea, there's some kind of mind that isn't the thoughts being invited to tea. Then there is a mind which hasn't invited the thoughts to tea, and there's the mind which is the thoughts. Now, On the one hand, we all take it quite casually. Oh, yes, of course, you have the experience of not inviting your thoughts to tea.
[19:39]
But that the fact that you can do that also means the whole of Buddhism, enlightenment and everything. Because what is this mind that doesn't invite the thoughts to tea? And then, okay, what are the two kinds of thoughts? The thoughts that you're not inviting to tea. And the thought which doesn't invite. They have to be different kind of thoughts. So what's the difference between these two kinds of thoughts? This is a fundamental question that's
[20:41]
obvious with any thorough practice of this simple instruction? It's obvious with any thorough practice of this simple instruction. So probably I'll come back to this. Because there we have the distinction, which, you know, one of these distinctions we can make, of the host mind, which doesn't invite the thoughts to tea, and the guest mind, which arises through the thoughts. Okay, so how do we discover what the nature of host mind in contrast to guest mind?
[21:55]
Yeah, okay, host mind means it's always There's so much in this little teaching, as you know, the host is always home. So how do we discover this mind that's always home? So then how do we bring it into the foreground? make it part of the foreground of our usual activity, which we can call guest mind. So this host-mind-guest-mind relationship is something I emphasized in the Sesshin. And I think it's something that we should, you know,
[22:56]
get very familiar with as part of our experiential vocabulary. Now, everyone wants to say, or commonly people say, oh, is host mind the same as big mind? Well, yeah, there's some... Yeah, it's the same way of thinking anyway, same way of experiencing yourself. But really... Probably when you ask the question, it's rooted in a habit of entity thinking. You keep wanting to turn these things into entities.
[24:16]
There's some kind of host mind or big mind, etc., and then there's this guest mind, and they exist in some way. But the host mind exists in relationship to the guest mind. Yeah, and big mind exists in relationship to small mind. And big mind exists in relationship to small mind. And big mind includes small mind as well as in relationship to small mind. Now, is this just a lot of... language again? Well, it can sound like it.
[25:32]
Unless your experience is in the language. And then when you call something, when the way you call something is an aspect of its relationship, it's different than when The relationship is different. One of the things I'm speaking about here then as a part of our vocabulary of practice is don't think in entities. And those who... too often have to stand in the corner and write, I promise not to think in entities.
[26:37]
I promise not to think in entities. With a little hat, you know. Did they do that in German schools? Well, you have to wear a dunce hat. I don't know about the hat. No. I think maybe it was done in colonial times in America. If you were too dumb, you had to put on this hat and write it over and over again on the blackboard. And stand in the corner. He had to stand in the corner. They did that in Germany. A Dummkopf hat. Dummkopf hood. Anyway. Don't think in entities.
[27:37]
If you notice you're thinking in entities, catch yourself. Think in relationships. And the example of that that I really want to get across... is directionality in a relationship. Again, a mind moving toward less preferences functions as a mind free of preferences. A mind... Moving toward more preferences functions as a mind of preferences.
[28:38]
Think of it as a guy carrying a lot of luggage. You've got a backpack on, a front pack on, and two suitcases in each hand. And as you start to put them down, you're a man. functioning as one free of luggage. As you start to put them all on, you're a man, a person who's loaded down with luggage. Okay, what I'd like you to do, and I don't know, this doesn't make sense, but I'd like you to shift your viewpoint to your arms.
[29:57]
Maybe you can start empowering your arms during Zazen. So when you're sitting, you feel you've got this warm circle of your arms embracing you. See if you can feel the world in your arms. Certainly our hands are an example of our intelligence. Our brain and hands are very closely related.
[31:08]
Probably our brains, the difference of our brains from dolphins, say, has a lot to do with we don't have flippers and tails and things. So let's activate the intelligence of our arms. Maybe when you sit you can feel This is a moon, a shining moon. And somebody asks, you know, Suzuki Roshi, what is concentration? And he said it's the 1,000 arms of Agla Kiteshvara. Now, what he meant, you know, the figure of Avalokiteshvara is shown with a kind of fan of arms, a thousand of them, making an aura.
[32:24]
And all the arms are ready There's a kind of readiness in the arm. So here he was trying to say that concentration is not something you do with your consciousness. Because if it's something you do, it produces conscious concentration, which is a very fragile, narrowing concentration. If you're disturbed by noise and you need a quiet place to work too much, it means that your concentration is very tied to your consciousness. Of course there's a difference if you're not being distracted in how you can work.
[33:40]
But there doesn't have to be a really big difference. Whether it's the wind or people, you can just... You could maintain your concentration. That kind of concentration is like these thousand arms of Avalokiteshvara. Which also is the aura, the presence, the nimbus. Yeah, like around Christ's head, it's the same kind of feeling. concentration of fundamental mind, which in certain states of mind you can see around a person.
[35:14]
So I'm suggesting we feel ourselves, our presence, or immediacy in our arms. I think we ought to have a break, because I'd like to shift how we're speaking a little bit, and maybe it's better to take a break at this point.
[37:12]
So probably about 25 minutes, but I'll ring a bell. They're intuitive. This way they open, this way they're closed. So we don't know by looking whether that's closed or open. If it blows open, you'll know. Once you get used to it, it's all right. Your hand is smarter than your eye. So is there something you'd like to bring up at this point, early on in our discussion?
[38:24]
I found it so much easier to concentrate on the hands than on the arms. Of course, yeah. Which fits with how many brain cells are dedicated to the hands. I suppose. I wonder if this can be used. The hands instead of the difference. Well, yeah, use it all. Elbows, hands. I don't understand why the direction, going through the direction of less luggage is already the same like being free.
[40:07]
What's the alternative? The alternative is to have no luggage at all, right? But you have your clothes. You have your body. Is there such a place as no luggage at all? I think maybe you just have to keep trying this on. The problem is that if I say you should have a mind free of preferences, if you take that
[41:12]
through our habit of thinking in entities, then it sounds impossible. Doesn't that make sense? But I'm not trying to teach something that's impossible. if you don't think in endpoints but think in relationships, then if the relationship is moving in the direction of less preferences, you could say that line is functioning in the world toward less preference. Since not only are the two endpoints impossible, they also don't exist. All that exists are less All that exists are relationships.
[42:52]
Alles, was existiert, sind nur Beziehungen. Do we accept that? Akzeptieren wir das? Does anybody disagree with that? Yes. Yes, disagree with it. Please, I'd like to hear it. No, I don't... As you said, you know, intellectually I wouldn't disagree. Also intellektuell würde ich nicht... But we talked about it during the break, and I talked with Agatha, and we tried to clarify what entity was, what that word means. And we found out it's defined in the relationship to the word relationship. And then I create an example when I look at you, and so I try to apply it. And I notice how much my perception is hooked on entities, you know, seeing Agatha as a woman, and I'm looking at her as a woman, I'm not looking at her in a relationship.
[44:03]
you know, the term woman or her being a woman is not necessarily, doesn't appear as a relationship necessarily for me. So I was just struck by the fact that how this goes unnoticed, you know, that I perceive the world and entities and just by talking about it and looking at it more carefully I noticed how it's happening. In the break we talked about entity and tried to clarify this term and found out that it is actually defined in relation to this term relationship. And then I tried to give an example. I spoke to Agathe and noticed how much I actually perceive her in entities and that this perception in entities Yeah, so in a way, I don't disagree, but... But in your activity, you actually disagree.
[45:14]
I actually disagree, and that's too bad. What do you mean, it's too bad? I wonder if too bad in English means the same in German. If you say, that's too bad, it means, go fuck off. Or something like that. To hell with it, I'm going to deal with it whether you like it or not. So probably it doesn't mean the same. I don't like you. Well, that's just too bad. It's because my English only exists in a relationship to my German. Yeah, I understand. That's why I don't know German, because it doesn't exist in any relationship to my English.
[46:20]
Yeah, well, it's... If you can't notice that your habit is different than your intellectual place, you have a hard time practicing. And if you as you can, if you do notice the difference, then the crafter practice is to devise ways to change your habit. But what if it's not only a habit, but I think it's very beautiful to have some entities.
[47:43]
I mean, what wouldn't be what it is if there weren't polarities Well, at least in English, the word polarity already emphasizes the relationship. South Pole, North Pole, etc. Two ends of a relationship. Okay. What I'm talking about doesn't mean that you don't notice or enjoy entities. What's an entity, a pretty beach stone? Yeah, but why are beach stones pretty? Because you found it. That's a relationship because it shows something of its history as a stone.
[49:01]
Because it still looks pretty when it's dry. Yeah. So I don't mean that whatever we enjoy is taken away. Even if we don't think in entities, we still enjoy the same things almost, almost the same things. And we might enjoy a little wider range of things. There are so many ways you can look at this, but do you want to add something, Beate?
[50:16]
Is this making any sense, what I'm saying? I don't mind if you say no. It should make sense. It should, mind? Oh, no, it shouldn't. What I understand is that there is no final point or two poles. There are poles, but not end points. I still have the feeling that going in this direction is also continuously a change. Yes. But your first description gives no other feeling.
[51:17]
As soon as you just decide going in this direction, it's already done somehow. No, I didn't say that. Okay. That was my main point, because I feel that. Deutsch, bitte. The reason why I had difficulties with this statement was that, well, I do understand the point that he makes, that there is basically not such a thing as an end-pole, but at the same time I think that if you go in this direction, that means that there is constant change and that there can also be more and more freedom. and that kind of took away this statement for me, that as soon as you have the intention or start to go in that direction, then you are free from preferences, but he had just said that it would not have been so mean.
[52:32]
When we're speaking so subtly about something, whether it's in English or German makes a difference. And I can't quite, I don't know the flavor. But in English, I would say also, if you say it's done, this is also, there's no such thing as done. There's only doing. Okay, like to call a tree, an example I use a lot, to call a tree a tree is to call it an entity. It's actually something more like treeing. It's a process of being a tree. It's not a tree, it's treeing. And each tree trees differently. This kind of shift in your thinking is really essential for practice.
[53:59]
In a sense, I would say that when the direction shifts in your life, say, toward practice, and you take the precepts. The whole understanding of the precepts, which is perhaps different than you might understand them in a Western context, is not that you don't kill. The precept says don't kill. But what it means is Try not to kill.
[55:01]
Because it's impossible not to kill. If you run a vegetarian farm... An organic farm, you kill, which I've done, you kill gophers, you kill insects, all kinds of things. If you run a organic vegetable farm, you kill a lot of insects. Just grinding your teeth together kills things. The realization of the precepts is the change of direction. So you avoid killing as much as you can.
[56:04]
And a person who avoids killing as much as he can is different than a person who doesn't. So when you decide to kill, avoid killing, you realize the precept. Now, there's a lot of teaching about the precepts in just this regard that I spoke about. Okay. In a way, we could say the precepts are meant to be broken.
[57:10]
Because if you don't break them, I mean, you're not going to go around saying, I've taken precepts, now I can break them. It's in the experience of noticing you break them, you notice how to fulfill them. Also man geht ja nicht herum und hat gerade die Gelöbnisse abgelehnt und sagt so, jetzt kann ich sie brechen, aber in der Erfahrung sie zu brechen oder das... In noticing how you break a precept, you notice also how to keep a precept. So, when there's been a shift in direction, we could say... something's happened, it's something real, or it's a critical mass difference.
[58:21]
That's the big change, that shift in direction. Now, certainly there's a difference if you have very few preferences and you still have a lot of preferences. But that's a less big difference. Because the shift How can I make it clear? Since it's the relationship that works, it's what's functioning in the world. It's the relationship which is functioning in the world. The... The dynamic of that relationship is the causal factor.
[59:49]
And the way karma is accumulated and so forth. Because your intention is at the root of karma. If your intention is different, then karma accumulates differently. Even in the same act. Another way to say this is that I don't exist. But all my relationships exist. All my relationships will continue in the world. They have effects. I'll die and be gone.
[61:05]
It's not so different than now. But my relationships will continue. Not only as my daughters, but as my friendships and everything else. So I myself am in relationships blood and all that stuff, a neuro-hormonal event. But also psychological, spiritual, et cetera, event. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I just want to say, you can have hope, because that functions differently than that.
[62:10]
And when you change the direction and begin to have less preferences, it functions in the world like have no preferences. Of course, there's degrees of difference. depending on how developed you are, etc. Yes. Sometimes I feel insecure about intentions in the sense that an intention could be a preference too. No, it is a preference, a kind of preference. Okay, so we will have to discuss at some point preferences, intentions, etc.
[63:36]
Yeah. Not all preferences are divisive. to separating, dividing devices. Okay. So we'll come back to it, and if I don't, just tell me. But I can't imagine I won't. Okay. Someone else? I would like to come back to the relationship. To me, the main difficulty seems that this relationship is not done, it's not an act, you don't produce it.
[64:43]
I have to give energy to the relationship to maintain it. To what relationship? Any relationship? To stick with the example of the suitcase. I have to stick to wanting to let go of the baggage. If that's not there, then the relationship is ended too. Yeah, that's right. So in that sense the relationship is the intention to put the baggage down. And the preference. Yeah. OK. Okay.
[66:18]
So I want to... You know, everything exists immeasurably momentarily. Everything exists in an immeasurable way, momentarily. From one millisecond to the next, there's past and future. So, what is the difference? The difference is duration, the experience of duration. This experience of duration is what is us. Like I pointed out at the Hannover that, you know, we want to give some reality to this world.
[67:26]
And the science led us into the kind of physicality of the world. And the what's it called, something oath that scientists in the 19th and 20th century took, implicitly took, that nothing that you can't measure exists. something that you can't measure doesn't exist. So everything that's real is measurable. And that took sort of God out of the picture.
[68:26]
For scientists, most scientists. But now, science has brought us to the point where what we see, visible matter, is only 1% to 4% of the cosmos. 33% of the cosmos is what they call dark matter. Sixty-six percent is what they call dark energy. Sounds like Star Wars. Dark Vader. Remember him? Darth Vader. So I like it, 66%, 33%.
[69:34]
What are we? We're in a little island of measurable matter. And on that little island, we live in a very tiny portion of that measured by our consciousness. So if everything is unbelievably brief. What is this experience of duration? Now I'm emphasizing duration instead of continuity. Because I really want us to look at the briefness of duration. And we could ask ourselves, how long does a moment exist?
[70:58]
How long do we feel we can hold a moment before it's changing? So this 5, 1 to 4 or 5% of visible matter is where duration exists. And something like 99% is dark energy and dark matter, which is not measurable except by implication. So now, if we're not a separate creation, we share the same creation. The practice is much about how to enter into that shared creation.
[72:10]
So, I mean, in other words, if you really have the viewpoint over centuries of, well, it's a shared creation, not a separate creation. You have people sort of feeling into... how are we sharing this creation or something like that. So the various teachings about the hara, the tanden, the ki-kai, the chi-hai are all chi-wiz. No. are all attempts to share in this creation. All these teachings from Hara, from Tanden, from Kikai, from Chikai, are... Gee whiz.
[73:33]
Gee whiz. They are attempts... Chi-Hai means the ocean of breath. Chi-Hai means the ocean of energy. But ki and chi, translated as energy, is not very good. It means more like vitality or life force or presence. It sort of covers the non-material aspects of our existence and overlaps with what we mean by spirit and soul and things like that. It covers most of the non-material aspects of our existence.
[74:43]
But it still has a kind of material aspect. aber behält doch dabei eine Art materiellen Aspekt. And as tanjen or tanjen, it means the field of elixir. Elixir? Elixir means the essence of something. Das tanjen oder das tanjen bedeutet ein Feld, ein Elk. What? The field of cinnabar. Yeah, this field is an elixir field. Yeah, I thought, what? You know all this stuff already, don't you? I mean, some of it. Well, this is part of the vocabulary of an attempt to exist in the world not through thinking. Sinabar means the ore that's the source of mercury.
[75:47]
So cinnabar is... Nitrous oxide, something like that. Anyway, it's mercury. It's the ore that's the source of mercury. The ore. The dirt you make, iron ore. And it comes from alchemy and the attempt to change mercury into gold or stuff like that. So alchemical ideas had a much more prominent idea, took more of a prominent role in yogic thinking than it does in Western thinking. Although alchemy is quite an important subtext in Western culture. Jung brings it to the fore quite a bit. And it's in a lot of poetry. Ja.
[77:26]
My eyes are in flower for you. You pure golden source. You verdant earth. green, growing, fertile. This is . And there's an alchemical flavor in that, you pure golden source. My eyes are not only in love, they're in flower for you. This is a kind of alchemy of love or something like that.
[78:34]
So there's this feeling that, you know, attention is like a magic wand. A magic? Wand. Wand? Magic wand. Ah, so the... And perhaps breath is the handle, the wand part, and this little star is attention. And some, for reason that's particularly well understood in yoga culture, that you bring breath attention to things and you transform things. So this physical spot, I mean, two fingers below or three fingers below the navel, sort of exists.
[79:40]
I mean, you know, there's such a spot on our stomach, I suppose. But it really exists as a relationship when it's in relationship to the breath and attention. Now, the sense of this elixir, alchemical fields, let's call it, are related to the chakras, but in a way it's a sort of different system. So this is one field, this is one field, and this is one field. And how you bring attention to these fields is part of our practice.
[80:44]
And it's considered the most rooted when you bring attention, develop attention, first here. Now, I'm sort of trying to... wiggle myself or wiggle us into a place where we can have a sense of what I might mean by arms. Where we feel the clothes of each situation. The clothes.
[81:51]
Clothes, like clothes. If I, say, look at the three of you, I can feel for a moment we're living in the same house. There's a kind of situation, a feeling of the four of us. Particularly from my point of view, you can't see him, but still, there's a situation. Yeah, but I don't like the word house so much because it feels like an entity, like we live in this space. House sounds too permanent. So we don't because we don't change houses that often.
[82:57]
We change our clothes more often. So maybe there's a quality of the clothing of this situation. And then if I change here and look at, say, the three of you, There's a different kind of clothing. I'm trying to find some kind of words for this. Because in early Buddhism, a concept is a kind of... clothing. Now in Hanover I tried to give a sense of it by saying the common example for somebody who meditates If you're sitting and you hear an airplane, or here we hear the carpenters on the roof, but an airplane.
[84:08]
Okay, now, for a moment, you may hear and think, oh, that's an airplane. But if you take the sweater, the word airplane, the concept of the airplane is like you just put a little sweater on the airplane. Flying along in a little pullover saying airplane. But in your Zazen you can kind of pull off the pullover and you just hear the sound okay the music of the spheres just a kind of humming of the air or the quality of hearing itself
[85:11]
Okay, now the sweater you put on it for a moment is a habit of adding a thought, but it's not thinking. If it's It doesn't lead to thinking. So if a thought doesn't lead to thinking, it's not thinking. Because thinking produces a mind that produces more thinking. So we use the word thought because it... We have a habit of noticing things with language. But if it doesn't generate a guest mind or a thinking mind, then it's not a thought.
[86:36]
It's like if you put a sweater on and As you put it on, it unraveled and became a ball of wool. You wouldn't call it a sweater. For a moment it was a sweater, but my God, look at this, it's changed into a ball of wool. So the word just slipped right off the airplane, and it's just a sound. And this is actually, you know, it's like the source of the sweater is the ball of wool.
[87:41]
And turning words are wado, means to return a word to its source. And wado means to return a word to its source. Okay, so now this is related to the difference between intentions and thinking. But we can explore that later. Okay, so now you have the sense that you can hear an airplane without thinking it's an airplane. And you can probably, I hope, not think about, oh, the last time I was on an airplane or the next time I'm on an airplane or this one's going to Frankfurt or something.
[88:46]
That would be a thinking mind. You have a whole wardrobe in the sky then. So those are falling off in all directions. Okay. So in early Buddhism, a concept was an enclosure that wrapped around a sense experience and generalized it. And part of practice is to try to take those enclosures off or not engaged with the conceptual framework, but the direct perception.
[89:56]
So practice was to emphasize the direct perception, not the concept, which encloses the perception. And this is real basic Buddhism, way before Zen. But when Yuan Wu says, bring yourself to a mind without before and after, a Zen teacher at the center of Zen Buddhism, Yuan Wu, So bring yourself to a mind free of before and after. Here and there. And the Taoist Chuan Tzu says, generate a mind free of this and that.
[91:11]
This is all to take the concepts off your direct knowing of the world. So I'm suggesting we emphasize duration. The length of time some kind of feeling of duration exists. And suggesting you kind of feel it in your arms. Like sort of give up thinking this weekend. Or give up a kind of self-centering viewpoint. And feel yourself in the center of a series of moments.
[92:28]
I would like to really give you a kind of tactile feeling for it, but I don't know if I can. Now it's time to get ready for lunch. Get ready for lunch, to have lunch. One o'clock is lunch? I think a quarter to one. Yeah, so we're supposed to stop her at 12.30. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll...
[93:17]
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