Yeah, I like where we are just now. Yeah. We've been able to muddle around quite a bit. That's good, I think. And, yeah, in the seminar, Oldenburg was good and Munchen was good. I thought it was okay anyway. But here we don't leave and bring the city back with us. We can stay with the practice much more than I have to get the city out of the practice when we start. And here, we don't go away and bring the city back.

[01:01]

We can stay in the practice much more. There, I always have to try to get the city out of the practice. And a dean, Frau Manshut, who I've been practicing with since the 70s sometime. Is that right? Mid-70s, yeah. Somehow neither of us have gotten older. And now Monday she's going to be ordained. And I can feel us moving toward that. And that's good. So I want to continue this, yeah, wonderful, the presence of this wonderful teaching, the Mudimaga that's, yeah, I want to bring that, make that more clear.

[02:13]

But first I'd like to see if, you know, we haven't had much discussion so far, so I'd like to have any comments you have. We had quite a bit in the prologue, David. Yes, please. Something simple. When we talked yesterday about culture, it occurred to me I would like to ask what this mudra means. Does it mean anything? Well, please, in Deutsch. Well, it's meaning... What it symbolizes is the least important part of it, of course.

[03:37]

The experience of it is what it is. But it's called the universal mudra because it brings all mudras together in this shape. You know, this Buddha we have in the zendo, in the Buddha hall. I think some of you, most of you know, but it was a Buddha that used to sit in an antique store, a Japanese antique store, next to a restaurant where I'd like to eat. In San Francisco, down near Lombard Street. Yeah, and I always liked to go to this restaurant. The food was pretty good, Japanese restaurants, but I liked sitting so I could see this Buddha across the way.

[04:41]

Yeah, I thought, yeah, that's really a great Buddha. It's too bad we don't have any money. Zen Center doesn't have any money. We can't afford it. Yeah, and eventually we did from the same man, I can't remember his name now, Japanese man, by the Bodhisattva, Jizo Bosatsu that's in the Green Gulf Center. Yes. With is, puns are called the lowest form of humor, and that's my job. Okay.

[05:59]

Not jitsu, jizu. Jizo. Jizo. Like gee whiz. No, not like gee whiz. Okay. But I always liked the Buddha because he sits for two reasons. One, I was interested that he sat this way. And I always liked it that for some reason they don't put his hands quite in the middle. His hands are a little bit to the left. I thought that made him rather human. He had a little problem with his shoulder or something. Now, if only I'd known Mimi, she would have straightened it out for him. So anyway, I liked it. Then years later, I was at a State of the World Forum in the big hotel on the... Fairmont.

[07:09]

Fairmont Hotel, thanks, my buddy here, in San Francisco. Yeah. So I was walking along, and there was this shop which sold, you know, Japanese antiques, and it was in the window, I think. I know you. Oh, I went in. I couldn't believe it. I went in, yes. That was the Buddha from so-and-so shop. I can't remember his name. And then I went in and said, that can't be it. And then they said, yes, yes, that's the Buddha from this and that shop there and there. This guy had it for 20 years in his living room in Los Angeles and decided to sell it. And the second man? Yes.

[08:10]

And this man from this antique shop, he had the Buddha himself for 20 years and had it in his living room in Los Angeles and has now decided to sell it. So we couldn't afford it. So I said, well, thanks a lot. So I came back here. Two weeks later, I sat up in bed in the middle of the night. We better get that Buddha. In the middle of the night is a good time to call America. Called and he said, I've been waiting for your call.

[09:13]

Half price. And the rest is history. A little help from Charlie. Who restored the Buddha for us. Anyway, so you practice with this and I found after a while I actually like this better. And some people sit, of course, this way. It's more Hindu way of sitting. And the problem with I find, I've sat that way, but I can't really sit that way too easily because it pulls me forward. But I have a long torso and short arms, so maybe a more normal person could do it. Yeah, and also there's a different feeling.

[10:32]

This is meant to circle, bring your energy together in a certain way. So there's two main postures we use for the hands. One is you put your right thumb in your left palm, you close your hands together. It's more Rinzai. And it's quite good in Crestone when it's cold. And there's a little different energy in it than this. And this can be either this way or this way.

[11:32]

And both are acceptable and okay in Zen tradition. So that's all. So just do what you like. Okay, anybody else? Yes. I have two things and I don't know which one to come up first. The first maybe is the one that I heard you for the first time talking about, the fourth mind. I have never heard you talk about this fourth mind before, the wisdom mind, you called it today. And what you say is that I would like to perhaps you repeat it so I understand it better, but when all these masters talk about getting what you already have, and you say you don't have it at birth, it's different from the three minds of birth,

[12:44]

So I'm a little bit confused with what you're supposed to have at birth and now you're looking for it as a natural because you lost it, or this thing that you call wisdom mind which is now different from birth. And I never heard you speak about it before in this fashion. Yeah. Okay. It's not new, but maybe I haven't spoken about it when you've been here. Deutsch, bitte. Ich habe von dir gehört heute für mich zum ersten Mal, dass du von drei angeborenen Geisteszuständen oder Geistes sprichst und dann kommt ein vierter hinzu. Und ich habe das... Okay, so first of all, you notice some sort of difference between what you've heard from other teachers. And, you know, Returning to what you... How do you put it?

[14:07]

Coming back to what you already have or something like that? Yeah. You have it all already. Oh, yeah. You do, but... Depends how you understand that. Mm-hmm. Well, we speak about the mind before your parents were born, your original mind, original face, etc., But it's a misunderstanding to understand that to mean to come back to what you already have. And you could also work with coming back to what you already have as a phrase that can be useful, but not a description of that you already have it.

[15:20]

Did that make sense? Du kannst auch mit einem Satz praktizieren, der heißt, zu dem zurückkehren, was ich bereits hatte. Aber that's not the same as having had it before. It doesn't mean that you've had it before. No, it just means the phrase may be useful and have power, independent of whether it's true or not. Der Satz kann nützlich sein, er kann auch eine Kraft entwickeln, aber es ist unabhängig davon, ob das stimmt oder nicht. That's a description of most religions. Okay. But the main thing is you've noticed some difference and you've felt or felt some truth in those statements by other teachers. So now work with how you feel about both, what in the end makes most sense to you. Okay.

[16:38]

Sorry. Because I am trying to understand. There is a time body, which we all have different, and it evolves. So it's not the same. Mine is not the same as yours. There is a difference in this. But if we go to what we could call the big mind, it's outside of time, and logically I'm trying to grasp the concept, there we are all the same, always, ever. Not me. I don't believe that. You don't. Completely don't believe it. No, wait, wait. Okay, Deutsch. Also, ich möchte das jetzt konzeptuell verstehen. Also, es ist doch so, wir haben einen Zeitkörper oder Körperzeit. Und meiner ist anders als deiner.

[17:57]

Aber außerhalb dessen gibt es ja diesen großen Geist, den sogenannten. So you said what I said? I said that you think it's absolutely not like that. Yeah, it's not like that. But if you want to think it's like that, it's perfectly okay with me. Yeah, I mean... I can't say that your view is wrong. I just think it doesn't work in the long run as a way to practice, nor is it accurate about how the world exists. Okay.

[19:05]

Although some pedagogy in Zen Buddhism would support you. And you can find Zen teachers who speak about oneness. Now, if they're speaking about it as a provisional teaching, it's okay. If they're speaking about it as they think that's real, I think they're incorrect. Provisional. Provisional. I remember, from the point of view, strictly speaking, as far as I'm concerned, and as I understand Buddhism, and in my experience, everything changes. There's no big mind that doesn't change. There's no universal enlightenment. As I said the other day, Bush, from a... what's the word... phenomenological point of view has an enlightenment experience.

[20:28]

But I'd certainly not call him enlightened. But that's a different use of the word. Many artists, I would say most good artists actually are working out of an enlightenment experience. But that's not what Buddhism means by enlightenment. And we have an experience of oneness, but an experience of oneness does not mean the world is one. we'd say, as Sukhirashi always said, not one, not two. And not-two-ness is not oneness. So if you take an experience of oneness as a truth about the world...

[21:30]

then your experience is not happening in a context of wisdom. If you take the experience of oneness as a description of the world, the experience of oneness did not occur in the context of wisdom. I mean, Einstein did not like... What's his name? The uncertainty theory. Heisenberg's theories. He said God does not throw dice.

[22:49]

But first of all, I don't know about God, but... This is a, we're in a dice game. So he didn't want the randomness of quantum mechanics. So the most famous genius of our times still somewhere believed in oneness. So these ideas are very pervasive in us. And most spirituality in the West is based on some kind of view of oneness. So, in many ways, Buddhism does not fall into the category of Western spirituality.

[23:55]

I mean, one of the This return to the... One of the things that really annoys me is Freud's idea that religion is an oceanic feeling. A return to some... A return to some... an infantile feeling of the oneness of the world with mother and child. So both Freud and Marx put down religion as, you know, the opiate of the masses, etc. But religion is...

[24:56]

What do we ever mean by religion? But it's one of our human, it's an attribute of us human beings. But it can be based on or it can know the world as it actually is. Okay, that was a little speech, I'm sorry. Okay, what's your second question? The other thing that you said from this muddhi-mata... The muddhi-mata, yes. ...that we had some difficulties with. You see, breathing in and out, you experience the whole body. Now, where do you put the pause in there? The comma? The pause. Pause. Pause. Pause. What pause? Between the breath, I presume.

[26:13]

True. I mean, my experience is that if I find someone breathing in and out, are these embodied people? That's my experience. If there is no pause... Okay. Yeah, I... Of course... Yeah, Deutsch, bitte. So in this text that you quoted, you said that it says, breathing in, breathing out, I feel the whole body or feel the whole body. Where does the pause come from? Okay, so there's the ex breathing out. There's the kind of pause and turning around, and there's the breathing in, and there's the pause and turning around, etc.

[27:16]

Yeah, and that's taken for granted. It's just they don't say all of that. They mean it. Okay, someone else. Yes. Since you asked a question yesterday, I've been using this question of what my experience is of institutional or monastic practice as a way of reflecting on what it is that you've been saying. And of how I relate to this practice as a body. And as best I can recall, I went to Tassajara for Suzuki Roshi's teaching and to practice Azen.

[28:28]

But I found something was going on in addition to the content of the experience of practice there. And particularly powerful for me was the schedule, a shared time. And pathways that we shared, meeting during the day. And the sounds of the temple that united us all in prayer. And there were a lot of transitions, not just eight hours of work or two hours of eating.

[29:40]

And I came to feel these transitions were as informative to practice as the meditation and the teaching. So I sensed a whole cloth of experience, not just the content that I originally thought was important. And dynastic practice continues to reinforce that experience of each thing being important. So, someone else?

[30:44]

Yes? If I understood you right before the lunch break, you spoke about the smart point, that there's interconnectedness between everything, and that point where everything meets, if somebody steps in there, it destroys. Well, that's, yeah, okay. I said something like that. I would like to know why this point is destroyed. um um Yeah.

[31:55]

Well, it was... Yeah, maybe in the context of what we're talking about, it was a little too much to say. But if you... If we try to understand, I try to explain what I meant, I can do that. Um... Oh... It's not exactly like there are connections, it's that there are at each moment relationships, let's call it that.

[32:58]

And as I mentioned, speaking about Elizabeth's statement again, comment. You end up with two spaces. And there's a relationship then between them. Okay. So if we do imagine, there's a ma point here. And in a Japanese context, this is thought of as part of haragai. Japanese haragai. I'm a hara kind of guy. Okay. Haragai means stomach talk.

[34:16]

And Japanese businessmen think that they can talk with each other with their stomachs. It's actually a business term. So the imaginary anecdote I create is you have some Japanese, German, and American businessmen sitting around a table. And the Japanese make sure that the Americans and Germans have a yellow pad, a glass of water and a pencil. The German has no yellow pad. Oh, the Americans and the Germans have them. Okay. So it all looks familiar to Europeans, Americans.

[35:19]

And they try to give an object of attention on the table. So the Japanese, their object of attention is under the table. So say that you're Japanese and I'm Japanese. You're a horror kind of guy. And David, who is a hara kind of guy. So the rest of you are kind of like dumb Westerners. No, the Japanese really do think this way. You know, anyway. Anyway, so a topic comes up that We don't want disgust.

[36:30]

So you and I and David really bring our energy into our tummy and try to draw the energy out of the room so everybody else feels a little faint. Also tun wir, also du, David und ich, wir tun unsere Energie in unseren Bauch und ziehen die Energie zu uns her, dass die anderen ganz schwach sind. And then the Japanese, next, later the German, the Americans are talking around the water, you know. I tried to bring this topic up three times and each time I couldn't find the energy to do it. James, wait a minute. Now, so it, I mean, this is a yoga culture. We're not a yoga culture, and they think that this way. Okay, so let's now imagine there's also a ma point in the room. You don't want to sit in that point because all the energy can come to you.

[37:50]

You want to sit away from that point. You want to know where that point is, but you want to sit away from it so you can modulate how you use the energy or create two spaces and bring it towards you or push it away. Plus the kind of person who needs to sit in the power point, whatever room to go to the most powerful place, everyone starts to dislike that person. So you want to avoid the place that absorbs all the energy, but you want to know where it is. Does that make sense? Would there be? Oh, I don't know. It's moment after moment different. Oh, it's always changing, yeah.

[39:11]

Everything's changing. Yeah. No. If you were... Let's make a simple kind of image that we can all get, right? You're a filmmaker. And you have two people sitting at a table. And you're the director. And you say, bend a little toward each other. Or you keep straight and you bend toward and then, you know, something, whatever. And you film the shape. You're really filming the shape between the two people. And then with one shape, the candle's the center, the ma point. Another shape, the candle, I mean the salt shaker, or the person in the back, other tables, the Ma Point.

[40:27]

So the good filmmaker who might not know anything about this Japanese idea of the Ma Point... would be filming the shape between the two people while they beam the camera in, first on the person way back there and then the salt shaker. And by moving that point, they change the way you experience the movie, the relationship between the two people. Also, dieser Filmemacher, der... Okay, okay. No, yeah, all right.

[41:37]

So that means in any field, the Marpoint is being, any moment, you create it by the objects which are in action in this field. Deutsch, bitte. It means that objects are in action in every field, that every moment of this mark point changes with every action. The filmmaker is creating it because they're in control of what's going on. But they still have to, like they say around Crestone where we have buffalo, you can only get a buffalo to do what it wants to do. It's like if you want to work with a wisdom phrase, a Wado, you've got to work with one that you can't get it to do just what you want.

[42:54]

It'll only do what it wants. But you have to find what that is. So you can't control what the mouth point is. But you can participate in it. You lean forward and it moves. Let's not take this as real. This is not something real. This is just something you feel, and it's a description of a feeling. And if you don't have a feeling for it, it's not real. It's not a thing.

[44:05]

So if I'm sitting here talking to you now, I am. And you guys get up and go to the kitchen. No, no, no, you stay here. Then immediately the energy in the room is different. So I have to find that in my hara and then move that, compensate for the loss of that, or exaggerate the loss of it as I wish. And I've got to speak to the point where the energy is now. And it might be a little air ball right there. Let's not try to make it real. It's just a... So this idea, do you have anything you can add to the comment, David, from your experience in martial arts and Zen?

[45:15]

But the simple situation is when you are in the middle and you have, for instance, six or eight attackers. Oh, this happens to me every day. It's a difference if suddenly two of those peoples go away, then something changes in your feeling of the attacking people. So that's a mere simple feeling that you can produce in a situation that changes. There is perhaps a simple picture, when you are standing in the middle and there are eight attackers around you, then you are obviously in a certain war point, and the feeling that arises, or the change of this feeling that arises when, for example, two of these attackers leave, there is a feeling for this change of the war point. So I appreciate these questions, your question, because we can try to get a feel for these things.

[46:33]

Anyone else? Then we have a break. Yeah. I was in a training for transpersonal psychotherapy and it was mentioned to construct something like two bodies, a physical body and something – you don't like the word – energetic body. Yeah. No, it's okay. And it helped me a little bit to explore this. When I'm in discursive thoughts, then I'm neither in the physical body nor in this energetic body, and it seems to be a little bit locked off. And when I go into the physical body, I bring my attention to it, It's this way. For instance, I try to feel my hand, and if I put away the picture of this hand and I don't know how it looks, it doesn't feel like a hand, it's just something like a coupling or a formless, something like this.

[48:06]

what happens then almost by its own, it goes deeper, and then maybe it's something like I change my perception from the material thing to the wave more, and then probably I have this energetic body, and then it feels more spacious, more open, It's strange, even though there is no physical body I feel anymore, it's that it feels like that I feel other people, something like here, or the hearing takes place, something like here. And... Yeah, it's...

[49:12]

I think there is a tendency towards stillness, or it's already woven inside of this. And when I look at the whole thing, it seems that just bringing this attention or awareness, it already goes in this direction. Mm-hm. Dutch bit. I was in a training for transpersonal psychotherapy and the terms were shaped as a construction. The physical body and the energetic body. And it helped me a little bit to get closer to the research. And I found out that if you are simply in thought, then you are neither in the one nor in the other. And it is somehow relatively enclosed, blocked, relatively narrow.

[50:18]

And when you then go into the physical body with the attention, but that again exactly feels, for example, the hand, how they feel and you put the imagination away from the hand. that you now know what it looks like, then it doesn't actually feel like a hand, but maybe like a lump or something like that. And what usually happens when you stay there is that it goes on and then the physical body just disappears somewhere. But what is very interesting is that it still feels like that to me, So that I now feel other people or also in me, although no body is there, so somewhere here, or also the hearing or everything else takes place here. And the whole thing automatically has such a strong tendency in the direction of silence. And when you look at the whole thing, So this is one way to experiment with your body image and so forth.

[51:29]

And we speak in Zen about dropping or shedding the thought body. And my most simple example of that is doing this. And then you point to a finger and you say move it and it's very hard to move the right finger. Because you're experiencing the image of the body from the outside and now they're doubly reversed. The right finger is on the right side, but it looks like it's on the left. So you're actually, it's the thought body you're relating to, not the fingers from inside. Okay, now I would like to, if you can sit comfortably for a few minutes.

[53:00]

I mean, not, you know, comfortably, not Zazen or something. Okay. And let me try to say something to end this Moody Maga thing. Isn't Maga a powdered soup? I think you've understood that an object of attention An object is not a material object, but an object of attention. A potter, by giving attention to clay, makes a cup.

[54:16]

But that is a cup now for you when you use it as a cup, when you bring attention to it as a cup. The cup is not a cup just because it's a material object that looks like a cup. It's not a cup. It's only provisionally a cup. The physical object of the cup is a cup. Let's open a cup store and sell cups. It's a cup. What is this nitwit talking about? Try to tell this to a businessman who sells cups.

[55:22]

Don't tell me these aren't cups. But from the point of view of practice, it's a cup when your attention makes it a cup. You can say it's a material object, but it's a material object... It's a cup with... Oh, yeah, you don't understand. Okay. I think you've understood that. What? Yeah, okay. So, and an immaterial object can be an object of attention. Okay, so, the Mudimaga says... Mudimaga says, Titi and Gigi says that experiencing the whole body breathing in.

[56:39]

That's the instruction. Okay. Okay, now is just breathing in, experiencing the whole body? What is the whole body? Okay, now these are not dictionary definitions. Okay, these are experiential definitions. If you're in a world where everything's changing, There are only experiential definitions. Can I define Elizabeth once and for all? No, she's lots of different Elizabeths. She tries to present a fairly consistent picture to us. Sie ist bemüht, ein recht beständiges Bild von sich zu uns zu präsentieren.

[57:46]

But to herself, the picture is less consistent. Aber ihr selbst gegenüber ist es nicht so ein ganz beständiges Bild. Yeah, and we're all like that. Und wir sind alle so. So there's, you know, okay, all right. So then the instruction... It's wonderful. I love these teachings. I'm sorry. Then the... You didn't translate that. So then the instruction goes on to say... But what is the whole body? But what is the whole body? The whole body, first of all, is experiencing the body through non-delusion.

[58:48]

As long as there's delusion, there's no whole body. So how do you experience the whole body? What is the whole body? Okay. Well, first of all, it's a body without delusion or confusion. How do you know when there's no confusion or delusion? When there's an experience of ease. Now you could say a very simple zazen instruction is sit zazen until you feel deeply at ease.

[59:55]

physically, mentally, deeply at ease. So you sit and you're not at ease. So your practice is also noticing that you're not at ease. And sometimes you are at ease. There's moments of bliss. And deeply at ease is accompanied by an experience of bliss. This is the territory of heart and mind as described in Buddhist teachings. Which is also our experience. Okay. And when are you most likely, or when can, in the midst of breathing, you have this experience of...

[61:06]

Buoyancy, joy, bliss, ease. There's a rising mind, not a falling mind. That's another way we talk about rising mind or falling mind. Rising mind is joy. More sees the potential, he said. Short as a Buddhist goody-two-shoes. Goody-two-shoes. There was a novel written in the 18th century, 19th century, I think. A little girl who did everything right. She was called goody-two-shoes. Anyway, so how can you come in more likely in breathing come into this feeling of bliss and ease?

[62:16]

How come in the midst of breathing are you more likely to come into the feeling of bliss and joy? Well, and I think you can find out for yourself, if you bring your attention to a point where the breath, where you can feel the breath, And there's just that attention and not thinking or not much thinking. That point, that feeling is often accompanied by joy or ease or bliss. And at that moment it dispels confusion or delusion.

[63:25]

It doesn't mean you're not going to be deluded a moment later. It's just at that moment. You've got one of those moments, take advantage of it. Sinking mind would be, oh, in a moment I'll be deluded. Rising mind is, oh, a moment of bliss. There'll probably be others. So one of the big efforts in practice is to find the difference between rising mind and sinking mind. And if you think sinking mind is your nature, then you're in trouble. But if you think that these are just ingredients and you can cook them the way you want, up to a point, they're kind of buffaloes.

[64:48]

Okay. So at that moment we can say that's one of the aspects which allows you to experience the whole body. And what also is an experience of the whole body? Because it says there's two aspects, non-confusion and contact. Now, we understood that to complete that which appears makes an object of attention. So, if you know Breathing in and the pause, and breathing out and the pause.

[66:15]

And you know the factors of mentation. Within the cycle of a breathing in and breathing out, Within the sphere of this cycle, that which is included, in that cycle of breathing, the mental factors, the perceptions, the persons you're with, the physical world, whatever is in that sphere of a cycle of breathing, is your body.

[67:16]

Now that's a very different way of looking at the body than we do. It's a moment by moment, but now this is the way they're defining it. Don't ask if this is true or false in some kind of real world. As an experience, this can be true. So at the moment that in the sphere of the cycle of breathing in and breathing out, you can feel the presence of whatever is present. And at that moment, we call that your body.

[68:20]

So, if I feel and think that way, if that's part of my worldview, right now, each of you and all of you are part of my body. And I'm part of your body. If you think that way, it begins to have informational truth. Truth. Now, I would like to continue with this a little bit. But I should stop now. I will come back. I am not going away. So I would like us to take a break.

[69:33]

And after the break, most of you know what I'd like you to do. Gather in small groups and speak in your mother tongue. Except you're not allowed to speak Gaelic. Yeah. Will you have language groups? We'll have an English group, maybe. But I'll leave that up to Judita and the other authorities here. And I would like you to... You can talk about anything you want, of course. But you could speak about what is the body and what is your experience of the body. You can talk about what the body is and what your experiences of the body are.

[70:42]

Okay, thank you very much.

[70:45]

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