It started... Well, anyway, Frank had the idea that we should... Or we could, like, just brabble through the koan, like... Rabble through the... Brabble. Rabble through the koan. So, like... It must be Swiss-German. Yeah. Mixing sentences from back and forth and just throwing them together and, you know... Okay, I mean, I like this word, brabble, but I've never heard it before. Let's go. We noticed that we got out of our thinking mind by doing that. By brabbling.

[01:02]

Yes. Brabbling alone. Okay. That the perception broadened, that we heard the tones and the voices of one another more clearly. Mm-hmm. We could sense the movements of the others better. And it got created a field of a common field and of community. And from there we started telling one another the experiences we have with breath and awareness.

[02:23]

We all knew that we have experienced awareness, but to find the right words and the language to express that was difficult. And the term awareness doesn't exist in Swiss language. Does it exist in German? Oh, really? You can't. And we were looking for a new word upon which we agreed on.

[03:24]

And we noticed how closely related our language is with with our consciousness. Am I correct if I say that the words that are available to us are most of the distinctions that are available to us? Would that be correct? In other words, if there's a distinction you can feel or you hear about, but you have no words for it, it's very hard to identify it or make it your own experience. When there is a distinction which you have no word for in your language, then does it become difficult to get a hold of or a feel for that distinction if you don't have a word for it?

[04:57]

Okay. if we assume that's the case. I think that is the case. And I think that's exactly the problem one has trying to practice and teach Buddhism in the West. Now, would you say, if I'm trying to hear, if I heard what you said correctly... that the mind you had pre-Brabble was actually a kind of different mind than post-Brabble. And the mind where you felt a connectedness among you was a different mind than when you didn't feel connectedness among you. Now, that's certainly much of what I meant, part of what I meant by saying, can you see layers within consciousness itself?

[06:03]

Now, we don't usually distinguish such things. but in fact they're different and it's good to be able to distinguish them. Gerhard, I could see you were going to say something there. In our group we had the same problem, not to can differentiate so very clearly between consciousness and awareness. But I would think that awareness, you could say, is non-conceptional and consciousness is conceptual. Yes, you could say that.

[07:22]

Of course, being an English speaker, I'm given two words, awareness and consciousness. I've decided to turn them into technical terms and define them differently. And I needed such a distinction to be able to talk about practice. Yeah, but I need actually much more refined distinctions than just awareness and consciousness.

[08:27]

But we have to start somewhere. So if I can get us to have a feeling for a distinction between awareness and consciousness, then, yeah, we've entered the door. But when you then want to think of those two as consciousness and awareness as two entities, then you've misunderstood the whole thing. So then you try to say, well, is this awareness or is this consciousness?

[09:35]

Well, then you're thinking of them as entities and everything falls into these two baskets or categories, but that's not the way it is. Okay, so we can say there's certain qualities that consciousness has that awareness doesn't have, etc. Let me give you a little poem of Rumi's. He says somewhere, do I really have possession of myself or know myself on even one breath? Or on even half a breath. And he also says, people come in, people come and go across the door sill where the two worlds meet. He says, don't go back to sleep.

[10:59]

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. But you must ask for what you really want. So that's like, if you can ask for what you really want, that's another mind. And when that mind awakens, the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. That's like, how do we actually exist, as a question I gave you this morning, can establish a certain kind of mind. Now, as you know, the whole tradition, we've talked about it here, of a valid cognition. Valid cognition, pramana.

[12:04]

Is a cognition without conception? Yeah. As soon as you form a concept, you generalize it. or universalize it, and you lose its immediacy. Now, a mind that withholds from conceiving, from conceptions, is that awareness? Well, it's more awareness than consciousness.

[13:27]

So we could put it in the big basket of awareness. But can we generalize it as awareness? No. We could say it's non-conceptual awareness. And if really we want to understand this, we have to have awareness one, awareness two, awareness three. You know, we have a problem here. And then if I do that, then you decide this is really too complicated now. It's a lot simpler than the engine of your automobile out there. Yeah, but you don't want yourself to be as complicated as the engine of your car. We have a real deep distrust of any complexity in how we describe our consciousness and our knowing.

[14:48]

We're really deeply ingrained that somehow it should be natural or based on faith or grace. When I drive in the United States, sometimes you turn on the radio and there's these preachers, these Protestant preachers. And they say, you know, you do this and then, you know, and I think, oh, I wish it were that simple. It sounds great. Yeah. But all I can say is, let's practice so that we notice ourselves.

[16:05]

Yeah, and if you can notice yourself, you find, just as you do, really, you have different moods, feelings, etc. That's enough said there. Otmar? Yes, we had, it seems that all the groups had somehow the same discussion about the definitions and you don't know these definitions and they are not used to it. And I think it's somehow important to see what comes first. Is there a first definition? Will you give us a definition and we try to go there? Or should we just somehow practice what the koan says, first there is the breath, or we also can say first there is the zazen posture, and then there is still sitting and breathing, and then I practice in that, and then maybe we can

[17:14]

somehow let the definitions follow the definitions you give us, and then maybe there's a possibility to say, ah, that it's probably this or that, but the prep and sitting definitely should do the first step and the rest maybe can follow, yeah. We have to do that, yeah. That's the only way. I mean, I couldn't talk to a group that didn't practice. I couldn't even begin to talk about these things. To a group that doesn't practice, I couldn't talk about these things at all. Yes, in our group, Gerhard already explained the same thing, that there were similar problems in all groups, that when the discussion begins, that there are suddenly different terms in the room, such as being true and mindfulness and consciousness and so on, and that it is then very difficult or impossible to follow the experience and try to go there and understand it.

[18:22]

And the koan that we looked at basically says the exact opposite. First there was the breath and we can certainly still that we say there is also this Zen attitude and there is the sitting straight and the sitting still, and if we just go into it completely unintentionally and practice it, then maybe at some point we can follow so-called definitions such as being true and then maybe give it a name at some point, Yeah. Yeah, but as you do practice, it helps to have some teachings about what you might notice. Ja, hilft es einige Lehren zu hören, was du vielleicht dabei bemerken wirst.

[19:32]

But it shouldn't be, we don't want to make the shoe fit. Do you have that expression in German? Ja, wir wollen nicht den Schuh schon passend machen. A friend of mine, a poet, Robert Duncan, used to say sometimes he engaged in sort of telling fortunes for the heck of it. Robert Duncan says, sometimes you just say the future ahead like this. He says, people are so anxious to make the shoe fit, you can tell them almost anything. You will fall in love in the next... I think I know who you mean. They want so much that the shoe fits and then they believe everything. You will fall in love. Yes. then they walk away with their feet hurting or their heart hurting. A year ago we had a practice week and the topic was the wisdom of not knowing. So when the practice goes first, why not stay with just the not knowing?

[20:40]

Do you, in this practice week, teach somehow the knowing to get these names back in? Why not just stay with the field of not knowing, the wisdom of not knowing? Can you say that again in German? Yes, we had a practice week here last year, and the topic was the wisdom of the non-knowledge. And my question is, if the practice, the experience, really goes ahead, and now we have experienced it that way, do the terms follow along? Why not just Okay, we say one of the common images is wave follows wave and wave leads wave. This means your practice leads the teaching and the teaching leads the practice.

[21:54]

But the teaching shouldn't get two waves ahead or the practice shouldn't get two or three waves ahead. Well, as soon as you sit down, there's some teaching. As soon as you bring attention to attention or practice mindfulness, there's some teaching already. And the craft of practice is to not let the teaching shape what you find. And to practice in a way that you test the teaching.

[23:08]

Is this really the case? And you really make sure it's the case before you accept a teaching. Now, I teach as explicitly as I do, which is more explicitly than my teacher taught. For instance, if you look at the fascicle on breathing that I presented to you, I mentioned this fascicle, the section in Zen Mind Beginners Mind on breathing. It says what I said, but it's much less explicit. I know this experience is behind what he's talking about, or he wouldn't have brought in Dungsan's saying about the cloud and the blue mountain.

[24:29]

With the idea that another image used, which he could have used in the Commonly is the box and the lid. The box and lid are different, but they fit together. Yeah, but the problem with Zen as it's primarily taught... as it assumes ten years of monastic practice. So, when Sukershi first came to the United States, as he developed his way of teaching and He had to start saying, well, we're a new kind of monk and a new kind of layperson.

[25:51]

And he still taught much more implicitly than I do. And my way of teaching changed primarily when I started practicing with you here in Europe. And why is that? Well, when I first came, I think Gerald was present at my first lecture, pretty much my first lecture in Europe. In Davos. 1983. Yes. If he didn't shave his head, you'd see he had a big gray beard. And if he didn't shave his head, you'd see he had a big gray beard.

[26:56]

At that point, I had never given a talk to an uninitiated audience before. In other words, at the Zen Center, as we developed it, Paul, one of the people who helped develop it, Before you could go to the Crestone of that situation, Tassajara, you had to be practicing at one of our other two temples in the countryside at Greengelts, or in the city of San Francisco, for five years.

[28:08]

If you'd been practicing regularly for five years, we accepted you usually to go to Tassajara. But you had to commit to two years without leaving before we'd accept you. It's hard for most of you to figure out three months once in ten years. In earlier days it wasn't quite so, but that's basically the form of it, the last five, six, seven years before I left. So I was always speaking to people. Where the majority of people, or the people who carried the feeling, had been practicing for years and years and years.

[29:18]

So when I came to Davos to give this talk, I had no idea how to do it. First of all, I'd never given a talk standing up. I'd always given a talk cross-legged. Yeah, and lotus sits, that's right. LAUGHTER In a Lotus, it's... I can't afford it. But it was a big audience. I don't know how many people, a huge auditorium. And everyone else stood at podiums, and I couldn't exactly say, clear the stage, I'm sitting in the middle. No, so I didn't know how to talk standing up. And it took me actually several years before I could give talks where I stood up or public talks. I had to find a different place in my body from which to speak.

[30:21]

And I had to find a vocabulary and a way of putting things together that could reach people who hadn't practiced. And I It literally took me quite a few years to learn to do that. I set myself to do it. And two or three times I gave up the idea that I'd give any public talks because I failed so often. I mean, maybe the audience didn't think I failed, but I could tell I really wasn't serving the Dharma. Then once I got the hang of trying to practice and teach with lay people, primarily lay people, then I found people weren't getting it unless I became more explicit.

[32:03]

So I began to violate a lot of the implicit rules of what you talk about and what you don't talk about. It's not that it's secret, but by speaking about it, do you rob people of their own discovery? Now, I don't know if I'm, I don't know what I'm doing is the right thing to do or right or wrong, I don't know. The fact is, only for me, it is what I do. And I have some confirmation, because lots of you have been practicing together with me for a long time, and I'm very impressed by how much you have developed your practices.

[33:32]

And I would say... Go ahead. And I would say that your practice on the whole in the last ten years is far more developed than the practice that the San Francisco Zen Center was in the ten years or more that I was there. Overall, I would say that's the case. But that's not just because I'm doing better or something, but because in the early days it took a long time to develop a way to teach Buddhism, even with a monastic background. But it took a long time to develop a way to teach Buddhism, even with a monastic background.

[34:34]

to find a form to teach in... Some way. Teach Buddhism even with monastic practice. Without monastic practice. Or even with monastic practice. In San Francisco, even with monastic practice, it still took time to develop the teaching. So it looks like what I'm doing here is maybe the same as what I was doing 10 years ago if you went to seminars, but from my point of view, there's 10 or more years, 20 years of work that's gone into finding out how to do this. Sometimes I feel a little strangely disappointed. I say something that's taking me 20 years to find a way to say. That you won't find written down anywhere.

[35:46]

Yeah, that I haven't sweat blood trying to say it, but yeah, something like that. Yeah, and I say it, and you say, oh, yeah, yeah. Do you have any comments about this topic, Paul? I think it's a different kind of person that's practicing at the Dharma Sangha in Europe than was practicing at San Francisco Zen Center. I don't know how much that factor affects the level of engagement to practice in people's lives.

[36:47]

And I also feel there was an overlay of community at San Francisco Zen Center. A deceptive overlay of community. Eine täuschendes Überbau von Gemeinschaft. Which may have oversimplified a deeper relationship which I feel happening here. Ja, die vielleicht zu vereinfacht, ja, die Beziehungen zu stark vereinfacht hat und sie nicht so tief sein lässt wie hier. And I also feel you've continued to develop your teaching.

[38:03]

Thank you. Me? Oh, yeah. Okay. Which I think can reach different people and help them in different ways than it might have at that time. So given that I'm different and you're different, Still, many of the people, some of the people in those days, attracted a lot of young people for sociological reasons, political reasons. But still, there were some people not so different from you. Still, there was a difference in the... how people were getting the teaching. Now coming back to the wisdom of not knowing. This is a particular mode of being and mind

[39:04]

That's the fruit of practicing for quite a while with wave following wave and wave leading wave. Okay. Someone else want to say something? Yeah. The group that we had met in the couch area and across from us by the stairs was another group. And the first person's comment was about pace, about a sense of pace in breath. And then someone noticed for us the... possible feeling of distraction by hearing another group, their energy, some laughter, a loud modulation of voice.

[40:47]

And another person noticed the dispersion also by the different heights and depths of the voices from the other group? And over a period of time, we directed our awareness toward our activity, not activity around us. And I think for the most part, we all shared that experience of directed awareness or attention on our activity. Yesterday you talked about the power of support of a Sangha to practice with. And in terms of the layers of consciousness, this felt to be another kind of consciousness.

[41:58]

It's also funny to talk about it too much because it's like deflating attire. When we start to congratulate ourselves for sharing some other kind of mind. Anyway, but it's palpable. Okay. You know, we're a little bit like a grandfather clock or a black forest clock. I mean, not meaning that we're cuckoo. But the breath is like a pendulum. We can feel it establishes our pace and our time. Yes, but the breathing is like a pendulum and it establishes our time and our rhythm.

[43:15]

Someone else wants to say something. Yes. When we talked in the group about the connection between breathing and awareness, When we talked in our group about the correlation of consciousness and awareness, and breath, yes, it occurred to me that the Aurioki practice is a very good field of practice for me. I noticed how the Oryoki practice is a very good field of practice for me. Because the Oryoki practice also invites you to think, to get nervous, because others are faster and so on. Yes, and my experience is again and again that I don't know how it happens, but automatically my attention moves more to the breath.

[44:50]

And my experience is that this calm breathing rhythm also helps me to act calmly and to find my way back to this physical experience of ariyuki. And my experience is that this calming breath or pace helps me to get back to the bodily experience of the orioke. That's much of the reason why I've continued or made part of our practice what is essentially a monastic practice. Normally, you don't know this in Japan, for instance, unless you live in a monastery. It's just not, nobody knows about it. Yeah, and it also is good for the kitchen. Und es ist sehr gut für die Küche.

[46:19]

Not only because the food's simpler, but because food you'd never eat otherwise tastes good. Ja, also nicht, weil das Essen, was du sonst nie essen würdest, gut schmeckt. Yeah, if you served that in an ordinary situation, you'd... Wenn du das in einer gewöhnlichen Situation kriegen würdest... But your breath and your body and... Yeah. And it's a good example of a culture which wants to bring you into what I said this morning. Or yes, engaging you. Someone else. In our group we talked also about connection between breathing and awareness and consciousness and we talked mainly about moments of shift.

[47:33]

And lots of the examples were a little bit similar to that of Peter, that there is a moment of stress or a moment of pain. which stops the discursive thinking and lets the person remind or make them notice their breath and then shift them into another space where they feel silent or centered or concentrated. and what many told me was that due to moments of pain or also due to a great deal of stress they were brought to the point that this discursive thinking stopped and they then felt their breath, because then they were much more centered and concentrated and were more in the situation.

[48:48]

You know, what's the... I guess most scientists would say that Darwin's presentation of evolution is the most transformative discovery in sciences in the last couple centuries. The general sense and fact that things evolve affects everything. Now, Maybe it is almost as significant, or significant equal in another way, what mind was discovered, which has changed the Western world and much of the world.

[49:59]

Anyone have the obvious answer? Aristotle, oh. Yeah, well, Aristotle, he did a lot of work, but way back there. I mean, recently. And it's not really the unconscious. It's the discovery of the fourth skanda. Well, finally I just listened to you. Yeah, yeah. Me too. I mean, basically, Freud got people to kind of take a sort of meditation posture by lying on a couch or half reclining.

[51:13]

And loosen up their consciousness. And as they say, free associate. And in this free association, which also required the therapist, at least in those days, to establish his own suspended attention, his or her. So joining a suspended attention on the part of the therapist or psychoanalyst and a shift in from the usual posture and a mind that was encouraged to free associate, Freud discovered a different mind.

[52:25]

Now, was it known before? Well, it was known by many who'd had a few beers. But it somehow didn't have cultural importance. It's just, oh, yeah, he had a few beers, and did you hear what he told me? But what Freud noticed conceptually... We could ask, why did he notice it, and why hadn't it been noticed before?

[53:26]

Really noticed, actually noticed. Well, I think you can show that there was a kind of cultural wave that led his noticing. And what did he notice? He noticed that in this mind of free association, people knew things, a person knew things they didn't know in their consciousness. So then he had to say, well, where is this coming from? They don't know it consciously, but now they're telling these things which they know from somewhere, so he said it comes from the unconscious. This powerful idea has changed the way history's done, sociology's done.

[54:29]

It's changed everything, the way people think about things. But of course now people say, ah, like we might say with awareness and consciousness, they're entities. So the unconscious now is an entity which existed throughout time. Yeah, Shakespeare had an unconscious, Socrates had an unconscious, the caveman had an unconscious. And I don't think that's true.

[55:37]

I think the unconscious is the creation of a particular kind of consciousness in a particular kind of culture. And other kinds of consciousness. Yeah, other kinds of, yeah. I mean, like, it's interesting to me that Ivan Illich finds... much in the 12th century, in the Middle Ages, which is almost like a yogic culture from a Buddhist point of view. In the Middle Ages, in Europe. In Switzerland, especially. Especially higher up you go, where they're taking those plants, you know. The old ladies. Okay.

[56:41]

So, if he notices that in this mind of free association, which is one of our layers of consciousness, This mind of reassociation knows things that another kind of consciousness doesn't know. then it's a different mind. And the fact that it's a different mind, noticing that it's a different mind, has changed the whole way the world thinks about these things. I think in other cultures, and in Buddhist culture, there's not... the whole way non-conscious, unconscious, etc.

[57:51]

happens is different. And you can't simply translate the alaya-vijnana, as some translators do, with the English word unconscious. What Dogen also would call the mind of grasses and trees. Okay, so all I'm pointing out is that, yes, we do have different kinds of consciousness and different kinds of awareness. And Freud noticed one or so and it's a huge discovery. And in our practice we'll notice because of our practice, layers of mind, too, and awareness.

[59:12]

And that's like, I guess it was Gurel that said the five skandhas help us notice these things. And the percept-only mind, when you hear and smell and taste but don't conceptualize, Let's just take, I'm going to stop pretty momentarily. You just take the airplane you hear, again, airplane or bird during Zazen. And you, for a moment, you might put the sweater of a concept on it. And say that's an airplane.

[60:17]

And in technical Buddhist language, a concept is called an enclosure. So you enclose the sound in a shape, a sweater shape, the sweater saying, delta, delta. But if you're meditating, it's quite easy to just take the pullover off and you have the naked sound. What you're hearing is the vibration of the air itself. Which has secrets to tell you.

[61:19]

And you're hearing your own hearing, your own sense organ hearing. And what often happens is there's a feeling of bliss that occurs. Or some kind of satisfaction or transparency. You feel quite free. Okay, that's another layer of mind. It's not exactly, is it awareness? Is it non-conscious? Well, it's a bliss layer of mind. And Zen practice, Buddhist practice, is designed around emphasizing that state of mind more than other states of mind. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching.

[62:39]

kware manken no jiji tsuki su koto etari negawa kuwa nyorai o shinjitsu iyo teshi tate matsuran Good morning.

[63:58]

Good morning. Good morning. Yeah, this is the next to the last teisho. One of the things you could do for me is this afternoon, you could tell me, if you think of something, that I could speak about tomorrow in the last issue that would tie this or tie it up for you or make it more clear for you. And partly I come here during my six months in the States really just to have some excuse to see you. Marie-Louise is trying to make my schedule more coherent so that I might have more time where I have some choice about it.

[65:23]

She says the first thing we're cancelling is the February trip to Europe. I said, no, I don't know. She realizes I think we shouldn't do it. I don't want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see in 2005 what happens. She's even tried to get Judita on her side. Yeah. Of course, what shapes a seminar like we just had in this practice week.

[66:40]

What shapes it for me is, of course, first of all, the topic. Just being here, being here with you. And the second thing is what I find I can talk about. There's some things I think maybe I should talk about. I just can't do it. The energy isn't there to do it. Also, da gibt es auch Themen, über die ich gerne reden würde, aber da ist nicht die Energie dafür da, um es zu tun. So I trust that, and so I don't talk about something just because I think I should. Ja, und so vertraue ich dem und rede nicht einfach über etwas, weil ich denke, ich sollte es tun.

[67:46]

For example, the last couple of days I've been able to talk about the first... And third foundation of mindfulness. But the second and fourth, I thought, well, yeah, it is one. Why one and three? Why not two and four? So I thought I should probably talk about it. But I couldn't do it. I just got here and I didn't do it. But maybe today I can do it. I don't know. We'll see. So that's one thing. I just... There's some things I find I can talk about and some I can't.

[68:48]

And by what I consider to be a fortunate coincidence, I just two weeks ago or so, three weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, did a seminar in February in Boulder on taking the path of the breath. And I thought, oh, this will make life easier for me when I get to Europe. I can just find better ways to say what I said in Boulder. But I've said almost nothing that I said in Boulder. This is a really completely different seminar. Or practice week. And also what influences me, shapes what we talk about, is permission I have from you.

[70:04]

So something you say to me in the discussion in the afternoon gives me permission to talk about things I wouldn't otherwise. So that's all I'm saying here is you can give me lots of permission this afternoon to talk about whatever you'd like me to talk about. But I may not be able to do it. Sometimes I give myself permission, I can't do it, so we'll see what happens. But your permission, you giving me permission, is more powerful than myself giving myself permission. Okay.

[71:08]

The word spontaneity is used a lot in Zen practice. In Zen practice, the word spontaneity is often used. And it doesn't have such a meaning, oh, this little child is spontaneous. It doesn't have that feeling so much in Buddhist Zen practice. Also, da ist nicht dieses Gefühl dabei, wie, ach, dieses kleine Kind ist so spontan. Ja, it means, we don't have a word for it, but it means really to act free of self-consciousness and ego. Es bedeutet vielmehr, ja, zu handeln frei von Selbstbewusstsein und Ego.

[72:12]

Yeah, you feel your... Thoughts and actions come out of you. Your actions come out of you without thought. Even your thoughts come out of you without thought. But you don't feel, oh, I better edit that, I better think about this before I say it, so much because there's a fullness there. in the saying of it that you can trust. In effect, you're suspending the editor. And in changing, in suspending the editor, you're changing the way the Vijnanas work, where Manas is the editor of Alaya Vijnana, in a sense, a source.

[73:18]

Did you get that? All right. In the eight Vijnanas, the Alaya Vijnana is kind of like the... the stored and shared experience of everything that's happened to you. It has no relationship necessarily to consciousness. It's never been repressed. It's just this experience that's outside your usual knowing. And Manis edits this. There's an aspect of mine that's a seventh vijnana. That decides what's appropriate and so forth. Yeah, and we have to learn those things, you know.

[74:34]

And what happens with practice is this manas gets wider and wider, or less of a narrow opening. And even this thinking-editing part can be removed almost altogether, changed its location, so you're speaking directly or acting directly from the alive jnana. So that's what spontaneity would mean. You feel just a flow of whatever you do and say. without self-consciousness. And you have an experience. It's an experience of being something like fully alive. And fearless, without fear. Mm-hmm. Okay. So we could say that this practice is all about finding yourself fully alive.

[76:02]

Or finding a natural or fundamental spontaneity. Now I put it in all this way because if I just said, our Zen practice is so that you can find yourself fully alive, thanks a lot, I'm quite happy with the way I am. And anyway, who are you to talk to me about how I'm alive? But when we practice together, we have this feeling of being alive together. Aber wenn wir zusammen praktizieren, dann haben wir das Gefühl, gemeinsam lebendig zu sein.

[77:07]

Just to be alive with another person, to feel fully alive with another person, is a tremendous permission to be alive within yourself. Ja, und die Erlaubnis, also mit einer anderen Person, also oder mit einer anderen Person lebendig zu sein, gibt dir eine unglaubliche Erlaubnis, mit dir selbst lebendig zu sein. So you can think of this breath practice as a way of finding yourself into this. In Hinduism, there's a word, tat, T-A-T. In the Vedas, actually. And it means, you know, probably same etymological root, that.

[78:10]

Or we could say the or this or thus. So, you know, there's a kind of wisdom in the stick. And there is a wisdom in the staff. The Frank. The Frank. We can tell. I would like you all to call him from now on, The Frank. A kind of title. So, but what is similar about the, the, the stick and the, das, frank? Ja, und was ist da ähnlich? So, das, das, das. So there's a word, tahata. Ja, da gibt's dieses Wort, tahata. Which means suchness or thusness. Was bedeutet soheit?

[79:13]

And it means that, that, thus, this, the, the, the. And it means this, this, this, this. And if you could stop at the, the microphone. The Maya, the Tara. Look at the world. There's Mayas here and Taras here. We must be in Asia. How do we get the the-ness, thus-ness, the the-ness of things, the thus-ness of things? Yeah. He used to say, literally, and I couldn't correct him, things as they is. And then I'd say, you know, and he'd say, I like things as they is.

[80:28]

But we have also the is-ness of things. And is-ness is actually a copula. It's not just equal. It means an engagement. Sometimes it's grammaticians say it's just grammatices or something. It says it's just equals, this equals that, but it's actually this is copulating with the other. So what is this is-ness or thus-ness? Aber was ist diese Istheit oder diese Soheit? Now, in Hinduism, Tat means, is used to mean, in the Vedas, it's used to mean the uncognizable, ungraspable aspect of everything, of each thing.

[81:30]

So it means that which can't be languaged. And I think we have a problem. We hardly notice that we live in the world we can language. So all our senses are dominated by the visual and thinking sense. And seldom do we give our senses reign free reign outside of language.

[82:42]

Now, we came up yesterday afternoon and we were speaking about the difficulty in noticing something we don't have a distinction for. And if you look at my lectures, you'll see that a large part of my lectures is to try to find a way to move towards something we don't have a distinction for. Ja, und ein großer Teil meiner Vorträge befasst sich damit, ja, da in die Gegend zu gehen, wo wir keine Unterscheidung mehr haben. Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes we can make a new distinction. Manchmal können wir eine neue Unterscheidung machen. And we find a way to wedge it in between other distinctions. So push, fit it in. Ja, und dann finden wir einen Weg, sie zwischen die anderen zu schieben.

[83:48]

Yeah. So we can maybe find some way, as I've tried to find a way, to make a distinction between awareness and consciousness. And sometimes I try to, not recently, but try to open up an old distinction between emotion and feeling. And sometimes I try to open the difference between emotion and feeling. I mean, I feel angry. It's... In contemporary English, feeling and emotion are almost the same word. So this is easier to do because you can kind of open up a distinction that's there in the language, even if it's been lost.

[84:52]

With emotion and consciousness, I'm trying to, I mean consciousness and awareness, I'm trying to take both words out of common parlance. Yes, and with consciousness and awareness I try to take both terms out of normal language use. and give them a kind of technical meaning. As you know, I define consciousness as the realm of discursive thinking, language and self. And the function of consciousness is to give us a cognizable, predictable, chronological, relevant world.

[86:05]

Did you get them all? No. Cognizable, predictable, chronological, and relevant. And as many of you have pointed out to me now, quite a few of you have pointed out to me now, the difference in feeling between asking who is thinking and what is thinking. And strangely, what feels more personal, in a way, and wider? Okay. Now, what about words that can't be... What about distinctions that can't be distinguished? Yeah. Yeah. That's what tat means.

[87:36]

Okay. Now, the problem is, even if we find a distinction, a new distinction, and we wedge it in between other distinctions, the other distinctions influence this distinction. If you had a Japanese person, a Turkish person and a New Guinean from Papua New Guinea come here. Papua? In English, no? A Turkish person. And they were all here standing among us in service.

[88:38]

Pardon, not in service, I mean somewhere. We would sort of think they're human beings like us. Then we'd assume something about them from... all the other distinctions of human beings we have. And if the Turkish person and the Japanese person lived here, they probably understand us better than we understand them. Because they've had to adjust. The Papua Guinean, probably New Guinean, probably doesn't understand us and we don't understand him or her. I remember somebody I know went to a meeting of Japanese people of Ise and Nisei.

[89:48]

That means first generation from Japan and second generation. And they were having a meeting, speaking in English. And they didn't really notice this person was in the back. And Gaijin, we're Gaijin from a Japanese person, outsider, an outside person. Here they are, living in America, talking about the Gaijin. That's like you saying there were a few Germans here. Here they are in America, Americans, but they're talking about the Gaijin, the outsiders. And the outsiders don't... understand each other.

[90:54]

They don't feel each other through their bodies. And we can't tell them this or say it in front of them because they just don't have the ability. Yeah. And they were aware that they had some ability or realm of knowing that they were quite sure that the white people didn't have. Yeah, maybe we white people have a... Are we all white? I don't know. Not too white, probably. Do we have... Well, maybe we do, unless we're not entirely inferior. What do we do?

[91:56]

No, it's not important. I'm just mumbling, fooling around. Anyway, my point is that it's very difficult to make a new distinction that isn't colored by other distinctions. No, one of the... One of the things that the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is doing, is attempting to show us how to practice, is a widening of our knowing outside of language. Okay. So, now I can talk about maybe the four foundations of awakening again.

[92:58]

Two and four. The first is we call mindfulness of the body. Und die zweite nennen wir die Achtsamkeit des Körpers. But it's really more bodyfulness of the body. Aber es ist mehr so ein Körper sein. I mean, I made up the word bodyfulness of the body. You can make up something. I did. Okay. All right. What's the difference? Okay, say that you have a beach stone. And you put water on the beach stone. And it looks really beautiful.

[94:03]

And so we can see the B-stone, some aspects of it, more clearly when it's wet. That's like bringing mind to an object. Mind shines on the object or... Cognized as the object. Das ist wie wenn du den Geist auf ein Objekt bringst und dieses bringt diesen zu erleuchten. So that would bring wetfulness to the bead stone. Ja, das wäre wie dieses Nasswerden von diesem Kieselstein. Okay. But it doesn't make sense to bring wetfulness to water. Aber es macht keinen Sinn, die Nässe zum Wasser zu bringen.

[94:49]

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