One of the aspects of practice I would like to see if we can include, which I would call the ritual aspect of practice. It's partly what I implied or wrote in the recent Zen of the material stream of Buddhism. Isn't that what I said in that? Yeah, okay. Of course, that's being in this room. Being here at Johannesburg. Doing sasen in the morning or service, end service. Or putting up the scroll. With We have the idea, the cliché, the accurate cliché, that we can practice anywhere.

[01:25]

And it's true. Of course, we can practice anywhere. But it's not true that we can practice anywhere. I mean, in any way. Aber es stimmt nicht, dass wir auf jede Weise praktizieren können. There has to be some form to our practice. Wherever it is, there needs to be some form to it. Und wo immer die Praxis stattfindet, braucht es eine bestimmte Form. Or some freedom from form, relationship to form. Oder Freiheit von Form oder einen Bezug zur Form. We locate ourselves in practice. We can think of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as three locations. And when you take the precepts, take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, No, refuge isn't, I don't think, the best word for ya, whatever we mean by that.

[02:41]

But let's say we locate ourselves in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. We can say we find our refuge or our safety or something like that. But let's say it's something like location. That's a bigger sense of it and maybe more accurate sense of it than refuge. How do we locate ourselves in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha? Now maybe this is somewhere in between this sudden and gradual practice. And for various reasons, I don't like the word gradual very much.

[03:53]

Yeah, I prefer something like the craft of enlightenment. So here we've created a location. And I put the scroll up. Maybe in each situation, each room you're in, you can feel an altar in the room. Or you can feel an altar in yourself. One of my favorite statues in Japan is one of the Arhats. Well, this guy is a funny-looking guy with a little beard and everything, and he's pulling open his chest, and there's a Buddha inside.

[05:04]

Now, you may think this is a little corny. I'm sitting at the office working every now and then. What does it mean to locate yourself in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha? No, I thought that I would start out today with, you know, I want to have some discussion too, but we may not have time, we'll see. But I think I should start out with, yeah, some basic practice.

[06:06]

And... So I thought I would come back to the three minds, sorry, you've heard of it before, three minds of daily consciousness. And I don't, why am I coming back to it? Because I don't think we really get the sense of the power and usefulness of this simple practice. because I don't think we have the strength, the power of this very simple practice. At Crestone, I really recognize, even with senior practitioners, they don't get, they don't somehow really get the significance of this practice.

[07:19]

Well, what is the significance of it? And how do we get the significance of it? And what's the problem with why don't we get, sometimes we get more subtle practices than this, why don't we get this one? And I think that probably the reason is, is we think we're familiar with immediate consciousness. And because we think we're familiar, we don't really have to practice it. And for those of you who are just here and weren't here for the weekend... The basic concept of Buddhist practice is that the teaching is not in the words or not in the teaching.

[08:34]

It's in the practice of the teaching, the unfoldment through practice. I gave you the example of how in China the title of a practice is meant to be practiced. So, you know, we don't, as I said, we don't, entitle the chapter of a book. It's just the name of the chapter. We don't expect you to practice the name of the chapter and thus open up the whole chapter.

[09:38]

But that's the basic concept of practice. The content is the experience The content arises through its holding it in view, holding it in mind. Der Inhalt erscheint, indem du es in deinem Geist hältst und entfalten lässt. Okay, so what are the three minds of daily consciousness? That's not such a good title for it. We may have to think up a practice title for three minds of daily consciousness. Okay, it's immediate consciousness, secondary consciousness, and borrowed consciousness.

[10:39]

Now, we could call this also a gradual practice. Yeah, or incremental practice. Or a craft, maybe the craft of enlightenment. Or a craft of realization. Okay. You're so concentrated, I'm so impressed at you. Okay. Now, what's the point of these three minds of daily consciousness?

[11:43]

What's its dynamic? The first is, probably the most important that you've got to get the feeling for, is the bump. The bump. Yeah, the bump. Like a bump in the road. Like a bump in the road. Bumps in the road when you were a kid in New England were called a thank you marm. Thank you marm. Marm meaning mother. Thank you because in the old days when they had a horse, they wanted the mother to go, well the father always would, the mother to go over the bumps quickly because then everybody would get thing and they'd say, thank you marm. You know how kids like, you know that.

[12:47]

Thank you, Mara. Okay, so between immediate consciousness and borrowed consciousness, there's a thank you, Mara. Now, you need to find out for yourself this bump. Yeah. Notice it. So anyway, that means you really have to, I think, repeatedly practice this shift from immediate consciousness to borrowed consciousness.

[14:02]

Now, I will only give you I'll try to give you not too lengthy a feeling for the practice of it. But you do have to have a feeling for the practice of it. A feeling, of course, in yourself. But I found the easiest way to notice it and the easiest way to talk about it is to imagine walking in the woods. There's lots of good places around here, except they're rather hard to walk in now. And you have a state of mind that's... rooted in the context of walking in the forest.

[15:21]

Now, I think this is another point to notice, that it's rooted in the immediate context and nourished in the immediate context. There's a kind of nourishment, satisfaction, just having your mind in the immediate context. So I can just feel you. I can sit here in non-thinking consciousness and feel your presence, our presence, together and individually. And if you're practicing and locating yourself in the Sangha, your first, your initial mind is, is to locate yourself in the presence, the feel of each person.

[16:46]

Before you think about each person. We do that, but to really notice it, that's actually you're practicing the three minds of daily consciousness. So if I'm either thinking about something or thinking about you, I'm not really located here with you. So the practice of the Sangha practice is to locate yourself with each person in immediate consciousness.

[18:07]

Doesn't mean you don't talk about something. But you're anchored or located at each moment, with each person, in a feeling of presence or something like that. Okay, now let me give you the classic example of borrowed consciousness. Okay, I can know a great deal about each of you. Just by feeling the presence here. And I'm not, it doesn't mean I can't notice things. I'm not locked into immediate consciousness.

[19:09]

I can notice that Bernd, for instance, is still younger than I am. And that we call secondary consciousness. And that's still arising from the immediate situation or information in the immediate situation. But I don't know, I'm sorry Bernd, I don't know your birthday. And Bernd wouldn't know his birth date if his parents hadn't told him. And no one would know their birth date unless there had been Aztec calendars, European calendars and things like that.

[20:11]

So this we call borrowed consciousness. Now, just think for a minute. What is our educational system based on? World consciousness. And how do we often compare ourselves with others? Who knows the most? And what's the quality? What is the characteristic of borrowed consciousness? It's not rooted in the immediate situation. I can't guess. I mean, even with all my limited psychic abilities, I can't guess your birth date. So, if I spend the day in borrowed consciousness,

[21:15]

I'm going to be pretty depleted at the end of the day. That's all there is to it. Okay. Poor teachers. School teachers, you mean? Poor teachers. Yeah. Okay, so what you want to do is get a feeling for this shift from immediate consciousness to borrowed consciousness. And you want to get in the habit of, you know, just want to get familiar with it. And not just when you're sitting on the couch daydreaming or something.

[22:40]

And not when you're taking a walk only. You could do, I mean, maybe you all do this, I don't know. You're sitting in a restaurant and you have a plate in front of you. And you don't think about, sometimes you don't even think about what you're going to order, but let's say you don't think about what you're going to eat once it's on your plate. You just let your hand and your fork decide what you're going to eat next. You don't think, well, now I should have some potatoes or now I should have some fish or now I should have some, you know, soup or something. You just, you know that somehow you're going to eat most of it or all of it and so you just let it happen.

[23:42]

It makes me, instead of sticking a fork in the napkin, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You just find little opportunities to see, even during a meal, if you can just locate yourself in immediate consciousness. So again, taking the image of taking a walk. Going back to the image of taking a walk. Yeah, as I always say, you could notice that somebody's cleared the path of snow or somebody's trimmed the branches or something.

[24:57]

And you can think about it. You can still basically be in immediate consciousness related to secondary consciousness. If you're in borrowed consciousness, you can be in secondary consciousness, but then it's related to borrowed consciousness. Kannst du auch im sekundären Bewusstsein sein, aber dann ist es in Bezug zu dem geborgenen Bewusstsein. Okay, now, if consciousness, we all know, I mean it's commonly said nowadays, that self is a construct. Also wir alle wissen und es wird auch allgemein so gesagt, dass das Selbst ein Konstrukt ist. But it's not so often said that consciousness is a construct.

[25:59]

Although, as you know, I often say it. But if consciousness is a construct and self is a construct, you need a construction site. Where are you going to locate yourself? Okay, so let me just do the usual drawing of the three minds of daily consciousness. Well, I mean, I can grow on my knees, but, you know... Hitting the poor teachers.

[27:25]

So let's call this word. Yeah, you can see that word. Secondary. What does it mean? Ulrike Greenway, who translated for me, she'd say, the first thing a teacher has to know is to write clearly. Okay. But she's not here, sir.

[28:28]

Although she said she's coming to the Rastenburg seminar. That would be great. So you're taking your walk and you're located in immediate consciousness. When you notice the snow has been cleared or something and you say it to your friend, look, they cleared the path ahead of us in that day. And that's secondary consciousness. And that usually returns to immediate consciousness. And even you can say, geez, I've got to make some phone calls, but you then go back into immediate consciousness, and then that's like that. I've got to make some phone calls, but you go back. So it's not simply that this is immediate consciousness. This is immediate consciousness. And vice versa. If you're in borrowed consciousness, you stay in borrowed consciousness.

[29:57]

Now, what makes the difference? As a practice. First, you're trying to get used to this part. Especially this part. You get so you feel the difference between when you start thinking about something and when you're just in the immediate presence of the world. And you could feel that when you wake up in the morning.

[30:59]

You're basically feeling something like that, the transition between you want to stay asleep, you want to stay in bed, and then you think, oh, jeez, I've got to do something, pay my bills, I've got to go somewhere, it's going to be late. There's a bump, there's a transition. Now you can't stay on the side of the... You can't stay asleep all day. I mean, this wouldn't work. But you can stay in immediate consciousness all day. We can say that this is borrowed consciousness. And this So this is borrowed consciousness if it's initiated here.

[32:15]

And it's immediate consciousness if it's initiated here. Now this looks awfully complicated, but... It's really extremely simple. So one of the points here is to notice energetically the difference in your life when you're nourished in immediate consciousness. Another is to really notice this bump. It's pretty hard to notice the bump this direction.

[33:23]

So you have to kind of get yourself, get a feeling for it, notice when you're in immediate consciousness, and then notice the shift. And you can notice it in zazen. When the bell rings. When you react to the bell. Or maybe you reacted to the bell long before the bell rang. But in any case, whenever you decide the bell ought to ring or it does ring, you can notice there's a shift in how you're present. So I'm not saying that you want to stay in Zazen all day. We can talk about that later. Obviously, all in all, Zazen is different than ordinary Zazen.

[34:25]

consciousness, or we wouldn't do zazen. But what you want to do is get the feeling that you want to notice a different state of mind, different states of mind. You want to notice the difference. And that's best, easiest to notice in your body. So your mindfulness practice allows you to notice in your body the difference between immediate consciousness and borrowed consciousness. Part of practice, gradual practice, the craft of enlightenment, craft of realization, is to get to know in your body to make an effort to know in your body a different feeling.

[35:55]

And often the breath is a big help. You can use the breath to sort of locate a state of mind in your body. Not only locate it like, oh, I found it. But also locate it in the sense I can pick this up and put it there. so I can have a feeling for what is immediate consciousness and I can bring that feeling into my body and often you can use your breath as the reminder or the sort of invisible hand that brings it into your body

[37:05]

And I often say, use the doorway. When you come in a door, use the door to remind yourself to be a non-graspable feeling or non-thinking consciousness. So we have a non-thinking consciousness here. Now let me go over again what I mean by non-thinking consciousness. Which overall I'm using as a synonym for awareness, but not entirely. It's a simple example.

[38:11]

I'm walking along and I trip on the edge of the rug and I start to fall in Alan's lap. But I don't want to bother him, so probably I'll catch myself. Now, I don't do that by thinking. I don't think, oh, I'd better put my elbow out and I'd better put my knee down and so forth. But I'm not sound asleep or drunk. And as I fall, clearly I'm perceiving things. There's a whole lot of perceptions going on and I catch myself. So I'm calling that non-thinking consciousness.

[39:14]

As I'm calling, sitting, eating, and letting your fork decide where it goes. So non-thinking consciousness is... Always present, because unless I'm asleep and I fall, I will catch myself usually. Ja, und dieses nichtdenkende Bewusstsein ist immer da, weil außer ich schlafe, wenn ich falle, würde ich mich auffangen. Okay, the point of this practice is it gives you an insight into the energetic difference between states of mind.

[40:29]

Now, obviously, we do know already the difference between the horizontal sleeping mind and the vertical waking mind. Here the posture is more subtle. It's not so visible, horizontal or vertical. But When you are used to the subtlety of the posture, you can see it in another person's body when they're located in immediate consciousness. Yeah, and you can feel it in your own. You can feel the other person's posture in your own posture, in your own body.

[41:33]

So it is a physical posture, though not immediately obvious. So again, the dynamic of this practice is to notice the bump. is to notice that these are like two liquids. Both the color of air. Maybe one is gray air and the other is silver gray air. And you are blue-green and green-blue or something. And you can feel it, like the secret door in the garden wall. Okay, so you get to notice and feel this difference. And you get to be able then to establish yourself in one

[42:48]

or the other. By getting to know the bump. Okay, and then you notice, we notice that for the most part, once we're awake, we're established in borrowed consciousness. So gradual practice of the craft of realization is to shift yourself when you can from being located in borough consciousness to being located in immediate consciousness. Now you want to make that. Now that you realize you can be located in borrowed consciousness, and usually are, or immediate consciousness.

[44:03]

Then you realize you have a choice. You can make the choice. You can choose what kind of mind you want to be in. Now that's an extraordinary recognition and not a recognition that is easily come by. You're not a victim of your day, of your feelings, of your mood. It doesn't mean you won't have moods and so forth. And we should pay attention to and accept and not kind of get rid of our moods.

[45:18]

But if you are, as a matter of choice, located in immediate consciousness... Your moods, various things that happen to you, are more accessible and more instructive if you are based in immediate consciousness. So you can make a choice. And practice, traditional practice, is to choose your initial state of mind is immediate consciousness.

[46:24]

So you recognize you can make a choice, and then you recognize that choice can be your initial mode of mind. And if your initial mode of mind, your starting point mind, your reference point mind, this immediate consciousness or awareness, or non-conscious thinking, whatever we're calling it, that awareness begins to permeate our day. It's almost like a cushion which absorbs or accepts what happens during the day and allows us to feel each thing much more clearly.

[47:43]

The input is not blurred together as much. I think that's extraordinary. I wish I knew that when I was younger. I would have saved myself a lot of pain. That we can choose our initial mode of mind And it allows the world to be much clearer and one thing at a time. Less blurred, less overwhelming. Okay, so we have the choice of what our initial state of mind is.

[48:57]

Or as I said, beginning point mind. So now we have a whole other practice here. And then we have a completely different practice here. Where is the beginning point? Well, now you have to start feeling perception in a kind of pulse. In fact, we do perceive, if you study the brain and all that stuff, in a kind of pulse. But consciousness tends to blur that. scheint das irgendwie zu formulieren.

[50:03]

Schmieren, ja. But somehow, immediate consciousness, oder Gewahrsein, allows us to notice, to enter into the pace or pulse of the world. Thinking is pretty much the same. You're in this room, you're thinking. You go out in the hall, you're thinking. It's all pretty much the same. Yeah, but good architecture is meant to Ideally, not, you know, mall architecture. Ja, aber gute Architektur und dann nicht irgendwelche großen Raumarchitekten.

[51:08]

It's made to, you know mall, what I mean by mall? Shopping mall, yes. Most colleges nowadays are designed like shopping centers. Also nicht solche Räume wie halt diese Einkaufszentren. is that each room has its own pulse or pace. We try to create that in Crestone. And here in this building, which was already built, we try to make some distinctions like that. So part of it is each person has a pace or pulse. Each activity does. And if I'm speaking with you, I have to establish, find a way to establish some kind of pulse and pace that we share if we're going to hear each other and hear our inner discussion.

[52:25]

So now we've gone... the three minds of daily consciousness and the idea of an initial mind and the wisdom of gradually developing an initial mind and then in recognizing this initial mind We have to discover when is initial. So as I said, you can use the door. That gets you started. You can use the sky or the window. A basic practice is to look out the window or look at the sky and identify your mind with the sky.

[53:41]

And really there is some similarity between the sky, which isn't disturbed by what happens, And this initial mind of immediate consciousness or awareness which isn't much disturbed by what happens during the day. Now, but then we, again, we have this starting point mind or initial mind. And that's exactly what Dharma means, Dharma practice means. To begin to see each thing as it arises in the senses. As I said, you can use the door to get yourself started.

[54:58]

Or you can use more subtly your breath. Let your breath establish the pulse of each arising, each moment. So now if you develop the skill to be most of the time present within your breath, that works with establishing an initial mind. And this dharma practice, basic dharma practice, as Dogen says, to complete that which appears. So this simple thing, this little simple thing where you learn, discover the bump and recognize that you have a choice about your state of mind, state of consciousness and self.

[56:18]

And you make a choice. Now you know you can make a choice. You make a choice. And you have to find ways, breaths, doorways, whatever, to gradually develop this initial state of mind. Now, this is gradual practice. This isn't sudden practice. It's very basic. The craft of practice. Of course. If you've had any kind of enlightenment experience, it's easier to make the choice.

[57:29]

Because enlightenment is what we mean by enlightenment. It's an experience that turns you around and frees you from your self-habits and cultural habits. So it's easier to see, oh, yes, I can choose what mind I live in. And you don't feel, this is nuts, I mean, I am this mind. No, no, I can choose what mind I live in. Sophia, you know Sophia, my little daughter. And for some reason I find some excuse to talk about her. But she's always educating me. And the other day I was reading and I had this little table in front of me.

[58:40]

And it kind of blocked the doorway. She said, Papa, how are you going to get out the door with this table right in the doorway? She was looking at it very carefully. She was on the other side. I said, see, it's on wheels, so I can move it easily. No, I don't think she was just simply trying to figure it out. I would say that she saw a problem. She saw it didn't compute somehow. And she needed to make it compute. Once she saw the table was on wheels, she said, oh, okay.

[59:44]

And her mind relaxed. Tell me, am I supposed to stop? Oh, I'm really right on time. But I'm not going to stop. 602. But I will in a moment stop. What I'm introducing here is a kind of new topic. What allows us to resolve our consciousness? Was erlaubt uns unser Bewusstsein zu lösen? All the kids at the nursery school, the kindergarten in Crestone have been sick for the last couple of weeks.

[60:52]

Alle Kinder im Kindergarten von Crestone waren die letzten paar Wochen krank. Pink eye, chest colds, ear aches, you know. Ohrschmerzen, Erkältung in jeglicher Art. So, Sophia had a You know, painful earaches, I guess I never had them, but can be extremely painful. So she came into our bed and was really thrashing around, thrashing. And didn't know what to do. And me, Louise, and I were trying to comfort her. She didn't want eardrops. And suddenly she said, I am not happy. And it somehow resolved things. She was able to say that, and she sort of calmed down a little bit after that and fell asleep. So I'm not happy somehow made her a little bit happy.

[62:07]

To just be able to say it. I am not happy. She calls me up today. She hasn't developed a telephone voice yet. So I hear it was a little Irish fairy in the phone with its wings lightly flapping. And I hear, hi, Papa. Oh, Sophia. Yeah. And I told her that next door our neighbors may move.

[63:12]

And she particularly loves Eileen, this little girl who lives next door, who's a few years older than she is. And she was lost. They're going to move. And she's really not used to the fact that everything changes yet. And yesterday she called me up too. She said, is everything as it's supposed to be as Johannes will? Yes, I said, everything is as it's supposed to be. And I said, your room, the rug is vacuum cleaned and your bed is waiting for...

[64:18]

Yeah, so she kind of relaxed. Everything is as it's supposed to be. But today, Eileen is moving. And I could feel she was, what could she do about it? She can't do anything about it. She was really in a kind of pain over the phone. So somehow she needs to resolve her consciousness. How can she find a place where it's okay that Eileen may move? How do we find that place in our consciousness where we resolve that things are changing? And if we go back, as I did in the seminar this weekend, to the very earliest teachings of the Buddha, historical Buddha, that existence is marked by suffering,

[65:46]

by transience, by change, and by the absence of a permanent or substantial self. If we don't have any kind of continuous self, and everything is changing and this causes us suffering, how do we resolve consciousness moment after moment? What is our reference point mind? Let's not think about self, but what is our reference point mind? No, this is a teaching I'll come back to tomorrow. Okay.

[67:01]

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