I feel I've talked enough. And as you know, they say that if you talk too much in Buddhism, you develop thick, bushy eyebrows. I don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. You know, but I do want us to go into not... You know, we have to have some sort of conceptual understanding of our life. But I hope we can find that conceptual understanding from, first of all, feeling our life. As I come into the room I really settle into the feeling we have here.

[01:10]

Yes. So, what does anyone want to say? Yes. I'm getting to depend on you. Thanks for having something to say. We heard that in the beginning it's better to ask what am I instead of who am I? And my question is what or who is asking this question? When you ask what, you don't have a simple answer to what is breathing.

[02:37]

There's just breathing. Do you accept that sense? Okay. So it is possible for mind to observe mind. Es ist möglich, dass der Geist den Geist beobachten kann. Aber dieser, sagen wir mal, beobachtende Geist, der muss nicht das sein, wo wir unsere... To respond to what you said. You know, I might have to sort of like try to work my way toward it.

[03:38]

But let me, maybe I'll come back to it in that way. But let me just say, there's a capacity for the mind to observe itself. That's all. Okay, so when you're chanting in the morning, as we do, you can notice that you're chanting. you can think about something else while you're chanting. Isn't that true? Yeah. So that's just the capacity of the mind to do two things at once. Now, that capacity of the mind to do two things at once is not necessarily a who who's doing it.

[04:38]

Okay. That doesn't satisfy you. It doesn't completely satisfy me either. Okay. So let me... I also need to understand better what you mean, but let's, what you mean by who is asking the question. Yeah, and we have the simple problem that we're, in our language, you know, I mean the classic example is in English, it rains. But no one's ever been able to locate the it that's raining.

[06:01]

You could just say, rain rains. There's no one doing the raining. And just because we ask ourselves questions doesn't mean there's someone doing the questions. But somehow separate from the process of noticing. So let me, I have to speak about this in a way that's useful to everyone too. So let me just say that much for now, okay? Okay, someone else. Yeah. Okay, holding an intention.

[07:08]

How do I actually know that I'm holding an intention? If that's a path that's outside of thinking. Can I know my intention? You introduce it to yourself. you discover the intention. It either appears to you sort of half or fully formed, or you use discriminating thinking to work your way toward it, to come to it. But once you have the intention, then you want to give it some form in language that sort of sticks together as a phrase or as an image. And then you repeat it sufficiently or remind yourself of it sufficiently that you can feel that it's present.

[08:39]

It's present in your noticing, thinking, even it's subconsciously present. Okay. Does that partly answer your question? Can the intention be present without language being present? Of course. It can be an image or it can just be a feeling. I mean, the phrase that seems to be most useful to people Der Satz, der für Menschen am meisten hilfreich ist, scheint dieses bereits verbunden zu sein. And that's an antidote to the assumption we have that we're already separated. So if you find some way in English or German to say already connected,

[09:42]

You create a habit joined to each perception that you feel, as you look at somebody, already connected. And every time you think a thought like, well, I'm separated, I'm not there, I'm lonely or something, You counteract that with the feeling already connected. distills into a feeling. And pretty soon you just have that feeling whenever you do anything. And that phrase already connected, if it becomes a view, If it becomes the view you bring to the world, then, as I've said, your perception will start confirming connectedness rather than confirming separation.

[11:18]

Okay. Like right now when I look at you, with a little help from your hair, I see a white ox. And I feel very lazy watching you. Someone else. Does it have maybe something to do with kind of joyful or excited creative doing? When I write or paint, I advise him a kind of creative flow.

[12:38]

I get into a kind of, let's call it, creative flow. And then I develop an enthusiasm for it. And then I ask myself sometimes, who is it who is drawing? Who is it who is writing? So then I get a kind of excited thrill or something, you know. And then they ask me actually, who is it who's writing or who's painting or something like that. And when you ask the question, does it help you write or paint? Does it help you when you ask this question when you write or when you paint? When you ask the question, does it help you with your creative work? You know, I've been avoiding during this seminar of introducing the phrase of Dogen's, which I've introduced in every seminar for the last six months or so.

[13:44]

Yeah, but maybe now I will break my how to stop resisting. Yeah. which is to cultivate and authenticate the 10,000 things. By conveying the self to them is delusion. And delusion, kanji is actually to get lost, to get lost, to get mixed up. And 10,000 things is usually translated as myriad or many, but that's really instrumentally not a good translation. Because it is a generalization.

[14:48]

And the 10,000 things is something specific. It means actual things, stuff. You can relate to 10,000 things. So, from the point of view of practice, you're letting painting paint painting, sort of. When you convey the self to it, you're moving into another kind of mind. So, Dogen's companion phrase, When you let the 10,000 things come forward, and cultivate and authenticate the self, this is enlightenment.

[16:09]

Okay. So the more, from this point of view, this prescriptive view, that you can act without conveying the self to things, thinking in self-referential ways, this is an expression of or a cultivation of authenticating the world as realization. This is an expression of or you're cultivating and authenticating the world through realization. So, again, in practice, you want to, as little as possible, convey the sense of self to what you're doing. As much as possible you don't want to let rain rain without anybody doing the rain.

[17:16]

I can't say right now that anybody I know is speaking. I can't say right now that anyone I know is speaking. There is speaking going on here as an activity. But this object here seems to be doing it. But I don't have much experience of I'm thinking about it and I'm saying something. If I do that, I have a very limited amount to say. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I like the word intuition very much.

[18:34]

Is that intuitive doing? Well, you know, I like you very much. So far, anyway, it seems good. But I don't like the word intuition. Yes. Only women have intuition, remember? You know, I try to be as womanly as possible, but... Okay, but the problem with the word intuition is it's... Well, let me just say that what we mean by intuition... In Buddhism, the word hardly occurs, by the way. It doesn't occur. From the point of view of realization, all thinking is a continuous flow of intuition.

[19:41]

In what context is that? From the point of view of realization, all thinking, for a realized person, is a flow of intuition. So it's not something that pops up through a surface. And you mean intuition is something that just pops up? What characterizes intuition usually is we have a feeling of it's true. And scientists speak of they had a breakthrough and they knew this thought they hadn't had before was true.

[20:43]

But that sense of the truth of what you say or what you do is related to several things. One is not depending on discursive thinking. The second, having a physicality to your thinking. The second is a physicality, a physicality that goes with the thinking. I read somewhere, I read some essay by Einstein, and he spoke about, this is the year of Einstein, that he got his ideas from his body.

[21:50]

He'd have a feeling in his body, and he'd follow it, and it would turn into an idea. I read a text by Einstein, and this is also Einstein's year this year, that he... And the reason, as I've said before, the reason truth lie detectors work a lot of the time is because it's difficult for the body to lie. I mean people can fool lie detectors, but still it's difficult for the body to lie. And the more one's thinking is physical, if you can understand what I mean, the more you can't lie to yourself or the more your thinking is like intuition.

[23:03]

And this is called realizing the truth body. And at some point you understand that whatever you think you can do You don't think just anything anymore. You think things that are possible. Even if they seem, don't seem so sometimes. Oh, there I go talking again. Someone else. Yes. Was ist die treibende Kraft hinter allen Absichten? What is the kind of fueling power, energy behind all intentions? Caring. Das Sorgen um etwas.

[24:09]

Sich kümmern. Too easy. Some things are easy. Manche Sachen sind halt so einfach. What would you like me to say? It's your question, what do you feel, what would you like? Okay, for me that behind our intentions, just motivation is enough, that seems not enough or simple to me. So behind our intentions or behind our motivation... Motivation is behind intentions, just the caring or something.

[25:15]

So what would you like to be behind motivation? There must be some kind of... There seems to be some kind of... Conducting or leading force that brings you from one transformation to the other. We always say we go from one transformation into the other. What is this power? You mean some kind of guidance? This real source for change, this energy which really makes change. So the second law of thermodynamics is that everything will end in entropy.

[26:31]

There are contradictions to that too, but go ahead. So it seems that there can be a kind of end kind of state in a system that you can reach. But here we sit and we're alive and lively and everything is changing and developing. Yeah, that's true. So, but is it worth saying something about it? I think, going back to whether we... My feeling is that you can't... You stay alive because you care to stay alive.

[27:44]

My feeling is that you stay alive because it is in your heart that you stay alive, because you strive to stay alive. We are born and there is a certain genetic momentum that keeps us alive. And you only stay alive if you avoid accidents, avoid walking in front of cars and so forth. But you don't really stay fully alive unless there's an implicit or explicit decision to stay alive and you care to stay alive. But you don't really stay alive unless there is an implicit and explicit decision that you want to stay alive.

[28:52]

We say you can only say care when you care for somebody. Just to care. It means to care for somebody. So you care not just for yourself, but you care for your system or something like that. You care about things. If you're angry, you're angry because you care. So I would say that care is worth caring, or caring about how we exist is one of the roots of what we do, including most of our intentions, or all of our intentions. I can't say this word. It's kind of too weird. Say it again, the whole phrase. In English it's good enough.

[29:58]

And from the point of view of Buddhism, strictly speaking, there's no ground of being. There's no reality behind this. There's no inherency that's guiding us through transformation. That's what Buddhism says. Again, there's no... There's nothing inherent that leads us through life. That's what Buddhism says and that's what I say. I might be wrong. And another view can also be productive. Okay, for now?

[31:02]

Well, then you have to say it. I mean, we may feel in the background something's guiding us. And there's some truth to that. But it's not, from the point of view of my experience, it's not unconditioned, it's always conditioned by situation. So you may have an intention, but that intention is always being spoken to by situations. It's not, you know, isn't inherently going to find its way like an acorn turns into an oak tree. Also du hast vielleicht deine Intention, deine Absicht, aber die ist nicht unabhängig von deiner Situation.

[32:07]

In dieser Absicht steckt nicht inhärent eine Bestimmung drin. Es ist nicht wie bei einer And general Buddhism doesn't go back to beginnings and say you can find the end in the beginnings. This is just not a Buddhist... But whether it's Buddhist or not, it's what I have discovered so far. So what would you like to say? Do intentions create themselves? This is the same question he's asking. You're ganging up on me. Intentions arise from situations.

[33:20]

I am intentions now that I didn't have when I was younger. So intentions have been created by the conditions of my life, by my experience. So at each moment there's a particular pattern, and in that pattern certain intentions work. At each moment in this situation, moment by moment, it's actually slightly changing. Then we're always on the effect side and never on the cause side. In a fundamental sense, yes.

[34:22]

But it's really cause... No. Because we're finding ourselves in that situation. You're swimming. If you're swimming, you're always on the effect side of the water. But you can still swim. Okay, yes. In what relationship are the intentions with the five skandhas? Okay, what would you say? Where does your question come from?

[35:50]

I'm just asking his question in a different way. You mean, where in the five skandhas does intention arise? Well, the five skandhas are not facts or entities or some kind of thing that exists separate from us. They're a way of understanding how consciousness arises. So, if I look at you, all of you, right now, that's form. Kind of information or signal. And that's also emptiness. Okay. So, I look at you and I have some feeling. That feeling is already, you could say, a kind of intention.

[37:16]

As soon as I have a relationship, there's some kind of intention. And then when I notice, when I have a perception about it, There's no way my perceptions aren't informed by my experience. You can't have a perception without memory and information as part of the perception. I mean, a child can, but then they can't act in those perceptions. Okay, so when I have a perception, there's, you know, I perceive color or form or blue or something. When I look at you, I see a person.

[38:26]

I don't see a Martian. And I know you're not a Martian because of memory. You look very relieved that I don't think you're a Martian. I mean, I may think you're alien, but you're not a Martian. Okay, but I can also... through practice, have a notice that as memory crosses the threshold of each moment. So I can emphasize memory or I cannot emphasize memory. Or, for instance, let's take a simple example. You're doing zazen and you hear an airplane.

[39:42]

You can really notice that you can let go of the idea of it's an airplane. So you can think of it in lots of ways. In Crestone, you know that in Crestone, it's one of the most isolated places in the United States. But if you draw a straight line on any map from Los Angeles to New York, it goes straight over Crestone Mountain Sand Center. So you hear the early morning flights and you hear the late afternoon evening flights. And you could think, hey, there's the Los Angeles, that's a Delta flight. Or you could... Not think that.

[40:46]

Or you cannot think it's an airplane. And it's just sound. The music is the spheres. And practice also is to just hear, just see as much as possible without bringing any of this other information in. There's less experienced reference thinking or self-referential thinking. And for some reason, when you Just hear, or hear your own hearing, as I always say. It's often accompanied by bliss. Hi, Sophia, you can come in.

[41:47]

Mm-hmm. Okay, that's enough. Maybe there's more there, but I'll see if I come back to it. Someone else? You've moved. Yes. You said that who we are we cannot establish before we find out what we are.

[42:56]

It seems to me that the more I deal with this, what I am, and come into this spatial feeling, the less the other question is important. To me, it seems to disappear. Can you speak German, please? You said, before we... who we are, we must first find out what we are. And according to my feeling, the more we deal with this, what I am, that is, in this other state of mind, the less important the question of who I am seems to disappear somehow. So just to make it simple, did you say the more you notice what you are, the less the question or concern with who you are comes up?

[44:04]

That's exactly right. Das ist absolut richtig. Das ist meine Erfahrung. And the more the who aspect of what we are comes up in a much more essential and manageable way. Excuse me? And the more we emphasize or find ourselves located in what we are, desto mehr wir uns in diesem was wir sind finden oder fühlen, dass wir dort verweilen, the more, as you say, who we are hardly arises, and the degree to which we need to deal with the kind of person we've become, personality and so forth, That becomes more manageable.

[45:05]

And as we identify with it less, it becomes more acceptable. Okay, anyone else or is that enough for now? Yeah. I told in the last seminar, in the last seminar I told how I got the sentence, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Last seminar I explained what happens to me with that phrase, don't invite your thoughts to tea. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. And now I would just like to give a few examples from others. So I'd like to hear a few other intentions or intention phrases, just because I'd like to have some other ones.

[46:33]

Other than don't invite your thoughts to tea. Yes. Well, I gave you one just before lunch, no place to go and nothing to do. Another fruitful one that has been fruitful for people and for me is just now is enough. Because just now sometimes isn't enough. But even when it isn't enough, it has to be enough because there's no alternative. So what is the mind in which just now is not enough and what is the mind which finds always just now is enough? Another good one is not knowing is nearest.

[47:36]

That's enough to start with, isn't it? Okay, so let's have a break. It's Saturday afternoon and I'd like you to meet in small groups afterwards. And what shall we consider? Maybe it makes sense to consider the difference between being located in what we are in contrast to who we are. Maybe that's enough.

[49:12]

If I think of something else I'll mention it. Okay.

[49:16]

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