So let's continue to look at the parameters in the big picture. You know, a picture big enough that includes us. For the parameters are a description of, particularly the first four, human qualities. Again, just to keep the name simple, generosity, discipline, patience, perseverance and so forth. And the second, the last two are meditative absorption and wisdom.

[01:05]

Yeah, it's a little more... Yeah, it's not... But these are, again, the emphasis is on human qualities. The Buddha. is, was, a human being. And we're human beings. So, can we look at the... I mean, if you were going to describe a Buddha, you know, a Buddha that might be around, you know, around the corner somewhere. Well, he, she, nowadays it would certainly be a woman. In the old days they tended to be men, but nowadays... And so...

[02:08]

What would we want her to be? Well, we'd hope she was generous. At least that. And we'd want her to be, you know, have some discipline, you know. Some examples of lack of discipline. I find quite funny. Like one is unnecessary jumping around. Well, it is true. If you're going down the street and you started running and jumping, they think you're either nuts or you're still a teenager. I mean... primary school ager. So I often feel like I'm necessarily jumping around, but I restrain myself. Yesterday I almost burst into song during Zazen. Oh, holy night.

[03:33]

I stopped myself. The stars above are shining. And Catherine, the good Anja, said, I'm sorry, I don't know that song. I would have joined in with you. Okay. Sorry, we'd want human qualities like that, patience, perseverance, and so forth. Yeah, but they're human qualities. But a Buddha perfects them. What does it mean to perfect them? Because the word Paramita means the perfections.

[04:35]

So these ordinary human qualities, usual human qualities, how do we perfect them? You know, I've said often that I told the implicitly at first, Sophia, when she was, you know, an infant. She'll be 11 this month. It seems like she was just an infant the other day. Um... I said to her, and it was clear, that the first vow is to stay alive.

[05:35]

But how to stay alive? In what way to stay alive? Is the second vow. And basically what I've implied to her is that it's to stay alive within the field of sentience. I don't know if she tells the teacher that. My father told me to stay alive in the field of sentience. Probably she doesn't. But in the field of sentience, That's her school, the other kids, the teachers. They're showing her what it means to be alive. And... And Igor, her dog, and her cat, Minka, they show her what it means to be alive.

[06:46]

And so does the garden and the trees and so forth. Now, I think to feel yourself alive alive in a field of sentience. It's like, as I said the other day, there's no such thing as a single being. I said we can't imagine Neil or Katrin as a being independent of beings. Beings are inseparable from beings. Mother, father, friends. The language I'm speaking right now is the... Creation of beings.

[07:58]

So this recognition that we're in a field of sentience is that this recognition that we're in a field of sentience Sentience, C-E? S, oh, how have you been translating it so far? Sentience, T-S or C-E? Sentient being. Sentient beings. Sentience is... Sentience, yeah. Sentience. What did you translate before? Sentiencing. Well, whatever, anyway... It's all right. Our vow to save all sentient beings, I would prefer to say we vow to be in accord with

[09:08]

all of sentience. So I'm trying to speak about how we perfect these human qualities. Now I want to speak again about mental postures, and now I'd like to make a distinction, use the distinction between position and posture. Okay, so I know it's about time to... to eat, uh, orioki in noontime, say. So about five minutes before I start down, and let's say that my intention to go to the, uh, dining area is a mental position.

[10:33]

I'm walking along and I'm walking along within the intention to go to lunch. Okay, now let's say that I at the same time add just here. Either as a bodily experience or as a verbal suggestion. So I'm walking along and not only am I I'm sorry, this sounds so dreadful. A mental position of going to lunch.

[11:35]

By adding just here, only here, then I'm adding a mental posture. Now I might also be thinking discursively about something or other. But if I have this mental posture just here, probably it's, I'm not thinking discursively. Okay. So now, you know, I think that my way of describing this is partly based on the way we function as Westerners.

[12:36]

And to understand how we, in the traditional sense, perfect these human qualities of the paramitas, we have to shift a bit the way we function. Or understand a little differently how we function. Okay, because what I'm trying to do now is to say, you know, I've been presenting mental postures as something, a new worldview, a new paradigm. But a mental position, mental posture, pretty related, and we all use mental positions all the time. So say we're in the service and we're chanting.

[13:47]

Then you know the chanting by heart. Kanji, zaibo, zazen. So you're thinking about something else while you're chanting. What you're going to do later or somebody or something. So if you do that, we could say that chanting is a mental position. And you're adding discursive thinking. Okay. But now let's say you bring attention to what you're chanting. So you feel what you're chanting. I even like the word savor. Savor? Like you savor the taste of something. Savor literally means to find the taste.

[14:50]

To find the taste is to save. So you find the taste of what's being said in the chanting. then that's a mental posture. As I'm trying to distinguish between posture and position. And if you begin to feel what you're chanting, Then it's much harder to do any discursive thinking. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, the parameters assume... that generosity, in this case, is a mental posture.

[15:59]

It's like the vow to be in accord with all of sentience. You're feeling it. Or if I say, if I'm sitting here and my sense is just this, what I'm doing, what I'm holding, etc. Just this becomes a mental posture. Now, the practice of the paramitas assumes that you are perfecting them through making them mental postures. For instance, Gampopa, who's written one of the most famous commentaries on the six paramitas, speaks about the meditative cognition or meditative absorption as a bringing of the mind inside or holding the mind inside.

[17:27]

Now, what does that mean as our practice? Yeah, it's, you know, As right now, I am seeing you and knowing you as out there, but in my mind primarily. So my attention is not just on you as out there. As a yogi, I bring attention to attention itself. That's one of the key acts of yogic. aliveness is to bring attention to attention itself.

[18:34]

So if I bring attention to If I bring mindful attention to the mind which is knowing, then I experience you as an interiority. I experience you as simultaneously inside me, kind of inside, And not only so-called out there. And if I know you through this experience of interiority, and that's my habit, I know you so much more intimately than when I think you're outside.

[19:36]

Okay. So I actually don't use the words, or I use the words as a contrast, I don't use inside and outside. To try to use a language, to try to use English in a way that's coded to... a yogic worldview, as I tried to talk about in the last seminar, our culture is coded in our language. A real simple example? If we say in the West space, we mean space, we mean separateness.

[20:59]

In a yoga culture, if we say space, we mean connectedness, in-betweenness. So we have to re-code space The word space for us, so that space on the one hand turns us toward Western culture, on the other hand turns us toward yogic culture. So space becomes for us coded as, yogically coded would be as ma, ma meaning in betweenness, not space. And ma then means a space that's filled. A connecting space and a space that's filled.

[22:13]

Filled with what just happened and what is about to happen. And you see it in these Japanese Butoh dancers. They say things like, I dance the moment that just ended and the moment that's just about to begin. Now do you see that if you created a mental posture, I'm going to dance. Isn't that strange? When I say mental posture, of course I put my hands up here, and I mean, you know, anyway. If I created a mind-body posture, which was, I'm just about to dance what... the moment it ended.

[23:17]

And I'm going to dance the moment that's just about to begin. You can see why they sometimes say, I dance with my shadow. Or what if I'm speaking now and I'm feeling, I'm speaking what I've just about ended and what I'm just about to say. In fact, that's what I'm doing. And it produces a kind of different source for the talking. We're on Mars, you know that. We don't have to go to Mars. We're already on Mars. We've got a different culture right in front of us. We can start living. And you're the nicest aliens I know. Okay. Okay. Mother time is running out.

[24:26]

What do you say in German? Father time or mother time? Don't we? You don't say either. No. In English we say father time, but nowadays I'm changing it to mother time. In English we say father time, but I change it to mother time. That doesn't exist in German. Okay. Ah. So then my experience of the world of phenomena actually means the world as perceived. It doesn't mean the world independent of perception. In English. Die Welt der Phänomene bedeutet nicht die Phänomene da draußen, sondern die Phänomene, wie sie wahrgenommen wurden, wie sie von mir wahrgenommen wurden.

[25:53]

But we've forgotten that in English, and so phenomena come to mean the world outside of us and not the world as it is inside. So now, to speak about To get away from the dualism of inside and outside. I speak about interiority. And exteriority. And exteriority I know is my projected interiority. So even though I say you're an exteriority, you haven't escaped from being my interiority. And you don't want to escape because it's so nice for me. Is that called translation?

[27:00]

Well, I couldn't shout this, what you're saying. Okay. Now, patience... The perfection of patience I tried to say yesterday is something more like to wait with than to wait for. Also, yes, no, wasn't quite right. Instead of waiting for something, yes. My team. Thanks. Okay. Is also the Zen term Muxin. Mushin means empty mind or no mind.

[28:07]

And I tried to speak about it somewhat cogently in the previous seminar. Okay. And it's also sometimes Mushin Noshin which means mind without mind or mind without thinking. And there's mind without self, too. So now this is also similar to the Dzogchen sense of open awareness. So the perfection of patience becomes the mind of a big allowing space that accepts and allows without complaint without comparison and it's also the space of mind when I'm walking down the hall to the

[29:13]

to lunch. When I can feel the mental position of going to lunch, the mental posture of just here and nowhere else, And I can feel the sort of presence of the rats and marmots, martyrs, Martins in English, martyrs of discursive thinking along the edge. No, discursive thinking isn't that bad. Martyrs are cute anyway. I got one in my room once. He climbed in my room. And I brought our cat, who used to have Charlie, up.

[30:36]

And I brought Charlie in, and for about half an hour, this martyr was walking around my living room. And I brought Charlie up, and Charlie looked at the martyr and said, old friend, and he went to sleep. He was more Buddhist than me. All sentient beings, I just want to sleep. Now, I really want to speak about something else, but mother time is... So if you can be in this big space of patience, we'll start again this afternoon. Okay, thanks.

[31:24]

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