You know, all Buddhist thinking is, particularly in Zen, is maybe you can call it practice thinking. It's thinking that exists in the world in some way that can be acted on. thinking that exists in the world in some way that can be acted on. But of course there are, you know, in the Lotus Sutra and this idea of Kalpas. vast scales of imagination that aren't real in any practical sense.

[01:08]

They're not They are not existent in any practical sense. But they create a context for practical thinking. In English it would be better to say experienceable thinking. and maybe you can get a sense of this if you feel your thinking with your body one aspect of intuition not only that it

[02:10]

that arises from mind and not from consciousness. But it also has a physical component. We feel it physically. Now, when I say something like it arises from mind and not from consciousness, I wish there was an uproar in the room. What could this mean? How can you distinguish consciousness and mind? Yeah, because if you really can, that is something interesting. So for me, and particularly in Zen, Zen emphasizes experienceable thinking.

[03:22]

There are no symbols really, there's only examples. So in my own practice and in my own thinking, I mean, in my own thinking, I'm discovering how to practice it. In my own thinking, I'm discovering how to practice it. Practice the thinking. As my own thinking, in my own thinking, I'm always discovering, exploring how to practice it. And if I have thinking which I can't practice, I can discard it. A bodily sense of thinking is part of this process.

[04:47]

Since Einstein is so ubiquitous, you can't avoid quoting him sometimes. But he emphasized innumerable times that his thinking was physical. An idea would start in his wrist or something, and then he'd let it develop. Part of his genius may have been to notice the physical component of thinking. And to keep tying his thinking to physicality and to scenarios he could imagine, like, you know, space bending, and tying it...

[06:09]

connecting his thinking to physicality. And when he created images, which he often did to help him imagine things like spaces bent, He imagined scenarios which he could feel. Okay, so what am I doing right now? I'm seeing if I can take my own sense, my own experienceable thinking and make it also something you can experience.

[07:17]

And I'm really never sure I can do it. And it helps me when I have some confirmation from you that, yes, you can experience what I'm speaking about. Okay, now let me read you something. The Power of Positive Thinking by Dogen Carnegie. A Bodhisattva who goes on the difficult pilgrimage who courses in the perception of difficulty is not a Bodhisattva.

[08:23]

Because one who generates the perception of difficulties is not a Bodhisattva. is unable to work for the well-being of others. If that isn't the power of positive thinking, I don't know what is. However, when the bodhisattva forms the notion of ease. There's an interesting causal thing, because we could say when the bodhisattva forms the notion of ease,

[09:39]

If the bodhisattva creates a feeling of lightness, and when she forms the notion that all beings are her friends, it doesn't say that. Exactly. What it says is, through the notion of ease, you form the notion that all beings are your friends. Whether men or women, parents or children, all are imagined, conceived of as friends. And thus, in that way, she goes on pilgrimage to the Bodhisattva.

[10:52]

Now again, this is certainly power of positive thinking. And it's, of course, a challenge. Can you imagine all beings as your friends? Yeah, and if you can't do it, you can see maybe the benefit of doing it. Isn't there some Arabic saying like, trust in God, but tie up your camel? Yeah, so we have to be realistic. But, yeah, just like in Hannover, eight cars were broken into in our hotel, including one of the persons in the seminar.

[12:12]

But still, with just some sense of ease in the world, we can imagine that young people, ultimately people, can be or are our friends. I have a good friend in New York who I just saw who everybody likes, he knows everybody. And one time we were in some context, he said, well, I don't have any enemies, because when I do, I just like them back so much that they give up.

[13:16]

This is practically empathetic joy, which, as I spoke about in Hannover, is the second of the brahmavihara, of the divine abodes. This is to practice until you can feel empathetic joy in your enemy's success. You can see the Buddhist path is very basic. and not exactly easy. Now, what is the context of this positive thinking? Well, first of all, I'm trying to collage, mosaic our way into some kind of experienceable understanding.

[14:52]

If you do develop the Dharma practice of appearances, Then appearances are patterns. I don't know. I'm using the word pattern. Ich nehme jetzt mal das Wort Muster. Okay, so Fritz appears. Fritz taucht auf. And as I said, I look over at Martin and Martin appears. Wie ich gesagt habe, ich schaue zu Martin, denn Martin taucht auf. And seeing Martin is a pattern, a momentary pattern.

[15:57]

Den Martin sehen ist ein momenthaftes Muster. He may later grab me and say, I am more than a momentary pattern. I'm sorry, but yeah. Anyway, if you experience things as momentary patterns, and you develop this as your habit, Then you're in the midst of the act of forming identity. You're in the midst, you're participating in the imagination of a person. So I'm relating to Fritz.

[17:06]

Because he's sitting there, because I've gotten to know him at Yanisov. And I always feel good when I see him. He's easy to feel. Some people are more difficult to feel good. But my feeling good when I see him, or however I feel what I'm seeing, is interacting, in fact, with his own, forming his own identity. that interferes or can also be helpful, right? Contributes. Steuert auch seine eigene Entwicklung, sich selbst zu formen, bei.

[18:14]

You know, I mean, getting two people who've been fighting to shake hands. Just an act of shaking hands changes them. So the awareness of that is part of practice. Okay. Now, Heidegger, I know, says... Heidegger, Einstein, you know, I don't know. Why not Heidegger? He says memory originally. He's always interested in the origin of words. The original, or originary meaning of words. Memory originally meant... the ability to hold in mind a continuum of past, present and future which allowed you to act and to contemplate.

[19:21]

That's a pretty good definition of memory in a Buddhist context. And this is a pretty good definition of memory in the Buddhist context. The present is a permanent experience within our sensory system. and to imagine this durative experience as a continuum of a past, present and future in which you can act and contemplate. So I can imagine, again, if I was a Zen therapist, when I'm just about to see a student or a client, I can imagine

[20:40]

appearing, just appearing, the feeling of Heidegger's definition of memory. And if that occurred to me, I would trust its occurrence. I wouldn't think, oh, I thought that. Or I wouldn't think I heard that at the seminar. I would think this arose now at this moment, appeared at this moment out of the fabric of interdependence. And I trust the process of appearance of being the only realness I know as the only reality So I would assume this has something to do with the person I'm about to see.

[22:25]

I would just have that sense of trust and not a kind of critical thing, what should I do, you know. And that sense of trust, which is kind of experienceable truth, already creates a good atmosphere and ease in which people can be your friends. but listening to the person who I'm meeting with and I might then hold in mind that the possibility, the value of holding in mind a continuum, past, present and future, as a continuum in which we can act and contemplate.

[23:46]

And then I would see that perhaps this person doesn't have a feeling of a continuum in which they can act. They're imagining a pilgrimage of difficulties. And so if I did have this feeling and it didn't seem to be in the context, in the contextual time we'd be in the midst of establishing I might try to say something like what future can you imagine that you can convince me of

[25:00]

And I would then consider that an entering into gestational time. a gesture which shapes itself in the dark of gestation. And then the next time I saw this person that ducks on there in any capacity, I might just see if there's any ripening. Or I might say as we're passing in the kitchen, how's the pilgrimage going? And they'd say, uh-huh, what pilgrimage?

[26:43]

Oh, I thought we were on a pilgrimage together. Oh, I thought we did. Okay. All right. So in this context that that appearances are patterns. And there's a word, chitopada, Sanskrit word, which means something like thought as intention. And you want to cultivate thought as intention. Now, of course, we have discriminating thought, which is necessary sometimes.

[27:47]

Yeah, what refrigerator should we buy? And some report says... Um... And Chitopada is also very close to what's meant by Dharma position. Now, this is based on the assumption that we have a choice about what thoughts occupy our mind. Okay, that's... Now, we can tell that sometimes we're anxious,

[29:03]

And our thoughts revolve around some anxiety. But it's assumed here that as a yogi, You've realized the ability to notice thoughts moving around in anxiety. And you know they're just patterns. And you know that you don't have to identify with the patterns. They're only patterns. It's not that you try to pretend you're not anxious. But still, they're just patterns and you don't have to identify with them.

[30:20]

They are energetic forms in your mental field, but that's all. And for the yogi, there is no need to think about them until you can try to solve them. When I say Yogi, I think of Yogi Bear. His wife asked him once, you love New York now so much, but you told me you wanted to be buried in Philadelphia. He was old at the time and she said, shall I bury you in Philadelphia or in New York? He said, surprise me. So it's like that. So let's imagine, let's go back to the idea of a dharma position.

[32:06]

Can you say if this dharma position is like, what does the word position mean? A location. Okay. Also in this dharma position, a basic the concept of Dharma position is like Dogen saying place yourself in immediacy and consider this the entire universe Now I restated that to try to make clearer what I'm sure Dogen meant. is to place yourself in the midst of immediacy and consider this the functioning of allness.

[33:32]

Okay. Now, I've said, now I'm off on a little tangent here, but, you know, nothing but tangents here. I said, you know, the word universe is not really very experienceable. And oneness is a theological conceit. But oneness... We can kind of imagine all of this.

[34:53]

It's not. We can feel all of this. We can feel the particular and we can feel the many. So Dogen says we need a concept of the world or the universe or something. Dogen sagt, wir brauchen ein Konzept von der Welt oder vom Universum. Or perhaps even a Kalpa. Oder vielleicht sogar von einem Kalpa. But in English I'm saying the word that works best in English anyway is something like allness. Aber das Wort, was in Englisch finde ich am besten passt, ist diese Allesheit. And allness is the dynamic in a way of immediacy. And allness works also, as I tried to speak in Anabur, with the dynamic of the alaya-vijnana. But I don't think we have time to go there until Thursday.

[36:10]

Our hosts are ready. My daughter isn't ready. Is she coming home on Thursday or Friday? Friday. We have a daughter in Spain who's having a home heart sickness crisis and we last night decided to fly her home. Yeah. So the sense of a Dharma location, Dharma position, this takes some thinking, some contemplation.

[37:24]

But we can keep kind of poking at it or... Kicking its tires. You don't know that expression. You're going to buy a used car and you kick the tires. We look into a horse's mouth. This concept we have to test and try again and again. So let's say I get up in the morning. I mean, I do get up in the morning, actually. That's why I'm here. And I put my feet down on the side of the floor.

[38:28]

You get up with one foot? What do you do in Germany? You get up with the wrong feet? Well, I get up with both feet so I'm safe. And then, you know, and we also in America always want to get up on the right side of the bed, which is, you know, which doesn't mean the opposite of left. So here I've got both feet on the floor and I'm already off to a good start. And I know that this world is an act of imagination. Self is an act of imagination.

[39:30]

Self is an act, an action of this imagination. So how can you, if you're a therapist and people are concerned about their self and all that stuff, how do you sneak in a little Buddhist teaching that self is an act of imagination? Oh, well, I didn't really say that. So how can you somehow connect with your client? There is a little bit of Buddhist teaching that this itself is an action of the ego. When someone suffers, you can't really tell them all yourself with the suffering of an act of imagination. You'd be out of business in a week or two. Yeah, but it... But we suffer.

[40:34]

The bodhisattva suffers as well as everyone else. But to feel that your day is going to be an act of imagination, But it doesn't mean that you create your day. Well, to some extent, yes. You get to answer your emails. But that's somebody else's acts of imagination. I mean, this is just electronic bits on the screen. And you don't have to answer your emails. You could go take a walk in the park. You might lose your job.

[41:44]

That would be inconvenient. So I'm not saying, you know, you're nuts, you know, crazy. But it's a degree to which the world is an act of imagination. Like right now, I see you. You're there, but you are my imagination, in fact. And I certainly find an ease in imagining all of you as my friends. And I really feel relieved when I imagine you all as my friends. Here I sit with both feet on the floor and sit on my bed. So I first have to discover, this is Dharma practice, my Dharma position.

[42:48]

So the first thing I'm going to do probably, particularly since the last few seminars, I'm going to feel, locate myself in bodily time. With the feeling this isn't just some kind of medicine, it's really I am bodily time. So I locate myself in breathing, posture, heartbeat. And I can add another phrase, you know, because you can start out the Dharma positions with phrases. And the word for such a phrase in Sanskrit is a chitopada.

[44:07]

A dharma position. A location. So the assumption here is... What can I say? We have the idea that we're natural. Yeah, and I started out feeling that about Buddhism. You could go into the Zendo barefoot and be a kind of nature boy. But after a while he realized natural is some kind of belief in some, again, a theological kind of nature that's going to come out. But Buddhism believes in wisdom, not nature.

[45:22]

That left to ourselves to grow up in the jungle without parents was wolves. You may learn how to bark, but you won't learn how to be a bodhisattva. So we have a choice about what thoughts occupy our mind. And just the idea of that choice is already wisdom.

[46:27]

You know, they've done research, somebody's done research the last few years about who are the happiest people in what countries, what villages, etc., And one thing all these long-lived happy people had There's many different aspects, you know. I have a whiskey every night. But they all shared they'd made the decision to be happy. Among the alternatives, this looked like the best. No, if you have a feeling of interfering with my nature, which is to be bitchy. Do you use that word?

[47:32]

No. To be a complainer or something. Or I have these sufferings and I want to get rid of them, but I still want to explore them a little more. So again, sitting here, feet on the floor, you decide bodily time. Or maybe you decide the yoga of this moment, the yoga of the present moment. You take a moment to allow energy to come up through your body.

[48:35]

through and pouring down through your body. And you don't need other thoughts. That's good enough. Or maybe you come to what is your innermost request. Deeply, what intention do I have? So, this is a Dharma position. Then you get up and you go and wash bodily time. Boy, this Audrey Donner is stinky, but you know. No, maybe you think I'm nuts. But this kind of way of being in the world,

[49:40]

This way of being in the world and the manifestation of Dogen Carnegie's practice of positive thinking is rooted in the sense that it is rooted in the practice of appearance. I mean, if a child is beaten up by its parents over a long period of time, It's hard to get free of that.

[50:58]

But if you also, as an alternative to that, as an adult who was beaten up or as an adult who wasn't beaten up, if you keep presenting yourself over you know, it's not such a long period of time, a year or so. If you keep presenting to yourself for the rest of your life, but actually a year or two, a year or so makes a difference. You keep noticing that everything you see is your own mind. And you feel the mystery of that because Fritz, again, who's right here in front of me, is also much more than my perception of him.

[52:00]

But all I know of him is my perception of him. Aber alles, was ich von ihm kenne, ist doch nur meine Wahrnehmung. And if I had that feeling that all I know of him is my perception of him. Und wenn ich das Gefühl habe, dass alles, was ich über ihn weiß, doch nur meine Wahrnehmung ist. But I know he's way more than that. Aber ich doch weiß, dass er viel mehr als das ist. And I know that all he knows of himself is his own perception of himself, how he talks to himself. We're both in what's called the three mysteries of body, speech and mind. We're both in this mystery, differently and shared.

[53:21]

This doesn't threaten me or scare me because I'm located in bodily time. and not only am I now used to for months noticing appearance and feeling bodily feeling the notice of appearance Again, all mental phenomena have a physical component. And all sentient physical experience has a mental component. All sentient physical experience has a mental component.

[54:43]

Okay, so you can feel thoughts. And it takes a little while to become this sensitive, but that's part of what the practice of mindfulness is. Full mindfulness. So you have an experience of appearance. This is only what's real for you. But it's not graspable. It's fundamentally empty. And it occurs in the wider space of mind. But now you're used to the contents you're used to

[55:52]

Appearance as a content of mind. And you can't grab the content because it's only an appearance. And at the same time it appears in a field of mind which you can also feel but you can't grab. And you feel a tremendous relaxation, ease. The word relax, the lax part originally meant the floppy soft ears of a rabbit. I imagine this song, it's like somebody from Star Wars.

[57:02]

What's the guy in Star Wars like? He looks like a goat. Who's that? I don't know. But you might be interested that Yoda is partly based on Siddharth Roshan. Because... What is his name? Is the director of the movie? George Lucas. George Lucas. George Lucas. and his wife particularly used to come to the lectures at that time. The Lucas Valley, where George Lucas built his studio and stuff, is just up the roadways from Greenbelt.

[58:23]

Okay. That was a diversion. So, anyway, if I can't say more than I've said, but if you get used to knowing everything as appearance, you take this as a discipline like having intention to bring attention to the breath. That's a discipline of the yogi. Another discipline is to on every perception remind yourself that it's a perception. You remind yourself that it's a perception.

[59:35]

And what's interesting is when you do that, perceptions become clearer and clearer and more and more vivid and colorful and animated. The world is like a painting and you're painting it. So it's experienced even as more real Why do you know it as less real? Also wird es sozusagen als echter empfunden, obwohl ihr es als... Während ihr es empfindet, wird es als echter empfunden.

[60:47]

Obwohl ihr wisst, dass es nur Erscheinungen sind, findet ihr das... So the practice of wisdom phrases. Just now is enough. Or, which has to be the case. Is there an alternative to just now? Just now is enough. Already connected. Not knowing is nearest. These are all Dharma positions. But you locate your... locate your aliveness.

[61:50]

In this sense, being bodily time is a being time and a dharma position. And being able to To live in the midst of a dharma position transforms your world. I think it's time to have lunch. I'm four minutes early, I'm sorry. So, let's... Well, we have to dress us in for four minutes then, right? This is called respecting clock time. Yoga, the present moment Attention, breath

[63:55]

Dogen said, sometimes, something like now times, I enter an ultimate state, enter samadhi, And offer profound discussion. Simply wishing you to be steadily intimate with your field of mind. Simply wishing you to be steadily and with your field of mind.

[66:26]

One of the sutras says, What is bodhi? What is enlightenment? And the sutra answers itself. It's your heart, just as it is. Can we realize the ease of the heart just as it is? No place to go and nothing to do.

[67:48]

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