I try to imagine how you could actualize this in your everyday life when you are only remaining in your sensation. Yes, then it is so that one ... that one does not have any concepts about the world or also about the ... about the way in which one moves in the world. Is it a question or a comment? That's the way it is. Okay. If you ... So the result of this, if you actualize it, is that no concepts exist. Or are created.

[01:03]

When you're doing this practice. Or there's very little, yeah, go ahead. But how does this relate to past experiences? I have made the experience that... So I have made the experience that somehow my own practice extends into my own personal past and somehow reconfigures my past. Reconfigures, yes. I was told that I could speak a bit loud. Okay. That's great. All right.

[02:14]

And I'm not allowed to look at you. I should look. No, no. Straight. Then we see your mouth moving and we understand. We'll put a mirror here. And so you can see us. Yeah. And how is my outfit? Okay. Oh, you should comb your hair. Like you. Okay. So I should respond, I should comment or make a question, right? Well, of course, memory is an unavoidable part of our life. If there's not memory, you couldn't get out of this building. You wouldn't know where the door was. So part of this practice, this dharmic practice, is to notice when memory comes in.

[03:36]

The appearance. Part of appearance is memory. When you treat it as memory and not as you you can decide to let the memory in or to identify with the memory or let it take over. I mean, this gives you a chance to participate in appearance as a succession. So memory can also appear as an appearance which is not connected with the concept.

[04:59]

No, I would say that as soon as there's perception, there's likely to be the association of memories. And definitely when there's conception, it's constructed from memories. When I'm walking down the hill and I know the Zendo is over there and my room is over there, that's memory. But we could develop terms for memory which locates you and memory which brings forth narrative associations of the past, etc. I mean, one can develop terminology for that, which Buddhism has done, but I've only partially done it in English.

[06:20]

And one could develop a terminology of different kinds of memories, a memory that localizes you or a memory that is associated with stories. And in Buddhism there are these gradations, but I have only partially adopted them into English. You know, this putting a mirror by your mouth so you can see each other's mouth, right? Just reminds me of something I'll just say for the heck of it. That a French psychologist discovered psychotic scanning. I mean people always thought you looked at things etc in the usual way of a steady kind of a I can't remember his name, but it was not so long ago.

[07:29]

But he decided to watch himself looking at something in a mirror. And he saw that he didn't just look at things, his eyes were scanning all over the place, but he could see in the mirror. And this little And this very small observation that he made with a mirror completely changed our understanding of how our mind works. I'm wondering what happened if we both had mirrors mounted like a horse.

[08:44]

Anyway. So what, anybody else want to say something? Scanning. Scanning. S-C-A-N-N-I-N-G. I have a question about saccadic scanning. So there are two ways of looking at least. One is to look at objects and the other is to look at fields. If you are focusing on the field and then things appear within the field, but you remain and stay with the field, do the eyeballs then also wander around?

[09:54]

Yes, I think there's no perception, no, my understanding is there's no visual perception without saccadic thinking. But when you have a field your attention is the field. You relate to the information from the visual sensation differently than when you relate to the information if I'm just looking at the bell. We could discuss that more, but let's stay with sort of the time. Sorry, I shouldn't have brought this up, you know. So someone else. Yes? Taking care that we don't have body distinctions, taking care not to take obsession, not to make the ego out of it.

[11:30]

Oh, that's good. Which is a very strong experience. And someone explained to me that children, before they go through the space of ego, it's actually through the body, the body. Yes, and we could make one directly assess their friendliness, spirit, what has the body, and the feelings, and that's me, that's my feeling, and... And during the reverse process, you know, it's like a very small child, before they discovered their ego, they discovered also children, not reverse one, children. First they have sensations, they don't make them. And then there comes the things where they can't see between their mouths, they can't see, they've been discovered, so they have to reach. I can't do that anymore.

[12:31]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. But Deutsch bitte? Nein. That's what I'm trying to explain, that there are animals in the earth and that it speaks to you. It's always a very strong face, I see it in the body. When you sit on the carpet, you feel it in the body and that's how it is for me.

[13:32]

It's something unreal in this body. And, and, [...] It doesn't work with me. And in the same phase, it just happens that I'm in bed. It also happens with hearing aids. You think, aha, it's a small body. Suddenly, it's just a hearing aid. Aha, or everything is stuck in your mouth. And it's like this process, just like an exercise, to give up again. And the most difficult thing is to sit in your face.

[14:34]

I think that the sensation of aliveness or the gift of aliveness appears before ego. So I think first is the sensation and gift of aliveness that the infant has, then probably self, then probably ego. And if that's the case, and I think so, it's important because you can reverse the process, even if you can't get your foot into your mouth. Someone else? Yes, Regina? It's in...

[16:12]

It's interesting to think about and ponder where does sensation start and when does awareness come in and is it perception? And then, sorry, and then is there a succession of that? Is there a certain order of that? So that are interesting questions. I started with my father recently. Recently, I went for a walk with my father. And he brought me, he talked me into walking barefoot on a lawn. You've got a hippie father. It's been a hippie father. And weaning. And he walked before me and he was very much immersed in walking, lost in walking.

[17:20]

OK. And he said something like, isn't it amazing that we know so many things only from our feet, from the soul of our feet, where the wind bent the grass and where the rain from yesterday soaked more deeply into the grass. Can I meet this guy? I've met your mother, can't I? Maybe we could take a walk together. And then he said, and it is. And he also said, it's amazing that we know from the surface of our skin which cloud is more cooler than another one.

[19:08]

That's great. So I must admit that I was quite impressed. Me too. Ich auch. And I was also struck by that. Actually, there's a story I read in when I was in my twenties started to practice that Dung Shan went to find his teacher when someone said to him follow the bending of the grass and someone said to him follow the bending den biegungen des Grases and I grass bends in all kinds of directions, but to me that was very firm, clear directions.

[20:13]

And that meant something to me that I started doing. Meaning, basically, how do you read circumstances? Was this teaching I presented at the end of the last session accessible and imaginable to you or was Whatever was your reaction? It was okay. Good. Yes? Yes, I had a very pleasant experience with this teaching of yours Before appearance appears

[21:55]

That was somehow it merged or overlaid with the fading of the sound of the bell. ... [...] And by noticing this fading of the bell, the sound of the bell, I also noticed that this room, before appearance appears, can be experienced in each and any moment and always. And naturally, it was not anymore the fading of the sound of the bell. But in any moment a room, a space which enables or makes possible the appearance of a period.

[23:26]

And this was adventurous. An adventure, oh yeah. Okay, yes. So you said when you are able to remain in this sensation, and this was very meaningful for me, I lost the thread. Well, I'm here. You'll find it again. Yes, Christine. I think that these teachings are extremely important for us lay people. But I think that we need some time where we can practice this and where we can incubate that.

[24:48]

because in our everyday life the conventional self is very close and very easily covers again this experience. And our experience in this two months experiment Also showed that there is a desire or a need for spaces of practice which are not available in ordinary life. For instance, we said these things like, where can we bow to each other?

[26:02]

And we said, well, let's make an appointment in front of St. Stephen Cathedral and bow to each other, because we somehow feel the need to bow to each other. And this aspect of praxis... So it's very hard in everyday life to find space within ordinary everyday life. And also to find the space which can be a shared space where you are able to share these experiences and these practices. This description in a perception or sense perception and perception and concept, that would be something that could be put into a time frame. But I think this distinction between sensation, perception, perception, that would be something which we could take and practice together in a shared practice space or for a period of time.

[27:25]

And it could support our practice if we came to the decision, for instance, that we would say, OK, for the next two weeks, we try to practice that and look and see what happens. in my life I was very much in contact with music and artists and I realized that those who have a very sensitive quality without knowing Buddhism they have an intuition to understand when they go like this and they return.

[28:31]

Yes. What you created for me in presenting these three words is like a direction in the room, and this has two directions, from sensation to conception, which is for me like a road sign in the warmth of the daylight. And I love the other direction, because now I realize I have to follow the other road sign if I want to go back. for happiness and also if I have the need for protection.

[29:34]

Can you say it in German? Sorry, yes. A direction, like a room, or traffic signs, or something that goes back to the concept, to the other direction. The concept is what is always on the street in everyday life. But I notice that the other direction is very important to me. It goes away, back, Okay. Yes? Yeah. We have to have a husband and wife team here.

[30:36]

Okay. So the first thing is a question because I try to get clear for myself whether I'm more in this area of sensation or more in the area of perception. and my question is whether this is correct when I am not yet naming it and not giving names to it then I am in this kind of sensation state.

[31:53]

And in the moment when I'm adding names, then you are in this perception state and where you add names to it. So that's the question part of my comment and the other thing. There is an experience I would like to share and it is a distinction between experience and perception and conception. So this derives from experiences I made in communication techniques I had in dialogues by David Bong.

[33:21]

Yeah. So where it is an important practice to get away from this area of conception and to enter into this area of perception because it's almost impossible to come to an agreement as long as you stay in this area of concepts. Okay. Yeah, so let me say something. There's a methodology here. Again, let's say zazen is posture whilst the concept don't move. And once you embody this, the concept is just part of your posture.

[34:31]

Okay, so if we practice with a net like sensation, perception, conception. To throw this net over our experience and catch certain parts of it. Now, I've made these three distinctions. The methodology would be that you keep the three distinctions in mind. And you can actually, it's interesting just to study what happens when you keep a a conception in mind, like sensation only,

[35:49]

that the concept sensation only, can prevent sensation from leading to conception. So you develop an ability, I think a yogic ability, to hold a conception, which doesn't arrive from your habitual experience, which can redirect or redeploy your habitual experience. And it can even be a conception which stops conceptions.

[37:14]

So when you do something like this, you're also simply learning a skill. And a skill which is absolutely necessary for all advanced practice. Okay. When your attention rests on an appearance. it can happen that the attention is reinforced and gets stronger and stronger and it's not important which kind of experience arise or appear in this attention

[38:48]

But also this is getting stronger and also passes. What kind of appearance is that? Well, basically, I'm presenting a technique. what I'm suggesting to everyone is you apply this technique as it's interesting to you or useful to you. And explore your experience with this approach. So you can't say, is it an appearance or not, because if you've noticed it, it's an appearance.

[40:23]

But you can begin to notice what kind of appearance. And since there's hundreds of possibilities, infinite almost, I'll leave that up to you. Yeah, Christian, you were at Crestone when I first began speaking about the possibility or how to remain in sensation. And I spoke about it both during the maybe after the practice period, but then in Boulder too.

[41:37]

And now here in this context. And also yesterday you were, we talked about lay and monastic practice. And as I would say again, lay practice has an endless, you never reach the end of lay practice. It can be the completeness of your life. and you can also emphasize monastic practice and that is also endless. Even though both can be completely fulfilling, they're still different.

[42:48]

And the difference is, if we notice the differences and not try to conflate them, And we refrain from the anxiety and the self-concern about which one is better. And within our Sangha, benefit from the flowering of the differences. Yeah, we can really develop Sangha which carries the teaching. But still, more than anyone else here, you decided you primarily will do monastic practice.

[43:59]

And I guess I would not have come up with this description of practice that I just gave you. if the entirety of my practice was in lay public seminars. many of the teachings I develop in Western paradigms and languages arise in the context of monastic practice and the stimulation of the other practitioners And then I have to think about how to bring that into a lay practice situation, which I probably wouldn't have thought of it

[45:28]

But now I think of how to present it to a lay practitioner. Okay, now the emphasis on sincere, on... On... On... on the sensorium, and then using the language sensation, and then imagining how to say we can remain in sensation only, While it's been practiced for years, exactly how to formulate it and teach it is fairly new in the last few months.

[46:40]

So, do you have any comments on all of it? Yes, I have some observations. So one interesting process I observed was was the development of this particular teaching. I don't know how to call it from a concrete moment of insight.

[47:42]

And that is this walking with the dishes in a broken bag. Because I also have this experience that the so-called monastery provides an environment where we can focus our attention on these kinds of moments of insight. And this context allows for and also supports and promotes these insights, these moments of insight. And for myself, I'm calling that these moments can become moments of a kind of paradigmatic experience.

[48:55]

And I realized that this whole process of thinking about sensations was also connected with Bekarosh's talking during Sesshin about Yogacara teaching and the sensory fields. And that there is a kind of overlapping of traditional teaching. which allows the context of focusing attention.

[50:18]

Or two things, the conditional teaching and the context that allows the focusing of attention. Also das sind zwei Dinge, einerseits dieses Fokussieren der Aufmerksamkeit und gleichzeitig auch die traditionelle Lehre. And then there are also these personal moments of insight which happen in this context of teaching. And then there's also a kind of exchange which somehow creates a shared language for these experiences.

[51:19]

And that's my feeling of what we are doing there together. That's so much to the extent that I'm doing it. What's David Beck's Buddhist name? Okay, recently at Crestone. completed David Beck's transmission, teaching transmission.

[52:26]

And to complete transmission, particularly with a person who also has a full lay life, Even though he can come to Crestone sometimes for six months during a year. The process started some ten years ago or so. But we then he would come to visit me in Freiburg or Johanneshof or Creston. So at some point I feel he can completely present the teachings. So I finished transmission and said, you know, we can now call him Roshi.

[53:47]

And he can be back Roshi or Yoseki Roshi or whatever. And he chose at this point Yoseki and we'll see what people end up calling him. So, I'm mentioning this because David Beck was there for the month of May And Christian was there, and Nicole was there, and quite a few other people. And so I'm in daily contact with the practice of these people, these persons. I'm speaking about this because I want our Sangha to kind of study what's

[54:49]

what's lay practice, what's monastic practice, and why and how there are differences. And again, I am always faced by the overriding fact, as I mentioned yesterday, that No lay transmission has ever occurred for more than a few decades or a couple generations. We're here because of monastic succession. But being a lay person is different now than being a lay person a few hundred years ago.

[56:07]

And the conditions and the mixing of teachings and the degree to which we can communicate through and be in touch with each other through the technologies of transportation and communication and the fact that in the West the majority of practitioners are of serious adept practitioners not just believers, are laypersons. In the existential context of my life, I decided to be ordained.

[57:15]

First I found Tassajara for Sukhiroshi. And then, I realized that As I said yesterday, it's the institution he was critical of in Japan, which also still produced it. And here I was involved with presenting Sukershi with the possibility which he asked me to do, of a monastic institution. And the combination that there was no ordained westerner, and that I knew that no lay lineage had ever survived, in order to continue Sukershi's teaching,

[58:33]

I decided to be ordained. And I was ordained the night before the opening of Tassajara. And I decided somehow to experiment with being a lay person at the same time. And then I saw again, as I've mentioned, the immediate and extraordinary transformation Tassajara made for the whole sangha. It wasn't just a small change, it was a Complete, almost complete change.

[59:53]

So my life has been, practice life has been shaped by and forced upon me What happens with monastic practice? At the same time, I have, which wasn't the case in San Francisco, in Crestone in Europe, I have primarily a lay santa. So I'm just simply wondering what to do. Okay, so to go back where I was. I'm in a situation where every day I'm next to and calibrating within my own practice what's happening to Christian.

[61:08]

And then I feel the calibration. with Nicole's practice. And the calibration with David Beck's practice. So, something like which Christian called an insight. I noticed something that, oh, this would work with all three of those persons and others practicing. That's what's needed next. It's like being in a laboratory. Working together. So I start feeling. like I did the other night, during the night with Brother David Steiner-Rost here, what

[62:31]

I reviewed the possibilities of this weekend while I was still in jet lag sleeping. So both intentionally and non-intentionally. These things are put out into the myriad circumstances, the 10,000 things. So feeling the calibration of the Practice with David and Christian and Nicole and others.

[63:36]

Walking down the hill with the bag of breakables, the broken bag of breakables. Seeing the stone appear in the flashlight and then disappear. It occurs to me, ah, that's what I can bring into the situation with Christian and David, Nico and so on. So then I start figuring out how to bring an introduction with them. and then into the Dharma wheel meetings which some of us were meeting in smaller groups and then at some point some weeks later really I think oh I can use the various circumstances of walking down the hill to make this clear

[65:03]

And then I figure out how to talk about it in bolder and then here. But this probably wouldn't happen without the laboratory of the monastic practice. But you can see it's, I hope, of some benefit to us as primarily lay practitioners. So from my point of view, this all is fruitful for me as a way of practicing with our lay sangha. Which has a monastic, but relatively small monastic component.

[66:04]

So anyway, that's part of our discussion of How are we going to be a lay and monastic son? Anyway, I think that's enough for now. And if you're getting tired of hearing about lay and monastic, let me know. And instead we'll talk about monastic and lay. Let's sit for a moment.

[67:06]

There's lay and there's monastic. And then there's the utterly private and personal experience of your own life. And in that utterly private personal experience, Und in dieser vollkommen privaten Erfahrung eures Lebens ist immer die Unruhe der Verwirklichung and the possibility of realization. And what I'm speaking about we could call the incremental, the craft of incremental, not gradual, the craft of incremental enlightenment.

[69:15]

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