Thank you for coming here this afternoon. And we thought of this and doing this this Sunday particularly for people who might be new to practice and looks like not you're not particularly new to practice but Yeah, but I thought of it that way. What do I say to somebody who's new to practice? Because almost all the time I'm speaking about Speaking to people who have been practicing quite a while. But the question of how we enter into practice for the first time and maybe for the first time over and over again.

[01:08]

It's something, yeah, something important. So for those of you, most of you have experienced this as a kind of review, perhaps. So let's start with, yeah, Buddhism is, what is practice? Let's start there. So let's start with Buddhism, or what is practice? Buddhism, practice is the Buddhist response to change. No, we could say, I don't know if you can make a distinction in English, but the recognition of change. I don't know if you can make a distinction in English, but maybe... How do we recognize change?

[02:22]

I mean, everything's changing, but why notice it? Why bring it to our attention? It's obvious that everything's changing. I mean, yeah, sort of obvious. But we also think, we also have ideas of feelings of permanence. Yeah, it's almost a sense of a permanent self. Because the job of consciousness is to show us a predictable world. a predictable, cognizable world.

[03:44]

And it kind of eliminates that which is not predictable. So consciousness tends to make us see things as semi-permanent. Yeah, naturally we need predictability. So we tend to see things in a way that emphasizes their predictability. So... Yeah, so if we're going to notice change, we actually are sort of swimming upstream or backwards against a consciousness.

[04:45]

We need to find some way to remind ourselves of... impermanence, everything changing. And I mean, as common knowledge now, the main everyday practice of Buddhism is mindfulness. Brother David Steindl-Rast, he's an old friend of mine. He's about ten years older than me. He's beginning to look a bit older than me, I think. But we used to look so much alike.

[05:52]

Maybe I'm getting to look alike, I don't know. But anyway, we used to look so much alike. Also vielleicht sehe ich ja auch schon älter aus, aber früher haben wir uns so ähnlich gesehen. Also dass wir unsere, also er hat mein kleines schwarzes Kleidungsstück angezogen, also die Robe und ich seine, und dann haben wir die vertauscht und haben so Vorträge gehalten und haben die Leute etwas verwirrt, wer wer. He's a Viennese who's lived in America most of his adult life. But he's somewhat known in Germany, I know. Anyway, he sent me an email, which I got last night, which said, science proves Buddhists are happier than other people. I don't know if it's true.

[06:58]

I know I'm happier than I was before I started practicing. I don't particularly want to be happier than everyone else. I just want everyone else to be as happy as I am. But anyway, I thought it was a funny thing to get from a Catholic monk. I don't think the promise of happiness... He feels happy enough. As a Catholic monk. Anyway, if there is some, yeah, and there may be some truth to that practice does make you happier or at least deepen your sense of satisfaction.

[08:04]

So again, let's so that everyone knows now that mindfulness is the kind of basic everyday practice. And mindfulness, yeah, it can be, you know, You can understand it as just bringing attention to things, attention to your walking and so forth. But actually it's an informed mindfulness. Informed. Like you drive a car, you're informed about how the car works.

[09:09]

You have knowledge about how the car works. I mean, I don't know how to say it, because it's not really about knowledge, it's about having a certain kind of... Well, what I mean is that you're, in this case, is you're informed that you're noticing everything changing. You're not just noticing, you're noticing that everything's changing. Die Achtsamkeit unter dem Aspekt zum Beispiel sieht, dass sich alle Dinge ändern. Man ist nicht nur achtsam einfach so, sondern man mit dem Hintergrund die Veränderbarkeit zu sehen. You're noticing that everything is impermanent.

[10:12]

Also man bemerkt, dass alles vergänglich ist. And that means then you're noticing that you have a tendency to want things to be impermanent. In fact, I think if you look carefully, you'll see that there's a basic assumption that things are in effect permanent. Mindfulness really means to notice impermanence. To notice change. So that we're emphasizing noticing here. So it's also then to notice noticing. Or noticing the awareness of everything changing.

[11:17]

Now, yeah, these are just words I'm using. Das sind alles nur Worte, die ich verwende. But how can I make it sort of get a tactile sense of noticing that everything changes? Wie kriegt man ein greifbares Gefühl dafür, dass sich alles immer ändert? I think the easiest way, the easiest entry is what I call simply... the pause or to pause. You get in the habit of pausing for things. Now it's a pause that at first appears, you get, you, you, um, Yeah, you intentionally pause.

[12:29]

Also, diese Pause, die taucht zuerst auf. Das ist eine Pause, die man sozusagen absichtlich hervorruft. And after a while, the pause disappears. Und dann nach einer Weile verschwindet diese Pause. But it's a pause, even when it disappears, it never goes away. Aber das ist eine Pause, die selbst wenn sie verschwindet, nie weggeht. And it's a pause that becomes the space of the world. So I could say that mindfulness, when speaking about it today, is to get in the habit of pausing for each object. Not each person. Pause to let the world appear. Consciousness tends to run on, but in awareness you can pause. Yeah, a pause lets awareness appear.

[13:43]

That's the world appear. And the pause lets awareness appear. That's the space of the world appear. Now I'm saying it in various ways to see if you can catch the feeling of it. Because I think such a simple thing, it can be a real entry to practice. To catch the feeling of pausing on each perception. You don't have to worry that, oh, this is going to slow my life down.

[14:47]

Muss sich keine Sorge machen, dass jetzt das Leben dadurch verlangsamt wird. When you practice it, it might slow it down for a little while, but that's okay. Also wenn man das praktiziert, dann tut es vielleicht das Leben ein bisschen verlangsamt für eine kurze Zeit, aber das ist ja nicht so arg. But if you're worried about being efficient, it probably will make you more efficient in the long run, but I shouldn't tell you that. Because I'm not trying to sell a practice like candy. Zazen, bonbon. Zazen, as you know, 40 minutes a day is not always a bonbon. Yeah. The third... The third of the six parameters is patience. The third of the six parameters is patience.

[16:11]

And patience is also this pause. You know, the first... Three of the six parameters. The first is generosity. Which means an openness, yes, a welcoming, an acceptance of the world. And the second is discipline, but discipline here means the ability or willingness to learn from the world. And patience is to wait for the world. To wait for the world to speak to you. And the fourth of the Eightfold Path is energy or exertion. Of the eightfold path.

[17:17]

I mean of the six parameters. It's also in the eightfold path, but anyway. But it also can mean stillness, the energy of stillness. As I've been speaking recently, like noticing the stillness of a tree in motion and in stillness. If you look at a tree, even when it's not moving, you can feel its readiness to move. And its readiness to move is always a readiness also to return to stillness. I think you can see it most clearly in the stillness of a wave.

[18:19]

If you look carefully at a wave, like an exaggerated ocean wave, for example, the shape of the wave is completely its desire to return to stillness. If it didn't, otherwise it would just fly off into the air. But the shape of the wave, the very shape of it, is its attempt to return to stillness. So when you see a wave, no matter how rough it is, etc., unless you're sitting in a little tiny boat, in the shape of the wave you can feel its stillness.

[19:43]

And that is also what I mean, that stillness is also what I mean by a pause. A pause that's in the middle of the activity of a wave. So that stillness is also The energy of the wave. The energy is its returning to stillness. So the fourth of the six paramitas is this energy or even stillness. And the fifth of the six parameters is meditation. And zazen is more like, means not really meditation so much as absorption.

[20:57]

And absorption is the return to stillness. You can feel in yourself in sitting the desire, the return to stillness. And you can also see the contrast of your thinking. I think the artist or the painter or the poet hears some words or sees something and they feel it returning to stillness. The words are returning. Maybe the painter sees a scene and feels the scene becoming a painting, and that becoming a painting is returning to stillness, perhaps.

[22:11]

No, I'm not speaking about poetry as a technique of describing something. What poetry that uses words to touch something that falls out of the words? So zazen is meditation, zazen is this absorption. is a kind of big pause. And it's one of the reasons it's difficult to do. Because it's a pause in the middle of your activity. You have to restructure your life in some way, usually, so that you can have this pause.

[23:43]

And it's a kind of rest, too. It substitutes for sleep. Another bit of candy. Also, es ist tatsächlich auch etwas wie eine Art Ruhe, es ersetzt Schlaf, also hier wieder keine Bonbons. When you really find yourself coming to rest, it is another kind of rest. Und wenn es euch wirklich gelingt, zur Ruhe zu kommen darin, ist es eine andere Art von Erholung oder Ruhe. As when you wake up, you feel rested. So wie man sich erholt fühlt, wenn man aufwacht. And through zazen, you kind of wake up into more clarity in a more settled day. Und in zazen wacht man auf in mehr Klarheit, in einen gelasseneren Tag hinein. Now, if mindfulness practice, as I'm describing it, is to

[24:49]

come into momentary pause, to let each thing appear and speak for itself. And in effect, what you're doing is letting a little awareness appear in the middle of consciousness. Where you don't so much see where things are going or coming from, but you feel the space of the world. But you see the world appear. You feel the space in the world. It's almost like you stop for a minute and let the world rub against you. The pause lets you feel the impermanence in your throughout your body and mind.

[25:59]

It's not just an idea. When you pause for a moment, the object kind of catches you and you feel its presence. And you feel your breath. And your breath is always taking in the world and going out into the world. It's a little phenomenal bridge. Bridge of two phenomena or within phenomena. Okay. So the pause is a kind of bridge or a kind of door. We could say that the pause is a Dharma door.

[27:00]

Now, you know the word dharma means what holds. In effect, what pauses or what holds. So, dharma is what holds. It stays in place in the midst of everything changing. Now again, so what holds, what stays in place? Well, after a while you notice this, you notice that, you notice that, and it dawns on you. that awareness is what stays in place. Now that awareness is often confused with self.

[28:30]

Because there's a big fundamental confusion between the observing mind and the observing self. Denn es gibt eine ganz grundlegende Verwechslung mit dem beobachtenden Geist und dem beobachtenden Selbst. Und dieser beobachtende Geist ist nicht das autobiografische Selbst. Und ihr bemerkt dieses und jenes und so weiter und... So you begin to sort of physically know or intuitively know And you kind of guess, maybe awareness is what stays. But then you'll argue with yourself. You'll say, no, awareness doesn't stay, rocks stay. Yeah, but... But do I have to point out that the rock is your experience of the rock?

[29:48]

Within your world, the rock is your experience of the world. And the rock, you know, it's actually a relationship. Your relationship to it, the relationship to the little rocks underneath it and dirt and so forth. And I'm a big collector of beech stones. And how many beautiful beech stones I've brought home and when they're dry, they're They're different stones. So the beach stone wasn't as permanent as I'd hoped. Even in this case, it may be the awareness... stays more than the stone which is just a focus of relationships.

[31:06]

If you see the stone with the habit of consciousness, you'll tend to see it as permanent. But if you see the stone informed by the wisdom of impermanence, You see the stone in a context where you see its interdependence. So the teachings of Buddhism are interdependence and impermanence. So it means your mindfulness practice is interdependence and impermanence. Yeah, they're just two aspects of each other.

[32:21]

So mindfulness practice is to not only notice impermanence, And notice interdependence. But not just notice with your mind. That doesn't work very well because consciousness keeps taking over your mind. You want to notice it with the awareness that arises from the body. And the body that arises from awareness. So each little time you pause, Brings you into the dharmic world and a little bit out of the karmic world.

[33:32]

Brings you into your breathing of the world. But the study of awareness itself, once you notice that awareness is probably what holds, yeah, but you can't really depend on it. I don't want to depend on awareness. But if everything's changing, We can really only depend on... The idea of dependence is, what can we rely on? What kind of awareness can we rely on? And that's the central... central aspect of the practice of zazen.

[34:49]

To find the habit of this bodily and mental pause, which allows you to see the arising of the world in yourself, Yeah, it's not just the world that's appearing. Thoughts are appearing, mental activities are appearing. Well, how can you notice that and not get caught up in that? Developing the habit of the pause called zazen. Sitting absorption. Mm-hmm. Yeah, now, the most common advice, one of the most common advice for sitting is, you know, let your thoughts come and go.

[36:16]

Don't, as Tsukiroshi always said, don't invite them to tea. In this movie that some of us saw the other night, Enlightenment Guaranteed. I thought brilliant, ironic, funny movie. I enjoyed seeing it. I saw it twice. It's a very serious, I mean, if you haven't seen it, it's a very serious movie that makes fun of practice as well as being a serious movie.

[37:17]

And in completely funny situations, one of the brothers says to the other, just let your thoughts come and go. But even if they make fun of it, it's still a fundamental practice. The fact that you can let your thoughts come and go tells us a great deal about the mind. Because if you can let your thoughts come and go, you don't have to invite your thoughts to tea. Then there's a mind that doesn't come and go. A mind that doesn't have to invite your thoughts to tea.

[38:28]

What mind is that? How can we get a feeling of it? If we think it, it comes and goes. So we can't think it, but maybe we can, but we are it. How does the wave know the water? know the stillness of the water even in its movement. When knowing itself is a kind of movement. Well, the instruction to not invite your thoughts to tea basically shifts your sense to

[39:37]

Awareness and out of consciousness. Das verlagert... Oh, God. Shifts your sense from awareness. Your sense, your sense. Your sense of location, your sense of feeling. Also, okay, das verlagert dein Gefühl für verhaftet sein oder für sein. It shifts it from from consciousness into awareness. Trying to speak English in a precise way and be translated is really quite difficult. Because English is so colloquial. Yeah, it's like Louis said to me last night, this morning, and I said, I think you mean last night. Because in English, last night lasts until you get up.

[40:55]

It's not morning until you get up. So, anyway, there's so many things like that. It's just usage. Your sense shifts from consciousness to awareness. Almost like going to sleep, but you don't You go over the bump into another mind, but you don't go into dreaming mind. You go through a bump, like you go through a bump to go to sleep.

[41:56]

You may not notice it, but if somebody sleeps beside you, you can feel them go over the bump. There's a kind of bump that I can feel in the Zendo when the Zendo goes into Zaza. And you find yourself in a, first of all, usually in a kind of, thoughts are more floating around than in a kind of organized sequence. First you find yourself like that. Yeah, and then when you And that way you begin to feel the field of mind more than the thoughts.

[43:02]

And when you feel the field of mind more, you're feeling awareness itself. And when you feel the field of mind more, you're feeling the field of mind itself, which is to feel awareness in contrast to consciousness. Then, once you have that as a kind of the feel, the observing feel, field. Yeah. Yeah, you can begin to observe the activity of mind itself, of thinking itself.

[44:06]

So now you're mindful of The arising of mental activity. Like you've made this pause much bigger now. You can much more clearly see things arising. Now, in Munich, I decided to talk about practices related to how you... Let thoughts arise and observe them arise. That was just last weekend. But that was three full days and we only have... Another ten minutes or so.

[45:23]

But certainly a big part of practice is learning to observe how the mind functions. And if you can begin to experience how things appear in the mind, You can also begin to feel how things appear in the world. And all that can be rooted or can Open up from the practice of pausing. Just remind yourself in various ways in your activity, pause for things. I don't know what exactly... suggestion to make, aim or change.

[46:40]

You're pausing for the situational network of everything. Everything is a network or a situation. Or you're pausing for mind itself. You pause and let yourself pause and feel yourself noticing something. You don't try to think that noticing, you let that noticing do itself. It's captured in that little poem, you know, sitting quietly doing nothing. Spring comes.

[47:58]

Grass grows by itself. That also emphasizes this little pause. To let things grow by themselves. So once you get used to this pause, like when you're here in the center, when you take a walk, when you first wake up or first go to sleep, you can take those times and feel a little paused and notice what's happening.

[49:02]

Anyway, if you develop the habit of sometimes at least pausing for each thought moment, After a while, the pausing disappears. And it just becomes the space of everything. The space of the world in which things appear. Der Raum der Welt, innerhalb welchem alles auftaucht. Yeah, anyway. That's, I think, for anyone, just practicing this sense of a pause.

[50:09]

Also, ich denke, für jeden einfach nur dieses Gefühl für diese Pause einmal zu praktizieren. Will become a teaching which opens up mindfulness practice. opens up awareness for you in contrast to consciousness and opens you up into the practice of sasen. That's enough. So do we have time for some discussion or should we just stop or shall we have a stretch? Anybody want to talk about anything? I've answered all possible questions. After a lecture like this, we should have a pause.

[51:20]

But maybe the pause is the rest of your life. Anyway, thank you for joining us this Sunday afternoon. Thank you for translating. You're welcome. This is by a Korean. I always liked this girl. And it's a kind of wild kanji moo. And mu means emptiness.

[52:21]

And emptiness means the pause. And it's quite a dynamic pause. What would you like to speak about? Now, don't tell me you all came back to have someone else speak. I'm assuming you all came back because you each have something you want to say, even Valentine. He's gotten farther and farther toward Valentine.

[53:24]

Even though he came here all the way from Ireland. You've come so far, you could come, you know, right? Anyway, what would anybody like to say? Yes? Not yet. A question that's coming from Sarin, just before your talk. In Sarin, the space of not thinking so much that... felt very precious in the sense of the thoughts when approach came was so precious. . It felt like maybe a bottle of soap.

[54:29]

Very tender. If you move a little bit, maybe it's gone. and that each thought, the individual thoughts that came, felt so precious, in contrast to other thoughts, where I had the feeling that they were not precious, because they were recurring and could now stop. In contrast, the thoughts felt so precious The thoughts felt precious. Also thoughts felt precious, the thoughtless space, but also some thoughts. In contrast to normally when thoughts are coming the same all the time, I rather wish they would stop coming.

[55:34]

This time was different. And then I wondered how to work with turn words, phrases, in relation to this pose of space without pose. In this context, I just asked myself how one works with this, I don't know, German term, or [...] how one works with this, I don't know, Just pausing. I find it easily connected to daily activity, quite easy, but in Zazen this time I felt, May I put it into the space or not?

[56:38]

Was there a question that came out of that? At the beginning of the question, I just wondered, in that moment, is it too precious to put a word into this space? Well, I would say, first of all, practice is simply what you're doing, noticing such things. And to some extent, gently questioning such things. And I think when we feel mind in our thoughts, our thoughts feel precious. Like when you feel the body in the voice. When the voice, we can make sounds. But the voice seeks words and the body.

[58:33]

And when the voice finds both words and the body, then there's some presence in what is said and so forth. So I think when we feel the body and mind in our thoughts, it's not the same kind of thinking. And this kind of sense of it being a bubble... At first it's like that. And for a while, maybe quite a while, not just at first. But eventually... What is first felt as a bubble becomes the most stable thing in our life.

[59:50]

Someone else want to bring something in? Yeah. I can get a pretty clear feeling for pausing I can get a pretty clear feeling for pausing I can get a pretty clear feeling for pausing And that this is a much more profound and bigger perception of myself and the world.

[60:52]

And it's not so difficult to do it in particular situations or in moments, certain moments. But I notice it is very difficult to make that more continuous. Or the whole life or the kind of content of life or the effort of life to make that. To kind of direct those towards this. And that which constitutes me in ordinary life, my thoughts and all these things? then they kind of rebel against us.

[62:05]

And they kind of even more powerfully demand their position. They even make me bad conscience or something like that, that I want to get rid of. I'd like to ask what basic inner directionality or motivation or something can help to strengthen such a decision. And those difficulties which appear when you really try to find your basis right there and to kind of carry this in and through. So there's a joy to find it, and I spoke to Nicole about it recently.

[63:34]

That's one thing. That's an important point, but it seems to me that That there seems to be something else existing, too. It's a joy to find what? To find myself more in these moments of pause, to find myself there. But there's other things that can help. I understand. But I feel it's not the whole of you. So I see that there is joy in finding myself more in this pausing, but I have the feeling that there is something else to it. Mostly, anything you experience, even for a moment, can be all of your experience if you direct your practice in that way.

[64:42]

Okay, so if you know that, and you know that through faith and practice, so you know that's possible now. Then the question is, do you want it to be possible? Because you are, we all are, many persons, really, almost. And the more we, and when we start to practice, we begin to notice that how clearly, like at work, we're a different person than we are at home. And even in with one person you become a person you don't like too much, and with another person you become someone you like.

[65:59]

And in a way this is exactly the subject of the first koan in the Shoyaroku, the Book of Equanimity. The Buddha says nothing. He gets up and sits there a moment and gets down. And Manjushri then points out that, ah, this is the world-honored one who, you know. And then the commentary says that Manjushri, he's always leaking. And Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom, but he's always leaking.

[67:09]

Leaking means you're saying unnecessary things, you're involved in the world, and so forth. So in that sense, you know, the whole book of equanimity is a kind of leaking. So it's a kind of pulse or dialogue. You... Sometimes they are one kind of person, sometimes another kind of person. And the practice of accepting both, the practice of acceptance itself, begins an underlying transformation.

[68:18]

And the more you get familiar with this experience, when you feel your own silence or more settled, the more you get familiar with this feeling of silence, your own silence, your stillness, or you feel this pause in which the world appears, that somehow is actually more powerful than our activity. And that pause becomes the kind of space of all of our activity. So we're accepting our activity and we're accepting the pause and the pause slowly surrounds our activity.

[69:35]

And realizing that is a kind of faith. The faith that if you just continue, whatever should be will be. And if it won't be, it's okay. Acceptance is like that. Yes. Yes. When I look what influence my sitting practice has into my everyday life, then I see a lot of wonderful things.

[70:43]

I get more open, more silent, get more centered, happier, and so on. I have another side which appears a lot recently. I don't understand. I think it's also connected to my practice. There are states where too many things kind of jump at me. And I lose structure, the space, the kind of view about it. And so I'm kind of just subject of it, or I'm just, you know... You're subject to it.

[71:46]

Yeah, I'm just helpless towards it. Not a victim, perhaps, but subject to it. Really I'm kind of... Exposed, yeah. Exposed is a good word. I'm just like spreading parts in those things. It's really not nice. Well, I hate to keep saying this, but that's why we have monastic practice. And it gives you a safe place for this to happen. It's one of the things that makes lay practice a bit harder.

[72:47]

Because, as I say, practice is restorative and transformative. We can say that practice restores us to a kind of wholeness, restores us to a trust in ourself and the world which we might not have been lucky enough to have since childhood. it restores us to a wholeness that we entrust in ourselves and the world that we might not have been lucky enough to have since infancy.

[73:51]

or even if we did have we need to renew but it also is transformative and it's transformative in one of the ways it's transformative We begin to change the boundaries of mind. The structure of mind actually changes. How mind is structured. And I think that it's even a physiological change. And as that's happening, The way we've kept ourselves in order, we start losing that ability.

[75:18]

That can be kind of scary. disturbing at least. So as a lay practitioner, you have to find a kind of craft or sensible way to let this happen gently. Without going, yeah, gently or slowly. And sometimes it's better to say you're sitting two periods a day. Sometimes it's better to sit maybe one period a day for a while. Or kind of restore your old habits and feel them. It's a little bit like the shift from being armored, protected, to being not armored but sealed.

[76:36]

And as we give up our armor, we have to find some other way to seal ourselves or stabilize ourselves. But one of the good habits is to keep coming back to your breath in the midst of things. But one of the good habits is that you can come back to your breath again and again. When attention is inseparable from the breath, that tends to seal us. I don't know how those words work in German.

[77:52]

He has a sort of negative feeling, I think. In English... In other words, here's this word leaking. Not only do we leak, but we also are vulnerable for what disturbs us. And actually you want things to disturb you. And that relates to Boris' question. You don't want to The bodhisattva is one who can be disturbed. We could say the Buddha is one who can't be disturbed. But the Buddha is timeless, and the Bodhisattva is in this particular period in our history, in our life.

[79:00]

So the Bodhisattva can be disturbed, but can return to stillness. And returning, we can say that when you're not disturbed by input or you don't leak, we could say that's a kind of being sealed, but not being armored. But I don't know. If I knew German, I would try to find words. didn't carry negative baggage. But I'd need a bunch of advisors, Marie-Louise, Valentin, and others to help me.

[80:08]

Yeah. Do you have any ideas how you... That's the best distinction I've been able to make between armored and sealed. Maybe centered, but centered has some negative, not negative, but centered sounds too simple. But breath is great because you allow yourself to go out, but you pull yourself back in on each inhale. Sometimes you can emphasize the outward movement, and sometimes you can emphasize the inward movement, just returning everything.

[81:12]

What I'm saying is actually very basic to Zen meditation. Some of the early studies they did, you know, wiring you up with EEG and all that, of Hindu and Buddhist meditators, Hindu and Zen meditators. The Hindu meditators... habituated to input. They made input their habit. No, when there was input, they... Well, I'll give you an example. For the Hindu... I'm not putting down Hinduism.

[82:13]

This is something just different. The Hindus were really able to fully... sit, sometimes they sit even in very carefully protected spaces. Okay, this style of meditation. So when some input came, a bell or something like that, and the brain waves would go And the tenth time it came, it went... And the fifteenth or twentieth time, there was no reaction. They just... They didn't hear or feel the sound. There was no reaction to it. They shut out the reaction. But for the accomplished Zen meditators, the line just went up, down, returned.

[83:32]

There was none of this. They just heard it. They didn't react to it. So there was bing, and they went ting, ting. The hundredth time, bing, ting, ting. There was none of this getting used to it. That's technically locating yourself in the third skanda, percept only. You just hear it. There's no thought about it. You just hear it, just feel it. And for the, what I would call, the non-languaged, memory-based narrative.

[84:34]

And for the, what I would call, the non-languaged, memory-based narrative. non-language-based narrative. I can't do this. I can't remember. Non-language-based narrative. In other words, Sophia sees a ladder. She can climb the ladder. And it's memory based. And it's a narrative of the world that's going on all the time. But it's not in language. I'm trying to find words for it.

[86:17]

That embankment, like the banks of a stream. Which is most of what is happening in the world, actually. It's not our thinking about it. It's like the stream is running through... The stream is running through a stream bed. What's most important, the water or the stream bed? Well, the water sometimes can change the stream bed, but mostly it's the stream bed which shapes the water. We're functioning in the stream bed of the world. And that is we enter into through percept-only knowing. So Zen practice and Buddhist practice in general emphasizes this third skanda, this percept-only knowing, as a basis for identity.

[87:34]

Not for the whole of our identity by any means, but as a basis. Sorry, that was a little bit technical. I've been having fun with that recently. How to say it? Okay, something else? Yes? What you described as the stillness, awareness, that what's whole, what do you see is the difference to the Christian idea of soul? or as in the Catholic times, maybe despite that they think maybe soul can continue after death.

[88:43]

German, please. For me, the question is, what Washington described today in the lecture, this silence, What's the difference to the Christian? No, it's a good question. But I can't answer it at all from the Christian side. I just don't know enough. And I know how wrong most commentators are about Buddhism if they don't know it from the inside. So unless I knew Christianity from the inside, I wouldn't dare to make a comment. But certainly when you begin to notice that awareness and the observing mind

[89:58]

have more continuity and presence than any other aspect of our knowing, then it clearly resonates with the idea of a permanent self or a soul or something like that. But the... But in Zen practice at least, this sense of even an imperturbable mind is imperturbable in its relationships. It's never a separate thing. It's always in relationships. It's unperturbed in its relationships.

[91:29]

So it doesn't continue independent of its relationships. Now, some Buddhists think there's a mind that continues independent of relationships. Es gibt Buddhisten, die glauben, es gibt einen Mind, der unabhängig von Beziehungen besteht. And generally it's those Buddhists who need as part of their teaching is reincarnation. Und das sind hauptsächlich die Buddhisten, die in ihrer Lehre die Reinkarnation brauchen. I think they then construe they construe is to take something and twist it a little so it fits your view. They construe the sense of an observing mind into something that's separate from the body and then they can have

[92:37]

the idea of reincarnation or rebirth. But Buddhism basically, and from the Buddhist time, says this isn't such a continuation. It doesn't mean that the... There seems to be something more complex than just simple death, but that's a different subject.

[93:28]

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