Then it's addressed to Shariputra. As if Shariputra was asking questions. And Shariputra was maybe the smartest or something like that of the ten main great disciples of the Buddha. Anyway, he was known for his understanding. And he died supposedly a few months before the Buddha died. Anyway, these are probably real people we're talking about here, not just myths. And Shariputra in this sutra represents early Buddhism. And the sort of smartest guy in early Buddhism. And so we're now telling Shariputra what the Mahayana teaching is. And Shariputra is especially sometimes identified with understanding the Abhidharma.

[01:03]

And the Abhidharma is the study of how the mind functions. And to study how the mind functions from such an early time is the result of a world where people feel they're creating their own world. This kind of teaching probably doesn't arise in a world which thinks that it was created. So this is a teaching that assumes a world that's always in the midst of being created.

[02:32]

And you are always in the midst of being created. And you don't have to be stuck with the feeling, oh, I'm this kind of person. Yeah, partly of course true. There's a lot of momentum to our personality and physical cellular identity. But still we're We're in the midst of creating ourselves and our world. And it's pretty hard to notice this. It's one of the reasons we sit down and become still to see if we can notice something. If you're always moving, you don't notice so much. So we sit down and begin to notice the way in which we are in fact movement.

[03:47]

And the more we see that movement, feel our way into that movement, we see that movement can be directed. and is already directed. And you can affect this movement. If you don't really know this, it's hard to practice. Somehow you have to come into knowing our own movement. Our inner and outer movement. And to know that we are part of this movement and somehow are able to influence this movement. And this movement, this is also strange, how does the movement influence the movement?

[04:48]

Mm-hmm. These were the questions these folks asked themselves who developed the Abhidharma. So this is addressed to Shariputra to say, yes, the Abhidharma which observes how the mind exists. Yeah, this is a great teaching. But it's also empty. It's also something we can also need to become free even of wisdom. The wisdom of how the mind exists. And the Mahayana shift is to the shift of the stability that arises through being free from investing yourself in a physical or substantial reality.

[06:16]

Okay. The Mahayana rises... when it recognizes that true stability arises when we are free from the belief in or clinging to a substantial reality. Okay. Now the main thing we cling to is the sense there's an entity called self. But we can't see so clearly that the self is empty. The self doesn't want us to see that, even though the self is changing. So you notice in this sutra, does it say the self is empty?

[07:18]

It only says the five skandhas are empty. So this means that the first step in the practice is to change yourself, your sense of self, into the five skandhas. Because you can see that the five skandhas are empty. you can experience them as empty it's very difficult to experience the self as empty so here Shariputra is addressed the way you might address yourself your own skepticism form does not differ from emptiness And that's interesting. It follows directly from seeing that the five skandhas are empty.

[08:27]

So that's quite a jump, actually. We, through practice, see that the five skandhas are empty. And we somehow intuitively know then, yes, then everything is empty. Well, each thing is empty. There's no generalization emptiness. And this is very important to understand. Okay, so, O Shariputra, form, it does not differ from emptiness. And emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is exactly emptiness. That which is emptiness is exactly form.

[09:32]

The question is, you know, you've been practicing Buddhism, some of you, quite a long time. Do you really Find in your experience that form is exactly emptiness. Now, I think that one of the reasons this sutra is read so often is we enjoy this phrase. I mean, the real mantra of this sutra is form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And although we don't quite understand it or know how to practice it, we like the feeling or the sensation of it. Or that was true of me. It took me a long time before I knew the practice of form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

[10:38]

But I always liked the phrase. It's very much a kind of advertising phrase. It's a good slogan. There was a soap called Doze when I was a kid. D-U-Z. It was spelled D-U-Z. And it was like suds. Like suds is S-U-D-S. So somehow it was like suds reversed. Suds is soap suds. You know what suds are? You know in dish water, all the little soapy bubbles? Yeah. That's called suds. Aha, schaum. Schaum, yeah. Okay. So suds was reversed, was sort of does.

[11:40]

Aha. Also schaum umgedreht auf Englisch heißt das. Like now they have a soap called Tide. Do you have that in Germany? Das gibt jetzt auch eine Seife, die heißt Gezeiten. So there's a phrase, tides in, dirts out, in English, you know? And there is the sentence, Tides in... Dirt's out, right? Tides in, Schmutz out. Okay. So, anyway, the soap does seem to have disappeared. Because I guess other soaps did it better. But the phrase that was the little mantra was, does, does everything. And I went around as a kid, does, does everything here. But it wasn't really true, but then I discovered form is emptiness.

[12:41]

Emptiness is form. So some advertising genius thought of this back in the... the first part of the two millenniums ago. Yeah, the best way to make Mahayana understandable is let's create this phrase, form this emptiness. And I think you like it. People tell me this. I always hear people say, oh, everything's empty. They don't know what the heck they're talking about, but they say everything is empty. So somehow the phrase works, because they think they understand, so pretty soon maybe they will. Okay. So... And then this phrase is applied back to the Abhidharma, to the five skandhas, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.

[13:54]

And then it's, oh, Shariputra is again addressed. All dharmas are marked with emptiness. So now we have the, again, yes, if you can find yourself, like the beginning of the Genjo koan, When all things are the Buddha Dharma, then there are Buddhas and sentient beings. Practice and realization. Birth and death. And again, as I've often said to you, if you don't think Buddhas are possible, there's no reason to practice Buddhism. And this is also the shift from the early Buddhism to Mahayana. The early Buddhism imagined it was a long, slow process to realize Buddhahood. Several or many lifetimes.

[15:21]

And a lot of practice. And your practice, it didn't involve the world so much. But the shift in Mahayana was a shift in an understanding of reality. It was present in early Buddhism, too. But the emphasis in understanding reality, the emphasis became stronger in Mahayana Buddhism. And now we have a bodhisattva who doesn't even care about nirvana. He's not trying to get to nirvana. And if he could, he's not going to do it anyway because it's much nicer to help people.

[16:22]

It's awfully selfish to get nirvana. I'm enlightened and you're not. This is not so good. But then you're sort of forced into if enlightenment isn't something way in the future. And yet people are sometimes enlightened. Enlightenment must be present here. But it's not in the future. It's got to be somewhere. So it's got to be in the present. So how do we then understand a present which is also enlightened? This is a pretty, I mean, I don't know, maybe it's an ordinary idea to you, but I think it's pretty far out.

[17:34]

And it puts you into a rather extraordinary practice. I mean, a practice that used to be just for shamans, mystics, medicine men, etc. And here's a practice that we're trying to say everyone can be part of. Or everyone at least can know they exist in a world like this. And at least if we know we exist in such a world, we create a Buddha field in which a Buddha is more likely to appear. Mm-hmm. So this kind of understanding is behind the sutra.

[18:36]

So when all things are Buddhadharma here, yes, if you begin to see that all things are Buddhadharma, then it's much easier to see that all things are also emptiness. Or are simultaneously empty. Because it's not that everything is empty, it's that everything is simultaneously formed and simultaneously empty. Okay, so all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear. Now, what kind of world would we live in if nothing appeared nor disappeared? And again, please don't think this is something different than you know or can understand.

[19:43]

You've got to understand the teaching as if you wake up in the morning, call up your aunt, and say, Tante, dear, did you know that all dharmas are marked with emptiness? Yeah, and they do not appear nor disappear. And she says, oh, of course I know that, dear. I mean, somehow it's got to be in this kind of realistic context. Yeah. But maybe you've had the experience sometimes where everything seems in place. Everything seems just as it is. Nothing needs to be changed or nothing needs to be... You don't need to do anything. That's a taste of or an experience close to They do not appear nor disappear.

[20:57]

So we're talking here about often experiences we already have that we don't value or don't notice or don't know how to shift our life in such a way that these have a continual, these moments of everything being just as it is, have a continual, continuous presence in our life. And practice is simply to make that shift. I'm not going very fast in this, am I? I'm sorry.

[21:58]

Okay. And not only do they not appear nor disappear, they're not good or bad, not tainted nor pure. And they're not going anywhere. They don't decrease, they don't increase. Therefore, in emptiness, no form. Now we're back to the skandhas again. They're in this state of mind or mode of mind in which you know things as simultaneously empty. Let's not say in this state of mind or mode of mind in which everything is empty. That's a deluded statement. Let's not say that this mode or state of mind in which everything is empty.

[23:02]

For to state it that way is some kind of, a little, something deluded. That's like saying everything is form. So let's say in that mode of mind in which everything is simultaneously empty, there's no form, feelings, perceptions, impulses or consciousness. And there's no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. You know, Dungsan, one of our main lineage ancestors, practiced with the local teacher. Er übt, praktizierte mit dem lokalen Lehrer.

[24:10]

And they chanted this, you know, no eyes, no ears, no nose, etc. Und sie rezitierten das, nicht Auge, nicht Ohr, nicht Nase, nicht so. And he went to his teacher and asked the obvious question. Und er ging zu seinem Lehrer und fragte die offensichtliche Frage. And said, what does this mean? I have eyes, ears, nose. Und sagte, was bedeutet das? Ich habe Augen, Ohren, Nase. And the teacher said, you're too good for me. I have to send you to a great teacher. Because most of us read this, no eyes, no ears, no nose, and we don't stop and say, but I have eyes and ears and nose. What the devil, I almost said something else, does this mean? If you actually say, okay, if it says this, and I do have eyes and ears, what does it mean? You better go to a great teacher. Because you're obviously then a person who asks things and expects to find out. And is willing to pay the price of finding out.

[25:34]

Unless you want to fall back, as we discussed yesterday, into your convenient delusions. What does Frank Sinatra say? He forgives people for anything that gets them through the day. You can go that way or you can go Buddha's way. I mean, both are okay. Yeah. Frank Sinatravara. Okay. So no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. These are the vijnanas or the 18 constituents. And no object of seeing and hearing, etc. No color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch.

[26:51]

No mind object. And no realm or what appears when there's the object of perception, the organ of perception in the field that appears. no realm or ayatana of eyes or no realm until and then the whole list until no realm of mind consciousness no ignorance and also no extinction of it And this is the part I like, no old age and death. But also no extinction of it.

[27:52]

No suffering, no origination. No origination, no stopping. No path. Everything's taken away. What's left? What's left when you take everything away? No cognition. Also no enlightenment. No attainment, no path. With nothing to attain. Now I practiced this, not knowing exactly I was practicing this, with the phrase... for a year and a quarter, no place to go and nothing to do. I actually didn't understand the whole Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu process of negation. But I practiced it somehow through some intuition of being immersed in zazen and spending time with my teacher.

[28:57]

And seeing what a busy, compulsive, crazy person I was, I decided to negate myself at one of the most fundamental levels. I wasn't yet fully working with the five skandhas. But I took the phrase, no place to go and nothing to do. Now, There was hardly a thought I had which wasn't about going somewhere.

[30:00]

Or doing something. I noticed when I sat Zazen and sat on buses and walked around and worked in my warehouse. Or read books. Every thought was either about doing something or going somewhere. So I decided not to negate the thoughts. I've decided intuitively to negate the going part and the doing part. So every time a thought came up where there was a going aspect, I said, there's no place to go. Every time a thought came up with a doing aspect, I said, there's nothing to do. So for a year and a half, a year and a quarter it was, about, I repeated this little mantra I'd made up. No place to go and nothing to do.

[31:30]

And I should say that there was about two and a half months where I forgot it. And then one day it came, I don't know, I just completely forgot about it for two and a half months. Then one day I was walking along and suddenly I remembered and I was saying it again. And my practice had developed to the point where I didn't say to myself, you stupid person, you forgot for two and a half months You're a failure. How could you forget? I just started again. Because after all, there was no place to go and nothing to do. What could it possibly matter whether I did the practice or not? There was nothing to attain. So I started up again. And as I said, after about 15 months,

[32:38]

Suddenly I found myself in a place where there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. I sort of became a person you could put somewhere and if you didn't tell him to do anything, he'd just stay there. A month later you come back and you're still sitting there. So some people do get mad at me. Come on, there's a lot to do. We've got a plane to catch. Oh, there's no place to go. Anyway, so there's some bad sides to these practices. Ah, we have to stop soon. Well, there's no place to go and nothing to do. So this is a good place to stop. Thank you very much. Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji

[33:56]

Oh, you're a virgin, say God damn. Oh, you're a virgin, say God damn. Oh, you're a virgin, say God damn. Die führenden Wesen sind sagenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Der Weg des Bullen ist unerfremdlich. Ich gelobe, ihn zu erreichen. Kho jen jen ni byo gno wa Yako sen ba gwo ni wa Ayo koto kakashi

[36:08]

Mare Makenmonji Jujutsu Rukoto Etari Ewa Kwan Yorai No Shin Jitsun Yokeshi Tate Matsuran A newly-admitted, over-the-top and perfect Lama will surely be among the hundred-thousand-million-Kaipers only rarely. Now that I can see him and belong to him, I would like to receive the truth of the Tathāgata. So I've heard several people mention yesterday, someone said something about why are there so many rituals or forms in Zen?

[37:55]

And there's the usual questions about why is everybody wearing black and things like that. I don't know how to answer those questions. I never made a rule we should wear black, just people started doing it. Once you have three or four or five people, then other people start doing it. Why do so many people wear blue jeans? I don't know. Some kind of uniform or costume. But it is true that in Japanese Buddhism, black is the default position.

[39:07]

Default in a computer, you know, the default position is... What's the word? The fallback position, the standard. If you don't know what to do, you buy black. Maybe you could open one window down at the end. Yeah, pretty please. What? Oh, then you can't hear. Okay, all right. In Korea, it tends to be a blue, something like this. A gray or blue. Yeah. Maybe in America, it should be blue denim. Which just happened to be a cheap cloth that the Haas and Koshland families developed blue jeans, you know, Levi's.

[40:29]

Koshland. But there is a feeling of... But one difference is, I think, that there's not so much emphasis on how clothes look, but how they feel. And the clothes are meant to articulate the energy of the body. So you wouldn't put, for instance, a belt around your waist in a yogic culture because it cuts you off here in the soft part. You put the belt around your hip bone. And you tend to create clothes which allow you to adjust your body heat. And as I've pointed out many times, the tendency is to create clothes that your body is free inside rather than free outside.

[41:50]

We tend to shape our clothes to our body, and in Asia they tend to make clothes that your body feels very loose inside, but outside it's just big pieces of cloth. Issey Miyake made a fortune noticing this. Because he designs clothes along this yogic custom of having freedom inside the cloth, but he designs them to Western taste. So as most of you notice, it is easier to sit in a skirt than it is in pants. But my daughters never liked me picking them up at high school. Aber meine Tochter hat es nie gemacht, wenn ich sie von der High School abgeholt habe.

[43:16]

Because I was the only father who at least publicly wore silk skirts. Denn ich war der einzige Vater, der zumindest draußen auf der Straße Seidenröcke trug. Wait around the corner, Dad, they'd say. Warte um die Ecke herum, Papa. And the rituals are, you know, from my... I think what you mean mostly is explained by the difference between mental space and bodily space. And I sometimes say somatic space, but I get the feeling that... This word somatic is kind of unfamiliar for Germans.

[44:23]

But it's like in the psyche and somatic or psychosomatic. But I haven't found the right word. Sometimes I say embodied space. But I'm trying to find ways to talk about this. Now, language is, let's say language is an expression of mental space, primarily at least for us. And in language you have, it's quite precise. This, this that I'm holding, is a lotus teaching staff. Das ist ein Lotus-Lehrstab.

[45:36]

So you have to have this, comma, that I'm holding, comma, is, this is quite precise. Also das Beistrich, was ich halte, Beistrich, ist ein Lotus-Lehrstab. Das ist recht genau. But the same sense of punctuation and grammar is in the body in physical space. Maybe in the way acupuncture is very precise. As you know, it makes a difference whether you poke the needle here or here. Zen practice and yoga culture comes out of not just an emphasis on the body, but an actualization of bodily space. Now, what is... So I thought maybe I should take a little aside, seeming aside from the Heart Sutra.

[46:58]

And try again to speak about this. Partly from the point of view of the five skandhas. Now it's assumed, all right, let's go back to already connected. There's a Chinese Taoist and Buddhist practice maxim saying something like already connected. So there's an assumption in yogic culture that phenomena and the body are simultaneously interflowing, something like that. And a lot of the practices are aimed at opening you to this experience.

[47:59]

Perhaps the way if you find the ability to speak clearly using your language so that you can say fairly precisely what you mean There's a flow of energy, let's say mental energy, into the language and so forth, back and forth. And when your body becomes embodied as space, there's a flow of energy all the time from phenomena. There's a flow of energy all the time. And this is often connected with ideas of longevity and even immortality.

[49:15]

Because it was observed in China particularly that people who achieved this stayed young. Because it was especially observed in China that people who achieve this, stay young. And then they went so far that they said, yes, if we can stay young, then let us live forever. But that didn't work for everyone. So if you're used to, you know, it's hard to describe something like, how do you know the difference between mental space and embodied space? Because I'm sure we all know the difference.

[50:16]

I don't think we all emphasize the difference, but we all know the difference. Or you've noticed that you know it. Okay, now in the five skandhas. The first is consciousness. And the second is mental formations. And the third is perception. And the fourth is feeling. And the fifth is form. Now, this doesn't make, in this order, it doesn't make much sense. And as someone said yesterday, it's all combined in one event.

[51:19]

But, you know, if you do psychotherapy or something, often you try to do associative thinking. Free association. And already, just staying in a mind of free association is considered therapeutic. So already, if you do that, you're separating and using one's gandha. And the practice of the skandhas is to slow them down and see them as layers. Now, we could divide our mental processes up into other layers. the wisdom of Buddhism says these are the most effective layers to divide mental processes into.

[52:44]

No, I mean, I sort of feel I'm going against grace and instant enlightenment. Somehow we often expect, well, we expect chemistry to be hard work, but religion to be, I don't know, happen automatically or something. But serious Zen practice is a kind of physics or chemistry. Yes, there are enlightenment experiences, turning around experiences. But that just opens you to really understanding how you function. And transforming how you function. So emptiness, even if you imagined it as a goal, emptiness itself is, you know, nothing.

[54:01]

I mean, by definition. It's a condition that changes your life. It's perhaps a door or something like that. So I suggest if you want to work with the five skandhas, it's easier to do in meditation than in ordinary activity. You notice how when you are doing zazen you end up with an active associative mind. In fact, as ordinary consciousness is subdued, it sort of slips into the body like, as I say, water into sand.

[55:02]

So we usually have the Zendo a little bit dark and we lower our eyes so they're neither in sleeping posture nor waking posture. And this is a very precise communication. And we usually sit with our... There's several ways to sit. If you sit this way, as some people like to do, there's a more open feeling, receiving feeling. From the Zen point of view, it's not as concentrated. Partly because it moves the arms forward of the body. So ideally you want your arms, at least in the traditional Zen way of sitting, beside the body.

[56:29]

Coming down from the shoulder. And then you put your hands together. Thumbs together. And this creates a circulation of energy in this circle. And this circle then works with a circle that goes this way in your body. And that circle also works with a circle that joins where the tongue touches the top of the mouth. Now, until you really settle your mental activity, it's very hard to notice these energies. But, for instance, in China, in Taoist practice, mostly you concentrate on these energies. And they speak about one energy in the same way Zen speaks about one mind.

[57:36]

One energy in many manifestations. And their practice, and Buddhist practice too, at this yogic level, is to pay attention to your energy. So you don't have mindfulness, you have energyfulness. And you get so that you can feel your energy almost like a kind of white globe in your body. And you can move this down in your body or up in your body or fulfill your body. And it gives you a feeling of vitality and presence and you can extend it so it's not limited to the body.

[58:39]

Now I'm telling you these things just, I don't know, why not tell you? And also to give you an idea of what you're getting yourself involved in. If you want to do this practice, I just want to make sure you know you'll never come to the end of it. Ich möchte einfach, dass ihr ganz sicher seid, ihr werdet sie niemals ausschöpfen können. So we, in our whole lifetime, can only do a little bit of it. Wir können in unserer Lebensspanne nur ein bisschen davon machen. And you become more... you become more proprioceptively or bodily aware instead of mentally aware. For instance, when I'm sitting between Gisela and Paul in the morning, I feel Gisela on my left arm.

[60:02]

And I feel Paul on my right arm. And it's quite different. I'm sort of quite curious. I observe the difference. And I know for sure that if I turn my posture and face the wall, the Gisela feeling would shift to my other arm. And I can feel how concentrated they are in their zazen. And then when I bow, During service I can feel, oh, this is the Gisela arm going down and this is the Paul arm going down. Because it stays, the feeling of Paul stays in my arm and Gisela in the other arm for a while. And it helps concentrate my own body. And as I've told you before, but they've done studies which show, I think they've only done it up to 12 or 13 people.

[61:17]

But if you have a group of people meditating together, very quickly all their metabolisms come into, they're not touching each other, but all their metabolisms come into sync. And their brain waves and so forth. And that's happening right now in this room. which allows me to talk about these things. Now, I don't mean that next time you do zazen you should sit there and say, boy, I don't like that guy on my arm. And I like this pretty lady on my right arm much better. This is a misuse of the idea And in any way each of you is going to feel these things somewhat differently.

[62:36]

But this is not some magical power. It's simply a matter of being able to notice physical differences. And sustain the noticing of those physical differences. There's a word in English, eidetic, e-i-d-e-t-i-c. E-I-D-E-T-I-C, eidetic, which means precise visual imagery. And it's sometimes used like people have eidetic dreams. Okay, so, but I mean, I suppose that you've had dreams in which there are very precise visual imagery.

[64:00]

And if you have such a dream, sometimes the visual imagery is very not only precise, it kind of holds space. And this is something equivalent to the way one sees in somatic space. things tend to be very precise the color is very specific and many shades and you can see the difference for instance there is a shop in Kyoto There's a whole street in Kyoto which sells thread, silk thread.

[65:12]

And it always amuses me, these cultural differences. Yeah, because here it's kind of even hard to find silk thread. So here you have a whole street of nothing but stores selling silk thread. And what really blew me away was one store specializes only in shades of purple. These are distinctions we just don't make. Because we have emphasized the development of mental space. And the mental distinctions are much less than the physical distinctions. I mean, language can't begin to name how many greens are there in those bushes and garden.

[66:24]

There are simply, I mean, thousands of shades of green in front of me. And you tend to see in this way I'm speaking, space, I don't know how to say this, space is a lot of objects. There's the objects of the leaves and trees and so forth. And all the spaces among the objects are like objects.

[67:27]

So you see a very layered space. So I'm trying to, you know, we don't have to go to Mars. We don't have to go into meditation. To discover ways of being that are new to us and we can explore. Now, I can look at this tree. I can focus on it. And it tends to hold in space. And I can kind of enlarge it. And I can shift to look at something else, the stone over there. Well, in zazen you get so you can do this too.

[68:34]

Various things start floating into your visual, internal visual sphere. And when your mental activity is more calm, I don't mean all the time, but just for a few moments perhaps calmer. You can just examine things. You can choose to look at one thing rather than another. You can choose to look at a procession of figures coming up from a curved staircase and going off to your right. And you can decide to examine each figure. You can even decide to ask one of them to step out of line and come over and talk to you. Or you can shift to look at some plant or light or some other kind of formation that doesn't have names.

[69:46]

And then I'm beginning. This is just if you sit a long time with some good teachings, you know what you're doing, You begin to develop what I call interior skills, not inner skills. And I remember when I first found that I could choose to focus on one thing or another, like I can choose to focus on one thing or another in the garden. And really study it, like it was a kind of outside that was inside. Well, first I was just surprised that it could be done. And then surprised that we live in such a complex world.

[70:58]

And this kind of practice is to develop our interior knowing as well as our exterior knowing. And to relate our exterior knowing and interior knowing. Okay. Now, partly I'm saying this because this sutra comes completely out of meditation practices. And we can understand this five skandhas here first of all as having no own being which means in this context they're related to everything. And there are a descent into a bodily intelligence and bodily world.

[72:03]

Descent. Or perhaps an ascent. Okay. Now it's been discovered that the more you rest in the form skandha, the more you activate this bodily space. Okay, so let's look at the skandhas again. So we have consciousness.

[73:05]

And most of us, again, are just conscious and we don't think of what constructed consciousness. We see the house in the room, but we don't see how the room was built. And we hardly see at all the plumbing and electrical systems that make the house work. So this is a teaching about how you construct your own consciousness. Or how your own consciousness is already constructed. So the five skandhas are the way Buddhism has developed to look at the construction of consciousness. Yeah, and here we again have a solution to the problem of how the eye sees the eye.

[74:10]

How does consciousness see consciousness? That's interesting that they solved the problem. So the first thing is to notice associative mind. And again, it's easier to do if you're sitting zazen. and you can begin as consciousness sinks away and you have this precise eye posture which is like an acupuncture point perhaps which signals your body neither to be awake in the ordinary way nor to be asleep Sie signalisiert auch im Körper, dass er nicht wach sein soll im gewöhnlichen Sinne, aber auch nicht schlafen soll.

[75:24]

Is this a ritual or is this some extra form or is this too much? This is just the way it is. I'm sorry. Ist das ein Ritual, eine extra Form? Es ist einfach so, wie es ist. Mm-hmm. and you can begin to observe the formation of ideas. And a basic practice is to watch a thought arise and then follow a thought to its source to retrace a thought to its source. This is a simple yogic skill every Zen person should be able to do. And it overlaps with psychological practices. And it's not psychology, but it can work with trying to understand yourself psychologically as well.

[76:37]

And I don't know how long it will take you to get this skill. It doesn't make any difference. It's quite interesting. So enjoy yourself. So a thought or something arises, you say, where the heck did that come from? So you notice there was a previous thought. And maybe there was a sound or something outside. So it was initiated from a sense input. Now, when you do that, you're already beginning to practice with the vijnanas. The vijnanas, which are also in this sutra, said to be empty.

[77:38]

The vijnanas are, first of all, the six senses. And they're called six because the mind is also an originator. So things originate from your ears, from taste, from eyes, from nose, from your body. But some also originate from, without any sensory input, from the mind itself. So sense in Buddhism means where things originate, not just ears or something. Yeah. We have so little time. Yeah. But since we are time, there's no problem.

[78:54]

Okay. Okay. So, Once you get the ability to follow a thought to its source, you get to be able to be in the true immediacy of the present. Because usually What is in our consciousness originated before? For instance, the headache we have, we notice half an hour after it started. And if you can notice the moment headaches arise, you can usually stop them. If you can notice the moment a flu or cold enters your body, you can usually stop. You just tell it, there's no passengers here at this station.

[79:57]

Go on by and you flag the flu by. Sometimes it crashes into you, though, and then you're... derails, and then you're stuck with the flu. So this simple practice of following thought to a source allows you to discover the immediate present where things arise, where things are triggered. And also you're not so then a victim of your thoughts and so forth because you being there at the moment they arise you can participate in what happens to them better. Yeah, you can participate better in how they arise.

[81:09]

So then you're going to ask me, you might be asking me, who is this you who is doing this? Now this is again a theological idea. Because we immediately assume there's only one you doing this. But in fact, every state of mind can have an observing function. So whatever state of mind you have can also generate a part of it which observes itself. And we take one of those observing functions that we like the best or our parents said was the best or something, and we call it self.

[82:09]

And then when we have problems, we... with that one we feel all of us has problems. But then there's thousands of little tiny voices from the other potential observing selves Saying, I'm fine. Don't notice that bad guy. I'm okay. I'm healthy. So if you're more skillful, you can just say, oh, yeah, you're nice. You come up now. Mm-hmm. Now I'm turning this into a kind of joke, but there's some kind of truth to what I'm saying. Okay, now in this process, you also are developing a background mind.

[83:10]

You're developing the skills of observing mind. Mm-hmm. And now in that observing mind you can see perceptions arise. And you can then begin to feel the territory of feeling which does not take form. And now we're in the fourth skanda. The skanda of feeling. The field of feeling before form appears. So just to finish this, I'll see if I can take only a minute or two.

[84:14]

Because now we have the form skanda. Now, it means phenomena or just form. But this isn't trying to be exactly a... This is, let's call it a human science. Because obviously if there's form, and you know form, there's some kind of perception or knowing. So without feeling you can't know form. Okay, so what does it mean to say just form? How can we understand the form skandha? Well, perhaps to understand it as a resting point or a signal.

[85:17]

a resting point in the flow of inter-independence. Can you translate inter-independence? Inter-independence. I'll try it. So in the practice, the human practice of the skandhas, I can rest myself in the simple form without very little letting it open into feeling. And even less opening into conceptions and emotions. or perceptions.

[86:34]

Emotion in English means to move, emotion, emotion. So this movement into emotion and perceptions and conceptions doesn't occur. Now this is the basic resting point for a yogic practice of the mind. So when I said the descent into form, I should have said the ascent from consciousness to form. Because for the yogic practitioner, it's an ascent from consciousness to resting in form. Or a movement to an inner resting point. And then from that point you allow yourself to flow into perceptions, associative thinking and consciousness. Now what happens when you take consciousness away from this process? Awareness arises.

[87:51]

A kind of knowing presence that's not quite the same as consciousness. A knowing presence that's not the same as consciousness. The awareness that, as I usually say, keeps you from wetting your bed at night. Or the awareness that keeps you, if you sleep with an infant, from crushing it. Or the awareness that allows you to sleep, if you want to practice this way, with, say, a coin on your forehead, and it's still there in the morning. Das Gewahrsein, das es dir erlaubt, wenn du das praktizieren möchtest, mit einer Münze auf deiner Stirn zu schlafen, und am Morgen ist sie immer noch dort.

[88:53]

Das ist das Gewahrsein zu entwickeln im Gegensatz zum Bewusstsein. Or if I fall, consciousness isn't quick enough to prevent, do everything that allows me to catch myself and not get hurt. That's awareness. And the practice of the skandhas opens you to awareness. And opens you to embodied space. And that's implicit in all of this heart sutra. That Avalokiteshvara has these skills. Skills based on realization and wisdom. But skills also that open you to wisdom and realization. As usual, I've said too much. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. May our intentions be the same.

[90:09]

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