This territory of mind, body and phenomena. Breath. Questions you might have or something you might want to bring up? Actually, I would like to hear a little more about why it's important to practice together.

[01:13]

Oh, yeah. Why it's important to sit together. Okay. Deutsch, bitte. Ich würde gerne noch ein bisschen mehr darüber hören, warum es wichtig ist, gemeinsam zu praktizieren. Hong Ji, a famous, one of the most famous Zen teachers. Hong Ji. Yeah, why not? Good. Yeah, it was his name, Hong Ji, why not? One of his teachers said to him that it was part of a dialogue in which he had a realization.

[02:21]

Never, the last thing the teacher said was, never see others as other. There's some way in which the field of our own mind and body There's some way in which the field of our own mind and body evolves through contact with others who practice. That's enough for now to say.

[03:30]

Okay, something else. Yes? Is the background mind something that ties into that question or what you just said? Is it something we share? Wenn ich den Begriff Hintergrundgeist verwende, dann spreche ich davon nicht als etwas, das wir teilen. But in fact, as if you develop this background mind, it is something. It's not a thing, so it's not a something.

[04:31]

We can say there's a feeling or presence that doesn't have the boundaries of mind and body. And it seems to share with... seems to not be separate from, I'm trying to find a way to say it, seems to not be separate from phenomena and others, who are not other. And it seems to be divided or not to be separated from, I'm trying to find a way to say that, not to be separated from

[05:46]

You know, I'm watching, which is obvious to all of you, now I'm watching Sophia quite carefully. Very precisely. And I wouldn't say what she's doing is trying to learn to speak. That's going to be the fruit of what she's doing. But I don't think that's the... She's not doing it for any reason like that. She seems to be as completely responsive as you can be to what happens in her sphere.

[07:03]

It's an alertness I don't have. If there's one, any room like this room has, I mean, hundreds of objects actually. And an infinite number of relationships between the objects. If there's one thing that's different in a room, as soon as she comes into it in the morning, she'll notice it. It reminds me of the time I saw this, I've mentioned this before to you, the time I saw a little white blonde South African, no, Australian girl, I think it was,

[08:40]

It reminds me of the time, I've already told you, when I saw a South African, no, an Australian girl, a white girl. And a little black girl, Australian, Aboriginal girl. And they were about three, say. And they brought these two kids up to a stump of a tree, a pretty big stump, you know, like that big. And they had 40 or 50 objects on it. A bunch of branches and feathers, stones, things like that.

[09:48]

And they were all just put together. And they walked up to these two little girls, didn't tell them to look at it or anything, they just brushed it off. They asked a little white girl to put them back up there the way they were. She was completely incompetent. She got two or three things out, had no idea. A little black girl just went boom, [...] as if she had a Polaroid picture in her mind. I don't think one was more intelligent or something than the other. It's just that one had learned to structure things.

[10:49]

reality differently. I would say Sophia's at the point now where she could, if we let her go in that direction, she could be more like the Aboriginal girl. But there's no way we could... No way we could... do that. Unless we had her trained by the CIA. Because they actually train people so they can go into a room, move things around and put them back exactly. Because you actually make people think that they can go into a room where things can be changed and then they can put them back again.

[12:10]

When she hears a sound, whatever it is, she immediately has a response. The most recent one that we've noticed is she hears in Europe church bells. And as soon as the church bells ring, she starts swinging her arms. And she's not trying to learn language. It's as if if I gave him a poke, he feels that immediately. You know, I think you do, don't you? Yeah. Well, it seems to be that direct.

[13:20]

It's not like she's hearing it and wants... No. The bell rings and she starts going like this. And she wants us to notice... that she's hearing the bell. If she wants us to notice that she's hearing the bell. Or she wants us to name it. She goes, excuse me. But the reason she does that is because when she first heard this great Pyrenees mountain dog we have at Crestone, Drink water. She went in and watched him.

[14:26]

How dogs drink water. And that's become her symbol for hearing something. So if she hears something, wants us to notice, she goes... Now, so when the bell comes and she does this and sticks her tongue out... Is she trying to speak a language? What I would feel is a more accurate description of what she's doing. is what happens in the bird in the bird that she hears say or what happens in the bell tower

[15:29]

has to happen in her too. Almost like a tuning fork. Tuning fork, you know? It doesn't seem like she's even trying to communicate. It's just her way of duplicating, not imitating. And the duplication comes before the imitation. So at some point she may kind of duplicate the sound, but now she physically represents the sound. Okay, so what's all the usefulness of my saying all this to you? Because I think... I'm trying to speak about a continuum of experience.

[17:04]

And it will take us this weekend to sort this out. And I think if we can make it fairly clear among ourselves, It will actually become easier for us to practice. So let's try to use our ability to think about it. Lasst uns also unsere Fähigkeit verwenden, darüber nachzudenken, um uns loszulassen, um die Verwirrungen im Nachdenken darüber loszulassen. So we can more directly have experience of this continuum.

[18:15]

And little things like this pause at the threshold, or the pause for impermanence, bring us into a domain, a realm, where we're much more likely to have a direct feeling for, experience of, that the presence of mind and body is not limited to the mind and body. Okay, that's enough for that. Oh, Julio. Yes, go ahead. And is it one of the goals of practice to put the sense of self into that background mind?

[19:33]

It's the same. Yeah. You can see that practice is three-foot deep in the background mind. No. Nein. Deutsch, bitte. Hatte ich das? You did. Oh, I thought you wouldn't translate anything I said no to. Yeah, in that sense we say self covers everything. When in this wide sense of mind, when self is functioning, there's no wide sense of mind. I didn't get that. When those wide sense of mind doesn't happen if there's a sense of self. We want to understand our self well enough

[20:49]

and mature ourselves in terms of our own personal history. So it's one of the ways we function, but not the only way we function. That's why central to whatever I'm trying to teach is present is to see self as a function and not as an entity. Okay. Someone else, something else? You said we should see what kind of Buddha we are. But I have no image of Buddha, so I cannot work with this.

[22:23]

OK. German, please. You said we should see what kind of Buddha we are. But I have no image of Buddha, so it is difficult for me to work with it. Okay, I'll come back to that. Something else? I like to hear everyone's voice at least once or twice. So don't deprive me till late Sunday afternoon. The bird isn't shy. Yes. Sometimes people, friends ask me what is Zen and I cannot give an answer.

[23:36]

Sometimes I think Zen is an attitude. We do have to develop some kind of press release. Press release. That's what I thought. Yeah, I'm sorry, it's idiomatic. We have to develop some sort of press release for aunts, uncles and doubting friends. Zen, Zen, Zen, zoom, zoom, zoom.

[24:47]

I don't even know. But you're saying its attitude is good, actually. I remember after a couple of years of practicing with Sri Yukteswar, I said to myself, what the heck is he teaching us? And I said, attitudes, he's teaching us. Really all about attitudes. Or more accurate it would be to say views. Like to come into a room with a feeling of to pause for letting experience speak to you. as an attitude.

[25:53]

You're working with your views when you do that. And zen, zazen, meditation, still sitting itself, won't do this. Again, that's why the Eightfold Path starts with right views. Okay. Someone else. Yes. If we construct our reality ourselves, the way we think or feel, and that it is not only a subjective aspect of the reality, but also the external reality, rather to create a room, a seminar room for us, the mystical tree is the reality that is now in the normal world, to construct.

[27:00]

If you speak so long, then you have to translate it yourself. You can only... Our existence, yes. You're saying this is a so, or you're asking me if it's so? Okay, good. All right, I'm waiting. Out of the world, outside the normal world, in the state it is in, are people unconsciously want to have this kind of work?

[28:19]

Can you say that all in Deutsch? I think it's accurate to say this world that we live in, we've created. I don't think we can say it's the world we want to live in. I think we can say that I think we could say, if we understood the consequences of our actions, we would create a different world.

[29:27]

So practice, the idea of Buddhism is to make people aware of the consequences of their actions. Now, of course it's true that we also... want the kind of world at least to some extent we've created. But I think most of the time, if a person can really see the consequences, They might change. But our life is going along with these consequences that we don't like and at the same time trying to change some consequences if we can.

[30:51]

And strangely enough, if you too much want to try to change the consequences, even if it's in the direction people want, Without getting people to agree with you, there will be a tendency of people to want to destroy you. So somehow you actually have to not change the world, you have to get people's agreement to change the world.

[32:07]

So we have art, poetry, Buddhism, philosophy. Okay, something else? In this connection I would like to Here in explanation of dharma and karma. 2,500 years of trying to answer this question. Why shouldn't we do it this afternoon, this morning? Yeah. Well, let's just define them first.

[33:16]

When I say pause, pause for your experience, pause for karma, for impermanence. Basically, I'm trying to teach you, show you a way to practice the Dharma. For... For simply put, Dharma means to experience things in units.

[34:16]

And karma means the consequences of conscious acts. Karma isn't this loose idea of everything that happens to you is your karma. Karma is those acts that you are responsible for. And we could go into that in more detail, but that's enough said for now. The word dharma means how the world actually exists. And it means the teaching about how the world actually exists.

[35:38]

And it means the practice of how the world actually exists. As we learn walking by walking. Now I'm going to put, I'm going to use this flip chart to put the five dharmas on the, as a teaching on the, up for you. And I'll try to do that before lunch. But first, is there someone else who wants to say something? Yes. I would like to go back to the topic of language.

[36:55]

So far you said that beyond the language there are also languages of experience. But for me it's also interesting to shape or reshape the territory of experience in language. And years ago I was touched by a Chinese verse without being able to tell what it really means.

[38:13]

And it goes more or less like this. With a what? Trap. With a trap, you catch a rabbit. And once you caught the rabbit, you can forget about the trap. And then it goes on, I don't quite remember. With words you catch ideas. And when you understood the idea, you don't need the words anymore.

[39:17]

So show me people who have forgotten the words so that I can share a few words with them. And that I kept thinking about this, not only because it's a nice playing with words, but what is actually this area where we begin to express ourselves verbally about areas where it sounds so sensual? Yes, that is beyond the word. But what is this realm where we begin to speak about realms without, you know, when it just sounds a little zenny to say that these realms are beyond language?

[40:51]

And I think, yeah, this is similar to or like learning to speak. Maybe you can say something about this. Well, I suppose that I'm not trying to catch a rabbit. But I suppose I'm trying to catch your mind and release it. But I don't quite see why you make a distinction between reshaping the experience within words. Of course we reshape the experience within words. But we also have a way of functioning through noticing in which the noticing is not in words.

[42:17]

Yes, no? That's all? No, that's not what I mean. Then what do you mean? It's a different kind of language in words, so a verbal language. It is a verbal language and yet it is a different kind of language, at least that's how it feels to me, than we normally use it. It's a verbal language, but it's a different kind of language, at least in my feeling, a different kind of language that we normally use, with which we are able to communicate about experience.

[43:58]

And we fail in this area. For example, when we get together in small groups and try to talk about topics like, or questions like, what is Zen? Okay, I agree with you. But I still don't see how that is not overlapping with and parallel to what I'm talking about. Yes, I agree with you, but I don't see how that is not parallel or overlaps with what I'm talking about. First of all, I'm not just speaking about communicating.

[45:19]

Yeah, I mean in the traditional Zen sort of way. Yeah, there's the raising of the eyebrows. No, that's a kind of language. Or in the middle of a conversation, picking up something and putting it down. Which is bringing an action into the mind stream of the conversation. It's a kind of language, but it's not words. And the mind stream or mind continuum itself, to the extent that you can

[46:38]

shape its flow as a kind of language. But this gets us into an area where you need a fair amount of yogic skill and practice. In order to be able to talk about it, but of course we're all doing it all the time. structures and maybe we think these structures determine our experience. So they shape our experience in a way and fix this experience. And even if you're talking about a kind of language before or beyond words, when we want to

[47:55]

share the meaning of this language, we have to go back to the spoken word and to interpret what happened. And then again, we are back into the structures of our usual language, which we use in everyday life, and which is not made for sharing these kind of experiences. Yeah, . If we go back to a more contemporary question, then I think that we have the suspicion that our spoken and written language gives us structures die unsere Erfahrungen bestimmen und unsere Erfahrungen formen. Und das selbst in dem Augenblick, wo wir den Hinweis bekommen darauf, dass jenseits oder neben der gesprochenen Sprache eine andere Art von Kommunikation stattfindet, dennoch

[49:04]

Yeah, we do certainly tend to see in the categories of language. Once we speak, we tend to know the world through the categories of language. I mean, not entirely, but it still is our overall habit, I would say. No, I don't think we notice the habit. Because I think we think we're sort of free of the habit.

[50:20]

Until you start in meditation experience. Having experiences you can't... that are outside your own ability to notice them. And outside of your own ability for sure to explain them to anyone else. And this is actually quite important in Zen practice. Because we have a public-private threshold. But if we But we still want our private thinking to somehow be consistent with public thinking.

[51:35]

And if we begin to have experiences that are really outside the range of others, We think we're a little bit crazy, maybe. This actually used to be quite a big problem in the sports field. 30, 40 years ago, if athletes had very unusual experiences, of knowing what someone's going to do in advance, or something like that. They wouldn't talk to each other about it. And I know this because a friend of mine did a lot of research in this area.

[52:53]

And they would only talk about it occasionally and usually when they were drunk. And the next day they would deny they said it. deny it even to themselves. But now, There's been about 20 years of people exploring these areas. And now athletes are quite pleased to talk about it. And we have phrases like in the zone, you know. Which, you know, ambulance drivers and tennis players have similar experiences.

[54:07]

That suddenly in a situation, everything slows down and is going in slow motion. And it really used to be athletes wouldn't talk about it. They said it was something scary to them. Now, it's not just an extraordinary experience, it's a cultivated experience. Because people began to recognize it, and then sharing it, they began to cultivate it. And what we're trying to do practicing is to cultivate a territory of experience which actually our culture and language don't acknowledge.

[55:10]

And to cultivate it in a way that we don't feel crazy. Anything else? For now. Actually, this would be another reason why they practice together. That would be, yes. That's true. Deutsch, bitte. Das ist ein zweiter Grund, oder ein weiterer Grund, warum es gut ist, zusammen zu praktizieren. From the point of view of dharma, this is a description of how things exist.

[57:09]

And just noticing this as a teaching. And part of the practice is to get in the habit of noticing it. And you have to go against your own tendencies in order to get this to be your usual habit. Now, there's a teaching, we can say, related to this of the five dharmas.

[58:19]

Are there any more of these around? Black one or a little one, not so dry. I don't like to write unless I'm talking about the debt the center is in. About debt, the debt that Johanneshoff has. Or my own debt or anyone's debt. Yeah, so things arise. Abide and cease. Now, these buildings across the street here don't arise, abide and cease, it seems.

[59:28]

They just get renovated. But from the point of view of Dharma, they do arise, abide and cease. In much the same way, Mahakavi mentioned about the rune. Now do we notice the impermanence or do we notice the permanence? This is a choice. If you notice the permanence you'll tend to live in one kind of world. And if you notice the impermanence, you live in a different kind of world.

[60:38]

Now, predictability is not the same as permanence. So with Sophia, I'll try to get her to not confuse permanence and predictability. When she relates to something as predictable, I'll try to somehow say, oh, it's predictable, but it's not permanent. Now if we do assume that the mind and existence construct each other, then probably it's wise of us to think there's no absolute truth.

[62:01]

there's no true way the world is. There's just the way we construct the world. Does the construction really work for us or not? That's the question. Does the way we construct it really work for us or not? Buddhism takes the view that if you choose to construct through seeing everything as impermanent, You'll end up with a different kind of world. You know, having just been in Austria. Much of our modern world came... It seems strange to say this, but I think it's true.

[63:34]

Much of our modern world came out of a reaction against the Ringstrasse buildings. Ringstrasse. In Vienna there was no longer danger from outside. There was danger from inside. There was danger from inside. Because the populations all over Europe were rebelling against the traditional forms of society. So they built these buildings around the city.

[64:34]

They took the wall down. There's no danger. And they built the buildings where the wall was. And then they made the streets straight. In Paris too. You know why they made the streets straight? So they could shoot people. Because the population would get naked and the soldiers could shoot down the streets. And you could control the population inside the city. But the architects and the artists realized we don't want this world of the Ringstrasse type buildings.

[65:40]

So Eugen Steele and a lot of other beginnings of modern architecture started there. The point I'm making on these, if we want to change the... If we change our view, we start changing our architecture and everything else. Okay. So you're... Again, making a choice to see everything as impermanent. You can come into this room and you can see the permanence of it or you can see the impermanence of it.

[66:44]

I think we start having a more interesting experience of the room if we see it's impermanent. Now, that doesn't deny its permanence. Or rather, it doesn't deny its predictability. Because I think tomorrow these columns will still be in the same place. But you'll see downstairs by the toilets how this building looked before they changed it. Certainly the family that built all this stuff didn't expect it to ever look like this.

[67:49]

Okay, so if we want to practice the Dharma, it means you're going to start noticing the impermanence of things. And since we have so thoroughly confused predictability and permanence, We actually have to reverse our habits. Okay. Now sound is fairly easy to do it with.

[68:57]

It's one of the main gates to perceiving impermanence. We hear the bell. We know the sound will be impermanent. It appears, abides, and ceases. Now we don't have the same feeling when we see things. But you want to practice seeing as if you were hearing. Okay.

[70:00]

So I want to come back to this practice of appearance. If I look at Senkin, he appears. Now, if I look at Senkin and think, oh, Senkin's sitting there, I'm not seeing Senkin. I'm seeing my memory of Senkin. But if we start looking at the contents of mind, When we begin to look at the contents of the mind, what are the contents of the mind? There is one of the contents, what we could call the sensorium, the sound,

[71:10]

Put me in a hospital, you know. All this visual stuff. All this visual stuff. Invisible memory. Because the way I'm seeing this has to do with memory. It gives the structure of my seeing. I don't have to go over and push that pillar to know it won't bend like the lamp. That's the kind of memory structure that shapes what I see. So there's sensorium, there's of sound and sight.

[72:21]

There's in this Structure of memory. There's a kind of habit energy. To give reality to this way of seeing things. To give? A habit energy to give reality to this way of seeing things. there's the associations which arise there's distractions there's thinking about things thinking about myself all that's content of the mind Now if you practice mindfulness, and you practice attention and acceptance, you begin to create a presence

[73:54]

within these contents, that observes without thinking. Now, if you observe and think about, then you immediately relate everything to yourself. and there's no more an observer. So these contents of mind are there, and you practice accepting and bringing attention to it. Now that begins to generate, create a background mind.

[75:07]

An observing mind. That's not distracted by the contents of mind. Now, if I can look at all of this and think of something else at the same time that's a capacity of the mind to do two things at once. Now, if I take that capacity of mind to do two or many things at once And I take one part of the mind that can, say, think about something and look at something else. And I turn that thinking about things, just take that part of the mind, into accepting attention.

[76:16]

You're actually creating a new territory in the mind. it's not completely different from the way our mind already works. In a way, it's the closest to the category of intention. We're walking somewhere in the city. You're seeing and hearing things. You're thinking about yourself. There's a lot of the structure of memory present.

[77:31]

So you know when to stop at the corner and so forth. But there's an intention to go somewhere. And that intention is affecting the relationship of all these things. So in that territory of intention, you add or create a new area where you just accept and attend to. Now when you do that, you're practicing wisdom. Okay. Five dharmas.

[79:09]

It's appearance. Naming. Discrimination. Wisdom. Weisheit. Suchness. And soheit. Now that's a way to interfere with or interact with how things appear. Abide and cease.

[80:11]

Okay, so now let me go back on looking at Senkin. And I'm trying to treat him as a sound. So he appears like a sound and not just as a visual thing. The tone of sinking. Okay, now when I look away from sinking, the sound disappears. And you appear.

[81:27]

Or any one of you I look at appears. Now, if I have this practice of impermanence, if I'm breaking the habit of permanence, when I look back at Senkin, I want to hear a new sound. And if I haven't let the tone of Senkin fade, cease, When I look back at him, if I haven't let it cease, when I look back at him, what am I seeing?

[82:45]

98%, 95% of structural memory. So I'm not seeing my mind so much as I'm seeing my memory. So I actually cease to see second. If I practice this feeling of seeing as if it were sound, I can go, if I look back at Gerhard, it's a new Gerhard. I mean, you're Not only are you actually slightly different, if I look at you without a lot of structural memory, you'll feel that.

[83:59]

And the way in which you would be different on each moment anyway will increase. So if I keep looking at everything with seeing memory, If I keep looking at things and primarily see memory, I'm sort of breaking the first precept, which is do not kill. In some way, if I keep seeing each of you in terms of memory, I'm sort of killing you a little bit. Yeah, I'm not giving you this freedom. So the practice of Dharma is to, I think, first of all, really get used to seeing appearance.

[85:56]

And actually you have to break the habit of seeing memory. You begin to just emphasize seeing the way things change rather than the way things stay the same. And then comes in name. Okay. Now, I think we're, you know, we started... pretty early this morning. It's a kind of long morning to absorb all this. So I think we should take a break soon or have some time before lunch.

[87:17]

What do you think? Yes? Okay, so, because if I even start talking about naming, because this isn't because this is not meant to be understood intellectually. You don't go on to naming and the difference between naming and wording Really, until you've got really the habit of appearance down. No. Now I'm going to go through all five today with you except I can't really go on into suchness with you because suchness unless it's just a word which you have some sort of thoughts about its meaning

[88:54]

can't really be gotten unless you've spent a lot of time on the first four. And realistically you need to spend I don't know, six months or so on appearance. So you really have the habit of seeing impermanence. And then you start bringing in what happens when I name or identify things. But of course we do it all. We're always doing all this all the time. But there's a difference when the naming is occurring in a deep habit of only seeing appearance. So let's sit for a few minutes.

[90:31]

And we'll break. And then we'll break. As a living being, everything appears in this way. A thought appears. Does it lead to another thought? Or do you feel it abide and cease before it leads to another thought?

[91:48]

Thank you. Thank you.

[93:30]

Don't think of it as real or an obligation. Think of it as an experiment. He's noticing things arise, abide.

[94:42]

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