The reason for this pre-day and thank you for joining me, joining us in this pre-day. Anyway, the reason for Of course, I find the Friday to Sunday seminars too short. Yeah, but, you know, most people can come more easily, anyway, from Friday to Sunday. But of course I can't start the seminar now because then the people who come Friday would be lost.

[01:07]

So I have to do something else today. Now I'd like you to be better informed than the people who come, on the average, the people who come from Friday to Sunday. Now, do I want you to be better informed so you'd be ahead of them? Not really. I... But I'd like you to be better informed because I think it makes the larger group different. So today, I mean, you know, we're going to meet from...

[02:09]

and meet from 10 this morning till 4 this afternoon with lunch, of course. Yeah, and it's a usual part of my experimenting on how to bring these teachings into, you know, ordinary, our usual lay life. My experience is, if I speak to a group of people that's entirely new, Thank you. that I can't speak about anything except the most basic things.

[03:31]

Yeah, which isn't bad, but you have to kind of start from the beginning over and over again. But I've found, somewhat to my surprise actually, that even a small number of people, say five or six in a group of 50, is five or six in a group of 50. It makes a big difference in the way the whole group proceeds. five or six people who are more informed. Yes, more experienced in practice. And it's something mysterious. If I try to analyze it, I think it's a kind of credibility factor.

[04:37]

Yeah, I mean, if I'm speaking to a group of new people, and I say things that they kind of like look at me with disbelief, I get the feeling I'm lying to you. And Sikirish used to say that every now and then. He'd say, you know, I feel I'm lying to you. Because we were all beginners, and he would say these things we'd all... But I don't have that feeling if there's a few people who greet what I say with understanding. Sorry to bother you again, Frank, but could you close that door? And I think that for some people what I'm talking about is credible,

[06:17]

It opens the feeling in others that, oh, maybe it is credible. And once that feeling is there, there's a basis to speak. who feels maybe it's credible, finds in themselves experience or some kind of understanding that they wouldn't have noticed otherwise. We could say in English, perhaps a little, when there's a little bit of understanding, that understanding begins to stand under the group.

[07:29]

So anyway, my idea is to see what we could talk about here. More in the spirit of a lesson than persuasion. So I thought I might just present things like a lesson. In a seminar, I'm trying to convince you or persuade you. Yeah, well, I have to do that, you know. It's a wonderful teaching I want you to... I never felt that way. It's a wonderful teaching. So I'm trying to convince you, really make you have some experience of it.

[08:44]

Now I'm just trying to present some stuff that might be useful to you during the seminar. First, we should get really familiar with the eightfold path. So it's like saying our ABCs. Or counting or something. And because the more it's a kind of... continuous mental awareness. Kind of like memorization. But I think, I don't know. I mean, when I had to memorize in school, it didn't function this way.

[09:45]

Maybe it was supposed to. But I don't think my teachers understood memorization in the way we think of holding a teaching before you. not in the way, or have not thought about it as we do, when we say that an empty... to keep an emptiness in front of oneself. So let me begin to show you the Eightfold Path. Well, it's usually translated right. I think perfect is probably better. or perfecting.

[11:09]

Perfecting being it's an ongoing thing. It's not fixed perfectly. With the right, you have the problem of right and wrong and so forth. It's not that kind of feeling. So complete or whole is also what we mean by perfect. Now, again, as usual with these things, just don't go by the way it's translated or the way it's presented. Wie gewöhnlich, immer mit diesen Themen. Ihr nehmt das nicht einfach so, wie es üblicherweise vorgestellt oder übersetzt wird? Einigen.

[12:11]

Most people really don't know what they're talking about. They translate words. And some do know what they're talking about, but still you have to practice with the English words or the German words to even accurately translate. Yes, you're going to have to You have to find the translation, the word, you can change the word yourself, that you can feel. You have the first part of the... You have to change the translation or use the word that you can feel. Yeah. Dogen says... being in the room of the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors, far surpasses the intimacy or depth of their teaching.

[13:24]

To be in the room of the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors far surpasses the intimacy or depth of their teaching. That's an extremely interesting statement. A whole different world is in that state. Either we come back to it in the practice week or this weekend, I don't know. Here we have views. Pay attention. Oh, she just moved these flowers and I thought when you step back you should... Are you trying to create a mindfulness obstacle?

[14:29]

Constantly being tested. Achtsamkeitshindernisparcours, she shouted. Ich werde ständig geprüft. Ansichten, Absichten, Rede, Handeln, Kontakt oder Verhalten, Lebenserwerb, Erfolg, Bemühung, Achtsamkeit, Konzentration.

[15:40]

No. It's a path. But it's not really a sequential path until you're fairly experienced in practice. This is actually the path fourth of the Four Noble Truths. And the Four Noble Truths are that there is suffering, that there I know you can't read my hand.

[17:04]

That there is suffering. That there is a cause of suffering. And these cause. There is a cause. But there is a cause. And because there is a cause, There is an end to suffering. And that end, And the cause of that end is the Eightfold Path. The end to suffering, the cause of the end to suffering, is the Eightfold Path. Die Ursache für das Ende des Leidens ist der achtfache Weg.

[18:09]

So that there is suffering. Also, es gibt Leiden. Now that's not so obvious. Das ist nicht so offensichtlich. That's another sort of contemplation. Das ist eine andere Art der Betrachtung. A fish lays thousand legs, I think. Some fish lay thousand legs. Most of them become fish food. A few survive. Does the fish suffer? We just got a dog. Our dog Janie died. Most chows, half-chows, live six to seven or eight years' lifespan. She lived, Janie lived to be 17. And she perished the other day, just before practice.

[19:10]

She died during morning bath. And we buried her, and we had a nice funeral, actually. And we gave the dog food to the hillbilly eight lady. Kentucky and Tennessee, hillbillies are people who live up in the mountains. They're about 100 years behind everyone else. Hinterwäldler. Hinterperson. No, they're behind the forests.

[20:21]

That's where we are. So she said, oh, I'll accept the dog brood, but you know I raise dogs. And she raises Labradors. And Great Pyrenees, not Labradors. And the great Pyrenees... [...] Mountain dog. Or shepherd dog. Mountain dog. How are they called in German? Pyrenees mountain dog. So this little dog is nine weeks. At nine weeks was twice as big as our baby at nine months. And these poor hillbilly folks, they breed these female dogs I think three times a year.

[21:22]

Yeah, and they have two females and they have puppies all over the place and some get smothered and some don't live, etc. They get smothered? Yeah, and other puppies are on top of them, mother lies on top of them, and I don't know, two or three die out of everything. And they all live outside in 20, you know, zero, real cold weather. Is the mother suffering? Does she imagine it? I don't think she suffers unless she can imagine an end to suffering. For these dogs, I think it's just the way it is. They lose every litter, they lose some puppy. Not so different from human beings a few centuries ago. At what point do we see what we're doing as suffering?

[22:46]

Then see that it's caused. And that if there's a cause, if it's caused, there must be an end. So then, do you really believe that, though? So before you're practicing with the Eightfold Path, you really have to practice with, do I believe there's a cause? And if there is a cause, can those causes be changed? And is there really an end to suffering or just an amelioration? Amelioration means to lessen. Well, anyway, this is the most basic teaching of Buddhism.

[24:05]

And if you do want to think that there's a possibility of an end, that end has to have itself a cause. And that causes the eightfold path. Now for most of us, We enter, I mean, traditionally they say you enter the eight-book path through a speech conduct and livelihood. Three, four, and five. But in an ordinary, most ordinary sense, you do. If you don't have some awareness of your speech, your conduct, then you wouldn't even bother to practice.

[25:26]

But that doesn't really make it a Buddhist practice. For most of us, we had an upbringing and we have the character of a person who is concerned with their speech and their conduct and their life. Most of us are entering through mindfulness and concentration. Now, each one of these can be path. Jedes von diesen kann ein Weg sein. I suppose that, say, a writer's path, his or her path, might be speech.

[26:29]

Ich nehme an, für einen Autor ist ihr oder sein Weg die Rede. And in speech we could also include being a painter, too. Speech is about how you relate to other people. So you might discover your views, you might discover your concentration and mindfulness all in your writing or painting. So each one in a way can be a philosophy? It might be in here somewhere. Yeah. Okay. There are some points about practice I would like to emphasize today.

[28:49]

One is that practice is basically about our experience. And if you're practicing Seriously, it's entirely about your experience. So it's really, let's say, for the sake of today and this weekend, only about how you know. If you go to Singapore, when you arrive in Singapore, you create Singapore. Lots of Singaporeans were there before you got there, but For you, Singapore was created when you got there.

[30:09]

Or perhaps when you heard about it or something like that. Now, in a way, we all know that. But the absoluteness of that, I don't think we know. Western science tends to start from objects. I'm not criticizing Western science saying this. It just happens to be the emphasis. The emphasis. And it's been extraordinarily productive. And we study objects and then we look at the human being and say, what kind of object is that?

[31:15]

And looking at us as an object, as DNA and you know, blood cells and so forth, has been also extraordinarily fruitful. But it does tend to make us look us Westerners look at the person as an object. And then we wonder how can we understand consciousness or attention as some kind of object, brain-produced object or something.

[32:20]

And so then we start thinking about, can we create an object like a computer, which can also have consciousness or intention or something. And even this line of reasoning is productive. But let's imagine the point of view of Buddhism. What we study and what we know is what we know. We study our knowing.

[33:31]

And if we study our knowing, And we really study our knowing, at some point we can extrapolate that to objects. Extract, extend that to objects. So instead of studying objects and then extrapolating that to human beings and consciousness, Buddhism starts with knowing as the given. And then we extend that to objects. How do these objects somehow also participate in knowing?

[34:38]

Or something like that. OK. But before we extrapolate to the so-called objective world, Let's really concentrate on knowing. And really know that Singapore is created by our going to Singapore. It's certainly created by our certainly created by our, in us, by our going there. Paris is a much loved, has been a much loved city. Much loved city. And you could ask, how many Parises are there?

[35:43]

Sounds funny in German. You can have your jokes. But we could say that there's as many Paris's as there are people who visited or live in Paris. Paris. Cities like Paris. And we can understand that. And we know that if you have an influx of non-French people or an influx of lots of tourists, Paris changes. London has so many Indian people now that it's really, you know, there's an

[37:00]

big Indian element to London. And too many tourists tend to kind of... So actually each person who comes, each person, whoever, It makes the city. Again, that's obvious, but I really want it to be really obvious. Okay. Another way to speak about this is that mind, the job of mind, whatever, let's define it loosely, the job of mind, is to point at objects. But each object points at mind. We don't notice it pointing at mind usually, but it is pointing at mind.

[38:30]

So to get inside of Buddhist practice, you want to remember that each object is pointing at mind. Until you see your mind on every object. Okay, so we have the activity of knowing. And that knowing is also the object pointing at mind. How do we see into that knowing? Okay. So maybe we sit for a few minutes, then we'll have a break.

[39:51]

Thank you for translating. Thank you. If when you go to Singapore, or Paris, if you understand, know that you are partly making that city,

[42:32]

How much more so when we meet a person? Even the slightest meeting. The person we meet is making us a little bit. We're making them a little bit. while we're resisting it, not noticing it. This is the territory of compassion.

[43:50]

And the responsibility of being in this process for yourself and for another. And this is this responsibility. Bleh! So let's come back about 20 after, 25 after.

[46:02]

Thank you. So what I said is that we're studying, observing, knowing itself. Now, for any realized practice of the Eightfold Path, you have to study knowing itself. And, of course, in the Seventh, the mindfulness, when you study the traditional four foundations of mindfulness, you're trying to look in a very detailed way at how the object does point at mind, or how the object of consciousness or object of mindfulness

[47:08]

influences what mind is present. Yeah, so if you're mindful of the body, this is different than being mindful of feelings. It's not just that the object of mind is different. The mind is different when the object is different. Again, we know that. Our mind is different when we're angry and different when we're listening to music.

[48:34]

But What makes it Buddhist? What makes it different? It's the practice of seeing into it. And drawing conclusions from the quality of the aspects of knowing. I didn't want to say the nature of knowing, so I said the quality or aspects of knowing. Yeah. So any of you who have been practicing for a while know the four foundations of mindfulness, know the skandhas, and so forth.

[49:36]

Yeah, and what does, as we really have emphasized in the Dharma Sangha, the study of skandhas, And the point of that is the skandhas themselves. But the point is also to really get it. that consciousness has a structure. It's like taking a magnifying glass and looking at a piece of cloth. You see down into the weave of the cloth. Yeah, so when we use various teachings, we use various teachings like magnifying glasses to see into the fabric of knowing.

[50:50]

Yeah, you may not want to do this. But if you want to know how you know, this is the way to do it. Certainly one, perhaps the most developed way that I know anyway to do it. So we have some sort of English version of Socratic, you know, injunction to know thyself. But here we're talking about to know our knowing. How do we see our knowing? What kind of magnifying glass do we use?

[51:53]

And maybe like a movie, we slow down the frames. So that we can see the mind or knowing functioning frame by frame. The important thing to get really is that consciousness has a structure. You know, in America there's lots of Protestant, biblical, you know, Protestant preachers.

[52:57]

And they often start out with, the good news is Jesus loves you, or something like that. In Buddhism, the good news is that consciousness has a structure. Because it means you can do something about it. You can participate in it. Yeah, but how do you see it? Yeah. So, what I want to present today is the five dharmas and the four marks. As a way, as sort of magnifying glasses, to see into the fabric of knowing. Okay, what is the five dharmas?

[54:27]

Appearance, naming, discrimination, right knowledge, suchness, and so-height. Well, it all sounds kind of commonplace, except for suchness. Yeah, so you might say, well, I already know that, and to heck with suchness. Yeah. Yeah. I said, heck. But anyway. So let's listen to it again. Do we have more paper?

[55:34]

I don't think there probably is. So the five diamonds. So if you don't. I don't need more paper yet. Oh. Up here. Assignment. Naming. Discrimination. I'd know it. Right knowledge. Self-knowledge. And so on. Now I want you to both get the obviousness of this.

[56:52]

And also the extraordinariness of this. Of such a simple list. Things appear. We know that. Didn't see you yesterday, Nico, but this morning I see you. Yesterday I didn't see you, Nico, but this morning... Ingrid, I didn't see you. She just appeared, too. So you appeared. So why is appearance a dharma? It's just a fact. Yeah. Maybe today I'll get some mail. I can say a letter appeared.

[57:52]

Heute bekomme ich vielleicht Post und dann kann ich sagen, ein Brief ist erschienen. Yeah, I can, that's, yeah, a letter appears in the mailbox. Ein Brief erscheint im Briefkasten. Mm-hmm. But as a Dharma, it means something more than that. It means when you go to Singapore, you create Singapore. It means there's no objects. There's only relationships. because it's only the relationship that we know. So what we're trying to do here in this kind of practice, this kind of teaching, is to break the habit of permanence.

[58:55]

And we have a, no matter how smart we are, or how much we know the teaching of Buddhism, in fact, we probably have deeply ingrained in us a habit of permanence. The unconscious, the implicit habit of permanence. And implicit? No matter how much you really know that everything changes, That's really just on the surface.

[60:09]

You have a deeply ingrained habit of permanence. Wanting things to be permanent. Acting as if they were permanent. And not just acting within the understanding that they're impermanent, And not just... Yeah, we... Even if you know they're impermanent, we have to act in the world as if they have some permanence. That's okay, but most of us aren't that aware. You structure a future. You... Based on some idea of the way you want the world to be.

[61:12]

Well, that's natural enough, too. In such a way, we create a common world. And we invest ourselves in this common world. But because we have a habit of permanence, we invest ourselves too much. I think you can even find at what point in your life you created the world you hope exists in the future. As a child with your parents. Or as a child breaking away from your parents. Or in college. Or sometime in your early adult life. Or in college. You can probably find the point at which you project a future.

[62:38]

Then we invest in that future. Yeah, we practice Buddhism and meditation and so forth. But as long as it doesn't disturb our projected future, Which we explicitly take care of. And secretly take care of. That's also quite normal and necessary probably. But usually we don't have much alternative to that. And we're taken by surprise. When underneath our projected future it's actually changed. So from the point of view of my knowing,

[63:50]

When I look over at Nico, they appear. And when I look over here, Beate, she appears. Yeah, I know that Nico and Gisela are still there. I keep coming back to this process in what I'm teaching. But it really has to become your habit that, yes, Gisela and Nico are there. But what's real for me now is Beate appearing, Sophie appearing.

[65:06]

So the appearance of I mean, I suspect Sophie and Beate will take care of themselves when I'm looking the other way. But from my point of view, of my knowing, they're most real through their appearing in me. I knew Sophie, if I dare say so, when she was a baby. But some months ago, she appeared here. Through that appearance, she's taken, she's real, actual in a way that's not the same as when she was a baby, of course.

[66:13]

Yeah, so from my point of view, somebody could say, oh, I know her parents, and yes, that kid out there exists somewhere. I don't know where she is, but she must be grown up now. That's just information. Yeah. But since she's been here the last some months, she has appeared to me in a way that I... that has whatever those qualities are. So that is a knowing which arises through appearance. And that's so much more full. The information that she exists somewhere now grown up is almost negligible. So here in this, as a dharma, this means to really emphasize

[67:31]

the activity of appearance. And to realize that this moment of appearance deserves your attention. And so something appears and you fully bring your attention to it. You can understand this as the effort also in the sixth of the eightfold path. Effort or energy as a path. One thing that, you know, psychology tends to give us a sense that we're selves.

[68:48]

And usually we're selves that are selfish. The contemporary reductionist worldview is that in the end we're all, we can explain everything as rooted in selfishness. But there's also high spirits. What is high spirits? High spirits means to be spirited, to be full of energy, to be interested in things. Positive geister?

[70:00]

High spirits. Okay, we can use high spirits. And, you know, high spirits, a person who's high-spirited or very intense, they function in the world different than just whether they're selfish or not selfish or so forth. And often high-spirited people are seen as very selfish. Because they're interested in everything and everybody else is kind of pushed aside and they don't even know they're pushing other people aside. Because they imagine everyone else is just as high-spirited. So everybody else says, oh, is he selfish? He's interested in all those things and he wants them. She. Yeah, yeah. So something happens when you bring attention to appearance.

[71:19]

When you have the energy to bring attention to appearance. And what's the point of this list? Is you're bringing attention. to appearance before you name it. How can you do this? It's a dharma when you can do it. When as soon as something appears, you name it, this is not a dharma anymore. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think when we're in meditation, we notice this kind of not naming. So you maybe hear an airplane. Or as nowadays, these days, a snowplow or something.

[72:21]

No, no, you might think, oh, that's a snowplow. But in meditation, it's easier just to hear it as a harmony of the spheres. The music of the spheres. Isn't that nice to hear? Oh, that's great. Yeah, but then you name it. Oh, that's the snowplow. Then you think, oh, that's Kohlberger's snowplow. Now you're naming. And you're not bringing attention to appearance anymore. And you're not bringing attention to the pure mind that arises with the senses.

[73:24]

So you can already see how this is a kind of magnifying glass to look in to know it. Yeah. And then when you start thinking, oh, it's a coal burner's snowplow. And then you start thinking, yeah, well, we have a snowplow, too. But ours is smaller than his. And wet snow, it's kind of difficult. Then you're discriminating. So this process happens very fast, of course.

[74:26]

But you can hear the airplane passing overhead. You can hear the airplane passing overhead. You can hear it as an airplane and just peel the name off. Or you can start thinking, is that one going to Basel or Zurich? Or you can start thinking, is that one going to Basel or Zurich? But if you're meditating, it's easier to barely name it, just barely name it. To take the name off it. So this practice in the eight-fold path of mindfulness and concentration, which is the samadhi and meditative part of the path, makes you more able to really feel

[75:43]

know the territory of taking the names off things. Or keeping the names off things. Because the faster I go from appearance to naming to discrimination, the more I'm in a the habit of permanence arises. The more I have the habit of permanence, the more I am in this habit of permanence. So already, we've been injecting right knowledge. Because the turning point in this thing is right there.

[77:00]

Parents naming discrimination, that's what we all do. When you inject or bring in right knowledge, then suchness appears. So, I've been bringing in right knowledge when I've been talking about appearance. And when I just feel appearance without naming it, without discriminating about it, What I've got is suchness. So from the point of view of the Buddhist, They start with suchness.

[78:29]

What appears is suchness. And that suchness doesn't have any tendency to go toward naming or discrimination. So again, you're sort of seeing into the fabric of knowing here. Kind of have a loom or a needle or perhaps something like that of right knowledge. Loom is what you weave with. Is he speaking loudly enough? Okay. Okay. So again, we have a simple list here, which if you practice with the list, it allows you to see into the process of knowing, into the structure of knowing.

[79:53]

Now, the Genjo koan starts out with title means to complete that which appears. So here we again, we have the same idea. Something appears, how do you complete it? If you complete it by naming it, you're into the realm of permanence. Okay, so what does Dogen mean by completing it? He means something like the four marks. By the way, what time are we going to eat? That's the fifth mark.

[81:01]

One o'clock? What's the schedule say? Oh. What? Does anybody have a schedule? We're supposed to eat at 12.15? They think you are going to be late. I don't know. I guess I participated in making a schedule, so I should know, but I don't. Oh, so that's in 15 minutes. Okay. Okay. So I'll present in 15 minutes the four marks. It'll take two minutes. Burke? That's not really any different from appearance except using the word birth

[82:31]

really makes it more clear that it didn't exist before you noticed it. And again, I'm sorry to keep using Nico, but Nico, of course, exists whether I notice him or not. Yes, but how does he exist? By the point of view of Buddhism, he exists through a very large series of births. Not through permanence. He exists through thousands of births between us.

[83:40]

for a long time. He exists through thousands of births with his wife and his two children. He exists through thousands of births with his wife and his two children. And his patients as a doctor. And his driving down here in the snow and so forth. So, from the point of view of Buddhism, He's an accumulation of lots of these little births. So here, the second one is duration. So not only do we have thousands of little births, they accumulate somewhere. And even at one moment, even though a moment is immeasurable, And I always say, there's no length to 12 o'clock.

[84:57]

There's a second before 12, and there's a millionth of a second after 12, and there's no 12. There's moments we can't imagine the duration of a moment. But we can't rather think the duration of a moment. We can't think it. Or maybe we do think it. We do imagine it. We can't grab it, but we do have an experience of duration. So I... something appears, something is born.

[85:58]

And for my knowing, the reality is it appears, it's born. This is what I notice. I don't notice the permanence of any one of you. I notice all the little births we have each moment. And I treasure those little births. And I don't think, oh, you're permanent, so there's going to be a lot of those. And I don't think... I don't think you're permanent, so I don't have to pay attention to this birth. There'll be some more. Are you aware that every... each moment, each appearance might be the last? Where everything changes, where everything might be different.

[87:04]

So that's the way of thinking when you have a sense of, you have a habit of impermanence. So this next is dissolution. And the last is disappearance. Again, this is a simple list. until you recognize that Buddhism has tried to has tried to reduce the process of seeing into known

[88:06]

To a few things. You know, hard to remember phone numbers longer than... you know, seven or eight or ten numbers. So if we're going to have an effective teaching, it should be you know, a manageable thing that we can keep in mind, and yet dynamic among the parts. So here we're noticing that something appears.

[89:24]

And we're feeling it as a birth. Then we sense it has a duration. And we decrease it. We don't want to try to make it permanent. In fact, we actively want to let it dissolve. So here we're not just seeing the structure of consciousness. We're also seeing the construction of consciousness. Now, I'm mainly talking about consciousness, but we're But we can also understand it with some modification, that I'm talking about knowing and awareness and so other ways

[90:36]

So things appear, are born, and they have a duration. But we don't cling to that duration. In fact, through this teaching we actively, intentionally see the deconstruction as well as the construction. The deconstruction and deconstruction of this moment of this duration, this dharma. Yeah. So... If I... cling too much to the duration.

[91:40]

I don't see that in these momentary... Actually, three or four Carolinas have appeared in the last few moments. Her mood changes...

[91:49]

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