Are there any questions or anything, comments still in the air from before the break? I would like to make one comment, something that was mentioned in our group. Yes. To make it simple, to see in Buddhist practice what we do and where we are and what's happening at this very moment. To study the present, me now. that in Buddhist practice we study me now.

[01:16]

And then the question in the group was asked, is there anything like this in Western culture? And then the question in the group was asked, is there anything like this in Western culture? And then we thought there is something like developmental psychology, the development into what we are now. But there's not so much a study of who we are, what we are now, who we are now. And when I look at the discussions, we oftentimes return to how did we get there and not so much how are we now. I think that's an interesting difference and maybe those two paths also complement each other.

[02:33]

I hope so. I mean, we're doing what we're doing because there's a lot of complementarity in the West for what we're doing. I get it. I mean, I don't think that we're... At an explicit level, it looks like what we're doing arises from Asian teachings and lineages.

[03:38]

Asian teachings and lineages. But I think probably if you look closely for most of us, what we're doing also arises or maybe even predominantly arises from Western teachings and lineages. I mean, I lived in San Francisco during the 60s when we had all this psychedelic stuff. But Peyote and mescaline and things like that were around before the 60s.

[04:45]

And so it wasn't just that suddenly there were psychedelics available. It's that there was a historical moment or historical context where this suddenly had permission to happen. And what I see in... Western philosophy and poetry and painting. I would say, for instance, that Cezanne and Matisse and Picasso are painting various versions of the experience of Zen, of Buddhism.

[05:49]

Yeah. And many philosophers, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenologists, et cetera, And bring a really quite, you know, the path is, they're establishing a path which is quite similar to Buddhism. conceptually at least, but what they don't have is practice. In a way, they don't know how to go the next step, in my opinion. And they don't have the practices which open up the present into a field of experience, as you're saying.

[07:01]

Okay? All right. He and I have been hanging out since 83. I don't know what's wrong with us. He was young and handsome once. He's still young and handsome. All right, okay. If I think I should or someone thinks I should, I'll write the five skandhas on the flip chart. But what I'd like to do now is to try to show you or give you a way to practice the five skandhas.

[08:03]

Of course it's helpful just to conceptually, philosophically become familiar with it. Natürlich ist es hilfreich, erst mal nur konzeptuell und philosophisch mit ihnen vertraut zu werden. Und zu sehen, dass die konzeptuell betrachtet Sinn erleben. Sagen wir mal physiologischen und phänomenologischen konzeptuellen Sinn. But that still isn't their practice. No, it's as I said to Paul, Paul. No. I keep wanting to go over and straighten it. I like the you in Paul. You like the U?

[09:24]

Because you say Paul, Paul. And in English we just say Paul. And that's appalling. Because it sounds like P-A-L-L and Paul, you don't hear the U in English. As long as I'm like you, I want you to be in power. Yeah, okay. So when you go to sit zazen, you walk to your cushion, find your cushion or wherever you sit, in consciousness. And so that's the fifth skandha.

[10:28]

So you are, because you're practicing the five skandhas, because it's such a basic teaching of Buddhism, you try to remind yourself, yeah, okay, I should, all right. You say, this is consciousness. Yeah, it seems, yeah, what the hell is that? Where's Connie and where's Conrad? Yeah, so they sit down with you. And you say, Connie and Conrad, I don't need you anymore. Yeah. So you are aware you're sitting down in consciousness. Like a medium, like a liquid. Like you might be aware if you were trying to sit in a swimming pool that you're walking through water.

[11:29]

Right. I'm imagining us all sitting on floating pillows, like frogs in a pond. Frogs. Yeah, OK. So anyway, you sit down and you have the feeling, I'm walking, my body is informed by consciousness. Now, if you think you were born in a container, In a world that's a container.

[12:33]

It was there before you and it's going to be there after you and we don't have much to do with it. Yeah, then you won't have any sense that, hey, consciousness is... rising from me. It's not there before me. It's arising through my activity. So you're walking with the feeling that as you're walking, you're constructing consciousness. Your foot stepping forward is constructing consciousness. So you just keep trying to remind yourself and you can do it. As long as you're alive, you can do it anytime you want. Right now I'm constructing my locative, my location's consciousness.

[13:37]

And I'm trying to participate in a nice way in your consciousness. Yeah, so then you sit down. And you take your starting posture. And I say starting posture because the first five or ten minutes you bit by bit refine your posture. It takes a moment for your spine to open up. So when you say goodbye to Connie and Conrad, You sort of let consciousness settle out like sediment might settle in a glass of water. So you let... Or you take off consciousness as you might take a... a body stocking or a stocking hat off your head.

[15:10]

And you feel you're more naked sitting on your cushion. Exposed, as we say, in the golden wind. The dharma wind, the golden dharma wind. That's a koan. And then you allow associative mind to appear. And not only do associations appear, but the mind of associations appears. Like when you go to sleep at night. Yeah.

[16:11]

it's not just that dreaming may start. But the mind of dreaming appears as well as the contents of the mind of dreaming. And there's often a little kind of physical click or movement and you're in. in the field of dreaming mind and no longer conscious mind. Now, if you can establish the physical component of dreaming mind, It's much easier to stay asleep and go back to sleep. Because you don't depend anymore on your head starting to sleep and consciousness stopping. You discover that physical component of dreaming mind.

[17:35]

And you can experiment with these things. Why do you start to wake up? And it's only 5.30 or something, or 4.30, you think, maybe I could sleep till... So sometimes you can just go back to, there was an image of the dream, some kind of image that you were waking up from the dream. You can go back to that image, and that image will pull you into dreaming mind. You know, or you can forget about the image of the dream, maybe, and just go back to the... liquid, the viscosity of dreaming mind, the field of dreaming mind.

[18:48]

And I'm talking about playing with this because playing with this is much like playing with the ships in Zagreb. And you can notice that when Dreaming Mind appears, the dream floats into the dream. into the dreaming mind. Yeah, and when you go into consciousness, the dream just sinks out of sight. Where did it go? There it is, way down there. Mm-hmm. Dreams sink in the viscosity of conscious mind.

[19:57]

And conscious thoughts about your identity, basically. Self-continuum appears. What I've got to do today, blah, blah, blah. Oh, that damn self-continuum, it's... Got me by the throat. So you loosen it up and go back. Okay. So you're in associative mind. And things appear. And associative mind also appears. And you can kind of let the association disappear and associative mind can stay. And now you have a chance to actually more intentionally experiment with this shift from consciousness to associative mind.

[21:07]

Although it's conceptually parallel to the shift between consciousness and dreaming mind, And the viscosity of dreaming mind has a lot to do with the viscosity of associative mind. You're beginning to also experience the the activity of appearance.

[22:30]

And to allow the viscosity of associative mind to establish itself, to become established. You have to practice or discover not thinking about mind. Sorry, practice. The... The mind of not thinking about. Because if you start thinking about the appearances, you think your way right up into consciousness. But it's actually to play with that shift sometimes.

[23:40]

And you can go back down into, I think, a social divine and go back up into consciousness and back down. It's like a shaman's rope appears and you go up the rope into sleep. So now what you're learning is you're learning the physical and you use it as an opportunity to learn the physical component of not thinking about mind. No, but you will have or you can have a noticeable, I don't know what to say, a notice about a mind that notices but doesn't think about.

[24:42]

In other words, I can notice this bell without thinking about it. I'm just noticing it. I'm not thinking about it. Not at all. So it's very important to establish In yogic practice, to establish the not thinking about mind. And this not thinking about mind is an entry to Yaoshan's, I think, non-thinking. And when I read, I mentioned the other day, I think, Iyengar's, the famous yoga teacher's obituary. The last statement in the obituary Somebody had said to him something about, what do you do in one of these postures you hold for so long?

[26:26]

He said something like, well, I can happily be in a state of not thinking for a long time. Okay. Yeah. So you see there's a lot of territory right here in these first two skandhas. Getting to feel consciousness as a construct and then getting to feel the presence of not thinking about field of mind, of associative mind. And then there is the associative. What else did you say? The not thinking about associative mind. All right. So now you've established the feel of appearance without thinking about it. The mind that notices and doesn't think about.

[27:41]

And you've established the physical component of this mind that doesn't think about. Okay, and now you can let that The appearances disappear. And you can just rest in now this established non-thinking about mind. And allow yourself to be bathed in your sensorium. And allow yourself to be bathed in your senses. So there are inputs from the phenomenal world.

[28:58]

There are inputs from the phenomenal world. The sound of tires on a wet street. Or airplanes, birds, somebody talking outside. And although these are phenomenally sourced inputs, They're inputs, but your experience is entirely interior. The car horn or the wet tires on the street.

[30:01]

may come from outside, well, do come from outside. But your experience is not outside, it's your senses which are experiencing this. So you get very familiar with the interiority of the sensorium. The interiority of your own experience. And what's interesting about this is it's an experience of completeness. It doesn't feel like you're dependent on the outside. By entirely your own interiority, you feel very completed. And you feel nourished by your own senses.

[31:29]

And this feeling of completeness and nourishment is the basis for the feeling of bliss that can and often does appear. And there's a kind of brightness or shininess to this mind now of percept only. And now you're establishing the physical component of the bright mind. Lucent mind of percept only.

[32:33]

And if you do know now the physical component of percept, Now we're talking about knowing thyself. We're talking about knowing thyself. This is not knowing your consciousness. This is allowing consciousness to subside and discovering how you actually exist. And when you go through the skandhas from a one to five, As I said, it's a kind of philosophical construction. And you can understand how the experience of existence is a construct. And if you know that the experience of existence is a construct, you know that there could be a Buddha.

[34:02]

Your contractor could be a Buddha. Like Peter Bellen is a contractor. A mind worker. A body worker. Yeah. Okay. But when you go through them in the opposite direction, it's an experiential uncovering. It's a deconstruction which opens you to layers which allow you to reconstruct your life. Yeah, yeah.

[35:12]

It's like that. It's like this. So now you're in percept-only mind. And you really feel that percept-only mind. And sometimes you have the experience of in ordinary circumstances, in the midst of ordinary consciousness, being able to establish percept-only mind as if you brought a flashlight into consciousness which made a brighter area than usual consciousness. Yeah, like this. So now you've discovered that percept, only mind, and in fact all these... minds of the layers of the skandhas the layers which create the experience of existence don't necessarily disappear when you're primarily in consciousness

[36:33]

They can begin to illuminate consciousness and transform consciousness. But you can't do that without the teaching of the skandhas, which allows you to direct attention and notice these layers. In various circumstances, sometimes this appears to people. In various circumstances, without practice, this sometimes appears to people. Like a car comes up on the sidewalk and pushes you against a building and nearly kills you. I know such instances. It's almost like it breaks consciousness into its parts and you begin to experience things in an entirely different way.

[37:59]

And it's an effect of sometimes a gigantic enlightenment experience. But it can be crazy making because you don't know how you got there. But it can also make you crazy because you don't know how it happened. And your personality can fall apart because you have no way to ground your personality anymore. So the skandhas are a much easier way to go. than hoping a car comes up and hits you on the sidewalk. That's like the story of the farmer sitting on the stump waiting for a rabbit. Do you know that story? He's coming home from the fields and a rabbit, he startles a rabbit, it jumps past him, hits a stump, breaks his neck, he brings it home and they have dinner.

[39:28]

Rabbit. Okay. Okay. So the next day his wife was looking for him. She can't find him. He's sitting on the stump waiting for another rabbit. A lot of us spend a lot of time waiting for the right boyfriend or girlfriend. Yeah, okay. Buddhist gentle ring. Okay. Shall we finish this before lunch? All right. Okay. So now we're in the third skanda. Only nine. And but we have this shiny, bright, lucent mind.

[40:47]

Now rooted in your own sensorial. And explicitly rooted of sensed, literally sensed, explicitly sensed as not really coming from outside, only stimulated from outside. And when you take away the sensorial inputs, You have the field of non-graspable feeling. That includes everything. that openness itself.

[41:51]

Now what's happening in associative mind and percept only mind is you're discovering if you establish yourself in percept only mind and associative mind you can only be established in these two minds if you are non-judgmental if you're accepting inclusive and a patient So what's going on now? The continuum that was in consciousness a self-continuum is now a continuum of patience of acceptance

[42:57]

It's not that myself is deciding what I'm going to relate to. It's no longer this is me and I like this and I don't like that kind of thing. The world is the The world is flowing within you. And flowing with everything simultaneously. And now your relationship to it is patience and kind of softness and acceptance. Non-critical. I mean, it's necessary to be critical sometimes and make choices. But this basic mind is just open. Aber dieser grundlegende Geist ist einfach offen.

[44:26]

Und wir können sagen, das ist, wo du wirklich den Geist des Mitgefühls entwickelst. So just feel for, to feel with and to accept. Einfach für etwas zu fühlen, mit etwas zu fühlen und zu akzeptieren. There doesn't have to be justice here. There's just a rightness. There's just openness and compassion. Now that's the mind of non-graspable feeling. As soon as you try to ornament it, it becomes graspable. So it functions through an unbounded openness. And that's why the first mental posture in practice in all circumstances

[45:29]

is acceptance. Even if it's a terrible situation, you better accept it first. And it's come to you through your environment, environment world. You may want to change it, do something about it, but first, before you can do anything, you have to accept it. So acceptance becomes, on every level of practice, the first order of mind. And maybe you can hear in the word order in English, weaving. Order is a word that arises from weaving. See, the first loom, Dorothea, The first loom on which the world begins to be structured is acceptance.

[47:18]

And acceptance structures your experience differently than if you are, I like this, I don't like that, etc. Yeah, and you had to accept a lot these days. So, now we're in the second skanda. Should we... Do the first skanda after lunch? No. He wants to go to lunch, right? You're hungry. It's early. It's only at 12.15. You need to stop listening to your belly. I need to, too. No sound. Okay, now you're in this mind of... There's only one more skanda to go.

[48:29]

Now you're in this mind of non-graspable feeling. And now you bring this mind of non-graspable feeling to the form skanda. And there's nothing but brightness and everything dissolving in this brightness. Things have form, but they also are disappearing into the field of mind. Die Dinge haben Form, aber sie verschwinden auch in das Feld des Geistes. You're not grasping anything. Du greifst nicht nach überhaupt irgendwas. Because everything is changing, everything is interdependent and inter-emergent. Weil sich alles verändert, alles ist wechselseitig aufeinander bezogen und wechselseitig sich gegenseitig hervorbringend.

[49:37]

Here is wisdom. The wisdom of everything being interdependent. And disappearing into emptiness. So here we have the teaching, form is emptiness. Okay. Is anybody present during all of that? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thanks for translating.

[50:16]

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