If Neil and I were strong enough, we could just take hold of this soft floor and pull you all forward. But since we're not, at least I'm not, maybe he could do it. It would be nice if you moved forward some. If we're going to discuss the nature of mind, I need the mind's clothes. Just got here and you're leaving.

[01:16]

Where do you mean? Machine. Who's operating the recording machine? You can move what? It is recording. It's already working. It's just two buttons on the in-web. But I mean, but Gerald can do it or somebody else. No, he explained it to me on the phone yesterday before he was there. I just got used to it. All right. This Jerry, is that Jerry? Jerry. Hello, Jerry. Thank you. Thank you for moving up. You can't look really to know what Buddhism is.

[02:43]

It doesn't help much to look at historically what Buddhism has been. Really, To understand Buddhism we have to look to what it is. What it is in our experience. Yeah. So first we have to look at, feel into our experience. So I can't tell you much about the nature of mind. Well, I'll try to tell you what I've observed or thought I've noticed. accomplish anything these two days, we need to have some experience individually and shared experience of the nature of mind.

[04:00]

No. If we're all doing a sashin together, it's fairly easy. Or at least the basic technique. conditions make it easier to know the nature of mind. And one of the reasons this practice of sâshin exists, because if you sit together over seven days, actually Fairly quickly, the metabolism of everybody starts to be in sync. You can measure it. Starts to be in?

[05:02]

In sync, in synchronicity. In sync, yeah. Not in the bathtub. In the bathtub. Then it will be there, too. Then it will be there, too. Yeah, but here we don't have so much opportunity to come into a mutual feeling of mind that makes it easy for us to notice. and then speak about it. But still, to some extent, we have to find this physical sense of mind.

[06:09]

And for some reason it does just help if there's a field of mind of others in which we can feel this. Yeah, because again Any concepts I tell you about don't mean much. What will mean anything is some experience of mine. Now, so we have to look at some Let's try to at least look at some categories of mind to help our noticing. Well, but first let me say, if mind is such a big part of our life, we ought to know something about it. But maybe that's not true.

[07:20]

Maybe mind is just some kind of... untouchable. It's just, we hardly notice it, you know, when I'm looking at you. Do I see mind? No, I see you. In fact, I'm seeing mind, but the information, my senses say, I'm seeing you. So one of the first aspects which I have to remind ourselves of is all of real practice in Buddhism is to develop the habit of seeing mind as well as objects. To see everything as a mind object.

[08:21]

Now, how to do that or what that means, we can talk about that during our two days. Well, it's very clear it's good to know something about the body. And we have a lot of doctors to help us do it. Yeah. If you're going to, I mean, we know we should exercise, take care of our teeth, do things like that, etc. Wir wissen alle, dass wir unsere Übung machen sollten, uns um unsere Zähne kümmern sollten, usw. But how do we exercise the mind? Aber wie üben wir, trainieren wir den Geist? Well, you do learn how to think. We learn to do mathematics and speak a language correctly and so forth. Nun, man lernt zu denken, man lernt Mathematik und eine Sprache korrekt zu sprechen.

[09:39]

When we tell a child to learn ABC, 1, 2, 3, 4, you're already learning, that's already a structuring of the mind. But on the whole, we don't have mind doctors in the same way we have body doctors. We have psychotherapists. Maybe that's about as close as we get to a mind doctor. But psychotherapists are primarily interested, usually, in the self. And how our experience of the self and history of the self affect us. how we behave and feel about our self. But from the point of view of Buddhism, the self is only a function of the mind.

[10:44]

And the mind is much... More than the self. But how do we observe it? Well, the practice of mindfulness is the practice of beginning the observation of mind. And just that topic would be enough for a seminar. And we were just in Hannover with at least some of you, Andreas and Gerald. And we talked about wide choice Calm mind.

[11:46]

And were we ever wide and joyous? Well, I don't know, but it was okay. We spent most of the time actually on just what could be meant in yogic sense by a wide mind. We explored and discovered something about that really one adjective in relationship to mind for most of the seminar. But now we're talking about not just the wide mind, but the nature of mind. So I think this topic requires us to review what we know and have practiced within the Dharma Sangha about mind.

[13:02]

For some of you it will be mostly new. And for some of you, it'll be partially or mostly a review. But for those of you for whom it's, you know, partially a review, let's really see if we can feel each category, each distinction. And really see if in ourselves we have the experience and clarity of these distinctions. And you might. You might not feel it the same way. In that case, trust your own experience.

[14:12]

And let's share that, if it's possible, because that will benefit all of us. Because the touchstone... where you start from, is always our experience. The only way we're going to get anywhere is if we work with our experience. And especially if it's different from what I'm saying or what Buddhism is saying. You can't find out what Buddhism says unless you start from your own experience, whatever it is. So I'm going to present some basic, simple things.

[15:20]

But I'd like to present them in a way that we really have a feel for them. Mm-hmm. And I've been doing this for years. Yeah, I've been noticing my own experience. Listening to what Suki Roshi said for years. a decade or more. And studying Buddhism. And then studying my own experience now, observing my own experience and studying it for many years. And studying that in practicing with others.

[16:32]

And much of the development of my understanding has come through practicing with others. Okay. Now, If I say, mind is such and such, that's going to influence you. But it shouldn't keep you from noticing your own experience as being similar or different. Yeah. But I do want to influence you. Because, you know, we have to start somewhere.

[17:34]

Buddhism is 2,500 years of influence. And we have to know how that, in a way, influence developed But again, we need to trust our own experience. But try on this long tradition and see how it fits your own experience. And how it makes you notice your own experience. Now, I'm not just speaking about this right now in relationship to these two days.

[18:34]

But I'm trying to give you a feel for how practice itself works as long as you practice the rest of your life. Yeah, we say wave follows wave, wave leads wave. Our experience leads the teaching. And the teaching leads the experience. And you don't get too many waves ahead. You stay in relationship. And you don't get too many waves ahead. So let's start with some basic categories. Well, waking mind, that's pretty basic. Dreaming mind. And non-dreaming deep sleep. Yeah. Now, this observation is behind all of Buddhism.

[19:57]

And the questions noticing these three categories raise Und die Fragen, die diese drei Kategorien aufgeworfen haben, die haben zur Praxis geführt. Also ich nehme mal stark an, dass ihr diese Kategorien vorher schon bemerkt habt, obwohl es schwierig ist, nicht träumenden Tiefschlaf zu bemerken. Aber man träumt ja nun nicht immer. If you really notice these three categories, and you ask yourself some basic questions, if these minds are so separate from each other, could they be connected? I'll close the window.

[21:07]

Close the window? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So we have these three categories. Waking mind, which you're all more or less in right now. Sleeping and dreaming, which probably not too long ago you were... Enjoying. I hope enjoying. Although we don't always enjoy our dreams. And our sleeping mind is, you know, these two types of sleeping, dreaming sleep and non-dreaming sleep. And what is the first fact about these three minds?

[22:27]

Is they don't know each other very well. You know very well. You only partially know your dreams. And mostly, actually, we don't know our dreams and they're hard to remember. And why are they hard to remember? That's a good question. Why are they hard to remember? Okay. And non-dreaming sleep, we don't know at all what it's like.

[23:30]

Except that it's generally thought to be, felt to be, the most blissful of our three minds. Yeah, there's a lot of problems in consciousness. There's a lot of stress in dreams often. But non-dreaming deep sleep seems to be free of stress. Actually, we can't know exactly what it is because we have no observer in non-dreaming deep sleep. All right. So we can ask ourselves a question.

[24:31]

If you have a scientific... Or you just feel during this lifetime you ought to know what's happening here. So you might ask, is there any way to relate these three minds or make them know each other more? And this impulse led to meditation. It seems, though we don't really know, if you go back 3,000 years or so before Buddhism, There was people tried psychedelics of various kinds.

[25:39]

But the tradition from which Buddhism developed decided it was better to do it with yoga with meditation. To just look into the nature of mind itself. Okay, now as I started to say earlier, I've been reviewing these things, which I'm doing right now with you, myself for a lot of years, going over the same things and finding them clearer. Usually clearer and clearer.

[26:45]

And then sometimes not so clear. And then after a while, if I stay with it, the not so clear leads to usually greater clarity. my reviewing right now, not with the sense that it won't be clearer two years from now. And it looks like I'll be back in Berlin in a year. You can check in. Because already this year, it's a little different than I would have expressed it last year. No, I'm speaking about it because really to do this practice you've got to engage in this process yourself.

[27:53]

So what happens if you decide to try to answer the question Can these minds be more related, know each other better? How can you do this? You can't do it with thinking. You can't do it by thinking alone. Because thinking is what you do when you're awake. So you have to find some way to notice the mind not through thinking.

[29:13]

So somebody, I guess, somebody just sat down. Maybe they just gave up. I can't do this. I'm just going to sit down. I give up. And then it all became clear. There might be quite a bit of truth to that actually. Gary Snyder, the The poet thinks that maybe his training is as an anthropologist. Because he says that perhaps hunters, you have to sit a long time and wait for the buffalo. And while you're waiting, you are enlightened and you decide why I shouldn't kill. Or something like that. Or you're real apologetic for killing the bear. Yeah, anyway, might be some truth to that, too.

[30:31]

In any case, people discovered if you sit down... You can observe the mind. Because, you know, if I'm moving, and this is moving, I can't see anything. But if I sit still, I can begin to see the movement of the mind, if the body is still. And it was discovered that if the body sits still, the mind starts to become still. And if you can keep from thinking about it, you can start to observe. the mind.

[31:35]

Now this much must be clear. Well what happened was, yeah, they discovered there's more, there's a mind that links the other three, the other two, yeah, all three, the way dreams surface in sleeping, an aspect or quality of dreams surfaces during the day now in waking mind. And what was discovered is that also it seems like non-dreaming deep sleep

[32:37]

surfaces in meditation. Und es schien dann so, dass der nicht träumende Tiefschlaf begann während der Meditation aufzusteigen. So meditation was the kind of test tube, the experimental method, by which these three minds... became more connected. And in fact, a fourth mind was created. So the practice of trying to observe the three minds generated a fourth mind. Now, what is this fourth mind?

[33:52]

Does it only exist in yogic practice? No, no, no, it doesn't. I don't think so. But to establish this as a location within which you inhabit... This is yogic practice. And that's what the third eye means. The third eye is a fourth mind. To know the world not through the five or six senses, but this additional sense. Mm-hmm. And I spoke last night about the drawing of the tree at the base of the spine of this ancient Buddha statue.

[34:59]

This is another expression of the fourth body as well as the fourth mind. For the body which supports this Okay, so we've got pretty far from just looking at three categories. Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. And seeing if we can enter into the relationship of these three. And as I often say, you don't have to depend on meditation. Just start noticing the mind as you go to sleep and the mind as you wake up.

[36:00]

And notice the transition between dreamings, between consciousness appearing and dreaming disappearing. And see if you can slip back into sleep and dreams appear and consciousness sinks. So we can use the metaphor of a liquid Which is common to Buddhism, but also occurred in my own experience, trying to... understand these things. It's almost like there's two liquids with a different viscosity. And consciousness will float in one and dreams sink in it. And in the viscosity of sleep, consciousness sinks and dreams float.

[37:39]

Okay, so you can really get a feeling for the different viscosity of waking mind. and dreaming, sleeping mind. If you can really feel the different viscosity, physical feel of it, it will make it much easier to go to sleep or wake up. To my mind, to my thinking, this is just knowing about ourselves, knowing about the life we are in the midst of, the living we're in the midst of. I think another example of this fourth mind that occurs, is daydreaming.

[39:11]

I think daydreaming, it's not waking, it's not sleeping, but it's a territory where things seem to float around. Yes. Swim around, yeah. And I think also, as I've often mentioned, I think sunbathing is a kind of fourth mind, meditative mind. One time I was sitting with a friend meditating on a dock of a lake. And my friend wasn't used to my meditating. I hadn't seen him for years. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, we've got about a half an hour, nothing to do, so it's like sitting here in the lake, you know. And a few minutes later I looked over and he was... Lying on the dock sort of like this.

[40:24]

And I said, what are you doing, Earl? He said, I'm worshipping the great sun god, O Tanmi. So I think when we... When we do sunbathe, the sun kind of holds us in place and we're in some other space that's not sleeping and not... usual thinking, waking. But to establish us in this mind is the job of meditation and mindfulness. Yeah, so I think now is a good time to have a break. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for translating.

[41:24]

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