You know, of course, I've been doing this a long time, and yet here I am sitting with you, even for only ten minutes or less, and I am amazed that there's some kind of field I know extremely well, although all of you are different, and you're creating it your own way. I'm amazed. On the one hand, I've been doing this for so long and at the same time I come in here and sit with you for 10 minutes or so. And yet I feel such an innate trust with a field that we create together, although we have never sat together like this before and each and every one of you creates it with us. So I used the phrase earlier, to hold to the moment before thought arises.

[01:13]

The word dharma translates as to hold or hold. And here's that sense that if everything is changing, absolutely everything, where's your reference point? There's no change unless there's a reference point for changing or some relative reference Es gibt keine Veränderung, wenn es nicht auch einen Bezugspunkt für die Veränderung gibt, oder zumindest einen relativen Bezugspunkt. So we could say that the bodily wisdom, something like that, of yogic practice, ist to know that everything changes, and to know the relativity of everything that changes,

[02:20]

and to know somehow simultaneously a field or space in which there's something that doesn't move. I think all of the Asian, East Asian, Indian teachings, in some way the insight is that there's something that doesn't move.

[03:31]

I think in all Asian, Indian, Asian teachings there is the basic feeling that there is something that doesn't move. And this hold to the moment, hold then is what doesn't move or can be held or is a reference point. But it is simultaneously a knowing because you're doing it, you're holding. So there's some kind of knowing or agency doing it. And what you're holding, you're holding to a moment that's defined by thought yet hasn't arisen. So there's an energetic point, a kind of... energetic point or joint almost, from which thought arises.

[04:47]

And that point where thought arises is consciousness, is the knowing which we call thinking. And this point, from which thoughts arise, is consciousness and is what we call thinking. I find this, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm a little crazy again, I find this thrilling, such a statement. It's like, I think if I'd known it when I was 10 or 12, it would have changed my life.

[06:23]

And I've talked to Reinhard a bit about, and my daughter Sophia is completely interested in mathematics these days. Ich habe ein bisschen mit Reinhard darüber gesprochen, weil meine Tochter Sophia zurzeit sich sehr für Mathematik interessiert. Und ihre tägliche Übung besteht darum, zu versuchen, Aufgaben zu lösen, die sie nicht lösen kann, weil sie das Gefühl hat, dass das ihren Geist erfrischt. And I remember when I was a kid, I didn't, you know, I had a feeling with mathematics you can go somewhere where thinking doesn't take you. Ordinary knowing doesn't take you. But here's a kind of... Stillness, a kind of knowing which takes us where ordinary knowing can't take us.

[07:36]

Now this is a statement that's been kept in the Lineages, teachings since, I don't know, 1,000, 1,200 years. And it has so much in it, just that little phrase. This statement goes on to say, hold to the moment before thought arises. Die Aussage geht weiter mit Halte dich an den Moment, bevor Gedanken aufsteigen. That little joint before thought arises.

[08:37]

Diese kleine Schnittstelle, bevor Gedanken auftauchen. And then the statement says, look into it. Dieser kleine Verbindungspunkt. Und dann geht die Aussage weiter mit Schau dort hinein. And here, again, we have an agency of looking, which is not thought. Look into it and see, not seeing. See, not seeing. And then put it aside. Schau dort hinein und sehe das Nichtsehen und dann leg es beiseite. So that our personal narrative is being, if we say that it's mostly woven through reiteration, reiteration means to say again, to say it over and over again, to reiterate.

[09:41]

And the word narrative that we're using, the English word, means to tell a story. And in our discussion earlier this morning of memory, it's clear that we keep retelling the story to ourselves. And often, we're willing to retell the story at the price of the facts. Trump is an expert. I mean, about that. Trump is an expert. Yeah.

[10:48]

Every time I see his name, all I can think of is Trumptanik. I hope it hits an iceberg. Like Titanic. Yeah. So there's a knowing and an agency of knowing that's not consciousness. Now, is that part of our personal narrative? Is that woven into our personal narrative? Is it its own narrative? Yeah, I don't know.

[11:51]

Each one of those we could do a seminar on. And in these particular paradigms, a Buddhism has not been worked out. It comes out of our Western thinking, these questions. They're not non-existent in Buddhism, but they've been responded to in different paradigmatic ways. So we have the excitement of original questions here that we, in our own bodily lives, have to decide if we're functioning, if we're going to recognize and live within this wider agency of knowing than consciousness.

[13:00]

So here we also have this interesting situation with very original questions, questions that have never been asked and that we have to answer in our lived life, in our I lost you somewhere, the last thing. The wider aspects of knowing than consciousness. Well, if you lost me, you lost me. That's the way it is. I try to accept everything. Maybe we could call one cognitive knowing and the other affective knowing or something. And I think we all have intuitions and intimations of this wider knowing.

[14:04]

But to decide to explore it is the yogic bodhisattva intention. But to decide to explore this, that is the intention of the yogic bodhisattva. You mean, you know, usually when I speak, I do often, is almost everybody in the room I know. Where did you find all these new people? They found us. You look like perfectly nice people, but I haven't met you. And I'm good at faces, but not at names, so it'll take me a while to find out your names. Okay. And being new to this, you have to get used to, I think,

[15:07]

I think I'm being perfectly clear and coherent, of course. But I often hear from people, even Andreas Rohrmann, who just organized the seminar after he'd been practicing with me 20 years or something, I don't know. He startled me every now and then, quite often, saying, you know, the first four or five years I didn't understand a word you were saying. Well, it felt good, I don't know. No, I have this discontinuity between thinking I'm completely making huge effort to be clear, precise, etc. And then people say, well, it's nice to listen to you, but I didn't know what you meant.

[16:29]

I had the opposite experience many years ago with Sukhirishi in New York. Ich hatte die gegenteilige Erfahrung vor vielen Jahren mit Suzuki Roshi in New York. There's a church in New York, a big Unitarian church in New York, where they let Californians give lectures and things like that, you know, New Age stuff. Es gibt eine große Unitarian, wie heißen die auf Deutsch, Unitarier Kirche in New York, wo sie gestatten, dass selbst Kalifornier Vorträge halten dürfen, so New Age Zeug und so. So Sukhirashi and I gave a lecture. And he was on my left and I was on his right.

[17:34]

And it turned out his microphone didn't work. So there were, I don't know, some hundreds of people there trying to see what Zen was like. And afterwards people said, you know, we could hear you and understand you, but it was wonderful to look at him. Okay. Again, I'm trying to get us on a similar page and I will look forward to some discussion too. So we have this question, which I don't know if we can answer or we can approach perhaps. What is the relationship between weaving our personal narrative and a knowing, an affective knowing or agency of knowing?

[18:51]

which is not consciousness. This is not just a knowing that your body remembers how to ride a bicycle. This is an active agency of knowing, which is not consciousness. Okay, at least that's what's implied by the statement I gave you and by much else in the lineage teachings of Zen. And the style of teaching in Zen is basically, I try to teach you how to teach yourself Zen. So I give you some hints or create some problems, like is there an agency of knowing outside of consciousness?

[20:31]

Also versuche ich Hinweise zu geben oder vielleicht auch ein Problem zu kreieren, so was wie, gibt es so was, wie eine Instanz, eine aktive Instanz des Wissens, eine aktive Instanz, die weiß, die außerhalb des Bewusstseins ist. And then your way-seeking mind takes up these challenges or questions. And makes the practice your own in that process. It's not just coming from me. You make this practice your way. Now I mentioned earlier that Perhaps the sense which is least acculturated is touch. And there's touch as feeling and there's touch as agency. In other words, my two hands are touching each other.

[21:56]

And let's call that feeling. And yet I can have my left hand be the hand that has the And that's rather mysterious, but I can do it. I just intend it, and it's the left hand touching the right, or it's the right hand touching the left, etc., These mysteries are right here in front of us, in our hands. Okay. All right. So what I want to do is say something about Zazen and then stop.

[23:18]

Now that's not encouraging because I've been saying something about Zazen for a century and not stopping. Okay, so we're sitting, we have a posture. We are a posture. We've decided that to enter into this agency of knowing, which is not consciousness, it's good to have a very specific posture. As much as possible, as you get more experience, a rather articulated posture. It's interesting for me to watch musicians when they lean back playing the violin or lean forward or the cello, whatever it is, how their body relates to exactly what kind of sound they want to produce.

[24:47]

And if they experience every tone as having a beginning, middle and end, If they experience it that way, then that would be a definition of a dharma. Wenn Sie das so erfahren, dann wäre das eine Definition von einem Dharma. A Dharma is the experience you develop through practice and mindfulness that every appearance, you feel its beginning, you feel its durative middle, and you feel it ending.

[25:49]

And then you end it. That's a Dharma. And one of the pedagogical, in a sense, teaching yourself, The invisible stages within Zen practice that you notice yourself within your own way-seeking mind. You notice what percentage of the time you hardly notice percepts as appearances.

[26:55]

So the experienced practitioner notices all percepts, all perceptions as appearances of mind and the object being perceived. or the activity being perceived. And has an experience of every perception of having a beginning, middle, and end, and a release. I mean, maybe again, it sounds a little nuts to think, Can I just be alive?

[28:03]

Do I have to say beginning, middle and end? Leave me alone. I'm sure that my daughter is 15 and I'm sure when she was 14 that's what she said to me. Now at 15 she's kind of interested in things. She was like, Dad, you'll be so Zen. Yeah. Okay. So... But all of Buddhism is framed in... four conditions or expectations.

[29:04]

And these really, to make practice work again, these four have to function within you as something you're sure about. Und nochmal, wenn du wirklich möchtest, dass die Praxis funktioniert in dir, dann müssen diese vier Aspekte, die müssen in dir wirken als etwas, wo du dir sicher bist. One is that enlightenment is possible. Und das erste ist, dass Erleuchtung möglich ist. And the second, that it's possible to be free of mental and emotional suffering. And third, that it's possible to know how we actually exist. I should have said three. So the three work together. Und diese drei wirken miteinander, arbeiten miteinander.

[30:22]

They're three separate, they're three, they're separate but intertwined. Diese drei sind voneinander unabhängig, aber miteinander verwoben. So to know each percept, I mean everything's changing, right? How do you participate in that? To just know that everything's changing means nothing. It even deepens the delusion. Just to know that everything is changing, that doesn't mean anything at all. It even deepens the fog. It's an inoculation. You've been inoculated with the very disease. Vaccination? What? Vaccination? Inoculation? The doctors here? Yes? Well, tonight, well, I've seen the clocks.

[31:27]

Yeah, like that, okay. So you've got to find, is everything really changing? How do I experience this? So when every perception, when you feel yourself in the midst of every perception, You start with a few and pretty soon it's all of them. And you notice it isn't permanent. It has a beginning, middle, end and a release. And again, what does such a simple thing do? Simple to understand, not so easy to do, actually. It brings your constantly reiterated narrative into a pace of how you're actually noticing the world sensorially.

[32:45]

Okay. I wasn't going to say that, but that is an example of moving our narrative story out of just a cognitive flow into a bodily, perceptual flow. That's an example of what happens when we move our story out of a cognitive stream into a physical stream. Okay. Now, so what we're trying to do now, and speaking about touch, just a cut to the chase, as we say.

[33:45]

Do you know that expression? Like to come to the point? Yeah. Come to some point, anyway. The point, I don't know. Some point. When you sit zazen, you're taking the body out of consciousness. Ordinary consciousness. Because you can't really sit still and more and more thoroughly still inside and out. If you're primarily located in consciousness. Because consciousness is always asking you to move, to do things, to make things okay, and so forth.

[34:54]

Yeah. And wants to put things into categories, you know, etc. You have to free yourself from that temporal categorizing. And find some space that you... Whereas I said the other day, consciousness is like the waves above you, shimmering, but you are in the still water. And people who find a bodily liking for that still water underneath the shimmer of consciousness. Und Menschen, die ein körperliches Wohlgefühl daran finden können, in diesem stillen Wasser, das unter den Spiegelungen und dem Funkeln des Wassers der Wellen stattfindet.

[36:13]

Ja, are the kind of person that tends to continue practice. Das sind die Art von Leute, die häufig mit der Praxis weitermachen. Happy to take a vacation from their usual story. Or they just need a vacation from their usual stories. Yeah, okay. So, how do we make this more affective and effective? Kann das wer anders sagen? Wie machen wir das effektiver? How does it affect us more and affect what we do? Okay, wirksam ist klar, aber affektiv bin ich mir noch nicht sicher. Wie können wir machen... Beherzt?

[37:16]

How can we stabilize our posture with what are called some kind of term in English, bodily points. is that we can stabilize our posture with, in English or German, we can speak of body points. Now I use, there's sometimes seven bodily points, I use eight bodily points because I find them, the way I define it, useful. And for me, the eight bodily points are the spine, first of all, overall. And zazen is primarily a posture of the spine. And Zazen is meant to awaken the spine as a kind of mind.

[38:32]

A kind of present awareness which you give an upward movement through the body up to the crown chakra. And it actually takes a while of sitting before your spine opens up and there can be an attentional awareness throughout the spine. But I take three points, the coccyx, the sacral and coccyx area, the base of the spine. I bring that agency of attention, not just ordinary feeling, but agency of attention to that spot.

[39:52]

And then I bring it to the middle of the spine, the lumbar thorax on the spine. So for me that's a third point. A second point, excuse me. And then the third point is the cervical spine where the so-called atlas and axis vertebrae are. The base of the beginning of the neck. And that's where your head is balanced and where it can turn. Now, why do I bother to name them? Usually, in my experience, I just feel, visualize them.

[40:55]

But I also like to name them. And why? Because all mothers are called mothers. Does that make sense? Because, I mean, we all have a different mother, right? Unless you're twins or brothers. We have different mothers, but we want them all to be mothers. We want a genetic mother who's a generic... No, we want a genetic woman who's a generic mother. It's some sort of thrill to have your own mother. I mean, this is why the therapists are in business, because we don't often have the mother we needed.

[42:17]

I always find it great to see these nature things where there's like 10,000 walruses on the beach, you know. There's all little baby wallers that are kind of lost, but the baby knows the mother's sound and the mother knows the baby's sound. So, we're all different people here, persons here, but we all have a lumbar and thorax. It's pretty much the same, like a mother. It's a mother's spine. So I would also include then the crown chakra, the tongue, the middle of the chest,

[43:23]

And the hands and feet. I think that comes to eight. And I tend to feel those in zazen. I identify them. And when I'm walking around in activity, I feel them In the walking and in the doing things and so forth. So when I'm speaking, these bodily points, which are also my hands, are stabilizing my body in some way that's outside of my narrative. Und wenn ich hier sitze und spreche, dann stabilisieren diese Körperpunkte meinen Körper auf eine Art und Weise, die außerhalb der Geschichte liegt.

[44:43]

Das ist eine ganz grundlegende Lehre und Praxis. And yet, for us in the West, for me in the West, it was quite new to realize I could stabilize my body in a way that was outside of most emotional and mental concerns. That's enough for now. So maybe we can have, after a break, some discussion and conversation.

[45:08]

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